The hidden traffic metric that makes cities worse
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
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Resources:
A. This video was based on a suggestion by the California Governor's Office of Planning and Research. Many of the sources for this video can be found here: opr.ca.gov/ceqa...
B. en.wikipedia.o...)
C. t4america.org/2...
D. www.sb743.org
Produced by Dave Amos in sunny Sacramento, California.
Edited by Eric Schneider in cloudy Cleveland, Ohio.
If you can believe it, Houston has been known to use LOS ratings beyond ‘F’
Now I need to see LOS Z.
@@CityBeautiful That would be New York. Traffic here sucks, try fifteen minutes to get two blocks. That's with a great subway system, pretty good bus system, and pretty good walkability.
@@yaacovdavidowitz4502 If one is driving vs cycling..
@@yaacovdavidowitz4502
" try fifteen minutes to get two blocks."
That's never happened to me. How does it take 15 minutes to walk two blocks?
@@peterjszerszen have yet to have that happen to me in Detroit yet.
In the US, ~90% of the apartment dwellers will have their own cars as well, so that assumption is correct. You can't solve the problem without building public transportation first like what Denver did.
A lack of transit makes infill less useful (100 cars in the same block is a traffic horror), a lack of infill makes transit less useful (try walking from a culdesac to a bus stop). They go hand in hand
Kind of true, But public transit is only a part of a areas overall walkability. ( Or car dependency.)
It's also how far people have to travel in the first place to access the things they want or need.
@rws91942 without reliable public transportation, you're not gonna convince people to give up their cars. While walking is great, there's no way to make the entire metro area within walking distance of you
@@jmlinden7 when other forms of transportation become more convenient than driving, people will choose the alternatives.
Like I said, public transportation is only part of the solution, not the entire solution.
Having to travel less will shorten people’s travel times. Building areas with mixed uses are a part of that solution as well.
@@rws91942 Yes but people won't go completely car free until you pass a certain threshold of convenience, and it's impossible to get past that threshold without good public transportation. Without good public transportation, people will walk for 50% of their trips and keep a car for the remaining 50%. While that reduces vehicle traffic, it doesn't reduce parking requirements.
Don't you just love when you take multiple weeks/months to binge watch an entire UA-cam channel and you get the feeling you're finally up to date?
I'm finally at that spot! Great channel!
"1 year ago" 😪
Cities are so much nicer when you can walk or take public transit with ease
Depends on the person and the city. Some people like myself like to see cities in doses. For example, spend a few hours downtown, then the suburbs, then the hipster areas, then the urban areas, then the mountains, beaches, canyons etc etc. Also, not very many cities have great public transportation. Also, not every city is suitable for walking i.e. rainy, or hot and humid, or places you desire are not close. It all just depends on the city and who you are.
Not when it rains
Only if it goes where you're going when you're going there.
I am sure glad right now I can spend entire years without having to be within six feet of random schmucks I have no reason to interact with.
@@K.B.Williams The point being that those cities with terrible public transportation and destinations too spaced out to walk are bad cities because of it.
No traffic here, everyone uses the metro and ride bikes
thank you, supreme leader of democratic people's republic of korea. very cool.
I heard that if you drive, you get consequences! Thanks for enforcing biking and public transportation!!
In North Korea children ride on the hopes and dreams of their parents. 😢
Excellent job, comrade!
Thank you, Kim! Very cool!
Cities: Skylines here I come
same tbh
ì just started a new city so same
Same
At the moment, if only we could share a screenshot here
I was thinking all my cities must have "F" level of service.
I wonder how the "level of service" metric is skewed when the traffic lights are used as traffic dampers? There are 2 intersections in my neighborhood north of LAX that are set that way. This occurs at "T" intersections in what would be the thru traffic direction. When a car approaches, it always turns red, holds a car for 10 seconds then turns green - even when no other traffic is present. It's almost like the metering lights at freeway entrances.
LOS should be used to plan a city as a whole - not to rule in or out a single development. A totally good point.
Traffic impact studies aren't just used in the US though - apparently in the UK it's also problematic, although where the problem truly lies haven't really been uncovered to laypersons.
I kinda disagree. If an intersection gets worse, it will deter people from driving during rush hour, so some will consider cycling, walking, or even moving out of the suburbs. If we keep trying to improve driving conditions at the expense of cycling and walking, it will only cause a greater pull toward driving.
@@ImranZakhaev9 Hence why you should coordinate the planning within the whole city as well. Focusing on a single intersection doesn't help much. But you need evaluation for each and every single one of them as well, in view of the greater planning.
Almost any city with large areas and nodes built after 1970 is basically planned with LOS as the base standard for "balancing housing with car trips." Let me assure you, the results are very car-centric, and may have better traffic flow than older cities bulldozing Main Streets fighting for street capacity and parking lots, but it's still not pretty. And they struggle to carve out exceptions to this "balanced approach" allowing street capacity as their limiting factor to the detriment of land use efficiency or taking stock of access by proximity.
