The automobile is an unintended evil
Not at all related, I just find it interesting Henry Ford was a raving antisemite that lamented the loss of the beautiful countryside prior to the mass use of the automobile... but I think an interesting introduction to the evil that is in large part due to his practices and creation- the mass use of the automobile.
Road rage is a thing. It is a very situational feeling of rage due to the perceived (and often reality of) poor driving of fellow drivers on the road.
Car crashes kill, maim, and injure millions a year whether from hitting other cars or pedestrians being hit.
Insurance, shady sales practices, shady mechanics, the replacement of parts over time. It is one of the biggest money sucks.
Pollution.
Protecting property (car thefts/breakins, etc.).
Taxes related to cars and spending on infrastructure related to cars
Regulations and bureaucracy (even if necessary) related to cars..
Close calls, crashes, damage incurred from bad weather conditions.
Traffic
Parking
Noise pollution
All the law enforcement / governmental aspects
The political and environmental politics and damage caused by extracting, warehousing, transporting, refining, and purchasing of crude oil, gasoline, and diesel.
The vast use of space used for roads, gas stations, parking lots, and other car related phenomena.
The banking financial aspect
Imagine if more money was put into mass transit. Bullet trains, underground subways. Imagine if every city had worked out a way to transport people where anyone living in a metro area was never more than five minutes away from a stop for mass transit. Imagine a world where there were so many various train routes going from city hub to city hub, there wouldn't even be a need for highways. Imagine if one's personal or commercial goods were moved from various tram-like / light rails along with cable cars that could be connected right to a drive way to a residence. Or, if we had anything interesting, we could use robotic pickups and dropoff of large materials to the locations of our choice. Imagine a world where automobiles were rare, and mainly used in rural areas that were extremely remote or for emergency purposes only.
Road rage is a thing. It is a very situational feeling of rage due to the perceived (and often reality of) poor driving of fellow drivers on the road.
Car crashes kill, maim, and injure millions a year whether from hitting other cars or pedestrians being hit.
Insurance, shady sales practices, shady mechanics, the replacement of parts over time. It is one of the biggest money sucks.
Pollution.
Protecting property (car thefts/breakins, etc.).
Taxes related to cars and spending on infrastructure related to cars
Regulations and bureaucracy (even if necessary) related to cars..
Close calls, crashes, damage incurred from bad weather conditions.
Traffic
Parking
Noise pollution
All the law enforcement / governmental aspects
The political and environmental politics and damage caused by extracting, warehousing, transporting, refining, and purchasing of crude oil, gasoline, and diesel.
The vast use of space used for roads, gas stations, parking lots, and other car related phenomena.
The banking financial aspect
Imagine if more money was put into mass transit. Bullet trains, underground subways. Imagine if every city had worked out a way to transport people where anyone living in a metro area was never more than five minutes away from a stop for mass transit. Imagine a world where there were so many various train routes going from city hub to city hub, there wouldn't even be a need for highways. Imagine if one's personal or commercial goods were moved from various tram-like / light rails along with cable cars that could be connected right to a drive way to a residence. Or, if we had anything interesting, we could use robotic pickups and dropoff of large materials to the locations of our choice. Imagine a world where automobiles were rare, and mainly used in rural areas that were extremely remote or for emergency purposes only.
Comments (158)
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not rare. That isn't the word you want. I believe you mean government-approved uses.
In any case, you can't solve the problem of automobiles without first addressing the allocation of resources where no one gets insanely wealthy while others work for minimum wage.
Care to elaborate?
Ah got it. Yes, loans for all. Cars for all. Shit for all.
There were societies where loans are unheard of, let alone mortgage loans. Guess what? They built their own homes and did not buy a vehicle and used the public transportation instead. Look up Asian countries in the long ago past.
:up: But the question is then, what are we to do now?
It's too big to fail. The whole world from small town to largest city, from oil rigs to gas stations. From car dealerships and banks to local mechanic. No way.
I like this topic. I've gone back and forth with car, no car a number of times. I prefer no car by far. It's easy for a student in some cases. I remember at college orientation someone mentioned to consider not having a car for various reasons if it would work for our situation and from that I think I got in the habit of thinking about it.
You're right about autos being a waste of money.
For me it's a headache to avoid if at all possible but for most people there isn't a choice. I used to bike a couple thousand miles a year. Short trips...nothing to wear the joints out but saved a lot of car expense. Probably a little old for that now but I keep a bicycle around.
https://medium.com/modern-city/how-the-united-states-ended-up-with-no-high-speed-rail-476c6209ce16
@BC might have some ideas here.
Nothing like that anywhere near me.
I'm in a situation were thinking and planning and stocking supplies makes a big difference. Mostly I have my own resources and some limited public transit. And I don't commute. Working near home is huge in the whole picture. I do find ways to travel but don't like long trips over a few hours any more.
And don't forget the need for all trucks related to things for construction.. Moving materials for housing, concrete, gravel, lumber, etc. The only thing I can think of is a sci-fi scenario where it was all done by some sort of small cable car rail transportation system that could go into small sites, etc.
It would take the will and fortitude that no government really has the capacity for.
There is a false sense that cars are part of the free market economy. Not so really. Government is intricately involved in the linking aspects of the automobile industry. Companies would lose trillions if phased out to anything that made a difference. Of course, it would simply shift into public transportation/rail construction, which of course can also be done by private companies.. but that would be a market that is not around yet. No one can crack the automobile/oil stranglehold, as it is part-and-parcel of the modern economy since the early 1900s. It is entrenched fully and inextricably. It would literally be a social revolution if everything was interconnected through various high speed rails with little use of the personal automobile.
I'll never forget a train trip I took from London to Wales in 1985. Meadow after meadow, trees here and there, a few cattle - idyllic with no human in sight. Then, all of a sudden, a huge apartment building crammed with people, squeezed together like sardines. Walled off in the midst of nature. No cars in sight.
It's a question of cramming people together. Some like it hot.
Well said. Yep, the car and the world we have created to facilitate our dependence on it is pretty dreadful. I've long disliked cars and our addiction to them. I have often lived without one and recently got rid of another one. Now I am a public transport commuter again. PT in my city is reasonably good. It's a shame suburbs and outer regions are often designed with an assumption that everyone will need a car. I made a decision a few years ago that I would never live anywhere where I couldn't walk easily to amenities and shops.
If we were rational, mass transit would be a thing in the US.
Another stat: cars/vans account for about 50% of transportation emissions. Transportation as a whole makes up about 30% of carbon emissions in the United States the largest of any sector.
I'm carless at the moment but do grocery shopping on a local bus service. One of the hardest things is hauling bags on a bus. I need about 4 pounds of food a day so a two week supply is about 60 pounds which I pack in my own heavy duty bags to get home. It's doable for me but really clumsy at times. Some buses restrict the amount so you may have a one or two bag limit. Going more often takes too much time.
It's a little hard but in my situation I'd rather do it than have big car expenses. And I enjoy riding and hate driving myself.
I think I was trying to make you feel guilty for having two cars. Not really, just people decide on their own circumstances.
Yeah, I mean, as I said I get that cars aren't going any time soon. It would take a change in how we allocate money. Who do you think contracts and pays for the building and maintaining of roads? Local, county, state, and federal governments. That's who. So if you are telling me it's "practically impossible" for your "remote" location to be catered to.. guarantee there is a paid-for-by-government road leading to your small, tranquil hamlet "remote" location. That small route can easily be re-allocated to a light rail. Simply put, all money that is supposed to go to more roads simply goes to rail.
