9 ms·
Imagine all the problems that would be solved if someone invented a car with metal wheels, maybe one that can hold hundreds of people, goes really fast, is quie
by jumpingmice 7y ago
Imagine all the problems that would be solved if someone invented a car with metal wheels, maybe one that can hold hundreds of people, goes really fast, is quiet and efficient....
- jjtheblunt 7y agojust made me think the efficiency depends upon the utilization, so it's high when many ride and low when not.
- mikepurvis 7y agoBut it doesn't take many mass transit riders to make that vehicle more efficient than a single-occupancy car.
- jjtheblunt 7y agotrue!
- umvi 7y ago...and can only go to select locations at certain times that may or may not align with your final destination or schedule.
- luckydata 7y agothe last mile problem can be solved in a million different ways: bikes, taxis, uber, walking, buses... Eliminating car culture is non optional if we want to save the planet.
- umvi 7y agoIt's easy to say "use trains" when you live in a highly dense area. But America-the-continent is massive and not very dense on average. I'm not convinced trains would be viable economically like they are in Japan.
- dragonwriter 7y agoThey would be if the negative externalities of autos were priced in; trains aren't viable in America because autos are subsidized via substantial non-internalized negative externalities.
- zaroth 7y agoThat is not why trains are not viable in America. Trains are far more heavily subsidized than autos, for example, on a per-passenger mile basis. Studies that account for the full bore of taxes which apply to personal vehicles (sales tax, excise tax, gas tax, registration fees) show that cars provide significant net income to government far exceeding infrastructure outlays. I think that trains being less fuel efficient than cars with 2 occupants also is a good reason why “non-internalized negative externalities” have a hard time helping trains catch up in the final accounting. If you can cite a study which supports your claim I would be very interested to read it. However, I don’t think the science of accounting for PM2.5 tire and brake dust is at the point where we can calculate the economic cost.
- Steltek 7y agoTIL gas taxes paid for Boston's Big Dig. What states actually reap a surplus from personal auto fees? Meanwhile, are you including in your thought process any of the following? - Public land permanently dedicated to roads, highways, parking lots, etc - Parking minimums in zoning codes - Police resources dedicated to traffic enforcement - Wars of aggression fought to preserve oil prices - Oil industry subsidies - Innocent deaths and crippling lifetime injuries caused by automobiles - Massive declining public health due to sedentary lifestyles (sitting on your butt in a driver's seat)
- wcunning 7y agoIn order: Public land will be permanently dedicated to rails and stations and things, if you want to cover the same area with transit access, you'll need similar, if not the same public land. Parking minimums are not about being pro-car so much as being about anti-poor. This is a subsidy to entrenched interests, not to cars. Police make money from traffic enforcement. Many departments get their whole budget from that. Many towns get their whole budget, above and beyond the PD, from it. Eliminate cars tomorrow and you bankrupt a huge percentage of non-major cities and all small towns. Wars of aggression over oil are likely over due to fracking and oil sands, but I'll grant that they were bad while they were happening. Now, how are your predominantly diesel trains going to be powered without oil? Oil subsidies are a problem. I would love to see congestion pricing and an end to all subsidies for transit, trains, buses, cars, bikes and pedestrian behaviors. We do not and never will again live in that world. Deaths due to automobiles are at a record low per passenger mile and continuing to fall. Every time we make roads and cars and esp new cars more expensive, these rise as people limp their dangerous old clunker along a bit more. Weirdly, the requirements for safety technology cause people to drive older, less fuel efficient cars and the requirements for better emissions cause people to drive older, less safe cars all due to rising prices. Perhaps we should subsidize the removal of old cars (cash for clunkers)? I don't think you can blame sedentary lifestyles on driving. That's a step too far -- it's a factor, but it's by no means the biggest or the most consistent. I doubt that we'd be able to attribute anywhere near enough health problem to only and specifically long commutes to even really price this externality.
- bradlys 7y agoUnless you live more than a mile away... Lots of people don't live in densely populated areas near train tracks where getting off the train and getting home is <10 minutes. Obviously, it makes sense for those who do but most of America is sprawly and isn't designed for rail transit efficiency. I'd appreciate good quite rail but it isn't anywhere near feasible in these sprawly landscapes.
- allannienhuis 7y ago> Lots of people don't live in densely populated areas but MOST of the people do live (or around) densely populated areas, no? (just checked - google says 82% of US population is in urban areas). Addressing issues for most of the people first would have the most impact.