@@ImranZakhaev9 Chances are that if you are married, then you won't be moving out of the suburbs. Usually, the spouse also has a job, too, and must also commute. Frequently, the couple works in different places/cities. I've lived in suburbs for most of my life. Nearly every couple worked and they worked in different places/directions from each other.
It's good to hear that cities are slowly moving in the right direction!
Citizens and non-profits have to keep on the leaders to make it so!
I rather like the cozy shopping streets in japan. No cars, and there is like 4 metres width (12 ft approx) in some.
@@weakspirit_
Japan can reach 40°C in the summer in some areas. The closeness could act like a shade. Wider streets could give more airflow, depending on how built, but unless lined with wide shade trees, will bake in the sun. Plus, wide streets make it dangerous to cross roads. But, to each their own.
They're basically walkways with shop fronts, it's neat. And there's a lot more tiny residential streets. I've been looking at Japan through Google Earth to build a Minecraft map representation of Japan. I don't have much progress in the grand scheme, but I've built several buildings and roads already.
@@weakspirit_ The same thing is done in Taiwan, which is also tropical (though probably cooler then Malaysia). When i compare it to the USA, it's much cooler, as most of the streets are shaded from being narrow.
@@weakspirit_ Australia actually has some shopping streets that aren't dissimilar to Japanese streets, they just aren't that common, especially in developments from the 1970s-2000s.
@@weakspirit_
in australia, we either have winter,
that one nice season that last too short,
and bushfire
This is actually really true. I moved 10 blocks from a place I transferred to because I preferred a roughly 13-15 walk VS the 15-30 minute drive based on traffic from my old place. The big positive was I would end up living right next to a grocery store and a bunch of shops, something I had to spend time driving or taking transit to before. It feels so much more empowering being so close to everything and not having to worry about things outside of my control sucking time out of my day.
Hey citybeautiful, could u some day make a video on how to become a city planner and how your potential career would look like. That would be rly amazing
Cool vid as always
Greetings from Germany
It's old, but the content is still good. A bit US-centric (as is this whole channel, sorry!). ua-cam.com/video/d8672L-MG2U/v-deo.html
Play Cities:Skylines
If you're still struggling with this question, contact your local chapter of professional planners and see if they have an introduction/mentorship program.
You know what city doesn't use LOS? Houston! They have other ways of wringing street improvements out of developers, namely by forcing developers of large developments to request an opt out to the city's setback requirements, which usually comes with the caveat that the developer use money to make street improvements that they wouldn't have to do otherwise. The city and its planning department have no real power to force developers to do anything, and basically negotiate with the developer to get things done. By the way, you should totally make a Houston video. Houston is basically the giant asterisk to every other video you've made on planning and development.
Property owners should really be responsible for the infrastructure anyway, if they want something other than dirt.
@@MilwaukeeF40C they are, through a system called taxes
Taxes are inefficient and coercive. They hide the direct costs of infrastructure and create moral hazard.
@@MilwaukeeF40C That is very classist: It would lead to poor neighbourhoods getting worse infrastructure, decreasing land and home value and thus making the place even poorer. This is also the case with schools being paid by local taxes. This is a policy that would keep the poor poor and give them less and less opportunities to become more educated and richer.
He did! He did make that Houston video. Did you enjoy it?
From what I heard, it seems that in this models every citizen has a car. This is a big contrast to Germany here. I live on the countryside and yet still not everyone owns a car, even though travel distances are longer. Puplic transportation and denser cities do wonders to traffic. The american laws to ensure parking spaces seem inflated, because onstreet parking is never considered. I still dont get why driveways are needed in suburbs, where there is enough parking space on the roads.
yeah in rural areas, the norm is 1 or 2 cars per household, but in the City a lot of people don't have cars and bike ownership and ridership is much higher, and cars are also more expensive than in the US so why bother.
Admittedly, my hometown is growing very rapidly right now and the Transit network hasn't been updated since 99 so that's why car ownership is quite high over here but most trips are still doable by bike.
@@xirom-moksum What about grocery shopping? Do you just buy in small amounts daily?
NNINJA STRIKE where I live, online grocery shopping is very common
@@nninjastrike2127 well most households have cars and if they use it only once per week, it's used for shopping.
But also yes in denser areas where people don't have to drive a long distance, they tend to buy less in bulk and buy more often. Also promotes a more healthier diet since they get more opportunities to eat fresh food.
@@nninjastrike2127 I usually buy groceries when I cycle home from University twice a week. Because of that a bag pack is always sufficient
Build cities for humans, not car's!
