4 ms·

Do you have any idea of the SIZE of some States and distances between HOMES, not just towns? Public transport is not feasible in some places, as are not bikes.

by bnt 4y ago

Do you have any idea of the SIZE of some States and distances between HOMES, not just towns? Public transport is not feasible in some places, as are not bikes. Am I supposed to bike 30 miles for a gallon of milk? How do I bring it back?

sixothree 4y ago
Public transport changes that.
bannedbybros 4y ago
ericmay 4y ago
> Am I supposed to bike 30 miles for a gallon of milk? How do I bring it back? Live closer? How do people in Germany get a gallon of milk? Or Japan? How is it that every country in the world is able to do this except us? Ultimately physics will win here and we're going to run out of cheap gasoline and fossil fuels and you're going to wish you could walk a couple blocks to a neighborhood grocery store. Milk is going to be $7/gallon and gas is going to be $7/gallon and you're going to effectively pay $15 or more to drive to the store 30 miles away and buy that gallon of milk. The whole reason you're were previously able to live 30 miles away from a place to buy milk is because we've had cheap, subsidized fossil fuels. This is going away. There's no amount of oil we can drill for that will change this reality over the long term. No political party can "fix" this. Republicans can't open enough pipelines. It doesn't matter anyway. If you choose to live 30 miles away from the nearest house or grocery store, you also will incur the associated costs of doing that. Townships and other entities aren't going to be able to afford to repair roads. They don't have the money unless they raise taxes by a lot. Better get ready for that too. Public transit isn't feasible in many places, nor are bikes. Why is that? It's because we've decided to make sure that this is the case and we've spread out towns and cities, and used zoning to make sure that there are no stores within walking distance of the suburbs just so we can keep wasting money building new roads and buying new cars. It's a hidden tax going straight to shareholders of construction companies, automobile manufacturers, and government officials who green light all highway and road projects with your tax money even when we could just change a few things and reap huge savings. It's mind-blowing every time I see these comments. "How am I supposed to do this? See it doesn't work? Well yea because you've decided to make it not work and then tried it and you're like "oh the thing I made not work doesn't work! See??". Nobody is interested in "taking your car" and nobody is interested in forcing you to live in a place that looks like Hong Kong. What many people are interested in though is building in sensible ways that include cheaper and more effective transit options, like walking, biking, light rail, and possibly busses. 90% of your day-to-day needs should be within a distance that you don't need a car for. Everything else is incorrect and just won't work in the long-term for most people.
TulliusCicero 4y ago
Bikes are not feasible because of intentional urban design decisions, not because of inherent values of American geography. Needing to travel 30 miles for a grocery store applies to only a tiny, tiny minority of Americans here. edit: some data to back up my point: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2019/june/us-shoppers-access-to-multiple-food-stores-varies-by-region/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2019/june/us-shoppers-a... > When the ERS researchers looked at rural food store access, they found that the median distance to the nearest and the third-nearest food store was 3.1 miles and 6.1 miles, respectively. 6 miles is pretty far to go by bike each way, no doubt, though 3 miles isn't too bad, especially if you use an ebike, and those are steadily becoming more affordable. That would be in the range of 10-15 minutes each way. That said, the bigger problem right now is having decent bike infrastructure to actually get there, rather than the distance.
arinlen 4y ago
> Do you have any idea of the SIZE of some States and distances between HOMES, not just towns? Is that even a serious argument? Public transportation networks are designed to serve urban areas, with specific solutions catered to specific combinations of travel distance and throughput. Hand-waiving by pointing out isolated individuals live in isolated areas means nothing. Mass transportation is designed to serve the masses, not hermits who chose to live far from urban centers. Meanwhile, all those person's filling in those two-digit-lane highways live somewhere, and if they can pack a highway they certainly can be served by a suburban railway service.
- kube-system 4y ago
  It's not just hermits that live far from urban centers in the US. The US is famous for sprawling contiguous suburbs. Subway systems work well when people commute from the edges of a city to an urban center. Throw US suburbs into the mix, and you get some strange complications, like: * suburbs that from adjacent cities that sprawl together -- the residents there may commute to different cities * suburban office parks -- this makes it difficult to effectively meet people's needs with an affordable hub-and-spoke model, because large numbers of people commute not to the urban center, but between adjacent suburbs
  - arinlen 4y ago
    > It's not just hermits that live far from urban centers in the US. The US is famous for sprawling contiguous suburbs. Sprawling suburbs can be, and often are, served by public transportation. The critical factor affecting the US approach to public transportation, which is purely ideological, is the neoliberal belief that public transportation services are only worth considering if they are provided by private corporations and only if they are profitable right from the start. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world these services are either public or public-private partnerships, and subsidized with clear externalities in mind. For example, if I recall correctly the Tokyo subway network is operated by a few private companies which profit not by the direct exploration of their railway lines but from real estate investments coordinated by the expansion of their railway lines. Consequently, we have european capitals which coordinate urban planning (i.e., where suburban sprawls can and cannot be built) with coverage of their public transportation services, including investing in extensions of subway lines to deserted places where medium- and high-density housing projects have been approved. > Subway systems work well when people from the edges of a city to an urban center. Subway is not a good example in discussions over public transportation in urban sprawls. The main purpose of subway networks is to enhance mobility within a urban area. Consequently, typically you see subway networks with subway stops at 500-800 meters and travel speeds of around 50km/h, which just happens to be slightly better than traveling by car. Park-and-ride stops are only another aspect of the main goal of eliminating car traffic within the city. The standard strategy to serve urban sprawls with public transportation is to cover them with bus routes which feed into a high-throughput mass transport systems such as commuter rail or bus rapid transit, also serving as park-and-ride stations. > suburban office parks -- this makes it difficult to effectively meet people's needs with an affordable hub-and-spoke model, because large numbers of people commute not to the urban center, but between adjacent suburbs This is not true. I happen to have worked for a company located in a suburban office park which wasn't served very well by public transportation, but the office park itself organized bus services from one of the city's multimodal hub to the office park. Also, this is so common and mundane that I know for a fact that even some Ikea stores in europe located in industrial districts offer free bus services connecting public transport hubs to them.

