6 ms·

I'm not so sure. Slow and steady in this case might just be a failure to fail fast. The future isn't in cars or autonomous cars, it's in sidewalks, trains, bik

I'm not so sure. Slow and steady in this case might just be a failure to fail fast. The future isn't in cars or autonomous cars, it's in sidewalks, trains, bike lanes, and other forms of transit. The best ride in a car isn't one in which I'm driving or not driving, it's one in which I don't get in the car in the first place.

justrealist 3y ago
I hear a lot of people saying "the future isn't X" when they really mean "I wish the future wasn't X". The future absent radical change of cultural heart clearly is personal EVs. You don't have to like it, but it's the direction 99% of countries are moving and clearly normal people do want it.
- mupuff1234 3y ago
  > 99% of countries A large percentage of the world's population commutes on mopeds/scooters.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
    > A large percentage of the world's population commutes on mopeds/scooters. That is due to lack of money not lack of desire. If you asked the moped/scooter riders if they would rather have a car, they would choose a car. As countries become more developed and wealthier, more people will be able to afford cars and car use will increase.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    Scooters are probably the most rapidly electrifying class of personal vehicle.
    - mupuff1234 3y ago
      Yes, but the comment I was replying to was referring to car EVs, not scooters.
- webdood90 3y ago
  people _think_ it's what they want because it's all they know. cities should be pushing for alternatives because they're better in literally every possible way, except convenience. better for our safety, for our health, for the environment, for less noise, for the cost, for a sense of community, for the saved space, and so on.
  - standardUser 3y ago
    > cities should be pushing for alternatives Most are, but a massive number of Americans live in sprawling suburbs and small-to-medium sized towns, not cities. Most of those places are ill-suited (to the extreme) for mass transit and other non-car options - yet they are perfectly designed to handle cars.
    - taylodl 3y ago
      63% of Americans live in an urban area having a population density greater than 1,500 per square mile. There's no agreed-upon definition of "sprawl", but it's generally computed at being under 2,000 residents per square mile. None of the people collecting this particular data used that definition, they used 1,500. Even so, some 2/3 of Americans live in areas that would benefit from pursuing alternatives.
      - standardUser 3y ago
        As someone who has driven around a lot of this giant country, that 2/3rds number sounds hopelessly optimistic. Most places that fit that criteria are still remarkably ill-suited for mass transit solutions. Because they were deliberately designed that way.
        thfuran 3y ago
        Yeah, there's more to it than just population density. There also needs to be a sufficient density of walkable places for people to take transit to, and that's also missing in much of American suburbia. Bog standard suburban strip mall is way too spread out and buried in a sea of parking lots. They're simply not designed around pedestrian travel.
- aplummer 3y ago
  I mean, 99% of countries absolutely not. 1 big wealthy country, absolutely yes.
  - justrealist 3y ago
    Literally every country that moves from low to middle income, or middle income to wealthy, gets more personal vehicles because it's what people want. Denying this or misunderstanding human nature will not get you closer to mass transit, you have to first understand what motivates people before trying to convince them of another path.
    - JAlexoid 3y ago
      Owning a personal vehicle, is not inherently at the expense of mass or public transit. Building cities and infrastructure that precludes anything other than personal vehicles - that what forces people to use them primarily. Human nature wants convenience. A personal vehicle is not always the most convenient transport method.
- orwin 3y ago
  I'm widely doubtful about personnal EV. The renewable energy production chain growth this year is already slowing down, and we will probably be 20-30% under the net0 objectives in renewable production by 2030. Objectives that did not take into account metal availability either, so we could fall of behind really, really quick.
ramraj07 3y ago
You’re not gonna retrofit Atlanta and Dallas to be commuter friendly anytime soon. Self driving cars are gonna be a thing given what Waymos been able to achieve in SF and Phoenix already.
- mym1990 3y ago
  I won't go as far as to say Atlanta is commuter friendly, but the past decade has seen lots of improvements in greenway construction, the expansion of the beltline, connecting different parts of the city. I hope it keeps going that directions because that is where I am looking to end up eventually. I used to cycle down Peachtree Street from Buckhead to Piedmont Park...it was a harrowing experience.
- ericmay 3y ago
  I'm not sure we need to retrofit Atlanta or Dallas, or what you might envision here. You could for example maintain existing infrastructure without spending a lot of taxpayer money on new highways and instead allocate funding to improving density, adjusting zoning, eliminating surface parking lots, and literally just paving sidewalks and bike lanes. Busses can run on existing highways and throughout cities. City streets can already accommodate trams and bike lanes. I agree that self-driving cars are "going to be a thing" but their proliferation I doubt. They're not really a category change from Uber, it's just "more efficient" as an additive solution, but we need subtractive solutions. You can think of the car and self-driving cars in particular in the same way you can think of personal digital cameras, alarm clocks, and smiliar devices before the advent of the iPhone. The iPhone (and other smart phones) was a subtractive product and eliminated the need for those devices. Similarly a sidewalk and building well (among other things) eliminate much of the need for a personal car and so Ford, GM, Toyota, Tesla, etc. can't effectively compete because they don't build sidewalks or have anything to do with this category of transit. If I can just walk over to the grocery store like I could in London or Osaka then no amount of self-driving will matter.
