7 ms·

What exactly is the alternative to cars?

by pix64 13y ago

eddieroger 13y ago
Oh, easy - bikes and/or public transportation, of course. /s The idea of abandoning a car is silly at this point because it's just not going to happen. Maybe if urban sprawl wasn't a thing we could figure something out. On my team, I live the closest to work at 6 miles, with many of my coworkers commuting 40+ minutes. There's no complete replacement for that. Even when I was a public transportation commuter at a previous job in a different city, I had to drive a few miles on a highway to get to the bus depot. The anti-car sentiment seem to me to be localized in tighter packed cities with better public transit, which is a minority of the cities in America (sorry for being so US-centric, I haven't lived or worked outside of the States).
- saraid216 13y ago
  Dealing with urban sprawl is effectively the first step. There are ongoing movements to reinvent suburbs into communities, which could theoretically attract localized businesses to reduce the amount that people need to commute. It's important to recognize that the long commutes came about because of cars. Because it was possible to take the open road to get to work, sprawl was a reasonable option. And then everyone joined in on the fun and the open road vanished. It's a bait-and-switch. This doesn't mean that getting rid of cars will automatically fix things, but deliberately removing our dependence on them will absolutely help because part of that action is fixing things.
  - eddieroger 13y ago
    Long commutes are enabled by cars, but I don't think they're the direct cause - sprawl was a thing before cars as we know them came about. It's a natural phenomenon to move away from the civic center, we are just able to move father away because of cars. Before that, it was horses and carriages. Cars let us move further our, sure. Specifically in my case, the company I work for is located in my city (despite recent sale to an SF-based one). They chose a prestigious address over being near where the already sparse urban living was, and even that is geared at singles and young couples. I couldn't live near work if I wanted to. Personally I don't think cars are a bad thing and I don't want to trade mine for a bike or the bus. I like the freedom a car gives me. I don't have to plan my route to work on anything or anyone. I can leave when I want. I can go to lunch farther away from my office. Yes, it's contributing to climate change, and we need to solve that problem, but I don't think the solution is removing dependance on cars.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      > sprawl was a thing before cars as we know them came about. It's a natural phenomenon to move away from the civic center It is to a degree: it is a sign of status to be able to afford actual land from which you can bar others, and therefore actually using it isn't terribly surprising. This has been true since before castles were invented. The main difference is that, in those times, it was understood that the occupants were aristocratic elite. > we are just able to move father away because of cars. Before that, it was horses and carriages. Cars let us move further our, sure. Right. The issue isn't the combustible engine; it's the attitude that comes with being a car driver, which isn't that much different from being a horse rider. This is coupled with an illusion that you don't lose the connection to the urban center as a consequence (indeed, in many places, you find that another urban center inexorably becomes necessary). > Yes, it's contributing to climate change, and we need to solve that problem, but I don't think the solution is removing dependance on cars. The problem that I want to solve is a fundamentally broken social structure incapable of doing things like opposing the NSA in a meaningful sense and the IDL is an exception rather than a rule. Cars contribute to this problem by weakening the social basis by which we commit civic action and by disenfranchising the core of our human populations (the percentage of human beings in urban centers broke 50% a long time ago) in order to service the more far-flung. This is the essence of the city. Everything is connected. Our democracy is broken and this is part of the reason. People complain about how no one cares about the real issues. Why not? In part because they're exhausted from their commute. Certainly there are other reasons, but this is one and it's big.
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  Sprawl is just a subsidy for cars. Remove the sprawl subsidies and find out just how quickly your 40-mile commuters move to a home closer to the office (or find another job that isn't out in BFE.)
  - ars 13y ago
    So you have to find two places of work, shopping, school (potentially several different schools), worship, and recreation all within say 2 miles of your home? Good luck with that.
    - thrownaway2424 13y ago
      Huh? EDIT: Ah I guess you are saying two places of work, one for each adult in a household? Well have you heard of these things called buses and trains? They're awesome. You don't need everything to be in walking distance, as long as both ends are walking distance from transport. Also the nice thing about not being a superstitious throwback is I don't have to find any place to worship, walking distance or otherwise.
