But decreasing congestion? We already know how to do that, and in many ways it seems like a safer bet than some kind of technogy with large problems and even larger unknowns; public transport.
Cheap, well developed, reliable public transport will beat autonomous cars on throughput and resource use any day.
But this costs more than just money — it costs space. And if you are doing it right it also costs you road space (busses and streetcars only make sense of they have their own uninterrupted lanes for the most part).
We need to learn to appreciate things for what they're really worth to us (including their true costs) not just for what they look like.
_________________
Health problems come because of the polishing. Polishing rice into the sparkling white form that most people prefer has three major negative impacts on health.
The first is, polishing removes most of the vitamins and minerals that are vital to health. (...)
The second relates to diabetes, which is threatening to reach epidemic proportions in the Philippines over the next couple of decades. (...)
Finally, polishing rice also reduces its protein content, which can mean the difference between being well-nourished or malnourished.
(...) And, then, over the decades, the dominant culture defined brown rice as “dirty” and fit only for the poor, while white rice was seen as sophisticated and modern.
[1] https://ips-dc.org/why_billions_eat_unhealthy_riceand_should...
Cheap, reliable, dense public transit with diverse "last mile" options is clearly a much better choice from the congestion, efficiency cost point of views.
> well developed
> reliable
Speaking as a guy in Europe where we generally have "good" public transport, I think you can only ever have ONE of those at the same time, with some exceptions.
Cheap fares? You get decrepit busses from the 80s and the timetable's just a suggestion (what my city used to have)
Well developed? Development isn't cheap so fares get expensive, busses are Mercs that run on CNG and the timetable's still just a suggestion - but you get live boards showing arrival times at least (what my city has today)
Reliable? You'll have to go to Switzerland or Japan to experience that, no other place truly has it. And those places aren't cheap... but they would count as having well developed route networks, so 2/3 for them I suppose.
In Zürich, a monthly city ticket is around $50, and a monthly country wide public transport ticket is $340 (and really gets you almost everywhere). Annual tickets are slightly cheaper.
I would argue while not "very cheap", the prices are still reasonably cheap, especially when compared to reoccurring car costs.
I don’t think this is generally true... If it is true, then the I suspect government subsidize are a bigger factor in explaining the variance of public transit quality then fare price.
Take Reykjavík as an example. It has the most expensive public transit fare price in Europe (86% above the European average) and all you get are some buses every 30-60 min (with only a handful of lines running more frequently during rush hour), timetables from the 80s and a ticketing system that never actually works. It is safe to say that Reykjavík has an expensive, poorly developed and unreliable transit system.
I think a well funded transit system can actually accomplish all three pretty easily, as long as they are willing to sacrifice some convenience for private vehicles.
Of course driverless taxis will not help much with congestion. That will require different solutions.
Anything, automation included, that allows things to flow more smoothly will decrease congestion for a specific number of vehicles on the road allowing roads/intersections/etc to flow closer to their ideal capacity. (This principal holds whether you're talking about cars or buses, train networks, industrial facilities, etc.)
For example, if self driving solves some decent fraction of the morons who can't seem to merge in the size space that the engineers specifically allocated because it was sufficient for that purpose or can't turn left even through sufficiently sparse cross traffic you've just alleviated a lot of congestion.
In practice transit networks are bounded by the daily peaks so you'll never not have traffic jams and packed subway cars at rush hour but efficiency improvements mean these conditions will exist for a smaller slice of the day.
In almost all the above places, there have been frequent instances where I’ve had to use taxis and/or rent a car. And that was while living/staying in the core of these cities.
99.99% of places on earth aren’t nearly as densely populated as the ones above, so increase the need for cars proportionally if you ever want to go elsewhere.
We need both good public transport and autonomous vehicles. It’s not one or the other.
Whenever I see people citing public transport as a panacea for all problems, it’s typically a wealthy, single, childless, digital minimalist 20-something who lives in the core of the aforementioned cities, and never does much outside of it.
You ever wonder where the food you eat gets grown and how it gets delivered to that fast casual restaurant you love down the street? It’s not public transport.
the argument is strange, they don't exactly deliver 40 tons of wheat to the bakery with a taxi. Noone is arguing against cargo and utility vehicles unless they can be substituted by railway (which could be better designed, etc)
https://www.tescoplc.com/updates/2021/how-tesco-is-turning-t...
But again we're still stuck talking about cities. In any area where food is grown (or literally anywhere on earth outside of the .0001% of land that constitutes megacities), there is no public transport.
Do you think the people who grow your food are living as indentured servants on the land they cultivate, and never need to go anywhere?
Again, public transport is a fantastic solution for dense areas (ie. city cores). But cars are also a fantastic solution for the 99.9999% of places on earth that aren't a city core.
A feel-good PR greenwashing campaign by Tesco doesn't change that.
There's 8 billion of us, all living in different areas with different constraints. We can have both!
In my experience, shops and businesses tend to get deliveries early in the morning, when the streets are nearly empty. On the contrary, delivery vehicles tend to get exempted from "anti-car" rules, or regulated to some designated time slots.
... Wait, I mean they absolutely do. Pedestrianised streets are usually open to goods vehicles early in the morning for delivery, etc.
Here, I've put you smack in the middle of an area where food is grown and next to a rail station:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Alalkomenai/@38.4075142,22...
Drag the little man on the pin to admire the beautiful countryside.
Or scroll out to see the fields covering the land.
Btw, there are bus lines also but they don't appear on the map because the locals know where the stops are, and the bus drivers know where the stops are, and what they're called, and who will be waiting at what time, so there's no need for stop signs. Usually the signs were there when the routes were first created but they have er, gone missing since.
Remember, this is happening in a state with massive multiple public health crisis that go un-reported and has maps of human excrement in their inner-cities. The priorities here are completely in the wrong direction I agree.
You don't even live in the country and you know of the issues, how much harder can you contradict yourself?
For the municipiality a 6 lane street vs a two lane street with public transport and bicycle lanes can make the difference between neverending debt and prosperity. Places with good public transport and bicycle infrastructure and denser mixed use pay more tax revenue. Spread out urban sprawls and suburbs give the municipiality a lot of street surface to maintain, for very little tax revenue in return.
A good introduction on that part is the strong towns playlist by the youtube channel Not Just Bikes: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y_SXXTBypIg
For example in Italy many municipalities removed public transport so that FIAT could sell cars. And USA is at least just as corrupt.
I think you should strike the word generally here. Even in Italy there are many municipialities with great public transport (grew up not far from the Italian border). In Europe it is generally not rare to have municipialities with nice or even exceptional public infrastructure.
Corruption is always a thing that can exist, but if your place becomes dysfunctional for it, maybe consider your might be missing some of the core ingredients that lead to good democratic decisions (education, will by common folk to participate in regional politics, a working system of law that works against corruption, etc.)