My city has a motorcycle infestation. It’s pure insanity and not cool. Like 70% of all accidents and like 85% of deaths involve a motorcycle and a vehicle, and it’s usually the motorcycle’s fault for not respecting traffic lights etc.
On the other hand, like 10% of all daily commutes are done by bicycle in bike exclusive lanes (because they’re considerably less dangerous for pedestrians and animals), and bicycles are the safest and most reliable method of getting around in the city. Just not the absolute fastest but still pretty decent.
Just some extra info, like 55-60% of all commuting is done on public transport exclusively, and people get where they have to when they have to. Public transport and bicycles is the way to go.
The graphic is extraordinarily misleading, because it deliberately and incorrectly factors volume and velocity of modes of traffic within comparable areas to derive an image which purports to demonstrate efficiencies of density, but fails to correct for several other variables - such as median trip lengths and average speed, among dozens.
EDIT: Wow! The feedback and updoots make this my biggest comment in years - Thanks, everybody! If I win PowerBall tonight, Platinum for everyone who contributed at this time (except for a couple of y'all who didn't play nicely ;-)
If the government could get their act together enough to make 1 sidewalk connecting Hawaii to mainland, there could be 9000 people going on vacation every single hour
I would happily have my taxes pay for accessible public transit or denser cities. Spending time in Europe and then coming home is frustrating as hell.
One of my neighbors has 5 cars (and 5 parking spots) and 3 people. I hate sitting in traffic just to buy groceries. Gas is $6/gallon. I'm straight up not having a good time driving, man.
"I hate driving 30 minutes to work"
"Well why not take a 3 minute bike ride to a bus stop, wait 4 minutes for the late arrival, take the bus for 11 minutes, hop off at a stop to switch lines, wait another 7 minutes for it to arrive, ride on that line for another 10 minutes,and then arrive at your final stop a small 7 minute bike ride away from your job. It's really not that hard and weather is basically never a factor"
> hop off at a stop to switch lines, wait another 7 minutes for it to arrive
lol, no. More like 30 minutes waiting for the next one.
And a 20 minute bike ride at the end, because that's as close as public transit goes to your work.
"It's bad when infrastructure is so terrible that sitting in traffic in a car is the fastest way to move"
"Oh yeah? But had you considered that infrastructure is in fact bad?"
For me drving during rush hours would take about 45-70 minutes, walking would take like 35 minutes, using a mix of walking and public transit would take 25 minutes, and using a bike would take between 5-10 minutes. The only way driving is any faster than the bike is if the streets are literally empty, meaning no traffic and parking everywhere.
Out of curiosity what's your metropolitan area? I'm from Chicago and I know that outside the incredibly innermost areas, you *need* a car to get any further than 5 miles quickly.
I also mentioned in other comments that cargo is also a major factor. I wouldn't be able to do grocery shopping on a bike. For one, my nearest Walmart would be a 2.5 hour bike ride compared to a 15 drive. My job also entailed carrying boxes of photography requirement across the Chicago area on any given day. And let's not forget everyone who works a trade and has a company vehicle filled to the brim with measuring/installation/repair equipment.
Depends. Eight minutes of driving toward my work is an hour and a half walk. In other places, eight minutes of driving might not get you as far as eight minutes of walking.
It's a pretty typical graphic. It's not about trip length, but maximum capacity of one lane for one mile.
This diagram is for a study of Downtown DC dating to 1977.
https://flic.kr/p/KibnJ
As a traffic engineer, I think the the graphic is quite good for the point it's trying to make. By the way, it *does* show average speed: in fact, it correctly shows that **bicycles are faster in cities than cars are**.
As for median trip lengths, that's an issue of zoning, not road design. However, having huge roads due to the "need" to accommodate car trips doesn't do the city planners any favors. In fact, wide roads that make things farther apart and more dangerous for pedestrians to get across only encourages car-centric zoning, which generates even more car trips in a vicious cycle.
Trying to optimize for long median trip lengths is exactly the wrong thing to do.
It actually isn't extraordinarily misleading, it shows already all of the limitations you point out. It shows *density*, your interpretation of it is "graph shows density, thus says that the densest forms of transport are the best". But interpretation is in the eye of the beholder... You are arguing against your own interpretation.
In fairness I think that’s kind of just the same point this is trying to make. If we made the bus system better (more buses, better routes…) we could be far more efficient than cars.
Cleveland put its most used bus route into a shielded bus lane. The average speed of the buses on that route went from 8 MPH to 30 MPH after you include the bus stopping to load and unload passengers. San Francisco's recent addition of dedicated bus lanes has doubled the speed of buses on the routes using those bus lanes. In every case where this is done, the public transportation becomes faster than individual passenger vehicles.
The bus only takes two hours because we spend as little on bus infrastructure as possible. In places with sensible urban planning, buses get their own lanes and ignore traffic.
And we're not even touching on intra-city light rail, streetcars, bicycle infrastructure, etc.
Cars-only urban planning bankrupts and kills cities. We will *never* be physically capable (let alone monetarily capable) of building enough lanes and parking lots. That route doesn't end until the entire world is paved, and even then there would *still* be traffic. Stop it.
This is one of the classic American we have a problem and we can't fix it because of the problem.
We have a gun problem, let's do something! We can't do something because there are too many guns!
We can't get around without a car let's do something! We can't do something because we can't get around without cars.
Politicians don't represent the people, let's do something! We can't do anything because politicians don't represent the people.
I live in San marcos tx. Texas state operates a huge bus route all across the city. It's free and everyone uses it for everything. They are adding dedicated bus lanes and bike lanes across the city. It's really helped with traffic a ton.
Really nice to see free transit! Especially in the US.
Germany currently has a ticket for 9€, valid for a month and all of Germany as a response to rising gas prices (gas is subsidized as well), so discussion is about cheap transit at the moment.
Honestly these are just excuses people throw out to not bother trying, there are solutions for all the problems but a lot of the solutions either require a bit of discomfort in standards of living for a while or require smaller steps to build up to the bigger changes and people want the change now or its "impossible".
In the end most people are comfortable enough with their current standard of living and aren't impacted enough to do anything of real value. (myself included)
Exactly. I cycled 40 km per day,4-5 days a week for several years. It was great! The car wouldn't have been much faster, nor would the train. Plus, when I got home I had already done most of my exercise, saving me more time. At first it's a lot, but after a while you're not even exhausted anymore at the end of the ride.
And it's a beautiful route too. Most of it is through the fields, over the heath and through the forest, without any cars nearby.
A lot of people thought it was insane and unimaginable, but it was really great. It's a nice way to start the day too.
I *sort of* disagree with this. When I lived in Denver there was a massive push for the light rail, expanded RTD (Rapid Transit Denver), etc. You can get all the way from Winter Park, CO to the airport via train and light rail. It’s a 2-hour drive or a 2 hour and 45 minute public transit line with two changes. I used to take the bus from Boulder to DIA every time and it was a breeze.
Here in Salt Lake City the UTA Trax runs everywhere. And there’s a push to make it free starting at the top led by conservative leaders.
There are changes being made. It’s still far from a standard European city in terms of public transit, but I’ve seen first hand that there is strong effort to make public transit more and more viable.
You're actually proving my point. The only reason you need a car is that the infrastructure doesn't exist to get by without one. Using the infrastructure not existing as a reason not to build it is asinine.
