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naraburns  nihil supernum  5d ago (text post)   4639 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for April 2025

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.

Quality Contributions to the Main Motte

@Throwaway05:

@ArjinFerman:

@Closedshop:

Contributions for the week of March 31, 2025

@Dean:

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

@cjet79:

@coffee_enjoyer:

@ThenElection:

Contributions for the week of April 7, 2025

@100ProofTollBooth:

@LacklustreFriend:

@Dean:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@TitaniumButterfly:

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

@Gooofuckyourself:

@MadMonzer:

Contributions for the week of April 14, 2025

@FtttG:

@phosphorus2:

@RandomRanger:

@Dean:

@urquan:

Contributions for the week of April 21, 2025

@hydroacetylene:

@OracleOutlook:

@Rov_Scam:

@Dean:

@BreakerofHorsesandMen:

@naraburns:

Contributions for the week of April 28, 2025

@OracleOutlook:

@aiislove:

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What would you prefer to use all that precious public space for instead? Build public housing? Grow crops? Build public parks? Bike-only paths?

I also wonder just what % of lethal car accidents occur within city limits.

Bike lanes, denser cities, green space. If you could narrow most road ways to 1-2 lanes we could have bike lanes almost everywhere, larger sidewalks with more trees/green space. Parking lots could be turned into public parks or even businesses.

In 2022 there were 45 fatalities and 16k accidents in Baltimore city. That year there were 350 total traffic deaths in the whole state of Maryland. So 13%. The city makes up 8% of the total population of Maryland so the city is actually relatively more dangerous than the rest of the state for traffic deaths.

Isn't Baltimore also much more black than Maryland as a whole? Demographically they have many more traffic fatalities, so that might be the cause of all or most of your stat.

Fair enough. But this raises a couple of issues.

Green space and sidewalks would swiftly get taken over by fentanyl junkies, mentally ill homeless and other bums. What would you prefer to be done about it then?

Should the new bike lanes/paths be designated as bikes-only? If yes, should bike use be restricted on other roads correspondingly? This is a rather thorny question.

Let me be clear re:crime. We need to crack down on anti-social behavior here in America. If new green spaces are immediately colonized by junkies and other bums then that indicates a problem with society that runs much deeper than public transit. Cars don't really solve this problem, they just confine it to the walkable areas of the city, which are usually also historically the most pleasant.

My vision is for protected bike lanes of 1/4 lane width on the side of most streets. There are still issues with this: mainly it presents a hazard when cars are turning right and cutting off bikes, but it seems better than the alternatives (median bike lane has the problem with both turns, single use trails don't make use of existing infrastructure).

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This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

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