Why can't the majority of the people walk to a store and the rest can be serviced by a smaller truck?
Its pretty damn obvious that as the USA is laid out right now, we don't have any good last-mile solutions outside of 100x different people driving to the same store and picking up what they want. And its not like houses are going to pick themselves up and move to a store, and given zoning laws no one is going to move a store into a neighborhood either. (People won't like the crime that comes with it).
So whatever, that's that. I don't see this issue changing. But I do think that the truck/rail situation can change. Fewer people are in the decision-making process for train vs truck, and factories can be designed (and/or redesigned) to fit trains.
I'd assume that its easier to convince one or two factory owners to switch from truck-based to train-based logistics... rather than convincing 100x homehowners to vote at the next HOA meeting to start a city-campaign legal change to change the local zoning laws and possibly lower everyone's housing values by increasing crime in the neighborhood during this rise in shoplifting going on right now...
That's like ten carts before a horse or some brawndo has what plants crave shit. I can walk to the grocery store where I live -- my house is worth more because it has decent access to amenities.
> Data from DOT’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) shows that, since 2020, more than 100,000 truckers tested positive for cannabis, as Transport Topics first reported. Marijuana was by far the most common banned substance to come up in the drug screenings.
> Overall, there have been approximately 166,000 people who tested positive for some prohibited substance since 2020, according to a report that FMCSA’s Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse published last week. There is an option for those truckers to enter a “return-to-work” process that would require another drug test; however, the data shows that a large fraction of people are not taking the opportunity. About 91,000 of those 166,000 truckers who didn’t pass the drug screening have not enrolled in the process yet.
> This would be problematic from an economic standpoint in any industry, but it’s especially troubling in the transportation sector, which has been facing a significant labor shortage.
Trucking is not the best industry to be in and there are a lot of problems, but dismissing people who smoke weed, at all, is adding fuel to the fire.
Does crime come with it? I certainly wouldn't expect that.
Crime happens at places of commerce. That's just... how it works. Places of commerce have both goods to steal (especially useful black-market goods, like Tide Detergent) and cash-registers to steal from. I'm not saying like "murders" or whatever, but when a neighborhood has +100 police reports in a month, the Real Estate agents notice that and home values drop.
That's just... how it works. Its not necessarily about "which crimes are actually dangerous" or whatever, people just pay attention to crime heatmaps and don't really look into the details.
You stick a store designed to sell to homes, that store _will_ have homegoods, including Tide Detergent, in stock. That Tide _will_ be stolen, its just so easy to steal, easy to sell in the black market. That stolen good will be reported on police reports (so that the store can get back its insurance, or write it off or whatever they plan to do accounting wise). That police report will drop nearby home values.
Empirically, myself and my sister have witnessed shoplifters personally in recent months. I know this is anecdotal data, but anecdotes (especially personal ones) are enough for myself. At least in my area, it seems like shoplifters _are_ on the rise.
I don't need to prove it to other people on the internet. My own eyes with my own life is enough proof for me. If that's not enough for you, whatever. Seeing news reports that others are seeing similar rises matches my "gut check".
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Now people stealing food from grocery stores is... you know... the lowest level of shoplifting. These people aren't stealing like, luxury goods. They're clearly just trying to survive. Its not like a criminal gang or organized crime that'd be deeply rooted and/or difficult to deal with.
IMO, its weird that people would rather shoplift than to apply and/or use a WIC card (food stamps). So its a conundrum for another day in any case, its a crime (albeit relatively victimless. Sure sucks for the staff and the grocery store but I've seen worse...). But its still speaks poorly for neighborhoods and makes people feel less safe. So yeah, it needs to stop. But I can 100% believe that shoplifting is on the rise today. Anecdotally at least.
There's other low-level crimes, like obviously not-paying for the subway, that I think is on the rise by my eyes as well. These also make people feel unsafe and/or unappreciated (tax dollars wasted, etc. etc.) and is bad for our neighborhoods.
I do know that statistically speaking, the personal savings rate of people has declined, wages haven't kept with inflation, etc. etc. So these actions make sense in the greater economic situation IMO.
I don't necessarily want a police crackdown to throw all these people in jail. But we do need to do something, maybe make WIC cards easier to apply for (at every grocery store for example), or stuff like that. We literally have a food-stamps program, why aren't people using it? Why are they shoplifting instead?
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If I cared, I probably would start by interviewing / personally talking to cashiers at my local grocery store before I trusted online articles anyway. And I'd suggest you do the same if you cared about this issue. The internet is just not as good a source of information as the front-line workers here.
Every grocery store clerk has a feel. Talk with them next time you visit the store, don't be a political asshat about it but it wouldn't take more than 1 or 2 minutes to ask them if they've noticed more shoplifters. Obviously don't eat up all their time either (they're on the job after all). With luck, you might see a manager watching all the clerks who'd have more freetime to talk about shoplifters too.
