Should We Plan For a Future With Fewer Cars? (nytimes.com) 396
The New York Times ran a detailed piece (with some neat interactive graphics) arguing "cities need to plan for a future of fewer cars, a future in which owning an automobile, even an electric one, is neither the only way nor the best way to get around town..."
It asks us to imagine a world where there's suddenly more room for two-way bike lanes, wider sidewalks, and car-free bus lanes. But it also looks at our current conundrum: Automobiles are not just dangerous and bad for the environment; they are also profoundly wasteful of the land around us, taking up way too much physical space to transport too few people... And cars take up space even while they're not in use. They need to be parked, which consumes yet more space on the sides of streets or in garages. Cars take up a lot of space even when they're just looking for parking... New York's drivers are essentially being given enormous tracts of land for their own pleasure and convenience. To add to the overall misery of the situation, though, even the drivers are not especially happy about the whole deal, because despite all the roadway they've been given, they're still stuck in gridlock...
"The one thing we know for sure, because we understand geometry, is that if everyone drives, nobody moves," Brent Toderian, the former chief planner for the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, told me. Even if you're a committed daily driver, "it's in your best interest for walking, biking and public transit to be as attractive as possible for everyone else — because that means you're going to be able to drive easier..." Instead of fighting a war on cars, Toderian told me, urbanists should fight a war on car dependency — on cities that leave residents with few choices other than cars. Alleviating car dependency can improve commutes for everyone in a city...
At the moment, many of the most intractable challenges faced by America's urban centers stem from the same cause — a lack of accessible physical space. We live in a time of epidemic homelessness. There's a national housing affordability crisis caused by an extreme shortage of places to live. And now there's a contagion that thrives on indoor overcrowding.
Given these threats, how can American cities continue to justify wasting such enormous tracts of land on death machines?
It asks us to imagine a world where there's suddenly more room for two-way bike lanes, wider sidewalks, and car-free bus lanes. But it also looks at our current conundrum: Automobiles are not just dangerous and bad for the environment; they are also profoundly wasteful of the land around us, taking up way too much physical space to transport too few people... And cars take up space even while they're not in use. They need to be parked, which consumes yet more space on the sides of streets or in garages. Cars take up a lot of space even when they're just looking for parking... New York's drivers are essentially being given enormous tracts of land for their own pleasure and convenience. To add to the overall misery of the situation, though, even the drivers are not especially happy about the whole deal, because despite all the roadway they've been given, they're still stuck in gridlock...
"The one thing we know for sure, because we understand geometry, is that if everyone drives, nobody moves," Brent Toderian, the former chief planner for the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, told me. Even if you're a committed daily driver, "it's in your best interest for walking, biking and public transit to be as attractive as possible for everyone else — because that means you're going to be able to drive easier..." Instead of fighting a war on cars, Toderian told me, urbanists should fight a war on car dependency — on cities that leave residents with few choices other than cars. Alleviating car dependency can improve commutes for everyone in a city...
At the moment, many of the most intractable challenges faced by America's urban centers stem from the same cause — a lack of accessible physical space. We live in a time of epidemic homelessness. There's a national housing affordability crisis caused by an extreme shortage of places to live. And now there's a contagion that thrives on indoor overcrowding.
Given these threats, how can American cities continue to justify wasting such enormous tracts of land on death machines?
Only applies to big cities, not anywhere else (Score:3, Insightful)
Also if we're to have an endless string of 'pandemics' like some are saying, then 'public transit' becomes the 'death machines' not cars.
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Yes, that is 'fair'. Except for the suburbs in metropolitan areas as they would greatly benefit from good public transport since most residents work in the city center anyway. If you can get to a station within 5 minutes walking of your house, and your work is also within similar walking range, then I bet many people would think twice before taking their car. Looking at home values in metropolitan areas, proximity to such stations directly translates into higher values.
I do hope that remote working is here
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Someone has to produce food and goods and provide services that require you to physically be there. Very few jobs really can be done 'remotely'.
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Not everyone, but even say 10% would help.
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The jobs that undeniably require local presence tend to be more distributed in nature.