Many cities used to have built-in cable cars / tram cars and these were torn out because "people liked the convenience of cars". Don't get me wrong, I hate being around crowds, and being in the presence of my fellow man, crammed in a railway during a rush hour is one level of hell.. But that too can be alleviated by reallocation of resources to more number of trains per route.
When me and all my friends were around legal age to drive, one of them got a car he inherited from his granny (hence, the grannymobile). An ancient English Wolseley, you dont even see them any more. Walnut dashboard. But I remember him saying, having a car was just the greatest sense of freedom, having had to rely on hitch-hiking or trains or parents.
Yeah, and apparently in last weeks deep freeze in Chicago, Teslas became almost impossible to keep running, apparently they react very badly to extremely low temperatures.
Well you don't have to feel too bad with your gas car purchase. This is where I must give the obligatory response to electric cars: "The cobalt and other parts bring with it other problems, along with the disposal of the electrical components".
The old English cars.. Rolls Royce being the standard. Jaguars etc.
Ha, there are a lot one can choose from. I'll allow it :razz:.
Before I was driving age my friend's mom would drive a bunch of us around in an old paneled station wagon we called the war wagon. Loved that car... don't remember the make and model but it was big and a nice ride. My friend got it when he got his license and it lasted a long time.
Probably off topic.
More analysis of the situation.
@Wayfarer
Fair enough, LOL. They are my favourite, as will be obvious.
I've yet to drive one, though.
The machine of a dream
Such a clean machine
With the pistons a pumpin'
And the hubcaps all gleam
When I'm holding your wheel
All I hear is your gear
With my hand on your grease gun
Ooh, it's like a disease, son
I'm in love with my car
Got a feel for my automobile
Get a grip on my boy-racer Rollbar
Such a thrill when your radials squeal
Told my girl I'd have to forget her
Rather buy me a new carburetor
So, she made tracks, saying
"This is the end now"
"Cars don't talk back"
"They're just four-wheeled friends, now"
When I'm holding your wheel
All I hear is your gear
When I'm cruisin' in overdrive
Don't have to listen
To no run-of-the-mill talk jive
I'm in love with my car
(In love with my car, in love with my car)
Got a feel for my automobile
I'm in love with my car
(In love with my car, in love with my car)
String back gloves in my automo-love
You have a very vivid imagination. :grin:
Most of these things are very difficult to do, if not impossible.
Working from home reduces the use of automobiles. Having delivery services from businesses (e.g. supermarkets) would also reduce the use of automobiles. But I don't think that you can eliminate the use of automobiles completely. Like most things in life automobiles have their good points and their bad points.
The good points are known. They make things flexible. How much of the car industry and ancillary industries insulated itself from any substantial change to industry?
Most "established" industries and companies do this. If staying the same gives maximum profit then there is not much motivation to change. If this is what the shareholders want then then a company has an obligation to comply.
Are you aware of what you are saying here? Where do you live?
Very succinct, well-thought out, written, and agreeable, with the exception of this line.
Roads always existed. Either trails for walking or leading livestock comfortably, cobblestones for carriages or other wheeled mediums, etc. Gas stations = watering holes or small shops for feed. Parking lots = stables/inns one could accommodate their horse in reasonable warmth and comfort. Though, granted one would just tie up a horse to a tree and nap nearby. The sound of a horse being spooked would often awaken the traveler in the event of danger. I suppose by "other car related phenomena" you mean things like auto repair/supply shops/amateur race tracks and perhaps now EV stations? :chin:
Mass transit is nice but before there were buses they were trains. And before that caravans of buggies. Granted much more limited as far as precision or specificity as to being in the immediate vicinity of where one wished to ultimately arrive.
Also the "gas" part of the gas station actually takes up on average perhaps half or little more than half of the space the store utilizes for general parking/navigation and mainly, general commerce of goods. Safe, populated places where one would wish to store their horse or buggy took up much of the same space as well.
Cars remove the animal cruelty/burden aspect from human travel which can be equated to human existence. No man is an island. No settlement is its own universe.
I guess think of parking lots in cities. Lot of space for that. Perhaps the situation was the same for horse and buggy. More trains might need space unless its a subway. Trying to cover bases as to the externalities. Some are more impactful than others. But many roads did not take this amount of asphalt and concrete as ones used for automobiles. Its no doubt more roads and material are needed to support the tons of steel.
Id not be advocating horse again but public transit in the form of some kind of train system or cable cars.
Imagine this for almost any technology. Disbelief. A car or airplane to someone in 1789 might have seemed comically removed from reality, no? But please go on that trains to and from rural areas or at least, outer suburbs to grocery stores and cities- THIS is the one that is the most unbelievable and can never even be conceived in principle.
This is true.
Mass transit is the base idea of any new system, but, there is then a combination of Minority Report style vehicles or pods that travel the AI rail system, removing the inefficiency of fossil fuels and 'I'm my own fighter pilot' errors.
With such a system a rich man can buy a fancy autopod and anyone can summon one for a small fee, including children who need to get to school. Drunks and such, no problem. Everything is auto-drive.
Then these self same pods can go off-rail with more extensive AI or even manually piloted. Such a system includes all these solutions integrated into one system.
Wealthy people or smart ones could even 'lease out' or timeshare their vehicles and then almost anyone could 'lease/buy' on the basis of allowing their vehicle to be shared (already a thing, obviously).
I'm not really a fan of Capitalism, but it's clear than any transition to other economic styles would require an extended timeframe. So all of these measures have to be applied in part. Best to get started now.
For the right scenarios where traffic is high and fixed point to point, larger pods would be train or bus like. The whole solution would scale in every way.
Really the protocols and AI levels need to be standardized and that should be something already begun. Leaving the market too 'free' will defeat many of the efficiencies gained.
The automobile is a part of the capitalist society based on the technology and free market. Without them, the society will stop functioning smoothly. There will be economic collapse and many inconveniences in daily life for the society members without the automobiles.
It has many negative aspects as the OP listed, but then is there anything which are 100% positive and problem free under the scrutiny?
A.I. is already in place of some sectors of the current life - business, medical care, military device, education, art, literature and even in philosophy. It definitely offers more efficiency and speed of the operation and transactions in whatever walk of task they are working on than the conventional way of doing the business. However, there will be many uncertainties in aspect of human life in terms of mental wellbeing, economic insecurities and falling general intelligence. Can anyone stop the current trends of the progressing technologies, and turn the time back to the ancient times? Highly unlikely.
The point is that it is not just The automobiles, which have been negatively affecting human life. All technological advances in the capitalistic society impact human life enormously some in positive, and mostly in negative ways.
Some corners of Europe are already a bit like that, though you can still own a car anyway. Amsterdam comes to mind. If I recall correctly, in some areas they have bikes and trams, but no cars.
Prague's public transport system is mindblowingly good.
Yep, add it to the (growing) list. Do not take it as "exhaust"ive (pun intended).
Yes, Europe definitely has a better transportation system due to the population density, smaller areas/ closer cities, smaller space for automobiles, preservation of the character of older areas, more emphasis on public works, and generally favorable green policies, when compared to the US federal spending (though this is also more dependent on state governments. California might be more "green", it also has a negative migration rate due to various overregulations amongst other things. Los Angeles is too spread out for trains to be a real option. San Francisco has a better system.. NYC, DC, and Boston tend to be better because of built-in public transit from an earlier time).
I'm trying. Hard to imagine a train track running down the road in front of my house. Would it stop at every house? Or make a reservation and the train will stop at your house.
