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Switching to electric cars from ICE cars is continuing to do the wrong thing and make the wrong choices, but doing this wrong thing a bit better. It's still th

Switching to electric cars from ICE cars is continuing to do the wrong thing and make the wrong choices, but doing this wrong thing a bit better. It's still the same status quo, woefully terrible and unsustainable transportation model. Automobile oriented transportation doesn't scale, is a huge waste of resources, and perpetuates unsustainable, ultra expensive and resource intensive sprawling urban development patterns. In contrast more compact cities with bike lanes take CO2 intensive cars off the road, and less cars means less parking, which enables cheaper buildings with less CO2 intensive concrete parking lots. Wins all around. It's frustrating to see so called environmentalist politicians that go all in with big electric car mandates but can barely put any money toward active transportation and rebuilding our cities to be more space efficient and accordingly use less carbon. Remarkably former British Columbia Green Leader Andrew Weaver even got on twitter recently to oppose a Victoria area protected bike lane and got into all sorts of arguments with cyclists. Incredible to see an environmental leader do this.

nine_k 6y ago
Taxis, small delivery vehicles, utility cars, cars and trucks for countryside use, and various trucks for city and highway use can all be electric, with all the benefits of EVs. If you want public transit be more popular, build denser cities. E.g. on Manhattan using the subway is a no-brainer, and you are rarely more than two (long) blocks from a subway station. In some more remote parts of Brooklyn, you often cannot reach the destination by subway alone, and you have to take a bus. Even further away, traveling by a bus either becomes too slow, or the bus does not come close enough, and a car is inevitable. I suppose there is no way to make public transit economical or time-efficient in agglomerations like Houston, even though LA manages a bus network somehow. Cycling such distances us also problematic: you either have to be pretty fit and take a shower when you arrive, or you have to have all the time in the world. Cycling within a dense city is pretty practical, though.
- digital-cygnet 6y ago
  There's a chicken-egg problem at play, though. We can't build denser cities because we need to build 4-lane roads and parking; we can't get rid of these roads and parking because people need cars because the city isn't dense enough yet. It's certainly solvable on the many-decade timescale by smart, consistent city and state governments, but it's going to be a gradual slog of incrementalism (e.g., see all the changes NYC has made to shift from car centrism since the 90s - gradually adding bike lanes, closing Times Square to traffic, closing 14th street to private cars, congestion pricing for taxis,...) The distance problem with cycling is solvable (though it pains me a bit to say this as a recreational cyclist) by electric bikes and other micromobility solutions (e.g. Citroen Ami). The streets of NYC are chock full of delivery drivers and others zipping along at 25mph on cheap, quiet electric bikes with ranges of many dozens of miles. Once we have a better regulatory regime for these (so people aren't blowing so many lights and hitting so many pedestrians), I could see them being a viable alternative to cars for many-mile use cases, at least during dry/temperate weather.
  - nine_k 6y ago
    Indeed, two-wheeled electric transport is pretty great! It's a mix of EVs and bicycles proper. These devices still need parking, even if they are as compact as a scooter or a bicycle (not like a motorcycle). Keeping them in an apartment is a bit uncomfortable, too, especially in a walk-in on 4th floor, since they are not exactly lightweight. Electric skateboards are much more compact, but take more skill, and have a shorter range. All this is totally solvable, but the problems first needs to be recognized.
    - starkruzr 6y ago
      "parking" is relative. we all have bike racks around somewhere; they work just fine.
  - zip1234 6y ago
    Step 1: stop subsidizing car travel. Make automobile owners pay their way--to include negative externalities such as noise and pollution.
    - 908B64B197 6y ago
      Problem is: automobile owners chose their houses with these subsidies already accounted for in their budget. Remove them and suddenly it's impossible for them to stay in their home. Oh, and they can't move closer to the city center: removing the subsidies just made houses that are centrally located impossible to afford for them.
      - adrianN 6y ago
        So, spread the change out over a number of years, say 15 or 20. Building public transport won't happen over night either. People can't expect their living situation to stay the same forever, societal change requires personal change too.
    - dghlsakjg 6y ago