But I like cars!!! (Noah fence)
That's not how plurals work
It's cars not car's
@@Cheesecannon25 I'm still trying to figure out how autocorrect changes and to AMD all the time
@@리주민 m is next to n
@@Cheesecannon25 true, but I actually watch a correctly spelled and autocorrect to AMD. Same with bills turning to Bill's automatically
Love The Great quality. As an aspiring Urban Planner, this is very informative
Dutch Urban Planning > General American Urban Planning
Sadly agree.
Or should we call it General Motors Urban Planning?
would be interesting to see more content related to old european cities ...
we have to copy NL
@Marc T well at least we're not india
Love this channel man and it means even more during corona quarantine
love your content man, thanks for breaking down planning concepts to share with the general public!
You're welcome!
You often contrast high density neighbourhoods with suburban single family neighbourhoods. Terraced houses (row houses) can be an attractive compromise between density and individual space. In the US this type of housing seems to exist only in "historic" areas. Probably has to do with zoning. Can you do a video about that?
That kind of development is called "The missing middle" because cities and developers have been ignoring mid rise, multiplexes, and row housing for quite some time. It's either apartment towers or single family homes with very little in between. My city just changed zoning to allow missing middle development in established and new neighborhoods, but unfortunately it only passed with additional minimum parking standards. In other words space for more cars
Very interesting video, I had never heard of this type of urban planner measures before. I started watching this channel years ago while trying to find out about a new traffic circle-thingy off a major highway and have been subscribed ever since, I really appreciate the informative content your channel provides
I appreciate that your videos explain a topic that is quite interesting, in a clear and easy-to-understand way - but without dumbing it down. Thanks!
My professor is big on VMT over LOS. Great reminder for me and helps explain it more!
You should do a collaboration with the BM1
B1M*
Please no. Nothing but mega projects. They never say how much those projects go over budget.
Hi and thanks for another cool video. I'm a transportation engineer, done quite a lot of traffic projects. I understand the rationale in avoiding LOS for city planning, but when it comes specifically to traffic and intersection design it is essential.
It's almost as if you need local metrics for local decisions and system metrics for system decisions
@@stevecarter8810 Who would've thought! :-P :-P
Thanks for bringing more awareness to the large positive impact city planning can have on our lives. I would love to see a video on the role technology has and can play. Examples that I can think of are data models to guide planners and policies, smart traffic management, self parking cars, self driving cars, etc
What’s also tough is that the ITE Trip Generation Manual algorithms aren’t always suited for certain parts if the country. For example, gas stations in Texas are massive with upwards of 100 pumps. The trip gen manual contains many surveys taken from the northeast where anything more than 8-12 pumps is rare.
Things like this are so far from having analytical methods that there is almost no point in having a god damn design manual for everything.
Can you do a video on how dense urban areas are more susceptible to spread of contagious diseases and how city planners can mitigate them?
U Wot M8 There’s more pros than cons of dense urban areas.
U Wot M8
Once-in-a-generation events like SARS-CoV-2 shouldn’t dictate how we design our cities.
I have heard that VMT is now being used to stop some hospitality projects in the napa/sonoma counties. Opponents of hospitality projects have claimed that the environmental reports have not accounted for VMTs ... from the originating location of the tourist traveler, foreign airport to local airport etc.
California just doesn't have property rights.
To improve traffic flow on a block grid pattern, ideally you’d make some of the roads at a different level with gradient interchanges, to keep traffic flowing. If that’s not possible, they could designate certain roads for through traffic and have the traffic lights prioritise the traffic on those roads.
Honestly the best thing you can do is discourage cars. Major, dense cities need to accept cars don't work in dense urban environments, and fund better buses as a baseline and improve walk ability and other options for travel.
Superblocks. Intentionally make the inner junctions LOS Z.
@@Joesolo13 Bikes! Laws, regulations, and infrastructures need to favor and encourage bike usage.
What's you're asking for is Soviet style development. Large residential blocks with schools and small shops and parkland surrounded by arterial roadways.
@@Joesolo13 Folks coming from the suburbs will still be using private transportation. City-dwellers can use the buses or walk.
Replacing LOS with VMT in a dense area would probably mean grid lock. But maybe that is the intent?
Ultimately, the streets can still be widened and so on, but now the people driving the most will be the ones most responsible to pay for it because they are causing the most traffic.
People won't choose to drive if there is gridlock
I need to study, but can wait a little
It is amazing that there are places in UA-cam for people like us, with tastes as silly as wanting to improve your cities, when we are just regular peasants.
Did you really say one parking space for unit? I think that is the root of the problem. In Helsinki we are trying pass exceptions to the regulations that demand X amount of parking space / X amount of built floor space, this varies but is usually 1 parkin place for 100-150 m2 built residensial floor space. Instead there already have been projects without any parking space and some which parking space is dictated by the demand not the norm.
