The End of Uber with Cory Doctorow
thewaroncars.org
thewaroncars.org
We've got to stop with the whole "everyone gets a quarter acre and a truck" mentality. I live out in the middle of nowhere and everyday construction begins on a new home, filling in every gap of what used to be farmland. All of us are 15 minutes away from the nearest anything. To be fair though, I'm sure they're all moving out here for the same reasons I did. Housing near work or transit is so scarce and expensive that it just doesn't make any sense. We're spending the same as we would in the city center on a house, but we're getting a mansion out in the country instead of a shack in the city.
Everyone is making these same decisions up and down the society economic status lines and across the US.
One thing major cities could do to stave off cheap, cookie cutter expansionism is to buy up large swaths of land for city or state parks, and also cultivate those parks for high quality outdoor recreation. Such a policy would increase land price pressure (what local developer can outbid the government at scale??), particularly focusing on interstate corridors, which were built for… interstate commerce… but gets used for 40 acres and a mule commutes. The city comes away with a large land investment that it can prune as needed, or keep as a preserve as desired and directed by the govt/people.
Ok, so where does an already struggling community come up with $100mm to buy 200,000 acres of land surrounding the community? Land Conservancies are tax shelters where basically rich people or businesses commit their real estate assets to the government, or invest money in the conservancy to go buy up land. The land is conserved according to the conservancy’s covenant. Hold your nose, but its the fastest way to raise $100mm to tighten up development patterns.
Check out Wolf River Conservancy for a fledgling example.
I think you underestimate the scale of what you're proposing. You mention 200,000 acres. To buy up enough land to curb suburban development, you'd be looking at buying all the land in at least a 15 mile radius, probably much more (people "happily" commute 15+ miles into every major city), so well north of 700,000 acres. Your 100MM suggestion seems laughable, at $500/acre. Maybe you can get land for that price in the middle of nowhere, but certainly not on livable land within 15 miles of a major city. A quick search indicates farmland costs north of $3000/acre across the US.
Maintaining the land would now be a major expense on the city. It would be a political nightmare (yeah, we could fund basic infrastructure, or we could bankrupt ourselves trying to buy every livable plot within an hour's driving distance). And of course then there's the problem that people would be unwilling to sell and eminent domain attempts would likely fail in court.
> 40 acres and a mule commutes
I have no idea what you mean by this but I would suggest you not. 40 acres and a mule has a very specific context and it's not suburban spawl.
I am, however, aware of the scale of what I am proposing. A lot of the land to be controlled ends up being junk land, be it hazardous flood plain or otherwise challenging to develop, but it creates large buffer zones that constrains private development effort. Farmland is relatively expensive land because it has economic output. But that fine, call it $3000/acre. Dont buy high value farmland. Do buy un-farmable floodplain or wetlands. A lot of the land gets donated or conveyed via easement. Bigger cities will have bigger budgets to work with. You dont have to buy all the land, just strategic lands that apply pressure and create value in other forms, namely that a state park is available for all to use, a ranch is available for none.
It is not laughable, it is currently being done in many cities. Probably not viable in major cities, if your frame of mind is NYC or SFO, this process will not make as much sense because its too late.
I had this exact same misconception as well until a few weeks ago. I wonder how common it is! And where it comes from. Also worth noting that UT-Austin has a "40 acres scholarship" as their ultimate tier of endowment, which is a reference to UT-Austin originally receiving 40 acres on which to found their University (from the government as a land grant).
No worries. I assumed you must have meant something like that.
> I am, however, aware of the scale of what I am proposing…
For smaller cities I could see how this might work if it’s done before they really develop. I was thinking in terms of existing large cities, where it seems intractable in part due to the existing sprawl. I can’t imagine how this would play out in Seattle (where I live) because the sprawl is already well outside the control of the city. Even if Seattle wanted to do this, all of the land is under the control of the surrounding towns (Bellevue, Kirkland, Shoreline, etc.) at this point.
That land gets its value from the city. One can imagine border taxes (tolls, employment taxes, et cetera) funding those land purchases.
Initially it will be slow. But as the city buys and razes the writing will be on the wall. If that starts pushing down prices, a prisoner's dilemma will emerge whereby neighbors compete and further drive down prices. In the end there will be holdouts. But they'll be sustaining the infrastructure that supports them, a prospect that only makes sense for the rich and eccentric.
This would only work, however, if cities dramatically ease their effective ban on new development. Though that would largely obviate the need for a green ring in the first place.
Land in the middle of bumblefuck costs more than $500/acre. But this doesn't matter anyway because that high value for land around cities exists presently. An acre of developable land 5 miles outside of Seattle proper is probably worth at least half a million dollars even if there's no infrastructure running there.
> One can imagine border taxes (tolls, employment taxes, et cetera) funding those land purchases.
One can imagine many things that are unrealistic. Cities cannot tax people outside their incorporated territory so this idea that they'll just tax people to death for living outside the city is unrealistic. They could certainly add tolls, but not at the volume that would be needed for this. And if they tried, the state legislature would doubtless swoop in and make it illegal. e.g., In Washington, road tolls can only be applied to road improvements (indeed only to improvements to the road being tolled). Any city that goes overboard trying to tax outsiders aggressively will just get shut down by the state.
> But as the city buys and razes the writing will be on the wall. If that starts pushing down prices...
This is pretty ridiculous. If the city starts reducing supply, costs will go up, not down.
The purchasing scale needed to achieve this is insane. This would absolutely require many billions to achieve. Even if a city could manage to get their citizens to agree, and the state to allow it, and structure the burden so it falls on outsiders, it would still take decades to fund and execute, and in that time land value would go up due to the squeeze, making this more and more difficult for the city.
> Though that would largely obviate the need for a green ring in the first place.
This I agree on. City density won't be improved by preventing suburbs but by allowing more density.
Shhhhh.... We're fudging numbers to raise capital to monopolize land around an urban center. You just don't get it.
Do better next time.
Instead you seem to propose that cities try to expand their no construction zone to rural areas.
Which, when coupled with building height and density limits means Boulder has housing prices like those of a city 10x its size. I live in a subdivision in a small town just on the other side of that greenbelt. Since the bus service is terrible, when I was commuting into the city it took an extra 5-10 minutes of driving through that open space to get to my office.
So while I personally love having the open space, its not a panacea that solves all the problems.
I'm hoping to be one of these people one day, but I'm also hoping to be taxed appropriately for it. Make people who cost society so much pay taxes to cover their costs.
And until then, stop taxing my condo in the city as if I'm the same as the 4 bedroom house on a 1/4 acre lot down the street.
Taxes are based on ability to pay rather than actual cost to the city (land value is just a proxy for ability to pay). Otherwise poor people literally could not live in the city.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea to impose higher taxes on residences that have outsized infrastructure costs. But I'm not sure I see it as likely. (Or necessary, given that a city willing to do this could just as easily change zoning and suddenly there would be lots of pressure for those single family homes to turn into condos.)
Of course, taxing people based off their cost while also forbidding densification would just be a sick joke.
I find your points interesting and I don't like ad hominem... but you start with "I relocated into rural town". It's hard to follow the rest.
It may be a pain point for me; my in-laws are constantly complaining about how "These used to be fields around here, now it's all houses". THEY (my in-laws) all live in houses. How are these other houses different than your house? Whenever I ask that question, I get blank stares, as if I'm failing to understand their obvious point and complaint, which I guess I am. It's kind of like being stuck in traffic and non-sarcastically, angrily wondering "Where are all these people going to on a Saturday Morning (or whatever)??!?" -- umm, probably similar reasons and places that we are :-)
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As a more meaningful discussion though, it's interesting that I see modern living ideas go in both directions:
- We should all live in high density, efficient, foot-friendly urban areas
- We should all create our own farms and lead self-sustaining off-grid lives
Basically European towns and small cities.
Higher density is fine but high density like Hong Kong or Mumbai is an anti-pattern just as suburbs are.
coming from exactly one such European town (or more accurately the rural area around it) this is a 20th century bucolic fantasy.
Well-paying jobs are increasingly non-existent as brick&mortar is being killed by tech, education opportunities are limited, as is cultural life increasingly as the economy goes down the drain. More and more people commute 2+ hours to get to the better universities or better paying work. Doctors are hard to get a hold off, and so forth. Internet access as well as infrastructure in general is in mediocre shape because costs are high for small, spread out towns. The demographic shift as young people leave makes it even worse, elderly isolation is awful.
The first time I actually moved to a big city (abroad to Tokyo of all places) it took me a week to understand that the small town is pretty much over and also ridiculously romanticized.
Instead of commuting two hours to get to better paying work, you end up commuting two hours to afford the house you want. Doctors you can't get ahold of because their office is too busy to see you, wait 7 months, etc. Universities are impossible to get into because there are too many applicants, or the cost is too high. You can work or be educated over the Internet. Instead of having no culture in the city, you can develop or embrace your local traditions or cultural aspects. If there are none, then you can be the first one to start (building cultures is hard work, like maintaining government).
You can have a bucolic fantasy just as you can have an urban dream. Both can be ridiculously romanticized.
