- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Just to be clear, I do think the obvious solution to terrible things like this is vastly expanded public transit so that people don’t have to rely on cars to get everywhere, not overhyped technology and driving aids that are still only marginally better than a human driver. I just thought the article was interesting.
Trains are great for moving people but only from one designated area to another. With most commuters, they might be all headed to the same city but completely different parts of the city that aren’t easy to access. Their homes might all be in the same city but a 45 minute bus ride to the 40 minute train ride to the 20 minute bus ride, which isn’t helpful for what might have been a 45 minute commute by car to begin with.
Imagine if all the space between the primary radial arms of trains was filled in with street cars and pedestrian/micromobility centric spaces. Like the problem you are saying cars solve just doesn’t exist in the first place and people can still get around very easily. Even more rural folks can simply drive to the edge of this style of urban design if they need access to something. The reason bus rides are 45 minutes is because of the number of cars they have to put up with. The density of people that can be moved with shockingly good area coverage if cars are not a factor is incredible.
It’s still bad.
My old commute was a 25-30 minute drive. For a while though, I had to do it by public transport.
I’d be walking for less than 10 minutes because both my house and my work were close to the train station. The rest of it was on 4 different trains, but all within one metropolitan area. The changes were no more than 5 minutes each, pretty good really. However, the number of stops and the number of changes killed any progress. The end result was that it took 1h45m to 2h.
Changing a 8hr + 2x30m day into an 8hr + 2x2h day is a significant change in lifestyle. Losing 3hr day means you don’t enjoy your evenings, you don’t socialise, and life is only work. It’s miserable.
On a different job I worked at I could get there with just 1 train. That was about 35 minute drive or 55 minutes by train once you included the walk (again about 10-15 minutes total). Even with that you’re asking yourself “Why am I not driving?”.
I assume this is London.
And that’s fine, the train commutes were not for your specific needs. Weird that you had to switch three times to get to your destination, including the walks.
But this is hardly the norm.
If you want to have counter-anecdotal evidence presented, my daily commute used to be 5 metro stops worth 9 minutes of ride and 5 minutes of walking (in total). By car it was about the same, except for the added inconvenience of finding and paying for parking. This was Budapest.
Then there was 15 minutes of train coupled with 25 minutes of walking, 20 to the train station at a brisk pace and then another 5 to the office through the underground maze. By car it’d have been 15 minutes, not counting traffic. Which there always was. Because this was Toronto, the home of “just one more lane, bro”. So in total it was more like 40.
My current commute is 20-40 minutes by a single bus. Only ~2.5km. It’d be the same by car, because the route is entirely at the whims of the traffic.
However it doesn’t matter, because I also bike, and it’s my preferred mode of transportation. Biking in cities that do have minimal infra (such as well placed arteries) and culture for it, as in driving lessons focus on awareness and there is no us vs them mentality, is like IRL cheat code to commuting. You are faster than transit and traffic, you get some well needed exercise and de-stress time. And you get to exactly from where you leave from to where you want to go to, all while saving a dime.
Obviously biking is not for everyone. But if a fat dude with asthma in his late forties with two young children can do it, the barrier for entry doesn’t seem that steep.
This sounds great but isn’t really feasible in cities that are already built unfortunately.
Look at the history of transportation in whatever city you’re imagining. Cars took over, but I guarantee that city had the transportation infrastructure you think isn’t feasible. The automobile industry has you brainwashed into thinking cars are the only option, but one just has to look at the history of transportation in any given city to know that that isn’t true.
What does this even mean? Are you claiming all cities had railroad and public transportation hubs prior to cars being invented? I’m brainwashed because I don’t believe you can just seize private property and demolish tons of homes and businesses to build more efficient infrastructure in every moderate to large city in the country? Prior to cars existing, most cities were tiny and people didn’t commute 50 miles for work every day.
Can you point to the cities elsewhere where this transformation has occurred or where this already existed outside of maybe a handful of examples on the entire planet?
Educate yourself. You don’t have to be angry about it. And yes, all major cities had railroad and public transportation hubs before cars took over.
Sure they did, buddy. “Educate yourself” they say just like all those antivaxxers and COVID deniers do when they speak their nonsense. “All cities had public transportation” before automobiles existed.
Hilarious
You’re seriously attempting to argue with me about whether or not transportation existed before cars?