421–430 of 635 posts
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A huge boost to economic productivity and growth by increasing the flexibility of land usage, for example.
Cars are terrible for land usage. Car infrastructure takes up much more space than alternative transit infrastructure options.
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But this is not an inherent property of cars. It is only true because we invested all our transit dollars in highways. Cars are not inherently better and roads are not free. If we invest more in public transit we can reduce our need for cars.
Agree, but there's no political will and even if there was, it would take decades.
But what we cannot do is pretend that cars are inherently superior, ignoring the unprecedented investment we made in highways to make that happen.
But it also isn’t the case that improvements will take decades. Maybe solving the problem completely would, but local governments can convert big dangerous streets in to walkable areas with safer bike transport in just a few years or less.
Solving the whole problem would take decades but then, governments do tend to deal in decades long plans when needed. If they’re ever going to launch new national rail projects, they’re going to need the public to recognize the value of alternatives to cars.
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Being by far the most convenient way to travel from home to pretty much any random location. Speaking from the Netherlands with a relatively good public transit system.
That's not an externality. That's what you pay for.
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Once cars start being designed for robotaxi use, it makes economic sense to be much smaller: most rides are one-passenger. (Though who knows what crazy outcomes you end up with under the regulators.)
Most car trips today are single person and yet cars are enormous and getting bigger all the time. It's not the regulators, it's the consumers that want the crazy outcomes.
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I'd only add "...because they're incredibly useful, AND government policy has consistently favoured such a mode of transport over all other alternatives". The amount spent by governments on maintaining road infrastructure dwarfs all other transport spending, the amount of land dedicated to parking and driving space is mindboggling, and of course the amount spent on ensuring the global oil industry has been able to re…
You aren't wrong that government support of automotive transport is immense. But that government support comes from decades of popular electoral support for those policies from all across of the political spectrum. Why? Because cars give people more convenient and independent transportation then just about any other mode. And people push their politicians and representatives to support that kind of transportation. If…
If we did it once for cars we could do it again agin 'em.
Has anyone here ever lived near a freeway or even moderately busy road? I made the mistake of renting next to the freeway. Noise was perfectly tolerable, but I could not use my back porch, because after just a few weeks, everything had a fine coating of black dust. I could not keep my windows open in the summer. I was certainly breathing this vile shit the entire time I lived there. This doesn't surprise me in the le…
That's why so many people are cautious about "EVs to save us all", to put it mildly. We are so focused on climate change and greenhouse gases that we do not see a lot of other issues and may exacerbate some of them in the process of decarbonisation.
If anyone was serious about any of this, wfh for anyone that can is such an obvious solution with by far the lowest cost. Its a solved problem, we just don’t like the solution enough.
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Cars are terrible for land usage. Car infrastructure takes up much more space than alternative transit infrastructure options.
Minimizing road surface area and the like is not a very important issue compared to the land usage flexibility cars bring.
Roads of course are useful for economic activity, but we’ve gone so hard in to roads that every person has to have their own car. If we put more commuters on trains, we could still have roads for trucks and other things that don’t work well for trains. But with every person needing a car, way too much land gets swallowed by parking and road infrastructure.
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Nope. A car is convenient (the comment I was replying too) in both situations! Weird, eh?
I find it convenient to walk to my grocery store. It's inconvenient to have too many groceries regardless of my conveyance home.
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Once cars start being designed for robotaxi use, it makes economic sense to be much smaller: most rides are one-passenger. (Though who knows what crazy outcomes you end up with under the regulators.)
I doubt that's the case. And how would that work? If we look at the economics of Uber and Uber Eats, we see that they have shifted to ride sharing and also delivery sharing. In that, it makes more sense to bundle up multiple people and deliveries into one. Doesn't that sound a whole lot like buses?
https://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/design-change.html is very old and there are newer discussions, but I'm too lazy to find them for you. Also michaelmrose's answer.