I absolutely agree with you that Hong Kong from an infrastructure perspective has a lot going for it, but I think that skyscrapers are an anti-pattern. You can't repair them yourself, they require specialized knowledge to create and support, extremely dense environments are breeding grounds for contagious disease (this is a general statement), and from a natural standpoint they're quite sterile (the parks, while great, are illusions of nature - a toy or a simulation). I think we'll also find that skyscrapers cause anxiety and depression here in the near future as/if research is conducted. You also require massive infrastructure for cities, again more specialization. They're very much reliant on cheap fossil fuels to create and support, even if they're per-capita lower on emissions. If we run out of oil and I live in a 30,000 person city in Europe, life goes on. I still walk like I was before and farmers still bring their goods to the local market. If we run out of oil and I live in Hong Kong the entire thing crumbles to bits.
I think on aggregate, that is more expensive (financially and environmentally) than high density cities. Take all the infrastructure which needs to be built out for these small cities (roads, electric grid etc) which serve a very small number of people and now imagine if everyone lived like that and multiply that cost with building out this infrastructure for a many many small cities. Building 30 small idyllic villages instead of one hong Kong would end up having a larger environmental impact.
> Building 30 small idyllic villages instead of one hong Kong would end up having a larger environmental impact.
Depends. If they’re American-style sure. If they are (again these are your words idyllic villages) then I don’t see much impact. You just walk around the small village. Maybe a farmer comes buy and sells apples or whatever. These scale and the evidence is in the city, where you can see companies will create multiple instances of their stores because there’s an upper limit on the number of people served. Also for a right sized city 50,000+ you don’t need massive infrastructure investments which require massive specialization, massive costs, and so forth. They only exist because there are too many people.
Also for items like roads those are fine. You can walk or ride your bike in them. Maybe they’re even multi-purpose. Most wouldn’t be driving cars on them for any reason though which is a big inefficiency.
I wouldn't want to live in Hong Kong or a similar skyscraper supertall metropolis.
And single family homes everywhere with massive lawns are also broken because they make everything too car-ry.
But somewhere like London (less dense) or Paris (more dense) has a good balance somewhere. Like, here (London) we have streets and streets of "single family homes", but they're about 100sqm, they're terraced and thin. Walking by one takes like, two seconds or something.
On my street alone there are probably 200 of these things, and you can multiply that street by another hundred, and all of those are within easy walking distance of a high street and tube station. Those numbers are probably a bit off but you get the idea.
The thing is that people who get super into, well, anything, can't seem to resist going for one or the other extreme, and they seem to want to quantify everything, so it ends up being logically the case that like:
Beep boop
<the best thing to do is build loads of buildings just under the height limit at which the cost per square foot is optimal and then put everyone in them and then make the ground floor retail and then put the metro station>
boop beep.
But that's playing The Sims, not like, living in a world with real humans with wants and desires. Some people want to live in Manhattan and others want to live on 50 acres in Arkansas and that's fine.
Proponents of self-sustainment as the way forward advocate off-grid lifestyle that provides energy and large amount of food/materials internally / within family or homestead. A house and a plot of land, and some fruit/veggies/animals, with solar or geothermal, etc.
In my mind then, a 5,000 people town is as much on the other side of the spectrum from that, as a 5,000,000 people town.
In fact, in North America, small and medium towns in my experience (Minnesota, Manitoba, Ontario) are quaint and lovely, but worst possible compromise - no self-sustaining benefits of independent homestead, but with limited to no public transit, no high density dwelling, spread out infrastructure. You cannot live without a car in a small north american town - modern or old. They are beautiful lovely historic worst parts of sub-urban without the urban/core.
[edit/disclosure: In fact, I live in one now (moved there for love:) and it is fascinating how much we get none of the benefits of either farm or downtown living. City Council repeatedly rejects calls for public transit, on probably awful unspoken grounds of not wanting "undesirable elements". We do have a cute main street and the 5% of population who lives on or around it can probably walk there. Literally the rest of 95% of population MUST own several cars to live. I'm always amused when healthy 25 year old SF-downtown dwellers promote bikes as solution to everything - that's just not going to be relevant to the aging population of Canadian or USA snowbelt sub-urbia:]
Yes but this isn't possible with current population levels so it's a non-started from a practical standpoint. It also has downsides as you can't build things like hospitals or universities, particle colliders, or hardware/electronics to do self-sustainment. All and I mean all who advocate for this specific way of life only do so and are able to do so because it's subsidized by technological innovation throughout the rest of the world. To be clear I support people doing this. I think it’s really cool and good for society, but it’s important to be aware of how you’re actually able to do it.
> In my mind then, a 5,000 people town is as much on the other side of the spectrum from that, as a 5,000,000 people town.
I think this would be a great opportunity to recalibrate, because those are not even remotely the same thing in any way, shape, or form. Even ancient peoples who were undoubtedly more self-sustaining than anyone who exists today had settlements larger than 5,000 people.
> In fact, in North America, small and medium towns in my experience (Minnesota, Manitoba, Ontario) are quaint and lovely, but worst possible compromise - no self-sustaining benefits of independent homestead, but with limited to no public transit, no high density dwelling, spread out infrastructure. You cannot live without a car in a small north american town - modern or old. They are beautiful lovely historic worst parts of sub-urban without the urban/core.
I agree that this is the experience but you need to look to Europe for better examples. I'm also advocating for things like train service, majority of your experience being walking or biking (i.e. a 15-minute town), and very reduced car ownership. Having a car isn't that bad, it's having 2 or 4 cars and using them for everything under the sun. Europeans have cars, and they also have infrastructure, and farms, and self-sustaining areas. It's a great blueprint to improve upon. I'm not advocating for what is, but what could be.
In a city, bikes are useful because everything is compact and therefore relatively easy to reach. If more people go by bike, the traffic must adapt to bicycle popularity (as happened in Berlin, as is default in The Netherlands). Public transport is also good because its popular and various options for various ranges (tram, metro, train, ferry, etc). If both of these are good, the need for cars is less there, and public parking spaces are usually sparse in big cities, therefore expensive (also the required security costs money).
One thing car/bike have which public transport don't is that you are in a relatively private space instead of sharing the commons. In COVID-19 pandemic that's a plus, if you like being social to strangers (I don't, I'm a private person, but I don't condone such behaviour).
It doesn't have to be completely anti or completely pro car. Just like with FOSS and veganism and what not, there are shades of gray, people.
Where in rural America is public transportation not abysmal? I don’t believe there is anywhere in rural America where a personal vehicle can be completely replaced by public transportation.
I’m 40 and have lived in the US my entire life. I grew up in a very rural area, went to college in a small town, and now live in a tiny urban apartment. I have been anti-car my whole life and have never learned to drive.
Makes me laugh to see anyone in the suburbs say, “Boy I wish I didn’t have to drive everywhere.” You don’t have to drive everywhere! I’m living proof of that. You just have to make different choices and prioritize not-driving over having a McMansion. Yes, it’s inconvenient at times but that’s the trade off.
The gulf between what people say they value and what their actions say they value is monumental.
Many people would like to live in a city but can't afford it because even a multi-bedroom "shack" is incredibly expensive. You're basically suggesting that those folks need to suffer in order to validate their (totally legitimate) desire for better transit and more affordable housing?
If people aren’t willing to suffer today, then everyone is going to suffer immensely from climate change over the coming generations.
The fact that everybody wants change but nobody is willing to change shows me that climate change is an absolute lost cause.
But like I said, humanity is fucked. The next 200-250 years are going to be unimaginably awful for the descendants of people alive today who can’t imagine their lives being unimaginably awful.
Drive if you want. Live in a big house. Do whatever. It clearly doesn’t matter at this point.
The easiest "carbon capture" (though it is slow) is and has always been: Trees. We need more forests than ever and we keep bulldozing them instead.
Rural development is often at the expense of trees and forests for at best mostly unvariegated farm land and at worst useless (but "pretty") green yards.
(Here again the externalities of the greenhouse gases aren't felt by corporations building the houses nor the average home owner. We'd never pass Carbon Taxes in the first place, but especially no one wants to talk about Property Tax Carbon Taxes on their homes. But we need to reforest a lot of land to better deal with climate change and that's not going to happen with just market forces at work. Trees, deer, and birds don't have the money to buy land/houses.)
It seems to me those who came first, benefited the most. At the cost of everyone who follows. (if you think longer term). Eg; open land, develop it, live a grand life from the large profits. Subsequent years will have the property market determine the financial benefits from those who come and go. But then eventually, the natural loss starts to become a problem. And then everyone suffers. Everyone who is still around. This is just another kind of debt, just like "kicking the can down the road" wrt finance/national debt/money printing is.
Not only can those much further into the future not "benefit" (financially) from the ability to "cheaply" obtain undeveloped land, but they also sit with the problems due to the natural resources having been depleted (development of land does not only negatively affect tree...)
The whole concept of land ownership as it is, imho , is a problem.
I bike to work, and I walk to one of our three grocery stores and to my nearby coffee shop. My kids can walk to all three schools.
It's not feasible for us to have _no_ car, but I get behind the wheel _maybe_ once a week.
You can say "we should adopt lifestyles that use cars _less_" without saying "we should adopt lifestyles that don't use cars".
Moved cities, and now I try to walk/bike everywhere locally, only using the car on weekends when I want to go 50+ miles from home. There's issues sometimes (my city's bike and pedestrian infrastructure is... not ideal), but I do prefer this situation to feeling completely trapped in NYC.