  - NegativeLatency 3y ago
    Self driving cars also won’t really fix traffic, because people will send the car home (doubling the number of trips)
mym1990 3y ago
As much as I would love to believe in that future, it is a pipe dream in America at least. So little of the infrastructure I see going up is around any of those other forms of travel. Building sidewalks and bike lanes is not a sexy propositions for capital to come through...the money is in building 4 lane highways and spending billions on autonomous car research. All that to say I hope I am wrong in the biggest way possible.
- bluGill 3y ago
  All the new suburbs around me are building sidewalks and bike paths. That is a big improvement. Now if we can just get people to use them for something other than a Saturday bar hopping bike ride.
  - mym1990 3y ago
    Yeah, its kind of a chicken and the egg problem: more foot traffic can incentivize better infrastructure, and better infrastructure can incentivize more foot traffic. But which one should come first? Is the "build it and they will come" mindset right for all locales? (Questions are somewhat rhetorical). Plenty of ambitious projects get completed and fall on their face.
nytesky 3y ago
I was a huge proponent of urban planning and smart growth, loved trains. But I feel the pandemic has upended any momentum for public transit for a generation. Less frequent commmutes make long drives more tolerable and parking more affordable and available, and transit now seems like a disease vector as well as rolling homeless shelter. For me personally, I hate the smell of weed and it is EVERY where in many downtown areas and transit hubs. Bikes? So weather dependent, little cargo space, hard to secure, and no way to carry a family readily. It’s a sad state of affairs. Autonomous cars will be a travesty as everyone starts sending them on non stop errands or run double commutes to save on parking…
- ericmay 3y ago
  I hate driving down the highway and people speeding past me and weaving in and out of traffic without a license plate. I can't stand cars driving into buildings and businesses in my downtown area. Whenever it snows it seems like there's a huge multi-car pileup on the highway causing a complete stop and I can't get to where I was trying to go. The highways and roads are really really loud. Someone drove into my family in their truck and killed us all. Etc. It's not fair to point out the problems with bikes like you are, like the smell of weed (what about drunk drivers??) without also at least acknowledging the gigantic list of problems associated with car-only transit. Admittedly some of the problems you mention like a rolling homeless shelter or the smell of weed share a solution which is more, and better policing and as a society us having higher standards for ourselves and others, but they are problems that can be solved much more easily in my opinion than the problems associated with car-only infrastructure. Also I do want to point out that the disease vector comment seems really weird to me. Like the population density at Costco is a lot less than a train ride therefore you won't get sick as often? I don't get it.
  - naremu 3y ago
    I have a feeling that if people made one of those pros and cons sheets and did the crossing off equal things, these conversations would go easier I can't imagine equating things like the smell of weed and having to share a train with a homeless person, with death, death, accident clean up, new barriers added, and then more death anyways
srackey 3y ago
Lmao no it’s not Have you seen the sidewalks and trains in American cities? Lol Maybe if our streets and subways looked like Tokyo I’d agree with you, but getting to that point is a coup-complete problem
- ericmay 3y ago
  Don't mistake what today looks like for what tomorrow could look like. Take a look at Amsterdam in the 1970s. https://www.fastcompany.com/3052699/these-historical-photos-show-how-amsterdam-turned-itself-into-a-bike-riders-paradise https://www.fastcompany.com/3052699/these-historical-photos-...
  - taylodl 3y ago
    Wow! I did not know that! Thank you for sharing!
minwcnt5 3y ago
You're just dreaming. I hate cars, but they aren't going anywhere. Even cities in China that have some of the most convenient and modern public transit in the world are still full of cars. Even if the world cuts car and truck usage in half, which will take multiple generations, autonomous vehicles will still be enormously impactful.
dageshi 3y ago
Were autonomous cars available I'm certain people would prefer them over all of the above by a large margin.
poisonborz 3y ago
I'm a car convert, and I'm someone who generally hates driving, and used only public transport for decades. It's just no match. PT is only more effective in theory. Car infra takes next to nothing to plan and build. Trains, trams, metro, anything big at all really, takes decades, riddled with corruption, environment destruction, landscape change. State actors, maybe society, is just plain bad at organising this. Maintaining and switching cars is easy, maintaining public infra, keeping timetables (!!!), organising upgrades and extensions, keeping workforce happy and not striking is the same as above. And I live in a fat rich western country. I get that cars don't scale, and ok, downtown of 1m+ cities should be park & ride. But maybe we should just spread out our living area more, and outside of megapolises just admit defeat and improve car infra.
