The future isn't in cars or autonomous cars, it's in sidewalks, trains, bike lanes, and other forms of transit. The best ride in a car isn't one in which I'm driving or not driving, it's one in which I don't get in the car in the first place.
But I feel the pandemic has upended any momentum for public transit for a generation. Less frequent commmutes make long drives more tolerable and parking more affordable and available, and transit now seems like a disease vector as well as rolling homeless shelter.
For me personally, I hate the smell of weed and it is EVERY where in many downtown areas and transit hubs.
Bikes? So weather dependent, little cargo space, hard to secure, and no way to carry a family readily.
It’s a sad state of affairs.
Autonomous cars will be a travesty as everyone starts sending them on non stop errands or run double commutes to save on parking…
I can't stand cars driving into buildings and businesses in my downtown area.
Whenever it snows it seems like there's a huge multi-car pileup on the highway causing a complete stop and I can't get to where I was trying to go.
The highways and roads are really really loud.
Someone drove into my family in their truck and killed us all.
Etc.
It's not fair to point out the problems with bikes like you are, like the smell of weed (what about drunk drivers??) without also at least acknowledging the gigantic list of problems associated with car-only transit.
Admittedly some of the problems you mention like a rolling homeless shelter or the smell of weed share a solution which is more, and better policing and as a society us having higher standards for ourselves and others, but they are problems that can be solved much more easily in my opinion than the problems associated with car-only infrastructure.
Also I do want to point out that the disease vector comment seems really weird to me. Like the population density at Costco is a lot less than a train ride therefore you won't get sick as often? I don't get it.
I can't imagine equating things like the smell of weed and having to share a train with a homeless person, with death, death, accident clean up, new barriers added, and then more death anyways
They seem pretty equally hopeless to solve. How are we going to "change society's standards?" This isn't even a public transit problem--it's a "dealing with other human beings" problem.
Ever since the pandemic, going out in public and trying to do basically anything is like entering a probabilistic mental facility, where some non-trivial percentage of the time, some member of the public is going to enter your life as an obstacle, aggressor, or at least as an irritant. It's always been kind of the case, but the percentage chance just seems much larger today.
Road ragers are out in equal number to smokers on the train, sidewalk poopers while you're trying to walk, and coal rollers while you're trying to bicycle. It's not the mode of transportation, it's the growing belligerence of the general public.
Weed smell is going to be a problem simply from the fact that users stink ALL THE TIME, even if they aren't smoking in the actual metro. It like an epidemic of BO.
What Costco do you shop where you are pressed up against people for half an hour? A loaded train is a sealed environment with poor ventilation and way more density than almost any other scenario in modern life. Regardless it's also people's perception, and a huge warehouse feels better ventilated than a subway car.
Speak for yourself. More metros around the world are pushing for better mass transit. Even in the US, even mild expansion of light rail makes it possible for my kids to bike+rail to school and for me to use light rail to commute to work. US needs to handle its homeless problem - agreed - but that's a bigger societal issue.
Pandemic lockdowns are not going to happen again. People are finding out that lockdowns did not help all that much (even when implemented near-perfectly like in China).
I used to cycle down Peachtree Street from Buckhead to Piedmont Park...it was a harrowing experience.
Busses can run on existing highways and throughout cities. City streets can already accommodate trams and bike lanes.
I agree that self-driving cars are "going to be a thing" but their proliferation I doubt. They're not really a category change from Uber, it's just "more efficient" as an additive solution, but we need subtractive solutions. You can think of the car and self-driving cars in particular in the same way you can think of personal digital cameras, alarm clocks, and smiliar devices before the advent of the iPhone. The iPhone (and other smart phones) was a subtractive product and eliminated the need for those devices.
Similarly a sidewalk and building well (among other things) eliminate much of the need for a personal car and so Ford, GM, Toyota, Tesla, etc. can't effectively compete because they don't build sidewalks or have anything to do with this category of transit. If I can just walk over to the grocery store like I could in London or Osaka then no amount of self-driving will matter.
Small vehicles that use the road to take you on the short journeys, where mass transit is not an option.
The biggest issue with busses, for me is the timetable. Imagine having a truly 24/7 on time transit network? You'd only need a vehicle to haul something, which is not a daily operation.
Autonomous cars will result in an explosion of cars on the road and a severe increase in traffic. It'll be a disaster.