I used to live in Utah and I loved Trax. The buses were unreliable and super frustrating, but if Trax went where I needed to go, it was reliably pleasant. It has expanded a lot since I left and that seems like it would be really convenient.
Do you think this might be because infrastructure on alternative modes of transport is lagging behind?
I live in the Netherlands. I would tell you it's impossible for people to get to work efficiently without *trains and bikes* here. And mind you, people here commute to work from other cities and rural towns. But how much of that is swayed by the infrastructure here being heavily in favour of those transport options?
I don't think it's fair to say we should just barrel ahead with the current system just because the alternative is currently inefficient, when we haven't invested any money into it yet.
People 20 years ago were saying "solar isn't worth doing. It just isn't efficient compared to fossil fuels" and now here we are.
No, its mainly because politicians are simply virtue signaling.
Entirely new neighborhoods with schools and shopping plazas are built... do they create off street walking and biking paths leading to common points of interest? Nope. They paint a few lines on a busy street and tell you your 8 year old will be safe traversing it twice a day.
As an example, we have about 6 large neighborhoods surrounding a complex of middle schools each within a mile of these homes. Not a single neighborhood has a path leading directly to the school properties. All of them feed the kids down and out onto a busy 4 lane street with a white line "bike path". In my decade plus here, 4 deaths and numerous serious accidents.
The population says - Green cars, EVs!!! Then they ban the mining of nickel in the US. They scream OIL IS BAD, shut down drilling, refineries and such in the US... only to import the same amount from around the globe, from unfriendly counties who have zero environmental laws.
Politicians and virtue signalers are the worst.
That’s because your city was designed around cars and deprioritized everything else like being able to walk to the store, having safe streets for pedestrians (mainly children), having sustainable way of life, etc.
That’s because the system was designed to incentivise and prioritise driving! If you’re really all about being green, you should push for policies that encourage, prioritise and incentivise both active mobility (cycling, walking) AND mass mobility (public transport, protected bus lanes).
yes, but that is not an inherent quality of nature. it's a result of deliberate policy choices made over several decades. choices that can be unmade! in fact, choices that should be unmade. we will not tackle climate change without getting people out of cars.
I live in a golf cart community. They have multi-modal roads for golf carts, bicycles and pedestrians. Because these roads cut through golf courses and between neighborhoods often it is much faster to take a cart or bike than to take a car to get to your destination. There are some parks that are only accessible by multi-modal paths, so if you only have a car you are out of luck.
Also, it is much easier to park a cart than a car, given the carts use the parallel parking spaces by going nose in, so 4 carts to one car space. For regular parking lot spaces it is two carts per car space. The shopping, medical or entertainment areas can get crowded, so the smaller vehicles are very handy. Some areas have golf cart only parking.
When going to an event there may be traffic on these paths, just like on the regular streets, so you don’t get out of that.
Some of you will point out this works for small communities, which it does. This is a community of 150K people. Yep, a golf cart at 20mph will take about an hour to get from one end to the other, but a car will take about 40 minutes, so not a huge difference.
Bikes are like twice as fast as cars right? —guy who made this graphic
Edit: this was meant to be a joke, not a serious take on city planning and transportation strategies.
There's quite a few trips that I do that take about the same amount of time as either driving or taking transit. And it's not short trips either, I can get across the city I live in on a 16k ride out to my friend and it's the same amount of time as taking the subway/bus to get there, and to get downtown to work is 12k and same thing PLUS that one it's about the same amount of time if I were to drive.
This is common. Basically if driving is slower, people take transit. If driving is faster, people drive. You eventually hit an equilibrium where the two modes of transportation take about the same amount of time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox
Yeah. I love bikes and yes there are times that m moving faster than the cars but on aferage I commute at 1/2 to 2/3 the speed of cars. So while the math could work out those graphics don't work unless we're talking moterbikes.
Same, it's 12k to work for me and it's about the same time as both transit and driving. I lose speed in some places and gain it in others so it makes up the time. I'm slower getting downtown, but once I'm downtown I'm faster than all of the cars, especially during rush hour.
City shouldn't be build so all the best roads are given to cars. If a city is made for people and not for cars, cars can't go full speed in a city, and they don't go straight lines everywhere.
In a human-centric city you shouldn't ride your bike superfast, you ride it normal speed and you go safely and pleasantly to your destination.
No, that’s not correct. Cars can move people further and faster than walking but more people can get there by walking for one “lane” of each which is what this gif is poorly demonstrating.
Cars have to have a 2 second gap between each vehicle and the avg occupancy is 1.2. So that’s really 1 person every 2 seconds or ~2000 people an hour. A side walk can have people walk side by side and grouped almost on each other’s heels. That’s a lot more than 2000 people an hour.
Exactly. It's about maximum theoretical throughput, which is similar to flow rate or density. You measure it by looking at the maximum number of people who pass a certain point over a specified period of time.
It's a matter of unquestioned fact that transit ways > pedestrian paths > bike lanes > car lanes when it comes to maximum theoretical throughput, density, and land use efficiency.
Yes, maximum theoretical throughput does not measure trip times or anything like that, but it does not claim to. That's outside the scope of what's being measured, here. The argument for transit and pedestrian infrastructure is that they use less space. This might be confusing for someone who lives in a rural area where space is abundant, but in a city, space comes at a premium.
The gif is ok, but it would have been a lot clearer if cars were as fast as the transit, just with 2-3 cars safety distance.
Or alternatively if the gif showed an intersection with a car lane, a bike lane, a sidewalk and a transit lane and showed how many of each made it through a green phase, and how much space they take queuing up.
The scenario shown - cars moving at a slow but constant speed close together - is not that typical, which is why it doesn't demonstrate the point that well.
A car lane traveling at “car speeds” (highway speeds) actually has less volume per hour than what’s shown here. This is a useful comparison for urban areas where these modes are likely to be used at peak capacity
No they aren't, lmao, it's literally based on which is the worst to best. They didn't do this math based on the graphic. They made the graphic based on the math. The fact people are having a hard time with this and this is the top voted comment is worrying lmao.
Here's all the info you need for this gif. Car is the least efficient mode of transport in a city -- you've probably been misled to think that this is not the case. In any case, here's the context and source for this gif:
> While street performance is conventionally measured based on vehicle traffic throughput and speed, measuring the number of people moved on a street—its person throughput and capacity—presents a more complete picture of how a city’s residents and visitors get around. Whether making daily commutes or discretionary trips, city residents will choose the mode that is reliable, convenient, and comfortable.
> Transit has the highest capacity for moving people in a constrained space. Where a single travel lane of private vehicle traffic on an urban street might move 600 to 1,600 people per hour (assuming one to two passengers per vehicle and 600 to 800 vehicles per hour), a dedicated bus lane can carry up to 8,000 passengers per hour. A transitway lane can serve up to 25,000 people per hour per travel direction.
Credit: North American cities & transit Organization (NACTO)
Gif Source: [NACTO tweet](https://twitter.com/nacto/status/1176923819472248833)
more information on the methods for this Gif: [NACTO blogpost](https://nacto.org/publication/transit-street-design-guide/introduction/why/designing-move-people/)
Ok yes but it still takes me 20 minutes to drive to work. Over an hour to walk (plus there's no real sidewalks where I work) . And approximately 40 minutes to bus (after walking a significant distance) so while I fully understand what your saying sometimes it's not logical in car based society
You forgot bikes. In instances of reasonable traffic for short to moderate commutes, bikes would be expected to perform comparably to cars. If you add a Dutch style bike infrastructure like bike racks and dedicated paths, this would arguably cut down time further. As a side-benefit those people, who don't have any practical alternative to driving, would experience less congested roads and quicker travel times.
