5 ms·

This is a hell of a strawman. The proposition isn't to remove the ability to travel, which (as you said) is effectively the removal of geographic barriers to in

This is a hell of a strawman. The proposition isn't to remove the ability to travel, which (as you said) is effectively the removal of geographic barriers to interaction. It's to replace car travel with something that has lower costs in terms of efficiency, health, economics, city planning, fatalities, the environment, etc etc etc etc. > What, you think the amount of roads we have now is a lot? We've always had roads, they were for carts, or horses, or anything else. There is nothing special about cars here. Not all roads are made equal. There's a huge difference between "space reserved for a mode of travel" and the public spaces that roads[1] (in cities) were before cars became ubiquitous.[2] A good analogue is imagining a path in a park: it's generally used for transit (people walking and occasionally biking), but it's also fully open as a public space for the citizenry to use as they please. [1] This whole conversation is about roads in cities, so that's what I'm referring to: roads across sparsely populated countryside don't have nearly as high a cost, nor do they have as many viable alternatives. [2] http://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history http://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history

ars 12y ago
You have a VERY rosy eyed view of what cities were like before the car. What they were actually like is rivers of mud mixed with horse manure. There were just as many roads before as now, except they were very dirty. > and the public spaces that roads (in cities) were before cars became ubiquitous Absolute nonsense. Go read some history, or even fictionalized accounts. Roads were never public spaces like you imagine. They were roads, and carts and horses routinely road right over people who didn't get out of the way. They were crowded and dirty, and those open spaces you imagine did not exist inside cities. (There plenty of open spaces outside cities, of course.) Your dream world existed to some degree inside farm villages, but never in cities.
- classicsnoot 12y ago
  >fictionalized accounts The amount of plays, novels, stories, poems, and songs that take place in and on and nearby, as well as revolving around and referencing to, ares of transit is pretty large. When looked at in the context of human existence on the planet, roads are the pathways human cells use to move and multiply and spread and settle. So much culture and development occurs on the paths of humanity. This is not limited to any single road concept; bridges, train tracks, shipping lanes, and airports all spawn society blocks around them. The Pathways have always been public spaces. Are you opposed to those public spaces being safer and more productive? If so, would you say it is because vehicles [methods of human conveyance] have a priority over people [humans living] in the Public Square? The point of travel is the people that can do it, not the profits to be gained or the methods to be employed IMO.
  - jackmaney 12y ago
    > vehicles [methods of human conveyance] have a priority over people [humans living] in the Public Square On roads, vehicles absolutely have a priority over people. This is so obvious, I'm honestly not sure why I had to state the previous sentence.
    - ars 12y ago
      You do know there are people in those vehicles right? The way you write that, you make it sound like the vehicles are just driving around on their own. The vehicles have no priority at all, the people in them do. Does that bother you that someone wrapped in a vehicle has priority over someone not wrapped? It's like that always - small boats have to give way to large ones for example.
      - O____________O 12y ago
        It's like that always - small boats have to give way to large ones for example. Boats traveling through fluid, controlled by a relatively tiny prop, are in no way comparable to road-going vehicles that enjoy the static friction of rubber on asphalt. Additionally, all vehicles on the road are held to (virtually) the same legal standards, regardless of size. If anything, laws are more restrictive the larger the vehicle. Also, this is false: The vehicles have no priority at all, the people in them do. There are many parts of the country where it would be illegal to cross a road on foot (jaywalking), but entirely legal to do so within a vehicle.
      - classicsnoot 12y ago
