271–280 of 455 posts
The same phenomenon applies to credit cards, for which all the merchants bake the processing fees into the prices of goods and services whether you pay with a card or not. I'm not sure which instance of this phenomenon incurs the greater cost for most people, though.
This topic is discussed at length in the book, "Green Metropolis". It's part of a bigger issue of always putting cars first. You can't build a large building without first doing a traffic study. If you bring too much traffic, you can't build it. Never mind that traffic is about the only cost in America that you can increase to make public transportation more appealing. Generally U.S. building codes include a maximum…
I propose a fundamental principle that should be obvious, but apparently isn't. Public policy should aim to improve average quality of life in the short, medium, and long terms. We live in low-population-density areas because we get more, higher quality housing for less money, shorter lines, less crowded public places. We drive instead of taking transit because we get where we're going faster and more comfortably, si…
The lack of useful public transit (4 hours for a 20 mile trip because of cross scheduling). It feels like I live inside a ring of steel and rubber - if I want to leave my local area after work it is 2 hours for a 15 mile round trip.
No clustering of shops that generate footfall which builds a sense of community and opportunity for new business - drive to shop, buy thing, drive away. There is no discovery.
I haven't owned a car in the UK for 10 years, now I need one to buy groceries.
I do appreciate that I could move somewhere else and seek out those things in other communities but I am tied to my geography by work. If I was here long term I would certainly try and move jobs to get better quality of life.
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You're underestimating all of the ways self-driving cars will increase efficiency relative to parking, which are multiplicative. 1. Much higher occupancy per car. Based on my personal observations, at rush hour the average occupancy of a car is something like 1.3. I don't see any reason that can't increase to 2.6 or more without significantly slowing anyone down -- 2x 2. Yes, a lot of people need to get to work at 8,…
Do you think people will prefer to use a self driving car that gets them to the office ten minutes faster or one that meanders around picking up other people and dropping them off?
And if 1 occupant per 2-ton-vehicle becomes the norm, dense cities will implement congestion pricing or surtaxes to force multiple occupancy or public transport usage - if 1 million driverless taxis try to deliver people into the square mile of the City of London, everyone will have a bad time. (Ditto for Manhattan, SF, downtown Boston, Hong Kong Midtown etc.)
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Well if you want to compare that way to the cities mentioned in the list, the only appropriate comparisons in Europe are London and Paris which definitely have parking, traffic and pollution issues (or had till they started banning vehicles in the center of the cities). Paris even considered banning diesel altogether contrary to the rest of Europe. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_agglomerations_by_po... Barce…
Parking and traffic issues aren't issues if you're not driving, and most people in those places aren't. I mean, flying a helicopter around the city sounds like great fun but that doesn't mean everyone else should be forced to build places for me to store said helicopter.
Everyone suffers because of it, whether they are actively utilising the roads or not - because the people who are using the roads are their customers/staff/suppliers/whatever. If half of my staff can't get to work on time, my business suffers. If my customers can't get to me, or don't feel the time investment is worth it (I've done 3km in 3 hours in Dhaka), my business suffers.
Losses from Dhaka's traffic nightmare: http://print.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/old/more.php?news_id...
https://newrepublic.com/article/118416/what-dhaka-bangladesh...
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You do realise that lots of people all eating out at a restaurant is much more efficient than all those people cooking and eating at home right?
Depends on the restaurant. McDonalds', sure. Michelin 3-star, probably not. I don't cook like that.
My state also passed a sales tax (you know, the regressive kind) intended to preserve natural resources and cultural heritage, and most of the money has gone to art projects in the major metropolitan area that are mostly unappreciated. The point here is, yes, governments waste money, but making parking easier is hardly the worst offense.
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In my experience trams trend to be wider than buses by a noticeable margin.
Here in the UK, trams (at least for Croydon[1][2], Metrolink[3], Newcastle Metro[4]) seem to be standardised at 2650mm width whilst the New Routemaster[5] is 2520mm wide. Probably not a noticeable margin (130/2650 =~ 5%). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_CR4000 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variobahn#Variobahn_trams_for_... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M5000 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyne…
i can't wait for http://www.seasteading.org to take off and live where there are no cars. Or maybe http://freedomship.com is what I need as long as it has free wifi.
"You may pay for the cost of free-wifi even if you never go online"
My city just passed a bond measure which includes $36MM for a 300 space parking garage for the high school and city hall, literally meters from where a new light rail stop will be built. 25% of the city's families don't own a car. I have trouble not seeing this as a forced, direct subsidy for the lifestyle of the employees of the city. And this is supposedly one of the most transit-friendly cities around (in the US).…