Curious if you have any recommendations for "old suburbs" like where you live -- that's precisely the kind of environment my partner and I are looking for. I know there are some in the suburbs of Boston, but it's really tricky to try to find those places because in my experience walkability scores don't really mean anything.
Personally I prefer large, dense cities with lots of public transit and the access to international culture you get from being in a place like NYC, but a place like downtown Salem is probably really nice to live in if you're happy being in a small community.
Either way, the fully car based living most of the country relies on has always seemed ridiculous to me (I've never had a license or a car).
Agreed that fully car based living is ridiculous -- it's so sad to visit family and realize that I literally cannot go anywhere unless I hop in a car. I run for exercise pretty frequently, and find it a fun way to check out neighborhoods, and it is absolutely pathetic that most of my family members suggest driving someplace to run because their neighborhoods have no sidewalks, 60mph speed limits, and not even a shoulder to run on.
Traffic, price, and crime issues in big cities have largely turned me off from them since Covid started -- I just don't see the price:performance ratio there. But I also don't really take advantage of cultural things like museums and music venues very much, and I grew up in a rural community so cities have always felt a bit uncomfortable for me. So don't take that as an outright hatred of cities... I just feel they aren't for me. Hoping to find that "walkable/bikeable large town/small city" middle ground soon.
I agree that walk scores can be misleading, especially in this area. There are places that are listed as "walkable" because they have a lot of strip malls bunched together even though there are no actual sidewalks. On the flip side, we ended up moving to a small town with an abysmal walk score but good sidewalks, trails, and bike paths and a small but hardy contingent of neighbors who walk or bike to our local school and grocery store all year round.
I ended up just walking or biking around prospective neighborhoods during weekdays to get a sense of how many people actually get around in the neighborhood. I also ended up chatting with a couple of coordinators from the MA Safe Routes to Schools program to get a sense of which schools had the most kids walking to school. While they didn't have the numbers I was looking for they were friendly and helpful and I got a better sense of the different priorities in different towns.
Essentially nobody is willing to do either of these things so it doesn’t much matter which I say.
Not necessarily. If you don't want your nice rural area to be turned into McMansions centrally located on a Wal-Mart, it's important to support stronger cities and towns. I don't think any farmers want to deal with $500,000 4000+ sq. ft. single family homes constantly trying to shut them down because the farm they moved next to smells and sounds like a farm.
My situation is the same as you except where you veer off the deep end and "I have been anti-car my whole life". I did learn to drive, not sure if I can still do it, but I never liked driving. however, I am not 'anti car'. some people enjoy different things or have different things going on in their life, stop this anti-hate bs.
I suspect it is worth differentiating between `anti car` == `I don't want to need a car in my life` and `anti car` == `nobody should have cars`. I see both usages pretty commonly.
There is a more subtle boundary around opinion about how much city infrastructure should be manipulated to facilitate cars (or not), but this is difficult policy stuff.
Some study that came out a few years ago showed that cities lose money on the richer properties but recoup it in the denser, poorer areas. Not very reasonable.
I guarantee you this is not true. At least it's not true if you look at the totality of property taxes. If your city spends all of its money on roads it's because it's left things like police, fire, schools, and so on to county level government.
it was too big and noisy
So I moved to the country,
to stop and smell the rosies
All my city friends joined me,
and put up nice new housies
Now it's too big and noisy,
think I'll move to the country
https://www.google.com/search?q=fred+small+too+many+people+l...
When Uber started, we all thought it was a winner-takes-all market. The theory went something like this:
1. The more drivers are on a given platform, the more value users will derive from the platform in the form of cheaper rides, shorter waits, etc. This will result in more riders.
2. The more riders are on a platform, the more value drivers will derive in the form of higher utilization and more overall income.
3. Therefore, all drivers and riders will naturally gravitate to the winning platform. It's a winner takes all market. QED.
Honestly, at the time (and I'm old enough to remember that time), the theory made sense. But it was wrong.
The reason the theory was wrong is that there is actually zero cost for drivers in having multiple apps open at the same time. The switching cost is zero (actually, it's negative--we'll get to that in a second). And so point (3) doesn't happen.
The reason switching cost is negative is that it actually costs money to start driving (and to convince people to become drivers). People quit jobs, and get/fix cars, and invest in a bluetooth headset, whatever. So Uber was actually subsidizing every other platform's drivers.
So instead of an extremely defensible market you end up with a race to the bottom, with no barriers to competition.
While in retrospect the mistake and dynamics are obvious, at the time it seemed like a reasonable, risky, ambitious bet.
At some point these dynamics became obvious to Uber, which is when they started investing in self driving cars (never gonna work), uber eats, etc.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-ftc/uber-to-pay-20-m...
The reason those bears were wrong was because fb, snap, and airbnb are network-effects businesses. If ride-sharing had turned out to be a network-effect service as well, the bears would have lost.
I don't remember any arguments back then talking about why Uber was not a network effects business. And it's actually quite subtle!
For example, why did AirBnB win? On the surface homesharing seems VERY similar to ridesharing and yet it's behaved very differently as a bushiness and has not been a race to the bottom.
Those are entirely different arguments about unrelated companies. You seem to be saying that people have said negative things about things, therefore nothing important was being said about Uber.
Virtually every critic I've ever heard commenting about Uber as a business is exactly the one you have painted as having been unthinkable.
Because they were and continue to be completely willing to ignore any and all local laws until someone actually shows up and bashes them for it.
If it weren't for Covid shutting everything down and putting housing back into the local rental market, I suspect AirBnB was headed for some very large lawsuits. We'll see if that continues once things pick up again.
Wasn't Uber doing the same?
Ten years later they are a $73 billion market cap publicly traded company.
I would call that the opposite of a "fail"
There are existing industries with smart people with a wealth of experience. A tech company comes along and claims superiority by virtue of deductive reasoning. But they pay almost zero heed to the inductive reasoning of the incumbents and have to repeat their mistakes - this time with an app.
I never understood why Uber would win. All it was going to take was an uber-like app that existing companies could pay for and their primary (non-funding) advantage was gone. Otherwise they’re a normal cab company with all that entails.
My understanding is that with the exception of some very specific niche programs, all of those expenses are paid from the driver's pockets (since, as you recall, they're currently classified as independent contractors).
Uber does have a few competitive advantages that IMHO haven't fully materialized yet: they're pretty much the only company in the space with wide global presence, while simultaneously being a big player in more than one vertical. From a driver perspective, it's kind of a no brainer to be on Uber and Lyft simultaneously if they want to maximize the rate at which they get rider requests, but there's no other platform currently where they can get riders and food deliveries and grocery deliveries. Similarly, no other company can tap into motorcyclists and truckers and who knows what other type of workers Uber can reach these days.
The way I see Uber these days is similar to how I see McDonalds. McD is certainly not the only game in town when it comes to food (and it objectively isn't the best at it, by any measure), but its brand is recognizable worldwide and they're diversified in ways that you probably don't even realize (e.g. breakfast menus compete w/ Timmies in Canada and did you know Doraemon toy collectibles are popular in China?)
This would have been fine if the market were winner takes all, but it turns out that it wasn't, so in a way they ended up subsidizing their competition.
it's not negative though. you still have the cost of signing up, taking your car to get evaluated, getting trained, figuring out how/when to get paid, etc. it adds cognitive and accounting overhead, and you run into contention issues between the apps, creating negative rider feedback that you must balance against the increased income potential.
i do agree generally that there is little defensibility in ridehailing, and that's why uber (and lyft) tried to employ its supplier power to create competitive advantage/barriers. for instance, uber eats wasn't an expansion so much as a flanking move to lock in drivers on uber by increasing utilization.
You think no one noticed that when they gave Uber a $billion investment?
They're cheaper, more fuel efficient, and easier to park.
In my younger, poorer years, I had only a motorcycle (and before that a 10-speed bicycle ... if that dates me) to get to work and community college in the middle of a Kansas winter.
I rode very, very slowly. And spilled once or twice (at low speeds). The highways were of course out of the question (but I avoided the freeway regardless of the weather).
But, yeah, I might have been about the only person out there on a bike/motorcycle in the worst of the blizzard.
Most of these things help me avoid killing myself on my bike, but they also reduce my risk of getting killed by others. The idea that there is a bimodal distribution of riders is pretty apparent to me. EDIT: There are likely many "car at fault" crashes where the motorcyclist, though legally in the right, could have avoided the crash.
That said, hell yeah motorcycles are dangerous even for this safety obsessed nerd. Further, I agree they are not a solution for everyone. My bike stays parked if I think I could encounter freezing road conditions. I love riding, but my bicycle is far more practical as transportation than my motorcycle is.
To me the main concerns are:
- Commodity vs personal: taxis, trains and hire-bikes are convenient from a shared-ownership perspective, but inconvenient in that you can better customise the experience of having you own vehicle.
- luggage & shelter: a bike / motorbike limits how much luggage you can carry. Also, a car is a much nicer environment that motorcycle leathers in all-weather; It's also easier to get in/out of a car than it is to change clothes.
I wonder if some of this can be improved by mere infrastructure: better dedicated roads highways for certain types of vehicle, better (secure) parking, city storage facilities for commuters etc.
