41–50 of 68 posts
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Don't forget the perverse incentives of mandated "free" parking, resulting in every pedestrian, cyclist, and transit user subsidizing everyone who parks somewhere (in addition to the horrible sprawl effects).
Exactly. Even in places that are generally enamoured with free markets, you never see this. It would be fun to see market-priced parking in places like Manhattan - what would happen?
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> Is there really any downside to banning personal cars from the city? The fact that you're stomping all over a person's right to own property and use it as they wish? Oh sure, the city will prosper as a result, but when you start making rules solely for the sake of the majority, throwing basic principles into the garbage bin, you set a precedent. A precedent where anything that's for the greater good passes muster,…
Any rational planning system would enhance public transport to mitigate the effects of curtailing widespread use of privately owned cars. However, you seem to be American so perhaps the notion of rational planning is alien to you. Certainly the use of verbiage like "stomping all over a person's right to own property and use it as they wish" would indicate that rational thought is alien to you.
Shorter, more frequent routes are possible, but making the economics work does require a ban on cars to convert drivers to paying transit riders. But most of the drivers still need cars to get to outlying areas, so they have to pay bus operations and car capital outlay. People woth modest incomes cannot afford both, so they would have to give up the car and be trapped in the denser part of the city, indeed having their personal liberties stomped on.
Autonomous taxis will rewrite the economic rules. Since they won't crash, the massive crumple zones and crush cage can be eliminated, dramatically reducing capital and operating costs. An autonomous taxi ride will likely cost less than driving your own beater.
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Nobody who lives outside of the city would ever be expected to give up their vehicle. The corollary, is, however, that this means that people need to live IN the city, and the city needs to NOT be sprawling, and have good transit networks (paths, bike lanes, p. transit)
The point is that there are always going to be people that live outside the city. Period. Banning cars from the city means anyone not living in the city simply won't visit, which for most cities will result in too few people spending money inside the city to sustain the businesses that make living in the city attractive.
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The automobile-industrial complex that destroyed public transportation in the US would never let it happen here. Maybe in other countries it's a possibility. Or maybe in the future when the major car manufacturers FINALLY go under. I support visionary tech like the HyperLoop even if only because it shows that there are some smart people who can actually see the problem and that they are thinking of ways of solving it…
There are other problems that need to be solved before public transit can fully replace automobiles. Consider groceries. I can't get two weeks of groceries for two people without a car. Wine bottles get heavy, and stacking bags on my arms risks crushing my eggs. I imagine it's even more complicated for those with larger families. It's also generally cheaper to pick up furniture with Zipcar than it is to have furnitur…
The car is a textbook case of catastrophically bad scaling. For sporadic use (errands, long trips, leisure) it's amazing. For daily commuting (60 miles per day, plus parking) it's horrible. Space-consuming, polluting, expensive (except cheap relative to, e.g., Amtrak because no one uses the latter) and unsafe when abused to the point that cars are (operated while drunk, while seriously ill, or at unreasonable speeds…
I generally agree, but would add that if someone's daily commute is 60 miles a day, regardless of how they get to work, there's something catastrophic about that as well. I don't know what to attribute it to, but for any metropolitan area where 60 miles of commuting is the norm, there are problems which go way beyond the means by which the residents get to work.
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The downside is that you will kill the city. I am not sure about larger cities, but smaller cities (i.e. 200k- people) this sure applies. Banning personal cars makes the very majority of people, who lives just outside the city, to go shopping in the large centers (read: Walmart and siblings) placed outside the city. This does not only kill all the stores in the city, but also all coffee shops and what-else that goes…
Nobody who lives outside of the city would ever be expected to give up their vehicle. The corollary, is, however, that this means that people need to live IN the city, and the city needs to NOT be sprawling, and have good transit networks (paths, bike lanes, p. transit)
This is the pattern used by traditional streetcar suburbs. See e.g. Tokyo and environs for a modern example.
Transit is generally practical because of density, but density can take many more forms than just a single dense city core.
The more general point is that development patterns and transit networks are intimately intertwined. Modern American development is often predicated on personal automobile usage, and so it's not surprising it works pretty badly when you take than away. But there are other combinations of transit and development patterns which may be much better overall.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are other problems that need to be solved before public transit can fully replace automobiles. Consider groceries. I can't get two weeks of groceries for two people without a car. Wine bottles get heavy, and stacking bags on my arms risks crushing my eggs. I imagine it's even more complicated for those with larger families. It's also generally cheaper to pick up furniture with Zipcar than it is to have furnitur…
When you live in a walkable neighborhood, you quickly realize that you don't need to get groceries for two weeks in one trip. I go to the grocery store 4-5 times per week, spending maybe 10-15 minutes max each time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The automobile-industrial complex that destroyed public transportation in the US would never let it happen here. Maybe in other countries it's a possibility. Or maybe in the future when the major car manufacturers FINALLY go under. I support visionary tech like the HyperLoop even if only because it shows that there are some smart people who can actually see the problem and that they are thinking of ways of solving it…
There are other problems that need to be solved before public transit can fully replace automobiles. Consider groceries. I can't get two weeks of groceries for two people without a car. Wine bottles get heavy, and stacking bags on my arms risks crushing my eggs. I imagine it's even more complicated for those with larger families. It's also generally cheaper to pick up furniture with Zipcar than it is to have furnitur…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any rational planning system would enhance public transport to mitigate the effects of curtailing widespread use of privately owned cars. However, you seem to be American so perhaps the notion of rational planning is alien to you. Certainly the use of verbiage like "stomping all over a person's right to own property and use it as they wish" would indicate that rational thought is alien to you.
In most towns, bus economics only allows for one hour routes and a transfer for most trips. That means two hours in motion average for a round trip, and up to two more hours waiting if your business does not line up with scheduled stops. The grandparent comment is exactly right. Shorter, more frequent routes are possible, but making the economics work does require a ban on cars to convert drivers to paying transit ri…
> Autonomous taxis will rewrite the economic rules.
You're absolutely right.
However, that technology isn't here yet and there is no guarantee that it will arrive. Mind you, most of the barriers to adoption aren't even technical, although those exist too. I prefer not to count my chickens until they hatch.
Right now, public transportation means one thing: unions. And unions, in turn, mean: strikes, price hikes, inconsistent schedules and performance, etc.
On top of that, subway and other rail systems reach relatively few places. That means buses. And buses exacerbate the above issues to an even greater extent.
The car is a textbook case of catastrophically bad scaling. For sporadic use (errands, long trips, leisure) it's amazing. For daily commuting (60 miles per day, plus parking) it's horrible. Space-consuming, polluting, expensive (except cheap relative to, e.g., Amtrak because no one uses the latter) and unsafe when abused to the point that cars are (operated while drunk, while seriously ill, or at unreasonable speeds…
For example, a peak hours train ticket on the busiest commuter train in the U.S., the Long Island Railroad, is between $8 and $17.50 each way [1]. From the more distant suburbs (1.25 hours on the train) where the housing is cheaper, it costs $35 round trip. That's enough for about 9 gallons of gas which would suffice for at least 2-3 round trips.
There are monthly tickets which save significant amounts, but then we're asking people to spend $350 a month up front which is no fun for someone whose take home pay is a little more than that per week. They prefer the small payments for a tank of gas.
If we want rail to be the choice people make, it needs to be financially easier to make that choice.
[1] http://web.mta.info/lirr/about/TicketInfo/Fares03-13.htm