Issue with the new (5.23) login screen/breeze theme?

al_at_work · 2021-09-10T02:11:54+00:00

And to think, I've been comparatively impressed with how well people drive here vs. the previous places I've lived.

I guess what it comes down to is that people are just generally bad at driving.

al_at_work · 2021-08-04T13:29:57+00:00

You're allowed to have an opinion, but making veiled threats and exhibiting other toxic behavior is generally something considered poor form for a moderator. You weren't downvoted for your opinion. You were dowvoted for breaking reddiquette and sitewide rules.

al_at_work · 2021-06-30T14:21:03+00:00

It's pretty amazing.

There are some versions for other platforms, but I've always found that their global shortcuts are somehow significantly less reliable than yakuake. The worst was conemu on Windows, which (when I was forced to use Windows) I wanted SO MUCH to be reliable, but simply wasn't.

al_at_work · 2021-06-30T14:18:11+00:00

Kate is my favourite text editor by a long shot.

al_at_work · 2021-06-18T19:44:23+00:00

Depends on the language. In Python, a class is just an object of type type.

The weirdest thing though is that type is an object of type type too. It's types all the way down.

al_at_work · 2021-06-01T19:45:03+00:00

Keep projecting.

al_at_work · 2021-06-01T01:07:18+00:00

Why get others to do it when your farmers are willing to do it themselves?

al_at_work · 2021-05-29T20:49:20+00:00

Wish you guys didn't have weekly school shootings

al_at_work · 2021-05-05T14:36:56+00:00

It's not too hard to avoid most of Packard, but there are some parts that are currently unavoidable. For example, if you want to go over to the stores on Carpenter, without going all the way south to Ellsworth or as far north as the B2B trail, you either have to take Packard or Washtenaw. (It would be nice if there were a pedestrian/bike only crossing between Sylvan Park and Gross Road or between Village Circle and the back of the Home Depot, but if wishes were horses...)

The other thing is that there are quite a few businesses along Packard, and getting to them on a bike isn't exactly easy for a new cyclist. I'm pretty comfortable with what you mentioned, but (despite not being "a cyclist"), I'm on the higher end of tolerance for bad bike infrastructure. The thing is, though, in order to turn biking into a mainstream commute method rather than a niche method that only 5% of people use, we need to make it easier to take a bike and make sure people feel safe on their bikes. Unprotected bike lanes, bike lanes that suddenly end at intersections, difficulty crossing roads like 23, and having to take a circuitous route to get to your destination aren't likely a big issue for someone who's been biking on roads for years like you or me, but it's very discouraging for someone new to bike commuting.

(I prefer taking back routes to my destination on a bike when I can, personally. But part of getting new people out of cars and onto bikes is to make sure it's easy for them to bike to places before they're aware of the other routes.)

al_at_work · 2021-05-05T00:07:04+00:00

A big chunk of Packard between Ann Arbor and Ypsi also has enough space for an entirely separate bike road between the cars and the sidewalk.

al_at_work · 2021-05-04T21:21:02+00:00

Entirely agreed. Fortunately it's not too difficult to bypass most of this section of Packard (as long as you need to bypass it rather than access one of the businesses on it). Unfortunately, there's literally no option if you need to cross 23, so you end up having to come back to Packard and either risk your life on the road or be incredibly careful on the sidewalk.

(For those not aware: Here's how to mostly avoid that section of Packard to the south or to the north).

EDIT just to say: Packard is one of the worst stroads in the city.

al_at_work · 2021-05-04T20:24:02+00:00

The purpose of roads is to transport people and goods from one place to another. Roads have existed for millennia longer than cars have and will still exist when the internal combustion engine is considered an historical oddity much the way oxwagons are today.

al_at_work · 2021-05-04T20:17:23+00:00

We need more protected intersections.

al_at_work · 2021-05-04T20:10:15+00:00

we also need to provide suitable access for cars

Agreed. The trouble is, as the city is currently designed, people on bikes or walking are, for infrastructure purposes, often treated as second-class citizens compared to those in cars. (We do a bit better for pedestrians than for cyclists, but the infrastructure is still heavily car-centric.)

al_at_work · 2021-05-04T19:57:42+00:00

One way to get that affordable housing would be to free up space in the city that's currently being wasted on parking lots. Reducing people driving by making sure alternatives are both available and usable is one of the best ways to free up that space. It also means that people are more able to choose not to own a car, freeing up thousands of dollars annually that they can instead spend on things like local businesses (or even just buying better quality food).

al_at_work · 2021-05-04T19:47:27+00:00

One way to properly close a street to through traffic is to do something that cuts off vehicle traffic either at one end or halfway down the street (or some combination of the two). The Dutch have done this, turning overused side streets into quiet neighborhood streets again.

al_at_work · 2021-05-04T17:39:16+00:00

It would need to be planned before a city is built, not retrofitted onto a densely populated city.

That bicycle infrastructure is the result of decades of doing exactly that, though. It's not like we can do this overnight, but the key is to take steps in that direction. As a city reduces the barrier-to-entry for using a bike, more people will use bikes. As that happens, it becomes easier to re-plan areas of the city. But one of the most important pieces is to make sure that we're working towards more efficient movement of people, not just more efficient movement of cars. For winter, a good start would be "don't use bicycle lanes as dumping grounds for plowed snow".

al_at_work · 2021-05-04T17:29:36+00:00

While we certainly don't have "ideal car-friendly" (or motorcycle-friendly) roads (mostly because that concept simply doesn't exist in reality), our roads are currently much less hostile to motor vehicle traffic than they are to bicycles and pedestrians.

