lol - I love when this gets (re-) posted periodically. The first time I read it I was thinking “out in the desert” when it said it was outside Phoenix. It’s not. It’s a single block (1 street x 1 ave) of space *in the middle of Tempe Arizona * with a 4 lane highway on one side. This is not a “no car utopia,” it’s a more-profit apartment complex that is using the “walkable city” greenwashing to cover the entire parcel with dense apartments (and limited, doomed retail) and not have to set aside mandatory parking to cut into profits. Last I looked, a 3BR rental was something like $35k-40k a year in rent.
Don’t get me wrong - the concept is nice, with good massing around the alleys and public spaces. This took planning. And it’s ~1/2 or 3/4 mile walk to a pretty major shopping area (across said 4 lane highway and a massive parking area at the mall). And that last part is good because there aren’t enough units in this development to support more than 1-2 restaurants and a bodega…it’s only about 1/4 to 1/3 the population needed to support a standard grocery store. And - as advertised- there’s no parking and Tempe isn’t walkable so you’re not getting any substantial outside customer traffic.
And is there a better solution? And don’t give me that public transportation bullshit, it’s a bad solution in most cases and is already in place anyway.
Then it isn’t good enough yet. People will use public transport when it’s better or cheaper than a car. Dedicated bus lanes to bypass car traffic should be in place, to encourage using busses that create less traffic. Trains should be reliable, frequent, and cheap for longer distance travel. This stuff is all do-able with just a small amount of effort, and has been done and successful in other places, but it requires governments to stuff huffing gasoline.
What kind of public transport? And how is it implemented? The devil is in the details for this stuff.
Free bus tickets do nothing if the buses are stuck in traffic with no bus lane so often that people go “fuck it” and take the car anyway, because it’s more convenient.
Free metro tickets do nothing if the routes don’t go where people want to go.
Free train tickets do nothing if the trains don’t leave frequently enough to have options and/or are stuck waiting for freight trains to pass.
There’s any number of non-monetary reasons that public transport might suck, but there are solutions for them.
The problem is that it isn’t a matter of cars vs busses. It’s a matter of urban design in general.
Public transit gets better as density goes up. A bus that drops you off at a giant-ass Walmart parking lot with nothing else but two drivethroughs in walking distance isn’t very useful. A bus that drops you off in a neighborhood with 4 dozen shops, a dozen restaurants, 4 bars and 3 coffee shops within a 5 minute walk is way more useful.
By contrast, density makes driving worse. Density means more people are driving the same way you want to go. More people in cars means more traffic on the road with you. Designing for cars pushes you to low density sprawl.
Just building public transit isn’t the solution. Just building public transit in a typical American suburban sprawl makes something about as compelling as a Ford F150 in Vatican City.
You have to fix urban design - stop building stroads and start building streetcar suburbs again.
I mean, step 1 would be forcing the suburbs to pay the actual cost for their own power lines, plumbing and sewage, roads, phone lines, etc. Since as it stands, most of that cost is subsidised by the highly productive inner city, and that infrastructure is far cheaper per-person in dense neighbourhoods than it is in suburban tumours (sure, live out there if you want, but accept that you will either be paying a fortune for the infrastructure upkeep that supports you, or accept lower-class, cheaper infrastructure. I have a great aunt and uncle who live out in the countryside, and they have a dirt road, a septic tank and a rainwater tank, only their electricity and phone lines are comparable to what you get in cities, because it literally does not make economic sense to run paved roads or plumbing out to where they live).
Once people have realised that single-family housing with paved roads, sewage, plumbing and reliable electricity is well outside the economic reach of the vast majority of people, UPZONE. Demolish suburbs to replace them with far denser urban neighbourhoods, ones made up of townhouses, apartment blocks and mixed residential/commercial buildings. Change the zoning laws so that anyone can start a commercial business out of the front yard. Designate parks and other community areas in between your blocks of apartments and townhouses so that nobody is ever more than 15 minutes’ walk away from one. And for those who still want to live out in suburban sprawl, make the transition to being more self-sufficient easier.
Then, you have a city dense enough that you can start running vast amounts of public transport through it. Not just busses, but trains and trams as well. A train is more or less the ideal form of fast transportation along a known, unchanging transport corridor, with far more energy efficiency than anything that runs on tarmac, the ability to hit highway speeds inside city limits, and the ability to be extended almost infinitely. They can also be run from overhead power lines, no need for batteries or internal combustion engines. Oh, and the same lines you run urban rail along can also be used for freight trains, so they can replace both car journeys and freight truck journeys.
When you have dense cities with well-designed and extensive public transport, you can get almost anywhere with just one transfer, your bus/train/tram comes often enough that you’re never at the stop for more than 10 minutes, and even a trip from one edge of the city to the other will rarely be more than an hour. Plus, you don’t have to pay attention to the road, nor pay for fuel and maintenance.
