5 ms·

My pet theory is that driving is a viral system and this is why it has triumphed. - Cars are a lowest common denominator for transportation. They do not requir

by woah 5y ago

My pet theory is that driving is a viral system and this is why it has triumphed. - Cars are a lowest common denominator for transportation. They do not require much infrastructure at first, and are a very easy way to get around when not many other people are driving. - Once enough people are driving, the downsides start to become apparent. But roads can be upgraded incrementally and drivers become a powerful interest groups since people have invested their livelihood into it by moving somewhere you need to drive to. - So it's a ratchet mechanism where people get locked into a transportation choice, and then force it to be expanded and catered to. Public transit does not have this dynamic. While cheaper in the long run, train lines are very expensive to build at first.

lbriner 5y ago
> While cheaper in the long run, train lines are very expensive to build at first. As much as I would like that to be true, I don't think it is. The safety-critical nature of railways, more so even than a coach/bus which might travel almost as fast as a slower train, means there are massive costs for maintaining railways, based partly on use but not always. I asked my MP (representative) the other day about why it was so expensive to travel on trains when there should be a massive economy of scale but she didn't understand the question. A return ticket for an approx 150km journey might be around £100 in the UK, whereas the gasoline cost would be maybe £40 + some small percentage of my yearly insurance and maintenance costs.
- petschge 5y ago
  True cost of driving a car is typically more than twice the fuel price. So the train ticket is not that bad value. The car is just hiding a lot of the cost away in the form of registration, insurance, depreciation, repairs and so on that you don't associate with a single trip. That makes the car trip seem cheaper than it is.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    The train to commute from an outlying city into Boston is ~$400/mo. On a pure cost basis that's just about equivalent to a compact car assuming you have to pay for unsubsidized parking in Boston or thereabouts and with the car option you also get a car that you can use wherever and whenever you want.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      And if you're in an outlying city you probably need to own a car anyway. That said, if I'm going in for a day, I usually take the train because rush hour driving is so painful.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    The trouble is most people will feel they need a car so even those taking public transport or cycling and walking will still bear all those costs.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
chasd00 5y ago
Get out of the city, the crowds, and the congestion. There's a lot of cool stuff out there that doesn't involve being shoulder to shoulder, and stacked on top of, a million miserable people.
- woah 5y ago
  Yea, great. You're going to "get out of the city" and get into nature (actually a sterile suburb). Now you're driving to work every day, making a million people in the city miserable with your exhaust, noise, danger, and huge expanses of wasted road space. Cities are only "noisy, dirty and crowded" because of cars. The noise is self-explanatory, the dirt is also (car tires cover everything in a thin layer of black dust). Cars also make cities more crowded because of the immense amount of space they take up. Trains and bikes can transport people using 1/10th to 1/100th of the road space of cars. Reducing streets to train lines and bike paths would allow cities to reclaim around 75% of the road area (2 lanes of parking and 2 lanes of traffic reduced to one lane for bikes and deliveries).
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    >"Cities are only "noisy, dirty and crowded" because of cars" This is hyperbole. Throughout history cities have always been noisy, dirty, and crowded. Even in very dense cities with limited car traffic there is still an abundance of grime.
    - woah 5y ago
      Before cars, horses were pooping on the street. Nobody is suggesting going back to horses.
  - vanilla_nut 5y ago
    Why would getting out of the city mean moving to an awful suburb? With remote work, you can move anywhere with internet access these days. But agreed: cars don’t work in cities. We need to create more bike and pedestrian paths and get rid of a LOT of streets, roads, and highways to fix US cities.
phicoh 5y ago
It is a function of population density. If the density is low, you need a car. Alternatives don't work. If the density is high, cars don't work. In between there is a bit of a choice, streets that are friendly to pedestrians and bikes encourage people to walk, cycle and take public transport. Streets only designed encourage traffic jams. Cars create traffic jams in a way that doesn't seem to happen with other modes of traffic. In a medium density environment, if you like traffic jams, go for cars. There is a also a bit of a question how much children can move around freely. In areas designed for cars, children tend to have very limited freedom. Their parents have to move them around until they get a driving license.
mark-r 5y ago
Interstate highways were also very expensive to build at first, but enough people thought they were a good idea that it got done.

