When looking at something as complex as people's behaviour, then it's worth allowing for seasonal variations in public transport use (e.g. when it's raining people may decide to get the bus rather than walk). Could it be related to the length of their journeys and/or their net worth? (There's a strong correlation between health and wealth). How does it compare to a similar section of the population that drive or cycle instead?
I don't understand how are your questions going to answer anything anyways - it's not like the answer is going to be the same anywhere.
Post Szasz and Reagan we’ve had the policy of deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. Thus you have a lot of people with schizophrenia who have no insight into their condition who are very hard to manage. Even in a town where services are relatively available there are many people who take years to accept a diagnosis which can get them on disability and receiving permanent help.
Probably the best we can do for these people is get them stabilized on an antipsychotic drug and then get them in the clinic every few months for a depot injection but even that is pretty hard.
This dates back to at least JFK and probably farther back. The institutions of the 1950s were terrible for the mentally ill - putting them on the streets is a better answer than the abuse a lot of them suffered. Of course the Kennedy's had enough to treat their mentally ill family members to better institutions than the government mandated ones.
If a reformed institution could treat the mentally ill better than the the streets is an open question - in theory it can, but human nature is all too often to abuse in that way and so you should question if any reform can stick. If you say yes then it is on you to verify. If you say no - we need a better answer than the street (I can't think of any - or at least not any that I don't have other objections to)
Also, I was in Paris last year and I found your subway system more pleasant than ours. Methinks you doth complain too much.
Plus there is no bed bugs and pickpockets are an oddity outside of the most touristy stations.
Anyway, considering how awful it is to drive and park in Paris, you would have to be crazy to use a car instead of taking the train which is why nearly everyone does. Plus, with the mandatory employer subvention, it’s incredibly cheap at 44€ a month. The only credible alternative is biking which is indeed more and more popular.
Second, why are you blathering so much non sense. I have been taking the Paris metro daily for the past decade, commuting on the B, then the 6 first, then the 8 as I moved. I regularly go around including on some of the allegedly poor lines and cross Gare du Nord quite often. Stabbings never happen. An attack would be a newspaper worthy thing. People don’t take shit in the metro. What kind of non sense is that. And pickpockets are limited to the touristy parts because well there is not much to pickpocket in the other parts.
At first, I thought you were some kind of Russian chill spreading misinformation but then it finally hit me that you are probably using your car all the time and trying to justify your prejudice.
I have a strong political bias because I feel the need to intervene when someone spread utter lies about stabbings in the Paris metro. Sure, I’m the one having issues here.
The issue is not accepting your experience. You are talking non sense about factual things.
Parisians mostly don’t take the bus by the way. The buses are awful and have been running like shit for the past two years as drivers are not being hired in preparation of the privatisation. Are you sure you actually know what you are talking about?
many parisians take the bus to go through paths that are not covered well by subway especially true for horizontal paths for instance in left bank. ive seen a few stabbings myself taking rer and subway. i was even there when a random guy was stabbing people a few years back in st denis for no reason. I saw young people take out knives to fight after an argument, I ve seen people holding knives to threaten others. why do you think even the SNCF when they moved their office to saint denis wanted to have a specific arrival gate for their employees-only before backtracking when someone smarter than the average told them it would send the wrong message? have you came out next to barbes? have you seen that people got murdered just in front of gare du nord for no reason? have you been to north east stations where a horde (the right word) of junkies are crawling in the station and are all dangerous?
They are awful because they are never on time. Your post is pure delusion. I feel insulted by you even implying I could half agree.
> why do you think even the SNCF when they moved their office to saint denis wanted to have a specific arrival gate for their employees-only before backtracking when someone smarter than the average told them it would send the wrong message?
You are unlucky. I was working as a contractor for SNCF at the time of the move so I 100% know that what you are saying is pure bullshit. There never was a plan for a separate gare. The part of Saint Denis where SNCF is is perfectly safe anyway. I find it hilarious that you think it's even possible to open a new gare for a specific use case on the RER D, one of the busiest line in one of the busiest metro network.
https://www.lefigaro.fr/societes/2013/01/16/20005-20130116AR...
https://www.nouvelobs.com/rue89/rue89-vie-de-bureau/20140502...
even the RATP asking to close their stations but I am the one talking shit : https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/paris-ile-de-france/...
its very hard to understand paris subway is a living hell if you did not travel to better subways cities. seoul, tokyo, hong kong, taipei are what a subway should be. anything less is hell
Something like this is quite hilarious if you think about it.
https://www.alamy.com/parking-in-the-courtyard-of-high-rise-...
It reminds me of grazing cows having 80 times as much space as people in some parts of my country.
I always thought it funny how popular elevators are for vertical travel. A monorail station in the basement or even a ski lift seems a lot less space consuming.
