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Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

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Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#241

Post by TulliusCicero »

ars wrote: post #6
xversilov wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard for a non-American to appreciate just how different their urban environments are compared to the US, and vice versa. It was certainly a shock to me when I first arrived to the USA... "Why is everything so far away? Why does every building have a bunch of empty space around it? (i.e. mandated setbacks)" etc. The lack of real cities is probably my least favorite thing about the USA.

And it's one of my favorite things about the USA. I hate dense European style cities. Different people like different things. The nice thing about the USA is you can pick. You can live anywhere from a remote farm to a dense apartment.

Simply false. There are virtually no European-style cities in the US. If you think otherwise, maybe it's because you haven't actually lived in Europe? I live in Munich right now, and I've lived in several regions of the US, visited lots of places too, and can't think of any city that felt very much like Munich does, or even German cities as a whole for that matter. Perhaps you could enlighten me.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#242

Post by TulliusCicero »

mjn wrote: post #109
jonathanyc wrote: post #86

I think this is an awful situation, but at what point do we call seniors’ desires unreasonable? Is their want to stay in their suburban homes which are designed for cars really something the state should be concerned about when the working poor struggle to afford the subway?[1] I think we should make relocation easy for the elderly who aren’t able to get around. I think it is terrible if they can’t move from their ho…

Imo some level of service even in areas not all that favorable to transit is reasonable. Or at least, I think it's possible to do at least slightly better. I now live in a fairly rural part of the UK, a remote region (Cornwall) that has no real urban areas. And yet just about every population concentration of over 1000 people or so, here, has a bus that does at least one round-trip a day. Towns of over 20,000 people…

The demographic we're talking about is the exact same one that hates transit and will refuse to fund it.

It's not unlike the rural areas in the US that are heavily dependent on government subsidies that they vote against.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#243

Post by emj »

dundercoder wrote: post #188
poulsbohemian wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you dundercoder for sharing your experiences, would be very interested in the adaptations you made to your working environment as your eyesight failed. It also got me thinking about my own locale, and I would agree with volkl48. I live in Walla Walla, WA now, which has three colleges and a very walkable downtown. Sounds like you have kids, and we have reasonable public schools. It's a 45 minute flight to Seattl…

I still have some central vision, maybe 20 degrees field of view, so I can still see my laptop screen ok. I had to ditch my two 27” monitors because I’d get vertigo looking between them (usually hunting for the mouse pointer) I crank up the text size so large my neighbors can read it, but not so big that it exceeds my visual field. I use a screen reader to read docs. I’m super excited about the new AI powered narrato…

I really recommend Braille, even if you are not blind. You might be underestimating the time it takes to learn though Chinese is easy.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#244

Post by TulliusCicero »

rimliu wrote: post #229
SirZimzim wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't help that drivers act incredibly entitled to the road and view pedestrians and bicycles as obstacles.

Otoh, drivets are also the ones taking the traffic regulations most seriously. Pedestrians are inclined to jaywalk, and that’s pretty much it, but don’t get me started on bicycles…

Pedestrians and cyclists generally don't present a serious safety hazard to others.

This is like complaining that people treat guns and knives with different levels of seriousness. Of course they do; both are potentially deadly, but one far more so than the other.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#245

Post by TulliusCicero »

avs733 wrote: post #130
virmundi wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why give up your license? It's a great ID. You don't have to use it. I know plenty of people with licenses to carry concealed, but don't. To you point about car dependence, not using one is humiliating, at least for me. I live about .25 miles from my office. I walk daily to and from (twice). I feel, and have seen, people look at me like I'm poor. It is a foreign concept to many that walking or bikin…

I, and several of my friends when I used to live in Phoenix, were big walkers. Its evening? go for a walk around the neighborhood. Walk to work, even though it was like 1.5 miles...just...walk. Each of us were stopped at least once by police for being suspicious...near as I can tell (we were all >middle class white people) all that was suspicious was us walking on sidewalks. Outside of the biggest cities America is a…

Even in big cities American urban design tends to strongly favor cars and ignore pedestrians. Here in Germany, any decent sized intersection will have pedestrian islands, often multiple islands just for a single side. In the states, these are relatively uncommon.

