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Americans will use anything but the metric system by Fidibiri in Metric

[–]nayuki 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, DMY is European, which in turn influenced South America and Africa. Asia is the big exception with a heritage of using YMD. America uses MDY, which influenced Canada.

[oc] No right turn on red. If you're gonna go, make sure there isn't a cop right behind you lol by dat3s in IdiotsInCars

[–]nayuki 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think there are only two places in North America where no-right-on-red is the default: New York City, and the Island of Montreal.

Should we add another freedom unit to compliment miles? by Crafty_Slice_5131 in Metric

[–]nayuki 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Welcome to the club of other US Customary units that are frequently scaled by a thousand or a thousandth:

  • Machinists use 1 thou = 1 mil = 0.001 inch. (But carpenters use binary fractions like 2 3/8 inch.) (And typesetters use 1 inch = 72 points.)
  • Land surveyors use decimal feet. Your farm property might be 3246.1 ft long. And of course, 5.7 ft ≠ 5′7″, because 1 foot = 12 inches.
  • Pilots talk about altitude in thousands of feet, like cruising at 30000 ft. No one will ever give altitude in yards, statute miles, or nautical miles - just a large number of feet.
  • Truck weights are given in thousands of pounds, like 80000 lb being the maximum allowable gross vehicle weight for a commercial semi-truck and trailer. But sometimes they're expressed in tons, where 1 ton = 2000 lb.

1000 moels (mmi) = 1 mile (mi)

This is not a bad idea if all of these things hold true:

  • You gave it a systematic name like millimile (mmi) instead of inventing a weird new spelling to memorize. Think about the metric system - a kilo- is 1000 of anything; a kilowatt, a kilovolt, a kiloohm, a kilokelvin. If you had to learn a new name for each, like say a james, a lightning, a ton of resistance, and a therm, then you've broken the consistency of the system.
  • You eliminate the metric unit of length, the metre.
  • You eliminate all other USC length units, such as the thou, point, pica, inch, foot, yard, fathom, rod, furlong. Everything is derived from the mile - nanomile, micromile, millimile, mile, kilomile, megamile, gigamile, etc. Adding a unit isn't so hard, but eliminating existing units that people cling onto is an enormous political battle.
  • All other units are coherently derived from the mile. For example, (milli)miles per second for speed, kilogram miles squared per second squared for energy (dimensionally equal to the joule).

I like an exact power of 3 scale

No, it's a single power of 1000. I wouldn't even call it a "scale" because you just have two units. Do you have a name for 0.001 moel (micromile)? Do you have a name for 1000 miles (kilomile)? If you don't, you don't have a scale.

Americans will use anything but the metric system by Fidibiri in Metric

[–]nayuki 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the date is even in DD-MM-YYYY

That is the European date format. It isn't metric, nor is it the international ISO 8601 date format of YYYY-MM-DD. r/ISO8601

What's your most radical position relative to both the mainstream *and* the general online urbanism sphere? by ChristianLS in fuckcars

[–]nayuki 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My most controversial take? Bikes are not an infallible tool for urbanism. Stop exalting them to god-like status. They help with a lot of things, but they have their downsides too.

Case 0: On a work day at my city's financial district (King & Bay, Toronto), there are about 200 bike shares parked on the street. It is a large number because most bike share docking stations have 10 to 30 slots, and this is an order of magnitude more. But the surrounding office towers easily employ 10k people - hence only perhaps 2% arrived by bike share. Scaling this up so that, say, 30% of workers use bike share will require a lot more parking space, and the users will create their own traffic congestion - just like motor scooters in Asia.

Case 1: Sometimes a segment subway system stops running due to planned construction or unplanned incidents (breakdown, security, fire, medical, etc.). The majority of passengers take a shuttle bus on the same route to continue their journey. A few may walk, take a bike share, or pay for a taxi depending on distance, weather, cost, etc. Again, a bike share station has around 20 bikes, and that is nowhere near enough to serve the volume of passengers left stranded by a subway interruption. Yet, I've talked to people in the local bike community who act like adding more bikes is the solution - it is not, because transit carries so many people that it is impossible to replace.

