Comment by uv-depression
14 hours ago
Yeah, most places other than the US do. Good public transit is a far, far better solution than better cars. Elsewhere in the thread people are talking about ways of convincing drunk people to get their cars to drive them, and don't seem to realize the fact that people drive to go drink is terrifying! At this point it's deeply set in US "common sense" (to the point where in many places, bars have mandatory parking minimums!) and will take a lot of work to unwind. Fortunately there's progress, like in NYC and Seattle.
When you say most places, I assume you leave out most of the world in this? The number of countries with broad complete train networks is small compared to the land mass of the earth inhabited by humans. Even considering urban areas, most people don’t live in London or New York or Tokyo. They live in a city like Jakarta, Dhaka, Mexico City or Lagos. Even Bangkok which has the MRT and Skytrain only services the relatively affluent areas with service, everyone else is car bound.
Most urban US cities have some attempt at an urban train network, and most significantly more useful than Seattle. The issue is typically more of funding and willpower - major infrastructure in an established city is expensive and disruptive to the point most don’t want to deal with it. Additionally the feeder transit infrastructure tends to be weak enough that the daily practicality is low because you have to live right on the line and your destination must also be. Otherwise you’re driving in. Finally the urban planning for surface roads has been well enough structured that the trade off for time saved in public transit doesn’t make sense. You spend time walking and doing transfers in excess of double a driving time.
Is that a flaw? If you electrify the cars to minimize pollution, automate their driving to reduce risk, ensure they collaborate to improve efficiency, I’m not sure I buy the argument any more.
> Even considering urban areas, most people don’t live in London or New York or Tokyo. They live in a city like Jakarta, Dhaka, Mexico City or Lagos. Even Bangkok which has the MRT and Skytrain only services the relatively affluent areas with service, everyone else is car bound.
By raw population numbers, most people worldwide does live in large cities with a lot of coverage by some type of public transport, not necessarily trains or subways. Buses exist.
Only about 1 in 8 people globally lives in a large (> 10 million people) city.
Most people who live in cities are in cities with < 250,000 people.
Exactly how many live in cities at all is determined by where you drawn the cutoff at which it's no longer a city.
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And here we get into details. The problem with buses is their rubber tires. The awesome thing about buses is also their rubber tires. Need to move the bus line around? No need to run new tracks, just have the driver drive a different route. But all the negativities to buses aren't small details. Because you can just up and move the bus route, it means that the cafe owner right by the stop is at the mercy of the city planning department to exist, which leads to obvious power issues aka corruption. After everything else is greenified, rubber tires are the biggest source of pylori pollution from buses.
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It is perfectly possible to live in these places without cars as the primary means of transportation.
Cars are one of the most wasted expense all over the world. People buy cars suited for what they want 1% of the time. With electric mobility options available today I think public transport makes more and more sense. Asia and Europe with the dense cities should start optimising their roads for 1 passenger electric transport.
Many cities are doing it already with bike lanes which support both push-bikes and electric bicycles.
There's no practical reason we can't have good public transit AND better cars.
It is a nice bumper sticker slogan but public transportation operates at a loss almost universally.
It is really a problem with liberal democracy. Everyone has different values, everyone thinks their subjective values are the morally correct values and being so everyone should pitch in and help pay for the subjective values because they are morally correct. To not is "immoral".
This circular logic is half the posts on this forum if not talking about software.
> "public transportation operates at a loss almost universally."
So do highways! Nobody makes a profit from a $50,000 crossing or a $250,000 4-way traffic light intersection, or a $1M road resurfacing, or a $100M bypass, or a $1Bn highway on-ramp and rebuilding. (Except when officials grift the public money to their mates' construction companies).
It really is a problem with capitalist comments that the only things which are acceptable are things which make a profit - except for their personal cars which should be taxpayer subsidised.
Well, besides the big three auto makers buying up all the public transit and decomissioning it.
No no the invisible hand of the market will fix it, you see. Car manufactures will become so big and pay so many taxes that we could pave every road with rail.
>Elsewhere in the thread people are talking about ways of convincing drunk people to get their cars to drive them, and don't seem to realize the fact that people drive to go drink is terrifying! At this point it's deeply set in US "common sense" (to the point where in many places, bars have mandatory parking minimums!) and will take a lot of work to unwind.
A former member of the Pinellas County[0] Sheriff's Department related a relevant story to me many years ago. It was the practice of sheriff's deputies to park near bars around closing time and wait for drunk folks to leave the bar, get into their cars and drive away. And these folks were almost always intoxicated.
One night, they waited outside the bar and a patron exited, stumbled a bit, dropped their car keys a few times, then got in their car and drove away.
Cue the lights and sirens and the deputy pulled the driver over and prepared to arrest them for Driving While Intoxicated (DWI). However, a field sobriety test[1] and a breathalyzer[2] showed the driver to be stone cold sober. When the deputy returned to the bar, all the other patrons had made their exits.
So, rather than having a designated driver, they had a designated decoy!!!
Good luck fixing that sort of attitude.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinellas_County,_Florida
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_sobriety_testing
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathalyzer