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Let’s Build a Future Without Cars

pandodaily.com

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Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars

#121

Post by kstenerud »

wheels wrote: post #120
kstenerud wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality of service will never reach the level of Japan. Transit operators have it easy there because people don't vandalize and they don't litter. This means that your maintenance costs are very low and it's more economical to buy high quality, comfortable seating. As well, transit is only good for getting you around in the cities. Once you get out to "inaka", a car is all but a requirement, much like in North Am…

> if you live in a dense city with poor traffic flow, and that accounts for a tiny percentage of the world population That's false. Most of the world's population now lives in cities. Deciding what percentage of those fall below the threshold of "poor" traffic-flow wise is difficult, but it's not "tiny". ( http://www.gizmag.com/go/7613/ ) Cars beget cars. The reason people need cars in a lot of the US is because they…

The generic "city" is not a very useful term here. How many people are there? There's a big difference between New York and Maza. What is the topography like? Is it sprawling like Phoenix? Or dense like Tokyo? How much density, population, and infrastructure is required to make a convenient and economical transit system? I'd wager far too much to displace cars in any meaningful way except in the largest cities.

Cars are used because they are versatile. Every other form of transport has far more narrow use cases.

Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars

#123

Post by ezy »

exue wrote: post #49

Problem 1: This article is a giant anti-car rant with a few points of rational debate baked in that might help public policy. It's no more objectively helpful than reading a spiel from BimmerForums or ClubWRX on why they love their 300hp sports cars and would never give them up to be herded in a big, crowded, smelly bus. Problem 2: Cars are currently the best solution to the problems we have. That's why they are #1 i…

I think the robo-car is the self cleaning kitchen of the 2010's. When your ML algorithm makes an error, it won't just be a drop in some abstract accuracy measurement -- someone will die. This is a hell of a lot of liability to take on. Google's self-driving car is a promo stunt. You would need a lot of infrastructure for it to be safe -- and with that infrastructure will come loss of the "freedom" you describe -- e.g. It'll be a kind of train.

Not like you have that freedom now. Yeah, maybe in some rural area compared to hoofing it for 30 miles :-), but we're not talking about that -- you'll still use cars there. It's not true in suburbia. That's why we have malls and big box stores with huge parking lots built next to highways. You are unnaturally constrained to the highways and roads that have been built -- the freedom is illusory.

Speed. Well, you're attempting to compare Caltrain to the alternatives. In no way does Caltrain compare to Metro north or NJTransit -- the reason people choose to drive is not because cars are intrinsically faster in those areas, but because the mass transit in the bay area sucks. It's like saying in 1997 that "people have chosen rationally" not to use a phone as a web browser. Yes, they have, very rationally in fact, but it says nothing about the intrinsic ability of a phone-like device to be a web browser.

Efficiency is a red herring. Even the post you linked to is inconclusive in that regard. If you step out of the box and consider that the same improvements to cars could be made to buses or trains, then apply the economy of scale a massive investment in transit would mean -- it comes out a little differently. In the same post, there is a comparison to transit in other countries -- the comparison gets a little weak at that point.

Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars

#124

Post by mortenjorck »

enobrev wrote: post #62
kposehn wrote: post #32

This article, while well written and trying to think ahead, forgets something very important: cars are such a symbol because they appeal to one of the core aspects of human nature. The freedom of movement, the ability to choose where you go, the notion of being unrestricted and able to move about freely. Being herded on a bus is not in our nature. Furthermore, to some degree, cars are actually more efficient from a p…

Solid points. To add to your safety point regarding flying cars: as bad as people are at driving in 2 dimensions, I can't imagine how horrible we would be driving in 3.

Flying cars must happen eventually, but only long after driverless cars have become the norm.

Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars

#125

Post by Derbasti »

donw wrote: post #86
sgentle wrote: post #40

To me, what would be interesting about a world without cars (or even with cars, but vastly more attractive public transport) is that it would partly reverse a sad isolationist trend that's come along with the power and control given to us by modern technology. I used to catch a bus every day through the city, and there were a lot of strange people on those trips. Gangs of 9 year old gangster kids drunk up the back. L…

You've done a great job of summing up one of the reasons that public transit in the US is as bad as it is. My goal is to safely get from Point A to Point B, and I don't want to spend a lot of time waiting around at Point A, or sitting and waiting on the way to Point B. We have three goals here, in order of importance. Let's call them safety, convenience, and speed. Taking a bus with a bunch of drunken hooligans doesn…

Japan is not alone with this. Just about all of (central) Europe has excellent public transportation, too.

Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars

#126

Post by Derbasti »

api wrote: post #15

It's always important to consider the dark side. We didn't do much of that when we built car culture in the first place, so let's do it now. So try: "Let's build an unaffordable future where the super-rich live in hyper-inflated city real estate and the poor are consigned to unreachable rural pockets of cultural stagnation or to over-crowded ghettoes." How will we create livable walkable cities where real estate does…

If you don't fill up dozens of football fields worth of city space with parking lots but instead build buildings, cities tend to get a lot more manageable without a car.

Case in point: Just about all of Europe.

Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars

#127

Post by Derbasti »

yason wrote: post #9

To get rid of cars, you need cities designed for people, not cars: otherwise everything is so far away that nothing gets ever done. We won't get rid of cars until oil is ridiculously expensive and we must give up. That will also leave much of the recent (since 1950's) development to decay, and new cities will emerge where there are new concentrations of people. So, we will get a future without cars at some point, it'…

Look at Europe or Asia: All them old cities were designed without cars. Actually, many European cities today opt for car-free downtown areas.

Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars

#128

Post by johncarpinelli »

7952 wrote: post #73
markessien wrote: post #26

What we need are electricity powered flying cars. Then we can have green, walk-able cities and can use all that open space above us for transportation. We'll need some new kind of flying technology though, cos nobody wants to hear the loud noise of wind blades or deal with all the air pushing downwards. Perhaps hover "paths" where grass is below and not tarmac?

Flying buses would be much better than flying cars. Make a type of aeroplane that can do short flights (<20 miles between towns). Use capacitors that can be recharged between flights, and have an idling conventional engine in case of emergency. Even at relatively low speeds this could dramatically improve commute times.

Electric air taxis would be great for commuters. You would have to streamline check-in and security though. People will ditch their cars for a faster trip time.

Consider this scenario for a 20 mile commute: 1) Bike or walk one mile to local air strip ( a converted road) 2) 18 mile electric flight to destination town. 3) Bike or walk one mile to office from landing strip.

Takeoff and landing must be silent and fast. See http://electrictakeoff.com for an example.

Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars

#129

Post by greggman »

donw wrote: post #86
sgentle wrote: post #40

To me, what would be interesting about a world without cars (or even with cars, but vastly more attractive public transport) is that it would partly reverse a sad isolationist trend that's come along with the power and control given to us by modern technology. I used to catch a bus every day through the city, and there were a lot of strange people on those trips. Gangs of 9 year old gangster kids drunk up the back. L…

You've done a great job of summing up one of the reasons that public transit in the US is as bad as it is. My goal is to safely get from Point A to Point B, and I don't want to spend a lot of time waiting around at Point A, or sitting and waiting on the way to Point B. We have three goals here, in order of importance. Let's call them safety, convenience, and speed. Taking a bus with a bunch of drunken hooligans doesn…

I don't expect to ever see safe public transportation in the USA in my lifetime. Our culture sucks. Japan works partly because like many other cultures in that area it's a community comes before the individual culture.

We've put up with crime for so long in the USA we've forgotten places actually exist without most of it. We've gotten so used to it we think it's normal to "avoid dark alleys" to "pull out your car stereo and don't leave anything visible, even a jacket or risk getting your car broken into" to "don't go to those parts of town"

None of those apply to certain countries.

now watch the defensive replies :(

Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars

#130

Post by yaix »

>> "Big, gaping garages"? "WalMarts, Targets, and mega-malls don’t even bother catering for the pedestrian shopper"

The problem is not the car, its city planning.

Don't make the roads wider and wider, build good and fast bike paths.

Have the train station in the city center where all the shops and malls are.

Build supermarkets and workplaces close to where people live. Suburbs far away from everything are bad in many ways.

There are many more things that could be improved, if city plaing wasn't run by the car lobby.

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