This sounds so much better than having my car available anytime, and easily drivable to the Walmart about three miles away. Much better to wait for the neighborhood train.
The best situation I've come across is a college campus type situation where most things are in walking distance and need for transportation is low. But that's a very narrow age group and most jobs are going to require travel, probably by car. And if you like more variety or travel or need a hospital or your friends move away or like to move a lot you're locked into the car. The old European cities sound good too.
JD Powers is saying the quality of cars is going down. Mostly early failure of new technologies.
NB: I am aware we can do it in 6-ish hours. Restricting comment to the use of cars.
I've done some road trips. For me they were just the opposite of a vacation. High stress, high worry, high risk. The destination has to be worth it for me and that seems to be less worth it than it used to be.
I do transit and flying but don't like flying either.
Yes, yes, you're young. I've been there, done that. Seems like I go through phases...maybe I'll get back to it.
Some (many) European cities. It is hard to generalise even countries. Portugal goes from complete public transport to no transport besides one bus route every hour.
I'm guessing more than half, but things change all the time.
How many of the troubles can be put on the tragedy of the commons?
Ford started paying his workers 62¢ an hour ($5 a day) in 1914. At the time the average factory pay was around 22¢ per hour. This solved two problems. It reduced turnover in the workforce, and it enabled workers to buy a Model T, which in 1914 sold for around $500. Ten years later, the price had dropped to around $260.
I am not sure whether workers saved up for a car, bought it on time, or borrowed the money, My guess is more the former and less the latter.
Some certainly did save up for it. But we're talking about the mass produced cars whose buyers didn't have the time to save up. 1919 was the first time auto loan was available to the general public.
There are now 1.2 BILLION cars on the world's road with 2 BILLION expected by 2035. Most of these cars are now internal combustion powered. In 2035 a larger share will be electric -- but not all of them by any means.
Quoting L'éléphant
Thanks for that. I didn't know when car loans began.
Think. Usain Bolt could run at 27+ miles per hour.
It has nothing to do with virtue that at 77 I have not driven a car. Poor vision has kept me out of the driver's seat and kept everyone else safer. I have always depended on either someone with a car or public transit, and I can testify to the truth that it is more or less difficult to live without a car in the United States. Less difficult IF you live along transit corridors in dense urban settings. More, and much more difficult if you live in a transit starved suburb, exurb, or rural area.
Just for example, I live 3 miles from the University of Minnesota where I have worked and where I get medical and dental care. It takes me about 50 minutes to travel that distance on a bus (with good connections). It takes about an hour to walk. It takes about 20 minutes to bike. 50 minutes is too long for the distance, but there are no direct busses to the U from where I live. If a bus is missed, automatically add 12 to 30 minutes to the time.
Minneapolis supposedly has good transit -- maybe, but compared to whom? Certainly not New York, Chicago, or Boston. Better than Boise? Better than Biloxi? Better than Baton Rouge? Almost certainly.
The Metropolitan Council (an authority created by the State of MN) runs Transit, Water, and Waste Water Treatment systems, among other things, They have also built two light rail lines of about 20 miles total. Just as good (If not better) and cheaper are the Bus Rapid Transit lines the Met Council built. A third leg of light rail running out to a western suburb has cost 2.75 BILLION so far, and they have been working on it for years.
Light Rail is about as cheap as rail systems in an urban setting can get. Tunneling is extremely high cost. Maybe elevated trains, like Chicago uses, would be cheaper than tunnels, but people hate the idea. But then a lot of people also hate buses.
Interurban trains, running from urban hub to urban hub, used to cover much of the United States. I think we have a very romantic notion of what much of that train service was like. Long distance trains in the 1950s and early 1960s reached a high standard, then they went broke. Most train service was just not splendid. Schedules could be inconvenient, waiting rooms could be dreary, train cars could be too hot, too cold, not very clean, and uncomfortable in several different ways. Riding first class was certainly better, but it might not have been quite as fine as Hollywood made it seem.
Interurban trains were not especially fast -- certainly nothing resembling bullet trains. They chugged along, maybe 70 or 80 mph. But one could get almost anywhere, and one could ship a load of coal or sofas almost anywhere. Many small towns, like <2000, had at least freight train service. Lumber, coal, and oil was delivered to towns that way -- not by truck. Back in the day (say, up to the 1960s).
IF, and it is a VERY BIG IF, we had spent as much money on rail transit and urban transit as we did on highways, we would have a gold-plated system that would be the envy of the solar system.
Outward-directed growth of cities at a relative low density was underway by the time cars became a feature. The US had room; a LOT of acreage and long distances. The compact manner of growth practiced in Emgland wasn't necessary here, and wasn't obviously beneficial. By the time the downsides of highly dispersed growth became manifest, it was too late to do much about it.
Another factor here is racial policy. The US practiced segregation early on. After the Civil War, it was practically mandated, if not legislatively ordained. A series of events -- WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII resulted in the American urban scene being crowded and at least some what dilapidated. New Deal Legislation, which played out in full during the Post-WWII Boom, built large swaths of new suburban communities for (more or less) middle class white people. Large tracts of urban land (neighborhoods) were written off as black slums. Downtown cores gradually emptied out -- so that by the 1990s, say, there was not as much "there" there as there used to be. Covid nailed the coffin lid shut.
Highways were built to, within, and between suburbs; highways were built between urban hubs; highways were rammed through cities; highways were built coast to coast. "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." The kernel of Ford's and GM's drive to create new markets where no market had previously existed, reached its fulfillment during the completion of the Interstate Highway system in the 1970s.
It took time for "the automobile market" to fully transform the American society, the American economy, the American landscape, American demographics--about 60 years, 1914 to 1974, to pick a year. Did Ford and GM plan all that out? No. In general, capitalists are short-sighted. They want to see yesterday's investment pay off tomorrow. That may take a year, 5 years, 10 years, or maybe 20 at the extreme. As goals are met, as the market reaches its goals, new goals are set -- ever towards growth, new markets, new products, new transformations--whether The People jolly well like it or not. But plenty of money will be spent on getting them to like it.
It took more than Fordism to get the automobile mega ball rolling. There had to be oil, grease, and gasoline; iron ore, coal / coke, and steel producers; rubber plantations, rubber shipping, and rubber manufacture; limestone, coal, cement, and concrete--all in huge abundance. The stock market and government ran in tandem, investing and spending.
Imagine all the unintended evils that would accompany such a thing. :razz:
...I don't find much rigorous argumentation in the OP. It looks like a quick attempt to think up as many problems with cars as you can, and this is then followed by a quick plug for mass transit, John Lennon-style. Most of it has nothing specifically to do with cars. Pollution? The trains you are so fond of once ran on fossil fuels, and the cars you dislike now run on electricity (and there are all sorts of problems with electric vehicles too). Taxes, banking, security, etc.? They apply to everything, not just cars. It is unprincipled to apply most of these things to cars and to nothing else. The other problem is that I see no attempt to understand the impact of cars as a whole, namely by juxtaposing the cons with the pros.
The problem with such technologies, in my opinion, is mass transit. Mass transit, whether in the form of cars or trains or airplanes, will cause the problems you are concerned with. So should we reduce the need for mass transit? Perhaps, depending on the costs associated with such a move. But this would lead to a more communal form of living, with less travel, globalization, etc.
And I think the big elephant in the room is autonomy and subsidiarity. You have conceived of mobility as tied inextricably to the State within a centralized, top-down system.
In the city, where food magically appears in the grocery store. :smile:
Quoting Leontiskos
Indeed!
