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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

#61

Post by icebraining »

lazyjones wrote: post #9

Yet another fantasy article that tries to suggest roads were built for "the car loving 1%ers of the 20s" and not for public transport and all kinds of other infrastructure needs, including the army's.

What public transport used roads (not streets) in the early twentieth century of the US, when much if them were built? According to [1], by 1929 the private car was doing 175 billion passenger miles, while the bus was doing just 7. As they write, "Although intercity bus travel climbed from nothing to over seven billion passenger miles in 1929, it was always the choice of a relatively small number of people."

And of course, trains don't use roads. What other public transport is there?

[1] https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-bus-industry-in-the-united-s...

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

#62

Post by noobermin »

tomohawk wrote: post #49
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…

No conspiracy required when a lot of people are acting according to a common view. People see the real advantages of owning a car and the freedom it brings, and that activity builds industries and has an impact on policies. Of course, GM really did conspire to put the trolleys out of business. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp... However, this is the kind of thing organizations (companies,…

The reality of the GM streetcar conspiracy is disputed.

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

#63

Post by autocracy »

ginko wrote: post #42
LeonidasXIV wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tran…

Yeah, I never understood what people have against MUNI. The bus and subway seemed perfectly fine and quite cheap when I visited.

MUNI's shortcomings are visible during rush hour due to system collapse, and off-hours / on secondary routes due to missing runs or too-infrequent scheduling.

Moving around the most urban cores outside of rush hour, you typically won't see the worst of the warts.

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

#64

Post by Lio »

nmeofthestate wrote: post #60
Lio wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds shocking if you only travel in car as it doesn't affect you as much but if you ride a bike it's a fact of life in many areas. For example if you wear lycra, you will probably find that a percentage of people will regularly try to "punish" you because they think you "look funny". The mildest form of punishment will be them driving as close to you as they dare. That could be 50mph 12"s away. That's like stand…

I've cycled for decades and never had such an incident of aggression from drivers. Maybe it depends on some other factors in addition to the drivers.

Speaking personally I'd like to know what those factors are.

Is it just location? Is it the type of bike or the clothes we wear?

There was this study https://helmets.org/walkerstudy.htm which has some interesting conclusions but the sample size is a bit small to be statistically valid IMHO.

Oh and I'd add, if it's not clear already, that most drivers seem to be very nice and considerate people. It's just that there are percentage of aggressive people and when they're in cars they drive aggressively.

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

#65

Post by falsedan »

inflatableDodo wrote: post #14
devoply wrote: post #4

Not just the legal system but also the city planners who designed all sorts of things like suburbs, malls, etc. that favour cars and are pretty much copy-pasta all over each city on the whole continent. All these people want bike lanes, I want my horse lane.

I want the majority of the road network roofed with turf into a long hill with occaisional exits, or lowered and moved completely underground.

Terrible maintenance costs for ventilation, plant vehicle access, widening (e.g. temporarily for roadworks), poor kerb access for deliveries/emergency vehicle access, plus a firetrap in the case of a burning vehicle

At least that's what I've worked out from Cities: Skylines.

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

#66

Post by unwrap »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #54
unwrap wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not always the drivers' fault, some pedestrians are just asking to be put in a coffin. Where I live, most people jump on the road, jack-in-the-box-style. They don't wait for the cars to stop, they don't even bother to look around. They walk slowly, sometimes crossing the road at an angle (which takes a lot more time, obviously), even if it's a single physically fit individual blocking a busy 4-lane road. I'd say…

Based off your parent poster's description of the situation, it sounds as if the pedestrian had the right of way. However, if the driver was half their age, all else equal, would we say the DMV should assess if they're competent to drive? The primary cause of the accident could be independent of age.

For a pedestrian it doesn't matter whether you have "right of way", because you can be right a hundred times over and still go to a mortician. That's all I am trying to say. If you are crossing the road, please wait for the cars to stop, or make absolutely sure there aren't any nearby. Cars are multiple-ton steel monsters, it takes a lot of energy and space to slow them down.

Just bringing some perspective from a country with a lot of idiots (that's what they are -- idiots) needlessly risking their lives.

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

#67

Post by chronolitus »

unwrap wrote: post #51
methodover wrote: post #43

“Given New York’s lax enforcement record, the Freakonomics podcast described running over pedestrians there as “the perfect crime.”” I was driving in Oakland when the car in front of me didn’t slow down for a pedestrian in the crosswalk. The pedestrian disappeared in front of the car. I stopped my car, got out, found the struck young woman trembling and bleeding in the street. The speed limit was 30 miles per hour. I…

It's not always the drivers' fault, some pedestrians are just asking to be put in a coffin. Where I live, most people jump on the road, jack-in-the-box-style. They don't wait for the cars to stop, they don't even bother to look around. They walk slowly, sometimes crossing the road at an angle (which takes a lot more time, obviously), even if it's a single physically fit individual blocking a busy 4-lane road. I'd say…

Let me float you a hypothetical situation:

you're in command of a few tons of steel, and your priority is to get to some arbitrary location. Your second priority, I assume, is to not murder anyone.

Here's what you know about the environment : it is populated with (harmless fleshly) people who are also going about fulfilling goals 1 and 2. You know with high probability that at any given moment one might quickly cross the path of your vehicle - it is normal (80-90% of people do it) to behave this way.

You can:

- reduce your speed, knowing that accidental collisions are likely. This slightly penalizes your first goal, but greatly increases the outlook for the second.

- Blame 80-90% of everyone, for not taking the cost onto themselves to ensure you can get to your goal quickly without much effort.

I guess it also boils down to your views on responsibility:

"I shouldn't be accountable when the risky situations which i knowingly entered materialize into accidents. Especially because these risks mostly apply to others."

or

"I am personally directing a large amount of kinetic energy for convenience reasons and am responsible of where it ends up. the onus of carefulness befalls me and not the other unwilling participants as they are handling much less kinetic energy and therefore by themselves orders of magnitude less likely to cause the death or injury of others."

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

#68

Post by noobermin »

kd5bjo wrote: post #37
megablast wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 surroundin…

I think this is the point. Malls in cities in other countries are not as pedestrian/public transit unfriendly as they are in the US.

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

#69

Post by tremon »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #35
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 p…

Speaking as a Dutchman, I experience much more flexibility and freedom riding a bike than my car.

That's probably a consequence of both the overcrowding of our roads, and the density of our infrastructure -- I rarely have to drive more than 15 minutes to reach any kind of shop, and by bike I can take shortcuts that my car can't follow, especially in inner cities.

Ultimately, my car has been relegated to recreational purposes only -- everything else in my life (work, shopping, friends) I can do by bike or public transport. For me, it doesn't really feel like a conscious personal choice -- it feels more like the pragmatic consequence of our infrastructure design.

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

#70

Post by raquo »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #47
raquo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article comes so close to defeating its own argument it's painful. If that land wasn't protected with zoning, it would have been built up long ago into a typical sprawling suburbia – the opposite of what they propose. So if it had been unprotected in the past, that would have been bad. And if it stays protected that's bad because it's underused. It is only this short sliver of time that is today that this land s…

Perhaps I shouldn't speak for Scott Sumner, but I feel pretty sure he wouldn't recognize your opinion of what he supposedly thinks. If you make your comment at econlib, he's not unlikely to respond.

My comment is a critique of the content of his article, not an "opinion of what he supposedly thinks" in need of his recognition.

If "thinking that" are trigger words now, replace it with "acting as if" to same effect.

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