      Just removing parking subsidies would be huge. I lived in Vancouver, which is very transit friendly by NA standards. In the residential Neighbourhood I lived in, most roads were 3-4 cars wide, and 2 of those widths were exclusively for parking private cars (parking lane, travel lane, possibly another travel lane, and another parking lane). The building I lived in had as much square footage for parking as it did for living. Parking a car in was more or less marginally free(as in most North American cities). Using a city parking spot for anything else cost money, and was time limited. Renting a private parking spot was about $100/ month (due to building codes there was an oversupply of private parking in addition to the available street parking). Renting a bedroom the size of a parking spot was $500+/mo. In other words, the city incentives were set up that a climate controlled parking spot for a car was significantly oversupplied, and cheaper, than a putting a human in the same space.
- yourmom2 6y ago
  > be pretty fit and take a shower when you arrive oh no unsolvable problems
digital-cygnet 6y ago
In my experience, most people really do not understand how fundamentally unsuited cars are to solving urban (or dense suburban) transportation problems. Without really staring at the underlying geometry, it is hard for laypeople to understand that automobile-centric development patterns are by-and-large incapable of producing the kind of human-scale, dense, walkable areas that are (1) instinctively pleasing to be in, (2) generators of economic value, and (3) much more environmentally sustainable than the alternative. All this being said, I find it hard to fault 'environmentalist' politicians for their embrace of the electric car: politics is "the art of the possible", and the conventional wisdom, at least in the States, does not yet recognize automobile-centrism as a key problem. There are a lot of entrenched interests in favor of the status quo - not just the traditional car lobby (auto manufacturers, suburban developers, oil companies), but the ~half of Americans who live in suburbs, hence having their lifestyle and wealth reliant on cars remaining a dominant form of transportation. If the choice is between gas cars and electric cars (as, for a mainstream politician it basically seems to be), I am at least happy we are moving towards the latter, even though neither are the right answer. Shameless plug: I recently attempted to visually explain the first issue (why geometry makes cars unsuited to dense transportation) on my nascent blog: https://digital-cygnet.medium.com/a-quick-visual-illustration-of-the-folly-of-street-parking-76f161de02d1 https://digital-cygnet.medium.com/a-quick-visual-illustratio...
- Retric 6y ago
  The issue boils down to roads and parking more than cars. Trees need sunlight, but cars don’t so roads work just fine segregated below street level away from pedestrians and inclement weather. It sounds expensive, but work out how expensive NYC’s above ground road network costs both in terms of land value and ongoing property taxes and you see just how pricy cheap roads end up. Go 3D to segregate N/S traffic from E/W traffic thereby eliminating traffic lights and things really pick up. Of course it’s much easier to blame cars, but counties only have so many people you can actually build enough infrastructure to solve the root issues.
  - Tiktaalik 6y ago
    lol ok elon
spodek 6y ago
Exactly. Electric vehicles is a tactic that works within a strategy of fewer cars. A strategy more vehicles, even if electric, will eventually result in more total waste. A strategy of fewer vehicles works, all the better with a tactic of converting to electric. Want to lower emissions? One easy, cheap way is to convert car lanes to bike lanes or simply remove them. Lots of other government subsidies worth removing too, especially to fossil fuel extraction.
vgchh 6y ago
While I appreciate the contrarian view, it’s not either/or. Cars are a wonderful thing and facilitate independence and long distance travel. Electric cars are even more wonderful things. And Bikes are wonderful for active transport and but not a substitute for cars
- barnabee 6y ago
  It should be an either/or for travel within cities. I live in London and own a car, which I never use to travel around the city or at rush hour, only to leave on trips or for occasional movement of bulky items. The congestion charge (£10/day) and schemes such as local government closing off many residential streets to through traffic (which makes Islington wonderfully pleasant to walk/cycle around, it’s awesome!) help make this a no brainer, but I’d be happy for things to be taken much further with more restrictions and charges, as there are still far to many cars in London. Cycling infrastructure still needs much more investment and we should be changing rules to massively encourage electric micromobility as well. The safety arguments against it are nonsensical when compared to the cars it replaces, and better provision on roads would make it even safer.
- Tiktaalik 6y ago
  I never said it was an either/or situation here, but when governments put money toward things you can see where their priorities are. Right now with continuing near zero investment in active transportation the government is saying that its pretty much going go with the near status quo, minor and easy to achieve solution. The amount of CO2 reductions that follow will reflect this lack of ambition.
  - starkruzr 6y ago
    it's sort of unclear to me why you think moving to electric vehicles and renewable power will reflect a "lack of ambition" in CO2 reduction.
WalterBright 6y ago
In the Seattle area the existing train tracks are removed and turned into bike paths which transport about < 1% of the people the rail lines could have served. Seattle also will dig a new transportation tunnel, and fill up another tunnel with the excavated dirt, so a lot of money is spent and capacity does not increase.
