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Um Horse drawn transport requires a large amount of infrastructure

close04 8y ago
> large Animal drawn vehicles have been in use for millennia with nothing but nature to provide infrastructure. Relatively flat terrain for the path, a watering hole, whatever plant the animal ate. This was improved over centuries with actual infrastructure (a well) but you have to admit we're talking vastly different scales compared to anything auto.
- majewsky 8y ago
  So horse-drawn carriages don't need roads? I guess the Romans just built these for fun, then.
  - close04 8y ago
    Snark aside, no... the roads definitely helped but the vast majority of such traffic for thousands of years was done over "ad-hoc" roads, basically a beaten path. A road implies a base - pavement, stones, etc. For most of the history of carriages they used mostly beaten paths. For most (all?) of the history of the automobile they used roads. And I'm pretty sure that at any point in history probably until a century or two ago there were more "beaten paths" in the world than actual roads. Which isn't the case now. My point stands, highlighted by the quote: "large". The network of roads built for carriages pales in comparison with the scale of the current infrastructure for cars. Which I assume was the whole point of the comparison in the comment I replied to. I just objected to the unnecessarily vague or misleading use of "large". There was a road infrastructure. Whether it was large depends on how creative you get with the reference point. And I'm not even counting the fact that the infrastructure for cars includes far more than just the roads. In this context almost any other infrastructure of any kind built before the 20th century is absolutely tiny.
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  For a much smaller population that the point at the scale we are currently at you start to run into problems.
arethuza 8y ago
In places like Edinburgh's New Town - which were built at "peak horse" you have entire streets of mews properties that were originally built as stables for grand houses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Town,_Edinburgh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Town,_Edinburgh

> large Animal drawn vehicles have been in use for millennia with nothing but nature to provide infrastructure. Relatively flat terrain for the path, a watering hole, whatever plant the animal ate. This was improved over centuries with actual infrastructure (a well) but you have to admit we're talking vastly different scales compared to anything auto.

majewsky 8y ago
So horse-drawn carriages don't need roads? I guess the Romans just built these for fun, then.
- close04 8y ago
  Snark aside, no... the roads definitely helped but the vast majority of such traffic for thousands of years was done over "ad-hoc" roads, basically a beaten path. A road implies a base - pavement, stones, etc. For most of the history of carriages they used mostly beaten paths. For most (all?) of the history of the automobile they used roads. And I'm pretty sure that at any point in history probably until a century or two ago there were more "beaten paths" in the world than actual roads. Which isn't the case now. My point stands, highlighted by the quote: "large". The network of roads built for carriages pales in comparison with the scale of the current infrastructure for cars. Which I assume was the whole point of the comparison in the comment I replied to. I just objected to the unnecessarily vague or misleading use of "large". There was a road infrastructure. Whether it was large depends on how creative you get with the reference point. And I'm not even counting the fact that the infrastructure for cars includes far more than just the roads. In this context almost any other infrastructure of any kind built before the 20th century is absolutely tiny.
C1sc0cat 8y ago
For a much smaller population that the point at the scale we are currently at you start to run into problems.

arethuza 8y ago

In places like Edinburgh's New Town - which were built at "peak horse" you have entire streets of mews properties that were originally built as stables for grand houses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Town,_Edinburgh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Town,_Edinburgh