On: Time is the only real currency we have

[fnord77]

> replaced with more pedestrian overpasses,

vegas has pedestrian overpasses and they are a tremendous waste of time - much worse than crosswalks. A better approach would be to keep the pedestrians at grade-level and have car under-passes

[dbish → fnord77]

Vegas has built them to waste time rather then be efficient. The overpassed there make you loop around casinos and stores, purposely causing you to walk further and take longer

[nouveaux → fnord77]

If you're talking about overpasses in general, I can see how car underpasses are more time efficient. I assume pedestrian over/under passes are cheaper to build.

Regarding Vegas, it doesnt seem like crosswalks are more efficient, especially from the perspective of the driver. 1) Large intersections with crosswalks tends to have people linger in the middle of the street. This delays the flow of traffic. 2) Right turns are much slower. 3) People who jaywalk. This can be easily observed in Vegas at major hotels. Cars are always struggling to turn into the hotel with large crowds of people trying to cross regardless of the color of the light.

That said, I agree with another poster that crosswalks are optimized to force you into hotels/shops and are subpar.

[bobthepanda → nouveaux]

The problem here is actually twofold;

- Crosswalks don't do well in overly large intersections

- Vegas over-concentrates traffic into large arterials that require large intersections in the first place.

A traditional American street grid, while requiring more stopping time, in general allows traffic to diffuse across many different routes, making large intersections with two ten lane roads unnecessary.

[spking → fnord77]

Yeah, kind of like the utilidor system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_utilidor_system

[syrrim → fnord77]

There's always the barbican approach: move grade 6 meters up

[gofarup → fnord77]

There’s other ways to do it them having gigantic concrete bridges like Vegas.

In downtown SF, you could put lower diagonal street bridges which would save an infinite amount of time for people driving.

[allannienhuis → gofarup]

Several large cities in China that I've been to tend to use pedestrian tunnels at many large intersections. It works pretty well - subway-like staircases at each corner, and nice wide hallway/tunnels going around the whole intersection. Occasionally with some shops.

It has the advantage of being easy on the eyes above-ground. I can imagine in places with serious homelessness issues there could be problems, but the ones I experienced were fairly nice - some more plain than others, but generally graffiti free, well lit, and well used.

[bobthepanda → allannienhuis]

These are fine if you're perfectly abled.

If you are disabled (permanently or temporarily), old, have strollers or luggage, then level-changes add quite some time in the best case or are completely unusable in the worst case.

In my experiences traveling with Asia, usually these systems were not outfitted with elevators.

[allannienhuis → bobthepanda]

yes, I didn't see elevators, but I did see escalators on the busier ones.

[torstenvl → allannienhuis]

Harvard Square has this, by happenstance. There are entrances to the T on both sides of Mass Ave. and you don't have to go through the turnstile to cross from one to the other.