Alright so what we're going to do is extract limited resources from the earth, pump out a bunch of C02, have a lot of people or machines get together in a big factory and assemble a car, someone is going to take out a loan for $40,000 or something, pay interest on that loan, pay for insurance, pay for maintenance, pay for energy/fuel, we're going to build highways and roads, and then we're going to have the car drive itself and the passenger (of course just them because nobody is sharing their car) to their computer at work, the car is then going to circle the block for 8 hours while you work (i.e. sit on Zoom calls), and then once you are ready to head home the car will stop circling the block and come and get you.
Right. All to avoid walking, riding a bike, or god forbid being near other humans on a tram.
But seriously, privately owned cars are the problem here. If, instead, taxi service is normalized, then we don't have this problem, and my car doesn't need to circle the block because it isn't my car. As long as I can get home at the end of the day, a self driving taxi seems like the way for the system to be organized, to avoid precisely the stupidity you described.
Of course you need to avoid all the issues of NYC where they can't do anything, but both Atlanta and Dallas are not as corrupt (which isn't saying much) around transit.
Something like 40% of trips in Amsterdam are still made by car. It’s a useful tool, just not the ultimate solution to every transportation issue.
Although it may have become a problem with all this sunken cost.
Car infra takes next to nothing to plan and build. Trains, trams, metro, anything big at all really, takes decades, riddled with corruption, environment destruction, landscape change. State actors, maybe society, is just plain bad at organising this. Maintaining and switching cars is easy, maintaining public infra, keeping timetables (!!!), organising upgrades and extensions, keeping workforce happy and not striking is the same as above. And I live in a fat rich western country.
I get that cars don't scale, and ok, downtown of 1m+ cities should be park & ride. But maybe we should just spread out our living area more, and outside of megapolises just admit defeat and improve car infra.
As opposed to building highways, parking lots, massive car sized neighbourhoods etc...?
Car infrastructure is the same, you just haven’t seen it, and those are often related: most “pedestrian” or “bike” projects end up being about car management and almost all of the cost is usually spent there.
This has ripple effects: for example, Boston’s rail service is underfunded in large part because of the massive debt taken on to build the Big Dig. That was promised to reduce commuting times for suburbanites substantially but within a couple years of opening, they were worse than before due to the extra trips incentivized.
Admittedly we can build highways quicker, but I wonder why? Certainly it has nothing to do with corrupt state transportation agencies whose jobs depend on big highway construction jobs, auto lobbies, or highway and road construction companies that rely on big government contracts for their livelihoods... right?
Only if you pay up for that. Suburban areas are notoriously underfunding themselves.
Wait wait wait. A single double-tracked rail line that's 50 feet wide carries more passengers an hour than a 10-lane wide highway that's pure asphalt. In what world is the train a greater destruction of our environment?
And in what world is that a greater destroyer of our natural landscapes?
I understand the convenience. I also went from taking public transit exclusively to driving a lot more - and I get the appeal. I also understand the appeal is not scalable, considerably less environmentally friendly, and contributes a ton of carbon output and environment destruction.
We don't need to bend over backwards to pretend that the things that are convenient and enjoyable for us must necessarily be virtuous. We should be fully capable of owning the dissonance that our desires do not necessarily align with public benefit.
If we have any hopes of restricting climate change, reducing CO2 emissions, preventing mass extinction via habitat loss, we can't be doing this and going down this path.
It would only make any sense to create new green field cities if they were compact walkable cities built on a foundation of frequent and high speed rail access. Everything else is a regression of massive amounts of highway construction, habitat loss, CO2 emissions and strangulation by increased capture by the requirements of structurally inefficient automobile oriented infrastructure.
All that to say I hope I am wrong in the biggest way possible.
The future absent radical change of cultural heart clearly is personal EVs. You don't have to like it, but it's the direction 99% of countries are moving and clearly normal people do want it.
A large percentage of the world's population commutes on mopeds/scooters.
That is due to lack of money not lack of desire.
If you asked the moped/scooter riders if they would rather have a car, they would choose a car.
As countries become more developed and wealthier, more people will be able to afford cars and car use will increase.
cities should be pushing for alternatives because they're better in literally every possible way, except convenience.
better for our safety, for our health, for the environment, for less noise, for the cost, for a sense of community, for the saved space, and so on.
Most are, but a massive number of Americans live in sprawling suburbs and small-to-medium sized towns, not cities. Most of those places are ill-suited (to the extreme) for mass transit and other non-car options - yet they are perfectly designed to handle cars.
Even so, some 2/3 of Americans live in areas that would benefit from pursuing alternatives.
