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Perhaps don't advocate making good things in life shittier in order to make comparatively shit options you happen to approve of look good by comparison? If you

by Xymist 4y ago

Perhaps don't advocate making good things in life shittier in order to make comparatively shit options you happen to approve of look good by comparison? If you want public transport to be an even barely acceptable alternative to cars: - Make it door to door, no connections, no hiking to or from a station/stop/port at either end - Make it on demand, no timetables or shortages - Make it actually show up, and not be susceptible to strikes or moderately bad weather - Make a ticket cost the same as or less than the cost in petrol (or electricity) for the same journey - Make it private, without the need to be crammed into a box with strangers These aren't unreasonable requirements, or some utopia situation. They're all things that personal cars provide that trains, planes, taxis, subways, and busses frequently (perhaps generally?) do not. I don't even commute, I work entirely remotely, and your proposal would still be a massive decrease in my quality of life whether it achieved your objective or not. If you want alternatives to be more popular, make them better than the status quo for every individual rather than just waving at "the world in general" and saying it's better for that/them.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
If you want cars to be an even barely acceptable alternative to public transport: - They should not be stuck in traffic jams - They should not kill children, pedestrians and cyclists - They should be electric without heavy and polluting batteries These aren't unreasonable requirements, or some utopia situation. They're all things that trains and subways provide that cars do not. > - Make a ticket cost the same as or less than the cost in petrol (or electricity) for the same journey In your utopia, do I get a free car and only spend money on petrol for travel? It it a country that provides free car repairs and service, need no insurance, MOT checks, and has no road tax? In Britain the fixed costs of owning a car exceed £2000 a year before you've driven a single mile.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  You can solve almost all of those problems more easily by improving road design with knowledge we already have. In relative terms cars are actually amazingly safe given that we drive them trillions of miles a year. > They're all things that trains and subways provide that cars do not. Figure out how to get trains to operate everywhere instead of only on fixed routes, and then this comparison will be valid. Until then you're talking about two (more, really) different use cases with a minimal amount of overlap. So at the very least we will need buses, and a lot of them, to feed the areas where it't uneconomical or otherwise unfeasible to run rails. Do the environmental math on that -- how full does a bus need to be before the pollution per passenger is better than a compact car with one passenger? How about a compact car with four passengers? Public transit would need a fundamental change in approach. And of course this is only talking about people. Always lost in this conversation is that moving humans from place to place is just one use case.
  - ryukafalz 4y ago
    > You can solve almost all of those problems more easily by improving road design with knowledge we already have. Sure, to some extent. The knowledge we already have about how to prevent e.g. cars killing children, pedestrians, and cyclists is that you slow them down (and separate them which also typically involves taking space from cars to make room). But as seen above in this thread, that kind of thing meets opposition from people who say you're "making good things in life shittier". > the areas where it't uneconomical or otherwise unfeasible to run rails. If you've never done this, I suggest taking a look at old maps of the US's passenger rail network. We had a lot more rail in the past than we do now.
  - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
    > improving road design with knowledge we already have. Smaller roads with fewer lanes and lower speeds are very unpopular among car enthusiasts. > Figure out how to get trains to operate everywhere instead of only on fixed routes Cars can't operate everywhere so this is a unrealistic requirement in the first place. > Do the environmental math on that -- how full does a bus need to be before the pollution per passenger is better than a compact car with one passenger? How about a compact car with four passengers? Assuming a 1 person/car with a average 19mpg, and a average bus 6.2mpg, you need 3.06 people on a bus before it breaks even. If you can have 4 people on a compact car with four passengers, you can have a bus with 3 people on it.
- Xymist 4y ago
  The fixed costs of public transport options, given the significant investment of public money that they tend to represent, are not zero either. The marginal cost of a journey is far more salient to whether a given option is preferable to any given person. Traffic jams are an extremely variable issue and I would argue are directly analogous to being crammed onto a delayed train with a thousand other people who can barely move - that is, essentially a rush hour problem that is more about throughput and the madness of commuting than it is about any particular specific form of transport. Also note that your other examples violate my overarching point which is that they're about externalities. They don't represent advantages to the users' near term needs/desires, and in the case of my personal feelings about cyclists are actively in opposition, so they're almost always going to be fighting an uphill battle for mass acceptance.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > Traffic jams are an extremely variable issue Variable? A single line of rail moves more people per hour that 6 lanes of highway - that's just physics. Average speed of London traffic is 10 km/h while the new Elizabeth Line wooshes past at 90 km/h. It can cross London before your car gets 1/3 of the way. A crowded train still moves at 90 km/h. Your car in a jam is personally comfortable (unless you need to take a piss), but doesnt move anywhere. The idea that cars are comparable to public transport in situations of gridlock is preposterous.
bambax 4y ago
> If you want alternatives to be more popular I don't especially want alternatives to be more popular; I want less carbon and fewer cars. If that means making cars shittier (than they already are), then that's good in my book. > Make it private, without the need to be crammed into a box with strangers People who can't stand "strangers" should pay a special tax for being antisocial. Society is nothing if not sharing space with strangers.

