this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2026
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Fuck Cars

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Architect and urban & computational designer Abhinav Bhardwaj made this great set of slides comparing urban design in the US and Europe, peppered with pithy observations like:

  • European space is shaped on purpose: American open space is what’s left over.
  • Small blocks make more corners, more routes, more street life.
  • A fine grid offers hundreds of routes; the tree offers one way out.
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[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 36 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The 1000 m and 1020 m for the width of the street seem off.

[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You don't have 1 km wide streets in your city? Maybe it was supposed to be 100 m, but that still seems very wide. Maybe 1000", that would be around 25 m and fits better for regular inner city streets.

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The depiction shows a 6+ lane street like, e.g. the city ring street of a large city.

[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Which is more like 35-50 m, at least for a european city.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

They gotta be thinking 100 m and 102 m. They added an extra zero for some reason?

[–] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Maybe it was originally in inches and the author didn't bother to convert units?

1000 x 0.0254 yields about 25.4 m, which would be pretty reasonable. Let's assume that all lanes are 4 m wide, which would be much more than normal. (Usually, they're closer to 3 m wide each, which would yield about 20 m; 2 m is included for the kerbs to separate traffic).

Then with 6 lanes (2 mainwalks, 2 bicycle lanes, 1 car lane + carriageway), you'd have 24 m. Give 1.4 m for some kerbs and then you get the 25.4 m.

@zaphod@sopuli.xyz , @Successful_Try543@feddit.org , I think I have the answer.^

Not all streets are like that, by the way. All of them have side/mainwalks, but not all have the other lanes.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

You right, 100 meters isn't reasonable. I've had about 3h of sleep in the last 48 or so, so my brain is a bit mush. 😆

[–] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] victorz@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Sib?

Yeah I slept well this night. No worries. 😊

[–] bryndos@fedia.io 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

tbf katy freeway is over 100m wide in some parts. but hopefully that is rare, and probably is 'unreasonable'.

Those dudes need some more trains over there.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago

Fun facts: The Katy Freeway goes to Katy, Texas, and Katy, Texas is a southern terminus of the Katy Railroad (formally the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad, or "MKT"). The Katy was a major passenger railroad once upon a time.

So in a way, the freeway is helping motorists get to the trains, just trains that are in the past.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

That's a freeway though, I suppose.

[–] Beacon@fedia.io 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

1.75 m is the height of the person labeled for scale, so if you turn them sideways it would take 57 people drawings to equal 100 m. But in the drawing only about 20 sideways people can fit. So it can't just be an extra 0 added

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

You right, you right

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

If you take the 10 m scake below as a measure, the person would be 5 m tall and the 100(0) m would be ~60 m.

[–] Beacon@fedia.io 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeah at a bare minimum the numbers in this drawing are all completely totally wrong. Is this an AI drawing?

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

What person would label a human as "1.75 m"? We know what a "human for scale" is. Also, every single graphic, despite credited to the same author, uses a different scale marking: zebra, bar, tick, snaking (and then ignores it). The fonts differ too (look at every capital R) but oddly not within drawings, it seems to be an AI optimized for vector output.

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

As the cited paper is from 2008, I was tempted to say no. However, only the relative shares of the modes of transport are from the article, not the graphic itself.

So yes, this is likely an AI generated graphic.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292752103_Making_cycling_irresistible_Lessons_from_europe

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

One cited paper is from 1889, predating this whole graphics style by about a century. The graphics are probably what an AI made as a response to "illustrate this text passage" or "redraw this figure as vectors". (Yes, this one probably generates vectors, otherwise the font families would be inconsistent within images, not just between them)

[–] Beacon@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago