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Houstonian of 30+ years here.
Even with the insane number of lanes available, driving anywhere inside beltway 8 between like 12 pm and 8pm is hell on earth. And outside those hours, you’re playing chicken with drunk drivers.
Before I started working remote, I used to clock my average speed to and from work. Most of the time it was 15-20mph on a 65mph freeway. Literally bicycle speeds. Without cars or gridlocked traffic, I could have commuted faster on a bike.
More than one person dies in Houston traffic every day on average. This is probably the shittiest and most expensive form of mass transit mankind will ever build. At least I hope this is as bad as it ever gets, lol.
It’s absolutely insane how many people die every single day because we thought it was a good idea to let everyone operate multi-ton pieces of heavy machinery at hundreds of km per hour on the reg.
How the fuck is there more regular testing and training for people driving forklifts than Dodge Rams?
Simple, if you fuck up on a forklift you are damaging company property.
And as we all know, company property has more rights than people.
To be fair, those forklifts can be quite dangerous. Just ask Klaus.
Klaus seems like a fine dude
Seemed* 😔
Last time I was in Houston I was driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic that was going 95 mph. I looked over to my right and saw a group of five cars pass me going at least 10 to 20 mph faster. This would not have been remarkable except that I was in the right lane and these cars were passing me on the shoulder.
This being Houston, though, that’s still probably not remarkable.
Can confirm, this happens a lot too. That level of recklessness should be remarkable, but that’s just how people roll around here. There’s a special sort of Houston PTSD that comes from almost dying in a car on the way to work every single day.
Is that a typo? Or were you actually bumper to bumper going 95 mph? That seems like some death race material
Unfortunately I don’t think that is a typo, lol. Death race is definitely how I would describe the I-45 Houston experience. If I’m not mistaken, the section of it that runs through Houston is actually one of the most dangerous stretches of road in the entire US. People absolutely tailgate at 90+ on that road.
NOT a typo. 95mph and bumper-to-bumper.
I live in a medium-sized city and I learned years ago that if you want to get anywhere on time, stay off the freeway. It’s not nearly as wide, but it has on ramps at shit intervals and the on ramps mostly give you no room to accelerate to highway speeds, so it’s always congested. I’m actually about to go a couple towns south as I write this and looking at GPS the freeway route which is the most direct will take 20 minutes longer than simply going through back country roads that add an addition 10 miles to the trip.
Freeways cause traffic by creating bottlenecks.
I’m sure another lane or two will fix the problem!
How far did you have jt to work? Woukd it technically be cyclable (albeit not on the freeway)?
Going 20 mph for any distance on a bike includes and assumption of good health, includes carrying a change of clothes, and shower which most workplace don’t offer.
Or an eBike
After widening was completed in 2008, a portion of the highway west of Houston is now also believed to be the widest in the world, at 26 lanes when including feeders. - (Wikipedia)
WTF
Looks a bit jammed on the photo though. I’m sure one more lane will fix that. /s
Just. One. More. Lane. Brooooo
That sounds like extremely bad planning. In essence they could have had several smaller highways that better suited the needs of the users without forcing them all onto this clusterfuck.
There’s already another highway 4 miles north and 4 miles south of it. There’s some 2-lane each way roads between, but anything bigger or more grade-separated would be further isolate communities, take away alternative transportation routes, and take away greenspace.
And despite the extra lanes, it’s still gridlocked. Maybe they need just one more lane…
one more
lanetrain railI e moved out of Houston but if i recall correctly they also removed the rail line that was adjacent to this highway for the expansion.
There was a killer hamburger place off like Gessner that i still miss.
An old railway running along the north side of the freeway was demolished in 2002 in preparation for construction which began in 2004.
Form the wiki article linked above
Is Houston aware that some cities pay hundreds of millions of dollars to install a rail line to address this exact problem?
This will soon become top 100 most popular photos. Its synonymous with car dependency and post WWII American urban planning
Also, this one. Insane traffic in Los Angeles, 1993.
Future ppl are truly going to consider this time a dystopia.
