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Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

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

#361

Post by bsimpson »

DrScump wrote: post #59
bsimpson wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today, San Francisco only has trains along Market Street, fingering out into a half dozen neighborhoods. Most of the city is served by buses. Originally, many of those buses were, in fact, trains: > ...as SF's rail network was removed or replaced with bus lines in the mid-century, it went from 16 rail lines to five... The reason we still have the trains we do is because they were the lines that used tunnels, so they…

Today, San Francisco only has trains along Market Street Um, Caltrain? BART? Fixed rail Muni, including the 3rd Street line all the way to Bayview?

Perhaps I should have been more specific; I was talking about MUNI:

> along Market Street, fingering out into a half dozen neighborhoods

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

#362

Post by bsimpson »

timw4mail wrote: post #167
bsimpson wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today, San Francisco only has trains along Market Street, fingering out into a half dozen neighborhoods. Most of the city is served by buses. Originally, many of those buses were, in fact, trains: > ...as SF's rail network was removed or replaced with bus lines in the mid-century, it went from 16 rail lines to five... The reason we still have the trains we do is because they were the lines that used tunnels, so they…

Do streetcars not count as trains?

> along Market Street, fingering out into a half dozen neighborhoods

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

#363

Post by magduf »

candu wrote: post #335
turtlecloud wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to have the political will. There is nothing in the previous comment that is physically impossible.

...no, but it bears remembering that many cities in Europe were effectively bulldozed by two world wars, not to mention centuries of smaller wars. Just because you can raze entire cities, displace their populations, and embark on "clean slate" urban planning projects doesn't mean you should. That's the civil engineering equivalent of rewriting the entire codebase from scratch.

>That's the civil engineering equivalent of rewriting the entire codebase from scratch.

And yet, "refactoring" is definitely a real thing in software engineering and is not uncommon, for good reason: many times you really do need to throw everything out and start from scratch.

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

#364

Post by astura »

briandear wrote: post #255
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.

The same thing in the United States. The parent comment, while I don’t doubt the truth of the story, it doesn’t represent what actually happens. People that hit a pedestrian in a crosswalk are going to be cited and if there are injuries, potentially charged with a serious crime.

>People that hit a pedestrian in a crosswalk are going to be cited and if there are injuries, potentially charged with a serious crime

Nope, you're wrong, this is largely untrue unless the driver fled the scene or the driver was drunk. "Whoops I didn't see them" is usually a completely valid defense and everyone shrugs and says "Oh well, accidents happen" rather than "slow down, pay attention, and learn to control your car."

http://www.startribune.com/in-crashes-that-kill-pedestrians-...

>The majority of drivers who killed pedestrians between 2010 and 2014 were not charged, according to Star Tribune analysis of metro area crash data. Those who were charged often faced misdemeanors — from speeding to careless driving — with minimal penalties, unless the driver knowingly fled or was intoxicated at the time of the crash.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/11/06/no-charges-for-driver...

>Lenient laws and a culture of tolerance for traffic violence means that unless you were intoxicated when the crash occurred, the official word is most likely “accidents happen.” Even an investigation into a collision that caused life-threatening injuries might be too much to ask in a lot of jurisdictions. Streetsblog recently found that fewer than 1 percent of drivers who kill or injure pedestrians and cyclists in New York City are ticketed for careless driving, much less charged with a crime.

https://www.revealnews.org/article/bay-area-drivers-who-kill...

>Sixty percent of the 238 motorists found to be at fault or suspected of a crime faced no criminal charges during the five-year period, CIR found in its analysis of thousands of pages of police and court records from Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco counties.

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

#365

Post by magduf »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #329
turtlecloud wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to have the political will. There is nothing in the previous comment that is physically impossible.

No, you're right - but to say it's simple is ridiculous. That will take the entire city being willing to be displaced for years - millions of people without homes - what does the political will for that look like?

Well you don't need to do it all at once, and you don't really need to bulldoze every building and road. It would be more realistic to just "upzone" as the other commenter said, and stop accommodating car transport so much and start aggressively redeveloping after adding public transit infrastructure (which would be a lot cheaper and easier if you bulldoze along the routes so you can do cut-and-cover instead of digging tunnels).

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

#366

Post by carapace »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #158
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…

I too don't like the article presented that way. I should note that it was a conspiracy in this case. Automobile manufacturers ran media campaigns and lobbied to make walking across the street a crime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM Most of these are also laws passed by groups of people deciding to control others for a mix of perceived altruistic and selfish reasons. It's not secret but there's people co…

Man, I was talking about this a couple of years ago and got called a conspiracy nut. I was like, "crack a history book." Now I can just point to this video. Cheers!

(FWIW, Robert Anton Wilson once pointed out that, of regime changes in the 20th century, over half of them were the result of some sort of coup. In other words, conspiracy is normal. Make of that what you will.)

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

#367

Post by praying4death »

stronglikedan wrote: post #232
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…

As a pedestrian (or cyclist), you should always give way to cars, even being prepared to jump out of the way when you have the right-of-way. Unless the driver is intoxicated, they get inconvenienced with higher insurance premiums for a little while at worst, while you get stuck with life long injuries and pain at worst.

But I want to get hit by a car. I want to die. I want to escape this hellscape of nightmares.

I don’t fucking care anymore. Fuck money. Fuck jobs. Fuck electronic devices. Fucking kill me now. I want none of this.

I won’t try anymore. I don’t care what happens. Let it all fucking burn.

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

#368

Post by methodover »

briandear wrote: post #255
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.

The same thing in the United States. The parent comment, while I don’t doubt the truth of the story, it doesn’t represent what actually happens. People that hit a pedestrian in a crosswalk are going to be cited and if there are injuries, potentially charged with a serious crime.

You know what, as I think back to that night it’s possible the lady did receive a citation (a ticket) and I didn’t notice it. I was there the whole time, and listened to everything, but it’s possible I missed it. Also, the cops didn’t say they gave a citation when I talked to them, but perhaps they were following a privacy policy or something.

Also the young lady who was struck turned down an ambulance ride and got a ride home from another bystander. Injuries were not apparently life threatening. (I’m also betting the girl didn’t have health insurance.)

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

#369

Post by sokoloff »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #276
sokoloff wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more accurate than claiming they are eliminated.

It's not but it helps some narratives...

OK, I'll play along. Suppose I drive my electric car an additional 450 miles. That will consume an extra ~100kWh of energy from the battery, which will require me to buy an extra 115kWh of energy from my electric utility, which will require them to generate (or procure) an additional 125kWh or so.

Are there any emissions associated with that additional 125kWh of consumed electricity? If so, where? If not, why not?

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

#370

Post by carapace »

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…

> Cars make things drastically more affordable for people.

In "Energy and Civilization A History" by Vaclav Smil he points out that, once you factor in the time spent earning money to pay for the costs of car transport, you are doing no better than if you walked.

The time that the car seems to save is spent working to pay for the car.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31850765-energy-and-civi...

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