by bnt 4y ago

sixothree 4y ago

Public transport changes that.

bannedbybros 4y ago

ericmay 4y ago

> Am I supposed to bike 30 miles for a gallon of milk? How do I bring it back? Live closer? How do people in Germany get a gallon of milk? Or Japan? How is it that every country in the world is able to do this except us? Ultimately physics will win here and we're going to run out of cheap gasoline and fossil fuels and you're going to wish you could walk a couple blocks to a neighborhood grocery store. Milk is going to be $7/gallon and gas is going to be $7/gallon and you're going to effectively pay $15 or more to drive to the store 30 miles away and buy that gallon of milk. The whole reason you're were previously able to live 30 miles away from a place to buy milk is because we've had cheap, subsidized fossil fuels. This is going away. There's no amount of oil we can drill for that will change this reality over the long term. No political party can "fix" this. Republicans can't open enough pipelines. It doesn't matter anyway. If you choose to live 30 miles away from the nearest house or grocery store, you also will incur the associated costs of doing that. Townships and other entities aren't going to be able to afford to repair roads. They don't have the money unless they raise taxes by a lot. Better get ready for that too. Public transit isn't feasible in many places, nor are bikes. Why is that? It's because we've decided to make sure that this is the case and we've spread out towns and cities, and used zoning to make sure that there are no stores within walking distance of the suburbs just so we can keep wasting money building new roads and buying new cars. It's a hidden tax going straight to shareholders of construction companies, automobile manufacturers, and government officials who green light all highway and road projects with your tax money even when we could just change a few things and reap huge savings. It's mind-blowing every time I see these comments. "How am I supposed to do this? See it doesn't work? Well yea because you've decided to make it not work and then tried it and you're like "oh the thing I made not work doesn't work! See??". Nobody is interested in "taking your car" and nobody is interested in forcing you to live in a place that looks like Hong Kong. What many people are interested in though is building in sensible ways that include cheaper and more effective transit options, like walking, biking, light rail, and possibly busses. 90% of your day-to-day needs should be within a distance that you don't need a car for. Everything else is incorrect and just won't work in the long-term for most people.