For example, about 25 miles from here is where all the 'big companies' have their big campuses. They pretty much drive nearly all the problematic congestion (common commutes are in the 30 mile area, so you have an ~30 mile radius of people condense into a tiny area and then expand back out every day). These are mostly office workers who could work from home a large amount.
Meanwhile, the places that really demand people be
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So what work can you do in person that a remotely piloted robot with a set of very good VR controls cannot do?
None, since such things for all intents and purposes does not exist.
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"Fairness" may bring compromise but rarely endorsements.
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"Not everyone lives in or wants to live in a big city, nor should they."
But most people do; this is why they are big, of course. Suburban areas, US style, largely exist because they are necessitated by the car. If you redesign your cities so that people live closer to where they need to be, then suburbia would start to disappear and be replaced by living districts
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Considering that most people live in cities, yet you don't know anyone who wants to, you must be pretty much alone in this world.
Re:Only applies to big cities, not anywhere else (Score:5, Insightful)
In the context of this discussion thread, a city refers to an area where people don't need cars to get around. I might live in a "city" right now, but without a car, it would take me 2 hours to get to work using public transportation. Grocery shopping would also be a long hike.
Compared to residents of New York or LA, I can enjoy peace and quiet at night. I can pick fresh fruit from my backyard. The air I breathe is not polluted. There's a park 3 minutes from my house that is empty enough such that wearing a mask would be pointless. I only hear about riots in the news, not from outside my window. And I'm more worried about raccoons stealing my trash than thieves stealing my car. When people say they don't like living in a city, this is what they mean, not the legal definition that just happened to be on the books for that particular place.
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Have you really kept up with American politics?
Even Al Gore, 2000 Democrat presidential candidate, declared that the suburbs to be unwanted "urban sprawl". During that campaign, the Democrats declared war on the suburbs and make all kinds of threats. Some of those threats continue to this day.
Does any Government in the USA have specialized plans? From my experience dealing with multiple Government plans, One-Size-Fits-All is the mindset of the Governmen
You get what you plan for (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You get what you plan for (Score:4, Insightful)
People take mass transit when mass transit makes sense.
For example, I live in a suburb of Toronto. I take the regional rail to work, which happens to be near union station. I have a car. I actually do love driving. But it just makes sense for me to take transit. It's quicker and my work place is right near the terminal. It has nothing to do with money. Heck, even if it transit cost more, I'd still use transit right now. I literally don't know anyone in my office who drives to work. People come from all over the burbs and even more rural areas. They take the train. People who live in the city take the subway/walk/street car...
Here's the thing, it's my first job that I'm actually able to do this. Before this, all my work places were in suburban office parks. There is just very little you can do to incentivize me to take transit those days or punish me from driving to get me to switch. It just wasn't feasible. The suburban office parks just weren't designed with transit in mind.
You are absolutely right that you get the city you plan for. But that's the issue. PLANNING. Not spending. Not parking maximums. Not even density. Just simple planning. You'll note that I don't even consider density planning. because here's a dirty secret, residential density doesn't really matter that much. Commercial density does. As I said, I like most of the people in my office take transit to work as it's located at a major rail terminal. Yet, I know a lot of people who live downtown in condos and in the city, who actually have to own a car... and drive to the burbs for work. Just plan things appropriately. You can plan high rise density well. You can plan suburbs and single family housing well. Those aren't the issues at all. It's just basic planning. Plan it right so it makes sense for people to go where they need do and they will take transit.
Don't punish people or think incentives are going to work.
Rather, build transit. Relocate employers to transit friendly nodes.
People aren't clinging to their cars for kicks. As I said, I have no issues taking transit. This is just my first job, it made even remote sense for me to take it. I love driving and still do. Were I to get another job in a not so friendly transit location, I'll be driving. No amount of taxes or subsidies is going to change the reality of how people look at getting from A to B.
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Public transport is better in East Asia and most of Europe because people there didn't have much say in the m
The problem is not the cars; it's the pedestrians. (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is not the cars; it's the pedestrians, or rather, pedestrians sharing the same vertical layer with cars. You have a huge number of people who can move only at a slow walking pace, and you put them on the same layer as the cars, and then you wonder why there's gridlock. And then, to "solve" the problem, folks are proposing not speeding everyone up to the speed of cars, but rather slowing everyone else down to the speed of pedestrians. That solution is exactly backwards.
