{"id":29,"date":"2022-09-26T11:38:02","date_gmt":"2022-09-26T09:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/users.utu.fi\/mtwkar\/?p=29"},"modified":"2022-09-26T11:38:02","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T09:38:02","slug":"sustainable-infrastructure-isnt-car-centric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/users.utu.fi\/mtwkar\/2022\/09\/26\/sustainable-infrastructure-isnt-car-centric\/","title":{"rendered":"Sustainable infrastructure isn\u2019t car centric"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zagreb has more asphalt devoted to cars than I think it needs (or has money to look after). While public transport is actually very good, the core high-capacity tram network does not reach as far as one would expect. Busses cover many routes but suffer from the plague of cities: cars.<\/p>\n

Please don\u2019t misunderstand \u2013 I\u2019m a car person. I like them as objects, I like fixing them, I like driving. I don\u2019t think they are best suited to dense urban areas however. I think they take space away from people in places where space is already at a premium. They are also a pretty bad way to get around at the time when most other people also have somewhere to be. Bikes would be a great alternative.<\/p>\n

Zagreb has nearly ideal geography to become a great cycling city. In the parts of town where the vast majority of people work and live, the topography is very nearly flat. The weather is also milder than even Paris \u2013 the headline \u201cnew cycling capital\u201d. But cycling is severely underutilised as a transit mode.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that there is no cycling infrastructure \u2013 there is. It\u2019s just not very well connected to the places people want or need to go. It is also unsafe. Bike paths are narrow and often end suddenly \u2013 into a lamp post as in the picture below on Vukovarska (street view from 2011, because I\u2019m not in that part of town now; don\u2019t worry it\u2019s still like that) or merging as a cycling gutter onto a road with a posted speedlimit of 60 (which half the drivers really see as a minimum speed). Cycling modal share will not increase if people feel unsafe cycling.<\/p>\n

\"Bike
Streetview from 2011, but this bike lane is still there still heading for the light pole, just with fresher paint.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Of course, there\u2019s a cycling strategy (from the previous mayor\u2019s era) and there are articles about renewed momentum. And education campaigns. And yet there are many 3 lane throughways in the core city that could be cheaply converted for cycling without severely impacting traffic. Those stroads have a speed limit of now 50 or above \u2013 drop it to 40 \u2013 car journey duration will probably not go up, as the lower speed frees up capacity.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d really like to cycle to most places I need to go. Driving is expensive (even before inflation), and the tram only goes halfway half the time. What bugs me, and this is universal \u2013 I have plenty of the same things to say about Turku\/Finland as well) – is that cheap solutions that can be implemented quickly are overlooked in favour of (expensive) additional infrastructure. More infrastructure means more to maintain too. If repurposing existing infra for 20% of the cost achieves 80% of the effect is so difficult, imagine how much over budget and complicated the dedicated entirely new build infrastructure will be!<\/p>\n

Car travel will get it\u2019s own post at some point \u2013 there are many intersections here that will magically send you away from where you want to go because you didn\u2019t change lane twice three kms ago.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll come back to the theme of low cost-high impact <\/em>with infrastructure in future posts. And as a general caveat: I\u2019m not at transit engineer. In fact, I\u2019m not an engineer of any sort! And certainly, there will be some details I\u2019ve overlooked, or complications I\u2019m not aware of. I\u2019m opinionated and I think my views have merit, but I\u2019m willing to be wrong. And I\u2019m also happy for you to tell me that I am, and why. Don\u2019t forget the why \u2013 I want to hear your arguments!*<\/p>\n

* Please present them in a civil way \u2013 if you\u2019re going to troll…<\/p>\n

** oh, and if I get round to it ill add some links and stuff. now need to do something else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zagreb has more asphalt devoted to cars than I think it needs (or has money to look after). While public transport is actually very good, the core high-capacity tram network does not reach as far as one would expect. Busses cover many routes but suffer from the plague of cities: cars. Please don\u2019t misunderstand \u2013… Continue reading Sustainable infrastructure isn\u2019t car centric<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/users.utu.fi\/mtwkar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/users.utu.fi\/mtwkar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/users.utu.fi\/mtwkar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/users.utu.fi\/mtwkar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/users.utu.fi\/mtwkar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/users.utu.fi\/mtwkar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33,"href":"https:\/\/users.utu.fi\/mtwkar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/33"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/users.utu.fi\/mtwkar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/users.utu.fi\/mtwkar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/users.utu.fi\/mtwkar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}