Cities should be transportation centric. Not just cars, not just bus, or bike, or walkable, it should be designed to fit them all together so people can use whatever they want and it's not a headache. Cities currently are NOT car centric, otherwise traffic lights would be timed correctly by a standard that works. Cities are "create traffic" centric, and there is no intentional design going into making sure people can get from point A to point B under any circumstances. The metrics they currently use on traffic is how long people spend in it, so if you get frustrated and simply go home instead of running errands, they see that as a success. One less person. Instead of supporting local economies by making travel easier in general.

[–] mindlesscrollyparrot@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 2 months ago

Cities are inherently car centric. Think about a typical crossroads controlled by lights. When the light is green, a car can enter the junction and can then leave in any direction (sometimes it has to wait for oncoming traffic, but it can always leave when the lights change again). When the light goes green for a pedestrian at the same junction, they can cross 1 road only.

Fundamentally, the cars are in the middle. They don't have to cross pavements (or cycle lanes) to turn. Everyone else has to cross the road.

Of course, there are exceptions, where a junction has been designed so that, for example, pedestrians can cross diagonally. Likewise the cycle lane sometimes continues across the junction, but mostly doesn't.