      - eddieroger 13y ago
        Just because you don't live ars' life doesn't mean the world should be your way and not his/hers. The term "superstitious throwback" is a really assholic way of dismissing an argument because you don't agree with it.
      - sliverstorm 13y ago
        You don't need everything to be in walking distance, as long as both ends are walking distance from transport. ... and that would be the problem, in much of the USA.
      - atgm 13y ago
        > Well have you heard of these things called buses and trains? They're awesome. They ARE awesome, but often come at the expense of time. I live in Tokyo, which has an amazing public transportation network. Including walking to/from stations and bus stops, taking the bus/train costs me around 80 minutes of my day each way -- that's over 2 1/2 hours of my day. If I take a taxi directly from my apartment to work, it takes about 15-20 minutes to get directly to work. Let's call it 40 minutes of my day. I can get back two hours of my life every single day with point-to-point transport. That's two hours I could be catching up with friends, reading a book, cooking, exercising, etc. It matters so often to me that I end up paying the 4000 yen or so it costs to take a taxi twice a day a horrifying number of times. This is to say nothing of the fact that I can sit in the taxi and read a book or something rather than being crammed and crushed in public transport.
gamache 13y ago
Walkable/bikeable urban and suburban planning. Living closer to work. Delivery services. Scooters, motorcycles, cargo bikes, light rail, buses, cars for hire.
- pyre 13y ago
  > Living closer to work You better fix the housing situation first in some areas (cough Bay Area cough).
  - rtpg 13y ago
    Isn't a big problem in the Bay Area is that a lot of people living in SF don't work there? In that case, if everyone in google lived next to the googleplex that would free up their appartments for the guy working at the deli downtown.
    - thrownaway2424 13y ago
      The daytime population of San Francisco is much higher than the actual number of residents, so no, this isn't the problem. If the daytime population was lower then you'd be on to something. Google has repeatedly tried to stimulate residential construction in Mountain View but the city of Mountain View just doesn't want it. We're all waiting for windshield perspective baby boomers to just hurry up and die so we can have proper urban forms on the peninsula. And I'm not talking about high rise, I'm talking about 3-5 stories over street level retail. Mountain View currently has lots of single-story and surface parking lots, even in their "downtown" which I reckon to be at Castro and Villa.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    The Bay Area is basically the epitome is car-based planning gone horribly, horribly wrong. I am told you have similar circumstances in Atlanta and Houston, but I haven't seen them first hand.
    - thrownaway2424 13y ago
mcrider 13y ago
Besides the obvious alternatives in cities, having more efficient cars (i.e., self-driving cars that can algorithmically ease congestion and find efficient ways to carpool) would be a big step forward. Take a drive on any American highway and you'll see the amount of cars with a single occupant is overwhelming -- what a waste!
- jessaustin 13y ago
  Do you think more people would share rides if cars could drive themselves? If this wouldn't be the case, I can see how the technology would help parking congestion but not how it would help traffic congestion.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    Having smaller cars would actually be a good thing in that it would reduce the space wastage without changing the number of occupants. Don't know if you'd count that as technology in the sense of self-driving cars, though. Self-driving cars can help traffic congestion in the sense that, if you can tell your car you don't care how long it takes to get somewhere, it might route you through a longer path and consequently help rebalance the load. Maybe.
    - eigenvector 13y ago
      This seems intuitively true but isn't. The majority (90%) of the space taken by a car at highway speeds is actually due to the buffer zone around it due to speed and not the size of the vehicle itself. Smaller cars don't increase highway throughput appreciably.
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      The auto driving car will be connected to a network and have a nice GPS, all you have to do is charge a fee for the shorter route. (I don't think people will be very excited about dynamic road tolls, but I think it would be at least somewhat effective in shaping behavior)
  - mcrider 13y ago
saraid216 13y ago
I mentioned these books below, but they serve as a reasonably comprehensive answer to this question: * http://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp/0865477728/ http://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp... (Warning: Speck's tone is pretty bad.) * http://www.amazon.com/Happy-City-Transforming-Through-Design/dp/0374168237/ http://www.amazon.com/Happy-City-Transforming-Through-Design...

