731–740 of 756 posts
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I like this point, my mind immediately goes to "swap your ICE for an EV or an e-bike and $20k". I honestly think that deal is so good you'd see car theft spike. Maybe that's fine? We're in wild times haha.
Admittedly I drove a pretty worthless car, but when I moved to a denser city and stopped driving, something like "swap your car for a lifetime public transportation pass" would have been really, really tempting, too.
I became very disillusioned with my “eco conscious” friends when they all went so hard against the bird scooters. These seemed like such an obvious and amazing solution to having too many gas powered cars in the road. The cost was very low, the distance you could travel was high, and they were everywhere. This seemed like such a massive ray of hope. When people started throwing them in the water, or damaging them int…
I would like to point out that the people in those pictures are wearing short sleeves and it is sunny (and presumably warm). As someone who had to scrape ice off of my windscreen this morning while the temperature inside the passenger compartment was creeping up from 1 degree above freezing, the inevitable suggestion that bikes are a better solution than cars is going to fall on my deaf ears. You're not going to get…
Perfectly possible to bike if you put on the right clothes. Even when it has been snowing, as the bike paths are cleared.
Several of my colleagues with kids bike every day as well, taking the kids with them on thei bike.
Might not be as comfortable as a air conditioned, well-cushioned car. But there are other benefits.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: building the future around cars of any kind is completely unsustainable. We cannot reproduce the rates of rich world car ownership in the developing world without mass catastrophe (raw materials/labor needed for construction and maintenance, raw materials/labor/space needed for roads and parking lots, literal tons of waste--batteries, tires, steel, plastic, foam--, energy ne…
"We¹" are not serious about it. Biden talks pretty but has increased the production of fossil fuels, beyond what even Trump did and we are now exporting more LNG than any other country. (That changes, we are at the top, the nr 1 spot might change between competitors now and again)
Yet we are all so happy with Biden cause he -says- the right words.
Same with Norway. So many people saying the right things at the right places with the right photo ops.
Yet we are not producing more fossile fuels than ever before. The state has decided that we will increase production until 2026, and -then- we will really cut back.
Yeah right.
Then we saw last winter many countries opening up coal powerplants again to have enough energy. You cannot be serious about 2030 and the climate in general, when you restart that kind of power plant.
¹ Those who run countries and have been elected to do so.
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Living in sky scrapers sucks and is not enjoyable. Same with living in suburbia. The sweet spot is densely packed urban areas that are built on the human scale.
> The sweet spot is densely packed urban areas that are built on the human scale. Near the subway, and surrounded by historical buildings and nice architecture ... where an apartment usually costs an exorbitant price.
It's not that it's very expensive to build (well, it's not cheap either), it's that there's so little supply and so much demand.
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i've never been in rome but i visited trieste - a very walkable city - a few weeks ago and i was shocked how cars were clogging up everything there. not necessarily cars driving, but parked cars. maybe trieste is a bit special because big parts of it are on a steep hill so it's not that well suited for cycling but none the less, i was very disappointed. not a pleasure with kids. i asked an italian friend about it and…
I’ve been to a good amount of Italian cities and would agree it’s the same mess of cars all over the place, like anywhere else. I also went to Rome for the first time half a year ago and it wasn’t the mess of cars and Vespas I imagined it was going to be, so hey, perhaps Rome is the anomaly.
there are first attempts to reduce the car mess in some cities, mostly by reducing public surface parking and making public transport and biking a viable alternative to car ownership.
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I largely agree, but it would still be a good problem to solve because it would make electric buses and the cars that can’t be replaced lighter.
I'm a little naive to the weight problem, is it really an issue for like, buses? Is this actually an area where trams (gasp!) are better?
I was mostly thinking of efficiency issues. But apparently, they have lead to issues with road wear in Indianapolis[0], although this may in part be due to poor planning on the transit agency or public works' part.
Trams and trolley buses do solve this issue
[0]: https://www.wrtv.com/news/working-for-you/indygo-reconstruct...
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I'm a little naive to the weight problem, is it really an issue for like, buses? Is this actually an area where trams (gasp!) are better?
I realized I had just assumed that electric buses were significantly heavier than ICE buses. They can be much heavier; however, using an aluminum frame or smaller batteries (if you don't need the range), can bring the weight down considerably. It's hard to get exact weights because the weight varies by configuration. I was mostly thinking of efficiency issues. But apparently, they have lead to issues with road wear i…
Huh I hadn't realized this might be an issue; thanks for the info. I know roads are rated for weight but I didn't think electric buses might have been so heavy to generally exceed it.
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Evidence like total cost of car infra vs taxes that ppl pay? Evidence that low density areas are subsidized by high density? All this info is freely available online. Difference is US can afford to be in debt, other countries - not so much
Those may be serious problems, but nothing about that says that "mass catastrophe" necessarily follows. Language like that is implying something approaching apocalyptic. > All this info is freely available online. Given that the internet is full of conflicting information, and that you seem to know far more about this issue than I do, perhaps you could share a link to some of this information from a source you find c…
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I can't carry four other people on my ebike, along with stuffing a minimum of one duffle bag per person, and usually being able to squeeze two in, along with a cooler for drinks, snacks, and sandwiches. My Telluride can do that though. Even if I could somehow fit all that shit onto an ebike, I wonder how long it and I would be able to make it before we give trying to go the 125 miles from Fort Worth to Possum Kingdom…
> This site infuriates me sometimes at the complete and utter lack of understanding of most of the United States Most of the US in what capacity? Square miles? Because the majority of the population lives in Cities. I love reading comments like yours. All throughout this thread you've vehemently argued that your perspective is the right one. It's a reminder to me that close minded people like you actually exist! You'…
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.