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Fair points, all. I suppose what I'm getting at is that as a nation, the US is morbidly dependent on the car. 160 miles for the school run and commute is utter

by madaxe 14y ago

Fair points, all. I suppose what I'm getting at is that as a nation, the US is morbidly dependent on the car. 160 miles for the school run and commute is utterly mad. I think we'll be adopting and using electric vehicles in Europe long before they take off in the US - our cities, towns and villages are built around humans rather than cars, and we have a public transport infrastructure. I think the main problem with adoption in the states is that your entire way of life is built around the capabilities and limitations of the ICE.

jdbernard 14y ago
> I think the main problem with adoption in the states is that your entire way of life is built around the capabilities and limitations of the ICE. I have found that many Europeans do not understand how much space there is in an average American city. It is not that our lives are built around the ICE, it is that we generally have to travel larger distances. 160 miles for the school run and commute is a lot, but certainly not mad by American standards. Population density of the US is roughly 34 people per square km. Compare to Germany (229), the UK (260), France (117). America is in the bottom 25% of the world's least-dense countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de.... People in the US tend to build everything farther apart, because we have so much more room. This was true before we had the ICE. We have always found some way of crossing large distances, because we have large distances to cross. Europeans see American car culture and get cause and effect backwards. I don't particularly like our car culture, but I understand it. We don't "build around cars" because we love our cars. We love our cars because they are a necessity given how much space we use. Look at teen culture. For a teenager in the US, a driver's license is freedom in a very literal sense. They can't walk to their school if their school is 7 miles away (mine when I was in high school), or to the movies, to friends in another neighborhood, etc. Public transportation infrastructure will never be as nice as European cities because the costs rise proportionally with the area you have to cover. We just don't have the population density to make it profitable or even useful for most areas of the country.
- VLM 14y ago
  160 miles for a commute is pretty much mad, even in America. Google finds numerous reports where the average American commute (not shortest, not longest..) at this time is currently 16 miles and 26 minutes each way. I strongly resemble that datapoint. I listen to audiobooks while driving and find a bit less than an hour a day of audiobooks is just about right. 160 miles is utterly mad in terms of time, also. As a balance between urban and rural driving, lets assume 45 miles per hour average, which might be optimistic on the coasts or pessimistic in civilized areas. Adding some realistic delays at each stop, that's about four hours, or about one sixth of each 24 hour day.
  - jdbernard 14y ago
    160 miles a day is pretty extreme, sure, but there are plenty of conceivable circumstances where you would do it, especially when you factor in kids going to school and errands. If you have a long enough commute, you are spending 80-90% of it on the freeway, traveling at 65-80mph. 120 miles at 75mph is only 1.6hr. For example, I have a friend who lives in West, TX and commutes to north Austin for work. That's about 100 miles one way.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  I think you're overstating things - the population density of the US may be 34 people per square km, but most of it is nearly uninhabited - Americans cluster into major metro areas just like their European counterparts. The density argument only makes sense if the mean is representative, which it isn't. Much more typically you're looking at suburban feeders into urban centers. Even (in)famously suburban place like metro LA clock in at around ~200 people per square km[1], which isn't quite like the UK, but isn't far off. The problem with American cities isn't how much space we use, it's how we use it. Meandering, twisting, turning streets present enormous transportation obstacles to anything that isn't a car, where grid-based layouts facilitate cycling and walking. There is this curious, and somewhat crazy, notion that Europeans live all stacked up on each other in some imagined urban paradise (or hell, depending on who you ask), and Americans live in some sparsely-populated wilderness. Neither impression are true. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles_Area http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles_Area

by madaxe 14y ago

jdbernard 14y ago

> I think the main problem with adoption in the states is that your entire way of life is built around the capabilities and limitations of the ICE. I have found that many Europeans do not understand how much space there is in an average American city. It is not that our lives are built around the ICE, it is that we generally have to travel larger distances. 160 miles for the school run and commute is a lot, but certainly not mad by American standards. Population density of the US is roughly 34 people per square km. Compare to Germany (229), the UK (260), France (117). America is in the bottom 25% of the world's least-dense countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de.... People in the US tend to build everything farther apart, because we have so much more room. This was true before we had the ICE. We have always found some way of crossing large distances, because we have large distances to cross. Europeans see American car culture and get cause and effect backwards. I don't particularly like our car culture, but I understand it. We don't "build around cars" because we love our cars. We love our cars because they are a necessity given how much space we use. Look at teen culture. For a teenager in the US, a driver's license is freedom in a very literal sense. They can't walk to their school if their school is 7 miles away (mine when I was in high school), or to the movies, to friends in another neighborhood, etc. Public transportation infrastructure will never be as nice as European cities because the costs rise proportionally with the area you have to cover. We just don't have the population density to make it profitable or even useful for most areas of the country.

VLM 14y ago
160 miles for a commute is pretty much mad, even in America. Google finds numerous reports where the average American commute (not shortest, not longest..) at this time is currently 16 miles and 26 minutes each way. I strongly resemble that datapoint. I listen to audiobooks while driving and find a bit less than an hour a day of audiobooks is just about right. 160 miles is utterly mad in terms of time, also. As a balance between urban and rural driving, lets assume 45 miles per hour average, which might be optimistic on the coasts or pessimistic in civilized areas. Adding some realistic delays at each stop, that's about four hours, or about one sixth of each 24 hour day.
- jdbernard 14y ago
  160 miles a day is pretty extreme, sure, but there are plenty of conceivable circumstances where you would do it, especially when you factor in kids going to school and errands. If you have a long enough commute, you are spending 80-90% of it on the freeway, traveling at 65-80mph. 120 miles at 75mph is only 1.6hr. For example, I have a friend who lives in West, TX and commutes to north Austin for work. That's about 100 miles one way.
potatolicious 14y ago
I think you're overstating things - the population density of the US may be 34 people per square km, but most of it is nearly uninhabited - Americans cluster into major metro areas just like their European counterparts. The density argument only makes sense if the mean is representative, which it isn't. Much more typically you're looking at suburban feeders into urban centers. Even (in)famously suburban place like metro LA clock in at around ~200 people per square km[1], which isn't quite like the UK, but isn't far off. The problem with American cities isn't how much space we use, it's how we use it. Meandering, twisting, turning streets present enormous transportation obstacles to anything that isn't a car, where grid-based layouts facilitate cycling and walking. There is this curious, and somewhat crazy, notion that Europeans live all stacked up on each other in some imagined urban paradise (or hell, depending on who you ask), and Americans live in some sparsely-populated wilderness. Neither impression are true. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles_Area http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles_Area