I love walking to work. But an A-hole housing developer has put up a fence adding 15 mins to my commute.
A-hole city regulations caused that, not developers.
So, you were trespassing?
Wire cutter
@@MilwaukeeF40C oh no, not the heckin property righterinos
Glad you're still making content. Keep it up!
Hi CB, i'm an urban planner myself in Sweden. I'm curious if you know the standards or the range of the standards for travels per households in the US when calculating traffic from new development in suburban areas. For suburban type development in Sweden (Jönköping) we usually go by about 6 vehicle travels per household per day.
Martin Jan Månsson oj fan det var mycket. Kan det verkligen vara hela 6 bilresor per dag? Känns som att vi i familjen kanske använder den högst tre gånger på en dag
@@turtle-balloon Many people comments on it being too high of a number based on their own experiences. 4,5 is the lowest number i've come across in suburban neighborhoods. You drive to work, school, sports, groceries... And you are two adults doing that.
It is very unfortunate, because the amount of traffic will be misrepresented and perhaps be counted as too high. People that are neighbors to new developments will always worry about the increase in traffic on "their" streets, and if the in-data is wrong, it might give an over-estimation of the traffic volumes that the new development will generate.
I would love to investigate whether the numbers are indeed misguided figures, or if they actually are on average correct.
Hmm... Off the top of my head I want to say 9 trips per day in the US suburbs?
@@CityBeautiful With those numbers it's not hard to understand why sometimes excessive road solutions are deemed necessary. It's certainly a driving force for cul-de-sacs.
Americans use exclusive zoning, not mixed like most of the world. I can speak for japan and Korea- height based zoning. Not exclusive res, comm, ind for the most part
urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html?m=1
What a great video, thanks! Simplified concepts to understand such a complex problem
The last time I was this early, California used LOS.
California is still kind of stuck on LOS. Last year I worked on a project with Cali. state govt and one of the project goals was to rewrite the guidelines on where to build schools to account for VMT, instead of LOS.
california coming with the LOS M
I commute from Anaheim to East-Central Los Angeles (just under 25 miles each way), and depending on the time of day, the drive can take anywhere from 40 minutes to 2 hours each way, assuming minimal construction activity and no major accidents.
Always awesome to see a shot of Toronto in your videos.
That clip is from the (excellent) movie Office Space. Maybe it's been used in a commercial as well (I don't live in USA, so I wouldn't have seen it ), but that's the origin. Highly recommend.
Office Space is a great film and it just so happens to have a great PSA on the ills of commuting.
I just meant that it seemed like Office Space was advertising walking.
Falling Down is another great warning against commuting by car.
I love the mention of Denver as a resident of Colorado who was born in Denver
1) So the Apartment building has a greater impact on traffic. Is that good or bad impact on traffic?
2) VMT sounds interesting.
3) Back in the 1980s, in Missoula Montana. They had one intersection called malfunction junction. It would take you a half hour just to get through the light. But thats what you get when you try to get six roads to bisect each other at the same point.
Been watching your videos for awhile now and just finally noticed that's Detroit in the background at the beginning of all your videos! Any particular reason why you chose Detroit? I attend Wayne State University in the city as an Urban Studies major!
i love the way you write your scripts. so informative. :)
Very brilliant, insightful and crucial video for better cities, thank you!
Could you make a series about how cities first came to be and then how they evolved, discussing smaller cities, villages and cities in different regions also?
Great video! Thanks for informing us on the subject!
The Denver points were great and reason why I moved here! Great videos
Some of us like the openness and space of the suburbs to the cramped, noisy life of urban centers. Densify the cities if you want, as long as there will always be options for suburban living.
He shows Tokyo’s famous Shibuya scramble. What it does not show is that there are underground passageways. What you see on the street level is just some of the pedestrians. That is how much people are in Tokyo. Underground passageways are specifically designed to ensure pedestrians and roadway traffic don’t impact each other too much.
Many high foot traffic areas in Japan have either pedestrian bridges or underground tunnels that take you to over or under the road. There are even large underground shopping areas that have everything from cafes, clothing shops, furniture, sweets shops, and restaurants. These vast underground shopping areas also link subway stations to building and to bigger train stations.
I doubt USA is going to make large underground walking tunnels anytime soon.
Fantastic. Thanks for explaining this so well. Gives me a lot to think about for our city.
LOS is measured by type of intersection, but also by the various HCM requirements, city requirements, street types and facilities- like curbside drop-off areas. LOS can also be greatly skewed if 1 or 2 cars are waiting a long time on the side street of a major corridor. The other issues with TIA’s can be troublesome if the scope isn’t large enough. It may miss areas either upstream and downstream from the project area.
