5 ms·

Here's hoping that the high gas prices will finally encourage people to consider that cars aren't the only way to travel! Alas, that will never happen in the U

Here's hoping that the high gas prices will finally encourage people to consider that cars aren't the only way to travel! Alas, that will never happen in the US, but one can dream.

tomjen3 4y ago
It is not the only way to travel, but I can either take my car to work or spend twice as long + wait time for the bus. It is something like a factor 1.5 to get to my parents and over 2 to my grandparents, much more if they can't pick me up and I have to walk the last 3 miles[0] from the bus stop. I don't know what the multiplier is to my brother, but it is likely to be quite high. [0]: it can be done, it just takes quite some time.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> high gas prices will finally encourage people to consider that cars aren't the only way to travel It’s more likely to entrench them, along with build popular support for slashing a lot of climate regulations. Humans don’t like fast change. Trying to force it usually backfires.
i13e 4y ago
In most of the United States it is the only way, unless you're referring to the disaster that is Amtrak or the four-ish airlines here (which also run on gas). I'd prefer an alternative too, but there isn't one (yet?).
- warning26 4y ago
  > In most of the United States it is the only way And that, there, is the problem. Everywhere in the US is designed, often in legally-enforceable ways, to ensure that cars are prioritized over everything else.
  - rarec 4y ago
    Chicken and egg problem. Cars are necessary because businesses/places to work are far apart, but they got to be the distance they were because cars are around. The US is a huge place, there was plenty of space to go around and the current situation is what follows from it.
    - trgn 4y ago
      Partly, but it doesn't explain people's obsession with large, heavy, low MPG vehicles and the entitlement people have when it comes to fueling these cheaply. The chicken-egg explanation is a normal consequence of not having anticipated the consequences when urban planning for car travel got going in the 50s. Unfortunate as it may be, but it's catch-22 that can be broken out of. The unwillingness to break out of it, is because of the fetishization of car technology. This is a completely pathetic for adults to do, and is this toddler-mindset which is the biggest impediment to meaningful change today.
      - RhysU 4y ago
        > The unwillingness to break out of it, is because of the fetishization of car technology. Careful tossing that first stone. This is Hacker News. Surely most people here have made some technology purchasing choices moreso for coolness than for practicality. Cars are simply one particular sort of technology.
- esotericimpl 4y ago
- usrn 4y ago
  Amtrak is actually pretty great in the coastal part of the mid-north Atlantic region, I ride it very often. Pretty much everywhere else it's useless. In most of the US cars are very much the only option (no you can't bike on a 50mph two lane highway with no shoulders for 15 miles. That does not work.) We don't have transit for a number of reasons, one is that everything would have to be torn up and rebuilt for high speed rail. Two we have a much lower trust society than places like Europe and Japan. Three it's just so unprofitable and people dislike it so much it never gets funding.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  A mixture of carpooling, WFH, biking and walking, switching to fuel-efficient vehicles, less recreational driving, plus public transportation where it's available. I'm not saying any one of these will work for everyone, but when gas gets expensive enough you'll see all of these come into play.
txsoftwaredev 4y ago
I'm going to assume you haven't traveled around the US a whole lot. The US is big, very big. It takes over half a day just to drive across Texas. And personally I don't want to be stuck in a bus, train etc. with a bunch of strangers. I prefer the freedom of my personal vehicle.
- the_gastropod 4y ago
  What about the US being large requires one to frequently traverse it? Europe is large. And people don't frequently drive from one end of Spain to the other. And when they do, they have 200+mph trains to do it relatively quickly and cheaply.
  - chasd00 4y ago
    what happens when where you're going is 50 miles from a train station? Do you take a cab?
    - the_gastropod 4y ago
      Maybe? It depends on the situation! There exist situations where cars are the best option. The point is: they don't need to be the only option because the US is big.
  - Turing_Machine 4y ago
    > Europe is large. Oregon is larger than the United Kingdom. Texas is larger than France. Alaska is larger than all of Western Europe.
    - the_gastropod 4y ago
      ....What? Why is that relevant? Europe is bigger than the US. Norway is bigger than New Jersey! Croatia is bigger than Massachusetts! Germany is bigger than Florida! Are you suggesting that because some arbitrarily-chosen borders from one are larger than other arbitrary borders on another somehow negates my point? Why does the size of the land-mass you live inside dictate the distance you need to travel day-to-day? People live in New York City. It's in the US. Those people tend to drive a lot less than those living in, say, Los Angeles—who also unambiguously live in the US. Why?
nine_zeros 4y ago
The time to invest in future is when the cost of resources was cheap. We should have built high-speed rail, lots of metro lines and expanded the Amtrak network. What did we do instead? Occupied countries with nothing to show for it, engaged in futile trade wars and allowed financial speculation in everything we produce.
BitwiseFool 4y ago
I used to take the local light rail back in college and it was great. Now, however, I am not located near the rail line and neither is my workplace. In order for me to take public transit, I would have to walk and take the bus. What normally takes me 15-20 minutes in a car would take an hour and forty-five minutes by bus, and involve three transfers (this is one-way, and the return trip is roughly the same time-wise). Gas would have to become ludicrously expensive in order for me to make the choice to forfeit so much of my day to commuting. It would be ideal if the city I live in expands the light rail system but that's a decades long process.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  What you need is both transit and land use which supports it. Private automobiles aren't a bugfix on urban planning, as someone posted to Mastodon recently, they're the determining cause of sprawl patterns. Personal vehicles, cheap fuel, and high-quality uncongested roads cheapen distance and through the Jevons Paradox increase the amount of space used. https://mastodon.social/@CarlMuckenhoupt/108465959449696924 https://mastodon.social/@CarlMuckenhoupt/108465959449696924 Light rail works great ... in reasonably dense urban environments and downtowns. If you have to walk only a few blocks to and from your boarding and disembarking points, they're great. Multi-link travel with transfers and delays is abysmal. LRT also benefits heavily from dedicated rights of way, no roadway contention from other vehicles, traffic signals optimisation, and the rest. And a single LRV can replace 40 -- 150+ vehicles on the road, depending on fill capacity.
lp0_on_fire 4y ago
Here's hoping that gas prices will rapidly fall so the less fortunate among us can afford to fill their tanks in the large swathes of the country where public transportation is simply not an option. Here's hoping gas prices will fall rapidly so the less fortunate among us can afford to heat their homes next winter. Here's hoping gas prices will fall rapidly so that the less fortunate among us can afford the rapid rising food prices that are the result of energy costs.
protomyth 4y ago
There are large parts of the US that do not have bus service. High gas / diesel prices mean your cost of goods is going to keep going up because cities don't produce anything they consume. Just because this is acceptable to most people on this board's income doesn't mean its a good thing in any way.

