6 ms·

What problem is this system trying to solve? It seems to be, in this initial deployment, that the office park is too far away from the restaurants its employees

What problem is this system trying to solve? It seems to be, in this initial deployment, that the office park is too far away from the restaurants its employees want to visit, compelling them to drive there. I feel like a better solution would be permitting denser and mixed-use development, so employees can walk to their favorite restaurants on the ground floor instead of driving >1km to them or paying for a delivery tunnel.

pavel_lishin 3y ago
And/or encouraging more use of things like bikes. I'd bet that painting a bike lane and putting up concrete barriers is cheaper than trenching out a three-quarter mile pseudo-pneumatic-tube-system.
- cpursley 3y ago
  Have you spent any time in Atlanta in August? Biking outside is not just biking, but also swimming - through the humidity. I don't mind it (avid all-season mountain biker) but most office workers wouldn't opt for that in their fancy office clothing just for a sandwich.
  - thorncorona 3y ago
    Seems to work fine for singapore / dc.
    - cpursley 3y ago
      Everything is closer in Singapore meaning longer distances (which is the key, a build environment for humans, not cars, first).
    - Rebelgecko 3y ago
      I think it's hard to say things are fine when there's still huge gender disparities, in DC area it's something like 2:1
      - cafard 3y ago
        This might have been true during WW II when flat feet and myopia did not exempt men from conscription. It has not, that I know of, been true any time in the last seventy years. I moved to the area forty-five years ago. This was not because I supposed that the 5:1 ratio (which some mentioned) would make women overlook my mediocre looks, shabby clothes, and so-so hygiene; but the chance it could be true seemed like a bonus.
      - mkii 3y ago
        What does gender have to do with anything in this discussion? > in DC area it's something like 2:1 That's not true.
        Rebelgecko 3y ago
        33% of bike trips in the Washington area are by women. Assuming non-binary people are around 1% of trips, that puts men at 66%, giving an exact 2:1 ratio Source: https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/24356/dot_24356_DS1.pdf https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/24356/dot_24356_DS1.pdf? And IMO you can't call a mode of transportation "fine" when large swathes of the population don't feel safe or comfortable using it (this comes up a lot when I talk to female friends about bus/metro usage too)
        mkii 3y ago
        Thank you for clarifying, I get what you mean now. That study is over a decade old though. And I would think that there's too many confounding variables at play there. IMO the biggest confounder is "society issues" that make women feel less safe in general in public spaces. In my local neck of the US, I pretty much never see solo women eating outside at night, vs solo men and mixed groups.
    - rayiner 3y ago
      As an Asian being sweaty in the summer is the worst part. My dad grew up in Bangladesh (in a village with no AC) and now even Maryland is too much for his taste.
  - NegativeLatency 3y ago
    Seems solvable with an e-bike or other micro-mobility options. "You're not made of sugar, you won't melt."
    - red-iron-pine 3y ago
      that's not how sun and humidity work. you're going to melt just by virtue of not being in the shade, let alone AC.
- quantified 3y ago
  Peachtree City has tons of golf cart lanes. Really a good solution for the problem.
conductr 3y ago
I feel like comments like this always come up. Basically reducing it to, why not just become Manhattan? They want a solution for today, not decades from today which is what urban planning would take. But also they likely want the neighborhood they built/moved to. They don’t want to live in a super dense mixed use plaza. They also want solutions that the plethora of communities like theirs can replicate. They just want a little upgrade to their bucolic life. They don’t want to hit the reset button. It seems way more reasonable to upgrade than try to reinvent it.
- NegativeLatency 3y ago
  Classic straw man argument, there's a pretty big difference from a walkable and incrementally more dense neighborhood and Manhattan. We're not going to tear down and rebuild everything all at once, it's going to take time and work to get us out of the massive car dependent hole we've dug for ourselves. It seems Atlanta has massively oversupplied (to it's own detriment) parking and prioritized space for cars, and neglected to consider that cities depend on attracting a sufficent density of humans. https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2022/07/11/atlanta-parking-maximum-legislation.html https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2022/07/11/atlanta-... > Studies conducted prior to the pandemic indicate that only 30% of nearly 100,000 parking spaces in Downtown Atlanta are used during peak hours.
  - wizerdrobe 3y ago
