5 ms·

Cars are unbelievably important unless you're either very wealthy or willing to accept squalid conditions. Is there an invention more egalitarian than the autom

• fortes 17y ago
  Huh? Cars cost thousands of dollars and require upkeep, etc, etc. People use cars to flaunt their social status all the time. They're also an incredibly dehumanizing way to interact with people (see road rage, etc). Cities which weren't built for the automobile are very different that those built in the last 50 years (sadly, in the US you can't really see this, but in much of Europe and Asia you can -- even South America has some pockets here and there).
  • erlanger 17y ago
    A car allows me to travel anywhere I please, not where the Transit Authority deems worthy. Cars are very cheap when you consider the tremendous benefits of such independent mobility.
    • fortes 17y ago
      A car allows you to travel anywhere with roads (which were constructed with public money). Road construction (like transit construction) was decided by the gov't.
      • erlanger 17y ago
        An effective train/bus must stop at every stop to pick people up. This is why public transit access is limited and could never remotely rival that of roads. On a road, every inch is a stop of its own, and the only people who have to stop for it are those who intend to go there.
        • menloparkbum 17y ago
          Don't buses use roads? You're getting hard to follow.
          • erlanger 17y ago
            Yes. And buses only stop at their designated stops; you can't hail a bus like a cab. And you're being dense, which is worse.
            • menloparkbum 17y ago
              And you're just pushing your tiresome agenda and boring everyone else on the site. Yes, cars are great in America because it's spread out and public transportation sucks. The point of the article was to illustrate an experiment with something new (a suburb designed for bikes and peds), which was interesting. Nothing you've said has been new or interesting.
              • erlanger 17y ago
                Is that long-hand for "you were right, I was wrong, but nobody cares"? If people were bored by this topic, it would not have generated so many replies while being voted to -2 in the root comment. Also, it's intellectually dishonest for you to claim that these discussions have offered nothing of interest, especially given your propensity to engage in them. "Nothing you've said has been new or interesting." A fixation on novelty in discourse is not a good thing. Defending a conservative belief is no less valid than championing a new, liberal one (I use these terms apolitically).
                • menloparkbum 17y ago
                  Yes. You win.
    • stcredzero 17y ago
      There are network effects at play. With good transit, the "worthy" places gravitate towards the transit nodes, for the same reason cities tended to form in river valleys. Cars really only allow you to travel where the Department of Transportation deems worthy. Also, the road network gets congested and is literally unusable in many large metropolitan areas for many purposes for about a two-hour span, twice a day. (Houston!) Rail has a much better record in my experience. (Commuting to work on the 7 train from Queens to Manhattan in the early 90's) Not only that, but the Department of Transportation gets its money from taxes, yet I have only indirect input to where the roads go. If you are touting "free-market" philosophy, you're only going halfway. That said, I love toll roads! I think the Westpark and Hardy tollways in Houston are awesome!
• khafra 17y ago
  I believe the "human-sized city" proposition is meant to remove the requirement for wealth or squalid conditions from a car-free lifestyle. Let's not forget that the car itself still requires more wealth than most people in the world have access to. My pick for egalitarian invention would lean more toward municipal public utility systems. If restricted to transportation-based inventions only, the bicycle.
  • erlanger 17y ago
    Yes, you could go wherever you pleased in such a place, within the city. A car allows its operator to travel great distances cheaply and quickly, seeking only the road's permission.
    • khafra 17y ago
      I can't see how needing to hop on a bus, train, airplane, or rented car to leave one's city requires extreme wealth or constitutes squalid conditions. Anectdotally, I lived in Korea for a year without a car, and had no problem getting around, both within and between cities as large as Seoul or as small as Kanseung.
      • erlanger 17y ago
        Korea is a relatively small country.
        • stcredzero 17y ago
          The Korean peninsula is about the size of California. (Which is about the size of France and Alabama together.)
          • erlanger 17y ago
            Yes. It's a small country. France is a small country too.
• stonemetal 17y ago
  Bread
  • jibiki 17y ago
    That's the opposite of egalitarian, isn't it?
• stcredzero 17y ago
  In one way, they are egalitarian, since their ownership is widespread. However, the cost of a car is a much larger proportion of the budget of those with lower incomes. Given a choice, many wouldn't own a car if there was some other, equally convenient way to get around. (My sister is one example. When I'm in Minneapolis, I'm another.) Many city dwellers and those who live in regions with well developed rail and light-rail systems do not have to accept "squalid conditions." You're mistaking cultural expectations for economic realities.
