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>>>>>>>> It's sad that for most of the world cheap enough electric self driving cars will come faster than good public transport (emphasis added) >>>>>>> I'm n

>>>>>>>> It's sad that for most of the world cheap enough electric self driving cars will come faster than good public transport (emphasis added) >>>>>>> I'm not sure why you think cheap enough electric self driving cars can't be public transport. This is the context in which my post was placed. I'm not sure why you've chosen to limit the scope to the Bay Area. The poster I was arguing with was claiming that space is the deciding factor and the hands-down-answered-long-ago-reason why electric cars have no place whatever in public transportation. Unless you are arguing that people should commute by bicycle in Minnesota winters, we're not really arguing here.

titzer 10y ago
Your comment directly complained about bicycles using an array of tired excuses. I would encourage you to visit a city where bicycle commuting works really well to get a different perspective. As for the bay area, I was making the point that even in one of the most optimal set of conditions in the country we still ignore biking which works well in other countries because we seem to be culturally blind. Instead we pursue techno-fantasy when we should really just be buying everyone a $300 bike and putting bike lanes everywhere. We should also build subways and trains and use buses and all the other things, but we can't even seem to get anyone to take bicycles seriously.
- kbenson 10y ago
  Since the bay area has a very high amount of people that commute a long distance (50 miles or more)[1], how well bikes work for getting around locally is secondary to the fact that a large group of people would have to spend a significant amount of their non-working time on biking to get to work. People prefer to raise families in a more suburban setting, and as long as proponents of alternative transport ignore that, their plans are doomed to irrelevance. 1: https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/03/05/san-francisco-bay-area-nations-capital-for-megacommuting https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/03/05/san-francisco-bay-area-...
  - titzer 10y ago
    Sure. There are a lot of intertwining problems here. Zoning has a lot to do with it. I used to live in Mountain View. The local governments in the South Bay overwhelming voted down denser housing and more office space. That ends up making it harder to live close to where you work, not only for capacity reasons but also due to housing prices. All of that compounds into a perfect storm of transportation woe.

titzer 10y ago

Your comment directly complained about bicycles using an array of tired excuses. I would encourage you to visit a city where bicycle commuting works really well to get a different perspective. As for the bay area, I was making the point that even in one of the most optimal set of conditions in the country we still ignore biking which works well in other countries because we seem to be culturally blind. Instead we pursue techno-fantasy when we should really just be buying everyone a $300 bike and putting bike lanes everywhere. We should also build subways and trains and use buses and all the other things, but we can't even seem to get anyone to take bicycles seriously.

kbenson 10y ago
Since the bay area has a very high amount of people that commute a long distance (50 miles or more)[1], how well bikes work for getting around locally is secondary to the fact that a large group of people would have to spend a significant amount of their non-working time on biking to get to work. People prefer to raise families in a more suburban setting, and as long as proponents of alternative transport ignore that, their plans are doomed to irrelevance. 1: https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/03/05/san-francisco-bay-area-nations-capital-for-megacommuting https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/03/05/san-francisco-bay-area-...
- titzer 10y ago
  Sure. There are a lot of intertwining problems here. Zoning has a lot to do with it. I used to live in Mountain View. The local governments in the South Bay overwhelming voted down denser housing and more office space. That ends up making it harder to live close to where you work, not only for capacity reasons but also due to housing prices. All of that compounds into a perfect storm of transportation woe.