    There’s nothing straw man about it, it’s reality of suburbanite life. I’ve worked in “walkable” office parks and have the time the guys at the office would get in a car and still drive elsewhere. It doesn’t solve for the overall problem. The only way to actually eliminate the drive-to-a-place problem is dense Manhattanesque cities where vehicles are prohibitive for the average Joe and robust public transit exists to allow Joe to make a quick jaunt down the road.
  - dingnuts 3y ago
    Your quote only adds to the GP's point -- Atlanta is so far from being walkable that it will take half a century of very good urban planning before the problem solved by the article is solved in the way that would make the r/fuckcars posters that show up in every thread on this site about transportation would like it to be. People arguing that Atlanta should just permit "denser and mixed-use development, so employees can walk to their favorite restaurants on the ground floor instead of driving >1km" as a short-term solution to the massive sprawl that is Atlanta have absolutely no idea of the gargantuan undertaking they are proposing and it's sort of ironic that they propose that undertaking as an "easier" solution to the problem than the one in the article. I think it's telling that the person who made this comment used km -- it's obvious they are not American, and know very little about Atlanta or about the suburbs around it or how people live there. I, on the other hand, have first-hand experience. Don't ask me about it though, I don't read replies to my comments on this hellsite
treis 3y ago
I'll never understand these sort of objections to convenience in favor of density. This is awesome and I can see it being a utility similar to water pipes or electricity going to a house for the same reason we all have mailboxes. Delivery is convenient and this could make it cheap and fast.
- keyboard_slap 3y ago
  I'm not objecting to convince in favor of density because there isn't a choice to be made between the two. You can have convenience in low or high density development. The difference is in cost and complexity; high density development has all the convenience with fewer delivery costs
  - conductr 3y ago
    What's the cost of rebuilding our existing tangible cities for density? Is that without complexity? What about consideration for time? It's not as easy as hitting "new game" on Sim City
    - keyboard_slap 3y ago
      On this small scale, rebuilding would likely be more expensive than this tunnel. But extending this network to every home would be (IMO) on the same order of magnitude as redevelopment in cost, complexity, and time. Redevelopment is complicated during construction but this system is also complicated forever. Our cities are already being rebuilt piece-by-piece every day; I'd just like zoning laws to permit rebuilding with mixed use and higher density development
      - conductr 3y ago
        It seems like it would always be small scale, just replicated. I don’t think they’re trying to long distance delivery through this. Like if wanted a pizza from 100 miles away, I’d not expect that to be supported. I’m seeing it like a LAN. Which is how most of America is built. Clusters of businesses supported by surrounding area of residential. Any interconnection would likely benefit from batched movement into the node (cargo truck) then items go into this as a last mile solution.
flukus 3y ago
If something like this is financially viable (doubt) then it sounds like the density already exists and the problem is the restaurants aren't near the people. All the replies are focused on the density you mentioned but mixed use is probably the bigger and far more easily solved problem. Letting restaurants open nearby to where there are clearly a lot of people is a tried and proven solution, not gadgetbhan for food.
sfifs 3y ago
The answer to this is actually very simple and used all over the world by shopping centres and shopping district associations. You just run a free loop bus for a few hours during lunch time to bring people to and from the shopping district. Even in the US I have seen airport hotels do this in NY, SF and LA. I wonder why the default answer in US is often not simple public transport.
- keyboard_slap 3y ago
  Because most public transit simply isn't profitable
  - averageRoyalty 3y ago
    Why would it need to be profitable? It's _public_ transport, paid for by public funds.
    - sfifs 3y ago
      Exactly this. It's generally a service with positive externalities. Also this specific use case (lunchtime bus loops) exists in many parts of the world and they are clearly value creating overall otherwise shopping centres and districts wouldn't be running them.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
cameronh90 3y ago
I live in London, and it’s very walkable and dense here compared to most US cities. Nevertheless, almost every vehicle is a delivery vehicle of some kind. Uber Eats deliveries and Amazon packages going everywhere all the time. Some sort of city-wide underground packet switched (literally) delivery network sounds sadly impractical but would be amazing and take a huge amount of traffic off the road.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jjav 3y ago
> their favorite restaurants on the ground floor instead of driving >1km to them There may be a restaurant on the ground floor but your favorite one might still be >1km away.

pavel_lishin 3y ago

And/or encouraging more use of things like bikes. I'd bet that painting a bike lane and putting up concrete barriers is cheaper than trenching out a three-quarter mile pseudo-pneumatic-tube-system.

cpursley 3y ago
Have you spent any time in Atlanta in August? Biking outside is not just biking, but also swimming - through the humidity. I don't mind it (avid all-season mountain biker) but most office workers wouldn't opt for that in their fancy office clothing just for a sandwich.
- thorncorona 3y ago
  Seems to work fine for singapore / dc.
  - cpursley 3y ago
    Everything is closer in Singapore meaning longer distances (which is the key, a build environment for humans, not cars, first).
  - Rebelgecko 3y ago
    I think it's hard to say things are fine when there's still huge gender disparities, in DC area it's something like 2:1
    - cafard 3y ago
      This might have been true during WW II when flat feet and myopia did not exempt men from conscription. It has not, that I know of, been true any time in the last seventy years. I moved to the area forty-five years ago. This was not because I supposed that the 5:1 ratio (which some mentioned) would make women overlook my mediocre looks, shabby clothes, and so-so hygiene; but the chance it could be true seemed like a bonus.
    - mkii 3y ago
      What does gender have to do with anything in this discussion? > in DC area it's something like 2:1 That's not true.
      - Rebelgecko 3y ago
        33% of bike trips in the Washington area are by women. Assuming non-binary people are around 1% of trips, that puts men at 66%, giving an exact 2:1 ratio Source: https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/24356/dot_24356_DS1.pdf https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/24356/dot_24356_DS1.pdf? And IMO you can't call a mode of transportation "fine" when large swathes of the population don't feel safe or comfortable using it (this comes up a lot when I talk to female friends about bus/metro usage too)
        mkii 3y ago
        Thank you for clarifying, I get what you mean now. That study is over a decade old though. And I would think that there's too many confounding variables at play there. IMO the biggest confounder is "society issues" that make women feel less safe in general in public spaces. In my local neck of the US, I pretty much never see solo women eating outside at night, vs solo men and mixed groups.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    As an Asian being sweaty in the summer is the worst part. My dad grew up in Bangladesh (in a village with no AC) and now even Maryland is too much for his taste.
- NegativeLatency 3y ago
  Seems solvable with an e-bike or other micro-mobility options. "You're not made of sugar, you won't melt."
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    that's not how sun and humidity work. you're going to melt just by virtue of not being in the shade, let alone AC.
quantified 3y ago
Peachtree City has tons of golf cart lanes. Really a good solution for the problem.

conductr 3y ago

I feel like comments like this always come up. Basically reducing it to, why not just become Manhattan? They want a solution for today, not decades from today which is what urban planning would take. But also they likely want the neighborhood they built/moved to. They don’t want to live in a super dense mixed use plaza. They also want solutions that the plethora of communities like theirs can replicate. They just want a little upgrade to their bucolic life. They don’t want to hit the reset button. It seems way more reasonable to upgrade than try to reinvent it.

