Cars Kill Cities • Hacker News Board

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#221

Post by robomartin » Thu, Dec 12, 2013, 6:23 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #211

robomartin wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's kWh. EE, so I get it. Don't know where you live but "a few hundred Watts" would only power my computers. I keep a couple of deep cycle 12V batteries fully charged in the garage. We typically use them as power sources for chargin LiPo's for electric model aircraft at the field or to power the glider launch winch. A nice side effect is that the are available for emergency power if ever needed. I still have…

The refrigerator seems like the only real substantial load. I looked that up, and while it'll draw over 1kW when starting, the continuous load is something like 200W for a modern one. Nothing else is in my house is going to approach that. I'm not going to be running desktop computers during an extended outage, and laptops will add a negligible impact. In colder weather I'd want enough power to run the gas furnace, wh…

Hence the propane generator.

:)

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#222

Post by grayarea » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 10:36 AM UTC

booyaa00 wrote: post #110

jseliger wrote: post #34

If you're interested in this topic, Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking and Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City are both worth reading. The former explains how "free" parking isn't really free and how it distorts a lot of behavior, and the latter is about what cities are good for and how to build healthy cities in general. Personally, I wonder why people would want to own a car if they can avoid it: htt…

Lots of people don't want to live in a city. For me, living in a city is a horrible existence. So living in the unspoilt countryside a car is pretty useful to get around. A car is freedom. Do you really want to be completely dependent and beholden to some public transport system?

> Do you really want to be completely dependent and beholden > to some public transport system?

With a car you are dependent and beholden to a public transport system. They are called roads and highways.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#223

Post by dded » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 8:00 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #190

dionidium wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody knows this is true, of course. I live three miles from work. To get here this morning I could have walked 3 blocks to the light rail station near my apartment, then another 4 or so blocks from the destination station to my office. This is pretty convenient, especially in St. Louis, where the vast, vast majority of residents don't have options nearly that good. But I didn't do it. It was 16F degrees when I l…

Put on some proper clothing and take your bike?

Perhaps you're being facetious, but on the off change that you're just not familiar with 16F (-9C), understand that that's cold. I'm a runner, but I don't go out if it's below 20F--I can't take it no matter what I wear. And a given temperature feels much colder on a bike.

Of course, if it's 16F, there's likely some ice and snow about, and riding a bicycle is treacherous in that. And St. Louis is on the eastern edge of the central time zone, so it'll be pitch dark out when he gets off work, also treacherous given traffic.