511–520 of 545 posts
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> driving appears to give you more freedoms only because you live in a city I don't live in a city, just like half the population of the US. You assumed that, and now the rest of what you wrote is irrelevant.
80% of the US population lives in a city.
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Since he's talking in F (e.g. 105), when he says sub-zero, he means -18C or lower. Or did you mean -10F?
Ah okay fair enough. I'm from the US, but lately I've been playing a game with temperature set in C, and am used to working in C from talking with a bunch of international people in programming chats. Yeah sub -18C is extremely cold. Definitely not cycling out there. I don't think I've ever seen below 0 Fahrenheit where I live.
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I think when he says "show up looking presentable", it may be that he needs to be in suits or business casual, preferably unwrinkled. Also, I am exceptionally disinclined to bike through below-zero weather, snow tires or no (referring to the hypothetical canadian). Let alone Texas summers, which regularly hit 105 this time of year. I don't care if there are showers or not, it's just darn unpleasant to be outside this…
Cycle in with your lycra and then change into your work clothes. I've pedalled in -10C and 35C in Toronto. Showering at work isn't necessary either: sweat is odourless, and the stickiness comes from bacteria. So you can actually shower before cycling to get things clean and you'll be fine the whole day. In some ways we're actually ourselves too much: * https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/550291/beyond-soap-...
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You don’t seem to able to wrap your ahead around the fact that driving appears to give you more freedoms only because you live in a city that was designed around cars, not because cars are inherently faster or more convenient. The convenience of the car is an artifact of city planning decisions, not a universal truth. Example: do you realize how preposterous the idea of driving several miles to get groceries is to so…
Will there be grocery stores every four blocks in your bike structured city?
Sure:
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/205+Roncesvalles+Ave,+Toro...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roncesvalles,_Toronto
There are already neighbourhoods and cities like this. Do you know how many vegetable/fruits stands there are on the above street? Plus a couple of delis, a fish market, dry cleaners, four banks, a library, a BBQ joint, a couple of pizza parlors, pharmacies, dentists, optometrist, etc. The tram / street car tracks you see connect to a subway station.
Plus everyone on the residential side streets have a backyard, many have garages connected to lane way:
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Westminster+Ave,+Toront...
This is how we used to build cities.
Cars are present but optional. If you want one you can still have it, but they're are not needed.
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Instead of constructing your life around a bike you construct it around a car. You can't commute to work any other way, if it breaks down you are bound to mostly Uber as a backup strategy to get anywhere. Except those car-centric environments you live and work in are a more effective gate to keep the poor out than the grandest gated community. Almost no where else on the planet is the idea of a city being a tiny urba…
> construct it around a car I don't, actually - it's that a car is far more useful than a bike. I drive 25 minutes to work; I haul (5 bike-ride-loads of) groceries several miles to my house; I visit friends anywhere from 1-5 hours away; I casually drive into the city and back. Even if I felt like riding 10 miles each way, rain or shine, or using public transit, it takes so much less time to drive my car, and I have t…
Amsterdam is a perfect example of this: cars have not been completely eliminated, just de-emphasized. Making cars a nice to have instead of a need to have.
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>Lifts are the disruptive technology. They make energetically efficient cities possible and cheap. Are lifts really as efficient as escalators? An escalator is constantly moving (unless it's malfunctioning), so there is no wait to continue moving. An elevator on the other hand is not. Maybe it depends on the number of floors? I can see an elevator being faster going from ground to floor 40 rather than zig zagging flo…
Our hospital used to have lifts that didn't stop at floors. The had no doors, you just jump on them and get off. They were intended for staff only, to quickly get between floors so slightly out of view of the public. They were replaced a few years ago though. Mabe too many accidents?
I own a condo with a garage, yet I can't put in a charge station. I need to convince most of my neighbors to have the HOA do it. The garage is a separate shared structure and is only wired for lighting and the electric garage door. The only way they could put in EV chargers would be to trench though 30 feet of asphalt from the electrical vault (assuming that vault has sufficient capacity), then wire up the garage. I'…
All new builds must have at least the conduit in place (if not the wiring). I wouldn't be surprised if having EV stations becomes a selling point in pre-construction marketing.
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In that scenario stopping at a charger every day would be silly. Stop once a week at a charger that's near a grocery store, movie theater, restaurant, etc. Both of my local Tesla chargers are near grocery stores. Electrify America is installing chargers at Wal-Mart. Charging an EV is less like going to a gas station and more like picking a place to go that happens to have EV chargers while you do other things.
> Both of my local Tesla chargers are near grocery stores. How close? Can you push your cart back to them? > Electrify America is installing chargers at Wal-Mart. How many? If we want this whole "electric car" thing to take off, you're looking at, what, 50% of the whole parking lot? Not a half dozen stalls right beside the store.
It doesn't cover everyone yet, there's no way that we're going to have infrastructure to replace 100 years of gasoline infrastructure in a handful of years.
Also you only need to cover those who can't charge at home, which is a lot of people but not all of them.
I own a condo with a garage, yet I can't put in a charge station. I need to convince most of my neighbors to have the HOA do it. The garage is a separate shared structure and is only wired for lighting and the electric garage door. The only way they could put in EV chargers would be to trench though 30 feet of asphalt from the electrical vault (assuming that vault has sufficient capacity), then wire up the garage. I'…
I don't know where you are, but I'll give an example locally. For commercial installation (since it's HOA) if you're with LADWP (Los Angeles), they will reimburse for the cost of the charger and installation up to $5000 for the first charger, and $4000 for each charger thereafter.
LADWP will also install a separate meter (if you so choose) and give you a discount on the energy specifically for EV charging.
Might be easier to convince the HOA if the net cost to them to install it is... well, hopefully nearly nothing.
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> I live in a 100 year old apartment Keeping in mind '100 years old' sounds dramatic but is now as recent as 1919, which doesn't sound that old when you write it out! That's about a fifth of the housing stock in the UK I believe. Obviously, almost none of these houses have garages. I wonder if local governments could install plugs under little hatches like they use for stop cocks all the way down residential roads. h…
London is putting charging points in street lamps: https://www.electrive.com/2018/08/21/char-gy-new-player-on-l...