Very interesting information. I never knew there was something called LOS ratings. Also, great visuals. It really helped me learn and make it more interesting to watch
So, let me see:
Level Of Service is right out front; Vehicle Miles Traveled is around the corner.
Does this mean out of sight, out of mind.
Doesn't that just show Urban Design/Traffic Planning is in its infancy !
As always, excellent! I am watching from the Netherlands where cities cater to pedestrians and cyclists. Perhaps the New Urbanism movement in the US will speed up the transition from car oriented cities and towns to sustainable, manageable cities and towns.
I am also living in the NL, everytime I travel to the US I see that they really need more roundabouts instead of traffic lights on every block. Roundabouts work wonders for the Netherlands.
@@Maxbario You are absolutely right, Maxim. Frankly, one now sees a proliferation of roundabouts in California, Indiana, and other states.
@@Maxbario From what I know, and please please correct me, the capacity of a roundabout is usually smaller
than a light-controlled junction. Which means there's a range of traffic volumes where a roundabout makes sense.
Considering the extreme amount of traffic, roundabouts might even slow down traffic even more.
But they could contribute to overall lower traffic since less people might want to drive.
Traffic planning is probably the worst thing that exists.
Marcel Moulin hopefully not. Bikes are a children’s toy and not a real mode of transit. You can’t commute 40-60 miles to downtown on a toy bike. Maybe a motorcycle but those are dangerous
@@LucasFernandez-fk8se You do know that there's many, many places where people cycle all the time? Like the mentioned Netherlands.
If you design cities in a bicycle friendly way, you'll have shorter commutes and much healthier people. And trust me, you can even go furniture shopping at IKEA with a bike. (In Amsterdam)
Awesome video! Isn’t that Office Space at 4:54?
Yes!
Love watching your videos. I studied urban planning in France (American but raised in France) and currently work at the transportation authority of Nice. I sometimes weigh my options on whether or not to move to the US one day.
None of this matters. I’m totally serious. The data used in the studies is so often rigged, that the outcomes have nothing to do with the metrics. I saw an office building study where they purposely ignored that all the surrounding buildings had changed from single family and small multi family to 4 story and taller apartment buildings still under construction. The guy leasing the tower had huge pull at city hall. They let the study pass through when it was obviously flawed.
My shock was noted by the city council members staff guy who explained that there were no hard and fast rules on the studies and that whatever the engineer said was believed even though he worked for the developer and that it was well known there were engineers willing to say anything for a check.
The property owner shouldn't even have to waste time with crap like that.
It’s only an issue for very large projects to show their isn’t unreasonable impact on other property owners. In this case, a billionaire put an office tower (15 stories maybe?) right across the street from a bunch of homes owned by millionaires and multi-millionaires. I know a lawyer who lost about million dollars valuation on his home a block away. During rush hour, he could no longer get to or leave his home from the direction of the tower. He then had to sell because his company moved its HQ. Ouch.
So a traffic study isn’t a big deal for a project like that. Avoids lawsuits if done properly.
@@MilwaukeeF40C Are you kidding? Cities can't be treated like rural areas. One major building change can cause gridlock for the entire surrounding area if poorly done.
Nobody is entitled to any particular outcome. Individuals can adjust their behaviors when things like that are too much of a pain in the ass for them. If they put up with it, then the traffic is clearly not a big deal.
Bushrod Rust Johnson, It’s all fine until it happens to you, bro. There’s another project near me where a five story parking garage went up 8 feet from the property line of a row of million dollar houses.
Seriously, even hard core libertarians understand your rights to use your property in any way you see fit ought rightly be limited by how that truly affects others. For instance, I’ve got some issues with a certain “wet market” on the other side of the planet.
It would be interesting to explore the cost of requiring a private car as an inherent "tax" versus the cost of public transit
Yes! Office Space! I've been watching that over and over for weeks now -- while I work lol. You reference the best movies and shows!
High density is no good for corona .. what do you think? can you make a video on how city design influence spread of diseases?
SolidYaz
Once-in-a-generation events like an epidemic should not dictate how we design cities.
@@hostilepancakes I can't agree more. It's just an interesting thought. Smart design considers all.
South Korea did and Japan did a lot better than the USA with Covid. Preparation (to be fair they have had scares with SARS), testing, !contact tracing! and not being a selfish idiot mean a lot. Sadly, I see Covid being weaponized against public transit and infill for years to come.
So much research and my government cannot even handle traffic lights on a road without intersections.
Always bringing in the good info.
Good video. And it's funny how cities and city planners just seem to avoid stating the obvious fact that the use of cars in big cities is totally inefficiant and disturbing.
Just discovered your channel and Iove it!
Out of curiosity, maybe you answered it already somewhere down below, does the LOS metric assume beforehand that every new person who will live in that project owns a car? (It sounds like that in your explanation)
If that's the case, but let's say a 1/3 does not, the statistics would be skwed.