Government offloaded transportation onto individuals and parking onto business, now everyone is worse off.
The Federal Highway Administration has a multi-billion dollar budget, and doesn’t include the multi-billion dollar budget each state allocates to their state highway departments, or the multi-million dollar budget most large cities allocate to their streets and highways departments, and many cities unconditionally grant valuable street real estate to individuals to park for free.
It’s not an anarchocapitalist conspiracy, it’s a massive subsidy for motor vehicle owners.
bUt pUBliC tRanSpOrTAtiOn nEeDs tO mAkE a pROfiT
How common/usable is subway in bigger cities? Here in Prague we have an amazing public transport, even with priority lanes for buses at some places and most importantly a pretty decent subway. I’ve never had an issue getting anywhere around the city in a short time (I can get anywhere in the city within 1.5 hour max (that is including suburbs around Prague), around 30 mins to places around the center), and the cost of an unlimited year-long ticket is just 150EUR.
Oil and automotive companies literally tore most of public transport out in US way back when.
They would invest into the local tram companies, buy them out, then close and tear out the lines.In the US, public transportation is pretty much unusable in bigger cities except for NYC.
America has this weird, masochistic relationship with cars that just gridlocks everyone. But “FreEdoM.”
One potential reason posited by The 1619 Project is due to white Americans moving out of metro areas after WW2 in order to “escape” black residents. Then, they restricted expansion of public transportation development to those areas because making them more accessible and usable would potentially result in a influx of poorer, black residents who can’t afford a car to commute to the suburbs.
The specific example they used is Atlanta, which has staunch racial lines, horrible public transport, and some of the worst traffic in America. They make a very compelling case.
Here is the relevant New York Times article about it and it’s Chapter 16 in the actual book
This must also happen in reverse. The hip expensive city center and the poorer suburbs?
I think definitely in downtown areas with a large night culture, but to a much lesser extent. The entire city center isn’t expensive, just the “hip” areas where the money is being spent. There are tons of poorer areas inside city limits that definitely have a lower cost of living compared to owning a house and a car
Chicago?
Chicago is pretty expensive for public transportation. A monthly pass is $75 for the L and buses. A commute from the northern suburbs is $100 a month for Metra trains and an additional $30 per month for buses and the L. There are discounts for people that qualify.
The price and the poor schedule to northern suburbs makes it unusable for me. It’s great for weekend trips to the city.
$130 is still a cost saving compared to gas, depreciation, and renting a parking space in town though, isn’t it?
For many people that’s true, especially if you don’t need the Metra pass. I’d consider it if the stops to my station were scheduled more often. The bar car is gone from the Metra, but they still allow alcohol so you can relax, have a drink, and listen to music.
It’s my freedom to sit stuck on hot asphalt for hours at a time. Gridlock is real American freedom.
It’s insanely bad. Hell, Canada has shown that public transit is viable with the North American development model, but the US simply refuses to invest money into public works.
Vancouver SkyTrain and Montreal REM/Metro are both fast, highly efficient subway systems that are able to navigate single-family housing development. Why can’t the US?
Come to Toronto/The GTA, the lack of investment in public transit is on par with the rest of North America.
When I was in Toronto, the transit wasn’t great but it was at least better than Boston/Philadelphia…
Not many U.S. cities have a subway. I think the only substantial subway system is in NYC. The city I live in has a very short commuter rail line that doesn’t go to/from anywhere people want to go. Buses are gridlocked in traffic like everyone else, and have to make frequent stops, so it can take something like 2 hours to travel 10 miles. The low-wage workers I know without vehicles just spend $40/day on Uber to commute to work and back (which is a significant percentage of their pay).
NYC is by far the best, but several other cities have fairly decent subways. Boston, DC, Chicago, and San Francisco have decent systems, although Chicago’s is an elevated train and Boston’s has had increasingly severe issues due to underfunding maintainence for decades.
unfortunately it is not the case for most of countries. For example, here, in Azerbaijan, rural public transport basically doesn’t exist, and in capital city - Baku - schedules, traffic, prices… They all suck. We only got underground metro, but as that is only sane transport, everyone uses it and on critic hours it also suck. Sadly.
