What, you think the amount of roads we have now is a lot? We've always had roads, they were for carts, or horses, or anything else. There is nothing special about cars here.
> Gosh I hope we can figure this out in my lifetime.
We did. We made travel cheap and easy and it has benefited us massively.
> What, you think the amount of roads we have now is a lot? We've always had roads, they were for carts, or horses, or anything else. There is nothing special about cars here.
Not all roads are made equal. There's a huge difference between "space reserved for a mode of travel" and the public spaces that roads[1] (in cities) were before cars became ubiquitous.[2] A good analogue is imagining a path in a park: it's generally used for transit (people walking and occasionally biking), but it's also fully open as a public space for the citizenry to use as they please.
[1] This whole conversation is about roads in cities, so that's what I'm referring to: roads across sparsely populated countryside don't have nearly as high a cost, nor do they have as many viable alternatives.
What they were actually like is rivers of mud mixed with horse manure. There were just as many roads before as now, except they were very dirty.
> and the public spaces that roads (in cities) were before cars became ubiquitous
Absolute nonsense. Go read some history, or even fictionalized accounts. Roads were never public spaces like you imagine. They were roads, and carts and horses routinely road right over people who didn't get out of the way.
They were crowded and dirty, and those open spaces you imagine did not exist inside cities. (There plenty of open spaces outside cities, of course.)
Your dream world existed to some degree inside farm villages, but never in cities.
The amount of plays, novels, stories, poems, and songs that take place in and on and nearby, as well as revolving around and referencing to, ares of transit is pretty large. When looked at in the context of human existence on the planet, roads are the pathways human cells use to move and multiply and spread and settle. So much culture and development occurs on the paths of humanity. This is not limited to any single road concept; bridges, train tracks, shipping lanes, and airports all spawn society blocks around them.
The Pathways have always been public spaces. Are you opposed to those public spaces being safer and more productive? If so, would you say it is because vehicles [methods of human conveyance] have a priority over people [humans living] in the Public Square?
The point of travel is the people that can do it, not the profits to be gained or the methods to be employed IMO.
On roads, vehicles absolutely have a priority over people. This is so obvious, I'm honestly not sure why I had to state the previous sentence.
The vehicles have no priority at all, the people in them do.
Does that bother you that someone wrapped in a vehicle has priority over someone not wrapped?
It's like that always - small boats have to give way to large ones for example.
Boats traveling through fluid, controlled by a relatively tiny prop, are in no way comparable to road-going vehicles that enjoy the static friction of rubber on asphalt.
Additionally, all vehicles on the road are held to (virtually) the same legal standards, regardless of size. If anything, laws are more restrictive the larger the vehicle.
Also, this is false:
The vehicles have no priority at all, the people in them do.
There are many parts of the country where it would be illegal to cross a road on foot (jaywalking), but entirely legal to do so within a vehicle.
It is always context as well as proportion. Neither air nor water work as reference points for driving, as the scale in both those worlds is analogous to the variance in insect size [ant to dragonfly] or water creature [diatom to jelly fish] while the road is much more like the difference in dog breeds. On top of that, the land is our natural habitat, as opposed to the hydro- or atmosphere, and the use of that space must take into account that society is based on people and not profits or production. Yes, like mobility, the are absolutely important, but only in how they advance culture and society. A heart is a meat pump if there is no brain to feed oxygen.
There are more people without vehicle access than with. De-personalizing vehicles would be a good thing.
And just because i'm on a rant: how many people die from terrorist attacks per annum v. car accidents? If the government[s] actually cared about people, vehicular death would be confronted with the same rigor and rhetoric that extremist islam is. Kind of sad that rich south africans and faceless cororations are the only ones who seem to be doing anything about it.
I was actually worried my point may come across like this and considered clarifying, but I figured it would be obvious with even a moment's thought that I'm not suggesting literally reverting to exactly how roads were before cars. The only point I was making with respect to the way roads were used was that they were closer to public spaces than the situation we have now. Roads today are reserved pretty much exclusively for vehicles: just try dawdling or having a conversation on a major street in any city to see what I mean. If you RTFA, Hamburg is planning to replace the massive amount of space wasted by roads with green spaces. Relying on things like underground subways or elevated monorails or (much much much smaller than roads) bike paths means we can have the best of both worlds: undo the disastrous damage that cars did to city planning and public spaces without giving up the incredible benefits of streamlined transportation that cars enabled.
