Infrastructure - Cheltenham, Sep. 7

I went in to downtown Cheltenham today to have lunch with a friend whom I've never met in person before, which was pretty fun! We ate at a pub called Wetherspoons, and both decided to get fish and chips, because, you know, England.

After that, we decided to walk around town a little bit because I wanted to explore. I considered it to be a bit of a warm up before I visit places in mainland Europe, so I get a better sense of what to look for since I don't normally walk through towns. Along the way, we popped into a few shops, and I ended up buying a few sausage rolls. We also stopped into a Poundland, and I ended up buying some chocolates!

They unfortunately got a bit squishy due to the heat today, so I've got them in the fridge now. Which reminds me, air conditioners are not super common around here. Normally that's fine, but it gets a bit too toasty at times. Should have tried to get ice cream or something to cool down.

Anyways, the main thing I wanted to talk about in this post is infrastructure, the most exciting of topics! But seriously though, this is actually something I'm very interested in, because I think the US does a lot of it in bad ways. In particular, the US is heavily dependent on cars for transportation, almost every other method of getting to places is infeasible much of the time due to a number of things. Let me explain:

Like most places, the US has zoning laws dictating what can and can't be built in various areas. Unlink most places, the US does this in a ridiculous way. You'll often find suburbs several square miles in size, in which the only thing that's allowed to be built is housing. In these housing regions, the only type of transportation network that exists is roads with tiny sidewalks.

Now suppose you're at home, and you want to go somewhere. If it's your neighbor's house, great! As long as they're nearby, you can walk there. If you want to go anywhere else like a store, well... you have to drive.

Walking is infeasible, since the closest store is usually a few miles away. On top of that, you usually have to cross a few dozen roads just to get there, and each road will have at least 5 lanes of traffic, because pedestrians aren't prioritized. So not only will it be a long distance to walk, but you'll also spend a lot of time waiting for your turn to cross. Plus, US roads are tremendously dangerous for pedestrians, over 6000 were killed in 2019 due to traffic crashes. Given how rarely people walk in the US, that's an alarming number of people!

You could also try cycling to your destination, if you like getting hit by cars. Honestly, I've felt worse about cycling in the US than walking, the infrastructure for it is horrendous. The most popular solution I've seen is to paint a bike lane in the road gutter, since riding your bike on the sidewalk is illegal. So only a few feet separates your handlebar from a car zooming by you at over twice your speed. No thanks!

Another alternative is to take the bus, but, good luck with that. In my experience trying to take the bus out of a US suburb, it's nearly impossible. Whatever bus stop is closest to your house will probably be going the wrong direction, so you'd have to make a connection in the middle of a city, meaning you've already gone the wrong direction if that wasn't your destination. On top of that, I've found busses to be unreliable, often coming late or even early sometimes. Late busses are tolerable, early busses are not!

There really isn't any other possible mode of transportation in my experience, since things like rail lines are fairly uncommon. Thus you're pretty much forced to drive, whether you like it or not. Don't get me wrong, driving has its perks. You can get to your destination much faster than walking or cycling, you're in a climate controlled environment, you can carry lots of stuff with you, etc.

However there's a lot of downsides to cars too. Cars are very expensive, usually tens of thousands of dollars for a new one. Then you need to buy gas on top of that, which adds up a lot faster than you might think (don't forget the carbon emissions that are killing the planet). And because cars have thousands of moving parts that will eventually fail, maintenance costs build up quickly. All of this is on top of insurance, another constant money drain. Compare this to a bike, which would be a few hundred dollars.

Cars are also incredibly dangerous. Cars are basically 2 tons of metal flying down a road at 60+ mph, that's a heck of a lot of kinetic energy! When you get into a crash (when, not if, it's basically expected to happen to everyone), there's a good chance you'll sustain some major injuries, or even be killed. How often do you hear about bike crashes being that severe? Now you've got huge medical bills and repair bills for your car, I hope you had insurance for that!

