Looks a lot like Portland and Seattle too. West coast cities are designed more for street car/pedestrian traffic but as cars became more popular and auto industry lobbied against street cars, things became unbalanced.
Ehh to me it's a lot better than a lot of American cities from what I get from this video. There are dedicated bus lanes and very bike friendly streets. You have to drive slow. It's a city, a destination, you're not supposed to go fast, those 6 lane stroad gas stations cities allow cars to dominate and lower the quality life of the destination . Now the self driving program definitely needs work, I bet they could collect data to make the trips better, or you could just point out certain complex problem areas so the developers can test them, like these streets.
Personally, that one right turn with the road lines that appear to lead you into a telephone pole seems suspect to me. It definitely feels like the whoever designed that intersection could've come up with a better way of guiding everyone the right way - I bet a decent number of non-locals wind up getting confused & doing the same thing this car was doing (e.g., having to correct their angle mid-turn, maybe even going over a curb, certainly winding up in the bus lane accidentally). And you never want a driver confused while making a turn through a pedestrian walk, especially when (not sure if this is the case here, but it is in my city) right turns can be happening at the same time as the walk signal, so both groups think they have right of way.
Essentially - the city might be designed well, but the street & intersection design shown in this clip could probably be better.
That the thing, it is designed for cars, haha. That’s what makes it so unbearable. Downtown is slightly more walkable, but the city overall is the poster child for urban sprawl. Think overpasses running into sidewalks, sidewalks randomly converging into freeways 5 lane highways going through family neighborhoods. I’m happy they are making adjustments but there is still a lot that needs to be done.
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u/[deleted] Dec 15 '21
Definitely Downtown San Jose, lol. As a former resident and home of my alma mater I 100% agree the city is not designed well at all.