- lagolinguini 3y ago
  > Car infra takes next to nothing to plan and build. Trains, trams, metro, anything big at all really, takes decades, riddled with corruption, environment destruction, landscape change. As opposed to building highways, parking lots, massive car sized neighbourhoods etc...?
  - buzzert 3y ago
    I can't recall a strike ever preventing me from getting to work in my car?
- eschneider 3y ago
  Uh...highways and roads don't build themselves. The planning and costs are huge.
- acdha 3y ago
  > Car infra takes next to nothing to plan and build. Trains, trams, metro, anything big at all really, takes decades, riddled with corruption, environment destruction, landscape change. Car infrastructure is the same, you just haven’t seen it, and those are often related: most “pedestrian” or “bike” projects end up being about car management and almost all of the cost is usually spent there. This has ripple effects: for example, Boston’s rail service is underfunded in large part because of the massive debt taken on to build the Big Dig. That was promised to reduce commuting times for suburbanites substantially but within a couple years of opening, they were worse than before due to the extra trips incentivized.
SirMaster 3y ago
Even when a huge amount of people live in suburbs and even farther out? I have no interest living in a city and the older I get the more and more I want to move away from things.
nemo44x 3y ago
This is such a ridiculous thing to say. Cars are so immensely useful because I can go to exactly where I want to when I want to. I can transport people and things easily. How do I take a train or a bike 80 miles away to go hiking, boating (imagine carrying a boat or a canoe onto a train!), golfing, etc? Or the other way to the beach? Or to drop kids off at different places with a variety of things they have with them? I would seriously limit my freedom of movement and ability to do things. There's a tendency here for a I assume young person who lives in a city and doesn't have a family or hobbies that require going to far away places with things, etc.
- ericmay 3y ago
  Can you elaborate on why if we build more infrastructure, create more bike lanes or sidewalks, create street cars in downtown areas and such, you wouldn't be able to drive your car 80 miles away to go hiking or boating or golfing or go to the beach?
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    Well, I interpreted this: > The best ride in a car isn't one in which I'm driving or not driving, it's one in which I don't get in the car in the first place. As saying you don't see any need for cars at all. That the future is these other things. I'm just saying that cars are extremely useful and that if I had to choose between having a car or all the other things then I'd pick a car. I enjoy the other things too and am grateful to have a train nearby I can take into the city. But I can't imagine life without a car.
    - ericmay 3y ago
      Oh ok. I also have a car, and a garage, and have no plans on not having those. It's convenient and allows for flexibility. I'm not advocating for banning cars or something. But we also do not have to make an either-or choice. The answer is we can have both! But today we need to do two things: 1. Not building car-only infrastructure. I.e. build sidewalks, bike lanes, busses, and trams/street cars. While I can afford a car, many can't or struggle to, or even if they can it is a poor financial choice. By giving people additional options we can increase entrepreneurship, reduce barriers to things like physically getting to a job, etc. 2. Reducing the need to use a car for things like buying a loaf of bread, short trips, going out to a restaurant, heading to a local sporting event, etc. There's no world in which you will forever be able to drive a large truck or SUV 15 miles to a grocery store to buy a few trivial items. We can do that now because we hit an energy jackpot with fossil fuels (which are necessary and useful), but economic physics dictate that this can't last. So instead of driving to do common tasks, you can instead just walk (exercise is good for you) and then walk back. If it's raining, umbrella. Etc. There are a lot of additional benefits here like obesity reduction which will save us money. Today what we have is incredibly expensive infrastructure and transportation. We don't need to. We need more options.
xnx 3y ago
Self-driving electric vehicles are the future of public transportation: safer, faster, cheaper, and less environmental impact than trains. Additionally, nothing is better for pedestrians and cyclists of the future than self-driving electric vehicles.
- sangnoir 3y ago
  > Additionally, nothing is better for pedestrians and cyclists of the future than self-driving electric vehicles. How about no cars at all (or significantly fewer cars)? Adoption of mass transportation like trams, trains and buses is better for pedestrians and cyclists.
  - xnx 3y ago
    > Adoption of mass transportation like trams, trains and buses is better for pedestrians and cyclists. Buses are terrible to bike around: obstruct visibility, hard to pass, block traffic when they stop, and are louder and more polluting than electric cars. Trains don't yield to pedestrians and only serve a very limited number of locations.
danaris 3y ago
I mean, I certainly hope that the future is those things in places where they're practical. There are many places where they just aren't practical—where sidewalks are useless, because the nearest thing to walk or bike to is miles away, the weather gets too inhospitable to walk or bike safely for much of the year, and the places people want to go are just too spread out for trains to be at all viable. For those of us who choose not to live in dense urban areas, I would dearly love to see full self-driving cars someday...but given the challenges we've observed in the last few years, I'm now skeptical as to whether we'll realistically see them arrive.

