Cars Kill Cities • Hacker News Board

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#171

Post by saraid216 » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 2:28 AM UTC

lsc wrote: post #153

dllthomas wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Freedom", too, for that matter.

meh, 'freedom' has never had a good, solid meaning. Kings have been using that word for centuries. Slavery, until fairly recently has meant 'owning another human' - I mean, hell, I'll buy the use of slavery to mean 'having a choice between doing what another human wants and dying' My problem here is expanding it to mean 'having to pay a small fee or suffer discomfort'

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=slave&allowed_in_fr...

Slavery was turned into "owning another human" by abolitionists who wanted to play up its squick factor. It was previously just a state of submission and would be interchangeable with "servant".

The sense jseliger is using it is in the sense attested from the 1550s: that a car owner has lost resistance to a habit or vice; in this case, the "habit or vice" is the acceptance of car infrastructure in city design and the habit of looking at the world through the needs of one's car, namely to find parking, to calculate finances based on a car's needs.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#172

Post by gregl » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 2:30 AM UTC

dustcoin wrote: post #126

Xylakant wrote: post #107

I'm genuinely curious: Here in germany we have car-sharing offers that allow you to pick up a car on the street, ride it to where you want to go and then leave it parked there in the larger cities. The fee is usually about half of the fee of a cab. Then there's the same for bicycles. The combination of public transport and car-sharing in berlin is awesome, at least in the city center: I go most ways by public transpo…

What you are describing sounds like https://www.car2go.com , which is available in some US cities.

Which just happens to be a German company :)

We have it in Toronto and it's super useful sometimes to quickly get somewhere within the downtown when transit would be slower and cabs more expensive.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#173

Post by alexeisadeski3 » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 2:33 AM UTC

Wonder when the liberals will wake up and smell the coffee: Private busses are the miracle solution to public transport.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#174

Post by toddmorey » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 2:35 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #162

jseliger wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(correction applied) Thanks, fixed! Because I can go wherever I want, whenever I want, with my whole family (pets included), with a trunkful of cargo, as I see fit. But at very high cost, per The High Cost of Free Parking , and at high time costs: I'm struck by the way that, when I lived in Tucson, it took seemingly 30 or 40 minutes to get anywhere. Now I live in New York City and it takes about the same, but the def…

Even in Japan if you only rely on Public Transportation (and you probably have heard its one of the best out there, worldwide), there are a number of situation where it just does not work. For example: you want to come back later than 11h30 pm ? Bad luck, most of the metro/train lines have stopped. Or, there's usually always a way to get from point A to B with public transport, but unless you go to major stations or…

Yes, although owning, driving, and parking a car in Japan are not pleasant experiences, either. I remember one drive in particular when traffic was stalled so badly people were just leaving their cars idle to go pee on the side of the road.

I do think the most ideal setup would be public transport for most occasions combined with car rentals / delivery for large items.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#175

Post by ghaff » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 2:39 AM UTC

lambda wrote: post #59

jowiar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxis are a reasonable "turking" of this concept.

Taxis are a lot more expensive than self-driving cars. The driver takes something like 60% of the fare you pay for a taxi; I'm sure insurance eats up another sizeable chunk, and if self-driving cars are ever allowed on the streets, they will have to be safer than human drivers, and thus will have lower insurance costs. Furthermore, eliminating the driver means that you could use even smaller, cheaper cars, or fit mor…

>Taxis are a lot more expensive than self-driving cars.

But they have the advantage of actually existing. Whatever relatively near-term possibilities there may be for cars to operate on "autopilot" on certain highways, an urban environment where taxis are most common is probably one of the last places you'll see self-driving cars.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#176

Post by chongli » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 2:39 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #40

chongli wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bus service does not work. People hate buses, no matter how well designed and efficient their routes are. Buses have an extreme social stigma attached to them.

Unfortunately, just because you hate something doesn't mean we should continue to support policies for wasteful/inefficient transportation.

You know what's wasteful and inefficient? Empty buses driving around all day. My city is full of them!

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#177

Post by wh-uws » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 2:41 AM UTC

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #173

Wonder when the liberals will wake up and smell the coffee: Private busses are the miracle solution to public transport.

Trying to be as non promotional as possible here.

With my startup I'm working on this problem aiming to make easily setting up private transport a reality.

You can check out my vision here.

http://www.driveless.co/about.html

My contact if is in my profile if you have any comments or criticism.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#178

Post by yetanotherphd » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 2:42 AM UTC

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #173

Wonder when the liberals will wake up and smell the coffee: Private busses are the miracle solution to public transport.

But they bring in undesirable male nerds.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#179

Post by ecocentrik » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 2:46 AM UTC

anthonyb wrote: post #133

vacri wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my own experience, if you're working outside peak commuting hours, public transport is horrible. Take a cold winter, services 20 minutes apart. One service is missed, cancelled, whatever, you're now there for 40 minutes waiting for your bus. Of course, you don't know that the service is missed, you're just waiting at a pole. And in my case, it was a connecting service, so repeat the process for the second leg of t…

Bear in mind that you're comparing mostly-decent road transport to generally-awful public transport. Buses, for example, suck - they're always going to be a worse experience than a car (walking 10+ minutes to the stop at each end + waiting, to be stuck in exactly the same traffic). Now if public transport had the same investment as private, it'd be a different kettle of fish. Take a look at http://carfree.com/intro_c…

Buses don't have to get stuck in the same traffic. Bogota, Columbia and more recently New York City have dedicated cross town bus lanes.

Edit: video of the Bogota bus system https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU6ImWY4IBc

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#180

Post by nitrogen » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 2:48 AM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #9

gress wrote: post #7

The post is right, and even more so for developing world cities that emerged before cars were around. However the post is also naive. Cars are usually much faster, provide much better shelter from the weather, and are much less tiring than trying to lug bags from one place to another on buses or other public transport. They also place far fewer constraints on when you can travel. Of course it's possible to structure…

Self driving electric cars that people pay for on a subscription model (rather than ownership) are the future I'd like to see. I hope it happens during my lifetime.

Subscriptions sure are convenient (and lucrative), but there's also something to be said for the certainty of an owned asset that will always be there, even if you run out of money later.