And I frankly don't care to convince you of the fact. I'm not sure if anything you'd say could beat out my personal methodology on this particular question. I actually wave / say hi / talk to the grocery store clerks (and their managers) on a regular basis, so I've got people I trust who can tell me about rising (or not) shoplifting. I really don't need the internet to tell me this.
I literally can just ask the manager (and I recognize him by face since we talk so often) at the store next time I see them. I'm not sure if you'd care on their response or not, but... I'd trust him more than anything you'd say or research. No offense to you personally, but I have my methods to gathering information that I trust more.
There's much, much simpler, and direct, ways of getting information than surfing online for a database... or engaging on internet debates over.
For example I care about the environment but not enough to throw away a one million dollar suburban house for it.
Basically to fix this problem is essentially to cause current suburban housing to depreciate in value until the property has become essentially worthless which is against much of the populations self interest as many people own homes. Either way, this kind of thing has sort of already happened in Japan.
That being said in CA there are measures to combat this problem. ADUs and SB-9 to increase density, but adoption has not yet been that wide spread.
Can you explain?
The only place where this isn't true are big urban cities like tokyo near really good locations.
See source: https://japanpropertycentral.com/real-estate-faq/popular-myt...
Nobody really talks about why there's this dichotomy between Japan in and the US. The reasoning is multifaceted. One of these things is infrastructure. Japan cities have extremely good infrastructure and are super clean. Living in Tokyo is close to living in a futuristic utopian cyberpunk society. So people know that the urban way of life is 100x better.
The Western US is centered around suburban life where everyone drives cars. Property is spread out and not much is invested in cities on the west coast. People don't see the value of city life as much. The east side of the US is more hybridized where rural and city properties are valued for different reasons.
Much of this dichotomy between countries is driven by lack of land in Japan and a lowering population. However this just pushes japan ahead of the curve. As energy becomes more and more expensive all economies will inevitably shift to becoming more like japan where suburban properties become more and more worthless.
Single-use zoning. Most people in the US live in areas where you can't walk to a store.
The sprawl is real and I just don't always have 1.5 hours to dedicate to grabbing bread.
Assuming an average adult walking speed of 3 mph, I'm guessing that's somewhere in the ballpark of 2.25 miles? So something like 11 minutes at an average cycling speed of 12 mph, yeah? The distances here don't feel insurmountable.
Alone it would be fine, I know what I'm doing. If I add my children to the mix, it is a little sketchy due to what I'd consider tricky spots.
There are no sidewalks, no bike lanes, no curbs, a squeeze over a bridge where two cars won't fit around the corner simultaneously, and a couple of roundabouts that drivers just don't understand (one normal, one mini). I can't quite trust them to do the right things. The drivers or my children in this instance.
Where the distances are okay but the streets aren't, safer streets can make cycling feasible. Where the distances are too far for cycling, you need both safer streets and a shift in land use to get people out of their cars. Both are doable in the long term, but the former is much more tractable in the short- and medium-term.
The fanatic anti-car people will actually reduce the chances of meaningful regulation being passed here - as they won't be able to resist trying to use this opportunity to actually make cars more expensive and less accessible to people, and reduce overall car use, etc.
Thus, reasonable people who are not fanatically opposed to cars will be suspicious of whether the proposed regulation is really needed, or just an excuse to achieve socio-political goals that can't be achieved directly.
This is exactly the same dynamic that affects other issues, e.g. gun control. The extremists will block reasonable progress.
Auto companies lobbied governments and put out propaganda to get cities to rip out street cars and rail in the early 1900s. They did this to sell more cars, so this is what we get.
What about the single mother of three with a disability? Should she push a cart to the grocery store? Who is watching her kids while she does this?
Weird, eh?
I live in a neighborhood full of small apartments, single level duplexes, and single family homes. What stores are walkable? The liquor store, and gas station, and if i really feel like it, dominos and 7-11, both of which are at least 1/4 mile one way. Most others in this area, dont get those even. Past that its about a mile one way to the actual grocery store. And then after all the shopping, i have to walk back, now with 50+lbs of groceries.
Honestly, all this we need more walkable cities stuff, i get it, yes, you should be able to get places by walking, but really, its just not even feasible most times if youre going to be buying something. Im not gonna walk home from best buy 4+ miles away heaving a huge TV on my back, no one will. We invented transportation that didnt involve humans using their legs because we are slow, and easily over encumbered when carrying things. Theres a reason we saw an explosion of carriages way back. Its easier to haul more, and much faster, than if a person, or even many people at once, were to do it.
Housing density is a huge factor in a lot of this, but having swaths of tall purely apartment buildings is also not the answer. People want single family homes and other styles for many reasons. They wont be going away anytime soon. And even if they did, the only answer is very mixed use zoning.