Otherwise, why not just regulate available parking space within the project planing. It seems to be desirable to reduce traffic and also possible to do your every day life with out a car in those neighborhoods. Reduce parking space will automatically attract more buyer's who don't deepend on a car so much. At least that is what I would intuitively guess. Please correct me if I wrong.
There is another thing about LOS analysis that makes it an even worse metric. What city officials care the most about is LOS degradation, or when the LOS of an intersections is projected to degrade from a C to a D, or D to F due to the traffic impacts of a development. That means that an intersection with a delay of D, but almost high enough to be F, could be pushed over the edge by a small development which could trigger traffic mitigation requirements.
Great video! I'm curious how it works with both LOS and VMT when you have a suburb that's outside of the city limits and there's a typical lack of regional government in the US. Do the suburban governments even care or consider the effects on the city that ultimately many residents will commute to?
Choosing where you live is what it is. Other things may effect your experience.
We suburbanites don't give a rip about our effects on the city that we commute to. We aren't part of that city, but are stuck commuting to them for work even though we'd rather not have to do so.
I love your old Go Do Good Chicago b roll😂 thanks for the new video!
sir, i just discovered your channel, and i love it. thank you
phantom traffic jam in action at 1:41
Great video. SB743 shows that California is doing a few things right.
This is California were talking about. Any bill we pass is just virtue signaling. Nothing will truly change while rents and traffic continue to skyrocket so the landowning elite continue to suck money out of everyone else.
@@karenwang313 Well, not every bill, but many yes. It would be wonderful if we repealed Prop 13 (the 1978 one).
Good. Please make a video on the coastal road project in Mumbai !
Do city planners concider time of lift travel? Most of my life I was living in 10+-storey buildings and I'd say that lift queue could take tens of minuites in the rush hours. I recently moved a bit further to the townhouse and I actually spend less time to cycle to work in comparison with travel from 11th floor near. Waiting for lift, going from 11 to basement minus 3, taking bicycle up from the basement to the ground was actually taking up to 20 minutes. 20 minutes just to escape the building! Living on the floor 4 was a bit better because there was normal staircase rather than a fire stairs going down and fetching bike to the light was taking up to 5 minutes. With townhouse it's just seconds while the garage door opening.
Good job as always
The biggest problem of the metric (and of the proposed solutions) is that it focuses on cars, not people. This leads to car-centric design that is focused on how to push as many vehicles as possible through the junction instead of how many people will travel through that junction and prevents more efficient solutions such as good walking and biking infrastructure or public transportation. It's forcing street designers to suppress more efficient modes of transportation in order to make space for cars, thus making the traffic worse.
2:20 is it realistic though ?
No one trying to get through even if it means blocking traffic when the lights change... 🤔😁
You need to keep intersections clear, that (lower) traffic on the crossing road can still get through.
That's law in pretty much every country, but most drivers simply don't care.
I'm used to being honked at for keeping the intersection clear
(which increases the flow on another road, without giving up too much flow on "my road")
Can't legally block the box
Using VMT may lead to an other interesting development. Allowing small scale businesses into residential areas. Having a small supermarket in the center of a residential area, drastically reduces the VMT of the whole area, because now half of the shopping can do by foot bike or on a 3 minute car trip. Living close to a small supermarket increases your quality of life drastically. I don't need a car despite not living in the city center. I can walk to my local supermarket, post office hair dresser, school, kindergarden. All while living in a suburb with less than 3000 residents.
i've noticed how the difference between no traffic jam and a long traffic jam is just 2-3 seconds, and that the behavior of just one car can completely block traffic for an hour or more. would be interested if you could work out if that happening at one intersection can affect whole cities like i think it does.
what i mean is say at a turn signal say 10 cars get thru each cycle. if 10 cars arrive each cycle then there's no jam, but if that increases by just one more to 11 cars each cycle, after 10 cycles you have a double-cycle wait for everyone, 20 minutes it's a triple-cycle wait, and those long queues take up to an hour to clear. but then say just as we reach the 10 car limit one of those cars isn't paying attention or accelerates very slowly and so only one car takes the time that it normally takes 2 cars to get thru. the 10th car has to wait a 2nd cycle, and effectively the limit is then 9 cars per cycle, not 10. then at 11 car per cycle 2 don't get thru each time instead of just 1 not getting thru, and so the jam starts earlier (peaking at 9 cars per cycle instead of later when 10 cars per cycle are coming), and lengthens much more rapidly, even though there's the same number of cars.
basically one slow car causes the same delay as 2 or even 3 cars.
It seems to me VMT is based on statistical averages and assumptions, while LOS is based on actual measured data. Also, vehicles don't pollute nearly as much when they're driving freely at optimal speeds to get their best efficiency. They pollute a lot more when they are idling, stuck in traffic barely moving. Tracking the miles traveled does nothing to track or mitigate this problem.
