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The silly stuff we keep inventing to not confront the simple truth that single persons sitting in 2 ton metal boxes on highways leading to city centers is insan
by revelation 9y ago
The silly stuff we keep inventing to not confront the simple truth that single persons sitting in 2 ton metal boxes on highways leading to city centers is insane and will not scale.
- falcor84 9y agoWell, it has scaled pretty amazingly until now. It might quite possibly scale even further with the use of smaller self-driving vehicles.
- revelation 9y agoAh yes, the mythical self-driving car that solves Americas traffic problems despite being the exact size of a normal car (bigger, even).
- DKnoll 9y agoWhat's the alternative? If weight of the metal box is the problem, individual cars beat out buses and trains.
- closeparen 9y agoThe alternative is to all live within walking, cycling, and transit distance of our needs. This also doesn't work very well when we're not willing to upzone/bulldoze/gentrify existing low-density communities on centrally located land.
- YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y agoDon't we? Transit distance with cars, that is?
- closeparen 9y agoEvery distance is walking distance if you have enough time. By "transit distance," I mean "a distance that can be covered on public transit in an acceptable amount of time." I'd wager that for most people, this is less than half the distance they currently drive.
- DKnoll 9y agoI don't think moving every time you get a new job is feasible. You also can't help where your friends and family choose to live.
- tzs 9y agoThe same problem can happen with any mode of transportation in which travelers take up space when traveling. The underlying issue is not single person cars--it is that there is a large net flow in one direction during part of the day, and a large net flow the opposite direction during another part of the day.
- crzwdjk 9y agoPeople always take up space though. The scaling problem comes in when people take up considerably more space when traveling than when stationary, so the transportation infrastructure ends up taking up more space than the thing you're transporting people to.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]