> Absolute nonsense. Go read some history, or even fictionalized accounts. Roads were never public spaces like you imagine. They were roads, and carts and horses routinely road right over people who didn't get out of the way.
Absolute nonsense. Go read some history, or even fictionalized accounts. Roads were public spaces almost exactly as I described them, since what I said was that vehicle traffic existed alongside people strolling and standing and doing whatever the hell else. As I mentioned above, we'll even be getting rid of the vehicle-induced downsides of these previous spaces (the mess and the danger), since vehicle traffic will be completely excluded from the road-replacements being described in the article.
We're lucky enough to have video from the early 1900s[1], which shows exactly what I mean about roads essentially being extensions of the way sidewalks are today (+ vehicle traffic), as opposed to the "all vehicles except for crosswalks" style we have today.
By the way, I notice that the only thing you addressed in your entire response was nitpicking (an inaccurate interpretation of) my unimportant supporting comment about how roads previously were. As I said before, the only thing I was alluding to was the fact that they were space that you could actually use, spend time on, play on, etc, as opposed to the reserved-for-cars and much-more-dangerous-for-pedestrians streets we have in the modern era. I can only assume you fully agree with the _actual_ point of my comment, which is that talking about giving up the advantages that efficient transit has bought is either disingenuous or idiotic, since that's not what's being discussed.
No, I understood, I was trying to tell you that roads are, and were, for travel and that's it. This public space you love never occurred on roads. People have ZERO interest in doing anything on a road except getting to their destination. We have lost nothing whatsoever.
> vehicle traffic existed alongside people strolling and standing and doing whatever the hell else
You can not bring back the halcyon days when people strolled slowly and were not in a rush. Those days are gone and are not coming back. People want to get where they are going without any time waste.
You propose replacing roads with underground subway or monorail, which are entirely unsuitable for 90% of cities. Plus they don't solve the last mile problem, I've actually never heard of any solution for it except self driving cars that don't exist, or expensive taxis. And even then you still need your hated roads!
> As I said before, the only thing I was alluding to was the fact that they were space that you could actually use, spend time on, play on, etc,
No ever actually did that. Your dream world simply never existed.
Go watch that video you posted and tell me how many people you see talking to other people. I spotted exactly ZERO. People were shopping, or going places, sometimes together. But none were using this "public space" you imagine for anything except travel.
Perhaps you are thinking of central markets like a souq? But that's only a tiny portion of the road network.
> which shows exactly what I mean about roads essentially being extensions of the way sidewalks are today (+ vehicle traffic), as opposed to the "all vehicles except for crosswalks" style we have today.
And you'll still have your hated roads even in your scenario! Only instead of carts you'll have slow autos? So in essence you want to drop the speed limit? And that's about it? So why all the text about how much space roads are taking?
Or do you want to get rid of roads to bring back an ideal that never existed and that no one even wants (periodic mini-parks would provide all the advantages and none of the drawbacks), and have no suggestions for what to replace it with?
If you're in a rush then taking cars through a city is a terrible method to get somewhere fast. The root problem is not that people have gotten more efficient.
>the last mile problem
You could have public transport. It wouldn't have to be exotic. It would need one lane and wouldn't fill it.
> And you'll still have your hated roads even in your scenario! Only instead of carts you'll have slow autos? So in essence you want to drop the speed limit? And that's about it? So why all the text about how much space roads are taking?
A few slow cars would not take up nearly as much space, and they would not interfere with people walking.
You are flat out wrong. Markets, bazaars, strip malls, housing; these are all based on road placement. What happens when a city has a huge celebration? Why, they shut down the roads so people can move freely in safety and merriment. What happens when the government pushes its citizenry too far? Why, take to the streets and make yourself heard!
TBH, i cannot think of a thing/facet of infrastructure that is more representative of public space and socializing than a road. True, steel death machines flying about at 70kph+ is not conducive to healthy neighborhoods. really, the personal car is a huge fracking waste of time, material, and currency.
I think you may, as my father does, believe that the car is some magical device that creates freedom and profits out of thin air. Just look at the commercials; each year we are expected to believe that the NEW one is SO MUCH FUCKING BETTER than last years model WHICH IS SHIT COMPARED TO THE NEW AVENTURAMO by NISSOTA NOW FOR JUST 200%+ THE AMOUNT IT COSTS TO MAKE!!! Truly, car culture is what props up the fallacious American Exceptionalism that capitalists purport.
How sad is it that the most patriotic thing i can do, more than military service or medical aid or child rearing, is to own 1+ cars and make all of the requisite repairs and pay for all of the titling, permits, and insurance?