I expect something between a velomobile and a tuktuk could be engineered to protect a rider from a fall, but where would you drive it? It wouldn't be safe to share a road with trucks, and but it would be a danger to cyclists.
Edit: We have the tech to do it right now--the homebrew combo of bafang motor and phaserunner controller can turn a mountain bike into a suicide machine. It would be a sensible upgrade for a dutch-style cargo bike though. Keep it locked under 30kph and you could take little kids on a grocery run. (Where city trail infrastructure exists.)
This kind of behavior is a huge disincentive to people that actually want to follow the spirit of the law. I mean, who wants to play a game where the other participants are flagrantly unabashed cheaters? Who wants to try to raise capital honestly, when liars can thrive?
I have plenty of ideas and skills to launch viable startup businesses, but I'm not will to lie, cheat, and steal to compete. And like it or not, that's pretty much exactly what it takes to create a business like Uber.
Don't blame the player, blame the game.
I do not see a way of reforming society. I see our governments continuing to devolve into ineffective squabbling and pandering, until the final straw lands and their backs break. The pandemic came wonderfully close. If it had been a little worse, many governments would have had to institute martial law, as they would be forced to institute policies would that actively choose who gets to live and who dies. You can imagine how things would go from there.
The 10th Amendment has been effectively dead since around WW2. The big turning point was Wickard v. Filburn [0], which grossly expanded federal powers over intrastate commerce. Similar efforts have succeeded in castrating the power of the States on many other fronts.
That treasonous status quo alone should be cause for revolution; however, all of our fundamental civil liberties have been curtailed in similarly countless ways. For anyone doubting the veracity of this assertion, I recommend the now-dated-but-still-pertinent book by Naomi Wolff, "The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot". Read it and start sharpening your pitchfork.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_America:_Letter_of_...
What they don't talk about is that their "more convenient taxi" ride is heavily subsidized by VC money - that is why Uber has lost billions of dollars every year. Uber uses the subsidies to undercut traditional transportation which has the (desirable, from Uber's POV) side effect of driving traditional transportation out of the market leaving uber sized holes in cities.
Heavily subsidized rides that are more convenient than a taxi are great until the bezzle collapses and suddenly the cheap, convenient Uber rides disappear and we find out how badly traditional transportation (starting with taxis) has been damaged by the bezzle.
While the ultimate premise might be correct, this is not exactly a compelling example. Before Uber, cabs (in SF) refused to take credit cards, regularly didn’t show up when pre booked and often smelled like they had a rotting corpse in the back. They were “ok” in New York City - though frequently cabs would flout the law if the driver saw you had a suitcase, fearing a ride to JFK. But everywhere else they were completely terrible.
At least they accept credit cards now.
In September 2005 I spent 20 minutes on a Sunday afternoon trying to get a cab at 19th and Judah before giving up and taking a Muni. (For those unfamiliar with San Francisco, 19th is the main north-south route through the city, so is very very busy at all times.) This is the sort of problem that car sharing has completely solved.
edit: I also didn't have to announce to the entire world where I go. I could flag one down, get in and tell them where I was going, pay, get out, and end the relationship.
Talk about privacy concerns - Uber execs were literally tracking decisionmakers and enemies in realtime.
Yet there are competitors around where I live that pay the drivers more, bill their clients less, and still manage to make a profit.
The engineering playground full of microservices and $200k+ employees doesn't come for free.
By squeezing out costs of a VC management ownership & hypergrowth objectives, as well as automating more of the core administrative needs, that mix of tech and operating approach should be very competitive for providing modern ride services.
[2] https://www.kqed.org/news/11849055/tired-of-big-tech-co-ops-...
This meme really needs to die. Uber did burn VC cash earlier on, especially in places w/ intense competition (e.g. vs Didi in China), but that's not an accurate portrayal of the company anymore. Uber has been a public company for like 3 years now, and they actually posted a profit on adjusted ebitda basis on Q3 last year (with a promise for a larger profit for Q4).
The Uber-is-cheaper thing isn't an accurate premise these days either. There have been numerous articles of people complaining about high airport trip fares due to the mismatch between demand and supply curves due to covid lockdowns/reopenings. There were also price hikes in two key markets (SF and LA) partly due to regulation.
This suggests that on GAAP metrics, they lost $1.28 a share. Doesn't sound like they're making money.
The being public thing is especially important since it basically means these companies (Uber, Lyft, Grab, Didi, etc) can't rely on cute accounting tricks. It's kinda do or die before the runway ends.
Regardless of equity-related stuff, the Q3 report did specifically state that the rides division were in the green for the first time ever (on adjusted ebitda basis), with eats posting a near-break-even loss. The point isn't so much about where exactly the "green" line stands (whether it's adjusted ebitda basis, regular ebitda basis or GAP), but that the data points have been going up (and rather aggressively, according to some). This is supposed to suggest that operations are no longer bleeding cash mindlessly and actually working towards optimizing expenses etc.
99% of the population find Uber/FB etc. awesome for mundane, day-to-day use.
It would be all fine and well if that just meant that some investors ended up subsidizing movement of people for most of a decade, but those subsidies caused real damage. Diverting people from public transit, municipalities subsidizing rides rather than building infrastructure, entrenching worker precarity via things like Prop 22.
Definition of 15-min city: https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2021/02/08/defining-15-minu... & https://hub.beesmart.city/en/strategy/the-15-minute-city-nur...
This may come to fruition in private charter cities like Telosa, https://www.cnn.com/style/article/telosa-marc-lore-blake-ing... & https://cityoftelosa.com/
> A so-called "15-minute city design" will allow residents to access their workplaces, schools and amenities within a quarter-hour commute of their homes. Although planners are still scouting for locations, possible targets include Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Texas and the Appalachian region.
Neighborhoods of existing US cities may also be candidates, https://www.movebuddha.com/blog/15-minute-cities/
> One popular concept hailing from Paris is the 15-minute city. It’s a city in which, wherever you live, everything you need is located within a 15-minute walk or bike ride away ... which of America’s largest cities have the greatest potential for transitioning into a 15-minute city?
It's ostensibly a good idea. I actually probably could live it, I'm 15 minutes walk from essentially everything I'd need.
But whenever I read 'marketing material' it always just sounds like some way to ensure that the proletarians exist less. Use less resources, basically just corral most people off into these little life simulators.
If you deleted long-distance transport like cars tomorrow I could still _do_ most of the things I need in order to subsist, but you would have immediately essentially just turned off the reason I get up in the morning.
I don't think the 15 minute city precludes the use of cars, it just means they're not required, and are actually inconvenient for local journeys.
That is to say that the feeling of being in a different place is psychologically important.
I think that most people have this desire and many of them don't realise it until they fall into a habit of not really leaving their local area (e.g. staying indoors for weeks on end doing WFH). They start to feel sad or frustrated and can't really identify why.
Exploration and novelty is important for the human spirit.
By contrast, cities that are car dependent and spread out have been invariably the most alienating environments possible in terms of novelty. You have to drive, and quite quickly, because there's nothing else but concrete and parking lots and gigantic stores on any human scale.
And then they go home and vote for widening their local stroad, as if that would in any way contribute to solving the suburban hellscape problem.
I live in my little shoebox in inner/central London and then go and rent a big beefy beefcar and drive around the US, then go home and get on the tube. :D
The fact that my commute is a business park 30 minutes away doesn’t make my life full of exploration and novelty, it just wastes time and money.
Characterizing life in suburban America as it is currently built as embracing and enabling exploration and novelty seems pretty far off. It is much more common for people, especially young people who most desire exploration and novelty, to find our omnipresent suburbs to be stifling.
You can live in basically any city (actual city, not the suburbs) and have most things close by, it's an available option.
What I'm arguing against is the idea that we should make everywhere like this, or that within those zones we should seek to make travel awkward for the sake of maintaining the 15-minute ideal.
For example, if you have to ban cars in my street to bring it from a 'everything within 20-minutes' to 'everything within 15-minutes', then logically in my view you lose more. This is just anecdotal, but my street is full of stuff like camper vans, off road vehicles, tourers and cool shit, they'd have to either give up their hobbies or move out and into the country.
When you look at the best selling vehicles in the US it’s clear that people generally aren’t buying the least expensive vehicle that would work for them. They spend tens of thousands more because they want to.
As a European, this comment is perplexing to me. We all live in 15-minute cities over here.
I agree that by that metric basically any European capital or major city has loads of this.
That's not what I understand the '15-minute city' concept to mean. The video posted is a good example of it. It seems to be centred more about fundamentally rewriting the way I live my life (e.g. get rid of the office, try to discourage me from going outside of that 15-minute zone by encouraging walking over all other forms of transport including trains/buses).
It's weird because I've just re-read my initial comment and I'm just re-typing what I said. Is there something confusing there?
Optionality is tautologically great, but discouraging people to travel is not that.
My dentist, my general practitioner, my gym, my favourite restaurant(s), my friends, the food store(s) I use are all in different parts of town, and I believe that hugely enriches my life. The job I used to have was about 30-45min away, and after work I would then explore _that_ area.
I could go to the ones next door, but then I'd only ever go next door. Why would I want to only ever go next door?
I guess basically I'm just reading American shit and thinking "what's all this nonsense about 15 minutes? what you want is a dense urban city with public transport".