We've already solved this problem completely, from a design perspective. It's expensive to implement in existing cities, and nobody wants to spend the money to do it, but in principle, the solution is trivial:
Boom. No more gridlock.
In practice, you might have to make some allowances for existing buildings, like allowing the walkways to be on the outside of the building at the second-floor level, with exterior elevators and stairs down to existing entrances on the first floor, but either way, you get the idea. The goal should be no crosswalks, period, eliminating street parking to the maximum extent possible, and ensuring zero interaction between pedestrians and traffic.
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Yeah, high rise, separated walk ways and roads. We've done that, in the late 60s and early 70s. It makes for a hideous urban environment. And didn't solve the problems of gridlock because at the other end you have to have a car parks where people change from being in a car to being out of it.
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It works quite well in Grand Rapids, at least within the areas that it covers.
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One approach for new construction might be to have buildings face inward, to walkable space inside city blocks, isolating pedestrians from traffic znd allowing sidewalks to be eliminated for faster, more efficient traffic flow. Pedestrian space could be as simple as a shopping street, or could include parks, food courts, and entertainment areas, like the old European plazas. The traffic interface would be parking garages on each block facing each other across traffic streets, forming convenient places for b
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You could do that, but if you put the walkway level on the second floor, you can make the entire ground floor be parking garage space, and you get the same advantages without having to change floors whenever you cross a roadway.
Re:The problem is not the cars; it's the pedestria (Score:4, Informative)
This idiocy has been tried in the sixties. It doesn't work. Automotive cities don't work. Cars are the problem, not the pedestrians.
Re:The problem is not the cars; it's the pedestria (Score:5, Informative)
A bit of history lets us know that this idea is not new. Grade separation hit its hey-day in the US in the late 60' and early 70's. It was tried in a couple of ways. In Dallas, for example, pedestrian tunnels in downtown were supposed to be an air-conditioned panacea. In northern cities (eg Milwaukee), pedestrian skyways connecting buildings would keep people out of the cold. All the while cars and trucks would speed by uninhibited at the "street" level.
This did not work. It does not work. These facilities are closed, closing, or diminished. Where they still are used they do not add to the pedestrian experience and certainly do not make driving better.
What these grade-separated facilities do is help is kill downtown activity making for a sterile and lifeless downtown. We are physiologically at ease on the ground with the sky above us. Ask an urban designer - or heck, experience this yourself - there are exterior "room" dimensions that work. Too big a space and we feel exposed. Too small and it feels claustrophobic. Tunnels and skyways are not that ideal. The real answer is making these dense areas more navigable with "slow" transportation. Pedestrian, bikes, and, yes, scooters, should have the highest priority. Grade separation was tried. It just doesn't work because as pedestrians, we want to be "on the ground".
The myopic NYT (Score:5, Insightful)
That's great if you live in New York City, with it's thousands of yellow cabs, Uber and Lyft cars, and even bicycle style public transportation. Dense living means lots of job opportunities for drivers, and a lot of businesses close by to walk to.
Out in the US desert southwest (Arizona) the sparsely populated area does include dozens of cabs (45-60 minute arrival time, and prices through the roof), a hundred or so ride-share (15-30 minute arrival time except during busy times where 45-60 is the norm), and no alternatives other than having your own car.
Worse, when the temperature is 108F (42C) just standing outside in the sun waiting at the driveway's edge for rideshare can be unhealthy for older people, compromised health people, small children, etc.
And finally, most cabs and ride-shares don't take pets. So if you're trying to get your dog or cat a checkup, shots, or whatever, you NEED your own car.
Sorry, NYT. Time to get glasses so you can see past "The City".
Ehud Gavron
Tucson, AZ - Yes, it's really that hot.
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You might want to get some glasses to fix your myopia. You are in the minority, not the NY Times, writers!