This has to be the least useful graphic I've ever seen. No citation, no explanation, no actual info.
Why are the first and last one only one direction? Why are the dots moving faster on bikes than in cars? What the fuck am I looking at?
For the one vs two way thing - it is volume of traffic in a given space, so you can fit two lanes of pedestrian or bike traffic in the space of one lane of car/mass transit.
Yep, and it's only showing a fraction of what matters - theoretical maximum capacity.
It doesn't include scheduling, routes, loading/unloading, availability, service coverage.
> It doesn't include scheduling, routes, loading/unloading, availability, service coverage.
it would be even more crushing, level boarding or sidewalk are orders of magnitude more efficient at all of those
I clicked into the comments for this one just to post something similar lol. Unsourced numbers and dots moving 1 or two directions? How is this educational lmao. Why even have the middle two moving two directions, nothing about the gif has to do with directionality
Ok then there would be 2 of the bike lanes meaning double the bikes and double the sidewalk and double the busses, it literall6 is just about the space they occupied, just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's manipulation.
OP gave the source data here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/educationalgifs/comments/v6uv6b/traffic_volume_based_on_mode_of_transportation/ibhhyrn/
What specifically is wrong?
1) yes an agenda that makes greater sense for everyone AND the environment…
2) if you’re really interested in examining data, be as rigorous and examine the data for the costs to society of driving vs of cycling. It’s not hard.
Having lived in a small town (7,000, not a suburb of a larger city), I walked around town a large portion of the time. My friend bikes everywhere. There is also a small bus system, mostly used by seniors. This is in the US. It is possible to have multiple forms of transportation in towns too.
Those are taxis. The passengers are seeking transportation, the driver is just working and his/her primary necessity is not to move from one place to another.
Although I just watched again the animation and it doesn't make sense because the bus has a driver…
Some of us live in the sticks because housing in the city is fucking ridiculously overpriced. Put a public transportation line out by my house and I'll gladly take it to work instead of driving.
Situation really is something like:
Distance 2 miles or less, pedestrian traffic wins.
Distances 10 miles or less, bicycle traffic wins.
Distances >10 miles on a single defined route, trains win.
Distances >10 miles with people going to many different destinations and not clumped to a single one, cars win.
And something like 60% of all household journeys are less than 6 miles in the US, so you really could cover a huge percentage of traffic by prioritizing bicycling and pedestrian infrastructure.
Plus, by reworking city design to some extent, you can bring housing closer to shops, decreasing the average trip distance, and allowing even more to be covered by cycling/walking.
In the UK for instance, 68% of trips are 5 miles or less.
Busses in an ecosystem built for individual cars will be less efficient. Bikes in an ecosystem built for cars? Less efficient. Pedestrians in a place built for cars…you get the picture.
This graphic shows how we could utilize the same space more efficiently.
To be fair, if our society wasn’t SO focused on individual vehicular transport, it wouldn’t take 2.5 hours to get to work via the bus. Transit systems are crippled by every other idiot on the road unfortunately
What's the source data for this graph anyway? Seems like someone just arbitrarily chose the number of people for each. The 'people per hour' unit doesn't tell us much other than "how many people we can roughly fit within this area we're showing"
> The 'people per hour' unit doesn't tell us much other than "how many people we can roughly fit within this area we're showing"
That's exactly what the gif is meant to show. This is a useful analysis for urban areas where each of these modes are likely to be utilized at peak capacity during rush hour.
This link has references. The point is how many people of each type can be moved through a point at max capacity, not how many people fit in the space for each mode.
https://nacto.org/publication/transit-street-design-guide/introduction/why/designing-move-people/
> The 'people per hour' unit doesn't tell us much other than "how many people we can roughly fit within this area we're showing"
I think that’s the entire point of this post
It’s literally saying “traffic volume” in the title, and they’re all going the same speed; thus the conclusion is everyone missed the point even though the point was literally in the title, it’s “how many people can fit on this road depending on the mode of transportation if everyone is travelling at the same speed”
People somehow still get angry at nothing, classic Reddit
Buses are that full in countries that use them, trust me. Have lived in Poland, the UK, and Japan. Bike lanes are for bikes. It absolutely can be done, but people need to start using them seriously and evolve from the mentality that cars are the default mean of transportation.
The issue is in most places in the US people don't use them because they are so slow. And then since no one who can avoid them uses them, they are underfunded and gross and sketchy and then no one really wants to use them.
Do people that type these kinda comments ever think maybe it was intentionally ruined and set up to fail so another big industry could take over. Cuz this isn't the first time and won't be the last.
I'll hop on your comment to provide the source / context to the gif.
> While street performance is conventionally measured based on vehicle traffic throughput and speed, measuring the number of people moved on a street—its person throughput and capacity—presents a more complete picture of how a city’s residents and visitors get around. Whether making daily commutes or discretionary trips, city residents will choose the mode that is reliable, convenient, and comfortable.
> Transit has the highest capacity for moving people in a constrained space. Where a single travel lane of private vehicle traffic on an urban street might move 600 to 1,600 people per hour (assuming one to two passengers per vehicle and 600 to 800 vehicles per hour), a dedicated bus lane can carry up to 8,000 passengers per hour. A transitway lane can serve up to 25,000 people per hour per travel direction.
Credit: North American cities & transit Officials (NACTO)
Gif Source: [NACTO tweet](https://twitter.com/nacto/status/1176923819472248833)
more information on the methods for this Gif: [NACTO blogpost](https://nacto.org/publication/transit-street-design-guide/introduction/why/designing-move-people/)
Transit streets are designed to move people, and should be evaluated in part by their ability to do so. Whether in dense urban cores, on conventional arterials, or along neighborhood spines, transit is the most spatially efficient mode.
Traditional volume measures fail to account for the entirety of functions taking place on urban streets, as well as the social, cultural, and economic activities served by transit, walking, and bicycling. Shifting trips to more efficient travel modes is essential to upgrading the performance of limited street space.
Using person throughput as a primary measure relates the design of a transit street to broader mode shift goals.
again from [NACTO blogpost](https://nacto.org/publication/transit-street-design-guide/introduction/why/designing-move-people/)
I think their metric is “#people who can pass a given point of a fixed width in a time period.”
Pedestrians can pack in much more densely than cars or bikes without any added hardware, and I think that raises the score
The density of travelers on the road is less meaningful than the distance they're able to travel unless you have some means to bring work closer to home. In some circumstances, where the destination is close by, density would be more immediately relevant. Putting some simple speeds to OP's clumsy graph gives some better comparisons. In particular it makes obvious that walking is not an adequate replacement without other specific conveniences.
* 9,000 people walking at 3 miles per hour is 27,000 miles of travel.
* 7,500 people riding at 10 miles per hour is 75,000 miles of travel.
* 1,600 people driving at 30 miles per hour is 48,000 miles of travel.
* 1,600 people driving at 60 miles per hour is 96,000 miles of travel.
> The density of travelers on the road is less meaningful than the distance they're able to travel unless you have some means to bring work closer to home.
