4 ms·

And the alternate universe version of this clickbait: "America has paid a steep price in time for devoting too little space to storing cars," or "Our transporta

by tivert 3y ago

And the alternate universe version of this clickbait: "America has paid a steep price in time for devoting too little space to storing cars," or "Our transportation choices have boxed Americans into living in sardine cans. We need new personal transportation infrastructure."

BlargMcLarg 3y ago
Americans don't seem to live in sardine cans compared to the world. They mostly seem to transport themselves and work in sardine cans, though. Not very different from the remainder of the developed world, where people do live in sardine cans primarily.
- tivert 3y ago
  > Americans don't seem to live in sardine cans compared to the world. They mostly seem to transport themselves and work in sardine cans, though. Not very different from the remainder of the developed world, where people do live in sardine cans primarily. You misunderstand. It's an alternate universe headline.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - BlargMcLarg 3y ago
    Fair enough, didn't interpret the second line as also being an alternative universe.
    - tivert 3y ago
      I edited it to make that clearer.
abeppu 3y ago
I'm not sure this claim makes sense. Yes, _if you're committed to driving everywhere_, then fewer parking spaces when you arrive at your destination may make you spend time looking for parking. But in the alternate world where we didn't design for cars first, you'd be more used to other forms of transit, and a lot of things would be closer together. In our universe, where most businesses are surrounded by large parking lots, whole cities get sprawled out and everyone's travel times are inflated (regardless of mode of travel).
- giantg2 3y ago
  "But in the alternate world where we didn't design for cars first, you'd be more used to other forms of transit, and a lot of things would be closer together." You don't need an alternate world as you can just look at history. Then we would have to consider why the people chose to adopt and promote cars to bring us into this age.
  - orwin 3y ago
    Because marketing works, companies like selling stuff (shared laundromat in the basement? Are you communist?) and because government likes selling dreams even if those turn to nightmare.
    - tivert 3y ago
      > Because marketing works, companies like selling stuff (shared laundromat in the basement? Are you communist?) and because government likes selling dreams even if those turn to nightmare. Come on, dude. A suburban home with a yard isn't a "nightmare," they're actually very desirable to a lot of people. They market themselves. Of course, there's a set of wannabe central planners that dislike that preference because it conflicts with their "vision" for how the plebs should live, so they try to deny that truth.
      - abeppu 3y ago
        I think the house and the yard aren't the nightmare, but the miles of cookie cutter housing developments attached to arterials studded with strip malls are. And those are the communities which were invented and built by central planning, by people saying: "these businesses all need to meet a large parking minimum, and these areas are _only_ allowed to be single family homes, and this other area can _only_ be commercial, and these arterials will then need to have 45 mph speed limits so drivers can get from their homes to the store in a reasonable period, and since they're going fast the lanes should be wide so I guess we won't have room for a bike lane, and only one side of the street can have a sidewalk, and hey what do you know, that really fits with our intention to not put crosswalks except at those intersections every 1/2 mile ...". Suburbs don't happen without planning, and don't pretend it's only city-dwellers that have a vision for what society should look like. The design of the suburb _coerces_ people to drive by threatening the lives of cyclists and pedestrians, and invariably having poor or slow public transit.
HPsquared 3y ago
That alternative universe is Prague.
ch4s3 3y ago
This was basically the argument of overbearing planners in the 50s and 60s who carved up walk-able American cities with urban highways. The results were pretty disastrous and don't really need to be expanded upon here.
- amflare 3y ago
  Thats a bold claim to make so axiomatically. Disastrous in what regard? Why do you feel like you don't need to expand? What is this seemingly obviously utopian vision you have that the greatest civil engineering minds of the 20th century failed to comprehend? How precisely would you have handle the competing needs of the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors of arguably the largest developed country (by sq miles of developed land) in the world?
  - shagmin 3y ago
    It doesn't feel like such a bold claim to me. Dividing neighborhoods (i.e. redlining) lead to ghettos, inner city violence, white flight, etc., Today there is barely any remnant of the middle class in major urban areas and more traffic than ever. City planners (and policy makers) are not civil engineers.
  - sofixa 3y ago
    > Disastrous in what regard? Why do you feel like you don't need to expand? What is this seemingly obviously utopian vision you have that the greatest civil engineering minds of the 20th century failed to comprehend It's a bit surprising this is news/debatable to some, but here it goes: * Traffic is very heavy on those urban highways, making them highly inefficient in transporting people, their main objective; they result in massive amounts of time wasted * The neighborhoods bulldozed for those urban highways, or near them, suffered immensely. Of course this being the US we're talking about, it was disproportionately poorer and "non-white" communities that suffered, as well as historic/picturesque parts (e.g. some US cities have highways on waterfronts which are super nice places to have as parks). Ugly, noisy, polluting highways that wall off the undesirables while also being shit at their main task? Yes, urban highways were generally a failure.
dividefuel 3y ago
Are there consistent major differences in time spent in transit for public transit / walkable cities VS cars? My understanding is that transit time is often similar, it's only the method that changes. E.g., most people probably aim to live within an hour of work regardless of commute method.
- tivert 3y ago
  > Are there consistent major differences in time spent in transit for public transit / walkable cities VS cars? My understanding is that transit time is often similar, it's only the method that changes. E.g., most people probably aim to live within an hour of work regardless of commute method. You're too fixated on one variable. You can decrease transit times by increasing density, but then you're cramming people into sardine cans.
  - undersuit 3y ago
    Most of the times when I've traveled by public transit I've had for more room available to me than when driving. Should I hate driving because sometimes my car is filled full of people or items?