Yes, we should (Score:2)
Re:Yes, we should (Score:4, Interesting)
In the end I gave up and bought a car because it's so much more convenient. Yes, I have a supermarket next to my house, and I can walk there conveniently, but sometimes I want to go to Home Depot, and I don't want to take 90 minutes to get there.
Also, Uber is not pleasant.
Re:Yes, we should (Score:4, Insightful)
Would you be opposed to a hypothetical future where you can do the latter with a 1-person car that you do not own but offers most of the conveniences? It stops at your front door, it drops you off where you need to be, and it has space to haul your stuff when you go back.
Your example is hypothetical, so it's hard to oppose it.
We can compare the experience to Uber, because Uber does all of that but with a driver. I can say that after a year and a half of using Uber regularly, the many little irritations get to you. Who likes standing on a curb in the wind waiting for a car?
In terms of convenience, owning your own car will always be better than not owning it, even if alternatives are satisfactory. The only question is whether it's worth the price.
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That applied to the dynamo generators that were used in the past, but the modern alternators can provide enough current to charge the batteries even at idle speeds. Of course it'd be better to just use an AC charger rather than idle the car in the driveway.
For cities, maybe... (Score:2)
The aspiration for cities should be to try to reduce the number of trips that require a car; the number of cars naturally follows that. I have no problem riding my bicycle in traffic, but far too many people are only comfortable riding a bike on the sidewalk.
Until a bike lane actually carries more passengers than a road lane for cars (even factoring in busses), you aren’t going to be able to make it practical from an urban planning perspective. Despite having lived in many bike-friendly places over
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You don't have to get "everyone" out of cars to solve traffic and pollution problems.
If most people in cities use bikes and public transport by default, and only rent a car or truck when they need to transport bulky stuff or go to remote location, the problems is already mostly solved.
A few remaining cars are not a big deal; they don't cause much pollution or take up a lot of space.
The new normal (Score:4, Interesting)
Article is biased from the get-go.... (Score:4, Informative)
If you're going to label cars "death machines", we already know you're on the side of eliminating them.
Mass transit is the lowest common denominator of transportation in cities. People use it when it's offered, mostly because the city is designed to purposely encourage taking it vs using a car. (Look at Washington DC for example. Driving around is downright driver-hostile between all the speed and red light cameras, complicated traffic patterns that tend to change based on time of day, random street closures, incredibly expensive parking and traffic bottlenecks at places like bridge entrances.) But it loses money constantly and metro fares keep going up and up anyway. Finally doing a lot of deferred maintenance to improve the terrible reliability now -- but can't even provide anywhere near 24 hour service (closes around 10PM to midnight at the latest).
But especially for people who don't necessarily want to limit themselves to only going places IN the city, a car is a far more useful solution. It's the only sensible option if you live outside a city, and we'd all be better off if we spread out some more and did that....
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It's possible they walk the walk I guess, but I'm going to make a guess the writers of the article have no intention of ever giving up their cars or have their kids be poor enough to be among the people their preferred policies would deprive of cars.
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It's the only sensible option if you live outside a city, and we'd all be better off if we spread out some more and did that....
No, we wouldn't. We'd destroy the climate much faster if we did that.
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Did I ever tell you you the definition of insanity?
We're going to run out of metal (Score:2)
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Run out of metal? No. There is plenty of iron and aluminum on planet earth, and both are readily recyclable, too.
Don't forget about old and disabled people (Score:5, Insightful)
In the logan's run utopia where everyone is under 30 years old and healthy, biking everywhere is great. But in the real world where some people have disabilities or are just too old and weak to walk or ride bikes, we will need to make sure that some form of highly inclusive accomodation is made for others. A lot of young parents want to live near their parents to help out with childcare and so-on. They may also like to all go out places from time to time whether it is to sit on a park bench and watch the kids play or whatever. It is not enough to have some klunky, cumbersome way that old people can get to places. There needs to be inclusive accommodation so that groups of people with mixed levels of ability and vigor can all go out together.
I am not saying that we need to keep cars. I am saying that if you want to eliminate cars without creating a debacle, you should not just hand wave away all the reasons why people use cars now. Maybe something similar to the handicapped parking placard can be used to allow people to drive in areas where cars are normally not allowed. I don't know.