mrshadowgoose 6y ago
Most humans enjoy being comfortable. Costs (financial and ecological) ignored, it's safe to say that a large portion of the population would choose to proceed quickly from point A to B in the comfort of a private enclosed vehicle. Obviously this desire needs to be balanced with environmental protection, practicality and accommodation of those who legitimately want to cycle or walk. There are a few technologies coming down the pipeline that should help achieve a compromise between all of these: -mass electrification of vehicles -pervasive small-diameter tunneling: The jury's still out on whether this can be done cheaply enough, but if this works out, it completely solves the urban scaling problem. Passenger vehicular traffic in cities can be pushed down into the ground, freeing up existing space for cyclists and pedestrians. Parallel tunnels can be trivially added when specific routes require additional capacity. -self-driving vehicles: Self-driving taxi services would reduce the demand for personal ownership of vehicles, thereby reducing the total ecological burden. I'm in complete agreement with you that automobile-oriented transportation, as implemented today, is completely awful. That doesn't mean we should reject the human element, and force people to do things they don't want to, when technological progress can allow us to satisfy those wants responsibly.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  People are only comfortable in cars because they've learned to be. Before I owned a car and cycled every day I didn't once think it was uncomfortable and that I'd rather be in a car. My body was used to it.
  - Shivetya 6y ago
    No. Cycling is fine until its too cold, too wet, too hot, and oh I am late or I need to carry something else or .. or... or.. seriously all these articles act as if it is a viable solution day in and day out and its far from one. people like cars, buses, and other enclosed transport, all for the same reason. because it can make the weather irrelevant to the trip
    - eythian 6y ago
      Those times usually not that big of a deal anyway. Too cold you can dress up against, to warm could be a thing depending on where you are, if you're late then a bike is probably the fastest mode of transport through a busy city anyway, carrying things is definitely possible. And these situations aren't common anyway, and I say that living somewhere where so many people bike everywhere all the time that finding parking can be an issue (though is still much easier than finding parking for a large steel box on wheels.)
brailsafe 6y ago
I agree, but I think Vancouver has a pretty good handle on its car/parking situation. That's Vancouver proper, not the suburbs. Most new buikdings that go up have their parking underground, and then drivers in the city are squeezed for the most part in terms of parking options and so on. The parking lots that are still around seem to be from older buildings, that then get replaced with higher density eventually. When I do drive, it's actually still pretty pleasent, because it's for necessarily driving dependant activities. Even though there's quite a lot of electric cars, there is still a remarkable level of noise generated next to patios along main roads, so improving that would be nice, if we can assume that cars won't go away entirely. Compare that to the prairies, Alberta, or even the island, and it's a world of difference in terms of surface level lots. Would be curious what your opinion is as (presumably) a bc resident.
- __turbobrew__ 6y ago
  I live in Vancouver proper and rarely drive. The city has done a pretty good job on the bike routes; I can get to nearly anywhere in Vancouver within a 30 minute bike ride from my home turf of Mount Pleasant. I think forcing parking lots under ground and limiting parking spaces has been great for the city! It is definitely a trend with new buildings to have limited parking options. My workplace office houses about 60 people but we only have 4-5 parking spots which incentivizes alternate transit modes. Having limited parking options means that many people at my work live local to the office and either bike or walk to get there, which I think is awesome! Ultimately the city of Vancouver cannot grow out anymore therefore we need to grow up without increasing the amount of traffic on the roads. I think the key to limiting traffic on the roads is to build dense walkable communities connected by solid transit options. Regarding solid transit options: I think the city desperately needs a broadway skytrain all the way to UBC and a skytrain line which goes from metrotown straight west down 49th avenue connecting with the canada line at oakridge and ultimately terminating at UBC. Going east-west in the city kind of sucks right now and most of the crappy buses to ride on are east-west due to overcrowding.
  - brailsafe 6y ago
    Interesting point. I hadn't thought of a SkyTrain to Oakridge from Metrotown. Oakridge is apparently getting a massive redevelopment and that could increase demand, but is it currently busy enough? I guess with the development happening ta Metrotown as well, it would be good to just connect all major centres. I did used to live in Burnaby, and it sucked getting to the airport from there.