by tivert 3y ago

BlargMcLarg 3y ago

Americans don't seem to live in sardine cans compared to the world. They mostly seem to transport themselves and work in sardine cans, though. Not very different from the remainder of the developed world, where people do live in sardine cans primarily.

tivert 3y ago
> Americans don't seem to live in sardine cans compared to the world. They mostly seem to transport themselves and work in sardine cans, though. Not very different from the remainder of the developed world, where people do live in sardine cans primarily. You misunderstand. It's an alternate universe headline.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- BlargMcLarg 3y ago
  Fair enough, didn't interpret the second line as also being an alternative universe.
  - tivert 3y ago
    I edited it to make that clearer.

abeppu 3y ago

I'm not sure this claim makes sense. Yes, _if you're committed to driving everywhere_, then fewer parking spaces when you arrive at your destination may make you spend time looking for parking. But in the alternate world where we didn't design for cars first, you'd be more used to other forms of transit, and a lot of things would be closer together. In our universe, where most businesses are surrounded by large parking lots, whole cities get sprawled out and everyone's travel times are inflated (regardless of mode of travel).

giantg2 3y ago
"But in the alternate world where we didn't design for cars first, you'd be more used to other forms of transit, and a lot of things would be closer together." You don't need an alternate world as you can just look at history. Then we would have to consider why the people chose to adopt and promote cars to bring us into this age.
- orwin 3y ago
  Because marketing works, companies like selling stuff (shared laundromat in the basement? Are you communist?) and because government likes selling dreams even if those turn to nightmare.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > Because marketing works, companies like selling stuff (shared laundromat in the basement? Are you communist?) and because government likes selling dreams even if those turn to nightmare. Come on, dude. A suburban home with a yard isn't a "nightmare," they're actually very desirable to a lot of people. They market themselves. Of course, there's a set of wannabe central planners that dislike that preference because it conflicts with their "vision" for how the plebs should live, so they try to deny that truth.
    - abeppu 3y ago
      I think the house and the yard aren't the nightmare, but the miles of cookie cutter housing developments attached to arterials studded with strip malls are. And those are the communities which were invented and built by central planning, by people saying: "these businesses all need to meet a large parking minimum, and these areas are _only_ allowed to be single family homes, and this other area can _only_ be commercial, and these arterials will then need to have 45 mph speed limits so drivers can get from their homes to the store in a reasonable period, and since they're going fast the lanes should be wide so I guess we won't have room for a bike lane, and only one side of the street can have a sidewalk, and hey what do you know, that really fits with our intention to not put crosswalks except at those intersections every 1/2 mile ...". Suburbs don't happen without planning, and don't pretend it's only city-dwellers that have a vision for what society should look like. The design of the suburb _coerces_ people to drive by threatening the lives of cyclists and pedestrians, and invariably having poor or slow public transit.

HPsquared 3y ago

That alternative universe is Prague.

ch4s3 3y ago

This was basically the argument of overbearing planners in the 50s and 60s who carved up walk-able American cities with urban highways. The results were pretty disastrous and don't really need to be expanded upon here.

amflare 3y ago
Thats a bold claim to make so axiomatically. Disastrous in what regard? Why do you feel like you don't need to expand? What is this seemingly obviously utopian vision you have that the greatest civil engineering minds of the 20th century failed to comprehend? How precisely would you have handle the competing needs of the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors of arguably the largest developed country (by sq miles of developed land) in the world?
- shagmin 3y ago
  It doesn't feel like such a bold claim to me. Dividing neighborhoods (i.e. redlining) lead to ghettos, inner city violence, white flight, etc., Today there is barely any remnant of the middle class in major urban areas and more traffic than ever. City planners (and policy makers) are not civil engineers.
- sofixa 3y ago
  > Disastrous in what regard? Why do you feel like you don't need to expand? What is this seemingly obviously utopian vision you have that the greatest civil engineering minds of the 20th century failed to comprehend It's a bit surprising this is news/debatable to some, but here it goes: * Traffic is very heavy on those urban highways, making them highly inefficient in transporting people, their main objective; they result in massive amounts of time wasted * The neighborhoods bulldozed for those urban highways, or near them, suffered immensely. Of course this being the US we're talking about, it was disproportionately poorer and "non-white" communities that suffered, as well as historic/picturesque parts (e.g. some US cities have highways on waterfronts which are super nice places to have as parks). Ugly, noisy, polluting highways that wall off the undesirables while also being shit at their main task? Yes, urban highways were generally a failure.

dividefuel 3y ago

Are there consistent major differences in time spent in transit for public transit / walkable cities VS cars? My understanding is that transit time is often similar, it's only the method that changes. E.g., most people probably aim to live within an hour of work regardless of commute method.

tivert 3y ago
> Are there consistent major differences in time spent in transit for public transit / walkable cities VS cars? My understanding is that transit time is often similar, it's only the method that changes. E.g., most people probably aim to live within an hour of work regardless of commute method. You're too fixated on one variable. You can decrease transit times by increasing density, but then you're cramming people into sardine cans.
- undersuit 3y ago
  Most of the times when I've traveled by public transit I've had for more room available to me than when driving. Should I hate driving because sometimes my car is filled full of people or items?