But it is entirely possible that the automobile-free utopia some people propose of high density housing near transit will actually lead to some type of dystopia if it is not implemented in a way that takes care of everyone.
Right now people with means are moving out of denser areas as fast as they can, so it is not at all evident that people actually want to live in dense housing near transit.
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It seems to me the correct vehicle for someone who wishes to blend into a "bicycle society" without having to pedal is an electric bicycle, not a car. The need to "armor up" to protect from other drivers and their armor is greatly reduced.
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"Nobody lives in dense housing near transit anymore. Those places are too crowded." --Yogi Berra
Teleporter will replace them (Score:2)
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we have those, I'm working via one now. Your modem is your teleporter. Now I don't even have to go into the goddamn city... thank you coronavirus.
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Unlikely. When your wizard hits 9th level and takes Teleportation Circle, do you use it for everything, or do you still sometimes travel over land? The teleporters may not let you go close enough to where you want to end up to justify using them.
North American cities are not properly designed (Score:5, Insightful)
Most North American cities are a real pain to live in unless you own a car, with a few exceptions such as those central parts of NYC, Toronto, etc. that are well-served by mass transit.
If you want to reduce the number of cars, you have to design cities with mass transit in mind and that means denser cities with more people living in apartments and fewer people owning houses. That's the opposite of US cities such as San Diego, Dallas, Atlanta and Houston which are just godawful sprawls.
Ride-sharing and roaming robocars are not the solution, IMO, for moving lots of people efficiently. Mass transit is really the only long-term solution.
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Well yeah I think that's exactly what the article is advocating for.
"Instead of fighting a war on cars, Toderian told me, urbanists should fight a war on car dependency â" on cities that leave residents with few choices other than cars. Alleviating car dependency can improve commutes for everyone in a city..."
Or... We could decide not to overpopulate (Score:2)
It doesn't even have to be anything as drastic as "Population control" and all of the negative connotations tied into the phrase (However much I've started to sympathize with Thanos, none of us can snap our fingers and make it happen.) We don't need to limit the number of allowed births, or taxing second children into oblivion... We don't need to star (or end) a major war.
We *DO* need out governments (and eventually businesses and entire economies) to stop relying on (and thus planning for and promoting) co
Yes. (Score:3, Insightful)
Example: Germany.
- 4.7 Billion Manhours per year and rising spent in traffic jams.
- Cars waste huge amounts of resources, the most of which are wasted while the car is being built.
- 95%+ of a cars lifetime is spent just standing around, unused. Clogging up valuable space.
- When a car is in use, it's - on average - transporting 1.4 people at an average capacity of 4.6 people
Cars and their general usage pattern are a bizarre waste of resources and bringing car usage down by orders of magnitude would largely benefit society. Robot cars won't change this all too much.
So, yes, we shouldn't just plan for less cars, we should actively start moving traffic away from the private car.
Um, no (Score:2)
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Re: Um, no (Score:3)
The solution to most problems (Score:3)
How to promote Collective against the Individual? (Score:2)
Ok, criticizing the "environmental impact" worked pretty well, but now that this turncoat Trump-supporter [businessinsider.com] has made electric ones so cool, it is not as effective any more.
Maybe, let start raising awareness of traffic and parking scarcity. Everyone knows about them, yes, but, in a novel twist, instead of improving the roads and adding parking space, let's argue for making roads more narrow, and parking spaces — fewer.
Oh, and call it unethical — so that the next generation can make it illegal.
Re:How to promote Collective against the Individua (Score:4, Insightful)
How to promote Collective against the Individual?
people will do what is in their best interest. If you want to promote collectivism, you need to make people think its in their best interest. Frankly, the only way to exact real change is to make it a women's issue and convince women that they would shun any man who think different, because in the end, the only issues that people care about are women's issues (thanks, evolution).
