6 ms·

...or even better, just not travel as much. Most current travel is either unnecessary or inefficient. Citation: I live on a fairly busy road in London, UK. I j

...or even better, just not travel as much. Most current travel is either unnecessary or inefficient. Citation: I live on a fairly busy road in London, UK. I just watched 45 cars go past my living room window with only one person in, followed by a double decker bus with about 5 people in it. Hardly efficient!

melling 13y ago
Mass transit really isn't that effective unless you live near both ends of a system. Need to transfer, it gets worse. You can try and make people feel guilty so they use mass transit or you can actually help it make their lives better. Which way do you think will be the most effective? Bottom line: solve for time.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Spooky23 13y ago
  Or, you can shift their workplaces to areas with no parking. I work in a downtown business district. A recent office move and resident parking, constraints in parking facilities, and heavy enforcement of once-loose parking rules vaporized office worker parking. This affects 20-30k people. Result: The telecommuting program participation rate is up, and people are taking public transit options, several of which are free to them. The car problem in society is all about who bears the costs for things.
  - pif 13y ago
    Sorry, but that is not a solution. The traffic is the natural consequence of people's need to move around, not of available parking. A real solution consists in removing the need (a.k.a: letting people telecommute), not the tools (parkings).
    - Spooky23 13y ago
      I didn't say it wasn't available. I said it wasn't free. By making parking "free" to the end user, you make it easy for them to make choices around a car. Usually, public transit is cheaper than driving, but adds time. In my case, I can drive 15 minutes and pay $250/mo to park, take a bus for 25-30 minutes for $25/mo, or walk for 45-60 minutes for $0/mo. Think about NYC and it's famous mass transit system. Why does that exist, where just 200 miles away, Boston is a sprawled out driving disaster? The root answer is that Manhattan is an island, and there is no parking. You cannot just bulldoze a hill to put a 50 acre Wal-Mart parking lot there.
- pif 13y ago
  > Bottom line: solve for time. Absolutely! People don't like to spend hours in a traffic jam, but if they do it every day it's just because they don't have a faster way to get to their destination. Yes, public transportation may be cheaper, but it is slower unless you live and work next to two stops of the same train/bus line. What is more important: time or money? Given the ever increasing road traffic, people clearly prefer time.
clicks 13y ago
So I guess the most pernicious evil is the sprawling suburbia all around America that for no good reason necessitates car travel all around.
- panacea 13y ago
  We've got videoconferencing, but imagine if the R&D hours and experience we've got in building cars to ferry people around had been invested in 'remote cars'. i.e. Remote workstations that were like modern office cubicles, except they existed in your home. Even better, instead of cubicles, we could use an array of cameras and monitors to simulate shared working spaces. And instead of spending money on road/rail/air transport infrastructure, we spent it on high-speed data transfer links. So I could have an office on a beach, that when I entered it, I was actually inside a shared, real-time space with my work colleagues. Totally possible with current technology, but not with mindset or infrastructure constraints.
- DanBC 13y ago
  That's no evil. It is baffling, however, that people who spend so much time in cars are happy with cars that have such poor fuel efficiency. Yes, I understand that some people need big cars with poor fuel efficiency. (You need a 4x4 to get over the hills in winter; or for all the sports gear you're using; or because it's your business.) But people in the suburbs tootling around doing 40 mile commutes every day just need a comfortable car with good efficiency. Cheap gas and complacency really hurt the US.
- 13b9f227ecf0 13y ago
  The reasons for the culture of urban sprawl in the USA substantially boil down to white flight. Urban planning was a disaster in most US cities, the governments and services were dysfunctional, and there were too many people in the cities that middle class folks didn't want themselves or their children around. Arguably the death knell of urban family living was forced busing. Suburbia was a way to get away from people who couldn't afford two cars, and to live around only people who could afford that. You will not curb the suburban sprawl problem in the US until ways develop for communities to control who lives in them. Right now the only mechanism is price. The rich can sustain unsprawled urban enclaves because they price undesirables out of their neighborhoods.

melling 13y ago

Mass transit really isn't that effective unless you live near both ends of a system. Need to transfer, it gets worse. You can try and make people feel guilty so they use mass transit or you can actually help it make their lives better. Which way do you think will be the most effective? Bottom line: solve for time.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Spooky23 13y ago
Or, you can shift their workplaces to areas with no parking. I work in a downtown business district. A recent office move and resident parking, constraints in parking facilities, and heavy enforcement of once-loose parking rules vaporized office worker parking. This affects 20-30k people. Result: The telecommuting program participation rate is up, and people are taking public transit options, several of which are free to them. The car problem in society is all about who bears the costs for things.
- pif 13y ago
  Sorry, but that is not a solution. The traffic is the natural consequence of people's need to move around, not of available parking. A real solution consists in removing the need (a.k.a: letting people telecommute), not the tools (parkings).
  - Spooky23 13y ago
    I didn't say it wasn't available. I said it wasn't free. By making parking "free" to the end user, you make it easy for them to make choices around a car. Usually, public transit is cheaper than driving, but adds time. In my case, I can drive 15 minutes and pay $250/mo to park, take a bus for 25-30 minutes for $25/mo, or walk for 45-60 minutes for $0/mo. Think about NYC and it's famous mass transit system. Why does that exist, where just 200 miles away, Boston is a sprawled out driving disaster? The root answer is that Manhattan is an island, and there is no parking. You cannot just bulldoze a hill to put a 50 acre Wal-Mart parking lot there.
pif 13y ago
> Bottom line: solve for time. Absolutely! People don't like to spend hours in a traffic jam, but if they do it every day it's just because they don't have a faster way to get to their destination. Yes, public transportation may be cheaper, but it is slower unless you live and work next to two stops of the same train/bus line. What is more important: time or money? Given the ever increasing road traffic, people clearly prefer time.

clicks 13y ago

So I guess the most pernicious evil is the sprawling suburbia all around America that for no good reason necessitates car travel all around.

panacea 13y ago
We've got videoconferencing, but imagine if the R&D hours and experience we've got in building cars to ferry people around had been invested in 'remote cars'. i.e. Remote workstations that were like modern office cubicles, except they existed in your home. Even better, instead of cubicles, we could use an array of cameras and monitors to simulate shared working spaces. And instead of spending money on road/rail/air transport infrastructure, we spent it on high-speed data transfer links. So I could have an office on a beach, that when I entered it, I was actually inside a shared, real-time space with my work colleagues. Totally possible with current technology, but not with mindset or infrastructure constraints.
DanBC 13y ago
That's no evil. It is baffling, however, that people who spend so much time in cars are happy with cars that have such poor fuel efficiency. Yes, I understand that some people need big cars with poor fuel efficiency. (You need a 4x4 to get over the hills in winter; or for all the sports gear you're using; or because it's your business.) But people in the suburbs tootling around doing 40 mile commutes every day just need a comfortable car with good efficiency. Cheap gas and complacency really hurt the US.
13b9f227ecf0 13y ago
The reasons for the culture of urban sprawl in the USA substantially boil down to white flight. Urban planning was a disaster in most US cities, the governments and services were dysfunctional, and there were too many people in the cities that middle class folks didn't want themselves or their children around. Arguably the death knell of urban family living was forced busing. Suburbia was a way to get away from people who couldn't afford two cars, and to live around only people who could afford that. You will not curb the suburban sprawl problem in the US until ways develop for communities to control who lives in them. Right now the only mechanism is price. The rich can sustain unsprawled urban enclaves because they price undesirables out of their neighborhoods.