3 ms·

Not only do I think this is a completely legitimate point of view, I fully agree with you in terms of your policy goals: walkable neighborhoods, high density, n

by wilg 4y ago

Not only do I think this is a completely legitimate point of view, I fully agree with you in terms of your policy goals: walkable neighborhoods, high density, no parking minimums, pedestrian-and-bike-focused city design. I don't want to see cars parked on the sides of the streets. No question in my mind that's the better environment to be in. Some pushback on your facts: Firstly, cars are getting significantly better as they go electric. Smell is eliminated, while noise and environmental impact will be significantly reduced - without any changes to our road infrastructure. Anti-car people tend to push back on the idea that electric cars are significantly more environmentally friendly, but they're flat-out wrong. A Tesla Model 3 is 5x more efficient than the average new gas car. Four people driving in that same Tesla emit less greenhouse gas than if they were traveling on UK rail. Cars are also are pushing forward electrification technology in other domains. Impact from mining for battery materials is improving. That mining is necessary anyway for grid storage if we're to switch to renewable energy, not to mention that EV batteries are 99%+ recyclable, so we don't have to mine this material forever, either. It's also not the case that cars are only getting safer for the passengers. Technologies like automatic emergency braking that always watch out for pedestrians and bikers is now standard, and will continue to improve as cars become more autonomous. In the US, average weight of cars is basically the same as it was in 1975, and per-capita pedestrian deaths have halved over the same period.

sagarm 4y ago
Car dependent suburbanites are also anti car: their neighborhoods are designed to make driving through them inconvenient, to minimize the the cost of their car dependent lifestyle on THEM. I just want exactly the same car-hostile design, with 15 mph speed limits and copious dead ends, in my neighborhood so my neighborhood streets are also safe enough for kids to play in. How can suburbanites object? The status quo is that the external costs of car dependent lifestyles are almost entirely pushed onto other people via highways slicing through the middle of cities, roads being paid for mostly via the general fund, larger vehicles protecting occupants at the cost of everyone else, sound isolated cabins protecting drivers from the noise they create and requiring louder emergency sirens...it just goes on and on. EVs are better for the environment than ICE vehicles, but the noise, air pollution via tire dust, and physical danger they present is the same. The real EV is an e-bike, but most people don't want to bike because sharing roads with cars feels too dangerous. As a result, cars on the only choice. I want 90% of my city streets to block through traffic with physical barriers, just like the suburbs. Many intersections should allow ONLY pedestrians, cyclists, transit, and service vehicles through, so the fastest and most pleasant ways from point A to point B are walking, cycling, or transit.
- nayuki 4y ago
  That's right. Suburbanites want the freedom to drive everywhere but also limit through-traffic and noise on the street their house exists on. That's why twisty roads and culs de sac exist. "Oh The Urbanity!" argues this point elegantly in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqQw05Mr63E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqQw05Mr63E "The Suburban Traffic Contradiction"
slifin 4y ago
electric cars do have some benefits that you outline but also some new dangers I've been nearly hit by a driver who accelerated as I attempted to cross At the time he was a long way off but by the time I crossed he had accelerated to the point he could have hit me Electric cars will still cut up my local town into little isolated islands the same way normal cars do Car alternatives need so much more support than they get right now it's unreal
actionablefiber 4y ago
> Firstly, cars are getting significantly better as they go electric. Smell is eliminated, while noise and environmental impact will be significantly reduced - without any changes to our road infrastructure. The issue with the road infrastructure is also that it necessitates cars to begin with. With wide, sprawling networks of roads where motor traffic is too fast for people to comfortably walk and cycle, you end up with huge amounts of suburban sprawl. Things are located far apart; tons tons tons more infrastructure needs to be built to provide roads, water, electricity, gas, Internet, police, fire response, schooling and wastewater treatment to those people living in sprawling exurban developments. All the parking lots and strip malls and highways mean that it is simply impossible to make a trip by any way other than car, which triggers orders of magnitude more motor vehicle trips of orders of magnitude longer distance than in a mixed-use walkable neighborhood, so it's not even really useful to draw a comparison between the marginal emissions of four people in a Tesla vs. the amortized emissions of four people on a train. > Technologies like automatic emergency braking that always watch out for pedestrians and bikers is now standard, and will continue to improve as cars become more autonomous. I hope this will save lives, but it will never be enough to break the environment of fear and the lurking danger of death that comes with navigating cities with motor traffic, especially since you can never assume that a car is equipped with it (and that it will function correctly). You need to have an incredibly high level of trust, one that just doesn't exist when you are interacting with someone using a different means of spatial displacement. Bikes and scooters are light, slow, small, maneuverable, and offer such good visibility, both to and of the cyclist, that every single risk factor is extremely low. Or to put another way: in the aggregate it will save lives, but will you always be able to count on it to save yours? There are other considerations too: a person in any vehicle can, and (in my experience) many do, park or drive in bike lanes or fail to yield to bike lane traffic when making turns. Here you have not the physical threat of the car itself but the fact that by doing this the motorist can force other people to execute dangerous maneuvers, like merging into high-speed motor traffic, splitting the lane or hopping onto the sidewalk to avoid the car. And as for noise - firstly the tire noise is still there and actually worse due to vehicle weight. The honk is still there, it is still loud enough to trigger a bystander's fight or flight response, and hoo boy is there a lot of it! The people driving in DC and NY seem endlessly upset about the fact that they are doing so. > In the US, average weight of cars is basically the same as it was in 1975, and per-capita pedestrian deaths have halved over the same period. There is a lot going on with these numbers. For one, the main cause of this trend was the mass adoption of cars: people are simply walking a lot less than they did half a century ago. For two, the downward trend has sharply reversed since 2009: pedestrians deaths are rising very quickly, rising 50% between 2009 and 2020[1], coinciding modestly with the rise in popularity of mass market pickup trucks and SUVs. [1]https://www.statista.com/chart/17194/pedestrian-fatalities-in-the-us-by-year/ https://www.statista.com/chart/17194/pedestrian-fatalities-i...