Here's an example that illustrates everything I've talked about above. This is an intersection in Manchester, New Hampshire where I did an internship a few years ago. I had to cross this intersection every week or so to get groceries. This is clearly designed exclusively for cars to get through, not for anything else. Pedestrians, busses, and cyclists are physically able to get through, but it's really not designed for them. Pedestrians have to wait for the cars to go first, and hope that no one runs a red light. This intersection has no bike lanes, so cyclists can choose to block cars by riding in a lane, become a criminal for riding on the sidewalk, or dismount and become a pedestrian. Busses get held up by the cars since there's no dedicated bus lane. This is extremely typical for US intersections, they just don't prioritize anyone other than cars. 

I could go on about how much I dislike US infrastructure, but I think I've gotten my point across. I don't like being forced to drive everywhere. My goal is not to eliminate vehicles, far from it; they're incredibly useful when you need them. But I have legs, and I'd like to use them to get to places. Most places I've been to in the US don't allow for this due to ridiculous zoning laws, you're pretty much forced into driving long distances.

That's one major reason I'm on this trip, I want to find places where it's feasible to get somewhere without driving. I've gotten a sense of Cheltenham over the last couple days, and I do think things are a bit better here, but it's honestly not great. Walking through downtown Cheltenham today made it pretty clear that the fundamental issues I have with US cities exist here too. It's built primarily for cars, and only really accommodates pedestrians because it has to. However it's better than what I've experienced in the US.

I think walking is a bit of an improvement, depending on where you're going. I'm not familiar with zoning laws in the UK, but it appears to be nowhere near as extreme as the US. Take these 2 screenshots of suburbs from Google Maps at about the same zoom level, roughly 1km across. The first is a random area near my hotel in the UK, the second is near my home in the US.

That's a pretty dramatic difference. The UK image has several stores spattered throughout the housing area, a handful of bus stops, and even a rail station. The US screenshot has a landscaping company and a school. That's it. It's also got a giant 5-6 lane road to cross in the middle!

It just feels so much easier to get to where you need by foot, whether it's a grocery store, a pub, etc. Obviously not everything is in walking distance, but it's certainly a lot more than the US, and there's no scary roads to cross over. It looks to me like major roads have pedestrians just go under the road, which is so much more sensible than forcing people to cross what is effectively a highway with a stoplight.
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As for busses, they're actually a feasible way to get around here! The stop outside my hotel has a bus coming by every 5-10 minutes or so, which is way more frequent than the 30 minutes I'm used to in the US. And there are dedicated bus lanes in lots of places, so busses don't get held up by traffic as frequently. The ticket price is pretty reasonable too, it was £2.40 in each direction for my trip today (could have saved some money if I'd bought 1 ticket instead of 2). Considering the cost of fuel here, that's cheaper than driving.

I've heard comments from locals that the busses aren't good due to not arriving on time, but so far it's better than what I've experienced in the US. And with how frequently busses come, it's not a major issue if you miss one. My biggest complaint is that the stop names aren't called out, so you're just expected to know where your stop is.

As for cycling, I don't think I've seen enough to make a firm conclusion, but it does seem a bit better. Cycling on the sidewalks is also illegal here, though it sounds like it's not really enforced. There isn't much infrastructure for bikes on the roads that I've seen, but I have seen some cyclists using other routes. Hard to comment on since I haven't seen a lot, but it's certainly not popular as primary transportation.

As for driving infrastructure, it's quite a bit better here than the US. There's a number of things done very well that keep cars moving. For example, intersections are almost never crossroads, they're almost always either T-junctions or roundabouts, and traffic lights are fairly rare. From what I've seen, this does an excellent job of not making drivers wait at a traffic light, even though an intersection is empty.

