531–540 of 545 posts
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London is putting charging points in street lamps: https://www.electrive.com/2018/08/21/char-gy-new-player-on-l...
Taking their 78% figure I get 6.8 million people who would need one. I don't think I would call 1,150 even a toe in the water.
http://content.tfl.gov.uk/technical-note-12-how-many-cars-ar...
So the toe is bigger than you think it is.
I live in a high rise apartment with three shared level 2 chargers in the garage. I would say there are ~10 EVs in the building and sharing the chargers has never been an issue. It's like shared laundry; you really only need it once a week or so for a few hours. Once it's easy to make people pay for electricity, adding lots of chargers will be a no-brainer for garage owners.
Laundry. That just might be the perfect example. What a huge division of experience between the wealthy and the less wealthy. Most homeowners have laundry in their home. Starting and switching loads is a few minutes, and the rest of their time is still free. Many high-end apartments have laundry within a short walk from each residence. It's largely the same experience. But then those with less ability to afford "nice…
Where I live everybody has one and we have salaries like 10x less than they have in US. And also flats are mostly tiny.
Taking you clothes somewhere to wash it sounds like first world nightmare to me.
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> The problem that these “garage orphans” don’t get is that society doesn’t owe anyone a free parking space Nobody owes anyone anything. But a lot of things in the society exist because "We would rather live in the world where X rather than in the world where X isn't". Car ownership is a societal norm in US, so most people are going to buy and own cars, at least for a while longer. And people are going to park these…
Unregulated free-for-all is kind of what we have, though, in NYC at least. People double-park with impunity, drivers leave cars on sidewalks, and the worst offenders are the NYPD, the very people who are supposed to enforce these regulations. We could trade subsidized parking for… - bus and bike lanes - garbage bins (the trash situation here is just humiliating) - inducement for the city and state to fix the subways…
As a person who paid a few thousand dollars in NYC parking tickets over the past two decades or so, I respectfully disagree with this assessment :)
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> Laundry. That just might be the perfect example. What a huge division of experience between the wealthy and the less wealthy. While a bit off-topic: I never understood why a lack of washing machines in flats is such a huge issue in some countries. In Germany, most flats come with a connector for your own washing machine, those that don't have on inside the flat often have them in the basement, where every party liv…
Germany is usually used as an example of good tenants' rights, though. I've never lived there but my understanding is that there's nothing wrong with renting, well off people might do it too, and so it's comfortable. Apartment living mixed with bad tenants rights is a recipe for disaster because the majority of people then end up basically living in a minimum standard hellhole that no-one cares about. See: UK private…
And it's not like the situation is that perfect either, these past years rents have been exploding in most places with any economic development. Government response has been slow to non-existent on the issue.
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That doesn't work in many low density areas (prime example is American suburbia). So your answer for those people is to make them move to a more dense area that can support such solutions. Which isn't a bad idea, but it's a much harder thing to accomplish.
Ebike/scoot to transit hub, trains to commercial areas. It’s not rocket science.
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Germany is usually used as an example of good tenants' rights, though. I've never lived there but my understanding is that there's nothing wrong with renting, well off people might do it too, and so it's comfortable. Apartment living mixed with bad tenants rights is a recipe for disaster because the majority of people then end up basically living in a minimum standard hellhole that no-one cares about. See: UK private…
I checked if it's something that's required by tenants law, but from what I could gather nothing like a "tenants right to a washing machine in their house/flat" exists in Germany. And it's not like the situation is that perfect either, these past years rents have been exploding in most places with any economic development. Government response has been slow to non-existent on the issue.
A bit like how buses in the US, or at least the parts I've visited, seem to be a shitfest, because they're only a thing poor people use, whereas in Europe they're often a lot better not due to legislation per se.
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I used to work in an office building with escalators that are powered off at night -- there was some sort of motion sensor about 10 feet before the escalator that would power it on when someone approached, you'd have to be running to reach the escalator before it reached normal speed. So on-demand escalators are possible, just rare. In the daytime either they kept them on all the time, or maybe there was enough const…
I thought on-demand escalators were the norm, from subway to malls I don't think I have ever seen an escalator that not my on-demand. But I can't say I've put a lot of thought into it.
There are maybe a few hundred on-demand escalators in the whole world, and millions of normal ones.
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I thought on-demand escalators were the norm, from subway to malls I don't think I have ever seen an escalator that not my on-demand. But I can't say I've put a lot of thought into it.
Are you thinking of elevators, maybe? There are maybe a few hundred on-demand escalators in the whole world, and millions of normal ones.
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That's a big one for me. It's the largest thing you can probably do to reduce global warming, personally. EVs are also faster to accelerate, and more fun to drive.
Well, not the largest. I'm doing something better. I offset all my carbon and drive an ICE SUV. I'm actually carbon-negative every year. I do contribute sulphur oxides and all that stuff, but global warming is driven less by those.
Planting trees (that take decades to grow might or might not release the carbon again soon after) or helping other people emit less does not render your emissions harmless.
The only way that can work is to take it out of the atmosphere again for good. Is there is an offsetting option that I'm not aware of that does this?
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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…
Escalators in Incheon airport start when you approach and stop when you exit.