3 ms·

Personal automobiles are suboptimal in every measurable metric aside from your subjective "but I like owning a car" opinion.

by RIMR 2y ago

erik_seaberg 2y ago
Cars run point to point on demand, which is optimal. Any system that does not will waste huge chunks of riders' time.
scottLobster 2y ago
If you confiscated my car tomorrow, I literally couldn't get to work or buy groceries. That isn't an optimization, it's a hard reality. Once you've built timely safe replacement infrastructure that can carry me from my home to my place of employment as fast or faster than my current commute, and take me to any of the shops I frequent, and do that for all of my neighbors, and do all of the above in a way that costs less than car ownership, we can talk.
- PreInternet01 2y ago
  Hey, I'm the guy who is 100% against private car ownership, and I don't want to "confiscate your car" (I mean, what would I do with that?) or encourage anyone to do so (unless, of course, they're the bank and you're a delinquent, don't want to upset the apple cart too much...). I want you to be able to reliably get transport to where-ever you need to go, an what-ever time you need to go there, without the need to keep a 1000-pound pile of junk in (semi-)public spaces at all times. Where I live, that's pretty much a possibility already. I want everyone to have that same freedom!
  - erik_seaberg 2y ago
    Are you proposing ridesharing? Self-driving hasn't been widely deployed yet.
    - consteval 2y ago
      ... no? Are we so car-brained that the options are "my car" or "somebody else's car"?
      - erik_seaberg 2y ago
        "Transport to where-ever you need to go, an what-ever time you need to go there" has to functionally be pretty car-like. My question is how he wants to dispatch it on demand so it doesn't need to stay parked near us.
        consteval 2y ago
        Buses and trams do that as well, or at least extremely close to it. If the next bus is in a minute, and it's going to the block you're going to, guess what - you can go where you want, whatever time you want. This is the case in many areas. When I was in Romania, between buses, trams, and rail I could go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. There was always an option available, typically multiple overlapping options. Keep in mind this is a poor eastern European country. Keep in mind it's also fast, like very fast. Going across the city was a 10-minute affair. Try driving across a big city like Dallas.
        erik_seaberg 2y ago
        From Fremont, CA, the Sunnyvale office is a 40-minute wait for a 16-minute bus to a 12-minute wait for a 14-minute train to a 14-minute wait for a 48-minute bus (making 34 stops). Google estimates I could get there in two and a half hours. Getting home after 11 PM is more like four hours. It's only 22 miles. A replacement for a car should be able to do this in about 32 minutes. But it would have to go point-to-point on demand, they can't cover the spanning tree of n^2 possible trips with any reasonable frequency (mostly because n^2 taxpayers don't exist, nor housing for them).
        consteval 2y ago
        Right because the US is car-centric, so everything is designed to be an inefficient as possible. Things are far away not in spite of cars, but because of them. > A replacement for a car should be able to do this in about 32 minutes Right, again, I was able to go across the capital of Romania in maybe 10 minutes end-to-end. Because Bucharest isn't car centric. And I'm able to reach any arbitrary point in the city trivially. Also, as a side note, your car couldn't do that in 32 minutes. There're people in CA that commute MUCH LESS than 22 miles that spend 1.5+ hours in traffic a day. Because, again, cars are the most inefficient means of transportation imaginable, so they have awful throughput and bandwidth. This is mostly a case of US car brain. There're countless examples of places all over the world that are able to achieve this, and more, without a car. The biggest factor to remember is that distance doesn't scale like you think it does - due to the extreme inefficiency of motor vehicle infrastructure, the majority of our space is wasted on not-useful things. 22 miles in the US isn't equivalent to 22 miles somewhere else, because somewhere else those 22 miles have 10x as much stuff, so you wouldn't need to travel 22 miles in the first place.
- Xymist 2y ago
  It also needs to be able to do this _literally door to door_ and without having to sit next to, speak to, or touch anyone I don't know. Cars are a privacy bubble and a shield, not just a transport mechanism; no form of mass transit will ever be an acceptable substitute in the way that, for me, is the most important factor.
  - consteval 2y ago
    Part of existing in a society is the fact you will interact with other people. There are places - particularly rural - where this is not the case. Such places would probably never not be automobile-centric, as it makes no sense to run lines to low populous, sparce areas. But if you live in an urban area, the "cost tradeoff" of having everything close is there's more likelihood to be around people. It's untenable to have the desire to have 10 grocery stores, 5 banks, 3 schools etc within 5 miles of you and also have no people interaction. Who runs those places? And who goes to them? The privacy cars provide is therefore mostly an illusion. Also, I wouldn't describe an automobile as a shield, considering it's by far the thing most likely to kill you. It's a sword, if anything.
brink 2y ago
Life being "optimal" does not make it worth living as if we're all cogs in a machine. Liberty makes life worth living, and liberty is very expensive.
- consteval 2y ago
  Cars aren't a liberty, merely an illusion of it. Cars are the reason you can't go anywhere you want to go without paying for a hunk of steel and risking your life. True liberty would be being able to walk everywhere you need to go, but this is rare.
  - brink 2y ago
    > risking your life. Hence my point; liberty is expensive. Liberty includes the liberty to risk it. There's no illusion. Cars do not rule me. They're not binding, or addictive. They're a tool that physically extend my liberty to go where I please, and I can use them or leave them as I please.
    - consteval 2y ago
      > Cars do not rule me They do, that's what you're missing. They're both binding and addictive, because we have to build our entire society to revolve around them. You've lost countless liberties, as have many Americans, due to the concessions around cars. The reason your grocery store is 5 miles away is because of cars. The reason you can't have a job without a car is because of cars. The reason you don't have a right to reasonable noise is because of cars. The reason you don't have a right to not inhale tire fumes is because of cars. Cars have taken away your ability to do a lot of things. And no, you cannot "leave them" as you please, you are required to keep one otherwise you will most likely not have a job. Go ahead, try this out. Get rid of your car for one year, without moving, and come back.
      - brink 2y ago
        > The reason your grocery store is 5 miles away is because of cars. You're suggesting everyone just move to a city, or what? Because we can't just litter a grocery store every mile across the entire American continent. We know that cars are neither binding nor addictive because people regularly move to cities and sell their only car with little difficulty. The car increases my liberty, my choice to not live in a city. Have you ever actually lived outside of a city? The way you're looking at it is upside-down. The car doesn't push opportunities away as if ridding ourselves of cars would magically make everything close, no, it increases my reach. We know this because of historical evidence. Before the car, going to town was an all-day affair in the horse drawn carriage. Now it's a 30 minute trip. Freeing up my day to do whatever else I choose to do. Maybe you're suggesting that if we didn't have the car, there would be train tracks within walking distance everywhere? I love trains. Rather than trying to kill cars, why not attempt to build better rail infrastructure? Then I could join you.