by Xymist 4y ago

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

If you want cars to be an even barely acceptable alternative to public transport: - They should not be stuck in traffic jams - They should not kill children, pedestrians and cyclists - They should be electric without heavy and polluting batteries These aren't unreasonable requirements, or some utopia situation. They're all things that trains and subways provide that cars do not. > - Make a ticket cost the same as or less than the cost in petrol (or electricity) for the same journey In your utopia, do I get a free car and only spend money on petrol for travel? It it a country that provides free car repairs and service, need no insurance, MOT checks, and has no road tax? In Britain the fixed costs of owning a car exceed £2000 a year before you've driven a single mile.

rootusrootus 4y ago
You can solve almost all of those problems more easily by improving road design with knowledge we already have. In relative terms cars are actually amazingly safe given that we drive them trillions of miles a year. > They're all things that trains and subways provide that cars do not. Figure out how to get trains to operate everywhere instead of only on fixed routes, and then this comparison will be valid. Until then you're talking about two (more, really) different use cases with a minimal amount of overlap. So at the very least we will need buses, and a lot of them, to feed the areas where it't uneconomical or otherwise unfeasible to run rails. Do the environmental math on that -- how full does a bus need to be before the pollution per passenger is better than a compact car with one passenger? How about a compact car with four passengers? Public transit would need a fundamental change in approach. And of course this is only talking about people. Always lost in this conversation is that moving humans from place to place is just one use case.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  > You can solve almost all of those problems more easily by improving road design with knowledge we already have. Sure, to some extent. The knowledge we already have about how to prevent e.g. cars killing children, pedestrians, and cyclists is that you slow them down (and separate them which also typically involves taking space from cars to make room). But as seen above in this thread, that kind of thing meets opposition from people who say you're "making good things in life shittier". > the areas where it't uneconomical or otherwise unfeasible to run rails. If you've never done this, I suggest taking a look at old maps of the US's passenger rail network. We had a lot more rail in the past than we do now.
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  > improving road design with knowledge we already have. Smaller roads with fewer lanes and lower speeds are very unpopular among car enthusiasts. > Figure out how to get trains to operate everywhere instead of only on fixed routes Cars can't operate everywhere so this is a unrealistic requirement in the first place. > Do the environmental math on that -- how full does a bus need to be before the pollution per passenger is better than a compact car with one passenger? How about a compact car with four passengers? Assuming a 1 person/car with a average 19mpg, and a average bus 6.2mpg, you need 3.06 people on a bus before it breaks even. If you can have 4 people on a compact car with four passengers, you can have a bus with 3 people on it.
Xymist 4y ago
The fixed costs of public transport options, given the significant investment of public money that they tend to represent, are not zero either. The marginal cost of a journey is far more salient to whether a given option is preferable to any given person. Traffic jams are an extremely variable issue and I would argue are directly analogous to being crammed onto a delayed train with a thousand other people who can barely move - that is, essentially a rush hour problem that is more about throughput and the madness of commuting than it is about any particular specific form of transport. Also note that your other examples violate my overarching point which is that they're about externalities. They don't represent advantages to the users' near term needs/desires, and in the case of my personal feelings about cyclists are actively in opposition, so they're almost always going to be fighting an uphill battle for mass acceptance.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > Traffic jams are an extremely variable issue Variable? A single line of rail moves more people per hour that 6 lanes of highway - that's just physics. Average speed of London traffic is 10 km/h while the new Elizabeth Line wooshes past at 90 km/h. It can cross London before your car gets 1/3 of the way. A crowded train still moves at 90 km/h. Your car in a jam is personally comfortable (unless you need to take a piss), but doesnt move anywhere. The idea that cars are comparable to public transport in situations of gridlock is preposterous.

bambax 4y ago

> If you want alternatives to be more popular I don't especially want alternatives to be more popular; I want less carbon and fewer cars. If that means making cars shittier (than they already are), then that's good in my book. > Make it private, without the need to be crammed into a box with strangers People who can't stand "strangers" should pay a special tax for being antisocial. Society is nothing if not sharing space with strangers.