Effortlessness requires a lot of infrastructure, especially if it involves retrofitting.
In the 1970s a mechanical engineering professor at the U of Minnesota proposed a network of 1 or 2 person small automated vehicles moving on very light rails throughout the city. It would pick you up at your door, or maybe the street corner, and deliver you anywhere else in the city. It was, in a number of ways, attractive. And in many ways highly impractical and expensive.
50 years later, it's much more likely that an AI supervised self-driving car will deliver door to door service for much less. Get rid of the Uber or Lyft driver and you're almost there. All we need is a self-driving system that is up to the task. So far, not so good.
You can have door to door transportation in a skyscraper IF you install elevators while you are building the tower. If you have to add elevators after the tall building is finished, elevator shafts and elevator systems become prohibitively expensive. Same thing for a city, to a large extent. One of the difficulties the met council's light rail system had was digging up all the infrastructure that was under the streets on which the light rail would run. It had to be either moved or upgraded so that it excavation wouldn't be needed in the intermediate future. Neither elevated rails nor burrowed tunnels get around all problems.
Our best bet for getting beyond the personal car and highways is global warming and an economic crash. The highways are always crumbling (at least in cold parts of the country) so without maintenance they'll be gone PDQ, what with a nastier climate.
The truth is, we missed the boat a century ago. We dismissed trains and we staked our future on autos, trucks and highways. Yes, it was a bad idea.
Just more frequent trains. And yes, your objection represents the common view now. Intractable. At the end of the day if Trump gets elected its only the fault of the electorate. If trains dont gain traction (pun intended), it starts with the consumer.
In a perfect world, thered be tons of train cars. Maybe there be a reservation component. Either way, it would be integrated with everything and planned into the city.
Interesting!
Quoting BC
Yes, perhaps. But now you have me thinking of boats.
Regarding the OP, I don't think countries that were built on cars will be converted to rail systems. Any problems with cars will be addressed in a piecemeal fashion, as is naturally already taking place. Population-dense urban areas already make use of rails. It is not only a matter of addressing foreign infrastructure, but also of trying to fit a rail system to a car geography. It would be like replacing the riverboats with cruise ships in a country of streams and rivers. The automobile has created a country of streams and rivers, at least in the U.S.
Damn. I get blamed for everything.
Quoting jgill
:lol:
Quoting schopenhauer1
The secret to a band: more cowbell. The secret to a society: more trains.
You said here:
Quoting jgill
Man, after a long day, I wouldn't mind just sitting and letting the local transit take me to my location with ease and not having to deal with driving. So the convenience can go either way.
Quoting jgill
Cars represent a kind of freedom, but it has had its consequences, which aren't great either. As @BC well-stated:
Quoting BC
Yes, I understand the infrequency and inefficiency of today's public transit.
I also think AI trains might be the best model, not AI cars. Imagine if roads had smaller trains that stopped at each house or what not with some conductors helping the elderly and disabled.
The kind of taxes, banking, and security that go to public transit, or even a private company is not the same as incurred when owning a car. Less time, stress, loans necessary when spread out across a community in the form of X (non property/car tax... from a general fund whether it be sales, house, income, or any of the other usual ones that are used for various public works). In other words, I don't mind it being taken from a progressive tax base rather than personally from my bank account. This is evil sounding to conservative politics, so go on trying to show the downsides...
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't mind fees to a private company to maintain it. Besides, do you think that "public" is really just "public"? It's always been public contracted to private with public and sometimes combined with private funds. Everyone gets their cut. You can have your Ayn Randian proprietors and shareholders ripping people off or the government getting their share, I guess.
Maybe it would only stop if there is someone waiting at the stop. And maybe you could pull a cord to alert the engineer that you want to get off at the next stop.
...It's like we're groping in the dark for the concept of a bus.
Dynamic trains can probably do that.. I made that up. But sounds like it's possible.
Okay.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You have an expensive idea you want other people to pay for? Nah, I'll just quote it and let it stand there awkwardly: :razz:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting schopenhauer1
The problem isn't merely economic, although the cost of trains is certainly prohibitive to private parties. The problem is that in order to go anywhere I am at the whim of your centralized thought-child. What you have in mind is centralized, government control of the mobility of the entire nation.
I just think you overlook that roads are simply a hodgepodge version of the same thing.
But they're not, because roads are cheap enough to be built by private parties. Small counties can afford roads but not trains. Where I live many of the roads are dirt. My car gives me access to the entire continent. It drives on roads of all different kinds, made by all kinds of different communities and people.
The U of M mechanical Engineer scheme I mentioned fits your idea of AI "trains" (maybe one small car on a rail rather than a string of them). His was an 'on demand' system. One would call for a ride; there wouldn't be a string of cars passing every few minutes.
His system wouldn't work by itself -- it would need too large a number of cars to handle peak traffic. For peak travel times, buses and trains would move large volumes of travelers.
Lyft serves my needs fairly well. Most of the places I need to get to quickly cost about $10 each. I use Lyft maybe 2 or 3 times a month. Today I used it three times within 4 hours because I had 3 places to be and no way to get to each by bus or bike. That was an unusual situation,
The bus system operates an on-demand ride share for some parts of the city that have been underserved and have a lot of bus riders. I don't know how well it works.
What makes Boston's system good, or even the Twin Cities' system good when it is good, is enough buses on a given route to offer frequent service, and then good interconnections with rail or other buses. Covid 19 fucked things up for transit systems across the country. Just now things are getting back to normal, but not quite up to 2019 levels.
Bus Rapid Transit lines run as frequently as every 8 minutes. which gives them good connectivity with other parts of the system. Some of the lines are 10 miles long or longer.
I have had a lot of negative experiences with buses over the last 50 years -- like long waits and slow travel times, or not knowing when in hell the bus was supposed to arrive. If you didn't have a printed schedule, you were sol. That has been solved by a text system for finding out when the next bus is scheduled to arrive.
That is false.. depending on the country I guess. Most roads are funded by state, local, and federal taxes.
Sounds like an interesting first step. It's more ideas like these that are needed. But no one is going to give up the ease of "just" (there is a lot that actually goes into "just") driving to get to their friends or family or business or recreation or whatever other private activity one desires.
Quoting BC
I'm not keen on busses. They are better than nothing, but they seem inefficient and slow except for small connections.
That doesn't mean they can't be funded otherwise, or that they need to be of the quality you have in mind. Consider:
Quoting Outlander
A dirt road where I live handles pedestrians, bikers, horses, ATVs, carriages, motorcycles, cars, RV's, buses, and semi-trucks. One time I even saw a Ferrari (on the paved road, admittedly)!
And when the cheaper system of roads breaks down because society hits a depression, it is still serviceable to a large extent. The quality of the roads diminishes at that point, but the transportation system doesn't collapse as it would with a rail system.
Well, they are not, and that's not going away soon, anymore than my ideas are going to be adopted soon. The government finances the infrastructure for your "private" cars. That is just a fact of our times.
Quoting Leontiskos
Well, then let me list you all the stuff from the OP that goes along with automobiles.
It's really nothing like your ideas. If the government funding fails then you revert to lower quality, dirt roads, as are already common in countries without substantial government utilities. Cars run on dirt roads, don' cha know.
Quoting schopenhauer1
So we've established that the automobile system is not a centralized, top-down, government-run system like your mass transit system. We've established that the infrastructure for cars is more serviceable, more flexible, and massively cheaper than your mass transit system. But now your response is, "Oh, but look at my OP." Well I already responded to your OP. I will even remove the sentence you half-addressed by saying that other people would pay for it with a progressive tax scheme:
Quoting Leontiskos
The correct title for your OP is, "Trains are better than automobiles," but even then it is in need of proper argument.
