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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

#41

Post by jessaustin »

btrettel wrote: post #30
_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…

Rail is faster and more comfortable than buses in my experience. The comfort is more than just less bumps in the road and less starting and stopping. Some trains even have bathrooms. The bathrooms on the (US) MARC commuter trains I've taken are considerably better than those on flights or Amtrak, for example. Buses usually have no such amenities, and when they do I'm told the bathrooms generally are disgusting.

The best part about the restroom on Greyhound is when it fills up and then every time the bus goes around a corner it sloshes over. Pretty soon there is raw sewage streaming down the aisle.

Good times!

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

#42

Post by opportune »

rayiner wrote: post #14
ars wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But you don’t really get to pick. Dense European style cities are outlawed in the US. Hell, dense European style suburbs are outlawed here. My pre-zoning code suburb has lots that are less than 3,000 square feet. It’s awesome—easy to walk and you see your neighbors all the time. But it’s completely illegal to build more neighborhoods like mine. The minimum lot size now is more than five times bigger—we have legally m…

Dense suburbs are only "outlawed" because certain places, usually at the municipality level, zone the buildings that way. You know it is also "outlawed" for most European cities to build too high vertically too right?

Also, it varies from city to city (and within cities). Although most of the 20-35 crowd probably would prefer a denser city, old people prefer owning homes with lawns, so they wouldn't even want to live in that kind of place to begin with.

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

#43

Post by natrius »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #36
rayiner wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you don’t really get to pick. Dense European style cities are outlawed in the US. Hell, dense European style suburbs are outlawed here. My pre-zoning code suburb has lots that are less than 3,000 square feet. It’s awesome—easy to walk and you see your neighbors all the time. But it’s completely illegal to build more neighborhoods like mine. The minimum lot size now is more than five times bigger—we have legally m…

Sure, it's outlawed - in your suburb. It's not a nationwide ban, though. It's not even (I presume) statewide, or even city-wide. (It may be true that there literally are no municipalities in the US with zoning codes that allow dense neighborhoods, but I would be highly surprised.)

It's outlawed in so many places because of the incentives at work. At the edges of a city, greenfield exclusive neighborhoods have a better chance of holding their value than neighborhoods that let people with less money buy homes on less land. Once an economically stratified city is in place, no one can opt out without losing money. Everyone has to opt out together, and the politics of that are the worst.

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

#44

Post by jseliger »

_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…

Why do people push for rail

Visit Japan (or these days China) and you will understand.

This reminds me of people who say, "What's the big deal about electric bikes?" Ride one and you'll know.

See what Japan and China are doing WRT rail and you'll know.

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

#45

Post by ghaff »

btrettel wrote: post #30
_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…

Rail is faster and more comfortable than buses in my experience. The comfort is more than just less bumps in the road and less starting and stopping. Some trains even have bathrooms. The bathrooms on the (US) MARC commuter trains I've taken are considerably better than those on flights or Amtrak, for example. Buses usually have no such amenities, and when they do I'm told the bathrooms generally are disgusting.

In the US, for the most part, inter-city buses (in particular) are almost exclusively transportation for those who can't afford anything else. People lining up for a Megabus in NYC without any sort of covered waiting area aren't there because they prefer it to Amtrak or flying. And the Port Authority may not be the worst bus terminal on the planet but it's pretty awful.

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

#46

Post by Balero »

_m8fo wrote: post #28
Johnny555 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends how many people you need to move and how often you need to move them. Rail has a high capital cost, but lower operating cost due to the fact that a single engineer (and maybe a conductor) can run a 2000 passenger train while a bus driver carries 50 - 100 people so you only need about 1/20th the number of operators. Another drawback of buses on the road is that unless they have dedicated lanes, they are s…

These are excellent points, but I reckon boring tunnels, dedicated lanes and self driving can mitigate the disadvantages you mention.

> Boring tunnles

>> high capital cost

Apart from this one?

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

#47

Post by innocenat »

_m8fo wrote: post #28
Johnny555 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends how many people you need to move and how often you need to move them. Rail has a high capital cost, but lower operating cost due to the fact that a single engineer (and maybe a conductor) can run a 2000 passenger train while a bus driver carries 50 - 100 people so you only need about 1/20th the number of operators. Another drawback of buses on the road is that unless they have dedicated lanes, they are s…

These are excellent points, but I reckon boring tunnels, dedicated lanes and self driving can mitigate the disadvantages you mention.

Steel-on-Steel rail are generally also most energy efficient compared to rubber-tyred vehicle.

And IIRC, one of the most expensive part of rail building is the dedicated right of way, so if you are also doing that for self driving vehicle then might as well as go for rail (if there's demand, that is)

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

#48

Post by rootusrootus »

rayiner wrote: post #14
ars wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But you don’t really get to pick. Dense European style cities are outlawed in the US. Hell, dense European style suburbs are outlawed here. My pre-zoning code suburb has lots that are less than 3,000 square feet. It’s awesome—easy to walk and you see your neighbors all the time. But it’s completely illegal to build more neighborhoods like mine. The minimum lot size now is more than five times bigger—we have legally m…

That is very dependent on where you are at. We have suburbs around here with lot sizes of 2178 sf (for houses of ~1800 sf).

I don't really agree that developers are particularly responsive to the market in this regard, either. Or rather, they make quite a lot more profit from two 6K lot houses than they do from a more expensive house on a 12K lot. Builders always, always want to go for smaller lots unless they're selling super-premium houses of at least $1M (for context, the average house price here is probably right around $350-400K right now).

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

#49

Post by _m8fo »

btrettel wrote: post #30
_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…

Rail is faster and more comfortable than buses in my experience. The comfort is more than just less bumps in the road and less starting and stopping. Some trains even have bathrooms. The bathrooms on the (US) MARC commuter trains I've taken are considerably better than those on flights or Amtrak, for example. Buses usually have no such amenities, and when they do I'm told the bathrooms generally are disgusting.

I can relate to this. One has to wonder how much of this is inherent to buses as a transportation mode vs the fact that it's normally the cheap option.

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

#50

Post by davidw »

influx wrote: post #10
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.

The USA is so big and diverse it's silly to say that the it doesn't have any "real cities". I suspect New York City, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Portland and others would be proof otherwise.

NY, Boston, kind of. Portland... a little bit, downtown, and starting, a little bit to be that way in some areas.

With the Supreme Court's Euclid decision in 1916, we've had zoning that has only gotten worse and worse since then, so most things built in the years following that have deviated from that sort of walkable, incremental city that we used to have here too.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburb...

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