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The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

ianvisits.co.uk

71–80 of 153 posts

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#71
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the presumption that residents walk/bike/transit far more often than drive?

That's unevenly distributed. Lots of people in London do walk or use public transport, but you still need many delivery drivers, tradespeople, etc and it doesn't make sense for them all to live outside the city. And people who don't usually drive occasionally need to use a vehicle, and then it's more stressful because you aren't used to having to know where the vehicular entrances are. It's too simplistic to just mak…

So if you make it safe and pleasant for everybody who doesn't need a truck as part of their job, then the remaining roads are available for the small minority that "must" use them.

But maybe rethink whether they "need" to and whether said vehicles must live in dense residential neighborhoods.

https://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/window-washers-...

https://www.velove.se/

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#72
post #6

> The e-scooters that clutter up pavements may seem like a new thing, but a hundred years ago, there were already people zooming around London on powered scooters. The problem is that we've given so much space to automobiles that there's no room for anything else (bikes, scooters, etc). Pedestrians have been given a sliver only because drivers need to walk between parking and their destination. This is true even in c…

> This is true even in cities where the majority of people don't even drive! I dunno... in New York City there are an awful lot of bike lanes now: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7355559,-73.9921499,13z/data... There's still room for a lot more, but plenty of space has been taken away from automobiles precisely for bikes, scooters, etc. It's trending in the right direction. Especially now that bike lanes are increasi…

Per capita that's table scraps.

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#73
post #55
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their groceries won’t make it to the stores and packages won’t get to their homes without a robust road network. A road network isn't the only solution. In the early 20th century, for example, there was a separate narrow-gauge tunnel network beneath Chicago dedicated to freight. Deliveries were made directly to businesses via subbasements or elevator shafts. The network had stations at rail and ship terminals for a…

This is neat but also seems like an insane solution to the problem of “I don’t like seeing service trucks”. How many such tunnels and elevators would it take to supply the buildings in a typical city’s downtown area? And what else could we do with that investment?

I would argue the ammount of space in cities wasted on cars and their infrastructure is totally insane.

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#74
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bikes don't stand a chance. They're inequitable. Old people, pregnant people, sick people, and children are all left out. They suck in the rain and the snow. You can't move anything of size or scale. I would invite you to come and have a look in the Netherlands. It’s very common for octogenarians to cycle. My wife cycled up to the day of the birth of our daughter. Children have more independence because they can cy…

European weather is still mild relative to the US. It will be so long as the Gulf Stream doesn't shut down. Americans are fatter and less healthy. Americans are busy and work longer and harder. ("Work hard, play hard.") Americans buy more stuff. Big stuff. Lots of stuff. Frequently. (This is actually a superpower of our consumer economy.) We have invested hundreds of trillions of dollars in our infrastructure. We mig…

> I know you Europeans love your model, but it doesn't apply to us.

lol. You're what we call "carbrained".

Explain how the climate of the coastal West coast is unsuitable for year-round bicycling. Much of it is nicer than the Netherlands and has several times the population.

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#75
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The context here is not cars but delivery trucks. The tunnels in question also did not transport pedestrians and were essentially focused on coal delivery and ash removal.

Sure, let's restrict statistics to any automobile used to transport merchandise. What do you think, ready to imagine such a comparison?

Sure. In 2022, 672 pedestrians were killed by large trucks. How many of those do you believe happened in say New York City? And how many of those do you think you could eliminate with this hypothetical tunnel system? And how much will this hypothetical tunnel system cost?

New York has about 300 pedestrian deaths total from all vehicles every year. So my guesstimate is that if you eliminated all of the trucks from New York City, you might save 50 lives a year, max. I would also guesstimate that it would probably cost well north of $50 billion to create this tunnel system to connect all of the major buildings in New York City. So we’re looking at about $1 billion per life saved. I bet you could save more than one life per billion if you put that money somewhere more useful.

> What do you think, ready to imagine such a comparison?

What are you intending to accomplish with your snarky and condescending tone?

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#76
post #74
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European weather is still mild relative to the US. It will be so long as the Gulf Stream doesn't shut down. Americans are fatter and less healthy. Americans are busy and work longer and harder. ("Work hard, play hard.") Americans buy more stuff. Big stuff. Lots of stuff. Frequently. (This is actually a superpower of our consumer economy.) We have invested hundreds of trillions of dollars in our infrastructure. We mig…

> I know you Europeans love your model, but it doesn't apply to us. lol. You're what we call "carbrained". Explain how the climate of the coastal West coast is unsuitable for year-round bicycling. Much of it is nicer than the Netherlands and has several times the population.