nine_k 6y ago

Taxis, small delivery vehicles, utility cars, cars and trucks for countryside use, and various trucks for city and highway use can all be electric, with all the benefits of EVs. If you want public transit be more popular, build denser cities. E.g. on Manhattan using the subway is a no-brainer, and you are rarely more than two (long) blocks from a subway station. In some more remote parts of Brooklyn, you often cannot reach the destination by subway alone, and you have to take a bus. Even further away, traveling by a bus either becomes too slow, or the bus does not come close enough, and a car is inevitable. I suppose there is no way to make public transit economical or time-efficient in agglomerations like Houston, even though LA manages a bus network somehow. Cycling such distances us also problematic: you either have to be pretty fit and take a shower when you arrive, or you have to have all the time in the world. Cycling within a dense city is pretty practical, though.

digital-cygnet 6y ago
There's a chicken-egg problem at play, though. We can't build denser cities because we need to build 4-lane roads and parking; we can't get rid of these roads and parking because people need cars because the city isn't dense enough yet. It's certainly solvable on the many-decade timescale by smart, consistent city and state governments, but it's going to be a gradual slog of incrementalism (e.g., see all the changes NYC has made to shift from car centrism since the 90s - gradually adding bike lanes, closing Times Square to traffic, closing 14th street to private cars, congestion pricing for taxis,...) The distance problem with cycling is solvable (though it pains me a bit to say this as a recreational cyclist) by electric bikes and other micromobility solutions (e.g. Citroen Ami). The streets of NYC are chock full of delivery drivers and others zipping along at 25mph on cheap, quiet electric bikes with ranges of many dozens of miles. Once we have a better regulatory regime for these (so people aren't blowing so many lights and hitting so many pedestrians), I could see them being a viable alternative to cars for many-mile use cases, at least during dry/temperate weather.
- nine_k 6y ago
  Indeed, two-wheeled electric transport is pretty great! It's a mix of EVs and bicycles proper. These devices still need parking, even if they are as compact as a scooter or a bicycle (not like a motorcycle). Keeping them in an apartment is a bit uncomfortable, too, especially in a walk-in on 4th floor, since they are not exactly lightweight. Electric skateboards are much more compact, but take more skill, and have a shorter range. All this is totally solvable, but the problems first needs to be recognized.
  - starkruzr 6y ago
    "parking" is relative. we all have bike racks around somewhere; they work just fine.
- zip1234 6y ago
  Step 1: stop subsidizing car travel. Make automobile owners pay their way--to include negative externalities such as noise and pollution.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    Problem is: automobile owners chose their houses with these subsidies already accounted for in their budget. Remove them and suddenly it's impossible for them to stay in their home. Oh, and they can't move closer to the city center: removing the subsidies just made houses that are centrally located impossible to afford for them.
    - adrianN 6y ago
      So, spread the change out over a number of years, say 15 or 20. Building public transport won't happen over night either. People can't expect their living situation to stay the same forever, societal change requires personal change too.
  - dghlsakjg 6y ago
    Just removing parking subsidies would be huge. I lived in Vancouver, which is very transit friendly by NA standards. In the residential Neighbourhood I lived in, most roads were 3-4 cars wide, and 2 of those widths were exclusively for parking private cars (parking lane, travel lane, possibly another travel lane, and another parking lane). The building I lived in had as much square footage for parking as it did for living. Parking a car in was more or less marginally free(as in most North American cities). Using a city parking spot for anything else cost money, and was time limited. Renting a private parking spot was about $100/ month (due to building codes there was an oversupply of private parking in addition to the available street parking). Renting a bedroom the size of a parking spot was $500+/mo. In other words, the city incentives were set up that a climate controlled parking spot for a car was significantly oversupplied, and cheaper, than a putting a human in the same space.
yourmom2 6y ago
> be pretty fit and take a shower when you arrive oh no unsolvable problems