I actually want my city and its' trains to expand out so that it's a 4 hour city and I can tap a card and get the tube to Manchester and wander about there, lol.
That’s what I want in the US. Unfortunately we don’t have a city-to-city train system to speak of, Amtrak isn’t even close, and it doesn’t seem to be on the horizon either. I don’t really know, but part of the issue may be that cities in the west and midwest aren’t yet big enough and numerous enough and dense enough to support the financing for a better train system.
New cities in the mid west are spread out over wide distances assuming automobile transportation.
Denver and the surrounding suburbs come to mind and Calgary in Canada as well.
More than 90% of the city was built in the post-car era, and the main city planning stage (in the 50s and 60s during the population explosion) was of course, heavily car-centric. That's the legacy we're still living out, with similar stories in cities across North America.
I live in a developing "15 minute city" that encompasses a border with Denver and one of its neighboring cities. Development has been... okay I guess. We have a light rail stop that goes downtown to Union Station and to all the main stadiums, and bike trail that runs alongside it.
That's pretty much it. The area has been zoned for everything a 15 minute city might need, but developers have been reluctant to build anything beyond 5+1 apartment buildings and small townhome developments. It's hardly a 15 minute city and both municipalities (Denver and the other) that have a stake in the development don't seem to care much about the area.
We are still fully car dependent for basic errands, and now that they are enforcing parking laws for blocking hydrants, alleys, etc, people are up in arms.
https://mobile.twitter.com/juliagalef/status/105489825464980...
Edit: Thanks for the responses.. made me go read more. Here's the source article for his original quote:
https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
And apparently he got a lot of flack for that comment on voting and so replied a couple weeks later:
https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/05/01/peter-thiel/suffrage...
"It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us. While I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised, I have little hope that voting will make things better."
That was directly linked from the original article, and happened over a decade ago. That's enough for me; Doctrow seems either to be parroting a falsehood or simply incorrect.
Reading that quote by him in context, Peter Thiel's nuanced stance is more along the lines of "The extension of voting rights to women has likely resulted in an America that I think is worse/less preferable to the one that would probably exist if women were not allowed to vote".
So no, he hasn't advocated for taking away the vote from women in as many words, he just makes it known that he wishes they had never been allowed to do so. One can reasonably see how these positions are similar enough that some people have editorialized slightly. Especially since, given these views, it seems also reasonable to suppose that were the question of women voting to be put forth once more, he would probably vote against.
The idea behind voting is to say "I think this way is the best way", right?
So if Thiel is saying "that way was not the best way", then presumably if the issue came to a vote today, he would vote against.
It's true that he's not advocating for turning back the clock, but I think it's fair to say he wants to turn back the clock, in that he has expressed his opinion that he would prefer to live in a world where it were so.
Large-scale societal changes -- even ones you think are well past due -- are filled with Chesterton fences.
Taking the leap to presume that he thinks it would be better if women never got the right to vote, isn’t that unreasonable.
The point is - Thiel is crank, and if needs to sugarcoat the true import of what he's really saying: "We'd all be better off if women's suffrage never happened" -- that's just Thiel being Thiel.
Maybe it would be terrible if Napoleon had access to nuclear weapons in the early 1800s. Am I saying we should have let the Rape of Nanking go on indefinitely?
1) We would be more capitalist (whatever that means) if welfare beneficiaries and women were not able to vote.
2) Libertarian initiatives would succeed more often.
Neither of those seem to me to obviously translate to "We'd all be better off if women's suffrage never happened". For one thing, the quote seems to be missing anything that says those groups shouldn't be voting. But again, I'm only looking at the words on the page.
Neither of those seem to me to obviously translate to "We'd all be better off if women's suffrage never happened".
That's because I'm starting with what he said. Whereas it seems you're starting with what you would have preferred he had said.
This is after all the very mark of a skilled rhetorician.
Against this backdrop -- it's interesting that you chose to drop the "d" part of the phrase as if Thiel never said it. Let's see how your paraphrase works using the "d" word in place of the "c" word:
1) Given Peter Thiel is for more democracy; 2) Peter Thiel believes that women's enfranchisement prevented more democracy; 3) Peter Thiel believes at the very least that women's enfrachisement has a consequence of preventing more of what he stands for, which is democracy.
That's because at his core, the man is and always has been -- expressly, unapologetically anti-democratic.
I can believe that my coworker getting a huge bonus/raise means that I am getting less as a result. It doesn't mean I think it shouldn't have happened, or that I'm going to attempt to sabotage them. I can acknowledge something that isn't beneficial for my cause without immediately desiring to end that thing.
To expand on this bit though:
> It doesn't mean I think it shouldn't have happened, or that I'm going to attempt to sabotage them.
You can probably see how if you go to your coworker, and tell them "It would have been in my best interest and created a world I more prefer if you had gotten less", they may get upset with you. This is what's happening here.
A previous thread, flagged and detached: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12926975
Cars are like distributed computing - millions of independent transportation options are superior to top-down, limited public transportation.
You’ll see countries with heavy public transport continue to adopt cars - and autonomous cars will only accelerate it.
With public transport, I just need to buy a ticket - no need to buy and maintain a car, no need to spend weeks to get a driver's license. Then, once I have the ticket, I can wait and then hop on a bus/train/subway and go to... wherever the government has seen fit to allow me to ride. In practice, today, roads lead to many more places than public transit, but this is not a necessity of the world, it is to a great extent a choice that was made long ago. Also, I can get on a bus drunk (but not disorderly) or tired out of my mind. While riding, I can work, play, read etc.
Once you go a tiny bit more rural than a million city, you start encountering "once an hour buses" and "there are only 3 buses a day here, only 2 on Sundays" situations.
Don't get me wrong, I am happy that I don't need a car to go to a supermarket nor to meet a mate in a pub. But cars do provide a lot more independence.
So? Those are some of the best places. They slow the rat race frenzy down, for one...
So, I have a friend. He owns a farm. I want to go and visit him on his farm.
There is never going to be a bus service that goes there, ever.
I love public transport and use it whenever I can because it's better. My house costs hundreds of thousands of pounds more than an equivalent one that's far from public transport. It was a very active choice.
But independent is one thing it definitely is not.
Last month my local train services were cut from every 15 minutes to every 30 "Cus COVID".
My car goes when I want it to.
The state built a road to their farm (and presumably that road goes past the farm as well). What would stop them from also running a (rare, definitely) bus line around there?
> Last month my local train services were cut from every 15 minutes to every 30 "Cus COVID".
Sure, global pandemics are one weak point of public services of every kind, unfortunately.
You're waiting at the bus stop for this rare service. How often is it coming? 99.99% of the time no-one even uses it. Once every day, then? Weekly?
It doesn't make any sense at all. You'd turn basic interactions that I have into something approaching booking intercontinental flights. Absolute madness.
Like, this bus service will not exist. Quantum tunnelling is more likely.
I can't even get a bus to my friend who lives 10 miles away from me in London.
On your second point - sure, the independence argument for public transport has become weaker. In 2020 my local tube station was actually fully closed for months on end "Cus COVID". Car 1, public transport 0.
The point is not that this is available today, as we clearly live in a very car-centric culture and no one is planning this type of small scale public transit.
But it's not at all inherently impossible, it could well be achieved, especially where you're still near to a major city. In my country for example there is public transport for taking kids from small (and very poor) villages that don't have their own school to neighboring villages that do - and that's much more feasible and much more economical than expecting each family to buy and maintain their own car and gas, and to drive each child individually to school in the morning, then to drive back to school in the afternoon, pick them up, and drive back. And the kids are much more independent by having access to this than if they had to synchronize with their parents.
It's actually pretty interesting to see people on the economic right being so staunchly in favor of this incredibly socialized waste of money - it's a testament to the marketing and lobbying efforts by the car industry for sure.
Moral of the story - cars are tough and can handle much (much) worse roads that US and eastern europe think of “normal” roads.
I prefer cycling myself and don’t really like cars, but “failing US road infra” just sounds so naïve…
And here we come to the old saying of "poverty is expensive". A modern, well made and maintained asphalt road is no issue for a modern car, it will require its usual scheduled maintenance and that's it.
But put the same modern car on a poor or dirt road and the maintenance expense for the car will explode: tires, springs, O-rings and other seals, rust, the list goes on and on. Pot-hole repairs in particular can get really expensive.
The "Not Just Bikes" youtube channel has a series of videos on the strongtowns, uh, thingy, that goes into more details. In particular this one describes the financing of suburban infrastructure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0
It is possible, however, to shave some of the excessive and frivolous use, so I wouldn't necessarily bet that we'll have more cars in the future. I would bet that they won't disappear or even reduce in numbers particularly dramatically; considering population growth and economic development, at global level the best one could hope for, if anti-cars, is to keep absolute numbers as they are today - already a very tall order.
Edit: downvoted for stating facts. Sadpanda.jpg.
I think a coat might be in order.
>or you're impaired
A lot of impaired people can't drive at all, their lives would be objectively improved if they could use bike lanes to move about. Look at any video of bike paths in the Netherlands and you will see a ton of people on mobility scooters.
>or you are carrying significant loads
Everything can be delivered to your door at the press of a button now.
Right, could you provide me a solution if I want to buy an used coffee table off FB marketplace or something like that? Do I hire a van beforehand? What if I get there and that guy from FB already sold it to someone else? What if I don't like it? Do I try to call a big uber while standing outside under the rain with a damn table?