  • erlanger 17y ago
    But that's the point: There cannot, logically, be a more efficient way to reach certain destinations than with a car. Because transit systems serve the needs of many, nodes must be set up for each destination, which is terribly limiting. Within a city, of course transit is usually the best option. I'm not arguing against that. However, it's important that we not exclude cars from cities, because of their importance for the vast majority of the population.
    • joeyo 17y ago
      > There cannot, logically, be a more efficient > way to reach certain destinations than with a car. Efficient in what way? Least energy use per person? Surely not. Least time to destination per person perhaps? If you define it as "Persons per hour that one meter-width-equivalent right-of-way can carry"[1], you discover that rail is among the best with 4000 persons/hr/m. Cars are not even in the same ballpark at 170 persons/hr/m. Even bikes do better than cars at 1500 persons/hr/m. 1. http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4057 http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4057
      • erlanger 17y ago
        "Efficient in what way?" Time!
        • stcredzero 17y ago
          Again, you are mistaking the way people have set-up the system locally for some universal principle. The combination of light rail and downtown bus zone are the most time-efficient way for me to get where I need to go when I am in Minneapolis, by far. The time-efficiency of car travel is directly related to the city's layout. Cities designed for pedestrians and bikes tend to be more convenient for those modes of transport. I am also reminded of the time I lived in the Clifton neighborhood of Cincinnati. Those few blocks were like living in a European city. Once I parked my car after work, I did all of my errands on foot. And let me tell you, it was far more time efficient than the same errands done here in the car-friendly (to a fault) city of Houston. There was no getting in and out of the car, no circling for parking spaces, no waiting at lights, no waiting on people who aren't really qualified to drive their behemoth SUV. That, and there was the significant chance I'd run into a friend walking down the sidewalk, and maybe we'd go up to her apartment for a drink, spot more friends from the balcony, and we'd have ourselves a little spontaneous party. Serendipitous human contact. I really miss it!
• joeyo 17y ago
  I don't understand the connection you posit between wealth and not using automobiles. I would expect that there is if anything a positive correlation between wealth and automobile use (though perhaps not between wealth and driving). At the very high end you may be right that helicopter, yacht and private jet transport could somewhat offset automobile use. But I would expect that that chauffeured cars still play a huge role in the transportation for the very wealthy. I wouldn't expect many of them to be using buses, trains and subways, for instance.
  • erlanger 17y ago
    As you leave the city, transit options become increasingly sparse. The US lower-middle class cannot afford to live in the close suburbs, or even in the suburbs. I see it where I live: People commuting from Luray or Richmond to DC (about 2.5hr each way), or even farther, because their hometowns have no jobs. Without cars, this would not be possible, unless they were to uproot their families and move into a very poor part of the city, hence my reference to "squalid conditions."
    • menloparkbum 17y ago
      This has changed a great deal recently with low budget airlines. It's been consistently cheaper for me to fly from SFO to LAX or SEA than it would be to drive. Even Boston to NYC it's often cheaper to fly.
    • joeyo 17y ago
      Ok well the article is about eliminating cars within cities, so why the non-sequitur? edit: Regarding your point about commuting from extremely outlying "suburbs"--Richmond is over 100 mi from DC!--I agree that such insanity is only "sustainable" with the automobile[1]. This is why as our cities start to invert (again!) with the more desirable areas tending towards the center and the outlying suburbs becoming less and less desirable, it is important that we develop good regional rail links. 1. I note, however, that Fredericksburg, which is a "mere" 50 miles from DC has VRE service. It may even be possible to commute from Richmond to DC via Amtrak, but I'm not sure of their schedules or if a reasonable person would want to attempt that.
• bmj 17y ago
  I suggest you read a bit of Ivan Illich on cars and transportation in general (http://ranprieur.com/readings/illichcars.html http://ranprieur.com/readings/illichcars.html). The money quote, as it were: Bicycles are not only thermodynamically efficient, they are also cheap. With his much lower salary, the Chinese acquires his durable bicycle in a fraction of the working hours an American devotes to the purchase of his obsolescent car. The cost of public utilities needed to facilitate bicycle traffic versus the price of an infrastructure tailored to high speeds is proportionately even less than the price differential of the vehicles used in the two systems. In the bicycle system, engineered roads are necessary only at certain points of dense traffic, and people who live far from the surfaced path are not thereby automatically isolated as they would be if they depended on cars or trains. The bicycle has extended man's radius without shunting him onto roads he cannot walk. Where he cannot ride his bike, he can usually push it.