justrealist 3y ago

I hear a lot of people saying "the future isn't X" when they really mean "I wish the future wasn't X". The future absent radical change of cultural heart clearly is personal EVs. You don't have to like it, but it's the direction 99% of countries are moving and clearly normal people do want it.

mupuff1234 3y ago
> 99% of countries A large percentage of the world's population commutes on mopeds/scooters.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
  > A large percentage of the world's population commutes on mopeds/scooters. That is due to lack of money not lack of desire. If you asked the moped/scooter riders if they would rather have a car, they would choose a car. As countries become more developed and wealthier, more people will be able to afford cars and car use will increase.
- thfuran 3y ago
  Scooters are probably the most rapidly electrifying class of personal vehicle.
  - mupuff1234 3y ago
    Yes, but the comment I was replying to was referring to car EVs, not scooters.
webdood90 3y ago
people _think_ it's what they want because it's all they know. cities should be pushing for alternatives because they're better in literally every possible way, except convenience. better for our safety, for our health, for the environment, for less noise, for the cost, for a sense of community, for the saved space, and so on.
- standardUser 3y ago
  > cities should be pushing for alternatives Most are, but a massive number of Americans live in sprawling suburbs and small-to-medium sized towns, not cities. Most of those places are ill-suited (to the extreme) for mass transit and other non-car options - yet they are perfectly designed to handle cars.
  - taylodl 3y ago
    63% of Americans live in an urban area having a population density greater than 1,500 per square mile. There's no agreed-upon definition of "sprawl", but it's generally computed at being under 2,000 residents per square mile. None of the people collecting this particular data used that definition, they used 1,500. Even so, some 2/3 of Americans live in areas that would benefit from pursuing alternatives.
    - standardUser 3y ago
      As someone who has driven around a lot of this giant country, that 2/3rds number sounds hopelessly optimistic. Most places that fit that criteria are still remarkably ill-suited for mass transit solutions. Because they were deliberately designed that way.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        Yeah, there's more to it than just population density. There also needs to be a sufficient density of walkable places for people to take transit to, and that's also missing in much of American suburbia. Bog standard suburban strip mall is way too spread out and buried in a sea of parking lots. They're simply not designed around pedestrian travel.
aplummer 3y ago
I mean, 99% of countries absolutely not. 1 big wealthy country, absolutely yes.
- justrealist 3y ago
  Literally every country that moves from low to middle income, or middle income to wealthy, gets more personal vehicles because it's what people want. Denying this or misunderstanding human nature will not get you closer to mass transit, you have to first understand what motivates people before trying to convince them of another path.
  - JAlexoid 3y ago
    Owning a personal vehicle, is not inherently at the expense of mass or public transit. Building cities and infrastructure that precludes anything other than personal vehicles - that what forces people to use them primarily. Human nature wants convenience. A personal vehicle is not always the most convenient transport method.
orwin 3y ago
I'm widely doubtful about personnal EV. The renewable energy production chain growth this year is already slowing down, and we will probably be 20-30% under the net0 objectives in renewable production by 2030. Objectives that did not take into account metal availability either, so we could fall of behind really, really quick.