One of my favorite examples, in downtown Denver, there is a tall apartment building, stacked on top of a large chain grocery store, it includes parking for the store, and spots for the building, under the building too. This is what i would consider peak use, and what people complain about walkable cities really need to focus on. Having a city you can walk anywhere is great, but you need to be able to get to the societal needs without having to walk far. Of course the grocery store also serves for a large part of that neighborhood, and distance to the store is a variable, but this mainly serves multiple buildings in a small area. The big problem is all the space we waste dedicating to parking. It might be more expensive, but you can gain a lot more use if you force parking lots to have shops above/below them, and that reclaimed flat land can then be used for the mixed use building. Parking is also not going away, like i said, we invented carriages for a reason. Howwwweeeeevvvveeerrr all of this comes with a number of caveats, like the ridiculous price to lease a storefront, build the building, etc, and of course its just a feedback loop that gets worse as we waste more space, space becomes premium.
All of this is to sum up my point, walkability is variable by person, and changes greatly depending on if youre going to have to be carrying things, and theres never going to be good "walkable" cities, short of nuking a city and starting over, you wont make it vastly better, especially with the politicians and government we have now.
(And personally if I lived somewhere unwalkable I'd move home to address that, though I appreciate there can be reasons to either not want to move or to not be able to move.)
Unless they changed their mind to that state due to some major economic shifts after the move anyway.
Also, it’s the year 2023 it is easier than ever to get a tv delivered to your front door without you needing to haul it anywhere.
I’m ready for your excuses.
Is it really better for the environment to double-up on all the packaging and have an even heavier truck (that has worse emissions and even worse tire-wear / microplastic creation) than the car that weighs like 1/4th the weight of the truck?
That's what I mean by the "last mile" problem. The alternative, big trucks that consolidate deliveries, isn't a clear cut win either.
And since when is rucking only 10kg? That’s just going for a walk?
Rucking has always been 40+ kg and involved some kind of serious terrain where I’m from?
Rucking originated as a military term for a long jog with a heavy rucksack (hence the name!) and was always pretty shitty because rucksacks suck and the military has no shortage of heavy shit to carry. I’ve heard stories of 80+ lb rucksacks and 8+ miles being the norm.
Weirdly, the military also coined ‘Vitamin I’ for ibuprofen. I wonder why?
Ah how the world changes. I can’t wait for it to mean going on a casual walk with a loved one while bringing along a nice meal and some wine. ;)
Thanks for explaining!
Back when I lived in San Jose I could also walk to the store because way back in the 1940's they put a pedestrian walkway between two streets which dropped the walking distance from my house to the shopping center from half a mile to again a third of a mile.
Which brings up something I think is over looked. Which is the layout of streets in post war housing tracts makes the distances you need to walk twice are far as they could be. With zoning changes, money and some eminent domain we could make things better.
I think a lot of the difference between people comes down to their childhood - what they learned as default behaviour. Though obviously people can change as they grow up too, either personality wise or having health/physical reasons they either can't walk far or can't drive at all. But my point is that just because some people feel that 3 minutes is the maximum time for walking before a car should be used instead it doesn't mean that short distance is an immutable fact, and many people could get used to walking slightly further distances and discover that no only is it not the end of the world, but it's even a good way to stay or become a bit fitter and healthier!
Aren't there shopping malls in the US longer/wider than this?
I think I walk further than that between buildings to get to the canteen at lunch time. I tell people I live "really close" to a metro station and it's 380m away.
It's not like people go to malls as frequently as they go grocery shopping, so this doesn't really imply anything. Also don't forget you're carrying potentially heavy bags. Also don't forget not everyone is a fit 30yo.
I never drive to the store and I still wouldn't do that.
Like, a car _is_ your shopping cart you take to-and-from the grocery store. It also carries you to work and does all sorts of other things.
These "crappier than a car" solutions seem to be from people who haven't really thought this through IMO.
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The solution is to have a store walking distance from the house, meaning you don't even take large amounts of groceries home. Why buy a lot of groceries when whatever you want is within walking distance?
When I visited Manila, Philippines, my life was like this. Fresh bread? Just walk to the corner store, no reason to take extra home with me because tomorrow morning it'd be baked fresh again. Why should I spend on 2 pan-de-sal (great tasting Filipino bread btw) for today-and-tomorrow, when I'm planning to walk to the city-corner again to well... do anything anyway? The bus is there, the food is there, breakfast is there, everything is there. Its less convenient to even take anything home outside of eggs or other longer-term goods.
But you need to live _much_ closer together than what Americans are used to. And there needs to be a reason to go "to the corner" (ex: to take the bus or other public transit). Etc. etc. etc. This simply doesn't work in American suburbia.
American City centers, such as New York or Washington DC seem to have figured it out in my experience. But prices for this lifestyle are higher than just buying a car and living in suburbia. So yeah, Americans recognize the value of this lifestyle (despite all of our debate and complaints). But there's not enough space/housing in cities to have enough people live a car-free lifestyle.