How Amsterdam Became a Bicycle Paradise (Score:3)
Amsterdam solved the problem ages ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKbRL6Opifg
Re: More cars, not less (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why would you want subway or bus, when you could take a robotaxi? I understand why lots of people don't want to own a car. It's a fundamental right IMO, but it shouldn't be a duty. The point is, maybe the 21st century can do better than the 20th century answers to not having a car.
* Door-to-door rides to any place of your choice should be a requirement, no fixed routes or fixed schedules.
* No ride sharing should eb an option - sharing would be cheaper of course, but the more expensive option no to should
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And why would a robotaxi take one person, when it could take four at an optimized cost? Yes, you could ride alone, but I'm almost certain that it will cost you more.
Why would I want to be crammed into a tiny space with 3 other people, and their accompanying filth, when I can just travel by myself in my own vehicle.
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Why would you want to go anywhere at all then? Stay home.
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Well if you have heard of rush hour the problem is lots of people going from near the same place to near the same place.
Rush hour traffic jams are caused by inattention and slow human response times.
Robotaxis don't have those problems. The carrying capacity of the roads can increase five-fold with much faster transit times.
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Why would you want subway
Eat fresh.
or bus, when you could take a robotaxi?
Because I have to get to and from work between July 2020 and when robotaxis become common.
Re: More cars, not less (Score:3)
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Re: More cars, not less (Score:5, Insightful)
A few reasons why "robo taxis" arent going to save us:
1. A car is a personal space for a lot of people - they leave sunglasses, mints, golf clubs and all sorts of other things in there for extended periods of time
2. Installing and removing a car seat for one or two kids each time you want to go somewhere is a complete PITA, plus you have to do something with them at the other end - cant lug car seats around town easily. And if the taxi comes with them, then you have an age issue - different aged kids need different seats. Plus would you really want to deal with car seats that have had other peoples crotch spawn puking and wiping bogies all over?
3. Pets. Pretty much no taxi company is willing to allow you to put your doggos on the back seat or in the boot. Especially if you've just taken them down the lake for a good splash around
4. Peak times. No taxi company is going to base its capacity requirements on peak times alone to allow for immediate pickup, so hopping into the taxi for your commute isnt going to be instant - there will have to be a significant shift in working approaches to allow for a staggered work day to accommodate the shift in capacity, or a huge shift to remote working (far beyond what we are seeing right now)
Taxis are a good convenience for when you need them, but they are not ideal as a normal transport mechanism for a large portion of society - for the same reason personal cars still exist in the era of major public transport.
Re: More cars, not less (Score:3)
How do people have a "right" to drive? The government can and does take or refuse to issue driving licenses. Including for non punitive reasons such as medical conditions.
Re: More cars, not less (Score:4, Insightful)
Or you can wear a mask on the subway
Only a small fraction of Americans live where a subway makes any sense at all.
When my mom needs to pick up 500 lbs of hog pellets from the feed store, she ain't gonna be using the subway.
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Or you can wear a mask on the subway
Only a small fraction of Americans live where a subway makes any sense at all.
When my mom needs to pick up 500 lbs of hog pellets from the feed store, she ain't gonna be using the subway.
That's not true. Most Americans live in urban places, not rural: https://www.census.gov/newsroo... [census.gov]
An even tinier fraction of Americans ever need to buy 500 lbs of hog pellets from a feed store.
Re: More cars, not less (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not true. Most Americans live in urban places, not rural
Most Americans live in suburbs, where subways make no sense.
Re: More cars, not less (Score:5, Informative)
Because it makes sense to walk 15 minutes to a bus stop, wait 5-20 minutes for the bus, ride it to a transfer location where you need to wait another 5-20 minutes, then ride it to the train.
Where I live (not in the US), if you pay an extra dollar, the "feeder" bus does a loop between the local train station and the largest local shopping centre, but actually services an area. If you pay an extra dollar, the bus will pick you up from your door at an agreed time or drop you there.
I don't bother because I'm only a 3min walk from the bus stop, and we have an app to show where the bus is so I'm never waiting more than 5min in practice. This bus goes to the train station where, at peak time, the wait time averages 5min. (When it's not raining, I don't even do that, because I'm only a 20min pleasant stroll from the train station along completely flat ground, but I'm in a fortunate position on that point.)