Or look at where the stoplights are. In Germany, they're set back such that it's impossible for a driver to go into the crosswalk and still see the light. This naturally encourages drivers to respect the crosswalk. Not so in the US, unfortunately.

I could go on and on, but really almost all American streets are hostile to anything that's not a car.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#246

Post by twobyfour »

sevensor wrote: post #67

My 96-year-old grandmother has macular degeneration in her eyes and neuropathy reducing sensation in her feet. She can neither see the road very well nor feel the pedals accurately. The state of Florida just renewed her license for six more years. I'd say it's irresponsible of her to keep up the license, except she has no options. The town she's in recently made it illegal for residents of her park to drive their ele…

When my grandmother became too old to drive safely, we sold her car and had her use the proceeds for cabs to where she needed to go. When that ran out, her kids and grandkids covered the cab fare. It wasn't all that much more expensive than the car itself. I can imagine it being a hardship, though, for those with less means.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#247

Post by twobyfour »

_m8fo wrote: post #8

I always get an inkling that buses (like Bolt/Mega/PeterPan) + the existing highway + roads are superior and more scalable than any other type of transportation, dollar for dollar. Why do people push for rail? Self-driving cars obviously can enhance this (the bus idea), but I suspect they will create even more traffic if we insist on having 5 passenger cars be 75% empty. Buses are great because demand can be realloca…

Because rail never has to sit in traffic.

Also, someone did a calculation that for buses to carry the same volume of passengers and NYC's L train alone when it's shut down for repairs, you would need to run them essentially bumper to bumper during rush hour.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#248

Post by defo_nonconvex »

virmundi wrote: post #134
behringer wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believing it is what got us here in the first place.

Belief boosted community. Black churches, unified by a belief in the intrinsic value of humanity, got people to vote, to march, and to change. Whites, Asians, and others, unified by a common core belief pushed against the violence and racism of their day to improve the lots of their fellow man. At the forefront was not a scientist, not a technocrat, but a preacher, surrounded by preachers. At its zenith, as with all…

There are quite a few countries with much lower rates of religious affiliation than the US, and decent societal values. NZ, Aus, Nordics, Swiss, Germany etc. And even if they have non-trivial rates of religious belief, its not the kind of fundamentalist and extractive religion that grips the US. If anything, the decoupling of religion from official institutions in the US has given it free reign to accumulate ever more soft power and wealth.

Those countries usually have "stronger" Governments too, with stronger social safety nets, and healthcare systems that don't try to shaft you for $40k when giving birth.

More to the point, someone should visualise the relationship between rates of religiosity and quality of public transportation, across a range of geographic areas. I can imagine the general trend, though there may be some outliers like Poland and Italy.

Content aside, this text sounds like a street-preacher in Battlestar Galactica or The Expanse.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#249

Post by ComputerGuru »

mysterypie wrote: post #181
Cd00d wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's extreme. I have a car in NYC. The subway system here is amazing, while also being an embarrassment. But, the car provides the freedom to visit friends and family for a day or weekend. The cost is $200 per month parking and $150 per month insurance, plus the cost of the car, which is relatively low as we drive less than 500 miles per month. We can visit family in 45 minutes or 2 hours (depending on destination)…

The flexibility of having a car is undeniable. However, pretty much everyone--including the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Reports, and the American Automobile Association--agrees that the total cost of ownership runs to US$8000-$9000 per year for the average person. The cost might be a lot lower for you, but most people are paying a lot of money for having a car at their disposal without realizing how muc…

The average person must be - forgive me - an idiot to spend that much in amortized yearly TCO on a car on the average person’s salary, then.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#250

Post by sethammons »

watwut wrote: post #221
TrickyRick wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called housewives, a concept abandoned by most of the modern world.

And for good reasons.

Good reasons such as? I think the rise of the dual income household is a major contributor to many problems. This is not to say that woman in the workplace is bad, I think a diverse workforce is a good thing. But the dual income family has lessened parent-child interaction and raised the average household income which I think raises general prices for just about everything, but especially housing. This makes it harder to get by as a single parent (which tends to affect woman more than men). And the increased cost of housing is a major problem and contributor to poverty and all the issues that brings.

It might have been better if the addition of woman to the workplace included an equal shift of men to a househusband role.

PS I like your username.

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