On Tue, Mar 1, 2022 at 11:41 PM Jake via sudo-discuss <sudo-discuss@sudoroom.org> wrote:
On Tue, 1 Mar 2022, Marc Juul wrote:

>> Interesting, though having a bus lane straight through a "car free area"
>>> seems very silly to me. I've never seen anything like that anywhere. Does
>>> anyone know why they came up with this? surely the bus could just run one
>>> street over from telegraph?
>>
>> I think it's still worth having a "car free area" even with public
>> transportation buses driving through - keep in mind that cities will always
>> want paths for fire trucks and ambulancii
>>
>
> Ambulances and fire trucks can still go in pedestrian areas without a big
> fat bus lane as long as you don't literally barricade entry and exit, and
> sure, having buses only is better than nothing but so much worse than fully
> pedestrian. There is a big difference in the feeling of having to check for
> vehicles before crossing vs. just being able to freely waltz all over the
> place without a care in the world. The question is: Why campaign for such a
> suboptimal solution?

why aim for that solution?  it's a big step in the right direction, and having
a bus go through gives the same access to the place to people who are too old
or immobile to get there by biking or whatever means us young healthy folks
have.

as for ambulances and fire trucks driving on non-roads...there will invariably
be obstacles on those paths making passage impossible, that's something that we
don't have to think about since we don't do those kinds of emergency jobs.

You realize I come from a country that's sorta known for being good at bike/pedestrian friendly infrastructure design? and I'm telling you I've never seen this sort of thing. There are other ways of dealing with access, such as having the bus intersect the pedestrian only area every couple of blocks. The bus doesn't stop on every block normally anyway. Obviously impeding emergency traffic by putting obstacles in their paths should still be illegal. I don't see why that would be different for a pedestrian area. If you ever visit my home town we can walk down the main street which is implemented exactly like this.
I'm also not sure why bikes should be allowed. Again they can just go one street over.

Talk to Sierk if you want more info on how to do good pedestrian-friendly street design. He has actually studied this stuff in depth. He'll also tell you all about why the telegraph bike lane situation near Omni is flawed.

 
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