this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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First thats fucking expensive. Second i like my car. Third the best thing u can do for the enviroment with a car is buy a second hand one drive it forever. Forth fuck anyone who talks about carbon footprint it was a term invented by bp to pass the blame to the consumer for the enviroment.
And if anyone suggests public transport, yeah thats a great idea i love the concept unfortunatly we dont live in europe and to hell with waiting 40 fucking minutes for a bus when i can drive in 10.
That concludes my rant wasnt directed at u just the state of the system as it stands.
I actually agree completely. It's a serious problem.
But it's also why we need to be investing more in public transport. We need to take away street parking to make room for bus lanes (or even better—build light rail!) to enable them to run quickly and efficiently. We need public transport that runs on 15 minute headways during non-peak times, up to more like 5 minutes or less during peak. And at least half-hourly even overnight.
We also need to up the density of our housing, and allow for greater mixes of local businesses (mixed-use zoning), so that more trips are shorter and can be easily walked or cycled.
The point is, you're right that in many cases, our current public transportation options are really bad. But the solution is not to just keep making driving easy. That's just throwing good money after bad.
Ur 100% correct. Im just complaining that the options for cars are being removes and public transport is stagnet or in some cases activly getting worse.
If your two middle paragraphs are listed in order of priority, they're backwards. Transit doesn't work without having density first, so fixing the zoning code should be a higher legislative priority than funding transit.
They are not. They were merely in the order it came to mind, based on context. Since the thread is primarily about road design, it's natural that the existence of public transport should come first. That's also why I started with "bus lanes" first, and not light rail. Bus lanes most directly compete with parking lanes, while light rail tends to compete indirectly (bus lanes literally being located in what would otherwise be parking space, while light rail tends to run down the centre but possibly requiring removal of parking to enable car lanes to continue to exist).
That said, I reject the notion that it needs to be done in a particular order. That's a surefire way to ensure nothing ever gets done, because you might say you need density for improved public transportation, but someone else will say they won't get rid of their car until there is first good alternatives.
But also, while higher density is certainly necessary for cyclability, I don't even believe it really is that necessary for public transportation to be viable. Remote US towns were built on the backbone of train networks. Rural towns in Europe have better public transport than much larger cities in America. Yes, increased density makes public transportation even more efficient, but efficiency is not a necessity for it to be viable. Only the political will to have it be good is necessary.
So I support, very strongly, any effort to improve public transport or increase density, regardless of whether it is done before, after, or alongside the other.
You know what? You're entirely correct.
Your car is a pollution machine that gives children asthma.
I love it when people like you get angry at my cities anti car policies. It's nice to know the assholes are seething
By being anti car it indicates the critical failure of design. You dont want to force people away from cars u want to make public transport a better more appealing alternative.
It depends what you mean by "force." It isn't necessary to legislatively outlaw cars or anything like that, but you really do have to at least stop catering to cars if you ever want public transit to be good. More concretely, you have to change the zoning code to stop limiting density and forcing developers to build parking. That accomplishes two things: it allows there to be enough trip origins/destinations within walking distance of stations to make the transit viable, and it limits the available parking to only that which the free market is willing to provide (a lot less than zoning codes typically mandate now) which discourages driving by making it hard to find a place to park.
That's not actually "forcing" anything in reality, but a lot of car-brained people will tend to think it is because to people accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
(Another related example: NIMBYs think "abolish single-family zoning" means "prohibit building single-family houses," but it actually means "give property owners the freedom to build either single-family houses or multifamily buildings if they want." It's actually deregulation, but the people wedded to the highly-regulated status-quo will swear up and down that the proposed change is some kind of big-government communist plot.)
The fact that people are still trying to drive Dodge RAMs in undercover carparks and down city laneways suggests that failure of design is not the key issue. Fuckwits are the issue.
Designing city’s that encourage social transit over independent transport is one thing. Legislation to prevent people being selfish fuckwits and driving a “Light” Truck into your office job.
As long as its safe why should the government have any say whatsoever over what vehicle u drive?