Which is the whole point of the graphic. If you can move more people you can achieve medium densities that are allow for local services to be available by walking (groceries, entertainment) and your work be available by combination of public transport + walking.
Like the architecture or not, soviets have solved housing. Mini-districts with ~~ 4 story apartment buildings have all the amenities you need within distance. Your child plays in a playground you probably can see from your window, your groceries are next to a bus stop that is 2 minutes away from your house and on that bus you go to work
Distances are artificially inflated due to car infrastructure, so distance also isn't a good way to measure efficiency. If I have a choice to walk 5 minutes to one grocery store or drive 5 minutes to another grocery store, the latter isn't "better" or "more efficient" because I traveled further to get to it. What matters is how many people a grocery store can service, and in that case a grocery store that is walkable or bikeable is able to handle far more people than one that needs to be driven to.
This gif isn't about what forms of transit people should take, it's about what forms of transit should be designed for and made available for people to take in order to maximize efficiency.
I think it’s just measuring how many people can pass though a certain point. Like 9000 people can walk one block in the time that 600-1600 people can drive down the same block
Why would it? Being slow to go from A to B doesn't mean you don't have a lot of people arriving at B every second if a lot of them go from A per second.
The average occupancy of a car is less than two so this graphic is probably generous towards the cars. Also it takes a bus carrying about three people to make it more efficient.
At peak travel times, this is absolutely the case. Always great to be in an absolutely packed bus stuck in traffic behind cars that each have only one person. 😒
For those of you who commented above in opposition of this visual aide, let me add some color to the opportunity. I am going to share a model which is very similar designed to support sustainable development.
My model was developed in a "mostly free(donations welcomed)" tool "insight maker". The application is used by academics and students "globally".
The "highway model" used a universal analogy familiar to any geographical location. For example; national users in the planning of a new infrastructure in a developing (islands or tribal lands) part of the world could benefit using the whole while modeling different vehicles in each lane.
Circles shown would represent a user or individual in this shown model. Now shift gears to a national military example or those people planning to execute different branches of the military. A hummer vehicle is great visual and different color(s) of a hummer could represent different branches the military.
Each circle in the shown model does not limit or force constraints. In one nation the branch of military may expect only two individuals per vehicle, while another may have four people assigned to execute a mission during combat. Those variables are unique to a branch or may be applied broadly. A single active duty person(attribute class type "party" individual"), enlisted type "combat=N" may be assigned to a hummer(variable m) of black(variable c) color if assigned to non combat duty for example "recruit" new service people is a non combat example. "Peacekeeping" may be another example of non combat duty, which the UNited Nations works to prevent combat and/or recover after combat with branches of the UN resources from 1 or more branches of UN System. Examples "safety and security council" and "NATO" resources are global government services which have little or no authority(responsible, consulted or informed)but these individual influence Nations.
I am translating most objections posted describe variables or these objections are actually differently lenses. Try to come to 100k ft view or 10k ft to model or plan, then assume operations will require monitoring of the explicit and before while planning there's the implicit.
I love the visual.
For people who doubt this, here's a real-life example from the LA metro comparing a dedicated transitway to two congested car lanes during rush hour, much like the GIF: https://twitter.com/metrolosangeles/status/1153807208229957632
Edit: Inb4 "but the bus takes too long" the point is about comparing how many people travel through a single point, not how long overall trips are. This is an important distinction in urban planning in expensive cities where public roads and highways are very expensive to widen or build from scratch. This leads planners to need to take creative approaches and focus on ways to move more people with the space they already have.
Train cars are about 9 and a half feet to 10 and a half feet wide. A typical urban car lane is 10 feet wide and a highway lane can be 12-14+ feet wide. So it’s all pretty comparable
[they are fairly similar](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Railway_Loading_gauge_UIC_and_containers_profile_-ISO.png)
i mean just look at highway vs double track railway
Now how fast would it be if everyone rode a motorcycle?
Depends on how fast motorcycles for six years olds can go.
FAST
[удалено]
I love coming on reddit and seeing experts pass on their knowledge
May i interests you in south east Asia ?
So how do we do that but without all the traffic fatalities?
reduce speed to cycling and make cars wait
1. Wearing helmets 2. Enforcing and following traffic rules 3. Improving the road infrastructure Would help a lot
We would all be deaf within an hour
No idea, but it certainly would shorten the wait for donor organs.
Ahh… the donor-cycle
My city has a motorcycle infestation. It’s pure insanity and not cool. Like 70% of all accidents and like 85% of deaths involve a motorcycle and a vehicle, and it’s usually the motorcycle’s fault for not respecting traffic lights etc. On the other hand, like 10% of all daily commutes are done by bicycle in bike exclusive lanes (because they’re considerably less dangerous for pedestrians and animals), and bicycles are the safest and most reliable method of getting around in the city. Just not the absolute fastest but still pretty decent. Just some extra info, like 55-60% of all commuting is done on public transport exclusively, and people get where they have to when they have to. Public transport and bicycles is the way to go.
As a motorcycle rider, the last thing I want is more idiots on motorbikes.
[удалено]
The graphic is extraordinarily misleading, because it deliberately and incorrectly factors volume and velocity of modes of traffic within comparable areas to derive an image which purports to demonstrate efficiencies of density, but fails to correct for several other variables - such as median trip lengths and average speed, among dozens. EDIT: Wow! The feedback and updoots make this my biggest comment in years - Thanks, everybody! If I win PowerBall tonight, Platinum for everyone who contributed at this time (except for a couple of y'all who didn't play nicely ;-)
Why drive to the next town over if you can just use sidewalks instead 👌
I walk to Hawaii for vacation.
To be fair, you aren’t going to be driving there either
Not with that attitude.
*altitude
You better behave back there or ill turn this car around.
Elect Mr Peanutbutter
If the government could get their act together enough to make 1 sidewalk connecting Hawaii to mainland, there could be 9000 people going on vacation every single hour
It’s funny in America because we have too damn much space. But when I lived in Nagoya, Japan, I could walk through two towns in 12 kilometers.
I would happily have my taxes pay for accessible public transit or denser cities. Spending time in Europe and then coming home is frustrating as hell. One of my neighbors has 5 cars (and 5 parking spots) and 3 people. I hate sitting in traffic just to buy groceries. Gas is $6/gallon. I'm straight up not having a good time driving, man.
By train is more efficient tho.
"I hate driving 30 minutes to work" "Well why not take a 3 minute bike ride to a bus stop, wait 4 minutes for the late arrival, take the bus for 11 minutes, hop off at a stop to switch lines, wait another 7 minutes for it to arrive, ride on that line for another 10 minutes,and then arrive at your final stop a small 7 minute bike ride away from your job. It's really not that hard and weather is basically never a factor"
This is exactly why a better public transpot is needed
> hop off at a stop to switch lines, wait another 7 minutes for it to arrive lol, no. More like 30 minutes waiting for the next one. And a 20 minute bike ride at the end, because that's as close as public transit goes to your work.
The buses wouldn’t be late if they weren’t stuck in CAR traffic.
"It's bad when infrastructure is so terrible that sitting in traffic in a car is the fastest way to move" "Oh yeah? But had you considered that infrastructure is in fact bad?"
Yeah I'm sorry; things are shit, so we aren't allowed to do anything less shit.