Source: I live in a city where you can sharply draw a divide between the pre-car and post-car zones, and the pre-car zones are mostly like how I describe, while the post-car zones are suburban sprawl shitholes that might have a train station if they’re lucky
Your comment does nothing but make people angry. It’s not helping anything, and will not change the behavior of anyone. When you insult someone, you only make enemies for yourself, and that’s nothing to be proud of.
Take some time and think about what you write and how it can realistically affect the world. Would you not rather make a positive contribution, and improve social media?
“Sure, the planet is unfit for human habitation now, but at least we got to have lawns in front of our houses and meat every day until the world ended”
Stopping climate change requires drastic action, rethinking how we live every aspect of our lives, and the wastefulness of suburbs means they must go, just like the internal combustion engine and the animal agriculture industry. How will you justify to future generations that you left them with a ruined world, all because you and those like you were too selfish to give up your current style of living?
Additionally, they are provably a blight on cities. They cost far more to maintain than they produce, since they lack any serious commercial activity, so no taxes, and the spread-out nature of them means that any infrastructure is far more expensive per person. You wouldn’t even need to actively demolish them, just cut off all maintenance, and watch them rot. Plus, they keep literally bankrupting cities, so often there is no choice, the money is no longer there to maintain them.
Sure, go right ahead and get to work on that plan then. I’m sure everyone in the suburbs will agree to give up their homes and land and move to the dense urban Soviet-style shitholes that you envision as the perfect way to live.
This could be the Striezelmarkt in Dresden at the Altmarkt. look here
You could walk there from the Hauptbahnhof but there are a lot of public transit stations close by.
Is this supposed to be big? Do American cities not have festivals, concerts, parks, squares, new years parties… Or is this just low hanging circlejerk bait lol? 🤔
Again, those are nice vehicles but can’t replace a truck for certain things. A truck can haul much more weight and I wouldn’t want a van because a lot of the time the stuff we’re hauling is too big to fit inside or just straight up garbage and debris that I’d rather have in an outside bed.
I mean the whole rest of the world seems to manage just fine without these, and we have tradesmen as well? The cabins can be as clean or dirty as you need, I’ve seen everything, loading trash or debris is also fine. If you’re really carrying mostly gravel or other type of stuff like that then you’d have something specialized for that with a much bigger box than on your pickups, or rent it for the job.
But looking at your other comments in the thread I see that you’re just set in your ideas and just looking at finding justifications for niche cases where it might be a superior vehicle, which I don’t deny certainly exist, but that’s not the problem, the problem is these are a dime a dozen if not the majority on your roads, and they’re not at all good as normal vehicles whereas the vans are. Also they’re honestly just superior in pretty much every way, flat bottom, low load-in height, can accept pallets, stuff stays dry, locked, engines are efficient and not crazy oversize and gaz-guzzling, they have good viewing angles at the front (e.g. you would see a child in front of the vehicle), etc etc etc.
So you agree with me than? Idk how many times I have to say yes I agree most people don’t need trucks, I don’t personally like trucks nor have I ever had one and I don’t plan on ever getting one, but they should still exist for those niche cases (although there seems to be more than you think exist). I’ll admit I was wrong about a trucks payload when compared to a van but it still wouldn’t work for most of the work I do. If you wanna carry the four person team that I work with they’d have to sit in the back taking away from the space required to haul materials, not to mention even if we wanted to drop two guys and have the full cargo space we still wouldn’t be able to haul as much as we can in our truck bed.
Also I agree vans are superior in a lot of ways, if they work for you I would absolutely suggest getting one instead of a truck, and some of your points are great but I gotta ask. You think trucks can’t accept pallets?! I feel like it’s far easier to put a pallet in a truck than a van lol. Not to mention you can stack multiple pallets on a truck! Also the low flat bottom is certainly a plus for some cases but that’s negative for when we need to haul materials off road on some shitty lumpy mud trails. And as far as gas guzzling goes trucks have become a lot more efficient over the years, obviously they’re still about the worst personal vehicles you can get as far as gas mileage goes but vans aren’t that much better.
I think we do agree, it’s hard to tell sometimes haha. I base my view that they’re not needed by 99% of the population on the fact I see much less than 1% of them on our roads (thankfully) and everyone seems to be doing just fine.
I get it, they’re kind of a middle ground trying to do it all but it fails at doing so imo and in the process, creates dangerous and polluting vehicles, compounded by the fact they’re getting bought on whim or as social status but then never see the use they’re supposed to be made for, just terrible all around.
But indeed I don’t deny they can be good specialized vehicles, I just think these cases are <1% of the population like if you’re chasing bears in the arctic or something, and certainly trades people etc would generally not need them and be better served by alternatives.
Lol I hear ya, especially over the internet! But yeah, we definitely agree that there are far too many trucks on the road and too many people buying trucks for dumb reasons.
That’s anecdotal evidence, I’ve never even seen a kei truck in real life but that doesn’t mean I think they aren’t out there, and sure you could fit a couple guys up front. But I’ve seen plenty of teams of 4 or sometimes even more come piling out of a work truck. I’m currently in one with four people right now! And just to be clear I agree there are far too many trucks and not every suburban dad needs one, but you blame the driver not the truck. There are absolutely instances where a full size truck is the best vehicle for the job, just like there are instances where a kei truck makes far more sense.