The other end of the train line is a 5min walk from where I used to work before the plague claimed my previous job.
This is a much more efficient use of my time than peak hour gridlock, and a much more efficient use of my money than having to buy and maintain a second car for the family.
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Because it makes sense to walk 15 minutes to a bus stop, wait 5-20 minutes for the bus, ride it to a transfer location where you need to wait another 5-20 minutes, then ride it to the train. Where, you once again wait 5-20 minutes to ride the train someplace where you need to do the entire bus, transfer, bus thing all over again? Transportation that is not point to point is pointless.
Public transportation is very inefficient. It uses up the most valuable commodity each of us has -- time. It's also horrible for transporting things back and forth. There is a reason why mankind has been creating/implementing personal transportation devices since the dawn of time.
Badly designed public transportation is very inefficient. If you go to London, you'd be slightly mad to try to drive around the central parts in rush hour, and you'd save time on the underground. In cities like Amsterdam there is a more integrated concept and it is also efficient.
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The majority of urban places aren't suitable for a subway/metro. Look at the difference between Los Angeles and New York City. Just because an area is urban doesn't mean your mass transit utopia will work.
And the headline on this summary is quite misleading. I think the better question is whether cities should plan for a future with fewer cars. I think that prohibiting passenger vehicles inside cities is something worth considering for the larger, denser cities. Building massive parking lot/solar farms
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I think the better question is whether cities should plan for a future with fewer cars.
And I think you both have it backwards.
If we want fewer cars in the future, we need to plan to make that happen. We need to have systems in place where it's easier and cheaper to use them than a car.
When I first moved into my current city, I was a 5 minute walk from a main bus line where the buses ran every half hour during weekdays, every 15 minutes during morning and evening rush hours, and once an hour on weekends. It was a 20 minute ride to and from work. I couldn't park for less than $15/day within a 1
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Those darn Democrats, always sabotaging mass transit in the cities they've run for decades!
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When my mom needs to pick up 500 lbs of hog pellets from the feed store, she ain't gonna be using the subway.
A truck should be delivering those hog pellets to your mom. It's a waste of time and fuel for her to drive to and from the feed store, and moving around 500 lbs of pig feed can't be good for her back. Make that truck driverless if we're talking rural delivery and save some labor costs.
Re: More cars, not less (Score:4, Insightful)
That then creates an unnecessary dependency on something external to get her feed.
And apparently the hog feed appears in the store out of thin air?
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There is a reason why there are very few subways in the U.S
There is a reason why EVERY mass transportation system in the U.S. loses huge amounts of money every year and requires massive taxpayer subsidies.
We know what those reason are, but continue to pretend that they don't exist.
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The system for automobiles has the handy side effect of also being useful for police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, pizza delivery, courier services, and maintaining the stock pretty much anywhere you shop.
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Re:More cars, not less (Score:5, Insightful)
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+5 Insightful.
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At least in TX, the big counts are in Harris and Dallas counties, home of Houston and Dallas. Houston averaged around 250K riders a day, on a population base around 2.3 million. Dallas is about the same. That's 10% of the population - high enough that it should be considered a concern for a disease vector.
Here in California, it's been LA and Riverside counties that have exploded. Those are also about the same rates - 12-15% of the population, by number of rides. And if you check Phoenix (where it's exp
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Nice redirect to try and make this about your being offended, but the weak correlation you're pointing out is confounded by much stronger correlations, like household size compared to household square footage, race and income.
New York's MTA had a daily ridership of 5.5 million... However, Tokyo Metro had an average daily ridership of 6.84 million. Seoul, 5.2 million. Singapore, 3.3 million.
There's not even a loose correlation between the largest outbreaks and the largest transportation systems. Our initial
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Cars don't really matter, when most of them will be electric over time...
What does matter is that humanity has fundamentally realized how stupid and dangerous mass transit is. After Covid how can we say bus or train or tram systems are a good idea? They have been shown to be suicidal.
So over time WAY more people will want to use private transport, one way or another. Maybe most of it is robotaxis. Maybe there are still a lot of people who own cars, smaller cars for in-city use. Either way mass transit will now enter a large scale decline, helped along by some many more people telecommuting...