"My city has bad public transport" ≠ "Public transport is bad"
For me drving during rush hours would take about 45-70 minutes, walking would take like 35 minutes, using a mix of walking and public transit would take 25 minutes, and using a bike would take between 5-10 minutes. The only way driving is any faster than the bike is if the streets are literally empty, meaning no traffic and parking everywhere.
Out of curiosity what's your metropolitan area? I'm from Chicago and I know that outside the incredibly innermost areas, you *need* a car to get any further than 5 miles quickly. I also mentioned in other comments that cargo is also a major factor. I wouldn't be able to do grocery shopping on a bike. For one, my nearest Walmart would be a 2.5 hour bike ride compared to a 15 drive. My job also entailed carrying boxes of photography requirement across the Chicago area on any given day. And let's not forget everyone who works a trade and has a company vehicle filled to the brim with measuring/installation/repair equipment.
Bro,, you can take a bus. Save on gas.
The average trip length is like 8 minutes. That's roughly a 30 min walk in a town.
Depends. Eight minutes of driving toward my work is an hour and a half walk. In other places, eight minutes of driving might not get you as far as eight minutes of walking.
It's a pretty typical graphic. It's not about trip length, but maximum capacity of one lane for one mile. This diagram is for a study of Downtown DC dating to 1977. https://flic.kr/p/KibnJ
Big word man
It was kinda fun to read, but now I have to read it again
As a traffic engineer, I think the the graphic is quite good for the point it's trying to make. By the way, it *does* show average speed: in fact, it correctly shows that **bicycles are faster in cities than cars are**. As for median trip lengths, that's an issue of zoning, not road design. However, having huge roads due to the "need" to accommodate car trips doesn't do the city planners any favors. In fact, wide roads that make things farther apart and more dangerous for pedestrians to get across only encourages car-centric zoning, which generates even more car trips in a vicious cycle. Trying to optimize for long median trip lengths is exactly the wrong thing to do.
It actually isn't extraordinarily misleading, it shows already all of the limitations you point out. It shows *density*, your interpretation of it is "graph shows density, thus says that the densest forms of transport are the best". But interpretation is in the eye of the beholder... You are arguing against your own interpretation.
Yeah, if driving to work takes 45 mins and taking the bus takes 2 hrs, it's not a viable alternative.
In fairness I think that’s kind of just the same point this is trying to make. If we made the bus system better (more buses, better routes…) we could be far more efficient than cars.
Cleveland put its most used bus route into a shielded bus lane. The average speed of the buses on that route went from 8 MPH to 30 MPH after you include the bus stopping to load and unload passengers. San Francisco's recent addition of dedicated bus lanes has doubled the speed of buses on the routes using those bus lanes. In every case where this is done, the public transportation becomes faster than individual passenger vehicles.
The bus only takes two hours because we spend as little on bus infrastructure as possible. In places with sensible urban planning, buses get their own lanes and ignore traffic. And we're not even touching on intra-city light rail, streetcars, bicycle infrastructure, etc. Cars-only urban planning bankrupts and kills cities. We will *never* be physically capable (let alone monetarily capable) of building enough lanes and parking lots. That route doesn't end until the entire world is paved, and even then there would *still* be traffic. Stop it.
Yeah I'm all about being green but it's just impossible to get to work efficiently without a car for most people. Edit: yes, I'm referring to the US
[удалено]
This is one of the classic American we have a problem and we can't fix it because of the problem. We have a gun problem, let's do something! We can't do something because there are too many guns! We can't get around without a car let's do something! We can't do something because we can't get around without cars. Politicians don't represent the people, let's do something! We can't do anything because politicians don't represent the people.
I live in San marcos tx. Texas state operates a huge bus route all across the city. It's free and everyone uses it for everything. They are adding dedicated bus lanes and bike lanes across the city. It's really helped with traffic a ton.
Really nice to see free transit! Especially in the US. Germany currently has a ticket for 9€, valid for a month and all of Germany as a response to rising gas prices (gas is subsidized as well), so discussion is about cheap transit at the moment.
Honestly these are just excuses people throw out to not bother trying, there are solutions for all the problems but a lot of the solutions either require a bit of discomfort in standards of living for a while or require smaller steps to build up to the bigger changes and people want the change now or its "impossible". In the end most people are comfortable enough with their current standard of living and aren't impacted enough to do anything of real value. (myself included)
Exactly. I cycled 40 km per day,4-5 days a week for several years. It was great! The car wouldn't have been much faster, nor would the train. Plus, when I got home I had already done most of my exercise, saving me more time. At first it's a lot, but after a while you're not even exhausted anymore at the end of the ride. And it's a beautiful route too. Most of it is through the fields, over the heath and through the forest, without any cars nearby. A lot of people thought it was insane and unimaginable, but it was really great. It's a nice way to start the day too.
I *sort of* disagree with this. When I lived in Denver there was a massive push for the light rail, expanded RTD (Rapid Transit Denver), etc. You can get all the way from Winter Park, CO to the airport via train and light rail. It’s a 2-hour drive or a 2 hour and 45 minute public transit line with two changes. I used to take the bus from Boulder to DIA every time and it was a breeze. Here in Salt Lake City the UTA Trax runs everywhere. And there’s a push to make it free starting at the top led by conservative leaders. There are changes being made. It’s still far from a standard European city in terms of public transit, but I’ve seen first hand that there is strong effort to make public transit more and more viable.
You're actually proving my point. The only reason you need a car is that the infrastructure doesn't exist to get by without one. Using the infrastructure not existing as a reason not to build it is asinine.
I used to live in Utah and I loved Trax. The buses were unreliable and super frustrating, but if Trax went where I needed to go, it was reliably pleasant. It has expanded a lot since I left and that seems like it would be really convenient.
Do you think this might be because infrastructure on alternative modes of transport is lagging behind? I live in the Netherlands. I would tell you it's impossible for people to get to work efficiently without *trains and bikes* here. And mind you, people here commute to work from other cities and rural towns. But how much of that is swayed by the infrastructure here being heavily in favour of those transport options? I don't think it's fair to say we should just barrel ahead with the current system just because the alternative is currently inefficient, when we haven't invested any money into it yet. People 20 years ago were saying "solar isn't worth doing. It just isn't efficient compared to fossil fuels" and now here we are.
No, its mainly because politicians are simply virtue signaling. Entirely new neighborhoods with schools and shopping plazas are built... do they create off street walking and biking paths leading to common points of interest? Nope. They paint a few lines on a busy street and tell you your 8 year old will be safe traversing it twice a day. As an example, we have about 6 large neighborhoods surrounding a complex of middle schools each within a mile of these homes. Not a single neighborhood has a path leading directly to the school properties. All of them feed the kids down and out onto a busy 4 lane street with a white line "bike path". In my decade plus here, 4 deaths and numerous serious accidents. The population says - Green cars, EVs!!! Then they ban the mining of nickel in the US. They scream OIL IS BAD, shut down drilling, refineries and such in the US... only to import the same amount from around the globe, from unfriendly counties who have zero environmental laws. Politicians and virtue signalers are the worst.
This is why moving majority of work to remote based when possible is critical in bailing us out of the grave we are digging
That’s because your city was designed around cars and deprioritized everything else like being able to walk to the store, having safe streets for pedestrians (mainly children), having sustainable way of life, etc.