Where I live, in the Seattle area, intersection delays would be better measured in minutes, not seconds. There are many intersections that take north of 5 min, and more than 3 light cycles, to get through. What should be a 10 min drive based on distance, turns into a 30 min drive due to traffic.
I like your channel, but I wish you weren't so dead set against suburban areas/lifestyle. Any good city actually needs both dense urban, as well as suburban areas. Excellent planning is key to either working well; and that means taking all considerations into account, from how roads/areas are intended to be used, to how they actually end up being used by citizens. Not everyone wants to be 8 floors up with only so much as a 2x6 wall separating you from neighbors on each side, as well as above and below. Conversely, I know not everyone wants a big yard to take care of either, or the ability to have more than one vehicle, and trailers for said vehicles to increase their utility; but some do.
Walking pollutes a lot less that starting a car. and you don't need 8 story buildings to achive a walk-able density. You only need 3-4 stories in most place and then place things close together. De-emphasising the car allows you to build less parking and narrower roads leading to more walkability. Not everyone wants to live out in the burbs 45 mins (or more) from work.
efficiency is higher, sure, but internal combustion engines still lose 60-80% of the energy to heat... so that's still not great compared to trains which are almost universally electrified for cities and commuter routes, and electric motors are 90-98% efficient. plus the optimal speed is rarely reached outside of a segregated fast highway (aka motorway or freeway or autobahn) so that argument is pretty irrelevant for city driving, which is usually 20-30mph. certainly driving a highly aerodynamic vehicle with a small engine will do far more for efficiency than trying to drive the same car fast all the time. and auto-start-stop turns off an engine completely when stuck in traffic. i know it used to take up to 5 seconds to fire up the engine again, but the car i learned to drive in was a 2020 model with the feature and now it takes less than half a second, easily the engine was up and running again quicker than i could take my foot off the brake and onto the accelerator. basically even if driving is still common and still based on burning fuel, there are many better mitigations than trying to avoid stopping the car at all costs, even by doubling the person's commute distance. after all, if a person who got 30mpg suddenly had half the distance to drive, at a crude calculation they would use the same fuel as if they'd switched to a 60mpg car for the same distance. mpg is measured in distance, not average speed, after all. it's also worth noting many engines don't have a linear relationship between mpg and co2/mi, the lower fuel economy also generates many multiples the same co2 per engine mile on average, in most cars. even when the engine is physically the same, but tuned to product more power in the ECU. i know not everybody wants to live in a city, some can't stand hearing any traffic noise at all, or need to see a forest and birds out of their window. but certainly we should make city living easier, safer and more convenient for people who live there, and enabling walking journeys and quick subway or bus connections makes that much easier (and accessible to all teens) than driving - which absolutely has its place in a city, even the best public transport system still isn't suitable for many disabilities, either you need to carry too much equipment with you or the nearest station is still just too far from your house bc of the disability, or whatever - so there will always be some place for cars in cities, as they'd be breaking disability accessibility legislation otherwise. but i don't believe cars need to be a first class citizen in dense city cores, and i'm personally happy to wait at traffic lights, knowing each person crossing the road is potentially one less car sharing the road with me, and making my journey less crowded and more pleasant as well. easily worth 2 minutes at some traffic lights. (plus if you have a shorter distance to travel, even in a car, you're going to deal with fewer traffic lights.)
You are all missing the point. I was not saying building suburbs is better than building dense urban. I actually said in the post cities need BOTH. All my point was is that neither VMT nor LOS gives the whole picture. We need a better way to measure vehicle, traffic, and environmental impact. That is all.
@@Patmorgan235Us There are still plenty of us that DO want to live out in the burbs 45 mins (or more) from work. I despise living near my workplace and absolutely refuse to do it.
I'm curious what you believe the long term effects on city/suburb planning and design our current "situation" will have, especially regarding the trends of city density vs suburban sprawl.
Great video!!!
Thanks!
this is an awesome video. learned a lot in less than 9 minutes. well done.
If a city can’t collect fees from increased traffic because of more cars coming from the suburbs, is there a way cities could collect parking fees from non-residents? Like a special parking tag that exempts residents of the city? And then perhaps they could spend that on infrastructure upgrades to encourage density and in-fill.
I’m from Denver and the traffic coming from the exurbs has gotten much, much worse. It not only increases people’s blood pressure, it increases pollution and traffic fatalities. The public transit here is underutilized because it doesn’t service the main economic centers in Denver. Once you ride a train in from Arvada, Golden, or Thornton, you’ll have to take busses to get everywhere else in the city. The busses don’t make sense! Public transit should help us avoid traffic! And there aren’t bike paths everywhere. The people on scooters use sidewalks and take up road space.
