California Department of Transportation to repave El Camino Real, add bicycle lanes
Sounds good, but...
"Cycling club adviser Natalie Docktor said finding alternative routes to improve bicycle safety might work better for both cyclists and businesses.
“Businesses need parking to stay in business. It would be best to find a parallel street and create a bike lane”
What is she advising them to do? Drive cars?
#PaloAlto #cycling #CarsRuinEverything
(High school paper)
https://thecampanile.org/30384/uncategorized/california-department-of-transportation-to-repave-el-camino-real-add-bicycle-lanes/
Brilliant! #CarsRuinEverything
Car ownership increasingly unaffordable for many Hoosiers
"Indiana rose two places from seventh in 2022 to fifth in 2023. Auto loan balances in 90 days of delinquency or more increased from 4.72% in 2022 to 5.29% in 2023, 26% above the national average.
The study also found that the percentage of auto loan balances with at least 90 days of delinquency is increasing nationwide."
More cities are banning right turns on red in response to rising pedestrian deaths
Not a great article. NPR interviews one person who says the sun is out, and one person who says it's raining, but they don't look out the window.
#UrbanPlanning #CarsRuinEverything
More cities are banning right turns on red in response to rising pedestrian deaths
Northeast Ohio cities are blocking new car washes
It's about time our elected officials fought back against Big Soap!
Northeast Ohio cities are blocking new car washes. Here's what's driving the backlash.
Philadelphia: Activists partied to stop cars from parking in bike lanes
This story is depressing for its implicit assumption that churchgoers have no way to attend church if they don't drive cars. Sure, "Some are elderly with mobility challenges while others are young families" but that implies that some are not. Can they carpool? Take the bus? Ride bikes?
#cycling #Philadelphia #CarsRuinEverything
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Outside this Philly church Sunday, activists partied to stop cars from parking in bike lanes
A $1,400 SUV payment? A $1,600 truck payment? Sounds ‘absurd,’ but it’s becoming more common.
"By this February, 17.4% of new cars were financed with a monthly payment of over $1,000, compared with 5% in February 2020, according to data from the car site Edmunds. Over the same period, the average transaction price for new vehicles jumped from $38,130 to $47,060, and the average interest rate on new-car loans went from 5.7% to 7.1%."
American drivers are now even more distracted by their phones. Pedestrian deaths are soaring.
"During the pandemic, American drivers got even more distracted by their phones while driving. The amount of distracted driving hasn’t receded, even as life has mostly stabilized...both phone motion and screen interaction while driving went up roughly 20 percent between 2020-2022."
You aren’t imagining things — drivers are more distracted by their phones than ever
@redfox Love them. Forces cars to slow down to a less than killing speed instead of a stop sign or light that can be blown through at 50 MPH. #CarsRuinEverything
Empty parking lots are a drag on America’s downtowns
"Our nation’s downtowns are full of these neglected spaces — surface lots of crumbling asphalt and weeds, emblematic of absentee property owners and a disregard for the public good. Other lots, not entirely abandoned, are often underused and unkept.
Surface lots occupy, on average, nearly a quarter of available land in city centers...They are holdover eyesores from the commuter past"
What Drives Republican Opposition to Transit?
Give credit to Aaron Freeman - This article on Urban-Rural divides in transit is full of "No Comments" and "Didn't Responds" but it seems Senator Freeman was willing to talk to them.
"GOP state lawmakers have often opposed new spending and infrastructure for public transit. The reasons have as much to do with the urban-rural divide as partisan ideology."
#transit #CarsRuinEverything #HoosierMast
More car owners are underwater on loans because of lower trade-in values
"In a new report, the car-shopping website found that 1 out of 5 new-vehicle sales that involved a trade-in were upside-down in the fourth quarter of 2023, compared with 17.7 percent in the last quarter for 2022 and 14.9 percent in the same period for 2021."
(Gift article)
Advice | More car owners are underwater on loans because of lower trade-in values
Santa Monica spends $26K to provide free car storage, reaps no benefits
"It is apparent that the 3 hours of free parking did not encourage people to visit the downtown parking structures during the 2023 holiday season. Much like the 2020 analysis referenced above, it can be concluded that “Parker behavior may be driven by accessibility to the amenities by the parking facility and less on the benefit of free parking.”
#SantaMonica #parking #CarsRuinEverything
Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies
"In recent years, insurance companies have offered incentives to people who install dongles in their cars or download smartphone apps that monitor their driving, including how much they drive, how fast they take corners, how hard they hit the brakes and whether they speed...instead: Car companies are collecting information directly from internet-connected vehicles"
"Bike lanes are incredibly efficient. They generate no traffic unless there are astronomical numbers of cyclists in them. This can easily be perceived as “emptiness,” but does not mean the bike lane is not used..cycling on the street increased by more than 100 percent following the installation of the lane — more recent bicycle counts show a continued increase since."
I wonder if there are any studies on bike lane perceived emptiness.
Understanding Car Culture 'Denialism' Can Help Safety Advocates Respond - Streetsblog New York City
Make Safe Streets a Culture War and We All Lose
"Making a fight against SUVs part of the culture wars is a dumb, ultimately losing, strategy. Dumb, dumb, super dumb.
There is so much shared experience to build from. Lean into that—don't do anything to distract from it."
The author suggests redesigning roads to be safer as a better solution. To be sure, but a lot more expensive and difficult one as well.
#UrbanPlanning #CarsRuinEverything
Will America ever stop building more highways?
"As the planet warms, some activists are fighting back — citing the future emissions of adding lanes and the devastation faced by communities razed to make way for them. Their push against giant multilane highways represents an emerging frontier for the environmental movement, which has historically been more focused on fossil fuel projects than seven-lane roads."
#environment #CarsRuinEverything
Driving to Isolation: Why Churches in American Struggle to Answer the Loneliness Epidemic
"The biggest enemy of connection, inside and outside the church, is not the Internet, or politics, or lack of opportunities to gather, give, and grow. That title belongs to one uniquely Western cultural force, one that we’re so accustomed to swimming in that we’ve forgotten we’re even in it: car-dependent sprawl."
@glightly I've decided on #CarsRuinEverything
Why do we have right-on-red, and is it time to get rid of it?
Atlanta, Denver, Indianapolis, Washington, DC, Raleigh, North Carolina, and other major cities have recently proposed or passed laws banning it in parts of their busy downtowns or citywide. They believe it will protect people walking and biking amid the highest number of pedestrian fatalities in more than 40 years.
How the 1970s oil crisis created the right turn on red | CNN Business
Red-Light Running Then — and Now?
(This is from back in 2000)
"(Minnesota) seventh grader Lydia Sorenson, who counted red-light runners for a science project...She said that before the study, she had expected to see maybe 10 red-light runners total. But 14 drivers ran the light on the first day alone. There were 70 total in the nine hours she counted, which she extrapolated to 217 a month — 2,604 a year."
https://streets.mn/2024/01/18/red-light-running-then-and-now/
Golf cart sales surge as US families find unlikely alternative to second cars
"Golf carts are becoming the second car of choice for families across the US, with the market anticipated to surge to more than $2 billion (£1.57 billion) within the next few years.
In retirement villages, residential communities, university campuses and small towns, it is becoming commonplace to see people driving themselves around in golf carts."
#golfcarts #CarsRuinEverything
Golf cart sales surge as US families find unlikely alternative to second cars
