Roundabouts and public transit improvements cost millions or billions and take years or decades to roll out. They’re great, and we should build them, but there’s a lot to be said for quicker, cheaper solutions in the mean time.

It is a pathetic commentary on our society that we can't implement roundabouts without spending millions of dollars and a decade of time. I feel that an intersection could be replaced with a roundabout in a single weekend if people cared enough. Didn't the Japanese recently reroute tracks and reconfigure a train station overnight, before the 7 AM train arrived?

At some point this attitude has to be given up. There's no reason traffic circles should cost millions to billions. I'd be willing to wager that this short sighted, quick and dirty meantime fix strategy has been employed too much and now we've arrived at this reality.

It’s not an “attitude”, it’s an objective fact about how capital project go in the US right now.

I’ve got theories, but I don’t really know what the best way is to fix that. We probably need to try a bunch of things, and I’m all for that.

But drivers running red lights kill people. I’m for for the ideal, elegant solutions, and also for the imperfect incremental ones. I really don’t think worse-is-better, if that’s what you’re advocating, is appropriate.

> Fines and fees are a difficult topic. Fines and fees should never be used to fund the government. They are a perverse incentive.

Perhaps it would be better if all of the fines went into a social wealth fund that every citizen has a share in?

> I'll bite. Fines and fees are a difficult topic. Fines and fees should never be used to fund the government.

Fines should be used to fund insurance for victims of lawless drivers, or to improve road infrastructure, build bicycle roads, etc.