So it's not so much cars themselves which are evil but the urban planning that prioritizes them. The prime example of this evil is stroads:
(And many of them are worse than this one; this one at least has sidewalks)
It's a road where there should be a street. Where I am in Moscow there are effectively similar roads in the city centre:
They turn what could be an extremely pleasant city into a hellscape, and they're really bad at moving people about compared to trains etc. (BTW Moscow does have some great public transport but it's not enough and the car is still allowed to dominate.)
Western European cities have begun to move away from the car-centric paradigm. A good YouTube channel that covers this stuff is NotJustBikes.
(And talk about big government and liberty is really not relevant or helpful. It's worth noting that the car-centrism that began early to mid-twentieth century was partly the result of oversized influence from the borderline monopolistic car industry (partly also some misguided aspects of modernist architecture))
Thanks for the resource! These videos are very relevant to this topic. I found another interesting one here:
Quoting Jamal
Yes, all true. My point to another poster was that "big government" (aka government), already subsidizes automobiles with roads, bridges, and anything relating to them that is paid for by taxes and handled by government officials (who usually contract to private companies to do the building).
Capitalism requires growth.
Suppose Ford sold stock and spent a few million dollars to build a car factory. He decided to make and sell just as many cars in a year as it would take to cover the cost of materials and labor, and then he would shut down -- maybe in September. In January of the next year, he'd start the factory up again and make / sell enough cars to pay off the cost of manufacture.
Everyone would get paid. What's the problem?
One major problem with this scheme is that it doesn't produce a significant profit. Another problem is that Ford's company would be static. There would be no growth. No one would invest another dime in Ford's factory if the business plan didn't call for greater production, more sales, and more profit on an on-going basis. There is a theoretical limit on how many cars could be produced and sold before the market was 100% saturated, but cars wear out, the population increases, and after over 100 years, automakers haven't yet totally saturated the market (which is the world).
At the opposite end of the economic continuum from car manufacturers are hunter-gatherers who spend no more effort on meeting their basic needs than is required. There is no accumulation of wealth, no growth in the standard of living. Tomorrow will be quite similarly to any day 5 years ago, maybe with slightly different weather.
Various peoples have lived much closer to the lifestyle of the hunter-gatherer than the way an automaker lives. Even in many sedentary agricultural societies, the goal was to raise enough food to eat, enough wood to cook with, and enough wool to stay warm with. After 100 years of settlement, the population and its lifestyles might be the same.
Once capitalism and industrialism joined forces in the 17th / 18th century, the assumption of growth was central. A firm needed to grow to attract on-going investments in order to reach new markets with new products and/or services, and to generate increased profits with which to reward investors.
If you are not trying to grow, then don't bother starting.
Capitalist industrialism didn't proceed to begin wrecking the world until the technology was capable of mass production for a large and growing population with enough resources to consume what was produced on an on-going upward-trending basis.
Continual growth is a mandate for everyone from Coco Cola to Apple computers.
Do people need more Coke? Do people need a new $1000+ phone every year? No -- clearly not, but the economy does. If Coke sales continually decline, that will be very bad news for its many investors -- plus many people require Coca Cola to function, apparently. People could eke out mediocre lives with a 3 year old phone, but that would mean catastrophe in Silicon Valley, Taiwan, and China, among other places.
So... buy a case of Coca Cola every week, and buy the latest fucking phone whether YOU want / need it or not. America is counting on you.
It is easy to transport people from point A to point B efficiently for SOME combinations of A and B using mass transit. For example, from the city center to a location in the suburbs. And also from a point in the suburbs to the city center.
However, it is difficult to transport people from point A to point B efficiently for SOME combinations of A and B using mass transit. For example, from a location in the suburbs to another location in the suburbs. This could be 2 different suburbs, but could also be in the same suburb.
Even if stops for mass transit were never more than five minutes away, it is impossible and impractical to try to efficiently connect every combination of point A and point B.
The following website:
Coral Cities
shows a visual representation of city networks based on their road network. The networks look like living corals and they are very interesting and beautiful.
Quoting Craig Taylor
I'm going to try hunter-gather for awhile. I don't have a car so I'm closer than most. I actually think I could do it but not sure it's a good idea.
Indeed car manufacturers and all industrial consumer goods manufacturers are insatiable. I think the laughable part is that people think this is "just" the private consumer choosing this. However, government actually encourages this growth and perpetuation of car use. Industry and government are intertwined through various transportation and commerce departments/agencies. Who do you think funds all those roads and bridges?? And public transportation is called "public" if it is somehow "communal" like trains and busses, but the public is deeply involved in car infrastructure as well. It's state-subsidized preferences for cars. There is no incentive NOT to use them. I've barely seen large-scale schemes like giving free tickets to those who don't own a car, etc.
Yes, most of this is a pipedream, but imagine if people built interconnected cable cars rather than roads? It was a choice. It's not like roads aren't (mostly) publicly funded!
Do you mean "cable cars" literally? Or do you mean trolley, bus, tram, street car, or light rail? I mean, cable-pulled trolleys are a charming but very anachronistic means of transport.
I mean updated versions of course :D.
There is another problem with mass transit. It must cope with very large volumes of people at only a few times of the day. Usually 2 times as people go to work and come home.
At other times mass transit must be available for the small volume of people who want to use it, and it must still be frequent enough to meet people's needs. This means that mass transit is underutilized but must still run to meet people's transport needs. So you get buses, trains, etc carrying only a few people. This is very inefficient. Cars don't have this problem.
Yep, public transit has its logistical problems, but cars do too, as mentioned in the OP. Cars are extremely inefficient when it comes to cost, pollution, physical, and psychological damage/outcomes if everything is considered in relation to it.
VERY unfortunately, an interconnecting system of transit lines is, in most American metropolitan areas became an impossibility since WWII.
A core city like Boston, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, even Minneapolis can operate such systems, provided they run their buses and rail systems frequently enough, and sometimes they even do. But, as you know well, the bulk of the population is now distributed in concentric rings around core cities.
I don't think we can afford the costs of building out the light rail / bus rapid transit lines that it would take to serve the large share of the nation's population that live in these dispersed concentrically arranged areas, whose design was predicated on individual car ownership and concrete everywhere. Minneapolis and St. Paul together are roughly 20 miles long and 10 miles wide. The 2.5 million people in the Minneapolis St Paul Metropolitan metropolitan area are spread across 70 or 80 miles, reaching across 4 to 6 counties. Crazy, but that's what happened.
It gets worse: one half of Minnesota's population lives in dispersed metropolitan areas while the other half, another 2.5 million, live within the roughly 60,000 square miles of rural territory (small towns, mostly). Many states have similar distributions. Northern Illinois is densely populated; the rest of the state, not so much. Mississippi, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, similarly.
Were we to make the truly Olympian decision to abandon individual transportation (whether gas driven or electric) it would require a Titanic change in the way 330,000,000 million people live--changes that are over the horizon and can only be guessed at.
All this is to say we are totally screwed. The unmarked pivotal events in our total screwing happened at least a century ago, and have been amplified again and again. The New Deal housing program that was a great blessing for millions of people was one of those amplifications. It created hundreds of suburban metropolitan zones, out of nothing, around the country and fed a tremendous amount of economic growth. Now we're stuck with it.
As much as I wish for great mass transit (especially as a transit dependent person), I don't see it as an economic or cultural possibility.
