The state government needs to start putting together a plan to protect us from abduction.

This is exactly what I’m referring to, yes. If people withdraw their support, the regime always collapses. However, things usually have to get bad for people to feel motivated enough to do this.

He has near full control of the executive branch, which is perhaps the most powerful force in our society. But it is not the only force. We have seen resistance from the judiciary, from universities, from law firms, from businesses, from unions, and of course from ordinary people. Right now most of this resistance has been fairly weak and disorganized. But I expect it to grow in strength as the ineffectiveness of his governance becomes more apparent and his popularity drops.

That’s not to say we should be complacent. Most people here are relatively educated and radicalized to see where things could be headed if Trump is not stopped. Everyone reading this should be thinking about how they can safely resist and especially who they can connect to and cooperate with to make this resistance stronger and more effective.

I didn’t say anything about elections.

Bullshit. Every leader, even a dictator, needs public support.

The deeper they get their claws in, the less support they need. But Trump doesn’t have them in that deep yet.

The problem is that downtowns by their nature are pedestrian zones. It’s unavoidable. You can’t have a freeway that’s also a pedestrian zone and that’s why so many people are dying. Not to mention what I said above—you would need to eliminate almost all intersections which would make it impossible to get to your destination. Without spatially huge interchanges (impossible to build without demolishing the city you’re trying to bring people to), the intersections that remain would still disrupt traffic flow.

You just can’t have high speed roads in heavily populated areas. It’s not safe and congestion prevents them from functioning as designed. If there is a great need for this then it needs to be underground, but this is usually too expensive to consider.

But yeah those other things are definitely needed in downtown areas.

It makes me very uncomfortable so I disagree. Red light turns are dangerous and shouldn’t be permitted.

Lol no. They don’t improve traffic and kill people. Don’t act smug because you don’t understand urban street design. There are very good reasons why so many cities are considering removing these.

But even if it was true, the old “my commute is worth more than your child’s life” argument doesn’t hold water.

I understand the principle but you simply can’t turn a dense city street into a limited access highway. We tried and it does not work, and has huge unintended side effects.

This is what so many liberals and “moderates” fail to understand about our political system. You can’t just create a quasi-caste system where a tiny number of people have near complete economic power over their “lessers” and expect that type of mentality and relationship not to spill over into politics. This idea that we can have democratic government and an oligarchic economy is a complete fantasy.

So the question is: do your prefer oligarchy in both or democracy in both? For me it’s an easy answer.

This is a misunderstanding of the issue. We aren’t talking about changing the road width here at all, just the lane number and direction. Most of these old, downtown streets were always narrow two-way roads. The difference is that oncoming traffic in the road and having only one lane in each direction dramatically lowers vehicle speeds, meaning these one ways are hugely more dangerous than the two way streets they replaced. In my city (which actually invented the downtown one-way!), 100% of pedestrians killed in the downtown area in recent years were killed on these one way streets. Yes, every single one.

To explain the history in more detail, when the field of traffic engineering emerged and it was decided that rate of personal vehicle flow was to be the sole design criteria for all roads in the US, narrow two way streets presented a problem. They couldn’t be widened due to adjacent development, and they were frequently congested and did not allow high speeds because of the close proximity of oncoming traffic. It was theorized that by converting them to multi-lane one ways, higher traffic flow would be accomplished.

As with other schemes to pack more vehicle throughput into urban areas, this seemed to work for a short period. It was deemed highly beneficial to the emerging political elites who had largely moved to the suburbs but worked in downtowns. Poor, minority, and other downtown residents who could no longer use or even safely cross the street on foot were deemed unimportant. Or more cynically, this danger and discomfort to the undesirables was another added benefit that might encourage them to leave the highly profitable business districts being built in their neighborhoods.

Before long, the new infrastructure for commuters enticed more and more suburban development and virtually everyone who could afford it moved out of downtown, and with this, traffic congestion increased dramatically. This is where the benefits of increased traffic flow disappear—adding more lanes in tight city streets where there are many intersections doesn’t really speed up traffic much at all when you reach even moderate traffic density due to all of the turning and lane-crossing required to navigate. Actually, this slows traffic and makes downtown streets safer during rush hour, but unfortunately they’re still extremely deadly at off hours, especially at night when fewer cars are on the road and visibility is poor.

In short, one way roads are dangerous and don’t really benefit anyone. In my city even local businesses have been agitating to get rid of them because they make it very difficult to pull over or cross the street to shop or eat. Eliminating them is a great and easy way to make city streets much safer and more pleasant without spending a lot of money or inconveniencing anyone.

The reason in theory is to allow multilane roads and higher traffic speeds. In practice this rarely improves things due to the high density of intersections and congestion in city centers. The real effect is just worse pedestrian and cyclist safety, in addition to making navigation much more difficult even for car drivers.

This is how I felt about all the one way streets in downtowns. Always hated them personally but assumed someone somewhere must have had a good reason behind it that I didn’t know.

But no… they’re just awful in basically every way.

My bike was like 50 bucks. It’s shitty but it gets me there. And no one tries to steal it.

It’s definitely not as fast as a fancy road bike though lol.

Lol that is not within the control of a random individual judge.

Doesn’t tolerating capricious and censorious moderation violate the principles you seem to be implicitly defending? I don’t really understand this mentality of neutrality towards authoritarian behavior.

Good for him. It’s time to escalate this. However I am afraid the Supreme Court will pacify lower judges who try to act.

Probably didn’t develop fully yet. Eggplants are picked before they fully ripen. They could also be aborted seeds that will never grow too.

In theory but they do a shit job of it.

Neighborhood associations also exist and are usually much better than HOAs. I would be happy if mine was in charge of the streets instead of the city. But not my HOA, they suck.

I feel like this makes it sound easier than it is. The powers that be won’t let us do these things. It is possible but it means evading or overcoming them.

At least 40 in the past century. But also I consider threats of violence (especially implicit ones) to be a distinct tactic from actual violence both in terms of effectiveness and ethics.