4 ms·
There is little hope for that as long as driving is heavily subsidized.
by adrianN 3mo ago
There is little hope for that as long as driving is heavily subsidized.
- xnx 3mo agoHow is driving subsidized?
- adrianN 3mo agoOne example is the requirement to have parking spaces.
- asdff 3mo agoMassive ongoing investment into roads. EV incentives that would pay for 3-4 ebikes outright. Big 3 bailout. Cash for clunkers. Impact fees from developers towards roads. As others said parking requirements. There is so much beyond that too.
- ErroneousBosh 3mo ago> Massive ongoing investment into roads Okay, let's stop spending money on roads then. How are you at riding your bike through mud? Pretty good? Got nice chunky tyres?
- adrianN 3mo agoRoad wear increases with the fourth power of axle weight iirc. Bike paths are orders of magnitude cheaper and need a lot less space.
- ErroneousBosh 3mo ago> Road wear increases with the fourth power of axle weight iirc That's not actually true, and the paper that describes the "fourth power" thing even says that right up front. If you massively oversimplify the model so that you've got all vehicles fitted with infinitely hard bicycle tyres on a perfectly smooth surface, it kind of works out, but not quite.
- adrianN 3mo agoInteresting! Nevertheless I believe it is true that bike and pedestrian paths are much cheaper to construct and maintain than roads for cars and trucks.
- ErroneousBosh 3mo agoProbably. How do you plan on getting food?
- adrianN 3mo agoMost roads are not used for delivering goods, so if we'd just reduce private car use that would already be a great improvement. If you want to go even further, rail has a lot of potential left.
- ErroneousBosh 3mo agoInteresting, can you give an example of why you think that? How does food get to the shop at the end of your street?
- throw0101a 3mo ago> How are you at riding your bike through mud? Pretty good? Got nice chunky tyres? Bicyclists were the ones to first push for paved roads: * https://www.history.com/articles/good-roads-movement-bicycling-origins https://www.history.com/articles/good-roads-movement-bicycli... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_American_Bicyclists#The_1880–1902_period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_American_Bicyclists#...
- oblio 3mo agoBy providing free or cheap parking for people that don't live there. Urban land is extremely expensive and parking generally doesn't cost what it should, other land uses would provide a lot more revenue. Parking in US cities is greatly over provisioned to make life easy for suburbanites, destroying urban fabric.