What if I go to IKEA to buy a mattress, it is right there, I can take it [if I had a car], but they tell me "sorry, our delivery slots are all taken for next 2 weeks"?
What if I want to order my weekly groceries like I always do, but suddenly we have a global pandemic, everybody wants groceries, and all I can get is pickup from a store 5 miles away?
That is not made up, that's literally my life.
As for groceries, if you have a grocery store within a 5 minute walk (which is the norm in dense cities), you don't need to buy a week's worth of groceries at a time. I go to the grocery store for quick trips a couple times a week. If you have more groceries, there's little carts (the ones you usually see old people with) that you can pull behind you. The nicest thing about this approach is that your food will generally be fresher; not only because you use it closer to when you buy it, but also because the sales in the store is higher so food isn't sitting on the shelves for long periods of time.
You're considering a reduction of cars as if your city is like it currently is; just without cars. The reality is that there'll be an increase in pedestrians and bike riders, which will lead to higher density and more demand for smaller, closer shops, restaurants and grocery stores. It's something that will happen slowly, and in general your life will become more livable in many ways. Of course if you refuse to adapt, it'll be annoying in other ways, since there'll be less (or no) free parking, lower speed limits, more narrow streets, and you will have to pay greater attention to pedestrians and bikers.
For the reference, I live in London. Yes, it has stores within 5-10min radius. Normally I don't mind going there every other day. However, in March 2020 everybody was going fucking crazy and, you know, the government told me to not go out unless it is necessary.
Before that, I lived in French Alps. It was splendid, I commuted by bike. However, every single weekend I was facing a choice: either I beg someone to drive me to mountains or I pray that there is a bus going where I want to go and I can calculate my hike well enough to catch one of 3-5 buses a day to come back home.
Not having a car sucks balls. I really can't see how anyone can argue the opposite. I think what you mean is "you don't need a car every single day".
You can still have your car, but the convenience is going to cost you. And yes, I'm very much saying you don't need a car every day, even if you maybe need one on occasion. I currently live in tokyo and I've used a car maybe six times in the past two years.
Not having a car is incredible. I love it. I'd argue the opposite in that having a car sucks. I don't have to worry about where it's parked. I don't need a space at my home dedicated to it. I don't need to pay for a car loan, maintenance, gas, insurance, etc.
In the rare cases when I need a car for a day or more, I rent one. In the rare cases where I need a car briefly in the city I call an Uber (or hail a taxi). My average transportation costs per month are $60. With the amount I'm saving, I can have temporary access to vehicles whenever I want.
Funnily enough I did exactly that with my bike during the initial lockdown.
The coat won't stay dry though.
> you will see a ton of people on mobility scooters.
Mobility scooters in bike lanes are dangerous - they take a lot of space and sit below line of sight of many bikers. They are dangerous to themselves on the road, and are dangerous to people on pavements. All in all, they tend to be a terrible idea.
> Everything can be delivered to your door at the press of a button now.
... by cars.
This hurts my head. Is everyone riding a recumbent bike or something? What the hell could possibly block your view on a bicycle?!
https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/who-else-benef...
Perfect, right? Somehow, not everyone driving to the dump to get rid of their trash - but one car picking it up in the neighborhood! Not everyone driving to the post office, but a single car bringing mail to the neighborhood!
I predicted a return to delivery of generics at the begin of the pandemic (e.g. milk, bread, toilet paper) and was obviously very wrong - but it sure would be more efficient.
Right on! Imagine the utopia if the only cars on the road were delivery vehicles.
Ow, you should experience one of the tropical rains in my hometown (Yucatan peninsula). There's NO way you will stay dry through your public-transport experience once it starts raining. In fact, if you take the bus and it starts to rain before you have to get down, you would normally accept that you'll get soaked, no matter how many coats, umbrellas and other water-repellent mechanisms you have.
So, what's the current state of cars in your time? ;)
And yet we do most of our computing in centralized centers in the cloud and as SaaS - with the machines they have being increasingly more like dumb terminals for most people's needs.
Also "are superior to top-down, limited public transportation" on what metric?
Not on energy and environmental costs, congestion, and several more besides...
Cars will be a luxury due to unavoidable environmental regulations and general decreasing economies as the world's population gets older.
I am pretty convinced that my current ICE vehicle is my last one, or next to last one, and that probably I won't have a justification to buy an electric one after the end of life of my last ICE car.
It's also wild how much money they need to commit to lobbying on the state and local level against union interests.
This is a single point that got my attention. He says that we, society, should run transportation for a net loss, because it benefits everybody, and especially benefits poor, who can't afford living close to their work.
This is sounds about right, but at the same time it creates an incentive to live even farther, because farther is cheaper.
Imagine me, a poor man, already settled for my current commute from point A to point B for two hours, and point A suddenly gets a better transportation, and I have one hour to myself because of that.
I may spend it to my health or my family, but at the same time I may choose to cash this hour out by moving to point C, where I still have a two hour commute (because it is one hour from point A), but rent is cheaper.
So this would be basically a subsidy, but there's another nuance. Rent at point A will go up because of better transportation. This is the most sure thing in the whole reasoning, because everybody old enough just saw things like that: subway station opens, and rent around it goes up. Moreover, there's a construction of higher class condo starts immediately, even before the opening.
So in the end said subsidy goes to the pockets of landlords and development companies. What am I missing here?
I think the most interesting subject is the question of just how are we going to manage the climate shift? It seems to me that we have all the technology we need already, and it's a matter of organization and motivation. We even have negotiation and communication technology (I'm thinking of things like Nonviolent Communication here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication ) that we can utilize.
I live in Oslo.
The city has declared an all-out war against cars for the last 10 years at least.
They have done some productive things, some annoying things and some downright sadistic things as far as driving. Removing damn near all city parking spaces. Regulating away even more.
There is still some parking in garages and private lots but it is $$$$.
Plus with the constant development in the city (Unrelated to the citys activities) you never know what roads will be closed temporarily and semi permanently (years)
As one example: The national government decided that their safety required that an important underground car tunnel had to be closed to rebuild it 2 meters farther down. [1]
That is going to take a while.
If you live downtown and you have a bike it is kinda nice. Except we have winters (should not surprise many) when travelling by bike a good option. (Yes there is a tiny minority who risk life and limb by biking all year around)
Most people dont ride a bike if the weather is bad even during the summer. Oslo is also far from flat.
Riding around in Amsterdam or Denmark its pretty flat. Makes riding a lot easier. In Oslo we go up and down, up and down etc.
This is mitigated in part by a sharp increase in bikes with electric engines. (Which I am not a huge fan of since it takes a near zero polluting vehicle and bang on a not ideally green battery)
I think spending so many millions of dollars to make Oslo better for bikes is an unfortunate strategy. If they instead spent the money in improving and expanding public transit (something sorely needed) it would benefit a lot more people all year round.
I have been a strong advocate for public transit most of my life and a staunch rider for most of my life.
I dont live downtown. It is terribly expensive. I cant afford to.
Until a few years ago where I was involved in an accident and I am no longer able to ride a bike, or use public transport. I am restricted to travelling by car. (or taxi if I could afford it). The nature of my injuries do not qualify me for the nationwide disabled person program where you get a sticker in your car that makes the city easier to handle by car).
Due to the anti car movement, freedom/options has been severely downgraded. There are museums, cultural events, restaurants, and people to visit that I simply cannot do anymore in any practical sense. I miss that.
I know it is selfish. But if you were in my shoes, you would find it annoying as well Believe me.
Huge shopping malls outside downtown usually have a lot of parking and accessible but it's not at all interesting for em.
Aside from myself, for my father and 10.000s of other senior citizens who are not in the best of health they suffer from the same issues.
As do thousands of others who are in some way disabled but do not qualify for the national standard.
(There are still a lot of senior citizens who benefit from it. It is not black or white)
Anti car movement seems best for rich, healthy young people.
Rich in that they can usually afford to live downtown or right next ot a subway station.
Health because you do need to be in decent health to ride a bike. even ebikes.
Young in that all physical activity is easier when you are young. (lets say less than 50)
So from embracing it, I have gone on to hate it. It is not inclusive.
As an ironic aside: The city wants to move towards 0 cars in the city or as close as they can get. HOWEVER, there are toll stations anywhere and the city has become dependent on the income from them. When Covid was in full effect and a lot less driving was taking place the city had budget problems.
They do not have a plan on how to replace that income (yet).
[1] https://www.bygg.no/vil-senke-ring-1-under-regjeringskvartal...
I dont live downtown because it is far too expensive.
The key thing to understand here is that the parking wasn't cheap before and it didn't get expensive suddenly when it was subject to market conditions. It was always expensive, but government was subsidizing your car-centric lifestyle. Now it's not and the true price of that lifestyle has been revealed to you.
So although I'm one of those who benefit from the cheap parking, I do think it's stupid, and in the end it just causes sprawl making us all worse off.
Huh. In my closest city, the parking is expensive and the local government taxes the shit out of it.
people often mention that bicycle paths need maintenance too, which leads to the fourth power rule: "What these researchers found is that damage to the roadbed is proportional to the 4th power of the axle load of the vehicle, and they called this “the Generalized Fourth Power Law.” This means that if you double the weight on an axle, your vehicle does sixteen times the damage to the road.