ramraj07 3y ago

You’re not gonna retrofit Atlanta and Dallas to be commuter friendly anytime soon. Self driving cars are gonna be a thing given what Waymos been able to achieve in SF and Phoenix already.

mym1990 3y ago
I won't go as far as to say Atlanta is commuter friendly, but the past decade has seen lots of improvements in greenway construction, the expansion of the beltline, connecting different parts of the city. I hope it keeps going that directions because that is where I am looking to end up eventually. I used to cycle down Peachtree Street from Buckhead to Piedmont Park...it was a harrowing experience.
ericmay 3y ago
I'm not sure we need to retrofit Atlanta or Dallas, or what you might envision here. You could for example maintain existing infrastructure without spending a lot of taxpayer money on new highways and instead allocate funding to improving density, adjusting zoning, eliminating surface parking lots, and literally just paving sidewalks and bike lanes. Busses can run on existing highways and throughout cities. City streets can already accommodate trams and bike lanes. I agree that self-driving cars are "going to be a thing" but their proliferation I doubt. They're not really a category change from Uber, it's just "more efficient" as an additive solution, but we need subtractive solutions. You can think of the car and self-driving cars in particular in the same way you can think of personal digital cameras, alarm clocks, and smiliar devices before the advent of the iPhone. The iPhone (and other smart phones) was a subtractive product and eliminated the need for those devices. Similarly a sidewalk and building well (among other things) eliminate much of the need for a personal car and so Ford, GM, Toyota, Tesla, etc. can't effectively compete because they don't build sidewalks or have anything to do with this category of transit. If I can just walk over to the grocery store like I could in London or Osaka then no amount of self-driving will matter.
- NegativeLatency 3y ago
  Self driving cars also won’t really fix traffic, because people will send the car home (doubling the number of trips)

mym1990 3y ago

As much as I would love to believe in that future, it is a pipe dream in America at least. So little of the infrastructure I see going up is around any of those other forms of travel. Building sidewalks and bike lanes is not a sexy propositions for capital to come through...the money is in building 4 lane highways and spending billions on autonomous car research. All that to say I hope I am wrong in the biggest way possible.

bluGill 3y ago
All the new suburbs around me are building sidewalks and bike paths. That is a big improvement. Now if we can just get people to use them for something other than a Saturday bar hopping bike ride.
- mym1990 3y ago
  Yeah, its kind of a chicken and the egg problem: more foot traffic can incentivize better infrastructure, and better infrastructure can incentivize more foot traffic. But which one should come first? Is the "build it and they will come" mindset right for all locales? (Questions are somewhat rhetorical). Plenty of ambitious projects get completed and fall on their face.