digital-cygnet 6y ago

In my experience, most people really do not understand how fundamentally unsuited cars are to solving urban (or dense suburban) transportation problems. Without really staring at the underlying geometry, it is hard for laypeople to understand that automobile-centric development patterns are by-and-large incapable of producing the kind of human-scale, dense, walkable areas that are (1) instinctively pleasing to be in, (2) generators of economic value, and (3) much more environmentally sustainable than the alternative. All this being said, I find it hard to fault 'environmentalist' politicians for their embrace of the electric car: politics is "the art of the possible", and the conventional wisdom, at least in the States, does not yet recognize automobile-centrism as a key problem. There are a lot of entrenched interests in favor of the status quo - not just the traditional car lobby (auto manufacturers, suburban developers, oil companies), but the ~half of Americans who live in suburbs, hence having their lifestyle and wealth reliant on cars remaining a dominant form of transportation. If the choice is between gas cars and electric cars (as, for a mainstream politician it basically seems to be), I am at least happy we are moving towards the latter, even though neither are the right answer. Shameless plug: I recently attempted to visually explain the first issue (why geometry makes cars unsuited to dense transportation) on my nascent blog: https://digital-cygnet.medium.com/a-quick-visual-illustration-of-the-folly-of-street-parking-76f161de02d1 https://digital-cygnet.medium.com/a-quick-visual-illustratio...

Retric 6y ago
The issue boils down to roads and parking more than cars. Trees need sunlight, but cars don’t so roads work just fine segregated below street level away from pedestrians and inclement weather. It sounds expensive, but work out how expensive NYC’s above ground road network costs both in terms of land value and ongoing property taxes and you see just how pricy cheap roads end up. Go 3D to segregate N/S traffic from E/W traffic thereby eliminating traffic lights and things really pick up. Of course it’s much easier to blame cars, but counties only have so many people you can actually build enough infrastructure to solve the root issues.
- Tiktaalik 6y ago
  lol ok elon

spodek 6y ago

Exactly. Electric vehicles is a tactic that works within a strategy of fewer cars. A strategy more vehicles, even if electric, will eventually result in more total waste. A strategy of fewer vehicles works, all the better with a tactic of converting to electric. Want to lower emissions? One easy, cheap way is to convert car lanes to bike lanes or simply remove them. Lots of other government subsidies worth removing too, especially to fossil fuel extraction.

vgchh 6y ago

While I appreciate the contrarian view, it’s not either/or. Cars are a wonderful thing and facilitate independence and long distance travel. Electric cars are even more wonderful things. And Bikes are wonderful for active transport and but not a substitute for cars

barnabee 6y ago
It should be an either/or for travel within cities. I live in London and own a car, which I never use to travel around the city or at rush hour, only to leave on trips or for occasional movement of bulky items. The congestion charge (£10/day) and schemes such as local government closing off many residential streets to through traffic (which makes Islington wonderfully pleasant to walk/cycle around, it’s awesome!) help make this a no brainer, but I’d be happy for things to be taken much further with more restrictions and charges, as there are still far to many cars in London. Cycling infrastructure still needs much more investment and we should be changing rules to massively encourage electric micromobility as well. The safety arguments against it are nonsensical when compared to the cars it replaces, and better provision on roads would make it even safer.
Tiktaalik 6y ago
I never said it was an either/or situation here, but when governments put money toward things you can see where their priorities are. Right now with continuing near zero investment in active transportation the government is saying that its pretty much going go with the near status quo, minor and easy to achieve solution. The amount of CO2 reductions that follow will reflect this lack of ambition.
- starkruzr 6y ago
  it's sort of unclear to me why you think moving to electric vehicles and renewable power will reflect a "lack of ambition" in CO2 reduction.