The argument is that its unsafe to drive a light truck unless absolutely necessary (necessity doesn't make it safer obviously). The best way to discourage their use would be strict licensing requirements (treat them like medium trucks: 0.0 alcohol) and require they do not enter truck-restricted zones
How is it unsafe? Other people feel unsafe? Its not like getting hit by a small car is any leas deadly the relative intertia means the car wins eather way regardless of if its 500kg or 3000kg.
Yank tanks are more dangerous for a few reasons.
The shape of their frontal area means that when you hit an adult, instead of being launched over the top of the car thanks to being hit in the legs, they get hit in the chest and go under instead. Far more deadly.
They also have abysmal sight lines. You can fit a dozen children sitting on the ground in front of them in a line before you can see any of them.
So not only is a yank tank more likely to kill you if you get hit by it, it's also way more likely to hit you in the first place, because it's harder for the driver to see you.
You failed physics in school, didn’t you?
Also modern passenger cars have crumple zones and pedestrian protection systems. Light commercial vehicles are legally exempt from these requirements because they are designed to be commercial vehicles. They are not designed to be driven by someone who doesn’t understand that 3000kg is more than 500kg and that changing the velocity of something that weighs more requires more “work”.
This example is also why Sports car brakes and SUV brakes are much more expensive than compact and subcompact car brakes. Popular LCV brakes are cheap because of volumes and fleet discounts.
Dodge RAMs, Ford F150s and Silverado’s all require LCV brakes, but because very few people in Australia are stupid enough to buy them as a daily run-around, there is not the market demand to create lower prices.
This is OK for people legitimately using it as a work vehicle, because they can claim depreciation.
When ignorant private individuals who can’t afford to buy these vehicles, and can’t afford to maintain these vehicles are out driving on our urban and suburban streets, other people in normal sized cars, motorbikes, pushbikes and pedestrians get killed.
It doesnt matter how much work it takes to stop the vehicle u standing on the road will not be enough in comparison to a car if its 10times what u can provide or 50 ur still dead. Also the whole breaks argument relies on people not being able to afford to maintajn there car. So the solution is simply ban poor people from ownjng big cars.
If I have a car barreling towards me, my first instinct is to get out of the way.
What I don’t think I about, but is pretty important are; A) is the driver doing to respond in time to slow the vehicle? B) is the driver assistance system going to respond in time to slow the vehicle. C) is the vehicle braking system going to be effective enough to slow the vehicle. D) how much momentum (Mass x Velocity) is the vehicle going to pass onto me when it hits me. E) where will my head hit the car when it does hit me. All these factors come into effect in modern vehicles.
A and B are irrelevent as that goes for all vehicles. C Australian regulations require all passenger vehicles are tested to an identical standard. Heavy vehicles are tested to a different standard but thats only ones over 4.5 tonnes (thats more than a Humvee). D Damage to a person is based on the Force which is accelleration times mass. Momentum is a measure of a bodies resistance to change in velocity as i said earlyer a small vehicle and a large vehicle have so much relative momentum compared to a person you will make very little effective change. E thats the only good point u got.
Yeah yeah yeah, meanwhile my street is much nicer without cars in it, and the shops are full of locals buying things. How sad that you car folks need to stay in your own neighborhoods instead of giving us all brain damage.
It really depends on what you mean by "force". Certainly we don't want to just ban cars, but in order to make public and active transport appealing, some restrictions on driving are necessary.
For example, at the moment you can drive from anywhere, to anywhere, via almost any route. This makes even local streets unnecessarily dangerous because people end up driving through unrelated local streets when that ends up being faster than sticking to main roads. Which in itself is making walking and cycling more dangerous, causing more people to drive instead.
If instead we used modal filters—sections of local streets that you can't drive through but can walk or ride through—that would definitely make driving seem "worse" because rat running would no longer be possible and access to local streets would be possible only via one route instead of 4 different ones, but it would also make walking and cycling better, too. It would make them safer, and would mean for some trips they can literally take a shorter journey.