Personal automobiles are suboptimal in every measurable metric aside from your subjective "but I like owning a car" opinion.

by RIMR 2y ago

Personal automobiles are suboptimal in every measurable metric aside from your subjective "but I like owning a car" opinion.

erik_seaberg 2y ago

Cars run point to point on demand, which is optimal. Any system that does not will waste huge chunks of riders' time.

scottLobster 2y ago

If you confiscated my car tomorrow, I literally couldn't get to work or buy groceries. That isn't an optimization, it's a hard reality. Once you've built timely safe replacement infrastructure that can carry me from my home to my place of employment as fast or faster than my current commute, and take me to any of the shops I frequent, and do that for all of my neighbors, and do all of the above in a way that costs less than car ownership, we can talk.

PreInternet01 2y ago
Hey, I'm the guy who is 100% against private car ownership, and I don't want to "confiscate your car" (I mean, what would I do with that?) or encourage anyone to do so (unless, of course, they're the bank and you're a delinquent, don't want to upset the apple cart too much...). I want you to be able to reliably get transport to where-ever you need to go, an what-ever time you need to go there, without the need to keep a 1000-pound pile of junk in (semi-)public spaces at all times. Where I live, that's pretty much a possibility already. I want everyone to have that same freedom!
- erik_seaberg 2y ago
  Are you proposing ridesharing? Self-driving hasn't been widely deployed yet.
  - consteval 2y ago
    ... no? Are we so car-brained that the options are "my car" or "somebody else's car"?
    - erik_seaberg 2y ago
      "Transport to where-ever you need to go, an what-ever time you need to go there" has to functionally be pretty car-like. My question is how he wants to dispatch it on demand so it doesn't need to stay parked near us.
      - consteval 2y ago
        Buses and trams do that as well, or at least extremely close to it. If the next bus is in a minute, and it's going to the block you're going to, guess what - you can go where you want, whatever time you want. This is the case in many areas. When I was in Romania, between buses, trams, and rail I could go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. There was always an option available, typically multiple overlapping options. Keep in mind this is a poor eastern European country. Keep in mind it's also fast, like very fast. Going across the city was a 10-minute affair. Try driving across a big city like Dallas.
        erik_seaberg 2y ago
        From Fremont, CA, the Sunnyvale office is a 40-minute wait for a 16-minute bus to a 12-minute wait for a 14-minute train to a 14-minute wait for a 48-minute bus (making 34 stops). Google estimates I could get there in two and a half hours. Getting home after 11 PM is more like four hours. It's only 22 miles. A replacement for a car should be able to do this in about 32 minutes. But it would have to go point-to-point on demand, they can't cover the spanning tree of n^2 possible trips with any reasonable frequency (mostly because n^2 taxpayers don't exist, nor housing for them).
        consteval 2y ago
        Right because the US is car-centric, so everything is designed to be an inefficient as possible. Things are far away not in spite of cars, but because of them. > A replacement for a car should be able to do this in about 32 minutes Right, again, I was able to go across the capital of Romania in maybe 10 minutes end-to-end. Because Bucharest isn't car centric. And I'm able to reach any arbitrary point in the city trivially. Also, as a side note, your car couldn't do that in 32 minutes. There're people in CA that commute MUCH LESS than 22 miles that spend 1.5+ hours in traffic a day. Because, again, cars are the most inefficient means of transportation imaginable, so they have awful throughput and bandwidth. This is mostly a case of US car brain. There're countless examples of places all over the world that are able to achieve this, and more, without a car. The biggest factor to remember is that distance doesn't scale like you think it does - due to the extreme inefficiency of motor vehicle infrastructure, the majority of our space is wasted on not-useful things. 22 miles in the US isn't equivalent to 22 miles somewhere else, because somewhere else those 22 miles have 10x as much stuff, so you wouldn't need to travel 22 miles in the first place.