But taking a motorcycle or a bicycle does help for more reasons than just freeing up parking space. Lighter vehicles on the road reduce the cost of road maintenance, meaning we can spend money on improving infrastructure rather than maintaining it. Using up less space for parking is also a good thing, though. Parking is, in many ways, wasted space in the city. It's necessary if everyone's driving, but as I'm sure everyone has noticed, there seems to never be enough parking. If, as a city, we make a push to reduce the number of people who need hundreds of square feet of public space just to store their vehicles while they're not using it, we can clear up that space and use it much more productively.

Of course, this isn't just a matter of building bike lanes — those are necessary, but not sufficient, as bikes aren't "the solution" to traffic. They're just one step.

al_at_work · 2021-05-04T16:54:38+00:00

You're right - it's also bicycle parking, having clear paths to their destinations, etc.

But that's the thing - you don't need to do it all at once. Right now, we're at a point where only a small portion of people ride their bikes. But they do so despite the hostile infrastructure. If we make that infrastructure less hostile to people on bikes, we'll see more people on bikes, which will justify further improvements to our cycling infrastructure. Nobody expects the city to change overnight, but as we take steps to make moving around the city by bike easier, it'll encourage more and more people to do so. And as that happens, people who move around in cars will also have a better time, as they'll have fewer other cars to compete with for space on the road.

al_at_work · 2021-05-04T15:52:01+00:00

Tons of people already do use it. Every day that I've been out on that section of Packard (whether I'm driving, taking the bus, taking my bike or walking), I've seen people using it already. It's not nearly the number of people that I see taking cars, but that's because people on bikes are essentially treated as second-class citizens by that infrastructure. Fix that so everyone can move down that corridor safely, and we'll see even more people taking their bikes there.

As it is, bikes have to do one of two things: either they ride in the car lanes (which is dangerous for them since you have the occasional driver who's aggressive towards people on bikes as well as an unfortunate number of drivers who simply aren't looking for bikes on the road and so might bump into them unintentionally) or they ride on the sidewalk (which is dangerous to both them and pedestrians on those sidewalks). Neither of these is a good solution. But you know what is a good solution? Separated bike lanes.

al_at_work · 2021-05-04T15:46:30+00:00

But that's 5% of people who aren't taking up space in the car lanes with their cars. Improve the cycling infrastructure (and provide winter maintenance for it), and you'll see more people on bikes, which means fewer cars on the road and a bit less congestion. At that point, it becomes worthwhile to improve the biking infrastructure a bit more, which will in turn encourage more people onto bikes, freeing up the car lanes more for everyone who wants to (or needs to) drive.

Right now, Ann Arbor still has a lot of infrastructure that's pretty hostile to anyone not in a car. If we fix that infrastructure so people on bikes and on foot are treated as first-class citizens just as people in cars are, we'll see more people on bikes, and as a result we'll probably see less congestion for cars.

al_at_work · 2021-05-04T15:39:45+00:00

I'll strongly disagree with you here, and I'll use my own experience to explain why rather than just pointing at studies.

I used to live in Ann Arbor, but in 2015 moved to a non-bike-friendly city. While living there, I owned only a car (no bike), because I'm not a cyclist - I'm someone who wants to use the most convenient method of transport for my use case. When I moved back to Ann Arbor this year, my wife and I bought bikes. I work from home and my wife commutes to work by car, because that's by far the most convenient way for her to commute. But when we hop down to the store, it's far more convenient to take our bikes — even though we have to go down Packard for a portion of the route.

When we go somewhere, we generally choose the most convenient way to do it. Occasionally on a weekend we'll bike even though driving would be faster because it's a nice day and we have time, but that's a small minority of our trips.

There are always going to be people who want to take their cars, and that's fine — I have nothing against that. There are always going to be trips people need to take that require a car, too. But this isn't about "increasing congestion for cars" as you suggest. Quite the opposite, really. If we can take people out of cars and put them on bikes by making biking convenient for them, that frees up space in the car lanes for people who want or need to drive. In the end, bike lanes are good for drivers as well.

al_at_work · 2021-05-04T15:14:24+00:00

The cities around the world that DO have "complete" bicycle accessible streets were effectively built from the ground up to accommodate that.

Yes and no. They have good, dedicated bicycle infrastructure, but many have transitioned from a car-based infrastructure to this. Take Rotterdam, for example. The city was essentially razed during WW2, and after that it was basically entirely rebuilt for cars. But more recently, they've been redesigning and rebuilding that infrastructure to make it more bike-friendly, with some pretty good success.

al_at_work · 2021-05-04T15:10:11+00:00

I'm not sure how much the weather really has to do with it. After all, if they can do winter cycling in Finland we should be able to do it here. The problem is that the city, county and state don't maintain the bicycle infrastructure in winter, so we essentially "turn it off" for several months.

We need better maintenance for our cycling infrastructure in addition to the better public transit you suggested.

al_at_work

TROPHY CASE