Of course, but that doesn’t mean one should get it. If you are gonna haul wood once a year, you are not BUYING a log trailer and just tow it behind you vehicle through the city all year - like a sensible person, you rent one for a day or two.
You did, but said I blame the driver not the truck. Who else to blame? The driver bought and is using the vehicle. I am not against using a vehicle for it’s job, but so many drivers just don’t do that.
I am sure the F-150 has a legitimate use, but it’s seldom used to it’s full potential, and for some reason it’s MOSTLY used legitimately.
Yeah exactly get mad at the driver who buys a truck they don’t need. But don’t be mad at trucks simply for existing, they have good reasons to exist. That’s the only point I’m trying to make.
Idk why I thought otherwise lol that’s my bad but yeah looking back I agree with all your comments lmao, it seems like there are others in this thread that just straight up don’t think trucks should exist though lol
It’s not about what you have, it’s what you do with it. I have carried things in my small sedan that you would never believe. You are just underestimating japanese tech and Mexican capacity for not giving an f.
The Suzuki Carry has a bed width of 1585mm (62.4") the Silverado has a max bed width of 64.8" (1646mm) so 60mm/2.5" wider. But the Silverado’s bed isn’t rectangular, ie if you want to lay something flat, the widest it can be is 50" (1270mm). That’s a foot narrower than the Suzuki.
The Silverado has higher walls which imo isn’t really a plus or minus. (More bulk materials, and less need to tie things down, but harder to access the things).
There are a lot of other differences in available configurations. I think the reason a lot of people prefer Silverados boil down to esthetics, and the perceptions of others. I think that for a lot of men, pickup trucks are an expression of their masculinity. They want something big and powerful that they can take into the woods and be manly^tm^ with.
A Carry is very practical and if I owned a landscaping business I think that’s what I’d want my crews to be driving.
But also, I’m not a business owner. I’m a man and I get it. Honestly I’d way rather own that enormous impractical pickup. I’m more likely to be hauling hockey gear than lumber and drywall. I’m tall and girthy, I appreciate a spacious cab. I have child seats in my car.
Maybe men should stop pretending they don’t care a lot about fun.
Edit to add: but I do agree we need society to be less car/truck centric.
Tbh I was going to say that at least some of the new fangled pick ups have easy to remove wheels, most of that stuff is easy to check, replace tires etc, but besides that from what I’ve been told they’re as much a pain to drive as they are to giveaway to
Nothing beats walking to me. I wish I could walk everywhere but stupid lack of endless time. In general I enjoy travel more that is slow but consistently moving. So train over bus and I just hate planes because sure the plane is fast but most of your journey your just sitting there or in lines. but yeah it would be walk then bike then metro train then other train. Plane and bus are pretty unappealing to me so not sure where to put either. At that point I might actually prefer a car, which I know is verbotem. Actually busses are not to bad if the jaunt is short enough but really then I might as well bike anyway.
Safety on the road has been improved so far by having public orgs and governments pressuring companies with regulations. Without them there would be no seatbelts and dashboards might still be dotted with stylish pointy metal spikes.
Unfortunately safety regulations have solely focused on the occupants of the concerned vehicle. It follows that any feature that protects the occupant at the expense of everyone else is still measured as a net positive. Ultimately this is leading to an arms race.
Vehicle safety needs to expand to the other side of the windshield.
Vehicle safety needs to expand to the other side of the windshield.
I would take it further and day that regulations should prioritize the safety of the people outside the vehicle over the people inside, for the simple reason that the people buying the vehicle already have a strong incentive to maximize their own safety, while they currently have zero concerns about the safety of pedestrians.
Pedestrians, on the other hand, don’t have the freedom to choose which vehicle runs them over, so it is up to regulations to advocate for them because nobody else will.
I’ve legit heard people say things along the lines of “The largest SUV or trucks are safer for Americans because it can hold up better in a collision with deer which we have a lot of.” (Because apparently large wildlife aren’t common anywhere at all in the rest of the world.)
They have a point though, and they’ll hold up especially well against a specific, extremely common subspecies of deer called “humans.”
Bike and it’s not close. I’ve loved being on my bike my whole life, ever since it was the easiest way to get to the public library as a youth. My hometown had a beloved, beautiful, and very extensive bike trail system, and in addition to my use of it for transit, my family would ride it together for fun every Sunday. At peak usage as an adult rider, my daily commute was ~27 miles. Currently it’s 9, but I do a lot of errands and shopping and recreational riding as well.
I’ve been riding motorcycles on and off for years. For the last 8ish months I’ve been riding one of those like city share electric moped/scooter things. It’s a cheap Chinese NIU brand. For the size and state of infrastructure in my current city (Tbilisi) it’s honestly the best way to get around.
I lived in Tokyo for years though. I would take a train network like that any day of the week.
fuck_cars
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.