Quoting BC
I agree. I am not saying this mass transit transformation will happen any time soon, simply explaining the situation as it is now, and to present some alternatives that will not take place. Cars were the "engines" (pun intended) of much economic growth. And I stand by the idea that it didn't lead to the best outcomes. Poor planning, mixed with corporate interests bring us to where we are now.
Absolutely. The tragedy is that practically our whole economy is built around this cost, pollution, physical and psychological damage, and negative outcomes.
As Jesus said, "It is much more difficult for an advanced economy to devolve dependence on the automobile than it is for a whale to live in a fish bowl." He said that. Really!
Being a philosophy forum, I did want to bring the moral and cultural aspects of this up. Humans are so extremely centered on this transportation technology- whole swaths of political and personal aspects wrapped up in it.. But it has forced us in a case of "too big to fail".
Quoting BC
:lol: No doubt, Jesus would have driven a Geo...
I thought that Jesus said "Blessed are the cheesemakers".
This is only true on paper. In actuality, one wonders why at any given day of the week and at any given time, there are so many people "not at the workplace", but going to shops, restaurants, the beach, and somewhere else. I witness this myself everyday.
As far as the public transit, there's park-and-ride, which is also nonsense as you still need to drive yourself to the location of the ride, park your car, ride, and come back to get your car and drive home. That's bullshit. Then there's the lame trolley as it is only available for short strip of the city, so it's like a joy-ride only, not a real serious shit that's gonna take you to work, home, school, and stores. Like it's a token ride so the politicians could point to "there's the trolley, if you don't own a car". Like, WTF!
This entire train of thought entirely ignores numerous illogical suppositions. Firstly, after the internal combustion engine was invented, how buses and trains could be perfected without passing through smaller and simpler cars first. Secondly, proposing mass transit over personal vehicles displays an urban bias. Rural folks are completely left out of the conversation.
Of course, a robust debate can be had on shifting a higher percentage of urban dwellers to mass transit and away from cars. But that is very different from declaring personal vehicles evil, as if they have no (inherently obvious to essentially everyone) huge positive impact to humans.
In the summer don't ride light transit after the ball game because it will reek of beer from the sports fans gassing off.
Spring or fall might be better, but you should ask some locals first. For example, O'Hare airport to downtown Chicago..take a taxi, not the L. Just my perspective. I found out the hard way. And you can't manage more than a small pack or hand bag.
I'm probably not deterred, but some will be. Many, many good rides but a few bad ones mixed in. Like Capitol Heights to the National Mall (DC) by rail..if anyone knows that one.
I actually use park and ride in big cities to keep my car from being vandalized.
That's a benefit, not the primary purpose -- one hopes. Park & Ride seems to be aimed at lessening congestion on inbound/outbound roads, and having to use expensive parking downtown. P & R is also a way of creating ridership.
Quoting Agree-to-Disagree
Quoting L'éléphant
The fact of the matter is that a large share of "mass transit" is largely transit for the poor and the disabled who have little choice but to use "shabby transit". Because the constituency using transit tends to be poor people, students, or people who can't/don't drive, frequency, comfort, quality, convenience, etc. just isn't a priority.
IF the kind of anti-social, dysfunctional, disorderly, and disruptive behavior that swept over transit during the pandemic occurred in a wealthy suburb's shopping area, there would have been an immediate crackdown on riff raff. On many transit systems, this crap continued for 3 years before transit authorities got serious about bad behavior on their systems.
Yes, individual cars and such allows for flexibility into rural areas. If I was to take a fully fictional scenario, I could propose that even farms can have trams and trains going to those areas with minimal need for cars and trucks..
More practically, sure, rural areas would still use automobiles, but by no means do cities, suburbs, exurbs, and even small towns need automobiles if there were interconnected series of rails, trams, light rails, and the rest.
Imagine instead of doing Ford (GM, Mercedes, Toyotas, Dodge, Chevy..etc.) bidding, we invested in public transportation right after WWII rather than expansion of highways, cars, and the like.. Perhaps growing the system such that one need only step onto a smaller tram right in front of their house that goes to larger avenues to their destinations.. Yes, it is completely sci-fi fantasy, I get that. And perhaps we couldn't have the technology or coordination during that time, but the ideas can come first, and the practicalities are worked out by engineers, planners, and the like. It's not impossible, but certainly it would take a huge political and cultural will which no one has and it would take a large national effort, let alone probably a global one to really make it work.
They're still not serious.. Just saying. Yes, mass transit has languished as a cesspool where drug users, predatory behavior, mentally disturbed are able to terrorize others trying to use it for commuting or getting around. This creates the chicken-and-egg. It is seen as unsafe and insecure, so people avoid it. People also don't want to wait 50 minutes or more for what could be done in 10 minutes (or less). This cuts costs. That cuts frequency which further erodes trust in public transit.
I'm someone who likes the park and ride. For someone a little outside of a metro area it seems to make sense. If you can travel light and don't have a tight time schedule it saves money, parking fees, possible risks like accidents, tickets, towing, damage, traffic.......
Not for everyone, but for me it's an option sometimes. I don't have a car now so I haven't done it for awhile.
If I visit a new city I like to check out their transit.
El Paso Texas had a good bus system when I was there. It got me close enough to walk into Mexico. Maybe a bad idea but it was just 50 cents to cross the bridge and I liked the food stands and walked back out before dark.
Boston has good transit and connects with Logan airport. I got out to the MIT, Harvard areas. Vacation sight seeing I guess but some of us like that.
Actually there is a lot of variation city to city. I try to check ahead but always a lot to learn.
I'm just rambling on about anything I know about transit. I haven't had a car for 2 years so have to find mixes of things that work for my situation.
There are smaller scale transit companies in small markets that seem very well run. Government subsidized but they are not the same as what you might expect in the big cities. Like county wide services in the outskirts.
Care to elaborate? Would it be with any frequency for anyone to give up their cars for?
No, just generalizing. More in the area of dial a ride and limited service.
It would be interesting. Has there ever been a time when whole swaths of industry has migrated to another? For example, if mass transit was developed, would all the engineering, construction, and operations go into that from car related industry?
I'm thinking there are personal solutions, government solutions, technology solutions.
For me it's just a personal solution. So for me it's a mix of things. Sometimes I just handle things by phone, networking, friends.
Online shopping has surpassed stores for me.
But I mean, would the X amount of work going into car industry go to mass transit?
I don't know. Okay...cost/benefit for cars (as is) vs cost/benefit for some other solution (might be). That's a little beyond me.
I would support smarter solutions and think reducing transportation needs would be a quick payback. Live closer to where you work. Have basic needs close by. Reverse urban sprawl. Do the easier things first. Even the simple things have push back and inertia.
After that it gets messy. It's not just basic needs but all the extra things people want to do.
First, technology makes it possible for many people to work at home. Good? Bad? It depends. It depends. In a cartoon from 2020, two cats ask, "When are they going to leave?" and "Why don't they just go outside and die." Initially many people didn't like it; now, as their employers are dithering over office rent, most don't want to go back to the daily commute.
Secondly, changing one thing (hundreds of thousands of office workers at home) can have adverse effects elsewhere in the economy. Work from home (wfh) was a boon to communication businesses. Think Zoom. At the same time wfh was a disaster for transit -- millions of fares foregone,
Central business district support businesses were devastated. Cafes, caterers, small stores, etc. tanked all over the place. The usual unlovely elements moved in to fill the vacuum created by absent office workers.