Billions of people disagree with you. I'm one of them. I love mass transit, and am moving from a place with none, to a place with lots (and that's one of the top three reasons I'm going). People are not going to avoid mass transit forever, as you seem to think they will.
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Public transit (albeit, considering our recent experience, should have more ventilation) and pedestrian/bicycle friendly is the way to go. If our rail networks hadn't been torn up, we might have expanded them to decent suburban and rural coverage too.
Re:More cars, not less (Score:4, Informative)
Even places like LA which were literally built for cars are choking to death on their own traffic problems, and expanded roadways don't do shit because more people will start driving on them and fill them up— it's a well-explored urban planning problem. In Boston for example, we spent a famously large sum of money putting our large central artery highway underground and expanding the capacity, only for it to be exactly as bad as it was beforehand almost immediately after it opened because of increased use.
For people who live in sparsely populated areas, sure, whatever. When those people vote against funding for pubic transportation expansions in the urban centers that economically prop up their rural hamlets, they're shooting themselves and everybody else in the foot. Public transit brings real economic development and also gets cars off the road so when they drive their unnecessarily huge Ford Flex into the city, they don't hit a traffic wall doing so. It's really insane how self-absorbed people are. If NYC never built the subway(s), it'd be about as notable as Bridgeport, CT right now.
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> What does matter is that humanity has fundamentally realized how stupid and dangerous mass transit is
I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion and you certainly aren't mirroring the current zeitgeist of "humanity". The danger of pestilence in urban centers has been around since groups of humans figured out what it was. This does not make buses and trains a "bad idea". SMH
The concept of mass transit remains. There is nowhere on earth that mass transit is being decommissioned or dismantled. Mass trans
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So how did Tokyo, the most transit-dependent city in the world, manage to get away with 8 deaths per million?
Japan did just fine with mass transit (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Japan did just fine with mass transit (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed, wage and debt slavery tends to not happen in civilized countries that have decent social safety nets and regulations. Such as the Scandinavian countries, Germany, and Thailand.
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"After Covid how can we say bus or train or tram systems are a good idea? They have been shown to be suicidal."
Well, if you apply this logic, then it applies to a few other things as well. I mean, as well as mass transit, it also applies to resturants and cafes. And pubs (or bars if you prefer). And cinemas, theatres and other venues. And night clubs. Football stadiums. Public libraries, schools and Universities.
After a while, you realise that it applies essentially to cities.
Funnily enough a city with few
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What does matter is that humanity has fundamentally realized how stupid and dangerous mass transit is. After Covid how can we say bus or train or tram systems are a good idea? They have been shown to be suicidal.
How about megachurches?
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And biology itself says you're 100% guaranteed to physically die, virus or not.
So your answer is essentially that we're all going to die anyway, so whatever.
I guess with that attitude you're answer to SuperKendall's point boils down to "It doesn't really matter, we're all going to die anyway, virus or not, so just go ahead and take mass transit"...?
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What does matter is that humanity has fundamentally realized how stupid and dangerous mass transit is. After Covid how can we say bus or train or tram systems are a good idea? They have been shown to be suicidal.
Car crashes, same argument.
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Either way mass transit will now enter a large scale decline, helped along by some many more people telecommuting...
Now why would people be saver in cars when one can pack people just as well into smaller train compartments?!
That trains and planes have large compartments tightly packed with people doesn't mean it has to stay this way. We still have a few trains with small cabins and it wouldn't be the worst way of travelling if we went back to it.
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Japan's government imposed lockdown was pretty much non existent except for schools for the early part of the epidemic. Lockdown wise the only thing they were fast at was school closures ... but there are reasons other than incompetence to be hesitant with that, New York for instance wanted to avoid it because they have very unequal impact. It's a social justice issue.
Seems less that they were competent and more that they were lucky and shitlords ... their government imposed fat shaming might have helped a
Re:Public Transportation? Wealth Redistribution? (Score:5, Insightful)
I gauge wealth and well-being on the number of hours that people need to spend in cars. The fewer, the better.