News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The Suez Canal will be widened by londons_explore on Sunday May 16, 2021 @10:13AM (#27173850)
I assume that both traffic evaporation and induced demand have a knock on effect elsewhere in the economy. When a road is closed fewer people can get from A to B easily, meaning less trade in shops near there, people taking less-optimal nearby jobs because they can't commute to a better job further away, delivery companies using two trucks and drivers instead of one, etc.

Each individual sees a small disadvantage when a bridge is closed, but the overall economic effect might be very substantial, and hard to measure.

Re:The Suez Canal will be widened by greggman3 on Sunday May 16, 2021 @12:06PM (#27174593)
As someone that lives in a city with lots of public transportation (Tokyo) and lots of stores surrounding almost every train/subway station, the number of opportunities to buy something daily is vastly higher than when I lived in a SoCal suburb and drove a car.

Basically with car, I went from home -> work -> home and unless I went really out of my way (pull into shopping center, park, get out of car, walk to store) then I wasn't near anything to buy. I basically had to make the conscious decision to go to a store.

Where as now, every time I enter or exit a train station I pass by 15-20 store fronts (book stores, bakeries, coffee stands, dessert stands, lunch stands, clothing stores, drug stores, grocery store, etc...) and it's literally 1-2 seconds off my path to be in one and buy something.

Re:The Suez Canal will be widened by GekkePrutser on Sunday May 16, 2021 @11:15PM (#27179744)
Yeah I also live in a big city (Barcelona) and I really love life without owning a car. Everything is nearby and gone is all the time wasted commuting, the stress of driving in traffic and the many expenses that car ownership incur. I don't miss my car at all, on the contrary.
Re:The Suez Canal will be widened by klipt on Sunday May 16, 2021 @05:11PM (#27177039)
Shifting demand from roads to trains seems like a good thing. But just closing roads without good public transit seems like it would be pretty bad for the economy.
Re:The Suez Canal will be widened by adrianN on Sunday May 16, 2021 @10:23AM (#27173906)
Traffic and the economy are complex enough that the answer is "it depends" most of the time. Generally when you close a street to cars pedestrian traffic increases. Pedestrians tend to spend a lot more money on a street that cars driving by. Cafes tend to flourish.
Re:The Suez Canal will be widened by goodpoint on Sunday May 16, 2021 @10:43AM (#27174051)
On top of that, low-walkability car-intensive cities strongly correlate with increased street crime and mental illness (depression, social isolation).

In various countries sprawls, shopping districts and office-only areas are prohibited by building regulations in order to create mixed areas where people can live/shop/work and build local communities.

Re:The Suez Canal will be widened by greggman3 on Sunday May 16, 2021 @12:10PM (#27174621)
> low-walkability car-intensive cities strongly correlate with increased street crime

Do you have any links? that goes entirely against my intuition. SF is generally considered walkable and has high street crime. I'm pretty sure the same is true for NYC, Paris, Berlin, other highly walkable cities where as say Irvine, Brea, (E.T. like neighborhoods that require a car to do anything) have low-street crime.

Update:

The first 2 hits I found on google found higher walkability correlated with more crime

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001391652092184...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41284-018-00161-7

Re:The Suez Canal will be widened by goodpoint on Sunday May 16, 2021 @03:47PM (#27176435)
It's a well known fact in traffic engineering. You can start from the links at the bottom of the page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkability#Socioeconomic

As the sibling poster wrote, by comparing the only walkable area in the downtown of a car-centered city you are [involuntarily] cherry-picking the populace that cannot afford a car. You have to compare whole countries.

Re:The Suez Canal will be widened by karpierz on Sunday May 16, 2021 @12:29PM (#27174770)
Those are measuring crime within a city, not comparing cities. Though I think you're going to have a hard time separating 'walkability', and other features of old European cities.
Re:The Suez Canal will be widened by GekkePrutser on Sunday May 16, 2021 @11:17PM (#27179758)
It's also much more fun working in those areas. Going for a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant at lunchtime, catching some sun in the park.. industrial estates are horrible places to work.
Re:The Suez Canal will be widened by londons_explore on Sunday May 16, 2021 @10:27AM (#27173937)
I guess the way to model that is to model the traffic and economic effects of a closed road, and separately model the economic benefits of a pedestrian street. Add the two together, and you have your result.
Re:The Suez Canal will be widened by crazygringo on Sunday May 16, 2021 @12:03PM (#27174567)
> meaning less trade in shops near there

I can't remember the link, but one study I read found that it mainly affected whether people took multiple trips or one to do the same number of things.

E.g. if no traffic, you'll pop to 5 different shops on 5 different days because it's easy.

If tons of traffic, you save it all up to go to the same 5 shops in a single trip instead.

So obviously the effects are complicated, and the consequences aren't obvious. Also, if it's harder to make it to the middle of the big city, that can stimulate more vibrant jobs/shops/activity/etc. in towns on the outskirts that weren't there before.

So while all the examples you've chosen are detrimental, you can also reframe them all as positive.

Re:The Suez Canal will be widened by closeparen on Sunday May 16, 2021 @05:27PM (#27177157)
It's true. Car infrastructure gives people in far-flung low-density environments access to much more variety, competition, and productivity than they would otherwise have. The more attractive we make them, the more people live in them. The argument is that this is a backwards use of public funds.

On the other hand I don't think it's funds that are the problem here, there's plenty of money chasing more urban lifestyles. The limits are on the zoning and permitting for urban housing types in the locations that need them. Once there is capacity for people to urbanize, then we can talk tactics to nudge the reluctant.

If you just make the suburbs painful without upzoning the city, all you've done is decrease quality of life.