City planners aren't sure whether their downtowns will find ways to become even moderately interesting please to be. Convert the office to towers to apartments? This is only sometimes economically feasible. Buildings with narrow floor plates can convert offices to living spaces, though it is expensive to add plumbing for baths and kitchens and HVAC for individual units. Large square or wide rectangular office buildings (the most common kind) have too large a floor plate. Apartments arranged along the outside edge, where the windows are, leaves a large cavity in the center of each floor that just isn't usable for much. Air shaft? Atrium? Again, generally not economically feasible.
How many people living downtown add up to an interesting city? I don't know, but a lot more than who are presently living there. I'd say... let's say... could be... 25,000 residents downtown could make for an interesting city that didn't depend on office workers.
Minneapolis has about 50,000 people living in a very generously defined downtown. These 50,000 are not a dense enough concentration for the amount of area they live in. 400,000 people live in Minneapolis, and they don't make downtown an interesting place, because most of them never drive -- never drove -- downtown,
Why did they not drive downtown? Because there are scary unpleasant things downtown, like one way streets, parking meters, the dreaded cultural diversity, no enclosed shopping centers, parking lots charging money to enter, busses all over, too many stop lights... It's a nightmare!
I think in the rural area mass transit is not practical. I think the OP meant the cities full of cars -- that's why the evil reference. But you are correct, there should be a two-tier proposals on the restrictions of vehicle use. I don't know. How are the Amish doing, btw? Do they use vehicles on the road now?
Quoting Mark Nyquist
In Asia, it's monorail. I've ridden a monorail before -- built by the Japanese. It's high up from the streets, unlike subways. The streets below have the regular vehicular traffic.
Quoting BC
The modern rail is open to everyone. Some have seats like an airplane cabin. Maybe the "bus" still bears the image of the uncouth crowd, but we should really change that now and make the bus ride as comfortable as the private car.
Yes light rail...my closest big city is Minneapolis Minnesota. Some short underground sections by the airport.
The thing with rail is physical limits. Things like curves and grades that don't work everywhere.
Example of rural transit: The Mayo Clinic is located in Rochester, MN - a town of 121,000 people. It employs a large number of people from at least 3 surrounding counties. In order to cut down on traffic and parking costs, and to keep from annoying citizens more than they already do, Mayo organized a transit system for its employees, collecting 1 or two bus loads of people each in small towns up to 50 miles out, and dropping them off at the buildings in which they work. In the evening the routes are traveled in the opposite direction. Several thousand workers get to work this way.
There used to be intercity or interstate bus service in some of these towns, but that died out decades ago.
I live a ways outside Minneapolis so I know the area.
The Northstar line is the heavy rail line for commuters and somewhat under used but could be coming back. From Minneapolis there is a light rail line to St Paul and one to the main airport. Another line is under construction, way over budget, and behind schedule.
That covers most of Minneapolis transit for those who don't know. Good bus service in most areas.
You mentioned Boston's transit. I've seen a number of Youtube videos critical of the MBTA -- primarily long-deferred maintenance. Design is itself a problem -- the oldest parts of the system were built about 124 years ago. Corners are tighter than would now be designed, less space was allocated. Old and newer elements within the MBTA are sometimes not quite compatible.
I lived in Boston in 1968/9, and I thought the subway, elevated trains, and buses were just wonderful.
Here's a pretty good Youtube video about the problems of the MBTA.
I have some family in the Boston area but only get there every ten years or so. I like Boston.
I used to bike a lot in Minneapolis. There are about 500 miles of off road trails in the metro area so one of the best biking cities in the US.
The Grand Rounds was set up by the parks board way back as the area was developed but the trail system has been built out in the last few decades.
Minneapolis is a pretty good place to bike around, as long as one stays off heavy traffic streets, with dedicated bicycle lanes or not. 28th St. has a well marked bike lane, but there is just too much traffic on the one way, and the Greenway runs parallel with it 1 block away.
I'm getting too old (77) for long rides, so mostly I just bike to the store and back.
Then light rail for them! What you say here really just advocates for better lightrail. However, I see it as part of the problem too? Why? Because light rails are often built to allow for suburbanites to park their cars and go to something like a sporting event downtown and back. It's never made with the mind for REAL daily commuting. In other words, it doesn't have lines that go INTO the neighborhoods to allow for people to walk easily and not have to "park and ride", which I saw you discussed earlier.
I know what you mean about picking your bike routes carefully. The Midtown Greenway you mentioned is one of those places. It's great in the daytime. It's a little sketchy at night.
You know about it but it's an old rail line converted to bike trail that runs below street level so has an overhead bridge at every street crossing.
It runs for a few miles that way in a straight line.
It's an interesting feature of Minneapolis you might not see unless you bike.
I saw an old vacuum cleaner thrown off one of the bridges onto the bike trail. Things like that.
So things happen.
Biking is dangerous. Street riding is the worst.
Things like getting 'doored' by a parked cars, storm drains, uneven curbs and gutters, potholes, cracks can ruin your day. I would think biking on known routes in your own neighborhood would be the safest. I did bike a few times in freezing weather and wouldn't recommend it. Ice patches and it's very hard to regulate your body temperature so if you stop biking you will be wet and freeze. And some trails might get groomed for skiing not biking in the winter.
I got started biking because a Sam's Club I shopped at was on a bike trail. I could do my shopping and spend an evening on the bike trails.
There are people who look for apartments on these trails just to get around on bikes but I doubt it works year round in Minnesota. Busing and biking would work if you are young.
If you lived in Minneapolis in August 2007 you remember the I-35W Mississippi river bridge collapse. I guess we are known for that. Bad bridge bearings that were frozen (locked up) and heavy materials stored on the bridge deck plus hot weather.
13 people died and more injured. The evil of cars.
The cure for ice is studded tires. I bought a pair several years ago and they really help. BUT studded tires do nothing for snow that is more than a couple inches deep. This has been a good year for winter bike riding. Not a normal winter.
I used to run all year round and liked running in the cold. But true enough, if you are sweating, you have to keep moving. The trick for winter riding or running (say, for an hour) is to not dress too warmly and suck up a certain amount of discomfort. You'll feel so virtuous!
Studded tires...okay.
There is always walking too. A normal walking pace for me is 4 miles per hour. It's good to know your rate if you are in a pinch. So you can walk a mile in 15 minutes if you really need to.
Mass transit in suburban areas is up against the low density that those cities were predicated on. True, fixed rail systems could be built out like so many branching arteries and capillaries. Better, it seems to me, IF we were going to force suburbanites to use transit (possibly by pointing a gun at their heads and ordering them to ride) would be many small electric buses that could use the already installed concrete and asphalt roads. These could be both on-demand or on-schedule.
As practical as a light rail network to every cul de sac in America would be to compress the suburbs into denser communities. Expropriate the properties, recycle the McMansions, tear up the excessive mileage of roads, and replace it with dense housing closer to the core. Return the once fertile suburban land to trees or turnip fields.
This draconian solution might be beyond even the Chinese Communist Party's enforcement apparatus, however.
I'm not sure how long studded bike tires have been around--probably not too long. You can get them with more or fewer studs; more is decidedly better. I've used them when the streets had a lot of packed snow/ice, and felt pretty secure from having the bike slide sideways out from under me.
One drawback is that they are fairly expensive, but they're good for at least several seasons.
Do you rely on public transit? Relatives? Don't leave your house?
I think the biking and walking conversation will drive some here crazy. They probably want more of the grand projects that governments do.
The thing is we need some exercise anyway so why not walk 10 or 20 minutes a day? Like you say a nice walk to get a bag of groceries.