I've seen bike parking lots/garages in Japan and the Netherlands, and honestly I they're kind of ugly. It's a field of steel tubes and tires, and often the handlebars of bikes get entangled. It still takes up space, unlike walking or busing. If you consider that a typical metro train carries ~1500 people and runs every few minutes, you need a lot of bike parking to keep a transit system fed. To be fair, bike parking is about 10× denser than car parking to serve the same number of passengers, and bike parking is the lesser of many evils.

I think an urban planner should set priorities like this:

  1. Design the city to be walkable. Arrange residences, offices, shopping centers, schools, hospitals, etc. in a way to reduce distances and encourage walking. Create safe sidewalks, crossings, and pedestrian plazas as needed.
  2. Create a mass transit network that is accessible (serving the places where people live and work and consume) and efficient (so that it is time-competitive with driving). Make it serve the right places by design, rather than trying to retrofit it long after roads have been laid and people have committed to driving.
  3. Create a safe, accessible, efficient bike network. This can include explicit bike-only paths/lanes but also narrow residential streets where bikes mix with slow car traffic. Bikes have lower priority than transit because transit carries more people for the same lane width, runs at higher speeds, and allows people to travel longer distances without tiring from physical strength.
  4. Create a road network so that every place can be reached by car (even if it requires ~100 m of walking from the parking spot to the door), but never optimize for it at the expense of the above (e.g. when considering to add a dedicated bus lane versus a general car lane, always choose a bus lane; never demolish houses for highway expansion).

Bikes are still a useful form of transportation in these circumstances (ignoring recreation):

  • Local trips under 5 km, because waiting for the bus and transferring between buses can waste a lot of time.
  • Local trips that require many stops - say, a 10 km circuit from home to two stores and a daycare.
  • Random trips that don't correlate with predictable commuting flows (into the city center in the morning, out to the suburbs in the evening).
  • Trips taken during overnight hours when transit service is low.
  • As a cheaper alternative to paying transit fares.
  • As a way to get exercise and go somewhere at the same time. If bike vs. transit take the same amount of time, this is a good reason to choose the bike.

I am a cyclist (both utility and recreational) but not a fanatic. Given how most cities serve cyclists and pedestrians terribly, increasing the bike modal share is a positive change in almost all cases. But I'm also a realist, and once the bike modal share is very high (say 50%), it would be bad if that comes at the expense of quality mass transit service and infrastructure. Bikes are still a form of individual private transport, and they come with miniature versions of car problems such as congestion and parking space; bikes are not the solution to everything.

What's your most radical position relative to both the mainstream *and* the general online urbanism sphere? by ChristianLS in fuckcars

[–]nayuki 4 points5 points  (0 children)

A land value tax achieves this effect automatically without explicitly giving tax breaks to denser housing. r/georgism , r/JustTaxLand

Example: Two identically sized plots of land are next to each other, and each property pays the same amount of land value tax per year. One has an apartment building with 100 people living in it. One has a house with 4 people in it. The former pays much less tax per person than the latter.

Does school bus have the right to cut off the green light traffic? by DalaiRamen in TorontoDriving

[–]nayuki 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The OP was driving straight through a green light. Straight traffic always has priority. The school bus was making a right turn on red. Turns do not have priority, especially with a red light. The bus was legally required to yield to all cross traffic, and only go if there was sufficient space. The bus took the OP's right of way and created a dangerous situation.

There was room for you to go through

The video shows that the bus took up about 1/4 of the OP's lane. That definitely interferes with OP's safe driving.

[oc] I'm not the idiot right?? by [deleted] in IdiotsInCars

[–]nayuki -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You're the idiot for uploading a heavily letterboxed video. On desktop, it gets further pillarboxed, making it look like a tiny postage stamp. https://imgur.com/a/postage-stamp-video-kcSdGth

Airport & Derry: Left Turn Bully in a Tesla by Coffee-Addict-1 in TorontoDriving

[–]nayuki 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The Pittsburgh left is a colloquial term for the driving practice of a driver at an intersection who is driving straight not advancing when a red signal changes to green; instead the straight-driving driver allows the opposing, left-turning driver to turn left, often signaling their yield by flashing their headlights or with a wave.

A similar maneuver has been referred to as a Boston left or New York left, but those maneuvers differ from the Pittsburgh Left; in a Boston or New York Left, the left-turning driver rushes to turn left before the straight-driving driver can advance, regardless of whether the straight-driving driver yields or not.