TulliusCicero 4y ago

Bikes are not feasible because of intentional urban design decisions, not because of inherent values of American geography. Needing to travel 30 miles for a grocery store applies to only a tiny, tiny minority of Americans here. edit: some data to back up my point: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2019/june/us-shoppers-access-to-multiple-food-stores-varies-by-region/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2019/june/us-shoppers-a... > When the ERS researchers looked at rural food store access, they found that the median distance to the nearest and the third-nearest food store was 3.1 miles and 6.1 miles, respectively. 6 miles is pretty far to go by bike each way, no doubt, though 3 miles isn't too bad, especially if you use an ebike, and those are steadily becoming more affordable. That would be in the range of 10-15 minutes each way. That said, the bigger problem right now is having decent bike infrastructure to actually get there, rather than the distance.

arinlen 4y ago

> Do you have any idea of the SIZE of some States and distances between HOMES, not just towns? Is that even a serious argument? Public transportation networks are designed to serve urban areas, with specific solutions catered to specific combinations of travel distance and throughput. Hand-waiving by pointing out isolated individuals live in isolated areas means nothing. Mass transportation is designed to serve the masses, not hermits who chose to live far from urban centers. Meanwhile, all those person's filling in those two-digit-lane highways live somewhere, and if they can pack a highway they certainly can be served by a suburban railway service.

kube-system 4y ago
It's not just hermits that live far from urban centers in the US. The US is famous for sprawling contiguous suburbs. Subway systems work well when people commute from the edges of a city to an urban center. Throw US suburbs into the mix, and you get some strange complications, like: * suburbs that from adjacent cities that sprawl together -- the residents there may commute to different cities * suburban office parks -- this makes it difficult to effectively meet people's needs with an affordable hub-and-spoke model, because large numbers of people commute not to the urban center, but between adjacent suburbs
- arinlen 4y ago
  > It's not just hermits that live far from urban centers in the US. The US is famous for sprawling contiguous suburbs. Sprawling suburbs can be, and often are, served by public transportation. The critical factor affecting the US approach to public transportation, which is purely ideological, is the neoliberal belief that public transportation services are only worth considering if they are provided by private corporations and only if they are profitable right from the start. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world these services are either public or public-private partnerships, and subsidized with clear externalities in mind. For example, if I recall correctly the Tokyo subway network is operated by a few private companies which profit not by the direct exploration of their railway lines but from real estate investments coordinated by the expansion of their railway lines. Consequently, we have european capitals which coordinate urban planning (i.e., where suburban sprawls can and cannot be built) with coverage of their public transportation services, including investing in extensions of subway lines to deserted places where medium- and high-density housing projects have been approved. > Subway systems work well when people from the edges of a city to an urban center. Subway is not a good example in discussions over public transportation in urban sprawls. The main purpose of subway networks is to enhance mobility within a urban area. Consequently, typically you see subway networks with subway stops at 500-800 meters and travel speeds of around 50km/h, which just happens to be slightly better than traveling by car. Park-and-ride stops are only another aspect of the main goal of eliminating car traffic within the city. The standard strategy to serve urban sprawls with public transportation is to cover them with bus routes which feed into a high-throughput mass transport systems such as commuter rail or bus rapid transit, also serving as park-and-ride stations. > suburban office parks -- this makes it difficult to effectively meet people's needs with an affordable hub-and-spoke model, because large numbers of people commute not to the urban center, but between adjacent suburbs This is not true. I happen to have worked for a company located in a suburban office park which wasn't served very well by public transportation, but the office park itself organized bus services from one of the city's multimodal hub to the office park. Also, this is so common and mundane that I know for a fact that even some Ikea stores in europe located in industrial districts offer free bus services connecting public transport hubs to them.