WalterBright 6y ago

In the Seattle area the existing train tracks are removed and turned into bike paths which transport about < 1% of the people the rail lines could have served. Seattle also will dig a new transportation tunnel, and fill up another tunnel with the excavated dirt, so a lot of money is spent and capacity does not increase.

mrshadowgoose 6y ago

Most humans enjoy being comfortable. Costs (financial and ecological) ignored, it's safe to say that a large portion of the population would choose to proceed quickly from point A to B in the comfort of a private enclosed vehicle. Obviously this desire needs to be balanced with environmental protection, practicality and accommodation of those who legitimately want to cycle or walk. There are a few technologies coming down the pipeline that should help achieve a compromise between all of these: -mass electrification of vehicles -pervasive small-diameter tunneling: The jury's still out on whether this can be done cheaply enough, but if this works out, it completely solves the urban scaling problem. Passenger vehicular traffic in cities can be pushed down into the ground, freeing up existing space for cyclists and pedestrians. Parallel tunnels can be trivially added when specific routes require additional capacity. -self-driving vehicles: Self-driving taxi services would reduce the demand for personal ownership of vehicles, thereby reducing the total ecological burden. I'm in complete agreement with you that automobile-oriented transportation, as implemented today, is completely awful. That doesn't mean we should reject the human element, and force people to do things they don't want to, when technological progress can allow us to satisfy those wants responsibly.

globular-toast 6y ago
People are only comfortable in cars because they've learned to be. Before I owned a car and cycled every day I didn't once think it was uncomfortable and that I'd rather be in a car. My body was used to it.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  No. Cycling is fine until its too cold, too wet, too hot, and oh I am late or I need to carry something else or .. or... or.. seriously all these articles act as if it is a viable solution day in and day out and its far from one. people like cars, buses, and other enclosed transport, all for the same reason. because it can make the weather irrelevant to the trip
  - eythian 6y ago
    Those times usually not that big of a deal anyway. Too cold you can dress up against, to warm could be a thing depending on where you are, if you're late then a bike is probably the fastest mode of transport through a busy city anyway, carrying things is definitely possible. And these situations aren't common anyway, and I say that living somewhere where so many people bike everywhere all the time that finding parking can be an issue (though is still much easier than finding parking for a large steel box on wheels.)

brailsafe 6y ago

I agree, but I think Vancouver has a pretty good handle on its car/parking situation. That's Vancouver proper, not the suburbs. Most new buikdings that go up have their parking underground, and then drivers in the city are squeezed for the most part in terms of parking options and so on. The parking lots that are still around seem to be from older buildings, that then get replaced with higher density eventually. When I do drive, it's actually still pretty pleasent, because it's for necessarily driving dependant activities. Even though there's quite a lot of electric cars, there is still a remarkable level of noise generated next to patios along main roads, so improving that would be nice, if we can assume that cars won't go away entirely. Compare that to the prairies, Alberta, or even the island, and it's a world of difference in terms of surface level lots. Would be curious what your opinion is as (presumably) a bc resident.

__turbobrew__ 6y ago
I live in Vancouver proper and rarely drive. The city has done a pretty good job on the bike routes; I can get to nearly anywhere in Vancouver within a 30 minute bike ride from my home turf of Mount Pleasant. I think forcing parking lots under ground and limiting parking spaces has been great for the city! It is definitely a trend with new buildings to have limited parking options. My workplace office houses about 60 people but we only have 4-5 parking spots which incentivizes alternate transit modes. Having limited parking options means that many people at my work live local to the office and either bike or walk to get there, which I think is awesome! Ultimately the city of Vancouver cannot grow out anymore therefore we need to grow up without increasing the amount of traffic on the roads. I think the key to limiting traffic on the roads is to build dense walkable communities connected by solid transit options. Regarding solid transit options: I think the city desperately needs a broadway skytrain all the way to UBC and a skytrain line which goes from metrotown straight west down 49th avenue connecting with the canada line at oakridge and ultimately terminating at UBC. Going east-west in the city kind of sucks right now and most of the crappy buses to ride on are east-west due to overcrowding.
- brailsafe 6y ago
  Interesting point. I hadn't thought of a SkyTrain to Oakridge from Metrotown. Oakridge is apparently getting a massive redevelopment and that could increase demand, but is it currently busy enough? I guess with the development happening ta Metrotown as well, it would be good to just connect all major centres. I did used to live in Burnaby, and it sucked getting to the airport from there.