by wilg 4y ago

sagarm 4y ago

Car dependent suburbanites are also anti car: their neighborhoods are designed to make driving through them inconvenient, to minimize the the cost of their car dependent lifestyle on THEM. I just want exactly the same car-hostile design, with 15 mph speed limits and copious dead ends, in my neighborhood so my neighborhood streets are also safe enough for kids to play in. How can suburbanites object? The status quo is that the external costs of car dependent lifestyles are almost entirely pushed onto other people via highways slicing through the middle of cities, roads being paid for mostly via the general fund, larger vehicles protecting occupants at the cost of everyone else, sound isolated cabins protecting drivers from the noise they create and requiring louder emergency sirens...it just goes on and on. EVs are better for the environment than ICE vehicles, but the noise, air pollution via tire dust, and physical danger they present is the same. The real EV is an e-bike, but most people don't want to bike because sharing roads with cars feels too dangerous. As a result, cars on the only choice. I want 90% of my city streets to block through traffic with physical barriers, just like the suburbs. Many intersections should allow ONLY pedestrians, cyclists, transit, and service vehicles through, so the fastest and most pleasant ways from point A to point B are walking, cycling, or transit.

nayuki 4y ago
That's right. Suburbanites want the freedom to drive everywhere but also limit through-traffic and noise on the street their house exists on. That's why twisty roads and culs de sac exist. "Oh The Urbanity!" argues this point elegantly in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqQw05Mr63E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqQw05Mr63E "The Suburban Traffic Contradiction"

slifin 4y ago

electric cars do have some benefits that you outline but also some new dangers I've been nearly hit by a driver who accelerated as I attempted to cross At the time he was a long way off but by the time I crossed he had accelerated to the point he could have hit me Electric cars will still cut up my local town into little isolated islands the same way normal cars do Car alternatives need so much more support than they get right now it's unreal

actionablefiber 4y ago

> Firstly, cars are getting significantly better as they go electric. Smell is eliminated, while noise and environmental impact will be significantly reduced - without any changes to our road infrastructure. The issue with the road infrastructure is also that it necessitates cars to begin with. With wide, sprawling networks of roads where motor traffic is too fast for people to comfortably walk and cycle, you end up with huge amounts of suburban sprawl. Things are located far apart; tons tons tons more infrastructure needs to be built to provide roads, water, electricity, gas, Internet, police, fire response, schooling and wastewater treatment to those people living in sprawling exurban developments. All the parking lots and strip malls and highways mean that it is simply impossible to make a trip by any way other than car, which triggers orders of magnitude more motor vehicle trips of orders of magnitude longer distance than in a mixed-use walkable neighborhood, so it's not even really useful to draw a comparison between the marginal emissions of four people in a Tesla vs. the amortized emissions of four people on a train. > Technologies like automatic emergency braking that always watch out for pedestrians and bikers is now standard, and will continue to improve as cars become more autonomous. I hope this will save lives, but it will never be enough to break the environment of fear and the lurking danger of death that comes with navigating cities with motor traffic, especially since you can never assume that a car is equipped with it (and that it will function correctly). You need to have an incredibly high level of trust, one that just doesn't exist when you are interacting with someone using a different means of spatial displacement. Bikes and scooters are light, slow, small, maneuverable, and offer such good visibility, both to and of the cyclist, that every single risk factor is extremely low. Or to put another way: in the aggregate it will save lives, but will you always be able to count on it to save yours? There are other considerations too: a person in any vehicle can, and (in my experience) many do, park or drive in bike lanes or fail to yield to bike lane traffic when making turns. Here you have not the physical threat of the car itself but the fact that by doing this the motorist can force other people to execute dangerous maneuvers, like merging into high-speed motor traffic, splitting the lane or hopping onto the sidewalk to avoid the car. And as for noise - firstly the tire noise is still there and actually worse due to vehicle weight. The honk is still there, it is still loud enough to trigger a bystander's fight or flight response, and hoo boy is there a lot of it! The people driving in DC and NY seem endlessly upset about the fact that they are doing so. > In the US, average weight of cars is basically the same as it was in 1975, and per-capita pedestrian deaths have halved over the same period. There is a lot going on with these numbers. For one, the main cause of this trend was the mass adoption of cars: people are simply walking a lot less than they did half a century ago. For two, the downward trend has sharply reversed since 2009: pedestrians deaths are rising very quickly, rising 50% between 2009 and 2020[1], coinciding modestly with the rise in popularity of mass market pickup trucks and SUVs. [1]https://www.statista.com/chart/17194/pedestrian-fatalities-in-the-us-by-year/ https://www.statista.com/chart/17194/pedestrian-fatalities-i...