Xymist 2y ago
It also needs to be able to do this _literally door to door_ and without having to sit next to, speak to, or touch anyone I don't know. Cars are a privacy bubble and a shield, not just a transport mechanism; no form of mass transit will ever be an acceptable substitute in the way that, for me, is the most important factor.
- consteval 2y ago
  Part of existing in a society is the fact you will interact with other people. There are places - particularly rural - where this is not the case. Such places would probably never not be automobile-centric, as it makes no sense to run lines to low populous, sparce areas. But if you live in an urban area, the "cost tradeoff" of having everything close is there's more likelihood to be around people. It's untenable to have the desire to have 10 grocery stores, 5 banks, 3 schools etc within 5 miles of you and also have no people interaction. Who runs those places? And who goes to them? The privacy cars provide is therefore mostly an illusion. Also, I wouldn't describe an automobile as a shield, considering it's by far the thing most likely to kill you. It's a sword, if anything.

brink 2y ago

Life being "optimal" does not make it worth living as if we're all cogs in a machine. Liberty makes life worth living, and liberty is very expensive.

consteval 2y ago
Cars aren't a liberty, merely an illusion of it. Cars are the reason you can't go anywhere you want to go without paying for a hunk of steel and risking your life. True liberty would be being able to walk everywhere you need to go, but this is rare.
- brink 2y ago
  > risking your life. Hence my point; liberty is expensive. Liberty includes the liberty to risk it. There's no illusion. Cars do not rule me. They're not binding, or addictive. They're a tool that physically extend my liberty to go where I please, and I can use them or leave them as I please.
  - consteval 2y ago
    > Cars do not rule me They do, that's what you're missing. They're both binding and addictive, because we have to build our entire society to revolve around them. You've lost countless liberties, as have many Americans, due to the concessions around cars. The reason your grocery store is 5 miles away is because of cars. The reason you can't have a job without a car is because of cars. The reason you don't have a right to reasonable noise is because of cars. The reason you don't have a right to not inhale tire fumes is because of cars. Cars have taken away your ability to do a lot of things. And no, you cannot "leave them" as you please, you are required to keep one otherwise you will most likely not have a job. Go ahead, try this out. Get rid of your car for one year, without moving, and come back.
    - brink 2y ago
      > The reason your grocery store is 5 miles away is because of cars. You're suggesting everyone just move to a city, or what? Because we can't just litter a grocery store every mile across the entire American continent. We know that cars are neither binding nor addictive because people regularly move to cities and sell their only car with little difficulty. The car increases my liberty, my choice to not live in a city. Have you ever actually lived outside of a city? The way you're looking at it is upside-down. The car doesn't push opportunities away as if ridding ourselves of cars would magically make everything close, no, it increases my reach. We know this because of historical evidence. Before the car, going to town was an all-day affair in the horse drawn carriage. Now it's a 30 minute trip. Freeing up my day to do whatever else I choose to do. Maybe you're suggesting that if we didn't have the car, there would be train tracks within walking distance everywhere? I love trains. Rather than trying to kill cars, why not attempt to build better rail infrastructure? Then I could join you.