...
You saw that, right? A tractor trailer causes roughly 6500 times more road damage than a Prius.
...
We see the Prius does 38,000 times more road damage than a bicycle."
see https://camdencyclists.org.uk/2020/06/the-fourth-power-rule-...
The absolute arrogance of thinking that the city should use some of their most valuable real estate so that you can cheaply store your personal property is baffling.
>If you live downtown and you have a bike it is kinda nice. Except we have winters (should not surprise many) when travelling by bike a good option. (Yes there is a tiny minority who risk life and limb by biking all year around)
Entirely a question of infrastructure maintenance and entirely not a question of geography. Cars only work in the winter because of the high amount of money spent on making roads accommodate winter driving, and the same is not done for bicycle infrastructure.
>This is mitigated in part by a sharp increase in bikes with electric engines. (Which I am not a huge fan of since it takes a near zero polluting vehicle and bang on a not ideally green battery)
If only someone told you about this other type of vehicle that has to run on fossil fuels, or be extremely heavy in order to carry around a decently-sized battery.
>I think spending many millions of dollars to make Oslo better for bikes is an unfortunate strategy. If they instead spent the money in improving and expanding public transit (something sorely needed) it would benefit a lot more people all year round.
False dichotomy - it's entirely possible to do both, in particular if you continue to divest in absurdly expensive car infrastructure.
I'm sorry to hear about your injury. It's odd that you do not qualify for an exception if you are as restricted as you say. I wish you luck in getting that sorted out . That doesn't mean that we need to accommodate non-disabled car users in cities, though.
>Anti car movement seems best for rich, healthy young people.
Not at all. People with reduced mobility generally benefit from not having to risk being hit by cars when they traverse the built environment, plus public transportation is a great option for people who are not allowed to drive on account of their disability. Finally, those that do have a disability that requires them to move around using a car, they benefit from having streets with less car traffic on, so that they can efficiently move about the built environment.
Have you ever lived in a place that has -real- winters?
Show me a city that has real winters with real cold, real snow, real ice which lasts months where the city has accomplished what you mention.
Even more fun when there are a lot of hills.
For a city that does winter cycling properly, refer to Oulu in Finland. Winter cycling is common, because the infrastructure is well-maintained, and hence not an issue.
1) Its fairly flat. 2) It is unique in that it stays consistently below 0 for extended periods. Avoiding problems with ice, rain and so on. 3. The median age is young. (but growing consistently older)
During the summer in Oulu bikes account for 19% of travel. During the winter it is about 9%. During the winter in Helsinki its 7%
So they do use their bikes a lot. And a lot more than Oslo. But over 90% travel by car or bus in the wintertime.
Based on:
Sykkelplanlegging i tre nordiske byer https://www.toi.no/getfile.php?mmfileid=52136
Ultimately, the more people who can get around without driving, the less traffic there will be for someone like yourself. You indirectly benefit from better transportation infrastructure, even if you're not able to take advantage of it directly.
in my experience most of those people who would benefit from reducing car traffic and boosting alternate forms would be the disabled, elderly or kids and the poor.
additionally, riding bikes (even e-bikes) is not just for the healthy, it improves health. this might be of scant comfort for those who area already crippled by decades of dependence on cars, but i see it as an investment in the health of future generations. cycling for the "less than 50" is a far too low a number, there are plenty of 50 plus riders who leave me in the dust. many of the ladies i see riding around look like 70+.
Overall I understand your frustration with how the city accommodates you, but I don't think the solution is allowing more cars in the city. It sounds like you would be best off if the city introduced some solution like microcars, forced all private vehicles (barring exceptions, like moving trucks and deliveries) from the city, and let you get around without traffic. Not sure if bikes are really causing the problems for you.
> Except we have winters (should not surprise many) when travelling by bike a good option. (Yes there is a tiny minority who risk life and limb by biking all year around)
I live in a US city that gets decent amounts of snow December->April. I really, really, really want to bike around my city, but:
- they don't do a good job clearing the roads or bike lanes - (and much more importantly) private cars drive like maniacs and I'm convinced they'd kill me if I tried to bike when it snows
Obviously when it's actively snowing, it's hard to bike unless your city is really, really on top of clearing snow from bike paths. But the biggest obstacle for me by far is other people driving their personal cars around way too fast when there's snow on the road, which feels way too dangerous to risk.
One more point:
> I dont live downtown because it is far too expensive.
And here is the issue: if you don't live IN a city, it's insane to expect that you can take a car in every time you want to do something in the city. I live in my city, but I completely understand that I can't do certain activities, like concerts and public events, in other cities when it's going to be busy. Because I don't live in those cities. It is expensive, yes -- but that level of access is why it's so expensive.
I briefly thought about golf cart with folding tent shade above, but it is not that viable: climat control would be too complicated. But it may be actually a lower-grade variant for adequate weather or undemanding passengers.
For example, cars are pitted against cycling as if one is somehow diametrically opposed to the other. But we have empirical examples of this not being the case.
I live in a city which is pretty car heavy (London). It's not LA, we don't have sprawling freeways everywhere, but the road outside my house is lined with cars on either side, there are multiple ring roads that are 2, 3, 4 lane roads, the vast majority of the city centre is not pedestrianised, etc.
Yet I can and do ride my bike every day, in areas both with and without cycle lanes, and so do lots of other people. The time taken for me to get from point A to point B via bicycle could not be meaningfully improved that much - if I had a direct monorail-style route it'd be a bit faster, sure.
Netherlands, UK, and US stats are here: https://content.tfl.gov.uk/pedal-cyclist-fatalities-in-londo...
Very very roughly, NL is at 2.5 deaths or serious injuries per 10 million km cycled, UK is at about 10, and the US is at about 40.
I'm going to use this data and further make an unsubstantiated claim that in the UK, London probably has fewer accidents than a more car heavy town.
So yeah, it's more dangerous than the stereotypical example of a cycling paradise, but it's not some sort of hellscape.
The point then is that you don't need to eliminate cars in order to create an environment in which people both have and exercise the ability to walk and cycle. You do need the roads to not be urban motorways.
But something like this:
https://live.staticflickr.com/7129/7667009494_ed377c00cf_b.j...
I think provides a reasonable balance.
The main part is that drivers understand that cyclists are a thing that exist. In London you don't expect to drive about at 30mph everywhere because well, the road is thin, bicycles, buses, taxis, people stepping out, whatever. It's not a divided motorway, you don't own it.
Another example is the idea that geometry is inherently against cars. It's inherently against cars the use of cars for commuting from a large suburban area to a small business district. But there exists no geometrical constraint that effects me driving from village/town/suburb A to village/town/suburb B.
This assumes again though that you have a balanced town/country plan. If you make everything a massive big expansive road and spread out too far, then sure, cars end up predominating.
I guess moderation, and the use of cost-benefit analysis, is just boring. No-one wants to campaign for it, and would anyone even listen? Is it catchy?
I feel like the demographics of who cycles in London is pretty limited, it's the young confident cyclists. No children, very few tandem bikes with children, few women [1].
Much of London doesn't have room for cycle lanes (we have a few, and many mixed cycle/bus lanes. Even those are often used by turning vehicles rather than being physically separated like in NL). US transformations, once they get rid of (enough of) the cars, have lots of space for BRT, or cycle lanes, or etc.
London also has a not-enough-parking policy for the city centre, which helps reduce car traffic, parking minimums are the bane of dense, cycle-friendly and pedestrian-friendly development. In other words, the picture of a high street is showing good transit first of all, not good cycling infrastructure.
[1] https://www.onlondon.co.uk/will-londons-cycling-gender-gap-c...
It's not _perfect_, but yeah, my city is not the M1 (main motorway/highway in the UK), you can cycle in it, if you don't want to, you don't have to. There are loads of other options, not only the car but the train, the bus, walking, etc.
I've never really been a fan of using the statistical approach because it doesn't work without first defining some sort of goal.
Changing the percentage share, or absolute level, of either cycling or driving, in either the positive or negative direction, isn't something that I have any interest in.
My original post is kind of aimed at that problem - that it seems as if these issues are painted as "pro-cycling group wants X" or "pro-driving group wants Y" when really what we need is "pro-both group wants X/2 and Y/2" or something like that. Freedom of choice is generally better than the alternative.
https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/travel...
I don't think you'll ever get a significant portion of people on bikes when they have to mix heavily with cars.
Because of that, there's absolutely no way I'd consider cycling from the station to the office now that I commute.
Last week I had somebody do a really close pass at 50 or 60 mph. It was obviously an attempt at intimidation and to some extent it worked, it did make me think about why I cycle rather than drive. That sort of thing is going to put off a lot of people which is why we need a lot more infrastructure.
This is rural Oxfordshire though.
I have friends that consider this to be a fun weekend out, clean air, birdsong, etc.
But to me it's just super boring (I find the city visually stimulating and like a real-world progress bar) and also quite dangerous. If I fall off my bike in the city there's a pretty good chance I'll be alright. If I fall off on an A-road I'm very very dead.
In the Netherlands, there would in general be physical separation between cycling and car infrastructure. Examples: https://publicaties.rekenkamer.amsterdam.nl/fietsvriendelijk... https://jorrevannieuwenhuyze.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/scr... https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5717/23592200220_ae52835ed4_o...