There has to be something to mitigate the traffic issues and get people around better. And the federal government should step in too. If they can finance 40% of states’ highway construction, they can chip in for public transit too.
Why not use the LOS (and/or VMT) proceeds to improve mass/alternate transportation infrastructure?
This has to change nationwide not to mention just how high rent is in cities when they should otherwise make apartment buildings taller with more apartments and an increase in supply will lower that $3000/month 1 bedroom apartment price...
There is a busy intersection in my daily routine where it is normal to wait till the third green light to be able to cross it.
@City Beautiful, neglecting any subjective argument, there are some serious factual errors here, starting with the Trip Generation calculation. You would think the single family homes would generate more car traffic, and you would be correct.
50 single-family homes = 550 daily trips
50 units mid-rise apartments= 271 daily trips
That's total trips, then we separate trips by mode. A dense urban apartment building would have a significant percentage of trips by walking, cycling, and transit, and fewer trips by car. Because of this, we don't typically do traffic impact studies in the CBD area, even for major developments.
I'm in favor of denser development, but most of the premise here is incorrect.
I am a traffic engineer with 20 years of experience doing traffic impact studies.
Dammit. I thought this was for Cities Skylines lol.
I mean, you're not THAT wrong...
@2:20 uhhh here theres a traffic light i've been stuck at for over an hour, idk where on the scale that would go
my city is using VMT but I don't know if they grade intersections but I assume they probably do, I know development fees are used for road diets to make some areas more walk able and expanding intersections in others. over all this decreases safety in dense walkable areas but makes the side streets safer and more comfortable
It seems to me that LOS is still a quite useful metric. Density is a love affair for city planners (no offense; it has its merits) because it reduces the need for infrastructure. But it's also a feedback loop of people abandoning their actual desires for space and privacy because the inefficiencies of bad/insufficient infrastructure are making the way they WANT to live so onerous that they scale their ideas of personal mobility back down to what they were 100 years ago when car travel was a luxury and moving more than 8 miles in a day was quite tedious. The great rural to urban migration is essentially driven by the desire of what you might call capital elites to reduce costs by consolidation, while the proles picking up their whole lives to move into denser and denser settings for work are on some level economic refugees. I definitely support a reduction in total miles driven and one benefit we will see from this lockdown is a large number of companies forced to acknowledge the viability of millions more people working remotely. That is a swing back in the direction of labor's power, whereas the migration to dense cities is generally the opposite. Im all for better cities but since the LOS metric is directly tied to one of the main downsides of density and governments' hot potato unwillingness to reduce congestion through sufficient infrastructure investments, it seems to serve a useful purpose.
7:18 hey, is that that HAI dude on the prospective left? I just want a video of his with an ad read where he was covering up someone on that side of the table, kind of gave his position away with that, if that really is him that is 🤔
So development projects in the city that have a bigger impact on the local traffic will now get built, but building fees will be transferred to developers who build in the suburbs? Sounds like a win for the city developers.
well the point is to reduce car dependence, the old metric assumed everybody had and used a car, while the new one tries to more accurately guess how many trips will actually require one (too far, need to carry too much, etc). making one junction more busy is less of a big deal if your route only takes you through a few junctions instead of dozens over many miles, anyway.
The problem with LOS isn't its inherent methodology but rather the impact thresholds and study scoping that developers get away with that to convince cities that small impacts far away and larger impacts at underutilized locations are safe to ignore, and the only impacts worth discussing are the ones that can be shown to be "physically" mitigated.
VMT attempts to be more holistic but comes with its own set of problems. Incentivizing mixed-use and infill drives up housing costs, makes suburban infill much more difficult, does not address intra-modal safety impacts, treats all "vehicles" as equally impacting (1 full size pickup = 1 Tesla = 1 motorcycle), and completely ignores shared mobility, telecommuting and the long term implications and effects of the pandemic.
In 2020, for mitigation of LOS *or* VMT to be effective, planners need to create *viable* alternatives to driving a full size vehicle that the elderly, soccer moms and the self employed are willing to life with.
Hey that’s Pittsburgh in the opening video!!
7:18 is that wendover productions?
Indeed. That's Sam Denby.
You didn't mention how a blanket VMT law for an entire state totally screws over rural areas. I'm a Land Use Planner in a rural California county and VMT will basically kill all development potential here. Like all things, there is no one-size-fits-all answer.
3:10 "city charging developers fees for infrastructure upgrades"? well not in my city :D:D:D there's EU money to go around and officials who draw new tram lines arbitrarily to make necessary detours at new malls.
So urban planners are assuming people can walk or ride bicycles? That seems reasonable, but I'm a little bit surprised. Real estate agents are not allowed to even describe the "walkability" of a listing's neighborhood because it discriminates against people who can not walk.