You are completely wrong:
Many European cities are heavily pedestrianised, with large areas of the centre accessible only for deliveries. There are big public health impacts - walking and cycling becomes more popular, children have safe spaces to play, accident rates fall and the air quality is drastically improved.
99% Invisible did a nice episode on it a while back: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern-...
https://books.google.com/books?id=Noo4AQAAMAAJ&q=%22jaywalki...
> Results 1-1 of 1 > Page 49 > Within ninety days after the signing of those pledges, the records of the Bureau of Public Safety showed a decrease of almost 50 per cent in accidents resulting from jaywalking. In 1926 all honorary and special commissionerships in the police ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaywalking#Origin_of_the_term
EDIT: In case that sounded sarcastic or like I didn't believe you, I'm actually curious about how they're so far off in their "first usage".
Search the book for 1954, or any year before then, you will get results. Search for 1955 and you get nothing.
[1] http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=ncycus...
I really thing life is better in cities where people has priority over cars. But it is also true that the lower population density in a city, the higher dependency on cars it has.
Even a not particularly car friendly city like Amsterdam would look dramatically different if you removed the parking space, because it would free up such an insane amount of space.
Cars have multiplied the amount of space dedicated to transport, without actually adding much to human progress and development, what with most of it being used to carry individuals short distances from A to B and back again.
I don't see the massive benefit here. It's a pointless habit we shaped a life/work culture around with a mostly negative impact on the quality of life.
I am opposed to vehicles being the priority, but their prevalence is directly related to their usefulness within the economic regions they occur in. If you ever go to the developing world, you will see vehicles used to grow and maintain society. It is easy to forget, living in the suburbs as i do, that most of the world does not joy ride over-produced SUVs.
The ability to move freely is a magical thing. Living in a place with bad roads is a reality to itself that i think every westerner should experience. The problem is what we use to take advantage of the roads.
Roads are society's rivers.
I hope i live to see the day when city centers are car free, and all cars on the road are automated and distributed. Imagine leaving your domicile, hitting a widget on your device, and in a short time a vehicle approaches near silently, its bay door opening. you step in and you are off to work at a consistent 60kph. Each day, you see the same people on their commutes, so you naturally strike up conversations and friendships. With the steering column as well as ~90% of other standard car interaction gack gone, the interior is free to be redesigned to suit whatever purpose one may have. Vehicles could link up, breakfast could be enjoyed over whatever amount of data you choose to view on your way, and there would be no traffic that the passenger is accountable for. And in the afternoon you do it all again, only now beverage quads flit back and forth between mothership and car swarm, possibly making the commute the high point of the day.
Actually that would have been pretty typical for a 19th century American city, e.g. in San Francisco most of the older streets have always been that wide.
Cities did not value green spaces at all.
I understand the desire for the "good old days", but those days never actually existed.
If you're referring to ICE and automobiles, that "cheap" cost is bought by uncountable externalities that aren't on the balance sheet: many lives and wars to secure this cheap fuel, not to mention climate change.
Arguments to ban cars outright because of climate change and oil might've been relevant in the 20th century, but now they're pretty much moot, so long as electric vehicles continue to grow in popularity.
The first section of this article is interesting in this context: http://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
This is total nonsense, easily falsified by just looking at daily urban life in the modern world. The behavior you describe is completely routine in Shanghai; deaths are rare.
The Chinese appear to disagree:
Shanghai traffic police have punished 350,000 cases of pedestrian jaywalking this year.... There have been more than 200 crashes involving pedestrians that have killed 56 people as a result of ignoring traffic signals in Shanghai this year, traffic police said. (2012)[1]
and
According to Shanghai traffic police, 48 people have been killed and 206 injured in more than 200 accidents in the first 5 months of 2013, involving either jaywalking or scooters and mopeds running red lights[2]
[1] http://en.people.cn/90882/8059898.html
[2] http://www.healthandsafetyinshanghai.com/shanghai-traffic.ht...
Actually, people with lots of free time and access to drugs is the driver of all human progress and development.
To deliberately - or perhaps honestly - miss that point and suggest access to recreational drugs (the only kind we use the term "doing drugs") is necessary to point out.
I can see it as being taken either way though
And I wouldn't put advances in medical drugs particularly high on the list of advances either. It's not even the top of the list of medical advances. Though I don't classify vaccines as drugs.
Cars kill 1.2 million people a year. I think that is special, and not something that happened before.