by woah 5y ago

lbriner 5y ago

> While cheaper in the long run, train lines are very expensive to build at first. As much as I would like that to be true, I don't think it is. The safety-critical nature of railways, more so even than a coach/bus which might travel almost as fast as a slower train, means there are massive costs for maintaining railways, based partly on use but not always. I asked my MP (representative) the other day about why it was so expensive to travel on trains when there should be a massive economy of scale but she didn't understand the question. A return ticket for an approx 150km journey might be around £100 in the UK, whereas the gasoline cost would be maybe £40 + some small percentage of my yearly insurance and maintenance costs.

petschge 5y ago
True cost of driving a car is typically more than twice the fuel price. So the train ticket is not that bad value. The car is just hiding a lot of the cost away in the form of registration, insurance, depreciation, repairs and so on that you don't associate with a single trip. That makes the car trip seem cheaper than it is.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  The train to commute from an outlying city into Boston is ~$400/mo. On a pure cost basis that's just about equivalent to a compact car assuming you have to pay for unsubsidized parking in Boston or thereabouts and with the car option you also get a car that you can use wherever and whenever you want.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    And if you're in an outlying city you probably need to own a car anyway. That said, if I'm going in for a day, I usually take the train because rush hour driving is so painful.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  The trouble is most people will feel they need a car so even those taking public transport or cycling and walking will still bear all those costs.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

chasd00 5y ago

Get out of the city, the crowds, and the congestion. There's a lot of cool stuff out there that doesn't involve being shoulder to shoulder, and stacked on top of, a million miserable people.

woah 5y ago
Yea, great. You're going to "get out of the city" and get into nature (actually a sterile suburb). Now you're driving to work every day, making a million people in the city miserable with your exhaust, noise, danger, and huge expanses of wasted road space. Cities are only "noisy, dirty and crowded" because of cars. The noise is self-explanatory, the dirt is also (car tires cover everything in a thin layer of black dust). Cars also make cities more crowded because of the immense amount of space they take up. Trains and bikes can transport people using 1/10th to 1/100th of the road space of cars. Reducing streets to train lines and bike paths would allow cities to reclaim around 75% of the road area (2 lanes of parking and 2 lanes of traffic reduced to one lane for bikes and deliveries).
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  >"Cities are only "noisy, dirty and crowded" because of cars" This is hyperbole. Throughout history cities have always been noisy, dirty, and crowded. Even in very dense cities with limited car traffic there is still an abundance of grime.
  - woah 5y ago
    Before cars, horses were pooping on the street. Nobody is suggesting going back to horses.
- vanilla_nut 5y ago
  Why would getting out of the city mean moving to an awful suburb? With remote work, you can move anywhere with internet access these days. But agreed: cars don’t work in cities. We need to create more bike and pedestrian paths and get rid of a LOT of streets, roads, and highways to fix US cities.

phicoh 5y ago

It is a function of population density. If the density is low, you need a car. Alternatives don't work. If the density is high, cars don't work. In between there is a bit of a choice, streets that are friendly to pedestrians and bikes encourage people to walk, cycle and take public transport. Streets only designed encourage traffic jams. Cars create traffic jams in a way that doesn't seem to happen with other modes of traffic. In a medium density environment, if you like traffic jams, go for cars. There is a also a bit of a question how much children can move around freely. In areas designed for cars, children tend to have very limited freedom. Their parents have to move them around until they get a driving license.

mark-r 5y ago

Interstate highways were also very expensive to build at first, but enough people thought they were a good idea that it got done.