“All Chicagoans have the right to public transit.” Sane and doable. Not done, not currently, as any map of the city will show you, but both possible and desirable.
“All Illinoisans have a right to public transit.” I’d love to see it, even if it’s just once-a-day trains to Springfield, to St. Louis, to the Region, to Milwaukee, to Rockford, to Peoria, to Chambana. But that’s a lot more train lines than we have now, and that means land for stations and RoWs, it means manpower and materials for maintenance, it means working out the logistics of scheduling and fare pricing for the communities being served. And it still won’t cover everyone unless augmented with bus lines, which also need logistics, manpower, and maintenance. Still desirable; not very efficient, especially for a perpetually cash-strapped state like Illinois.
“All Americans have a right to public transit.” At that point it’d be empty words, doing more harm than good.
“All humans have a right to public transit.” At this point, purely aspirational rather than descriptive.
In Switzerland, minimum frequency standards for public transport are enshrined in law – meaning each citizen can expect regular provision of bus and train services, even in rural areas. It is administrated at local level, with each of the country’s ‘cantons’ setting out a framework for delivery.
In the Zurich canton, for instance, which is roughly comparable with South Yorkshire, England, and includes both urban and rural areas, villages of 300 people or more are guaranteed a bus service at least every hour. In the Bern canton, which is less densely populated than Devon, small villages get at least four and up to 15 return bus services each day.
In both places, schedules are aligned with railway timetables to ensure citizens can travel short or long distances with ease. Accessibility for disabled passengers is also a legal requirement.
The article is speaking from a British perspective, so that isn’t really a problem. I do think that such a limit on density or some other metric. It should be more that every town and village has a public transport connection, rather than every rural farmhouse.
Yup. as a huge truck driver and also as a bicyclist, I’m always very aware of bike lanes, especially these mergey-switchy areas. I have been the bicyclist in this situation before and I have been hit by a car in even less-dangerous traffic patterns before. I’m very conscientious about bicyclists when I’m driving.
Shit happens. No one means to hit a pedestrian. Sometimes people with actually clean records hit pedestrians. It’s not called an accident because it was on purpose…
As is the case with every sane driver on the road. All the same, pedestrians are hit by vehicles every day.
With the volume of car travel in the world, it is a statistical certainty that people will make mistakes, be it distraction, complacency, fatigue, whatever the cause. An abundance of these high up, flat-fronted vehicles create a scenario such that WHEN those mistakes DO happen, they’re far more likely to end a life. To suggest that people should just be better drivers is essentially just wishing the problem will solve itself.
I think a lot of this conversation boils down to someone needing to make an ESP32 device that sits in your OBD port and can be addressed directly for those who have a car that can connect to your home WiFi. I feel like one of those already exists…
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