        I get the feeling that you have little to no experience on the water outside of Jaws and pontoon party boats. Size only matters in context with the area one operates in. Malaca Straits? Bet your ass the big boys have priority... but that is because of traffic and pirates. Coastal Downeast Maine? If you have the elephantiasis feel free to cut off the lobstermen in their tiny boats; i will watch you get keel hauled from a safe distance. It is always context as well as proportion. Neither air nor water work as reference points for driving, as the scale in both those worlds is analogous to the variance in insect size [ant to dragonfly] or water creature [diatom to jelly fish] while the road is much more like the difference in dog breeds. On top of that, the land is our natural habitat, as opposed to the hydro- or atmosphere, and the use of that space must take into account that society is based on people and not profits or production. Yes, like mobility, the are absolutely important, but only in how they advance culture and society. A heart is a meat pump if there is no brain to feed oxygen. There are more people without vehicle access than with. De-personalizing vehicles would be a good thing. And just because i'm on a rant: how many people die from terrorist attacks per annum v. car accidents? If the government[s] actually cared about people, vehicular death would be confronted with the same rigor and rhetoric that extremist islam is. Kind of sad that rich south africans and faceless cororations are the only ones who seem to be doing anything about it.
- obi-nine 12y ago
  I can't speak for your city but this is what Vancouver looked like just before the arrival of the automobile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzjRs3ARo0g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzjRs3ARo0g As you can see the streets are fairly wide (wider than they are now) to accommodate the electric trolley cars, the horse-draw carriages and the multitude of pedestrians and cyclists.
- wutbrodo 12y ago
  > You have a VERY rosy eyed view of what cities were like before the car. What they were actually like is rivers of mud mixed with horse manure. There were just as many roads before as now, except they were very dirty. I was actually worried my point may come across like this and considered clarifying, but I figured it would be obvious with even a moment's thought that I'm not suggesting literally reverting to exactly how roads were before cars. The only point I was making with respect to the way roads were used was that they were closer to public spaces than the situation we have now. Roads today are reserved pretty much exclusively for vehicles: just try dawdling or having a conversation on a major street in any city to see what I mean. If you RTFA, Hamburg is planning to replace the massive amount of space wasted by roads with green spaces. Relying on things like underground subways or elevated monorails or (much much much smaller than roads) bike paths means we can have the best of both worlds: undo the disastrous damage that cars did to city planning and public spaces without giving up the incredible benefits of streamlined transportation that cars enabled. > Absolute nonsense. Go read some history, or even fictionalized accounts. Roads were never public spaces like you imagine. They were roads, and carts and horses routinely road right over people who didn't get out of the way. Absolute nonsense. Go read some history, or even fictionalized accounts. Roads were public spaces almost exactly as I described them, since what I said was that vehicle traffic existed alongside people strolling and standing and doing whatever the hell else. As I mentioned above, we'll even be getting rid of the vehicle-induced downsides of these previous spaces (the mess and the danger), since vehicle traffic will be completely excluded from the road-replacements being described in the article. We're lucky enough to have video from the early 1900s[1], which shows exactly what I mean about roads essentially being extensions of the way sidewalks are today (+ vehicle traffic), as opposed to the "all vehicles except for crosswalks" style we have today. By the way, I notice that the only thing you addressed in your entire response was nitpicking (an inaccurate interpretation of) my unimportant supporting comment about how roads previously were. As I said before, the only thing I was alluding to was the fact that they were space that you could actually use, spend time on, play on, etc, as opposed to the reserved-for-cars and much-more-dangerous-for-pedestrians streets we have in the modern era. I can only assume you fully agree with the _actual_ point of my comment, which is that talking about giving up the advantages that efficient transit has bought is either disingenuous or idiotic, since that's not what's being discussed. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJfTa5SjDCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJfTa5SjDCY