- petschge 7y agoI will repeat a comment that I have made on HN before: 50% of the US population live in just 35 metropolitan areas (Los Angeles, CA; New York, NY; Chicago, IL; Philadelphia, PA; Washington, DC; Detroit, MI; Houston, TX; Atlanta, GA; Dallas, TX; Boston, MA; San Bernardino, CA; Phoenix, AZ; Minneapolis, MN; Orange County, CA; San Diego, CA; Nassau, NY; St. Louis, IL; Baltimore, MD; Seattle, WA; Tampa, FL; Oakland, CA; Pittsburgh, PA; Miami, FL; Cleveland, OH; Denver, CO; Newark, NJ; Portland, OR; Kansas City, MO; San Francisco, CA; Fort Worth, TX; San Jose, CA; Cincinnati, OH; Orlando, FL; Sacramento, CA; Fort Lauderdale, FL) that together have 173328 square miles. That is a density of 654 inhabitants per square mile or 253 inhabitants per square kilometer. Compare that with the 232 inhabitants per square kilometer in Germany, or the 118 inhabitants per square kilometer in France. And yes you can live without a car even in rural Germany (at least if you don't have kids). The 20 densest metropolitan areas contain 25% of the US population and have 400 inhabitants per square kilometer, comparable to the 416 inhabitants per square kilometer averaged over the Netherlands. The lack of public transport in the US is not a density problem. That is just the excuse because people don't want to change. And before anybody says "but the density in German cities is much higher": I lived for years in a German district with a density of 217 inhabitants per square kilometer, without needing a car.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoYou don't even need to go that far. Eliminating car culture is how you'd make a city I'd actually enjoy living in.
- manigandham 7y agoYou can separate the issue better by saying intercity and intracity. Getting from your home to a location is usually not much more time than getting from your home to a station. This makes trains unviable for most inner-city travel outside of some lightrail in dense urban areas. For intercity, trains quickly start competing against airlines which are better for most domestic travel because the US is so big.
- LeifCarrotson 7y agoSubways are one of the most effective inner-city travel systems available. I'd consider that a train system.
- mikepurvis 7y agoI'm always reminded of this when I visit Toronto— the last time I was there, my partner and I were going to see a small concert in the west end, and I groaned as Google Maps told me it would be a 40 minute trip by TTC, including the walk at both ends. Usually we would have taken the subway, but for whatever reason I was feeling lazy this time so we drove. It was almost a half-hour trip across downtown through the tail end of rush hour, and then ten minutes of circling the block looking at parking lots and garages that were already full, and then another ten minutes of walking back to the venue from the street parking we finally found several blocks away. And no, the solution is not "build more parking", the solution is to further incentivise mass transit use. For example, in this case, I probably would have been dissuaded from driving if Google Maps had not only incorporate traffic delays into its estimate, but also highlighted that the apparently plentiful nearby parking lots were all likely to be full at the time of my planned arrival.
- manigandham 7y agoIf you remove the parking situation from large-scale events, then the travel time is the same if not faster with the car, while providing more freedom and comfort. That's why many people choose it. Unless you within walking distance of a station, you're going to get in a car anyway and at that point it's usually faster and cheap to drive. That's the fundamental calculus that prevents large-scale train construction in CA cities.
- reaperducer 7y agobikes, taxis, uber, walking, buses Three of those four fail to address the tire issue, which is at the root of this problem.
- merpnderp 7y agoNon optional says whom? I'm rather excited about the new Tesla batteries and the possibilities of traveling more for less money per mile. You can live in relative poverty compared to today and ride a bike and only travel in a highly ordered and grating manner, but I'll support nuclear power and have fun around town in a 750hp electric.
- zaroth 7y ago> Eliminating car culture is non optional if we want to save the planet. That could work, or you know, we could continue research and development of tires with better PM2.5 ratings and vehicles that run on sustainable energy. I wonder which could be done without a multi-trillion dollar hit on the global economy?
- lotsofpulp 7y agoThe last mile problem can only be solved by eliminating single family detached homes. You can only reduce the amount of energy required to move bodies so much, at some point you have to start reducing the distances traveled.
- seph-reed 7y agoI'd rather go with the less people travelling further on bikes route. There's a 1:1 ratio between amount of space (and therefor nature) per person, and the distance we're willing to travel on foot/bike/etc.
- whyenot 7y agobikes have tires too
- labawi 7y agoand shoes are made of plastics as well Bicycle tires are made of and release much less rubber than cars.
- seph-reed 7y agoFunny enough, it might actually be kind of nice to work towards a world where being barefoot is okay. Would require a lot cleaner cities. Clean bare feet could become a sign of affluence: "I'm so rich, I only walk where it's clean."
- TheGrassyKnoll 7y agoI rather go with less people...
- Fricken 7y agoThe original idea of the suburbs, prior to the model-T, was for them to be small, walkable villages spread along networks of commuter rail lines.
- dmitrygr 7y agoall but one of those have wheels that would shed the same microplastics.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- undersuit 7y agoI mean cars have the same problems right? Or have traffic jams, road closures, and parking restrictions by time of day gone away?