If it means you can get a home 120m2 (1300 sq ft) in stead of 60m2 (650 sq ft) it seems worth considering.
They should be making decisions based on how to improve quality of life for residents.
Parking should exist where public transport is not a viable option. Ideally the work to make public transport an option should be prioritised over the work to making parking exist.
Cities and councils can make money from public transport too, it'll work out OK revenue-wise, and quality of life improvements can be considerable.
Why not?
> They should be making decisions based on how to improve quality of life for residents.
Residents can use money to purchase goods and services to improve their quality of life.
> Parking should exist where public transport is not a viable option.
And the market can provide parking at market-prices. (And, cities and councils can perhaps also offer parking at market prices on their properties.)
i live in a city with pollution problem. where can i buy this clean air to improve the quality of my life?
I believe that relying on individual purchasing power ("utility"), to improve the average quality of life is an experiment (often referred to as "Reganism" or "Thatcherism"), that after 40+ years of trialling has shown to be net negative to social mobility, overall net happiness and other factors important to me as a UK middle-class (this isn't the same as what middle-class means in the US), citizen with a significantly-above median income for my age, social background and other predictive factors, as compared to natural experiments in free market economies where such trials did not take place (most of Northern Europe), in the same time frame.
The core problem with free markets being used as a mechanism to settle all societies ills is that theory ignores natural monopolies. You can't have a car parking space and a children's park in the same place: you must make a choice. And if you choose based on economic utility, the outcome with the direct revenue will allow a realised "win" over that which has indirect or non-utility rewards such as "happy, well-adjusted, children who have learned to be nice to each other".
If you believe in the right wing view of economics without taking into account the lack of natural monopolies, you and I are unfortunately going to be so far apart from being able to find common ground we might just be wasting each others' time.
If you do understand the nature of a natural monopoly from a land use to utility company infrastructure, then you'll realise that when you follow the thread that car parking at market prices denies other monopoly uses of that land, that residents can't influence that through purchasing decisions, and that cities and councils would be failing in their duty to provide an equitable and comfortable city/town in which to exist by making decisions about monopoly situations purely based on revenue potential.
They also provide utility. If you remove parking spaces near a children's park less children can/will visit. You need a balance.
You can reach a children's park on foot or by taking public transportation, so ideally there's no need for a parking lot right next to it.
But it's like buying a gym membership across town with the idea that you would walk everyday. You aren't going once winter hits.
Not American but have been young and took transit and walked everywhere but also seen seniors in wheelchairs who stopped going to the park after they stopped allowing cars to park.
My adopted home of Singapore goes a lot harder on private initiative than Thatcher and Reagan ever dreamed off. And thanks to that, and some other factors, they went from third world to first world (or arguably zeroth world) in less than a generation.
> The core problem with free markets being used as a mechanism to settle all societies ills is that theory ignores natural monopolies. You can't have a car parking space and a children's park in the same place: you must make a choice.
You might want to read up on how https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
What you are describing here has nothing to do with a 'natural monopoly'.
Funny enough, most places in the US have outrageous mandatory minimum parking space requirements. A free market would most likely provide less street parking. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking_mandates and especially https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking
Revenue means people are willing to pay for something, something they value. So it's not the be-and-end-all for how to run your city, but it's better than many other ways political decisions are made. (And better than whatever political decision procedure leads to mandatory minimum parking requirements, IMHO.)
An entire section of philosophy is built on this question alone, and why there is such a thing as a social contract.
The existence of the towering edifice of Catholic theology doesn't disprove Hinduism. (Nor does it prove Catholicism.)
Do you chew gum when you are at home in Singapore? No, you don't, because it's illegal. Did you agree to that, were even you given a choice? No, of course not.
Singapore is more authoritarian than most liberal democracies. That means you do as your told. That's the social contract. If you disagree with the people in power to loudly, you got to rot in jail. https://www.smh.com.au/world/lee-kuan-yew-a-towering-figure-...
As it happens, Singapore got lucky. The people in charge are good at running a country efficiently. In particular, they didn't line their own pockets too aggressively - certainly not in a way that was out of line with liberal democracies. The Singapore it's an outlier compared to other authoritarian countries. Generally, once politicians eliminate the competition, they use their control to milk the economy for all they are worth.
It's more like a license than a contract.
> Singapore is more authoritarian than most liberal democracies.
The Singaporean government is a smaller part of life than in most other places. Much less red tape to fill out before you are allowed to do anything and regulations are simpler.
Yes, there are some weird regulations about how you can say things. But they affect the form more than the substance. You are pretty much allowed to say whatever you want, just not however you want it.
Yes, Singapore got lucky in that they had (and have) a hardworking population, and competent leadership.
Why do you insist that Singapore is authoritarian? We have free and fair elections, that are regularly observed to be so by international organisations.