ars 12y ago

You have a VERY rosy eyed view of what cities were like before the car. What they were actually like is rivers of mud mixed with horse manure. There were just as many roads before as now, except they were very dirty. > and the public spaces that roads (in cities) were before cars became ubiquitous Absolute nonsense. Go read some history, or even fictionalized accounts. Roads were never public spaces like you imagine. They were roads, and carts and horses routinely road right over people who didn't get out of the way. They were crowded and dirty, and those open spaces you imagine did not exist inside cities. (There plenty of open spaces outside cities, of course.) Your dream world existed to some degree inside farm villages, but never in cities.

classicsnoot 12y ago
>fictionalized accounts The amount of plays, novels, stories, poems, and songs that take place in and on and nearby, as well as revolving around and referencing to, ares of transit is pretty large. When looked at in the context of human existence on the planet, roads are the pathways human cells use to move and multiply and spread and settle. So much culture and development occurs on the paths of humanity. This is not limited to any single road concept; bridges, train tracks, shipping lanes, and airports all spawn society blocks around them. The Pathways have always been public spaces. Are you opposed to those public spaces being safer and more productive? If so, would you say it is because vehicles [methods of human conveyance] have a priority over people [humans living] in the Public Square? The point of travel is the people that can do it, not the profits to be gained or the methods to be employed IMO.
- jackmaney 12y ago
  > vehicles [methods of human conveyance] have a priority over people [humans living] in the Public Square On roads, vehicles absolutely have a priority over people. This is so obvious, I'm honestly not sure why I had to state the previous sentence.
  - ars 12y ago
    You do know there are people in those vehicles right? The way you write that, you make it sound like the vehicles are just driving around on their own. The vehicles have no priority at all, the people in them do. Does that bother you that someone wrapped in a vehicle has priority over someone not wrapped? It's like that always - small boats have to give way to large ones for example.
    - O____________O 12y ago
      It's like that always - small boats have to give way to large ones for example. Boats traveling through fluid, controlled by a relatively tiny prop, are in no way comparable to road-going vehicles that enjoy the static friction of rubber on asphalt. Additionally, all vehicles on the road are held to (virtually) the same legal standards, regardless of size. If anything, laws are more restrictive the larger the vehicle. Also, this is false: The vehicles have no priority at all, the people in them do. There are many parts of the country where it would be illegal to cross a road on foot (jaywalking), but entirely legal to do so within a vehicle.
    - classicsnoot 12y ago
      I get the feeling that you have little to no experience on the water outside of Jaws and pontoon party boats. Size only matters in context with the area one operates in. Malaca Straits? Bet your ass the big boys have priority... but that is because of traffic and pirates. Coastal Downeast Maine? If you have the elephantiasis feel free to cut off the lobstermen in their tiny boats; i will watch you get keel hauled from a safe distance. It is always context as well as proportion. Neither air nor water work as reference points for driving, as the scale in both those worlds is analogous to the variance in insect size [ant to dragonfly] or water creature [diatom to jelly fish] while the road is much more like the difference in dog breeds. On top of that, the land is our natural habitat, as opposed to the hydro- or atmosphere, and the use of that space must take into account that society is based on people and not profits or production. Yes, like mobility, the are absolutely important, but only in how they advance culture and society. A heart is a meat pump if there is no brain to feed oxygen. There are more people without vehicle access than with. De-personalizing vehicles would be a good thing. And just because i'm on a rant: how many people die from terrorist attacks per annum v. car accidents? If the government[s] actually cared about people, vehicular death would be confronted with the same rigor and rhetoric that extremist islam is. Kind of sad that rich south africans and faceless cororations are the only ones who seem to be doing anything about it.
obi-nine 12y ago
I can't speak for your city but this is what Vancouver looked like just before the arrival of the automobile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzjRs3ARo0g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzjRs3ARo0g As you can see the streets are fairly wide (wider than they are now) to accommodate the electric trolley cars, the horse-draw carriages and the multitude of pedestrians and cyclists.
wutbrodo 12y ago
> You have a VERY rosy eyed view of what cities were like before the car. What they were actually like is rivers of mud mixed with horse manure. There were just as many roads before as now, except they were very dirty. I was actually worried my point may come across like this and considered clarifying, but I figured it would be obvious with even a moment's thought that I'm not suggesting literally reverting to exactly how roads were before cars. The only point I was making with respect to the way roads were used was that they were closer to public spaces than the situation we have now. Roads today are reserved pretty much exclusively for vehicles: just try dawdling or having a conversation on a major street in any city to see what I mean. If you RTFA, Hamburg is planning to replace the massive amount of space wasted by roads with green spaces. Relying on things like underground subways or elevated monorails or (much much much smaller than roads) bike paths means we can have the best of both worlds: undo the disastrous damage that cars did to city planning and public spaces without giving up the incredible benefits of streamlined transportation that cars enabled. > Absolute nonsense. Go read some history, or even fictionalized accounts. Roads were never public spaces like you imagine. They were roads, and carts and horses routinely road right over people who didn't get out of the way. Absolute nonsense. Go read some history, or even fictionalized accounts. Roads were public spaces almost exactly as I described them, since what I said was that vehicle traffic existed alongside people strolling and standing and doing whatever the hell else. As I mentioned above, we'll even be getting rid of the vehicle-induced downsides of these previous spaces (the mess and the danger), since vehicle traffic will be completely excluded from the road-replacements being described in the article. We're lucky enough to have video from the early 1900s[1], which shows exactly what I mean about roads essentially being extensions of the way sidewalks are today (+ vehicle traffic), as opposed to the "all vehicles except for crosswalks" style we have today. By the way, I notice that the only thing you addressed in your entire response was nitpicking (an inaccurate interpretation of) my unimportant supporting comment about how roads previously were. As I said before, the only thing I was alluding to was the fact that they were space that you could actually use, spend time on, play on, etc, as opposed to the reserved-for-cars and much-more-dangerous-for-pedestrians streets we have in the modern era. I can only assume you fully agree with the _actual_ point of my comment, which is that talking about giving up the advantages that efficient transit has bought is either disingenuous or idiotic, since that's not what's being discussed. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJfTa5SjDCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJfTa5SjDCY