This is just one example of good design. There are a number of other ways things can be designed better that might both help public and active transport users and hinder car use. Ironically, if done well, even all this would actually make driving better, because the number one problem for drivers at the moment is other drivers. And if you design well, you can reduce the number of other drivers, so anyone who continues to drive will have a better experience.
It's not about "forcing" anything. But it is about incentivising and disincentivising things to arrive at a better overall transport network.
And why does someone else’s misery make you happier?
Depends a lot on the car.
Keeping a HSV Avalanche on the road as your primary vehicle so that you do not have to buy a newer car is probably not a fiscally or environmentally responsible choice. Nor is replacing it with a Rivian or Lightning.
Maybe a Suzuki Swift or a Nissan Leaf would be a better choice.
Alright using your examples which seem awfully chery picked the break even point of co2 in terms of years being as generouse to the suzuki as possible is about 4.16 years. Depending on age the average time someone keeps a car is 6-10 years (older people tending to keep it longer) that means about half the lifespan of ur suzuki must be spent before u break even on carbon cost. If u do the same calculation for electric vehicles u find they have a far longer break even period.
If u do the same calculations for my car it will take 27years to break even in terms of carbon cost.
What do you mean break-even point? A petrol car will emit CO2 to produce and drive, an electric one charged exclusively on renewables will only require CO2 to produce (which I assume will be phased out at some point). I am quite interested in these calculations
The production and recycping/disposal co2 costs are much heigher than u would expect. U cant get around these u cen reduce them but there are proccesses where u can not avoid pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere (these can be handled by the enviroment if we hadnt been making more than nessasary for so long). And electric cars are very rarely charged exclusivly on renewables and even if they are u need to account for the carbon cost for the lifecycle of those renewables as well. U also need to account for energy losses cos thermodynamics is a bitch etc etc.
How i did calcs: Talking specificly about the case i was arguing for before where u already have a car. U can get estimates of co2/kg for producion and recycling of a car. Using that and the cars weight get its production and disposal costs. U have already "paid" the carbon cost of manufacture for the car u already own so u only have the operation. But if u where to buy a new car u have both the production of the new one and the disposal of the old one(why reduce reuse recycle is in that order) to account for. Add the yearly cost as ur linear factor. Both can be plotted on a graph and the intersection will be the time period where u break even.
If u also put electric cars on the plot they are actually worse than ur average petrol car (currently with our non renewable grid) cos u have all the losses from energy transformations electric car goes: chemical energy to heat energy to mechanical energy to electrical energy back to chemical energy (ur battery) to electric energy to mechanical energy opposed to a petrol car which goes chemical energy to heat energy to mechanical energy.
An electric car run purly on renewables might have a lower co2 cost but lithium mining is disasterouse for the enviroment. And cobalt mining is power by slavery. Its a fucking disaster all round and at this point the option with the lowest cost to humanity is looking like sacricing millions or poor people to the greater good untill we have enough rare earth minerals to have a proper recycling lifecycle. Its like the early days of aluminium extrordinarily expensive and bad to produce but once produced very easy to recycle.
So what's the solution then? You said you like your car so I guess we can't do away with that.
The solution is public transport that is quicker and easyer than driving. Untill that day im gonna wanna keep my car tho. Trains and light rails know everythibg else put of the water in terms of efficiency.
The day public transport is cheaper and faster than driving ill do that. I suspect we aint gonna ses that for many many years
Too bad. You are not entitled to impose the costs of your car on the rest of society just because you like it. Pay the whole cost yourself instead of demanding demanding to use public space for your private car storage for free.
Oh shit!
Do car owners not have to pay any kind of tax supporting said public spaces?!?
Where do I go to file for my refund?
Not in proportion to their fair share!
How much gas tax, or registration tax do you pay to support the roads you are using?
You mean, as a cyclist? $0, and I'm still subsidizing you even at that price!
https://www.cyclingutah.com/advocacy/who-owns-the-roads-anyway/
Ok, 1 that is a very obviously biased site.
2, where are they getting their numbers? They cite a Canadian site, and I can not find those numbers on that site.
So are we in Utah or Canada here?
Just to be clear, I don’t believe the first site at all, I can make up whatever number they want.
If it is true, then thanks!
Here's an article about a study conducted in Sweden and Australia.
Those numbers appear very close, so to clear up any doubt: the car CBA was a net cost while cycling had a net benefit.
And even this is actually being very friendly to cars and unfriendly to cycling. Because even though most crashes between bikes and cars are caused by the car, the study counts this as a cost of cycling in its cost-benefit analysis. It also counts time as the biggest cost to cycling, which is fair in the abstract, but may miss two key details: (1) cycling for transport may reduce the time one needs to spend with dedicated exercise to keep healthy, so a 30 minute ride might only actually cost you 15 minutes, as an example. And (2) studies have noted that cyclists often take extra lengthy circuitous routes in order to stay safe and avoid cars—time would be lower if we had better biking infrastructure or if cars were used in a less unsafe manner.
Too bad. You are not entitled to impose the costs of your bycicle on the rest of society. And the article is complete bollocks ur taxes that go to roads isnt for the impact u have on it its for the goods and services that travel those roads that u consume. The cost u impose on the road in terms of ware is neglegable compared to trucks etc that deliver goods and services to you.
If i can afford private health care why should my taxes go to funding people who cant? That is your exact argument why should u have to pay the cost of a functioning society when ur not using the things its providing. Its literaly i dont need X why should anyone else be given X. Its an argument based in nothing but personal greed. Do u wanna end up like america its the worlds greatest 3rd world country.
Bikes are a net benefit to society, even when you ridiculously inflate the costs of cycling by including things that are really caused by cars such (as the safety risk) as costs of cycling.
It's both? Road maintenance is mostly paid for by council, which means its money comes from your rates bill (or your landlord's rates bill, and this indirectly out of your rent). The rest is paid for out of state government revenue, such as GST. Every vehicle that uses a road does damage to it. That damage increase with the fourth power of weight (specifically, axle weight), so a car does about 10,000 times the damage of a bike (2000 kg over 2 axles, compared to 100 kg for bike + rider over 1 "axle"). There's so much variety in trucks that it's difficult to pin down one number for them, but yes, they do a lot more than cars.
However, the thing is…the damage done by trucks is caused indirectly by both car users and cyclists, because both drivers and cyclists…buy things. So it's a neutral factor in this conversation. Not relevant.
If its a neutral factor then why didnt the article factor it out?
I don't really know what you mean.
Those costs are negative. You think you're clever trying to throw my argument back at me, but me riding a bike HELPS society instead of hurting it!
Being butthurt does not entitle you to blatantly make up shit and reject objective reality.
How have i rejected objective reality? I dont think its clever i think it applies equally to u as it does to me what the difference?
Its not like im the only person in the world with a godamn car. Why dont we just completly abolish roads while we are at it. I will continue to demand that i can park my car near wherever the fuck i need to go untill it is faster and more convenient for me to take public transport. I used to be able to park i nolonger can and public transport hasnt become viable for me why would i give something up with nothing in return.
Or you could park a little bit further away and walk the remainder of the distance? It's not difficult.
Neither is leaving a carpark where it is and not selling it to a land developer to make as many dolarydoos as ya can
Unfortunately car parking lots are just not good economics. Most customers don't drive, so providing an opportunity for more businesses to set up shop, or making more space for people to live (in a housing crisis!) is an extremely good thing. It's not just about making moolah for the developers, but also about providing the best outcome for all the humans who might use that space.
Likewise, on-street parking in the inner city streets, or outer suburb main roads, is a poor use of space compared to bike paths and bus lanes. (Nobody is suggesting getting rid of the ability to park on the street in local residential streets in the suburbs.)
There are a bunch of new suberbs where they have done exactly that. I also gotta lement the amount of apartments theae days rhat dont come with a carpark.