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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

#171

Post by vonmoltke »

dannyw wrote: post #92
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…

Now try going carless in Montana :)

There are plenty of similar places in Europe. I don't see how this says anything useful.

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

#172

Post by [deleted] »

lostjohnny wrote: post #135
bancars wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to give this argument a rest. Cycling infrastructure has everything to do with availability and very little to do with hills. I don’t avoid biking to work because of the hills, I avoid it because it’s treacherous.

Disclaimer: I don't like cars, I love driving, but as a sport, not in urban areas. Biking is like running, playing soccer, playing tennis, swimming, many people don't do it because they don't do any sport. Biking requires skills that normal people usually don't have, but that they believe they have. It is in fact more dangerous than driving (compared to the driver, not pedestrians) As soon as older people could not b…

[deleted]

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

#173

Post by desas »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #160
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what!? In Europe if you strike a pedestrian on the crosswalk you'll definitely loose your license and be looking at manslaughter charges too while your insurance company will murder you after paying the victim's medical/disability/court bills.

In most of the US if you lose your ability to drive you lose your ability to be a functional member of society and outside a few cities with good public transit even the poor drive. Europe has good public transit and their regulations increase the cost of driving to the point where mostly only the middle and upper classes do it. Losing your license in Europe is not as big a deal as losing it in the US.

You can't generalise Europe like that. Most people from a working household in the UK (outside of London drive). From supermarket workers to executives. Approximately every rural part of the UK has public transport but it's unsurprising if it is infrequent and doesn't get you to a population centre in time to work.

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

#174

Post by Ygg2 »

PakG1 wrote: post #159
Ygg2 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pedestrians can't put your life in danger Sure they can. They can increase the likelihood you'll get in danger, by trying to avoid collision with them.

Mm, even if they "tried to not put their life in danger", they still wouldn't be putting your life in danger... simple physics.

By disregarding the laws, and forcing you to accommodate their behavior, they can still end up putting your life in danger.

E.g. you drive on a road designed for relatively high speeds say 80-100 km/h. They decide to cross it, despite it not being a safe zone for crossing. You hit the pedals and swerve off the road injuring yourself (or you get rammed by a vehicle behind you).

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

#175

Post by u801e »

rocgf wrote: post #130
anonymou2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they have the best cycling infrastructure, they are called roads.

I get the feeling you do not know what good cycling infrastructure looks like.

If it requires cyclists to act like pedestrians and is only safe to use at pedestrian like speeds, then it's not good cycling infrastructure.

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

#176

Post by smileysteve »

maxsilver wrote: post #150
stellar678 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. True. But for comparison, if we live in this small town of 100k people, then 192 people will die from Heart Disease, 178 people will die of Cancer, 47 people will die of Respiratory diseases, 43 people will die of Stroke, and 16 will die from the flu (influenza or pneumonia) every…

> "Motor vehicle accidents" are not even in the top 10 causes of death (they're 13th, using 2016's data)

To your point of bringing up suicide, there is "accidental" death; where it's 1. Opioid overdoses 2. Suicide 3. Car Accidents

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

#177

Post by dalbasal »

tremon wrote: post #69
C1sc0cat wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Also a practical consequences of urban "design." In Amsterdam, Rotterdam or den haag, a 5km radius is a large area that captures a large chunk of the city. In Houston or LA, a 5km radius is a very small area.

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

#178

Post by kasey_junk »

sokoloff wrote: post #101
majewsky wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a rough estimate, a streetcar line is more efficient than a bus line above 40,000 passengers per day. My city (Dresden, Germany) has a bus line with 70,000 passengers per day, and you can really see it cracking at the seams. During rush hour, busses run every 3 minutes, and that interval cannot be increased any further because the busses would start blocking each other, thus backing up from the bus stop into the r…

The German bus systems I’ve used have been night and day better than US ones. Buses that mostly run to a schedule are incomprehensible to most in the US. Probably related, I doubt we have a bus line with anywhere near that ridership.

I was curious about this as I’ve never looked into ridership by route and at least for Chicago it is absolutely true. A 70k route would be more than 3x the biggest in Chicago.

https://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/6/Monthly_Ridership_...

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

#180

Post by majewsky »

kasey_junk wrote: post #178
sokoloff wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The German bus systems I’ve used have been night and day better than US ones. Buses that mostly run to a schedule are incomprehensible to most in the US. Probably related, I doubt we have a bus line with anywhere near that ridership.

I was curious about this as I’ve never looked into ridership by route and at least for Chicago it is absolutely true. A 70k route would be more than 3x the biggest in Chicago. https://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/6/Monthly_Ridership_...

To be fair, that 70k route is one of the top 5 routes in Europe by passenger numbers IIRC.
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