nytesky 3y ago

I was a huge proponent of urban planning and smart growth, loved trains. But I feel the pandemic has upended any momentum for public transit for a generation. Less frequent commmutes make long drives more tolerable and parking more affordable and available, and transit now seems like a disease vector as well as rolling homeless shelter. For me personally, I hate the smell of weed and it is EVERY where in many downtown areas and transit hubs. Bikes? So weather dependent, little cargo space, hard to secure, and no way to carry a family readily. It’s a sad state of affairs. Autonomous cars will be a travesty as everyone starts sending them on non stop errands or run double commutes to save on parking…

ericmay 3y ago
I hate driving down the highway and people speeding past me and weaving in and out of traffic without a license plate. I can't stand cars driving into buildings and businesses in my downtown area. Whenever it snows it seems like there's a huge multi-car pileup on the highway causing a complete stop and I can't get to where I was trying to go. The highways and roads are really really loud. Someone drove into my family in their truck and killed us all. Etc. It's not fair to point out the problems with bikes like you are, like the smell of weed (what about drunk drivers??) without also at least acknowledging the gigantic list of problems associated with car-only transit. Admittedly some of the problems you mention like a rolling homeless shelter or the smell of weed share a solution which is more, and better policing and as a society us having higher standards for ourselves and others, but they are problems that can be solved much more easily in my opinion than the problems associated with car-only infrastructure. Also I do want to point out that the disease vector comment seems really weird to me. Like the population density at Costco is a lot less than a train ride therefore you won't get sick as often? I don't get it.
- naremu 3y ago
  I have a feeling that if people made one of those pros and cons sheets and did the crossing off equal things, these conversations would go easier I can't imagine equating things like the smell of weed and having to share a train with a homeless person, with death, death, accident clean up, new barriers added, and then more death anyways

srackey 3y ago

Lmao no it’s not Have you seen the sidewalks and trains in American cities? Lol Maybe if our streets and subways looked like Tokyo I’d agree with you, but getting to that point is a coup-complete problem

ericmay 3y ago
Don't mistake what today looks like for what tomorrow could look like. Take a look at Amsterdam in the 1970s. https://www.fastcompany.com/3052699/these-historical-photos-show-how-amsterdam-turned-itself-into-a-bike-riders-paradise https://www.fastcompany.com/3052699/these-historical-photos-...
- taylodl 3y ago
  Wow! I did not know that! Thank you for sharing!

minwcnt5 3y ago

You're just dreaming. I hate cars, but they aren't going anywhere. Even cities in China that have some of the most convenient and modern public transit in the world are still full of cars. Even if the world cuts car and truck usage in half, which will take multiple generations, autonomous vehicles will still be enormously impactful.

dageshi 3y ago

Were autonomous cars available I'm certain people would prefer them over all of the above by a large margin.

poisonborz 3y ago

I'm a car convert, and I'm someone who generally hates driving, and used only public transport for decades. It's just no match. PT is only more effective in theory. Car infra takes next to nothing to plan and build. Trains, trams, metro, anything big at all really, takes decades, riddled with corruption, environment destruction, landscape change. State actors, maybe society, is just plain bad at organising this. Maintaining and switching cars is easy, maintaining public infra, keeping timetables (!!!), organising upgrades and extensions, keeping workforce happy and not striking is the same as above. And I live in a fat rich western country. I get that cars don't scale, and ok, downtown of 1m+ cities should be park & ride. But maybe we should just spread out our living area more, and outside of megapolises just admit defeat and improve car infra.

lagolinguini 3y ago
> Car infra takes next to nothing to plan and build. Trains, trams, metro, anything big at all really, takes decades, riddled with corruption, environment destruction, landscape change. As opposed to building highways, parking lots, massive car sized neighbourhoods etc...?
- buzzert 3y ago
  I can't recall a strike ever preventing me from getting to work in my car?
eschneider 3y ago
Uh...highways and roads don't build themselves. The planning and costs are huge.
acdha 3y ago
> Car infra takes next to nothing to plan and build. Trains, trams, metro, anything big at all really, takes decades, riddled with corruption, environment destruction, landscape change. Car infrastructure is the same, you just haven’t seen it, and those are often related: most “pedestrian” or “bike” projects end up being about car management and almost all of the cost is usually spent there. This has ripple effects: for example, Boston’s rail service is underfunded in large part because of the massive debt taken on to build the Big Dig. That was promised to reduce commuting times for suburbanites substantially but within a couple years of opening, they were worse than before due to the extra trips incentivized.