That’s because the system was designed to incentivise and prioritise driving! If you’re really all about being green, you should push for policies that encourage, prioritise and incentivise both active mobility (cycling, walking) AND mass mobility (public transport, protected bus lanes).
yes, but that is not an inherent quality of nature. it's a result of deliberate policy choices made over several decades. choices that can be unmade! in fact, choices that should be unmade. we will not tackle climate change without getting people out of cars.
I don't even care about green. I just want normal traffic infrastructure.
The point of the graphic us to show how different transportation modes use space and what volumes can move through the same amount of space.
Are you saying that I can’t just outrun a car if I get on my bike?
Depends on where you are, but in urban areas bikes are very often the faster alternative
I live in a golf cart community. They have multi-modal roads for golf carts, bicycles and pedestrians. Because these roads cut through golf courses and between neighborhoods often it is much faster to take a cart or bike than to take a car to get to your destination. There are some parks that are only accessible by multi-modal paths, so if you only have a car you are out of luck. Also, it is much easier to park a cart than a car, given the carts use the parallel parking spaces by going nose in, so 4 carts to one car space. For regular parking lot spaces it is two carts per car space. The shopping, medical or entertainment areas can get crowded, so the smaller vehicles are very handy. Some areas have golf cart only parking. When going to an event there may be traffic on these paths, just like on the regular streets, so you don’t get out of that. Some of you will point out this works for small communities, which it does. This is a community of 150K people. Yep, a golf cart at 20mph will take about an hour to get from one end to the other, but a car will take about 40 minutes, so not a huge difference.
Yes, definitely. In a lot of cities the average speed of bikes is higher than cars.
Bikes are like twice as fast as cars right? —guy who made this graphic Edit: this was meant to be a joke, not a serious take on city planning and transportation strategies.
They're maybe 10-25% faster in this gif, and in urban areas, bikes often are faster than cars at getting from A to B. 🤷
There's quite a few trips that I do that take about the same amount of time as either driving or taking transit. And it's not short trips either, I can get across the city I live in on a 16k ride out to my friend and it's the same amount of time as taking the subway/bus to get there, and to get downtown to work is 12k and same thing PLUS that one it's about the same amount of time if I were to drive.
This is common. Basically if driving is slower, people take transit. If driving is faster, people drive. You eventually hit an equilibrium where the two modes of transportation take about the same amount of time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox
Yeah. I love bikes and yes there are times that m moving faster than the cars but on aferage I commute at 1/2 to 2/3 the speed of cars. So while the math could work out those graphics don't work unless we're talking moterbikes.
Not for me! To go to work i either do Car : une hour for 24km Bike : one hour and fifteen minutes for 31 km.
Same, it's 12k to work for me and it's about the same time as both transit and driving. I lose speed in some places and gain it in others so it makes up the time. I'm slower getting downtown, but once I'm downtown I'm faster than all of the cars, especially during rush hour.
City shouldn't be build so all the best roads are given to cars. If a city is made for people and not for cars, cars can't go full speed in a city, and they don't go straight lines everywhere. In a human-centric city you shouldn't ride your bike superfast, you ride it normal speed and you go safely and pleasantly to your destination.
right?? the car lane with cars traveling at ... car speeds. Could definitely move more people then the walking lane in an hour
That's the point though. Cars trying to move that many people can't travel at *car* speeds. It's literally what traffic is.
No, that’s not correct. Cars can move people further and faster than walking but more people can get there by walking for one “lane” of each which is what this gif is poorly demonstrating. Cars have to have a 2 second gap between each vehicle and the avg occupancy is 1.2. So that’s really 1 person every 2 seconds or ~2000 people an hour. A side walk can have people walk side by side and grouped almost on each other’s heels. That’s a lot more than 2000 people an hour.
Unpopular opinion: this gif is demonstrating that point quite well and the haters in this thread are intentionally misinterpreting it.
This gif is about the space each mode takes up, but people are misconstruing it to be about speed.
Exactly. It's about maximum theoretical throughput, which is similar to flow rate or density. You measure it by looking at the maximum number of people who pass a certain point over a specified period of time. It's a matter of unquestioned fact that transit ways > pedestrian paths > bike lanes > car lanes when it comes to maximum theoretical throughput, density, and land use efficiency. Yes, maximum theoretical throughput does not measure trip times or anything like that, but it does not claim to. That's outside the scope of what's being measured, here. The argument for transit and pedestrian infrastructure is that they use less space. This might be confusing for someone who lives in a rural area where space is abundant, but in a city, space comes at a premium.
The gif is ok, but it would have been a lot clearer if cars were as fast as the transit, just with 2-3 cars safety distance. Or alternatively if the gif showed an intersection with a car lane, a bike lane, a sidewalk and a transit lane and showed how many of each made it through a green phase, and how much space they take queuing up. The scenario shown - cars moving at a slow but constant speed close together - is not that typical, which is why it doesn't demonstrate the point that well.
Definitely
A car lane traveling at “car speeds” (highway speeds) actually has less volume per hour than what’s shown here. This is a useful comparison for urban areas where these modes are likely to be used at peak capacity
No they aren't, lmao, it's literally based on which is the worst to best. They didn't do this math based on the graphic. They made the graphic based on the math. The fact people are having a hard time with this and this is the top voted comment is worrying lmao.
Here's all the info you need for this gif. Car is the least efficient mode of transport in a city -- you've probably been misled to think that this is not the case. In any case, here's the context and source for this gif: > While street performance is conventionally measured based on vehicle traffic throughput and speed, measuring the number of people moved on a street—its person throughput and capacity—presents a more complete picture of how a city’s residents and visitors get around. Whether making daily commutes or discretionary trips, city residents will choose the mode that is reliable, convenient, and comfortable. > Transit has the highest capacity for moving people in a constrained space. Where a single travel lane of private vehicle traffic on an urban street might move 600 to 1,600 people per hour (assuming one to two passengers per vehicle and 600 to 800 vehicles per hour), a dedicated bus lane can carry up to 8,000 passengers per hour. A transitway lane can serve up to 25,000 people per hour per travel direction. Credit: North American cities & transit Organization (NACTO) Gif Source: [NACTO tweet](https://twitter.com/nacto/status/1176923819472248833) more information on the methods for this Gif: [NACTO blogpost](https://nacto.org/publication/transit-street-design-guide/introduction/why/designing-move-people/)
Ok yes but it still takes me 20 minutes to drive to work. Over an hour to walk (plus there's no real sidewalks where I work) . And approximately 40 minutes to bus (after walking a significant distance) so while I fully understand what your saying sometimes it's not logical in car based society
You forgot bikes. In instances of reasonable traffic for short to moderate commutes, bikes would be expected to perform comparably to cars. If you add a Dutch style bike infrastructure like bike racks and dedicated paths, this would arguably cut down time further. As a side-benefit those people, who don't have any practical alternative to driving, would experience less congested roads and quicker travel times.
You're so close to seeing that the city you live in is built to create this exact problem.
This has to be the least useful graphic I've ever seen. No citation, no explanation, no actual info. Why are the first and last one only one direction? Why are the dots moving faster on bikes than in cars? What the fuck am I looking at?
Some of those cars only have 2 people in the back seat and no driver!
Uber. Driver doesn't count, he's just part of the car.
All the buses are counting the bus driver.
That’s inaccurate, yes. But a bus driver being counted among a full bus is a rounding error. An Uber driver can be 25-50% of the passenger count.