I agree that the laws about homosexuality are weird, but they are also democratic: it's broadly in line with what the population wants as far as I can tell.
... although if they were, the price of parking would be way higher. The optimal price for parking is a time-and-day-dependent price set high enough that around 10% of spots everywhere in the city are free at any given time, so that people who need parking can generally find it conveniently nearby to where they're going.
OTOH, if there is always that much space available (and presumably there didn't used to be before the price hikes) then it is evidence that a lot of people have chosen to go elsewhere because parking became too expensive.
Can the location compete with that "elsewhere"? If it is a unique location with unique reasons to visit, probably yes. But if it is the typical old downtown with stores competing with the strip mall with similar stores but free parking, probably not.
I've seen the depressing cycle of multiple vibrant downtown cores become abandoned after parking meters came in. I very much prefer a strong active downtown core even if finding parking is a pain, to one that is mostly all boarded up and abandoned but there's plenty of paid parking.
If after the price increase there are 10% (50) parking spots open, that means at least a 100 people went elsewhere (20%). That's a pretty significant drop in business to the local stores.
And speculation aside, I've seen this happen in two downtowns I frequented. Parking meters were installed, people went elsewhere, the vibrant downtown died and was boarded up and abandoned. And it's not just a transfer of business to a different location, but a loss of cultural significance. Because the old downtown had artists and musicians who no longer have a place at the strip mall. The stores moved, but the culture was lost.
Your math ain't mathing.
That $1 isn’t much, but many believe the Commons can’t compete on that basis and shoppers will avoid the Commons and go to stores on the commercial strip instead, it doesn’t help that the Commons doesn’t have a diversity of shopping, instead it has some gift stores, a legal cannabis dispensary that is just about to reopen after being closed for some reason, numerous head shops, a bookstore, and numerous CBD stores that I think sell real weed in a back room.
It's still a subsidy because they are charging less than the market value of the most valuable possible use.
However here in the UK I'm not sure your point about virtual subsidy quite computes. Most of the free to use parking in valuable areas is street parking outside homes. Seeing as housing costs are just a big sponge that absorbs any surplus productivity, I suspect if people had to rent or buy those parking spaces to use them then you would see a corresponding drop in house prices/rents.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t other advantages. Eg reducing parking spaces (as a sibling points out) to increase urban density is probably good for the economy, and time on a train can be better spent than time in a car because one doesn’t need to pay as much attention, which could be a small improvement to many people’s lives.
Looking at most German cities, the effect of this is negligible.
Although I don't think it could be an effect of Deutschlandticket, too little time to have an effect IMHO.
That doesn't make sense. German streets are full of cars, partly because there's insufficient dedicated parking space. Lower car ownership would have a very visible effect on the streets.
This is not really true on busy trains. I've commuted both on trains and in cars, and when comparing transportation methods near the saturation point, cars win when it comes to personal comfort.
A traffic jam is no fun, but you can still sit, aren't jostled about by other people, have your personal space, and keep your climate controlled to a good level.
In a full train, you will be standing up, pressed against a bunch of other people. The climate will be other people's sweat. You may be able to use your phone, but not much more.
On a longer quiet route the train can be very nice. Get your laptop out, do a little work, nice coffee or tea with you. But on a busy commuter line it's more annoying than a car.
Note that if you're at the saturation point of both modes, you're moving a lot more people with (light/heavy) rail:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_dif...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_capacity
Also worth considering that while it may be personally comfortable for you in on saturated rail, you're still moving towards your destination, whereas at car saturation you may be physically comfortable, but you are not making progress towards your goal of actually achieving your goal of getting to your destination while your speed is zero.
Yes, it is better from a capacity point of view.
If you have a linear path that is x metres wide, and you want/need to move a certain number of people, not-cars will move more people:
* https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Corridor...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis–Mogridge_position
Or, from another perspective, you have a budget of $/€ y for transportation, what mode of transportation will allow you to move the most people for that money? Unless you believe in MMT, government budgets are a finite resource, so how do we get the most bang for our buck?
Certainly you need some roads as vehicles such as trucks (UK: lorries) are very handy for society in running the economy. I myself own a car, a motorcycle, a bicycle, and have a transit pass (though I can use debit/credit tap-to-pay) and use each mode when appropriate. But the overemphasis on automobiles—specifically for private transportation—is suffocating the availability for other options.
To go back to your analogy: if you have a starving population, then factory farming is better because you can provide more calories to more people (and probably at lower cost). In that case organic is worse because you may be sacrificing people's well-being by not having enough capacity. Once you solve your first problem (enough calories/capacity), then you have the luxury of other considerations.
And like... generally speaking, the crowded train is still going to get you where you need to go. I don't know how you walk away from the 30 minute trip that took 2+ hours with any happy feelings. To each their own of course
You never drove with the DB before I take it (die Bahn - German trains). You routinely have that a 30min trip takes multiple times of what it should.