What exactly is the alternative to cars?

by pix64 13y ago

What exactly is the alternative to cars?

Oh, easy - bikes and/or public transportation, of course. /s The idea of abandoning a car is silly at this point because it's just not going to happen. Maybe if urban sprawl wasn't a thing we could figure something out. On my team, I live the closest to work at 6 miles, with many of my coworkers commuting 40+ minutes. There's no complete replacement for that. Even when I was a public transportation commuter at a previous job in a different city, I had to drive a few miles on a highway to get to the bus depot. The anti-car sentiment seem to me to be localized in tighter packed cities with better public transit, which is a minority of the cities in America (sorry for being so US-centric, I haven't lived or worked outside of the States).

saraid216 13y ago
Dealing with urban sprawl is effectively the first step. There are ongoing movements to reinvent suburbs into communities, which could theoretically attract localized businesses to reduce the amount that people need to commute. It's important to recognize that the long commutes came about because of cars. Because it was possible to take the open road to get to work, sprawl was a reasonable option. And then everyone joined in on the fun and the open road vanished. It's a bait-and-switch. This doesn't mean that getting rid of cars will automatically fix things, but deliberately removing our dependence on them will absolutely help because part of that action is fixing things.
- eddieroger 13y ago
  Long commutes are enabled by cars, but I don't think they're the direct cause - sprawl was a thing before cars as we know them came about. It's a natural phenomenon to move away from the civic center, we are just able to move father away because of cars. Before that, it was horses and carriages. Cars let us move further our, sure. Specifically in my case, the company I work for is located in my city (despite recent sale to an SF-based one). They chose a prestigious address over being near where the already sparse urban living was, and even that is geared at singles and young couples. I couldn't live near work if I wanted to. Personally I don't think cars are a bad thing and I don't want to trade mine for a bike or the bus. I like the freedom a car gives me. I don't have to plan my route to work on anything or anyone. I can leave when I want. I can go to lunch farther away from my office. Yes, it's contributing to climate change, and we need to solve that problem, but I don't think the solution is removing dependance on cars.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    > sprawl was a thing before cars as we know them came about. It's a natural phenomenon to move away from the civic center It is to a degree: it is a sign of status to be able to afford actual land from which you can bar others, and therefore actually using it isn't terribly surprising. This has been true since before castles were invented. The main difference is that, in those times, it was understood that the occupants were aristocratic elite. > we are just able to move father away because of cars. Before that, it was horses and carriages. Cars let us move further our, sure. Right. The issue isn't the combustible engine; it's the attitude that comes with being a car driver, which isn't that much different from being a horse rider. This is coupled with an illusion that you don't lose the connection to the urban center as a consequence (indeed, in many places, you find that another urban center inexorably becomes necessary). > Yes, it's contributing to climate change, and we need to solve that problem, but I don't think the solution is removing dependance on cars. The problem that I want to solve is a fundamentally broken social structure incapable of doing things like opposing the NSA in a meaningful sense and the IDL is an exception rather than a rule. Cars contribute to this problem by weakening the social basis by which we commit civic action and by disenfranchising the core of our human populations (the percentage of human beings in urban centers broke 50% a long time ago) in order to service the more far-flung. This is the essence of the city. Everything is connected. Our democracy is broken and this is part of the reason. People complain about how no one cares about the real issues. Why not? In part because they're exhausted from their commute. Certainly there are other reasons, but this is one and it's big.
thrownaway2424 13y ago
Sprawl is just a subsidy for cars. Remove the sprawl subsidies and find out just how quickly your 40-mile commuters move to a home closer to the office (or find another job that isn't out in BFE.)
- ars 13y ago
  So you have to find two places of work, shopping, school (potentially several different schools), worship, and recreation all within say 2 miles of your home? Good luck with that.
  - thrownaway2424 13y ago
    Huh? EDIT: Ah I guess you are saying two places of work, one for each adult in a household? Well have you heard of these things called buses and trains? They're awesome. You don't need everything to be in walking distance, as long as both ends are walking distance from transport. Also the nice thing about not being a superstitious throwback is I don't have to find any place to worship, walking distance or otherwise.
    - eddieroger 13y ago
      Just because you don't live ars' life doesn't mean the world should be your way and not his/hers. The term "superstitious throwback" is a really assholic way of dismissing an argument because you don't agree with it.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      You don't need everything to be in walking distance, as long as both ends are walking distance from transport. ... and that would be the problem, in much of the USA.
    - atgm 13y ago
      > Well have you heard of these things called buses and trains? They're awesome. They ARE awesome, but often come at the expense of time. I live in Tokyo, which has an amazing public transportation network. Including walking to/from stations and bus stops, taking the bus/train costs me around 80 minutes of my day each way -- that's over 2 1/2 hours of my day. If I take a taxi directly from my apartment to work, it takes about 15-20 minutes to get directly to work. Let's call it 40 minutes of my day. I can get back two hours of my life every single day with point-to-point transport. That's two hours I could be catching up with friends, reading a book, cooking, exercising, etc. It matters so often to me that I end up paying the 4000 yen or so it costs to take a taxi twice a day a horrifying number of times. This is to say nothing of the fact that I can sit in the taxi and read a book or something rather than being crammed and crushed in public transport.