NegativeLatency 3y ago
Classic straw man argument, there's a pretty big difference from a walkable and incrementally more dense neighborhood and Manhattan. We're not going to tear down and rebuild everything all at once, it's going to take time and work to get us out of the massive car dependent hole we've dug for ourselves. It seems Atlanta has massively oversupplied (to it's own detriment) parking and prioritized space for cars, and neglected to consider that cities depend on attracting a sufficent density of humans. https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2022/07/11/atlanta-parking-maximum-legislation.html https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2022/07/11/atlanta-... > Studies conducted prior to the pandemic indicate that only 30% of nearly 100,000 parking spaces in Downtown Atlanta are used during peak hours.
- wizerdrobe 3y ago
  There’s nothing straw man about it, it’s reality of suburbanite life. I’ve worked in “walkable” office parks and have the time the guys at the office would get in a car and still drive elsewhere. It doesn’t solve for the overall problem. The only way to actually eliminate the drive-to-a-place problem is dense Manhattanesque cities where vehicles are prohibitive for the average Joe and robust public transit exists to allow Joe to make a quick jaunt down the road.
- dingnuts 3y ago
  Your quote only adds to the GP's point -- Atlanta is so far from being walkable that it will take half a century of very good urban planning before the problem solved by the article is solved in the way that would make the r/fuckcars posters that show up in every thread on this site about transportation would like it to be. People arguing that Atlanta should just permit "denser and mixed-use development, so employees can walk to their favorite restaurants on the ground floor instead of driving >1km" as a short-term solution to the massive sprawl that is Atlanta have absolutely no idea of the gargantuan undertaking they are proposing and it's sort of ironic that they propose that undertaking as an "easier" solution to the problem than the one in the article. I think it's telling that the person who made this comment used km -- it's obvious they are not American, and know very little about Atlanta or about the suburbs around it or how people live there. I, on the other hand, have first-hand experience. Don't ask me about it though, I don't read replies to my comments on this hellsite

treis 3y ago

I'll never understand these sort of objections to convenience in favor of density. This is awesome and I can see it being a utility similar to water pipes or electricity going to a house for the same reason we all have mailboxes. Delivery is convenient and this could make it cheap and fast.

keyboard_slap 3y ago
I'm not objecting to convince in favor of density because there isn't a choice to be made between the two. You can have convenience in low or high density development. The difference is in cost and complexity; high density development has all the convenience with fewer delivery costs
- conductr 3y ago
  What's the cost of rebuilding our existing tangible cities for density? Is that without complexity? What about consideration for time? It's not as easy as hitting "new game" on Sim City
  - keyboard_slap 3y ago
    On this small scale, rebuilding would likely be more expensive than this tunnel. But extending this network to every home would be (IMO) on the same order of magnitude as redevelopment in cost, complexity, and time. Redevelopment is complicated during construction but this system is also complicated forever. Our cities are already being rebuilt piece-by-piece every day; I'd just like zoning laws to permit rebuilding with mixed use and higher density development
    - conductr 3y ago
      It seems like it would always be small scale, just replicated. I don’t think they’re trying to long distance delivery through this. Like if wanted a pizza from 100 miles away, I’d not expect that to be supported. I’m seeing it like a LAN. Which is how most of America is built. Clusters of businesses supported by surrounding area of residential. Any interconnection would likely benefit from batched movement into the node (cargo truck) then items go into this as a last mile solution.

flukus 3y ago

If something like this is financially viable (doubt) then it sounds like the density already exists and the problem is the restaurants aren't near the people. All the replies are focused on the density you mentioned but mixed use is probably the bigger and far more easily solved problem. Letting restaurants open nearby to where there are clearly a lot of people is a tried and proven solution, not gadgetbhan for food.

sfifs 3y ago

The answer to this is actually very simple and used all over the world by shopping centres and shopping district associations. You just run a free loop bus for a few hours during lunch time to bring people to and from the shopping district. Even in the US I have seen airport hotels do this in NY, SF and LA. I wonder why the default answer in US is often not simple public transport.

keyboard_slap 3y ago
Because most public transit simply isn't profitable
- averageRoyalty 3y ago
  Why would it need to be profitable? It's _public_ transport, paid for by public funds.
  - sfifs 3y ago
    Exactly this. It's generally a service with positive externalities. Also this specific use case (lunchtime bus loops) exists in many parts of the world and they are clearly value creating overall otherwise shopping centres and districts wouldn't be running them.

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

cameronh90 3y ago

I live in London, and it’s very walkable and dense here compared to most US cities. Nevertheless, almost every vehicle is a delivery vehicle of some kind. Uber Eats deliveries and Amazon packages going everywhere all the time. Some sort of city-wide underground packet switched (literally) delivery network sounds sadly impractical but would be amazing and take a huge amount of traffic off the road.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jjav 3y ago

> their favorite restaurants on the ground floor instead of driving >1km to them There may be a restaurant on the ground floor but your favorite one might still be >1km away.