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Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

theatlantic.com

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Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#31

Post by LoSboccacc »

megablast wrote: post #22

Imagine if someone invented cars today? Hey everyone, we want to make you use this killing machine, that kills a million people every year around the world directly, many more indirectly. We just need to clear out the parks currently around your houses to turn into horrible bleak roads, so they can bring the pollution directly to your door.

mass transit will never be capillary enough. you know what they did in old European cities when the started blocking city centers to public transit? they introduced 8 seater autobus to have enough and be capillary enough to get people where they needed to. mass transit can't do that, unless at some point you want very very tiny trams and tramways everywhere instead of roads everywhere

or would you prefer to live in a city where the job and housing market develops near a handful main connected roads and everywhere else you travel more than you work?

> [safety concerns]

on a side note, imagine the amount of deaths from not having ambulances or fire trucks and the price gouging of transit company to reach major productivity center.

if someone invented car today those would still be great selling points for them

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#32

Post by mytailorisrich »

achow wrote: post #25
mytailorisrich wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is misleading. If you follow the link to the actual research paper you find that it's 90% of PM10 and 85% of PM2.5 That is, not "emissions" in general but particle matter specifically. This makes sense because modern cars have efficient engines and particle filters so that few particles are emitted from the combustion engine itself. The remaining sources are the tyres and the brakes.

Yes. But doesn't the point still stays that contrary to the popular belief electric cars would not bring about much change? Research paper: ..it could be concluded that the increased popularity of electric vehicles will likely not have a great effect on PM levels.

Electric vehicles will bring about significant changes.

As said, and as your quote highlights, this focusses on particles. But the main emission of internal combustion engines is CO2, and other nasty stuff like CO, NOx, hydrocarbons, etc. These are eliminated by electric vehicles.

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#33

Post by fergie »

em-bee wrote: post #30

living in a big city in europe i was able to live without a car easily, but when i got a job in the US i fully expected that i'd have to learn to drive and get a car to get around. BUT, i managed to get an apartment 10 minutes walking from the office. this was in san diego, of all places, a city which is very spread out. a few months later i moved in with friends and we found a place far north. most of my roommates h…

As a European I was really surprised at how cycle-friendly San Francisco and Palo Alto (especially Stanford campus) are- its much better than you might expect. Room for improvement, but no worse than many cities over here.

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#34

Post by reallydontask »

dalbasal wrote: post #12

Another way of stating this could be "transport is a policy question." How cities are built and what transport infrastructure they're built around. Im fairly sympathetic to the overall aims of this article. I think a transport system more similar to those in the Netherlands makes for better urban landscapes. But... this habitual style of treating everything as a conspiracy, built around a personified enemy ("They gav…

> But... this habitual style of treating everything as a conspiracy, built around a personified enemy ("They gave legal force to a mind-set—let’s call it automobile supremacy—that kills 40,000 Americans a year)... this way of thinking isn't doing us any favours.

I get what you are saying, but isn't it, in this case, a relatively accurate description of what happened? If not all over the US, at least in some big cities.

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#35

Post by C1sc0cat »

dalbasal wrote: post #12

Another way of stating this could be "transport is a policy question." How cities are built and what transport infrastructure they're built around. Im fairly sympathetic to the overall aims of this article. I think a transport system more similar to those in the Netherlands makes for better urban landscapes. But... this habitual style of treating everything as a conspiracy, built around a personified enemy ("They gav…

Totally agree and totally ignores the fact that people like the flexibility and freedom (in fact as well as psychologically)

Unfortuetly this area and "green" in general does I am afraid does tend to attract "hobbyist" / "crank" activists. (I am using these terms in the political sense and not dising peoples hobbys

Eg the green movement needs to concentrate on the present problem (runaway global heating) and not on pious things like banning plastic straws.

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#36

Post by tonyedgecombe »

dalbasal wrote: post #12

Another way of stating this could be "transport is a policy question." How cities are built and what transport infrastructure they're built around. Im fairly sympathetic to the overall aims of this article. I think a transport system more similar to those in the Netherlands makes for better urban landscapes. But... this habitual style of treating everything as a conspiracy, built around a personified enemy ("They gav…

Yet if you look at the countries that are held up as examples to follow you will find the one thing they have in common is no substantial domestic car industry.

You can't ignore the politics of this.

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#37

Post by kd5bjo »

megablast wrote: post #24
kd5bjo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suburbs, sure, but do malls really favor cars? Where I grew up, the mall was the only place where people would walk from one store to another instead of driving. I’ve also been in plenty of urban malls that have excellent public transit connections and are situated on busy pedestrian streets.

Malls are usually surrounded by a huge carpark.

So are suburban train stations. It’s the natural byproduct of places where people change their mode of transport from cars to something else. Malls are one of the only high-density land uses that people in the suburbs accept, and the surrounding carpark is a necessary buffer between the low- and high-density development. I contend the problem isn’t with the mall itself, but with the low-density development surrounding it.

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#38

Post by LeonidasXIV »

fergie wrote: post #33
em-bee wrote: post #30

living in a big city in europe i was able to live without a car easily, but when i got a job in the US i fully expected that i'd have to learn to drive and get a car to get around. BUT, i managed to get an apartment 10 minutes walking from the office. this was in san diego, of all places, a city which is very spread out. a few months later i moved in with friends and we found a place far north. most of my roommates h…

As a European I was really surprised at how cycle-friendly San Francisco and Palo Alto (especially Stanford campus) are- its much better than you might expect. Room for improvement, but no worse than many cities over here.

As a resident of Copenhagen this was not really my impression. Yes, Palo Alto is cycleable, kinda in the same way any small town in the world is cycleable - low amount of traffic and comparatively wide streets. San Francisco is cycleable because it is 7x7 miles large so not that much space to sprawl but cycling infrastructure is basically completely absent.

What surprised me though is how overall passable public transport in San Francisco was. MUNI and BART are pretty okay for getting around even if locals don't believe so. Unsurprisingly whenever I was in trams, they were full of other European tourists.

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#39

Post by stellar678 »

DaveInTucson wrote: post #27

According to Wikipedia [0], the number of MV-related deaths has been right about 10 or 11 per 100,000 per year for the last ten years. Which makes the opening claim "Americans are condemned to lose friends and relatives to traffic violence" seem particularly overwrought. And while the legal system may have been of some help, I rather suspect the main reason cars took over is because they give the user a tremendous am…

If you live in a small town of 100,000 people, that means 11 of your neighbors will be killed by drivers crashing their cars every year.

And that doesn’t account for the deaths and health costs caused by road pollution, by inactive lifestyles forced on communities due to car-centered infrastructure, etc...

Given the car-oriented status quo, perhaps it’s true that cars give owners tremendous freedom and agency (at the costs outlined above, plus tremendous financial cost). But it’s also true that many of the most desirable and productive parts of our cities are that way despite cars and not because of them.

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