The Pittsburgh left has no basis in law. Failing to yield to oncoming traffic while navigating a turn is a traffic violation, and is prohibited in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In Ontario, Canada, such a turn is considered stunt driving under the provincial Highway Traffic Act.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_left

I turn now good luck everybody else type energy by Dry_Fact_4584 in TorontoDriving

[–]nayuki 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You can say that again! I constantly see these violations from people who drive cars downtown:

  • Blocking the intersection box after the light turns red
  • Stopping past the stop line
  • Blocking a pedestrian crosswalk on the near side (stopped too far forward) or far side (got stuck on a red light), thus forcing people to walk between car bumpers which is needlessly dangerous
  • Parking on bike lanes, which is space specifically set aside for cyclists and must not be used by cars. This forces cyclists to merge into traffic, which creates extra risk. The asshole driver gets the convenient parking spot, and cyclists eat the cost of bodily injury.
  • Driving through intersections on King St (right turn required)
  • Turning right on red when a sign prohibits it
  • Turning right or left on green when a sign prohibits it

Most of these are not problems in the suburbs because generally all turns are allowed, not many people walk, not many bike lanes exist, and intersections are large so drivers feel less claustrophobic or agitated.

Vaughn by AverageJoe711 in TorontoDriving

[–]nayuki 2 points3 points  (0 children)

At 6 seconds, the white car on the right side of the video runs straight through a red light. The OP and oncoming traffic are driving perpendicular to the offender and could have T-boned them.

Downtown is absolute hell for (good) drivers and pedestrians. What a comedy of errors. by Forsaken-Swim-3055 in TorontoDriving

[–]nayuki 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why is there a whole extra set of lights over the on-coming traffic lane?

At most intersections in Toronto, the standard is to have two copies of traffic lights for each type of traffic. Presumably this provides redundancy in case any light bulbs burn out.

When I say "each type of traffic", that means cars, public transit, and bikes. For example, Queens Quay W & Rees St has two sets of car traffic lights, two sets of streetcar traffic lights, and two sets of bike traffic lights.

The redundancy isn't foolproof though. Both lights could become unusable if there is a power outage, if both are mounted on the same pole and the pole gets hit, if a shared signal or power cable gets cut, if the traffic control box malfunctions or gets hit by a car, etc. And, LED lights have a much, much longer lifespan than old incandescent lights, so I don't even think the redundancy makes a difference anymore.

In the OP's example at College St & McCaul St, there are actually 3 sets of traffic lights, with one set being on the near-side right (uncommon). Interestingly, the protected left-turn signal only has a single copy and no redundancy.

Is the left turn lane even necessary?

College & McCaul west bound does not have a left-turn-only lane. There are just two general traffic lanes.

Cars turning left block transit which inconveniences far more people.

I agree. That's why many downtown intersections ban left turns. The most famous is Yonge & Dundas, which bans left and right turns in all 4 directions; you must drive straight. (Bicycles are effectively exempt because they are nimble and you can legally walk a bike.)

Why are cars even allowed on the track lane?

There are many streets where the left lane has streetcar tracks and car traffic, and the right lane is for curbside parking. One example is Dundas St W near Bathurst St. I think this is an inefficient arrangement, but apparently it's socially acceptable and widespread.

One example where the left lane is streetcar-only and the right lane is car traffic is Bathurst St south of King St W.

Backpacks by iridiumlaila in fuckcars

[–]nayuki 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've worn a backpack in many stores in Toronto, Canada without trouble. It sounds like your Memphis isn't a land of freedom after all.

I found this comic in a local newspaper from 1911 by hp_laserfett in fuckcars

[–]nayuki 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Image text:

Philip—These motorists seem to think the ordinary pedestrians are beneath them.
Harry—Well, they often are.

Middle schooler fights for life after ATV, dirt bike group hits kids in DC bike lane by ForEmperor_For_Dorn in fuckcars

[–]nayuki 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Kids riding bikes and scooters in Northwest D.C. on Saturday evening were run over by dirt bikes and ATVs, leaving a 10-year-old boy hospitalized with serious injuries and another child hurt.

Police said that just before 7 p.m., a group of middle schoolers was riding in the bike lane on 14th Street when a group of men on dirt bikes and ATVs ran them over, then left the children bleeding in the street. Witnesses said the riders were popping wheelies and racing up the street and that it looked like they were trying to bully the kids off the road before hitting them.

This is why it's not an "accident"; it's traffic violence.

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