The image below is one example that illustrates a few different techniques used in the UK. The A40 is the main road running from left to right, Whittington Road joins from the bottom, and Telstar Way joins at the top. For those who drive on the right, remember that the UK drives on the left. Both of these illustrate the main types of T-junctions I've seen (note that this isn't a crossroad, since you can't get from Whittington to Telstar).

Whittington only connects to A40 on the bottom, heading left. From Whittington, there is no way to go right on the A40. This prevents drivers from crossing multiple lanes of traffic, which holds up cars behind them as they wait for a clearing on both sides of the road. Also from the A40, you can only get onto Whittington if you're going left, not right. This prevents drivers from clogging up the A40 as they wait for the other side to have a clearing. Given that there's 3 lanes of traffic on each side, clearings big enough to get through are uncommon.

Telstar is a bit different, it connects to both the top and bottom of the A40. This introduces the problem of drivers waiting for traffic to clear as I said above, however this is mitigated in a simple way: adding an area in the middle for cars to wait. This doesn't solve the problem, since drivers still need to wait for a gap in lanes of traffic, but it means drivers don't have to wait for both sides to have a clearing when trying to enter the A40. Similarly, drivers getting off the A40 have an area to pull off, meaning they're not holding up an entire lane of traffic as they wait for a gap on the other side.

This is pretty similar in principle to the suicide lanes commonly found in the US, where cars can wait in the middle without blocking others. The main difference is that the UK has physical barriers in regions where you can't cross. I think the physical barrier has beneficial psychological effects, such as making people drive slower than they would if it were all a big road. Plus is foliage all over, it's nicer to look at.

Also note how in each junction design, the small road connecting to the bigger road curves the lane in the right direction. This allows drivers to change their speed outside of the main road, further helping prevent clogging of traffic. This is unlike most intersections in the US, where each lane intersects perpendicularly to the connecting road. This means drivers getting onto the main road aren't up to speed by the time they're on it, which can slow down cars behind them. And drivers getting off the main road have to slow down all the cars behind them in order to safely make the turn. Now that I'm looking at this closely, that's a bit ridiculous!

Of course, we can't talk about intersections in the UK without talking about roundabouts! I must say, they're done really well here. They come in many shapes and sizes, each designed for slightly different applications. There are tiny ones in small housing areas, and there's large ones used on main motor ways. There's even roundabouts with traffic lights on them!

Roundabouts are great with low to medium density traffic. Those who are on it have priority, which helps keep things flowing. No traffic lights are needed to keep the flow in these cases, humans can manage that easy enough just by following a few simple rules (wait your turn, follow the painted lines, use your indicator, etc.).

The problem with roundabouts is when you get to high density traffic. Most likely, there will be one entrance with loads of cars coming on, meaning there's never a gap for anyone else to get on. This is where the roundabouts with traffic lights come in, they give an opportunity for those drivers on smaller roads to actually get through it.

Another aspect I've noticed of the larger roundabouts with multiple lanes is that the lanes spiral outwards. So if you want to turn right, you get into the rightmost lane, which eventually spirals outwards and pops you out at the correct exit. Brilliant! You can see how the dotted lines in the image below make drivers keep going out one lane each time there's an exit. There's even labels on each lane for which exit it will take you to. I personally find this amazing.

This is so much better than the multi-lane roundabouts I've seen in the US that don't spiral outwards. Drivers taking a left have to get into the inner lane, but end up having to cut across the outer lane when they need to exit. Pretty good chance of crashes happening with that, not everyone thinks about the fact that there may be another car in the outer lane in your blind spot.

​One other observation I made while walking through downtown today was regarding the pedestrian areas. They're so quiet! My friend and I were walking next to each other on a road with cars, and practically had to shout to hear each other. Then we entered a pedestrian area, and the background noise almost instantly dropped off. We could talk at a normal volume without any trouble even though there were lots of people around, it was a pretty strange experience! Noise pollution is another big complaint I have about US cities, and I hadn't realized how much road noise contributed to that. I'll definitely be on the lookout for more pedestrian areas like this, they're awesome!