Even in cases without physical separation, there would still be separate cycling lanes, so that cyclists do not have to share a lane with much faster and larger motor vehicles. Examples: https://gratistheorie.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/fietsstr... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/Fi...
Are there roads with no separate cycling infrastructure? Certainly, but the urban landscape tends to be designed such that motor traffic is discouraged from using such roads.
In contrast, the picture you linked looks frankly horrid for cyclists, by Dutch standards. The road looks to be busy with both cars and buses, but there doesn't appear to be any substantial cycling infrastructure present, except for a singular buffer.
In general, many Dutch people (including myself) would be terrified of cycling on London's roads.
Yes, I did in fact explicitly called the Netherlands out as an extreme example.
Cycling in London is more catered for than in the US and harder than in the Netherlands.
Consider also the fact that Dutch cycling infrastructure hasn't always existed: it's a result of decades of focused policy. For example, consider this road (in front of busy Den Haag HS railway station) in the '80s vs. now: https://www.denhaagfietst.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/head...
On the other hand, London compensates for its lack of cycling infrastructure with its excellent transit, which is commendable.
Most of the US is, large parts of the UK are including many of our cities.
My argument is that London is a happy middle ground where you can cycle, or get the tube, or ride the bus, or use a car, and all of those work and that's fine. If anything the car is probably quite a bit less convenient than the others, mainly due to the geometry issues outlined in the article, and you have to really want to drive for the sake of it.
Though it's probably a good way to frame it. Car dependence is bad, having cars is not. My street is full of them yet I also live ten minutes away from a few different tube lines. Best of both worlds and this means I use my car maybe 50-100 times a year instead of 500+.
I have another friend. From my house at this time, I can cycle there in ~20 mins, drive in ~25-30, get the bus in ~55, the train in ~45mins or walk in ~1h20min.
Most of the time I cycle. So am I cycling dependent then? No, I'm just choosing the best option! It'd be annoying if it was gotten rid of out of some quest just to remove cycling because someone didn't like cycling or whatever.
When employers and politicians herded workers through tightly packed public transport with zero effective protection (partially due to lack of discipline, partially due to lack of investment), I felt save & secure in my movable tin box.
Yes, I am paying a lot for that box.
And, do realize, that public transport is and will be for the plebs. Even if it's green. Not spoken in derogative manner, it's just that. Noone of high enough status is going to bike or limit themselves in any way, shape, or form. If they do bike, they'll be taking the car when you aren't looking or helicopter in. That probably still is going to solve the problem of mass transit, but the few who are not mass are going to continue to enjoy unlimited individual and privat transport whereas the rest of us won't. It's a decline in a dimension of freedom and not recognizing and admitting that fact is dishonest.
Maybe fuel for a blog post? There are some great urban planning and architectural directions this could be taken.
For example:
https://humantransit.org/2016/07/elon-musk-doesnt-understand...
The ideas are great and ideal, but ...
Well run public transportation is always better than a car. Cheaper, easier, faster, and less stressful. The goal is for people living in urban areas to not need a car. Not for them to have to go without a car. People living in rural areas would still need cars.
We've built our cities so that you absolutely need a car to get where you need to go. Strong towns and Not Just Bikes aren't advocating for the end of cars so much as a re-think of our urban planning.
Imagine driving into town from 45 minutes out and having zero traffic and parking right next to the grocery store. Or even better, being able to drive 15 minutes away to the nearest walkable town, with affordable housing and a market with everything you need. Not needing to drive 45 minutes because car centric infrastructure killed the town and forced everyone to drive hours to a car clogged metro area funded by new development just to get groceries until road maintenance kills that city too.
They talk very dismissively about the whole thing, but I believe the business model was clear for Uber. Build a new transportation network to replace our current taxis, then other things, using technology. Once self driving cars are a reality, they have a strong position to be dominant.
Their real issues have been execution once (losing to doordash should have never happened) as well as the delay of self driving cars. Both started happening really once they ousted Travis.
The pandemic also hurt their core business dramatically.
Uber had two paths to success: either invent self-driving cars and get enough of them to replace private car ownership, while costs of cleaning and maintenance are handled by riders fees. OR Use VC dollars to subsidize a taxi service, while not investing in infrastructure and simultaneously fighting against regulations that protect riders (such as background checks and commercial insurance).
Guess which one they're stuck on? Because self-driving cars haven't happened yet, and won't happen in a meaningful way on city streets for some time yet.
But you know what? I've ridden an autonomous vehicle in a major city. Line 14 of the Paris Metro is driverless. It's also a train, and a public good. Uber would rather not see the proliferation of that kind of self driving vehicle.
Everyone presumes this but it may not actually be true. I used to work with perhaps the most preeminent tech journalist covering Uber/Lyft/self-driving cars, and he would always point out that even if self-driving cars became a thing, would Uber now have to own a massive fleet of cars?
This past year with tighter labor markets has shown that Uber does have substantial ability to increase prices without losing all of their riders. They are running losses, but the margins are not that far from profitable. For every dollar you spend on Uber, Uber's costs are $1.02 on average.
A much better analysis of Uber's financial situation is this https://philo.substack.com/p/ride-hailing-is-it-sustainable
It is not a multi billion pound wave of the future business model.
Self driving cars doesn't help them in any way.
If you want people to prefer to take transit, and you should want that, you need to deal with the lack of a social contract on public transit. That means, in other words, that behavior not tolerated in a private business (such as a bar or restaurant) can't be tolerated on public transit either.
For urban liberals, that means confronting some uncomfortable choices. A public space (and transit is public) is supposed to be open to all, but if we want public spaces to be livable, that probably means smells and behaviors are more tightly regulated in public, either through direct enforcement by transit police (unlikely) or more social pressure (also unlikely).
My incredibly liberal (left of Bernie) economics professor used to say that you need to build public transit infrastructure for the middle class, not the poor. It increases ridership amongst those paying the lion's share of taxes and causes development along high utility economic corridors, spreading outward, trickling down. It stops the service from being stigmatized and increases ridership at all levels.
That's not the case in the UK or the rest of Europe. Of course there are occasional nut jobs out there but the fact that so many people use public transport controls that sort of behaviour.
Edit: The only awkward scene I ever witness on my occasional commute into Edinburgh by train is when two laptop users sitting across from from each other accidentally touch screens - of course, both people immediately apologise. It's hell.
Not to say Europe is perfect: London, Berlin and other urban areas certainly have their issues in all of the mentioned areas. But we are miles ahead of the US.
It's uniquely American problem that your public transport smells like piss.
Not that I'm picking on you in particular but I just want to say that this idea, is maybe the biggest obstacle to mass adoption.
All you list here is repressive regulation, with all the problems that come with it - e.g. both unintended (correlation between homelessness distribution and ethnicity) and intended (discriminatory behavior by police) racism.
The worst problem in public from a safety point of view are homeless and mentally unstable people, and then "wild urination" and litter. To use police against the first two is just plain inhumane even if it's the sad "standard" - the solution to these problems are affordable housing and accessible mental health care. Using repression only shifts the problem to somewhere else, it does not solve the problem.
As for wild urination and litter, the issue here is that public toilets and trash bins are scarce. In Munich for example, trains used to have litter bins at every seat, buses and trams had tiny litter bins bins for tickets and small litter and a lot of subway stations had public, free-to-use toilets - both were cut due to cost-cutting, and then the problems arose.
Yes! I don't get why more people (and elected officials) don't realize this. The city I live in (Philadelphia) has approximately zero public toilets. Many of our train stations also constantly smell of urine. These two things seem related?
They realize, but they don't care. Their equation is: Why put in public taxpayer money (and thus, risk their own "political capital") for a service that's:
- mostly going to be used by homeless (and a few people with medical issues like IBS)
- going to be constantly vandalized (graffiti), mistreated (discarding tampons and condoms in toilets is a "classic"), abused ("glory holes", drug consumption, ...) or in questionable hygienic conditions (e.g. people flinging poo to the walls and ceilings), requiring a significant maintenance budget
- mostly going to improve the quality of a service (public transit) that mostly poor and other down-on-their-luck people are using
when the ones that vote for the politicians don't profit?
Not to mention that many small city/town budgets are already severely under strain.
Middle-class and rich people and companies don't need public transport, they have cars, and they don't need public toilets as they have toilets at home, at their employment place and if need be can afford to buy a snack at a restaurant to use their toilet.
That perverse incentive is why it needs regulation of minimum standards for urban areas at a state or better federal level.
This I think misses the geometric constraint here: in particularly dense city centers, there isn't really room for cars. I'm fairly well-off and have a car in the city, but I wouldn't bother trying to drive it around here, because it's honestly less convenient than taking public transport.
You can drive to your destination fairly quickly, but you then have to find a place to park the car and walk from there to where you're going. In Center City especially, that can take nearly as long as the drive there in the first place. No thanks.
My car mostly only gets used when I want to leave the city.
This is a weird trope, and also just generally cruel. First: when public restrooms are generally available, they tend to be well used (I use them frequently in Tokyo, for instance). Second: even if they are mostly used by the homeless, that's good for them and us, because it means they have a humane place to use the bathroom, and it means we see less feces on the street and fewer places smell like piss.