* train coming in late * no replacement * suddenly from another track * people taking their life * missing the follow train * having to wait because an ICE gets priority
You don't know how many trips I had to cancel because coming 3 hours to late (when starting the trip 30min early) isn't viable.
Yeah sure being in a traffic jam sucks! Big time. I hate it with all my heart, but I then start playing a podcast or calming music and actually get something out of it. It's actually not so nervewracking if you change your mindset. It bothers me more that I know that my mileage will tank for that short while... But yeah if I can I stay at home...
and that’s frequent. i did have to take the train for 6 months with 1 change of train and it was completely full all the time and late half the time so a missed the other train. its not all trains but some are freaking late all the time. especially those between frankfort and stuttgart.
there is a talk from daniel kriesel on youtube called bahn mining. very worth it
edit:// i use the 49 ticket because it is nice to use trams and buses in towns.
If your network doesn't have any sort of resilliance to failure, not much to do really.
(Aside: for the longest time I was always a bit miffed at France's train network, because it's mostly "go to Paris"/"move away from Paris" and very few sideways connections. Germany's transit map has always looked more evenly spread out! But every German I know who tries to take train transport complains about this lack of resiliance and now I'm pretty convinced that the network is too thinly spread out)
>the cases I've just been stuck in stop and go traffic for 30 minutes it felt worse than any train ride I've taken except for the few times I was in "I feel like I'm going to get crushed" levels of crowded.
I would much rather sit in a seat that has been meticulously adjusted to fit my body perfectly, with climate controlled to the exact temperature I want, with music/audiobook/etc playing at the exact volume I want, with 0 encroachment on my personal space, than to sit on a crowded commuter train, where crowded == more or less every seat is taken, with some people likely standing. I don’t care if I have to be in stop and go traffic for a bit, I know how to drive smoothly (usually smoother than trains) and I have pretty good patience, so I just sit there and relax listening to music for a bit longer than normal.
Maybe if you drive a particularly barebones/uncomfortable car[0] I could see a train being preferable. Aside from that, I will take the car over the train for commuting pretty much every time. The exception is if the train is notably consistently faster, or if I’m somewhere like the Netherlands where cars are more of a general inconvenience.
[0] Or any modern non-luxury car, since every manufacturer has decided “sporty” sells so you need 20” wheels with rubber band tires and sports suspension on your commuter car. I would highly recommend driving something like a 1990s Buick Roadmaster or Chevrolet Caprice, or Lincoln Continental, or equivalent vehicle - we had figured out how to make commutes incredibly comfortable for little money 30 years ago, but it seems like pretty much everyone forgot.
a few trucks are still needed but trucks used to haul are a minoricy of traffic
Yup, absolutely! But at least where I've worked on road design, the number of lanes on a local road is governed pretty much solely by the number of cars (trucks just have a larger impact on asphalt structure choices and, balance with the impacts of freeze-thaw, resurfacing schedule).
But this is about longer distance travel - trains generally being used for intercity travel vs highways. Even still, I don't argue against road subsidization, but rather in favour of more train subsidization.
Think of how often dedicated walking and cycling routes need to be repaved—almost never.
Car owners only pay about half of the cost of road maintenance in the US[1].
> The degradation of road surfaces is caused almost entirely by automobiles.
Given the fourth power law I find it hard to believe that larger vehicles, especially good vehicles , are not significant.
Even without wear, surfaces deteriorate. You cannot claim that pavements and cycle lanes are zero maintenance, or have negligible costs to build.
This should read: The degradation of road surfaces is caused almost entirely by heavy trucks.
Road wear is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight. A fully loaded cement truck or transport truck is doing way more damage than a fully loaded box truck, which is doing much more damage than a Hummer EV, which is doing much more damage than a Tesla Model S or F150, which is doing more damage than a Nissan Micra or Mazda Miata. Here’s[0] a page with a neat chart showing relative comparisons. Note that it tops out at 18k lb trucks, which are ~1200x as damaging as something like a Prius; it doesn’t include fully loaded trucks, which can exceed 80k lbs in North America. The amount of damage to roads they do compared to average or lightweight cars is mind boggling.
[0] https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...
The condition of many german cycling paths would beg to differ.
Not trying to detract discussion, just finding it hilarious that when facing a potentially existential threat from russians who repeatedly claim they will wipe them out, they will do just about anything rather than making their military into something a bit better than an chronically underfunded joke its now.
What's the use of tanks if you can't get them to the battlefield? [1]
Although some infrastructure was already built taking logistics into account [2], concrete structures have a life expectancy of about 50 years, and many bridges are past that age and need urgent replacement. And that costs a lot of money.
A small reminder on the importance of bridges: [3]
[1] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/what-can-stop-nato-...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Load_Classification