321–330 of 994 posts
North Americans visiting Europe often grapple with why they enjoy European cities more than North American ones. It's often perceived as an architecture issue ("Europe has historical buildings that we don't have") but very few notice that the main difference is the urban scale and the resulting walkability. The Netherlands has plenty of modernist and even brutalist architecture yet every city there is a pretty nice p…
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Car oriented people seriously underestimate how many people that can be transported in a subway train and how much highway space it would take to transport the same number of people in cars. One subway line can transport more people than even the widest existing highway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_dif... (edit: spelling)
From an efficiency point of view public transportation makes a lot of sense. From a quality of life point of view, I have never been comfortable being crammed into a sardine can with that many other people. I've done it. I've never enjoyed it. I do look forward to travelling to the Netherlands one day and I will enthusiastically use public transit there just as a personal experiment to see if my experience differs en…
Hard agree, but so long as I have a seat, it means I can have a nap.
One of the things that I can't do driving (safely!) is have a nap.
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Most of these bike moms/dads still have a car at home.
As long as those cars are at home in the garage instead of on the road that's fine. The point is having fewer cars on the road, not fewer cars in general. Riding around on a bicycle and having a car for exceptional circumstances and a once a year road trip is healthier and safer than driving that car around every single day.
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Train oriented people always forget that trains don't transport people from the origin to the destination. You still need to get to and from a train station. With all your groceries, gear, children's things, etc. Oh and you might be odor sensitive, but there's a lady next to you on the train that covered herself in perfume.
Life is full of impossible choices. Do I worry about the perfume of a lady on the train or worry about death/disability from a drunk driver on the road. Car deaths per year in the US are about 40 - 45K; injuries, some of them permanent are most likely 20 - 30x. Deaths and disability from perfume on a lady on the train are most likely far higher. I wish schools teach something, whats that called, math? probability? to…
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> Come to Europe Anecdotally, among myself and my friends we have more stories of problems with theft and encounters with hostile people from very brief travels to Europe than all time spent on public transport in the USA. To be fair, I haven’t lived in NYC where public transport is famously more dangerous. I also suspect that foreigners are more targeted for wallet thefts while traveling in Europe. However, watching…
Famously more dangerous? NYC? What on earth are you talking about
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From an efficiency point of view public transportation makes a lot of sense. From a quality of life point of view, I have never been comfortable being crammed into a sardine can with that many other people. I've done it. I've never enjoyed it. I do look forward to travelling to the Netherlands one day and I will enthusiastically use public transit there just as a personal experiment to see if my experience differs en…
> From a quality of life point of view The only thing that makes my occasional commute to office or distant family not a complete waste of time, is that I can read something or do a ton of language flashcards on the way. (plus a tiny small health benefit that like 20% of the commute is spent on foot.) In a car, even that would be taken away, with me being forced to focus on the road instead. > I need that little bubb…
Don't wait too long - I did that and had to take the test again! :)
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From an efficiency point of view public transportation makes a lot of sense. From a quality of life point of view, I have never been comfortable being crammed into a sardine can with that many other people. I've done it. I've never enjoyed it. I do look forward to travelling to the Netherlands one day and I will enthusiastically use public transit there just as a personal experiment to see if my experience differs en…
Exactly. Cars are a better experience in almost all cases, but also have higher marginal costs. They also take up a lot of space, which in a dense city where space is at a premium makes them even more expensive due to the cost of things like parking and big roads. The solution isn't to force people into one option or the other. It's to make all options available at market rates and let them chose.
The problem that car solved years ago, is the following: you can develop a city without cars up to a point where the distance that you have to move to get to your work, or the supermarket, the hospital, etc is at max some km, let's say not more than 10/20. That has the consequence that all people wants to live in the city center, and not in peripherals areas. This has the consequence of making the cost of an house (o…
The problem that car solved years ago, is the following: you can develop a city without cars up to a point where the distance that you have to move to get to your work, or the supermarket, the hospital, etc is at max some km, let's say not more than 10/20. That has the consequence that all people wants to live in the city center, and not in peripherals areas. This has the consequence of making the cost of an house (o…
> This has the consequence of making the cost of an house (or rent) go up to a point where most people can't even afford it
Except that in some of the largest cities in the world rents aren't that high.
> Cars allow us to develop our society not in big cities, but in rather small towns, without ugly skyscrapers
Go to Switzerland, it look like that before cars and still does. You can get affordable houses and apartments on rail lines where you can be in the city in 15min.
You don't need to own a car to live in a house with a garden if you have proper public transport.
And you can live in the city and have plenty of access to nature as well. And cites don't need to be ugly and ful of skyscrapers.
> To me cars, and now also remote work, are a benefit because they allow us to live in a more sustainable way.
People living remotely with cars are the opposite of sustainable, in fact, literally every study on the subject shows the opposite. Not communing makes it better, but its still nowhere near as good as a city.
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Edit: To explain - I was cycling on a that was on top of an embankment and a strong gust of wind unbalanced me at a bad moment when a lorry was passing - I actually hit the lorry with my shoulder and was knocked back upright again. This was all quite exciting at the time.