Very few cities have any acceptable public transit. The only reasonable options are in the NYC area.
Dont take it the wrong way but 1.5 hours doesn’t sound great for every day travel.
That’s to the opposite side of the city, every day travel would probably be closer to that 30 mins
Ah ha! I see the problem. It looks like more lanes may be needed.
4chan can be surprisingly perceptive sometimes.
Broken clock, etc
But you dont get it, managers need you at the office so they can feel important. You just need to lose 3 hours of your day, spend more money and pollute more, STOP BEING SELFISH!
This reminds me of Andre Gorz - the social ideology of the motor car . Essentially:
The invention of the personal automobile, and destruction of public transportation, was a triumph of capitalist drug-peddling; suddenly, all at once, everyone’s personal mobility became dependent on a single, new commodity, gasoline. Without it, we are unable to function, since urban sprawl and suburbanization now means we can’t even walk to work if we wanted to.
And going by time, by spreading everything out, it ended up taking the same amount of time to get to work, in 1900 as in 1980.
That gave me a good chuckle.
It’s odd how we’ve commoditized such selfishly resource hungry transportation. I like walking to stuff as long as where I live is safe.
This is true. Commuting in an urban or suburban environment should be significantly easier than it currently is. Public infrastructure needs to improve and become less car-centric. That being said, if you live in a rural area or a small town where there is very little traffic, or if you need to pick up groceries for your family of 4+, cars are needed. People in anti-car communities do not like to hear this, but I do not think cars should be criticized for merely existing. Current infrastructure should be criticized for only considering them. I think that while holding on to the idea that car=bad is fun, it also sours people who genuinely rely on cars to the movement and limits what actual progress could be made by these communities to make walkable cities a reality. Thank you for listening to my ted talk.
It’s extremely hard to nuance any conversation on any forum when multiple people interact. People almost always assume you’re pro or anti something. It’s also easier mentally to reject what doesn’t match your views.
Debating on the internet is useless most times to convince the other party, but I’m sure some people reading it who haven’t made up their mind on the subject can appreciate a well put out idea and maybe consider it before making up their mind.
My truck is used for hauling junk, supplies, tools, moving appliances etc. My job doesn’t work without a truck. Can’t get abandoned furniture to the dump on a bus. It is what it is.
This seems like a straw-man criticism. I have never seen the anti-car communities attack people in rural areas for needing cars.
Changing to a different form of transportation, unless it involves teleportation, is just moving the problem somewhere else. It might be all electric, and it might get you there twice as fast, but you’re still just leveraging a tactic that moves the goalpost and delays the inevitable.
Ultimately, there is no right answer to this. The greater the population, the greater the problem. If everyone who could work remotely started doing so, and the rest were afforded decentralized centers for the onsite labor they must do, this would be a more manageable problem. But eventually, we’d be back where we started - it’d just be a higher concentration of onsite workers generating all the traffic, and they might have less distance to travel.
Coruscant’s traffic problems, or maybe 5th Element’s, are what we’re destined for.
Better solutions move the problem elsewhere? I’m moving the goalpost and delaying the inevitable? I have no idea what you are talking about.
Brooooooo just one more lane, just one more lane bro, I promise, just one more lane, please, pls pls, one more lane 🥺
> Me playing Cities: Skylines
The answer is because local governments prioritized cars over streetcars and public transportation:
The real problem was that once cars appeared on the road, they could drive on streetcar tracks — and the streetcars could no longer operate efficiently. “Once just 10 percent or so of people were driving, the tracks were so crowded that [the streetcars] weren’t making their schedules,” Norton says.
We used to have public street cars where I live that took people up and down the hill, but they sold out to a car company. I believe it lasted 2 years before the car company shut it down all together. Wild stuff!
Ok I’m here! Where do I put the recliners and all that shit you asked for? Just leave it outside in the sun while I work? Then take it back home, leave it outside the house and do it all over again tomorrow?