Here's hoping that the high gas prices will finally encourage people to consider that cars aren't the only way to travel! Alas, that will never happen in the US, but one can dream.

tomjen3 4y ago

It is not the only way to travel, but I can either take my car to work or spend twice as long + wait time for the bus. It is something like a factor 1.5 to get to my parents and over 2 to my grandparents, much more if they can't pick me up and I have to walk the last 3 miles[0] from the bus stop. I don't know what the multiplier is to my brother, but it is likely to be quite high. [0]: it can be done, it just takes quite some time.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> high gas prices will finally encourage people to consider that cars aren't the only way to travel It’s more likely to entrench them, along with build popular support for slashing a lot of climate regulations. Humans don’t like fast change. Trying to force it usually backfires.

i13e 4y ago

In most of the United States it is the only way, unless you're referring to the disaster that is Amtrak or the four-ish airlines here (which also run on gas). I'd prefer an alternative too, but there isn't one (yet?).

warning26 4y ago
> In most of the United States it is the only way And that, there, is the problem. Everywhere in the US is designed, often in legally-enforceable ways, to ensure that cars are prioritized over everything else.
- rarec 4y ago
  Chicken and egg problem. Cars are necessary because businesses/places to work are far apart, but they got to be the distance they were because cars are around. The US is a huge place, there was plenty of space to go around and the current situation is what follows from it.
  - trgn 4y ago
    Partly, but it doesn't explain people's obsession with large, heavy, low MPG vehicles and the entitlement people have when it comes to fueling these cheaply. The chicken-egg explanation is a normal consequence of not having anticipated the consequences when urban planning for car travel got going in the 50s. Unfortunate as it may be, but it's catch-22 that can be broken out of. The unwillingness to break out of it, is because of the fetishization of car technology. This is a completely pathetic for adults to do, and is this toddler-mindset which is the biggest impediment to meaningful change today.
    - RhysU 4y ago
      > The unwillingness to break out of it, is because of the fetishization of car technology. Careful tossing that first stone. This is Hacker News. Surely most people here have made some technology purchasing choices moreso for coolness than for practicality. Cars are simply one particular sort of technology.
esotericimpl 4y ago
usrn 4y ago
Amtrak is actually pretty great in the coastal part of the mid-north Atlantic region, I ride it very often. Pretty much everywhere else it's useless. In most of the US cars are very much the only option (no you can't bike on a 50mph two lane highway with no shoulders for 15 miles. That does not work.) We don't have transit for a number of reasons, one is that everything would have to be torn up and rebuilt for high speed rail. Two we have a much lower trust society than places like Europe and Japan. Three it's just so unprofitable and people dislike it so much it never gets funding.
matthewdgreen 4y ago
A mixture of carpooling, WFH, biking and walking, switching to fuel-efficient vehicles, less recreational driving, plus public transportation where it's available. I'm not saying any one of these will work for everyone, but when gas gets expensive enough you'll see all of these come into play.

