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The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom

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Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom

#91

Post by bluGill »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #89
mattlondon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in large cities like London there are huge areas where public transport is a joke. Yes it's fine in the very tourist center, but get out further from the center where normal people with families actually live and what is a 5-8 minute drive to a large grocery store becomes a mammoth 50-60 minute journey each way . I personally don't want to spend 15% of my waking day going to and from the shops and paying huge pr…

It sounds like your public transport isn't actually good.

No place in the world has good public transit then. Which is realistic I guess: fix your own area instead of looking down on others who are worse.

Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom

#93

Post by bluGill »

outime wrote: post #75
nialv7 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. If you've been enjoying public transportation for so long, then why is your reaction to it getting worse not: OK, we need to fix it so it's as good as it was. Instead you are just saying: OK, I have the resources to fix the problem for myself, so I don't give a F.

I do give a F. I'm paying a fair amount in taxes every month despite not using it. On top of that, what's your proposal? Whether I use it (and be miserable) or not doesn't move the needle either way, so I choose not to be miserable. If there were actually a way to make it better, I'd maybe get involved. But since I see zero options, I just stay away from it. Virtue signaling doesn't work for me.

transportation is expensive and must be paid somehow. For most people good public transportation would realistically cost them $100 per month - that is less than they spend on a car per month but still a lot of money. (Car costs are mostly hidden - you spend less than that in gas, not noticing the payments, insurance which are paid differently, or maitenance which is large bills not often).

when looking at the above, most people live in a couple situation so think of it as selling one car and keeping the other - it still saves money and you get the best of both worlds. This only works though if transit is getting that money from everyone already though since you need that much before it is useful to those who would pay.

Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom

#94

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

bluGill wrote: post #91
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like your public transport isn't actually good.

No place in the world has good public transit then. Which is realistic I guess: fix your own area instead of looking down on others who are worse.

I've been to cities large and small in Japan that had better transit than what you describe in London.

That's probably why they have so much ridership.

Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom

#95

Post by AnimalMuppet »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #88
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #71

I am 63. As I look at my future, "freedom" and "walking" look more and more distant from each other. My wife has a handicapped tag. Freedom for her doesn't look like walking. My mother in law is over 80, and she had polio. One leg is not fully functional. Freedom for her doesn't look like walking. My son-in-law has something that looks a lot like long covid (not diagnosed, so I can't say with certainty). Freedom for…

I think transit would serve these people much better too. Driving independently is for people who are fit enough with reflexes, judgement, and eyesight. Level boarding means you can get your wheelchair into a train much more easily than having your grandchildren lift you into a car passenger seat. Having a bus driver drive for you means you can get around even when you no longer pass your eye exam. Being able to acce…

A train with level boarding is fine, but first I have to get to the train. For the average location in the city, how many blocks away is the train? That is a non-trivial problem for some people.

Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom

#96

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #90
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot that can be done outside of cities too. The main thing that makes it scary and inconvenient to take an e-bike eight miles to buy groceries is... sharing a road with cars! A bike path is much cheaper to build and maintain than a motorway, and especially cheap in rural areas where the rights-of-way can be purchased more cheaply. It's also possible to have rural areas accessible by transit. If you ever vis…

>The main thing that makes it scary and inconvenient to take an e-bike eight miles to buy groceries is... sharing a road with cars! If the cars weren't there, gangs of bandits would be. Bandits were a common threat to people living outside cities. If you didn't carry a gun or a sword out in the country, you were practically on your own against a possibly large number of criminals.

I see bandits with Toyota trucks in Africa, but no bandits on bicycles in the Netherlands. What you're describing is entirely orthogonal to modes of travel.

Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom

#97

Post by AstroBen »

onecommentman wrote: post #86
tim333 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an over 60 age is kind of an issue. Ebikes sort it though.

E-bikes help us to get up and down hills, but the safety issue doesn’t go away. Response times are slower across all sorts of dimensions (detection, response, mitigation, etc.), and an accident is more likely to end in hospitalization or actual death, e-bike or no. Well-traveled bike trails sound like fun, but I think it’s a no-go for general transport for the elderly. You can do it at that age, but I’m guessing the…

Not exercising is a risk also

Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom

#98

Post by throwaway22032 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #28
throwaway22032 wrote: post #9

"That's just like, your opinion, man." The car is clearly not the best way to navigate a dense city. It is impractical to have, say, tower block apartments and also have a car for each resident. It is unreasonable to build enough parking for peak time around every destination that anyone might want to go to. On the flip side - not everyone wants to live in a dense city, and people's opinions on this change throughout…

> On the flip side - not everyone wants to live in a dense city, and people's opinions on this change throughout their lives. If you look at the cost of living in an urban area it’s clear there is a lot of demand. Rural is cheaper because most people don’t want a long commute.

This is to some extent a kind of tautology, though.

There is more money available to chase housing in urban areas because it's where most of the jobs are due to network effects, so if you are a labourer you gravitate towards that (as you say, it's a commute thing).

It's not necessarily intrinsically more desirable. If you gave the average person 5 million quid I don't think they would choose to live in Central London.

Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom

#99

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #95
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think transit would serve these people much better too. Driving independently is for people who are fit enough with reflexes, judgement, and eyesight. Level boarding means you can get your wheelchair into a train much more easily than having your grandchildren lift you into a car passenger seat. Having a bus driver drive for you means you can get around even when you no longer pass your eye exam. Being able to acce…

A train with level boarding is fine, but first I have to get to the train . For the average location in the city, how many blocks away is the train? That is a non-trivial problem for some people.

So in places where trains are done well, like Asia, every real estate listing will describe how far it is to the nearest station, because it's taken as a given that that's how you want to get around. If you're mobility impaired you'd probably prioritize one of those locations so you don't have to go as far, but you're on luck because that's also where the most supply is available as the train operators are also developers. It's also where most of the destinations are so you might not even actually need to board a train most of the time.

But I guess to directly answer your question: ideally you get to the train by taking your electric wheelchair along a nice shady pedestrian area, amply separated from any cars so that it's quiet, and conveniently crossing at most two lanes of traffic at a time. But it depends on what your area is like.

Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom

#100

Post by wakawaka28 »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #96
wakawaka28 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The main thing that makes it scary and inconvenient to take an e-bike eight miles to buy groceries is... sharing a road with cars! If the cars weren't there, gangs of bandits would be. Bandits were a common threat to people living outside cities. If you didn't carry a gun or a sword out in the country, you were practically on your own against a possibly large number of criminals.

I see bandits with Toyota trucks in Africa, but no bandits on bicycles in the Netherlands. What you're describing is entirely orthogonal to modes of travel.

It is not orthogonal to modes of travel. A person in a car is much less vulnerable to attack than a person on foot, on a bicycle, etc. Also it's funny that you pick a low trust country and a high trust country to confound the issue. To be clear, the vulnerability is roughly the same no matter where you are located. The frequency of crime is a separate issue, and one that evolves according to opportunity. If more people are vulnerable to attack, that may be enough to inspire a crime wave even in a country we consider safe (compared to Africa).
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