However great is key. This means you need great operations: including worse case waiting time everyone should be 15 minutes or less from a place where they can find plenty things to do in the community (stores, parks, schools); and a transfer to express service to elsewhere. If you don't have great transit: people in the suburbs can afford a car, and traffic isn't a problem so they will just drive. Note that this is a higher level of service than many downtowns get.
The above is very very expensive. However cars are very very very expensive.
Denying this or misunderstanding human nature will not get you closer to mass transit, you have to first understand what motivates people before trying to convince them of another path.
Building cities and infrastructure that precludes anything other than personal vehicles - that what forces people to use them primarily.
Human nature wants convenience. A personal vehicle is not always the most convenient transport method.
How about no cars at all (or significantly fewer cars)? Adoption of mass transportation like trams, trains and buses is better for pedestrians and cyclists.
Buses are terrible to bike around: obstruct visibility, hard to pass, block traffic when they stop, and are louder and more polluting than electric cars.
Trains don't yield to pedestrians and only serve a very limited number of locations.
I have no interest living in a city and the older I get the more and more I want to move away from things.
Have you seen the sidewalks and trains in American cities? Lol
Maybe if our streets and subways looked like Tokyo I’d agree with you, but getting to that point is a coup-complete problem
Take a look at Amsterdam in the 1970s. https://www.fastcompany.com/3052699/these-historical-photos-...
There are many places where they just aren't practical—where sidewalks are useless, because the nearest thing to walk or bike to is miles away, the weather gets too inhospitable to walk or bike safely for much of the year, and the places people want to go are just too spread out for trains to be at all viable.
For those of us who choose not to live in dense urban areas, I would dearly love to see full self-driving cars someday...but given the challenges we've observed in the last few years, I'm now skeptical as to whether we'll realistically see them arrive.
How do I take a train or a bike 80 miles away to go hiking, boating (imagine carrying a boat or a canoe onto a train!), golfing, etc? Or the other way to the beach? Or to drop kids off at different places with a variety of things they have with them?
I would seriously limit my freedom of movement and ability to do things.
There's a tendency here for a I assume young person who lives in a city and doesn't have a family or hobbies that require going to far away places with things, etc.
> The best ride in a car isn't one in which I'm driving or not driving, it's one in which I don't get in the car in the first place.
As saying you don't see any need for cars at all. That the future is these other things. I'm just saying that cars are extremely useful and that if I had to choose between having a car or all the other things then I'd pick a car. I enjoy the other things too and am grateful to have a train nearby I can take into the city. But I can't imagine life without a car.
1. Not building car-only infrastructure. I.e. build sidewalks, bike lanes, busses, and trams/street cars. While I can afford a car, many can't or struggle to, or even if they can it is a poor financial choice. By giving people additional options we can increase entrepreneurship, reduce barriers to things like physically getting to a job, etc.
2. Reducing the need to use a car for things like buying a loaf of bread, short trips, going out to a restaurant, heading to a local sporting event, etc. There's no world in which you will forever be able to drive a large truck or SUV 15 miles to a grocery store to buy a few trivial items. We can do that now because we hit an energy jackpot with fossil fuels (which are necessary and useful), but economic physics dictate that this can't last. So instead of driving to do common tasks, you can instead just walk (exercise is good for you) and then walk back. If it's raining, umbrella. Etc. There are a lot of additional benefits here like obesity reduction which will save us money.
Today what we have is incredibly expensive infrastructure and transportation. We don't need to. We need more options.
When I grew up in Buenos Aires Argentina we used to take the train to our small boat, that train ran every 15 minutes. The boat was kept at a "dry" marina stored on bunks in stacks of other boats. We would call them about 15 minutes ahead of time, and they would forklift the boat into the water. I used to ride the train myself to school so my parents didn't have to drop me off with my variety of things. On the way home I would get off the train at a beach for after school sailing lessons. They had Canoes, kayaks, windsurfers, small boats, etc. so you didn't have to own your own or bring it on a train.
When I lived in Seattle, and Vancouver, there were busses that regularly went to trailheads. They would add express routes on the weekends from downtown directly to trailheads in Seattle.
If I were a golfer, I can't imagine being willing to walk my clubs a few miles over 18 holes, but not be willing to walk them a block or two to the bus stop. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that some people leave their clubs in a locker at the course so they don't have to load them into and out of their car.
All of the "problems" that you solve with your car have already been solved in other places without using cars. It seems like a distinct lack of imagination to think that everything you own has to be at your home, and that you have to use a car to use it.