I watched a documentary about Jacque Fresco where he shows some of his futuristic cities where this is implemented. Very interesting stuff with trains. Maybe a world without car will make the segways more popular.
Let’s Build a Future Without Cars
111–120 of 146 posts
Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> commuter rail kills .09 people per 10 million passenger miles. The non-suicide number is quite a bit lower, though, by (probably) an order of magnitude. Pedestrians on the tracks in an area they aren't supposed to be, who are struck and killed by trains, are classified in the bucket category of "trespasser" fatalities. Unless they left a note or something it's usually impossible to conclusively say that they were s…
The way I'm reading table 18, of the 526 commuter-rail fatalities, at most 285 of them are suicide-by-train. As you point out, trespassing is a wide category - it includes things like highway-rail collisions. That 285 number might be high, as it also includes things like a child straying onto the tracks that was hit by a train. I'm not sure it matters. The automobile statistics seem to include various methods of suic…
> The automobile statistics seem to include various methods of suicide involving cars.
I'm not sure they include them equally, though. The most obvious way of killing yourself on train tracks is standing in front of a train, but the most obvious way of killing yourself on a road usually does not involve a car, but involves jumping from a bridge (which doesn't get counted as an automobile fatality).
> If rail inspires suicide, that's a safety problem.
I'm not too sure about that one. If there are a significant number of people who, absent trains, wouldn't kill themselves, that would be significant. But I would guess a larger proportion are just choosing a suicide modality, and if it weren't trains, it'd be jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge, taking pills, etc. It's hard to come up with any real data for that counterfactual, though. I suppose a blunt correlational approach would be to see if there's any correlation between availability of commuter rail and suicide rates, after controlling for other confounding variables. I would guess that there isn't one, but could be wrong.
Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars
#113Let's built a future with 300mph self-driving supercars and mach 20 spaceplanes -- addressing the actual desires and wants of most users (mobility, convenience) rather than imposing personal ethics of asceticism (mass transit, anti-urbanization). The author brings up a lot of valid problems with contemporary car travel (and notably none of its revolutionary advantages), but most of these orthogonal to the personal-vs…
I agree with you. One thing that I have a problem with making everyone move to public transit is my IBS. I loath driving the way it is because of that, but I can at least pull over to a McDonald's or a gas station. It would be horrific to have to hold it on even the cleanest, fastest bus. I don't even drive non-family member to a local lunch because of my problem. So I really would be a shut in if I had to go places…
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Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've done a great job of summing up one of the reasons that public transit in the US is as bad as it is. My goal is to safely get from Point A to Point B, and I don't want to spend a lot of time waiting around at Point A, or sitting and waiting on the way to Point B. We have three goals here, in order of importance. Let's call them safety, convenience, and speed. Taking a bus with a bunch of drunken hooligans doesn…
You have many of the same observations as me, but form a different conclusion. Although, one thing: you say, "My goal is to safely get from Point A to Point B..." Cars are a great way to kill 30 or 40 thousand people a year. Not very safe. And the quality of service (and riders) will surely improve on public transportation as more people use it, don't you think? Japan seems to prove that.
The quality of service will never reach the level of Japan. Transit operators have it easy there because people don't vandalize and they don't litter. This means that your maintenance costs are very low and it's more economical to buy high quality, comfortable seating.
As well, transit is only good for getting you around in the cities. Once you get out to "inaka", a car is all but a requirement, much like in North America.
This "world without cars" is a nice pipe dream, but the reality is that no matter how good your transit system, it's still a huge time sink to use it. The only time it becomes faster than a car is if you live in a dense city with poor traffic flow, and that accounts for a tiny percentage of the world population. That's also why it's only the pampered urbanites who dream of a carless world.
Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way I'm reading table 18, of the 526 commuter-rail fatalities, at most 285 of them are suicide-by-train. As you point out, trespassing is a wide category - it includes things like highway-rail collisions. That 285 number might be high, as it also includes things like a child straying onto the tracks that was hit by a train. I'm not sure it matters. The automobile statistics seem to include various methods of suic…
> The automobile statistics seem to include various methods of suicide involving cars. I'm not sure they include them equally, though. The most obvious way of killing yourself on train tracks is standing in front of a train, but the most obvious way of killing yourself on a road usually does not involve a car, but involves jumping from a bridge (which doesn't get counted as an automobile fatality). > If rail inspires…
You're just as dead if you jump from a railroad bridge, though.
http://www.fra.dot.gov/downloads/safety/tdreport_final.pdf
is a Federal Railroad Administration report that breaks down the cause of trespasser fatalities. This isn't 100% comparable to the previous report, but it does claim that 23% of trespasser fatalities are suicides.