- bluGill 7y agoSimilar, but not exactly the same. My car goes when I want to go. The train goes when it goes even when I'm not there. I ride the bus to work, I am often annoyed to arrive at work 20 minutes early when I really wanted to sleep in those 20 minutes, but the bus runs on a half hour schedule - too bad for my preference. Traffic jams, road closures and parking restrictions are an issue for some, but I'm lucky enough that for the places I go they are not (between living in a small town and alternate routes I can get around by car with no problems). I take the bus, I'm trading a bit of time for the convenience of having someone else drive, and a forced exercise program walking to the bus stop. Several times a month I need to go someplace where the bus doesn't go without an unreasonably long walk.
- cobalt 7y ago"quiet and efficient" definitely does not exist in California currently
- koolba 7y agoI don’t know about the “quiet and efficient” but the rest of that describes a large armored personnel carrier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armored_personnel_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armored_personnel_carrier
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- billions 7y agoTrains are less efficient than cars on a per mile basis. https://www.theprch.com/this-vs-that/fuel-efficiency-planes-vs-train-bus-car/ https://www.theprch.com/this-vs-that/fuel-efficiency-planes-...
- cma 7y agoSounds like trains are less efficient than cars maybe only in the US, because of lots of empty seats and/or less cars per passenger train: >In the fuel efficiency information provided below you’ll see that trains are unexpectedly low, but this data can be a bit misleading because it’s from research that only studied trains in the US. There are two things to note: >1) Americans don’t utilize trains as a mode of transportation very much in comparison with European and Asian countries. This brings fuel efficiency down because there are less people being transported per train moving. >2)Trains have varying fuel efficiencies themselves. They are powered by either a normal combustion engine using diesel fuel or an electric motor. The efficiency of electric trains is highly variable because of the source of electricity. Electricity from a coal fired power plant will be much less efficient then renewable resources such as hydroelectric, wind, or solar.
- CJefferson 7y agoThe article says underutilised, old and inefficient US Antrak trains are less efficient. Thsts quite believable, but isn't a general comment against trains.
- manigandham 7y agoFrom the article: "In the US: Cars are generally more efficient than trains when there are 2 or more people traveling." That's rare. The vast majority of traffic is 1 person per car, which completely changes the results here to make it worse than the rest.
- chicagobob 7y agoThe blended 2017 US average is 1.54 people per car, source: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1040-july-30-2018-average-vehicle-occupancy-remains-unchanged-2009-2017 https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1040-july...
- manigandham 7y agoThe effectiveness of trains is directly related to the distance between stops, and California (and much of the USA) is too spread out for current combination of technologies and politics.
- Ericson2314 7y agoLarge swaths of suburbia must be abandoned and the remaining hubs densified to fix this. No exaggeration. We're doing a fine job of emptying the rural areas, heh, so I see no reason this isn't possible.
- TallGuyShort 7y agoYou've done it. You've figured it out. Nobody else has. Amazing.
- antoineMoPa 7y agoImagine someone invented some form of city planning that does not require people to use cars.
- antisthenes 7y agoThey did, unfortunately no one remembered to bring it over from Europe.
- tyingq 7y agoThat did exist in the US Northeast when I was a kid. Most everything we needed could be walked to. Walmart, Home Depot, and other chains eventually killed off all the walking distance mom and pop restaurants, grocery marts and shops.
- primroot 7y agoThis is happening in my hometown Chitré, Panama, an 80k population town in a developing country. But ask almost anyone and they'll tell you how Chitré feels more and more like the capital city, i.e. more developed. No politician in her right mind is going to propose increasing tariffs on cars and taxes on fuel. People thinks its perfectly OK if pedestrians have access to the worst infrastructure, while cars proliferate. After all, you work hard, buy a car, close the windows, turn on the AC, and let the underachievers breathe burned fuel. The world is in order. Update: I've also stayed several months in Chile, which based on GDP, HDI, and Gini Coefficient, is a more developed country. Fuel is twice the price as in Panama, pedestrian infrastructure is well maintained, and the car driver culture in terms of following rules is the opposite of Panama. Mom and pop shops are the norm there, everywhere I went.
- toephu2 7y agoThe Michelin airless tire is getting close.. (still uses rubber but not nearly as much as conventional tires) https://michelinmedia.com/michelin-uptis/ https://michelinmedia.com/michelin-uptis/
- excursionist 7y agoI'm not sure how this helps. The amount of rubber used is not as important as the surface area being deteriorated, which doesn't seem to be any different from conventional tires.
- miahi 7y agoIt uses the same amount of rubber on the part that matters for the subject. The microplastics in this case are not caused by the total rubber content, but the rubber that is lost through road wear, and that will be the same on the airless tires, as it cannot be changed without impacting the grip (or the cars will have the same problems as the trains discussed above - huge stopping distance, unable to go up a >2% slope without special tricks).
- manigandham 7y agoThey've been working on this for decades already, with the Tweel getting some attention in 2005: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweel It'll be a long time still before this actually gets to any kind of production use, unless regulation steps in.