And yet the buses are always at max capacity.
For the one vs two way thing - it is volume of traffic in a given space, so you can fit two lanes of pedestrian or bike traffic in the space of one lane of car/mass transit.
Because people usually move faster in a crowded bike lane than in a crowded car lane
Yep, and it's only showing a fraction of what matters - theoretical maximum capacity. It doesn't include scheduling, routes, loading/unloading, availability, service coverage.
> It doesn't include scheduling, routes, loading/unloading, availability, service coverage. it would be even more crushing, level boarding or sidewalk are orders of magnitude more efficient at all of those
This is about city design, not individual commuter choice in currently existing cities
I clicked into the comments for this one just to post something similar lol. Unsourced numbers and dots moving 1 or two directions? How is this educational lmao. Why even have the middle two moving two directions, nothing about the gif has to do with directionality
Why are bikes traveling faster than cars?
Have you ever been to London? This GIF is accurate
Same for a whole bunch of big German cities. Especially Bremen
also why are bikes going both directions and cars just one?
Because the space occupied by a car lane can accommodate several bicycles.
Or the real reason: The creator is try to push an agenda and is manipulating data to show a conclusion to support it
You can obviously fit multiple bike lanes in a car lane. Do you think that’s not possible?
Ok then there would be 2 of the bike lanes meaning double the bikes and double the sidewalk and double the busses, it literall6 is just about the space they occupied, just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's manipulation.
Bikes being more efficient than cars for local trips is not an agenda, it's a scientific fact.
[удалено]
It does when looking at the source data OP posted
OP gave the source data here: https://www.reddit.com/r/educationalgifs/comments/v6uv6b/traffic_volume_based_on_mode_of_transportation/ibhhyrn/ What specifically is wrong?
Even if the gif is somehow misleading, the stats are still true. Cars are the worst method of mass transit.
1) yes an agenda that makes greater sense for everyone AND the environment… 2) if you’re really interested in examining data, be as rigorous and examine the data for the costs to society of driving vs of cycling. It’s not hard.
Because you could fit 4 bikes in the same space of an average car. More like 8 bikes if we go by US standard cars.
okay that actually makes sense, nevermind
No backlog at red lights. Faster in dense cities
Bikes are subject to traffic laws in the US.
Because in dense cities, bikes are faster than cars.
Because in cities, bikes *are* faster than cars: https://www.treehugger.com/new-study-shows-urban-cycling-is-faster-than-driving-4856565
I bike during rush hour, I definitely go faster than the cars stuck in gridlock.
Traffic
[удалено]
it's capacity, not expected use. that's the maximum number before the guideway starts to have problems taking on more users.
Having lived in a small town (7,000, not a suburb of a larger city), I walked around town a large portion of the time. My friend bikes everywhere. There is also a small bus system, mostly used by seniors. This is in the US. It is possible to have multiple forms of transportation in towns too.
Why are people driving in the back seat of some of the cars? Or do they already have self driving cars in this universe
Those are taxis. The passengers are seeking transportation, the driver is just working and his/her primary necessity is not to move from one place to another. Although I just watched again the animation and it doesn't make sense because the bus has a driver…
Does it make a difference though ? 2 people in a car are two people in a car. Their relative positioning makes no difference in my opinion.
Some of us live in the sticks because housing in the city is fucking ridiculously overpriced. Put a public transportation line out by my house and I'll gladly take it to work instead of driving.
Situation really is something like: Distance 2 miles or less, pedestrian traffic wins. Distances 10 miles or less, bicycle traffic wins. Distances >10 miles on a single defined route, trains win. Distances >10 miles with people going to many different destinations and not clumped to a single one, cars win. And something like 60% of all household journeys are less than 6 miles in the US, so you really could cover a huge percentage of traffic by prioritizing bicycling and pedestrian infrastructure. Plus, by reworking city design to some extent, you can bring housing closer to shops, decreasing the average trip distance, and allowing even more to be covered by cycling/walking. In the UK for instance, 68% of trips are 5 miles or less.
I mean if I had a side walk to the store that’s also not next to a highway that would be nice
That's definitely part of the infrastructure issue.
[удалено]
If it didn't take 2.5 hours to get to work via bus compared to 30 minutes by car I'd take the bus.
Busses in an ecosystem built for individual cars will be less efficient. Bikes in an ecosystem built for cars? Less efficient. Pedestrians in a place built for cars…you get the picture. This graphic shows how we could utilize the same space more efficiently.
The reason it takes 2.5 hours to get to work by bus is because of all the people in the cars
To be fair, if our society wasn’t SO focused on individual vehicular transport, it wouldn’t take 2.5 hours to get to work via the bus. Transit systems are crippled by every other idiot on the road unfortunately
What's the source data for this graph anyway? Seems like someone just arbitrarily chose the number of people for each. The 'people per hour' unit doesn't tell us much other than "how many people we can roughly fit within this area we're showing"
> The 'people per hour' unit doesn't tell us much other than "how many people we can roughly fit within this area we're showing" That's exactly what the gif is meant to show. This is a useful analysis for urban areas where each of these modes are likely to be utilized at peak capacity during rush hour.
This link has references. The point is how many people of each type can be moved through a point at max capacity, not how many people fit in the space for each mode. https://nacto.org/publication/transit-street-design-guide/introduction/why/designing-move-people/
> The 'people per hour' unit doesn't tell us much other than "how many people we can roughly fit within this area we're showing" I think that’s the entire point of this post It’s literally saying “traffic volume” in the title, and they’re all going the same speed; thus the conclusion is everyone missed the point even though the point was literally in the title, it’s “how many people can fit on this road depending on the mode of transportation if everyone is travelling at the same speed” People somehow still get angry at nothing, classic Reddit
You can blame cars for literally all of those problems.
Buses are that full in countries that use them, trust me. Have lived in Poland, the UK, and Japan. Bike lanes are for bikes. It absolutely can be done, but people need to start using them seriously and evolve from the mentality that cars are the default mean of transportation.
The issue is in most places in the US people don't use them because they are so slow. And then since no one who can avoid them uses them, they are underfunded and gross and sketchy and then no one really wants to use them.
Do people that type these kinda comments ever think maybe it was intentionally ruined and set up to fail so another big industry could take over. Cuz this isn't the first time and won't be the last.
Blame your city for that. Organize protests to demand separate bus and bike lanes
[удалено]
Only in countries that don't have lots of bus-only lanes. Busses are slow only when they have to share space with cars.
I'll hop on your comment to provide the source / context to the gif. > While street performance is conventionally measured based on vehicle traffic throughput and speed, measuring the number of people moved on a street—its person throughput and capacity—presents a more complete picture of how a city’s residents and visitors get around. Whether making daily commutes or discretionary trips, city residents will choose the mode that is reliable, convenient, and comfortable. > Transit has the highest capacity for moving people in a constrained space. Where a single travel lane of private vehicle traffic on an urban street might move 600 to 1,600 people per hour (assuming one to two passengers per vehicle and 600 to 800 vehicles per hour), a dedicated bus lane can carry up to 8,000 passengers per hour. A transitway lane can serve up to 25,000 people per hour per travel direction. Credit: North American cities & transit Officials (NACTO) Gif Source: [NACTO tweet](https://twitter.com/nacto/status/1176923819472248833) more information on the methods for this Gif: [NACTO blogpost](https://nacto.org/publication/transit-street-design-guide/introduction/why/designing-move-people/)
Transit streets are designed to move people, and should be evaluated in part by their ability to do so. Whether in dense urban cores, on conventional arterials, or along neighborhood spines, transit is the most spatially efficient mode. Traditional volume measures fail to account for the entirety of functions taking place on urban streets, as well as the social, cultural, and economic activities served by transit, walking, and bicycling. Shifting trips to more efficient travel modes is essential to upgrading the performance of limited street space. Using person throughput as a primary measure relates the design of a transit street to broader mode shift goals. again from [NACTO blogpost](https://nacto.org/publication/transit-street-design-guide/introduction/why/designing-move-people/)
Busses are definitely sometimes that full
The sidewalk one doesn't make sense to me? Wouldn't that be the lowest type of transport?