Also your area looks like a sweet spot for transportation options compared to me being a ways out of town.
I am a bit perplexed about how the idea of automobiles may be seen in terms of philosophy. In some ways, it may be about practical ends, even with those who are unable to drive, for possible medical reasons, being seen as 'dysfunctional.'. I rely on public transport and walking. So, the worst possibility which I used in philosophy is of those who are not able to drive, for medical and other reasons, being discriminated against in a harsh way.
I travel on busses and am not sure how your philosophy adds up to such possibilities. One aspect which may be significant is the ecological aspects, and public as opposed to private transport may be important here..
Nevertheless, there are so many aspects of personal and public aspects of travel and transport, making it such an area of ethical concern, witn no simplistic conclusions. So, thinking about automobiles may involve juggling so much about life and travel in the material world and its consequent philosophy.
West Virginia has an especially high fatality rate in the US. Mountain roads maybe.
Maybe some mental philosophy about the risks of driving can keep us out of some of the mayhem accidents that happen in ice, snow, fog. Too many people get locked into schedules that can kill.
The alternatives have their risks too.
Wow! That actually sounds doable. If employers in the cities provide a benefit like that, I think that is a happy medium between convenience, not having to drive, and relinquishing some freedom from driving yourself.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yeah, the rail is very limited when it comes to "customization" of travel. Commuters go to the rails, not the other way around. And this poses a problem still, because you have to have a car to go to the ride. That's why buses, as BC has been talking about, are the way to go because they can drop off the travelers to every corner of the roads.
(I'm saying this as if I'm the department of transportation, :lol: )
Quoting Mark Nyquist
Absolutely! And the rails don't come to the people also. It's where the planning commission could plant them.
Here am I, on a Sunday afternoon, traveling 10 miles to downtown and my favorite gay bar. It took me 10 minutes to get to the bus stop, and the bus I was aiming for zoomed past when I was 1/2 block away. It will be 30 minutes before the next bus arrives -- and this won't get me downtown, It will get me to a transfer point where I will have to wait for another bus to finish the trip. Between 60 and 90 minutes later, I arrive.
The trip back is going to take just as long, because evening buses are less frequent and the whole service ends about the same time the bars close.
On Monday morning, there are more buses, certainly, but it still takes 10 minutes to get to the bus stop. The bus will probably be crowded and many people will be standing as the bus lurches this way and that. Still a transfer to be made. Another crowded bus, moving slowly down the street -- average speed is about what a bicycle can do, or less.
Quoting BC
Runs on fuel. A conventional car.
Quoting LuckyR
So drive less, is what you're saying.
Time is the biggest objection against the public transit, I think. What could take a 15 minute drive, would take an hour or more on a bus. So, if you're taking the bus to work, you would need to add at least a couple of hours more to your time of the day. That's a lot of hours that you would need to add to your working life each day,
It makes total sense to me that workers who were told to work from home don't want to go back to their former offices. It isn't the office -- it's the commute.
Many Americans could drive less. I don't really expect people to walk 2 miles to a supermarket and then carry 30 pounds of groceries back home. They could bike, but biking requires a reasonably safe street, and there are a lot of places in the suburbs which are hard to get to while remaining safe on the street.
Many people do, however, live reasonably close to drugstores and supermarkets, and could get there on foot or bike with little risk. It is more work, sure. But the labor of shopping and schlepping one's stuff home saves a trip to the gym.
Driving less worked (works) for me. I lived about 20 minutes from work and we don't take car trip vacations. I don't have a problem with electric vehicles, especially when they nail the batteries (which they should by next generation, with solid state versions). But for me, electric would a less fun, expensive, inconvenient alternative with negligible carbon improvement.
FWIW, I didn't return to office, not because of the commute - I didn't mind, and in fact I was lucky enough to be able to work on the bus - but because I deplored spending such a huge chunk of my life in this building. It made me feel my life was being squandered. All the usual distractions there didn't help.
Working from home, I still feel my life is being squandered. But working outside when the weather permits, in the park or beach, taking drumming breaks, smoking weed or drinking if I choose, working vacations in other cities, all certainly help.
I think, though, the carbon footprint is much less because of zero emissions. I guess we have to look at it this way-- we can't get rid of cars completely, but we can reduce the harmful effects of driving. I have not really looked at the studies as to whether the manufacturing of the vehicles, batteries, and storage units are not equally worse than manufacturing other products.
But certainly with less driving, collectively, that's also an improvement -- if you're using the ICE car.
Quoting hypericin
:100:
Quoting BC
Absolutely. I think the US has no history of bicycle usage as a mode of regular transportation, unlike the Netherlands and China. Planes, trains, and automobiles, these are what built its economy.
As William Wordsworth said in his poem, The World Is Too Much With Us, "getting and spending, we lay waste our powers..." in so many ways.
Well where do you think the electricity comes from? Even though around here it's generally hydroelectric, usually it's by burning coal or natural gas.
Good point. Apparently, we would need an additional 30% increase in electricity production if all cars are EVs.
BC knows about it and gave a video about how some of it is in bad shape these days. That's too bad. I really liked it when I was there.
So this is just a story of little things that can go wrong on public transit....
A group of us were in Boston for a wedding and a day before met at the airport and decided to do some sight seeing and take the subway line out to Harvard University. We got on the Blue line that goes to downtown and got off and looked for a Harvard connection. The Green line had a stop at Harvard Street so we got on that one. It was a mistake because the stop was in Boston Back Bay, not Cambridge. Back Bay is on the way to the Fenway Park area.
Anyway, we ended up walking across the Harvard Street bridge....got a good view of the boat house if you know that...and up to Harvard Square. It was back when they had the Out of Town News stand and the Curious George store but I think it's all changed now. Mostly Banks.
We took the Red line back to downtown and did a block walk (5 minutes)to the Blue line...that was the tricky part...and the Blue line back to Logan Airport and from there one of us had a car.
I think they have done or are doing a fix to connect the Red and Blue lines. Something the locals would know about but was confusing to us.
I mixed up Harvard Square with Harvard Yard but corrected that. We used to be able to visit Harvard Yard and even Widener Library but now a lot like that is restricted.
Perhaps 'the authorities' have no choice but to restrict access to places that used to be open to the public. Or perhaps they did have options, and chose restriction, just because. The U of Minnesota used to be wide open--libraries, classroom buildings, clinics, etc. Now there are guards and locks at many entrances. I suppose a higher level of social disorder since the pandemic might be a factor; so more thievery, assaults, OD's in the restrooms...
I can't remember how one transfers from the blue to the red line. It's been many years since I was in Boston. Did you, by any chance, drive through the route of "the big dig" or across the stay bridge?
I never drove in Boston only to and from the airport. I did walk the freedom trail as a kid which is downtown Boston, Boston Common and maybe some in the Beacon Hill area. And I walked some of the Back Bay or Fenway areas just because we got on a wrong transit line and were getting around on foot. I didn't mind walking. A lot to see in Boston.
Harvard Square is one of those places I am glad I visited when I did. 1990's. We walked onto campus in a gap between buildings and into Harvard Yard and took a look around Widener Library that had just had a major renovation. One of the nicest libraries I have ever been in. You would need to pay for a tour now just to see Harvard Yard. Lots more fencing and gates everywhere from Google Earth images from Harvard Square.
I remember in the 1960's someone tried to give our family a fake freedom trail tour and collect a donation. Some young kids who maybe needed some money.
No, I remembered the fake freedom trail tour wrong. It was more a political motivation about crooked Boston bankers in the early days. Conspiracy theory stuff.