Appendix H breaks down the reported fatalities - it looks like walking and sleeping (drunk?) on tracks each claim more lives than suicide.
One really interesting story is the massive increase in car safety. Deaths per 100M vehicle miles have dropped from 1.73 in 1994 to about 1.09 in 2010.
Fundamentally, I'm not sure any of this matters. We're talking a very small difference in safety - to the point where convenience is probably more important to most people.
Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Knowing that the median household income in the US is $44k, I am continually shocked at the amount of money spent on cars. "Slightly less than one-third of households said they had one personal vehicle1 available for use in 2001. A little more than one-third of households (40 million out of 107 million households) had 2 vehicles and slightly less than one-quarter had 3 or more vehicles available." [0] This is an unim…
I am amazed at the amount people spend no cars but again be wary of the thought that this inherent to cars. It's about culture and keeping up with the Joneses. My 15 year old 4 cylinder car costs not a lot to run and takes me everywhere. You can prise out of my cold dead hands :-)
4 cylinders isn't the norm any more? I knew I didn't stay up to date with the automotive world, but blimey.
Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars
#117Let's built a future with 300mph self-driving supercars and mach 20 spaceplanes -- addressing the actual desires and wants of most users (mobility, convenience) rather than imposing personal ethics of asceticism (mass transit, anti-urbanization). The author brings up a lot of valid problems with contemporary car travel (and notably none of its revolutionary advantages), but most of these orthogonal to the personal-vs…
I agree with you. One thing that I have a problem with making everyone move to public transit is my IBS. I loath driving the way it is because of that, but I can at least pull over to a McDonald's or a gas station. It would be horrific to have to hold it on even the cleanest, fastest bus. I don't even drive non-family member to a local lunch because of my problem. So I really would be a shut in if I had to go places…
If we're imagining clean, fast buses, I don't see why they shouldn't come equipped with toilets of at least McDonald's quality.
Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars
#118> So let’s build more bullet trains
The Earth's axial supercontent, Eurasia, is ideally suited to train transport. China has ambitious and innovative plans to build a Eurasian rail network capable of transporting people from Beijing to London in two days:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7397846...
Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars
#119One insurmountable problem I see with advancing mass transport is that people simply aren't willing to spend as much on public transport than they are cars because they believe they have an equity investment in the car. Most people I know get upset spending any more $75-100/mo on a monthly transit pass, but are willing to pay $400/mo on car expenses since they "own" the car. As a result, I don't think really good sys…
I wish I could pay $400/mo for access to a transit system with five times the operating budget of the $80/mo one I currently experience.
Re: Let’s Build a Future Without Cars
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have many of the same observations as me, but form a different conclusion. Although, one thing: you say, "My goal is to safely get from Point A to Point B..." Cars are a great way to kill 30 or 40 thousand people a year. Not very safe. And the quality of service (and riders) will surely improve on public transportation as more people use it, don't you think? Japan seems to prove that.
The quality of service will never reach the level of Japan. Transit operators have it easy there because people don't vandalize and they don't litter. This means that your maintenance costs are very low and it's more economical to buy high quality, comfortable seating. As well, transit is only good for getting you around in the cities. Once you get out to "inaka", a car is all but a requirement, much like in North Am…
> if you live in a dense city with poor traffic flow, and that accounts for a tiny percentage of the world population
That's false. Most of the world's population now lives in cities. Deciding what percentage of those fall below the threshold of "poor" traffic-flow wise is difficult, but it's not "tiny". (http://www.gizmag.com/go/7613/)
Cars beget cars. The reason people need cars in a lot of the US is because they moved somewhere that they need a car to get to. People talk about the amount of time that things take without a car forgetting that said problem was created by cars in the first place. In places where most folks don't have cars you have a small grocery store every few blocks rather than a large one every few miles. The demographics of public transit differ from society at large because the well-off drive cars.
I grew up in American suburbia and have lived in Europe for the last decade. The amount of time required to say, go shopping, or commute to work has remained broadly similar in the half-dozen areas I've lived in, though the distances have not.
Progressively moving away from cars is largely a cultural rather than technological problem. Some well-done urban planning (including structuring energy prices to favor more efficient means) and a few decades to execute it could drastically shift the balance to where we have far fewer cars.