gamache 13y ago

Walkable/bikeable urban and suburban planning. Living closer to work. Delivery services. Scooters, motorcycles, cargo bikes, light rail, buses, cars for hire.

pyre 13y ago
> Living closer to work You better fix the housing situation first in some areas (cough Bay Area cough).
- rtpg 13y ago
  Isn't a big problem in the Bay Area is that a lot of people living in SF don't work there? In that case, if everyone in google lived next to the googleplex that would free up their appartments for the guy working at the deli downtown.
  - thrownaway2424 13y ago
    The daytime population of San Francisco is much higher than the actual number of residents, so no, this isn't the problem. If the daytime population was lower then you'd be on to something. Google has repeatedly tried to stimulate residential construction in Mountain View but the city of Mountain View just doesn't want it. We're all waiting for windshield perspective baby boomers to just hurry up and die so we can have proper urban forms on the peninsula. And I'm not talking about high rise, I'm talking about 3-5 stories over street level retail. Mountain View currently has lots of single-story and surface parking lots, even in their "downtown" which I reckon to be at Castro and Villa.
- saraid216 13y ago
  The Bay Area is basically the epitome is car-based planning gone horribly, horribly wrong. I am told you have similar circumstances in Atlanta and Houston, but I haven't seen them first hand.
  - thrownaway2424 13y ago

mcrider 13y ago

Besides the obvious alternatives in cities, having more efficient cars (i.e., self-driving cars that can algorithmically ease congestion and find efficient ways to carpool) would be a big step forward. Take a drive on any American highway and you'll see the amount of cars with a single occupant is overwhelming -- what a waste!

jessaustin 13y ago
Do you think more people would share rides if cars could drive themselves? If this wouldn't be the case, I can see how the technology would help parking congestion but not how it would help traffic congestion.
- saraid216 13y ago
  Having smaller cars would actually be a good thing in that it would reduce the space wastage without changing the number of occupants. Don't know if you'd count that as technology in the sense of self-driving cars, though. Self-driving cars can help traffic congestion in the sense that, if you can tell your car you don't care how long it takes to get somewhere, it might route you through a longer path and consequently help rebalance the load. Maybe.
  - eigenvector 13y ago
    This seems intuitively true but isn't. The majority (90%) of the space taken by a car at highway speeds is actually due to the buffer zone around it due to speed and not the size of the vehicle itself. Smaller cars don't increase highway throughput appreciably.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    The auto driving car will be connected to a network and have a nice GPS, all you have to do is charge a fee for the shorter route. (I don't think people will be very excited about dynamic road tolls, but I think it would be at least somewhat effective in shaping behavior)
- mcrider 13y ago

saraid216 13y ago

I mentioned these books below, but they serve as a reasonably comprehensive answer to this question: * http://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp/0865477728/ http://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp... (Warning: Speck's tone is pretty bad.) * http://www.amazon.com/Happy-City-Transforming-Through-Design/dp/0374168237/ http://www.amazon.com/Happy-City-Transforming-Through-Design...