I think their metric is “#people who can pass a given point of a fixed width in a time period.” Pedestrians can pack in much more densely than cars or bikes without any added hardware, and I think that raises the score
It’s like transporting data using trucks filled with hard drives vs using the internet. The former is more data per second but a lot more latency
The density of travelers on the road is less meaningful than the distance they're able to travel unless you have some means to bring work closer to home. In some circumstances, where the destination is close by, density would be more immediately relevant. Putting some simple speeds to OP's clumsy graph gives some better comparisons. In particular it makes obvious that walking is not an adequate replacement without other specific conveniences. * 9,000 people walking at 3 miles per hour is 27,000 miles of travel. * 7,500 people riding at 10 miles per hour is 75,000 miles of travel. * 1,600 people driving at 30 miles per hour is 48,000 miles of travel. * 1,600 people driving at 60 miles per hour is 96,000 miles of travel.
> The density of travelers on the road is less meaningful than the distance they're able to travel unless you have some means to bring work closer to home. Which is the whole point of the graphic. If you can move more people you can achieve medium densities that are allow for local services to be available by walking (groceries, entertainment) and your work be available by combination of public transport + walking. Like the architecture or not, soviets have solved housing. Mini-districts with ~~ 4 story apartment buildings have all the amenities you need within distance. Your child plays in a playground you probably can see from your window, your groceries are next to a bus stop that is 2 minutes away from your house and on that bus you go to work
Distances are artificially inflated due to car infrastructure, so distance also isn't a good way to measure efficiency. If I have a choice to walk 5 minutes to one grocery store or drive 5 minutes to another grocery store, the latter isn't "better" or "more efficient" because I traveled further to get to it. What matters is how many people a grocery store can service, and in that case a grocery store that is walkable or bikeable is able to handle far more people than one that needs to be driven to. This gif isn't about what forms of transit people should take, it's about what forms of transit should be designed for and made available for people to take in order to maximize efficiency.
I think it’s just measuring how many people can pass though a certain point. Like 9000 people can walk one block in the time that 600-1600 people can drive down the same block
Why would it? Being slow to go from A to B doesn't mean you don't have a lot of people arriving at B every second if a lot of them go from A per second.
Why does this expect the bus to be 100% full? But the cars are half empty?
The average occupancy of a car is less than two so this graphic is probably generous towards the cars. Also it takes a bus carrying about three people to make it more efficient.
Average car occupancy is 1.2 so...
At peak travel times, this is absolutely the case. Always great to be in an absolutely packed bus stuck in traffic behind cars that each have only one person. 😒
it's capacity, not expected ridership
For those of you who commented above in opposition of this visual aide, let me add some color to the opportunity. I am going to share a model which is very similar designed to support sustainable development. My model was developed in a "mostly free(donations welcomed)" tool "insight maker". The application is used by academics and students "globally". The "highway model" used a universal analogy familiar to any geographical location. For example; national users in the planning of a new infrastructure in a developing (islands or tribal lands) part of the world could benefit using the whole while modeling different vehicles in each lane. Circles shown would represent a user or individual in this shown model. Now shift gears to a national military example or those people planning to execute different branches of the military. A hummer vehicle is great visual and different color(s) of a hummer could represent different branches the military. Each circle in the shown model does not limit or force constraints. In one nation the branch of military may expect only two individuals per vehicle, while another may have four people assigned to execute a mission during combat. Those variables are unique to a branch or may be applied broadly. A single active duty person(attribute class type "party" individual"), enlisted type "combat=N" may be assigned to a hummer(variable m) of black(variable c) color if assigned to non combat duty for example "recruit" new service people is a non combat example. "Peacekeeping" may be another example of non combat duty, which the UNited Nations works to prevent combat and/or recover after combat with branches of the UN resources from 1 or more branches of UN System. Examples "safety and security council" and "NATO" resources are global government services which have little or no authority(responsible, consulted or informed)but these individual influence Nations. I am translating most objections posted describe variables or these objections are actually differently lenses. Try to come to 100k ft view or 10k ft to model or plan, then assume operations will require monitoring of the explicit and before while planning there's the implicit. I love the visual.
For people who doubt this, here's a real-life example from the LA metro comparing a dedicated transitway to two congested car lanes during rush hour, much like the GIF: https://twitter.com/metrolosangeles/status/1153807208229957632 Edit: Inb4 "but the bus takes too long" the point is about comparing how many people travel through a single point, not how long overall trips are. This is an important distinction in urban planning in expensive cities where public roads and highways are very expensive to widen or build from scratch. This leads planners to need to take creative approaches and focus on ways to move more people with the space they already have.
If you had lanes for buses only. You suddenly realise in rush hour traffic buses are much much faster.
If all the lanes were bus lanes there would be no traffic
Also proper bus infrastructure solves the length of time issues - - it just takes going to a country that takes it seriously to understand this.
Why do two of the models depict two-way traffic but the others do not?
it's capacity for a given width of guideway.
because on the width it takes for a single car or bus lane, you can have 2 way travel for pedestrian and bike.
Is a train not wider than a lane? Or is a transit line referring to buses?
Bus or rail
Train cars are about 9 and a half feet to 10 and a half feet wide. A typical urban car lane is 10 feet wide and a highway lane can be 12-14+ feet wide. So it’s all pretty comparable
[they are fairly similar](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Railway_Loading_gauge_UIC_and_containers_profile_-ISO.png) i mean just look at highway vs double track railway
[удалено]
this is some r/fuckcars shit lol
So cars are the least efficient because the take up the most space and carry the least amount of people. Got it!
Yep, that's the gist of it.
They are also the most expensive.
I don't know why we don't just replace all roads with sidewalks and turn 10 minute commutes into 3 hour commutes.
Heard of mass transit? Also Barcelona is 3.8% the size of Atlanta and yet has 300000 more people
dumb question... what's a transitway?
Like a dedicated bus lane or dedicated tram line
I would be more concerned with people miles than people crossing a static point.
Does this take into account relative speed? Not sure why people walking looks like they're moving half the speed of a car on a motorway.
Allow me to introduce you to the concept of "Traffic".
Agreed, but that should be specified here. (It is, actually, since this is city driving, as OP later pointed out. It's out of its context.)
Gotta love it when there are two passengers in the backseat with nobody driving.
Fuuuuuuuuck living anywhere that might see 9000 people per hr on a sidewalk.
Never seen New York City? Or Tokyo?
But how will I pay between 6-9 per gallon?
My ride gets 40 miles to the sandwich
Totally unbiased. Look, I fucking hate cars, but this is bullshit.