101–110 of 117 posts
Governments build roads, so governments are.
and we the people only vote for governments that take care of our roads, so we are responsible, not somebody else.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not so much cars themselves as it is car-centric development that causes many problems. I wouldn't call it car centric, more like everyone-gets-to-have-a-lawn-and-2000-sq-ft-home centric. Herein lies the crux of the problem, not in the mode of transportation. Americans are used to such huge spaces per inhabitant that driving appears to be the only option. We have districts with detached houses where I live and…
Apartments are horrible. If you get a crying baby neighbor, or a dog, or neighbors who blast music at 3am, there’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing. The police will not help you, as noise ordinance is not enforced. Your apartment manager won’t do anything because none of them do anything. Other fun apartment specific happenings: constant clouds of marijuana smoke, curry spice smell seeping through the walls and s…
Nothing. The police will not help you, as noise ordinance either doesn’t exist or is not enforced. Your HOA, if you have one, won’t do anything because none of them do anything.
(Yes, this is tongue-in-cheek, but it is also rooted in real experience. Yes, I’m aware electric lawn equipment exists and somewhat improves some of the above when used. Nevertheless, city apartment living for me has been quieter than suburbia.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are plenty of rural roads and highways that disprove your point. We fill roads in cities because the population wants/needs to travel. If we would instead build trains those would fill instead. Trains are a lot more cost effective in cities, but no city (not even transit cities like Paris) builds enough of them to make trains a better alternative than cars. Note that by the time anyone realizes roads are full a…
It's not my point, it's a long standing observed principal of urban planning referred to as induced demand or induced traffic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/ My point was that road access introduced through previously road vehicle inaccessable regions often (not always) leads to more human activity and dwelling in the vicinity of that road. It's…
That it doesn't exist in rural areas improves that it isn't induced it is already there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not so much cars themselves as it is car-centric development that causes many problems. I wouldn't call it car centric, more like everyone-gets-to-have-a-lawn-and-2000-sq-ft-home centric. Herein lies the crux of the problem, not in the mode of transportation. Americans are used to such huge spaces per inhabitant that driving appears to be the only option. We have districts with detached houses where I live and…
Apartments are horrible. If you get a crying baby neighbor, or a dog, or neighbors who blast music at 3am, there’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing. The police will not help you, as noise ordinance is not enforced. Your apartment manager won’t do anything because none of them do anything. Other fun apartment specific happenings: constant clouds of marijuana smoke, curry spice smell seeping through the walls and s…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In fact, a whole field (stormwater engineering) exists to mitigate this. I haven't checked in lately. How are they doing getting over the age-old "Drain! Drain! Drain!! Faster! Faster! Faster!" mantra? This ethic of course only contributes to the problems of flash flooding, lack of buffer, lack of aquifer recharge, and (ultimately) alternating drought/flood cycles.
So the answer to this is HOA's.... Um, what? you say. So here in the hill country of Texas housing developments/cities need to build so many feet of storage retention ponds per house built and impermeable roadway laid. Depending on the size of the development these are decently sizes structures and an off the cuff guess on costs is between 500k and a few million (+lost land to build more houses on) so it's a sizeable…
Usually among the most costly line items of construction.
And the desire for recreation. The explosion of cars isn't necessarily that cars are so useful. Certainly they did have utility. But really they were kind of liberating. In the late 19th century, nobody ever heard of a vacation
We can see examples of other places where railways were the "liberating" technology that allowed people to go on holiday. For example:
Up to about forty or fifty years ago travelling was a solemn act, not to be enterprised nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly,’ so writes the Belfast News-Letter in September 1888. But all of this had changed; from the inception of the railways ‘day excursions’ had become ‘entirely modern pleasures,’ the British seaside and countryside opened up to visitors who could travel there easily by train.
https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2021/08/12/how-th...
The "cars are liberating, what a shame they destroy the wild place I went to meditate in" schtick seems like a deep-seated cultural echo of all the automobile advertising that has been consumed for about a century.
On top of roadkill itself, there's a reasonable (IMO) argument to be made that car-centric development is a big source of our looming water problems: the US has drained or redeveloped astounding amounts of natural swamp, marsh, and wetlands to make space for car-dependent living patterns. That means less water percolating into already over-stressed aquifers. It's a trite thing to say, but our grandchildren are going…
"Traffication: How Cars Destroy Nature and What We Can Do About It" excellent book on ecological damage caused by traffication. Some insights: * traffic noise (soundscape pollution) is actually suspected to be the biggest ecological destructor affecting all levels of life from insects, to birds, to mammals. * Traffic-related noise accounts for over 1 million healthy years of life lost annually to ill health, disabili…
On top of roadkill itself, there's a reasonable (IMO) argument to be made that car-centric development is a big source of our looming water problems: the US has drained or redeveloped astounding amounts of natural swamp, marsh, and wetlands to make space for car-dependent living patterns. That means less water percolating into already over-stressed aquifers. It's a trite thing to say, but our grandchildren are going…
Whether it is car, bus, train, Uber or hovercar, we will still need roads. Until personal jetpacks and flying school busses are a thing, the road issue is totally divorced from the type and environmental impact of vehicles driving upon the. Some form of road will be there regardless of the means, or even the amount of traffic, so long as a connection is needed.
But there are at least two problems with such a deceptively simple statement:
1) Road construction is constantly expanding. They create their own demand by diverting resources away from many things including affordable housing -- the number of people I know that commute for over an hour because they cannot afford to live near their work is non-negligible. At some point this becomes a planning/resource issue and at the moment the decision is to carry on as usual with a system that is causing major problems.
2) The amount of traffic makes a huge difference. It is well documented that roads create ecological bubbles affecting animal populations negatively. The speed and frequencey of the traffic (type of vehicle) makes a difference.
On top of roadkill itself, there's a reasonable (IMO) argument to be made that car-centric development is a big source of our looming water problems: the US has drained or redeveloped astounding amounts of natural swamp, marsh, and wetlands to make space for car-dependent living patterns. That means less water percolating into already over-stressed aquifers. It's a trite thing to say, but our grandchildren are going…
It's simply not possible for many families to live in the cramped environments of a city. How am I going to pick up 12 gallons of milk on my weekly grocery shopping trip without a pickup truck? That's about 125lb of milk. Not going to be able to get that onto a fixie in the city. How am I going to park the truck without a garage? The garage needs 3 spaces, one for the truck, one for the car, and one for my garage ref…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
and we the people only vote for governments that take care of our roads, so we are responsible, not somebody else.
Governments also are the greatest destroyers of roads; Primarily to deny their use to other governments. We the people want clean functional roads, we don't want to bomb anyone's roads, and yet the government does. Curious. Almost as if government doesn't care.