5 ms·

Can I have 30? I need to get to my hyperloop pod faster. Those modern transportation 'solutions' are a sign of local maxima of current city design. A bad desig

Can I have 30? I need to get to my hyperloop pod faster. Those modern transportation 'solutions' are a sign of local maxima of current city design. A bad design that cannot scale any further. So maybe instead we start on fixing cities?

atoav 5y ago
> Those modern transportation 'solutions' are a sign of local maxima of current city design. A bad design that cannot scale any further. Exactly. And for some reason the "solutions" always have the nice feature that they get those using them out of the sight of the rest of the lowly peasants living in those cities. As if it hasn't been demonstrated how public transport can do wonders for highly populated if done right (e.g. look at japan).
- 542354234235 5y ago
  And with driverless cars around the corner, now is the time to integrate them correctly. The idea should not be to get in your Tesla at home and cruise on the highway and into the city to park at your office. They idea should be picked up at your house by an Auto that drops you at the lightrail station just in time to catch the next train into downtown, where you can hop in a 10 person driverless shuttle that drops you at the office after a couple other stops. I mean, the real solution is to stop subsidizing suburbs, that are bleeding cities dry with the massive costs of infrastructure requirements and maintenance. >“The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates the cost at $5 trillion — but that's just for major infrastructure, not the minor streets, curbs, walks, and pipes that serve our homes. The reason we have this gap is because the public yield from the suburban development pattern — the amount of tax revenue obtained per increment of liability assumed — is ridiculously low. Over a life cycle, a city frequently receives just a dime or two of revenue for each dollar of liability. The engineering profession will argue, as ASCE does, that we're simply not making the investments necessary to maintain this infrastructure. This is nonsense. We've simply built in a way that is not financially productive. We've done this because, as with any Ponzi scheme, new growth provides the illusion of prosperity. In the near term, revenue grows, while the corresponding maintenance obligations — which are not counted on the public balance sheet — are a generation away.” [1] [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
  - atoav 5y ago
    The advantages to self driving cars being used this way are even better: - people driving don't have to take time to find parking lots - the cars themselves don't need to be parked in the city, freeing up space - depending on how many people are traveling together and what they are transporting different sized vehicles can be used That being said: the most efficient form of transportation any human can do right now is the bicycle. It is fast too. During rush hour I am faster than car, bus or subway on my commute (German city) and as I am sitting on the computer for long periods anyways, having a little movement is great. And for weather there is appropriate clothings.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mdorazio 5y ago
I see comments like this quite often without any suggestions for how it would happen practically. Let's talk Los Angeles, for example - where would you put light rail lines to sufficiently cover the low-density 400+ square miles of city sufficiently well to be better than cars? How would you acquire the requisite property & rights of way to run the lines? How would you fight the guaranteed NIMBY protests from local voters? Where would you get the tens of billions of dollars it would take? "Fixing" a city is hard. And I haven't seen too many examples of it actually done, in comparison to cities that were built with public transit in mind from the beginning.
- throwaway210222 5y ago
  > in comparison to cities that were built with public transit in mind from the beginning. Tokyo and Paris were built with electrified, public transport in mind from the beginning? Really?
- me_me_me 5y ago
  https://theconversation.com/superblocks-barcelonas-car-free-zones-could-extend-lives-and-boost-mental-health-123295 https://theconversation.com/superblocks-barcelonas-car-free-... He is an example.
- pasabagi 5y ago
  Rethink taxation so people living in suburbs pay proportionately to the cost of running services to them, and you'd very quickly see a denser city. Dense habitation is just way more efficient, more ecologically friendly, and more cost effective. If this was reflected in the law, you'd very quickly get a situation like you have in Germany, where you basically go from multi-storey apartments to farmland with no suburbs in between.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Many of the suburbs in the greater LA area are actually separate cities. It doesn't cost more to run services to them. The services are right there.
  - 5y ago

atoav 5y ago

> Those modern transportation 'solutions' are a sign of local maxima of current city design. A bad design that cannot scale any further. Exactly. And for some reason the "solutions" always have the nice feature that they get those using them out of the sight of the rest of the lowly peasants living in those cities. As if it hasn't been demonstrated how public transport can do wonders for highly populated if done right (e.g. look at japan).

542354234235 5y ago
And with driverless cars around the corner, now is the time to integrate them correctly. The idea should not be to get in your Tesla at home and cruise on the highway and into the city to park at your office. They idea should be picked up at your house by an Auto that drops you at the lightrail station just in time to catch the next train into downtown, where you can hop in a 10 person driverless shuttle that drops you at the office after a couple other stops. I mean, the real solution is to stop subsidizing suburbs, that are bleeding cities dry with the massive costs of infrastructure requirements and maintenance. >“The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates the cost at $5 trillion — but that's just for major infrastructure, not the minor streets, curbs, walks, and pipes that serve our homes. The reason we have this gap is because the public yield from the suburban development pattern — the amount of tax revenue obtained per increment of liability assumed — is ridiculously low. Over a life cycle, a city frequently receives just a dime or two of revenue for each dollar of liability. The engineering profession will argue, as ASCE does, that we're simply not making the investments necessary to maintain this infrastructure. This is nonsense. We've simply built in a way that is not financially productive. We've done this because, as with any Ponzi scheme, new growth provides the illusion of prosperity. In the near term, revenue grows, while the corresponding maintenance obligations — which are not counted on the public balance sheet — are a generation away.” [1] [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
- atoav 5y ago
  The advantages to self driving cars being used this way are even better: - people driving don't have to take time to find parking lots - the cars themselves don't need to be parked in the city, freeing up space - depending on how many people are traveling together and what they are transporting different sized vehicles can be used That being said: the most efficient form of transportation any human can do right now is the bicycle. It is fast too. During rush hour I am faster than car, bus or subway on my commute (German city) and as I am sitting on the computer for long periods anyways, having a little movement is great. And for weather there is appropriate clothings.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mdorazio 5y ago

I see comments like this quite often without any suggestions for how it would happen practically. Let's talk Los Angeles, for example - where would you put light rail lines to sufficiently cover the low-density 400+ square miles of city sufficiently well to be better than cars? How would you acquire the requisite property & rights of way to run the lines? How would you fight the guaranteed NIMBY protests from local voters? Where would you get the tens of billions of dollars it would take? "Fixing" a city is hard. And I haven't seen too many examples of it actually done, in comparison to cities that were built with public transit in mind from the beginning.

throwaway210222 5y ago
> in comparison to cities that were built with public transit in mind from the beginning. Tokyo and Paris were built with electrified, public transport in mind from the beginning? Really?
me_me_me 5y ago
https://theconversation.com/superblocks-barcelonas-car-free-zones-could-extend-lives-and-boost-mental-health-123295 https://theconversation.com/superblocks-barcelonas-car-free-... He is an example.
pasabagi 5y ago
Rethink taxation so people living in suburbs pay proportionately to the cost of running services to them, and you'd very quickly see a denser city. Dense habitation is just way more efficient, more ecologically friendly, and more cost effective. If this was reflected in the law, you'd very quickly get a situation like you have in Germany, where you basically go from multi-storey apartments to farmland with no suburbs in between.
- nradov 5y ago
  Many of the suburbs in the greater LA area are actually separate cities. It doesn't cost more to run services to them. The services are right there.
- 5y ago