SirMaster 3y ago

Even when a huge amount of people live in suburbs and even farther out? I have no interest living in a city and the older I get the more and more I want to move away from things.

nemo44x 3y ago

This is such a ridiculous thing to say. Cars are so immensely useful because I can go to exactly where I want to when I want to. I can transport people and things easily. How do I take a train or a bike 80 miles away to go hiking, boating (imagine carrying a boat or a canoe onto a train!), golfing, etc? Or the other way to the beach? Or to drop kids off at different places with a variety of things they have with them? I would seriously limit my freedom of movement and ability to do things. There's a tendency here for a I assume young person who lives in a city and doesn't have a family or hobbies that require going to far away places with things, etc.

ericmay 3y ago
Can you elaborate on why if we build more infrastructure, create more bike lanes or sidewalks, create street cars in downtown areas and such, you wouldn't be able to drive your car 80 miles away to go hiking or boating or golfing or go to the beach?
- nemo44x 3y ago
  Well, I interpreted this: > The best ride in a car isn't one in which I'm driving or not driving, it's one in which I don't get in the car in the first place. As saying you don't see any need for cars at all. That the future is these other things. I'm just saying that cars are extremely useful and that if I had to choose between having a car or all the other things then I'd pick a car. I enjoy the other things too and am grateful to have a train nearby I can take into the city. But I can't imagine life without a car.
  - ericmay 3y ago
    Oh ok. I also have a car, and a garage, and have no plans on not having those. It's convenient and allows for flexibility. I'm not advocating for banning cars or something. But we also do not have to make an either-or choice. The answer is we can have both! But today we need to do two things: 1. Not building car-only infrastructure. I.e. build sidewalks, bike lanes, busses, and trams/street cars. While I can afford a car, many can't or struggle to, or even if they can it is a poor financial choice. By giving people additional options we can increase entrepreneurship, reduce barriers to things like physically getting to a job, etc. 2. Reducing the need to use a car for things like buying a loaf of bread, short trips, going out to a restaurant, heading to a local sporting event, etc. There's no world in which you will forever be able to drive a large truck or SUV 15 miles to a grocery store to buy a few trivial items. We can do that now because we hit an energy jackpot with fossil fuels (which are necessary and useful), but economic physics dictate that this can't last. So instead of driving to do common tasks, you can instead just walk (exercise is good for you) and then walk back. If it's raining, umbrella. Etc. There are a lot of additional benefits here like obesity reduction which will save us money. Today what we have is incredibly expensive infrastructure and transportation. We don't need to. We need more options.

xnx 3y ago

Self-driving electric vehicles are the future of public transportation: safer, faster, cheaper, and less environmental impact than trains. Additionally, nothing is better for pedestrians and cyclists of the future than self-driving electric vehicles.

sangnoir 3y ago
> Additionally, nothing is better for pedestrians and cyclists of the future than self-driving electric vehicles. How about no cars at all (or significantly fewer cars)? Adoption of mass transportation like trams, trains and buses is better for pedestrians and cyclists.
- xnx 3y ago
  > Adoption of mass transportation like trams, trains and buses is better for pedestrians and cyclists. Buses are terrible to bike around: obstruct visibility, hard to pass, block traffic when they stop, and are louder and more polluting than electric cars. Trains don't yield to pedestrians and only serve a very limited number of locations.

danaris 3y ago

I mean, I certainly hope that the future is those things in places where they're practical. There are many places where they just aren't practical—where sidewalks are useless, because the nearest thing to walk or bike to is miles away, the weather gets too inhospitable to walk or bike safely for much of the year, and the places people want to go are just too spread out for trains to be at all viable. For those of us who choose not to live in dense urban areas, I would dearly love to see full self-driving cars someday...but given the challenges we've observed in the last few years, I'm now skeptical as to whether we'll realistically see them arrive.