It’s not about the climate. Cities are just too big.

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#77
post #6

> The e-scooters that clutter up pavements may seem like a new thing, but a hundred years ago, there were already people zooming around London on powered scooters. The problem is that we've given so much space to automobiles that there's no room for anything else (bikes, scooters, etc). Pedestrians have been given a sliver only because drivers need to walk between parking and their destination. This is true even in c…

Problem isn't the cars. Stop buying uselessly oversized SUVs, and trucks in case of muricans.

A Fiat 500/Panda is perfectly fine in cities.

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#78
post #73
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is neat but also seems like an insane solution to the problem of “I don’t like seeing service trucks”. How many such tunnels and elevators would it take to supply the buildings in a typical city’s downtown area? And what else could we do with that investment?

I would argue the ammount of space in cities wasted on cars and their infrastructure is totally insane.

And again, the conversation here is about delivery trucks, not cars.

Eliminating cars doesn’t eliminate the need for infrastructure for moving goods.

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#79
post #47
post #6

> The e-scooters that clutter up pavements may seem like a new thing, but a hundred years ago, there were already people zooming around London on powered scooters. The problem is that we've given so much space to automobiles that there's no room for anything else (bikes, scooters, etc). Pedestrians have been given a sliver only because drivers need to walk between parking and their destination. This is true even in c…

Despite city dwellers hating on cars and wanting complete streets, cars are poised to win even bigger when self driving becomes widespread. Our roads and highways will metamorphose into logistics corridors and optimal public transit systems. Everything will be delivered same hour. The cost of this will drop and entire new business models will be built on top of the "direct to you" model. Self-driving cars will replac…

I don't think this is a crazy take, but it is missing two big factors that self driving maximalists often ignore.

First is the cost of driving. A reasonable rule of thumb is $0.50/mile all in (i.e. including depreciation, repairs, gas, etc) -- you can get down to half that pretty easily and maybe a little lower, but especially if you're spending tons of time in this car you're probably going to want a nice comfy one, which will cost more and depreciate faster. So, these trips you're imagining everyone taking constantly are not going to be accessible to most people. Cars are already the second biggest expense in most Americans' budgets, one which scales with mileage, and which self driving would only increase (have to pay for the lidar, on-device compute, whatever remote service handled edge cases, etc).

The second thing your predictions miss is geometry. Despite the decades of predictions about self-driving cars being able to run safely at much higher speeds and with much tighter tolerances than human-run cars, the tyranny of geometry and stopping distances (which actually won't change much even with millisecond reaction times) means that throughput of car lanes is unlikely to change much (though we could all imagine top-down infrastructural changes helping this a lot, eg coordinated self driving cars and smart roads, those seem unlikely to land anytime soon given American political inclinations). Imagine how spaced-out people are on the highway -- in each lane, 1.6 people (average car occupancy) every football field (300 feet -- safe stopping distance at 70mph). If you're trying to go anywhere more densely packed than that -- e.g., a city, a restaurant, a ball game -- you're going to start to run into capacity constraints. Mass transit, walking, and cycling all can manage an order of magnitude higher throughput.

So while I think your prediction -- that self driving cars will increase demand for road space -- is right, the valence that takes for me is much more negative. The wealthy will be able to take up way more space on the road (e.g., one car each dropping off each kid at each extra curricular activity), condemning the poor to even worse traffic (especially the poor who cannot afford a self driving vehicle, who will not even be able to play candy crush while they're waiting in this traffic). People will continue to suburbanize and atomize, demanding their governments pay for bigger and bigger roads and suburbs, despoiling more of the areas you'd like to hike in, with debt that will keep rolling over to the next generation. Bikes and peds will continue to be marginalized as the norm for how far apart people live will continue to grow, making it even more impossible and dangerous to get anywhere without a car. I hope I'm wrong but this is how mass motorization played out the first time, in the post-war period, and if anything our society is less prepared now to oppose the inequitable, race-to-the-bottom, socialize-your-externalities results of that phase of development.

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smaller trucks. Japan makes due with one-lane alleys. (Not one in each direction. One. Deliveries and vehicular traffic are so uncommon, and the tightness of the space so inconducive to speeding, that it's safe for trucks and cars to go down them in whichever direction they need to.)

Makes do not due. A common error that seems to be increasing.

Probably meant "make do", as in, able to manage with limited means available.
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