txsoftwaredev 4y ago

I'm going to assume you haven't traveled around the US a whole lot. The US is big, very big. It takes over half a day just to drive across Texas. And personally I don't want to be stuck in a bus, train etc. with a bunch of strangers. I prefer the freedom of my personal vehicle.

the_gastropod 4y ago
What about the US being large requires one to frequently traverse it? Europe is large. And people don't frequently drive from one end of Spain to the other. And when they do, they have 200+mph trains to do it relatively quickly and cheaply.
- chasd00 4y ago
  what happens when where you're going is 50 miles from a train station? Do you take a cab?
  - the_gastropod 4y ago
    Maybe? It depends on the situation! There exist situations where cars are the best option. The point is: they don't need to be the only option because the US is big.
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  > Europe is large. Oregon is larger than the United Kingdom. Texas is larger than France. Alaska is larger than all of Western Europe.
  - the_gastropod 4y ago
    ....What? Why is that relevant? Europe is bigger than the US. Norway is bigger than New Jersey! Croatia is bigger than Massachusetts! Germany is bigger than Florida! Are you suggesting that because some arbitrarily-chosen borders from one are larger than other arbitrary borders on another somehow negates my point? Why does the size of the land-mass you live inside dictate the distance you need to travel day-to-day? People live in New York City. It's in the US. Those people tend to drive a lot less than those living in, say, Los Angeles—who also unambiguously live in the US. Why?

nine_zeros 4y ago

The time to invest in future is when the cost of resources was cheap. We should have built high-speed rail, lots of metro lines and expanded the Amtrak network. What did we do instead? Occupied countries with nothing to show for it, engaged in futile trade wars and allowed financial speculation in everything we produce.

BitwiseFool 4y ago

I used to take the local light rail back in college and it was great. Now, however, I am not located near the rail line and neither is my workplace. In order for me to take public transit, I would have to walk and take the bus. What normally takes me 15-20 minutes in a car would take an hour and forty-five minutes by bus, and involve three transfers (this is one-way, and the return trip is roughly the same time-wise). Gas would have to become ludicrously expensive in order for me to make the choice to forfeit so much of my day to commuting. It would be ideal if the city I live in expands the light rail system but that's a decades long process.

dredmorbius 4y ago
What you need is both transit and land use which supports it. Private automobiles aren't a bugfix on urban planning, as someone posted to Mastodon recently, they're the determining cause of sprawl patterns. Personal vehicles, cheap fuel, and high-quality uncongested roads cheapen distance and through the Jevons Paradox increase the amount of space used. https://mastodon.social/@CarlMuckenhoupt/108465959449696924 https://mastodon.social/@CarlMuckenhoupt/108465959449696924 Light rail works great ... in reasonably dense urban environments and downtowns. If you have to walk only a few blocks to and from your boarding and disembarking points, they're great. Multi-link travel with transfers and delays is abysmal. LRT also benefits heavily from dedicated rights of way, no roadway contention from other vehicles, traffic signals optimisation, and the rest. And a single LRV can replace 40 -- 150+ vehicles on the road, depending on fill capacity.

lp0_on_fire 4y ago

Here's hoping that gas prices will rapidly fall so the less fortunate among us can afford to fill their tanks in the large swathes of the country where public transportation is simply not an option. Here's hoping gas prices will fall rapidly so the less fortunate among us can afford to heat their homes next winter. Here's hoping gas prices will fall rapidly so that the less fortunate among us can afford the rapid rising food prices that are the result of energy costs.

protomyth 4y ago

There are large parts of the US that do not have bus service. High gas / diesel prices mean your cost of goods is going to keep going up because cities don't produce anything they consume. Just because this is acceptable to most people on this board's income doesn't mean its a good thing in any way.