So what’s more practical, slowly replacing all ICE cars or completely redesigning entire cities, bulldozing large metro blocks to reconfigure and rebuild?
What is the argument here? Cars are here to stay forever and ever? Most daily commuters could get used to a train. It is possible for most people to live without a car, your city was just designed in a way that requires you to.
bassomitron@lemmy.world 8 months ago
n2burns@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
A little column A, a little column B. Mostly, we can have gentle changes to our cities, like removing Single-Family Home and other exclusionary zoning, removing mandatory parking minimums, as well other initiatives to encourage higher density, mixed-use buildings, and active transportation usage.
Sanctus@lemmy.world 8 months ago
As I just commented. How many individuals can drive cars before congestion makes it impossible? 10 million people? 20? 30? The I-10 and 101 stack interchange is already a fucken mess that can’t be expanded. How do you handle exponentially more drivers on the road each year?
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 8 months ago
How many individuals can drive cars before congestion makes it impossible
It’s impossible to answer that - there’s just too many other variables, such as how far are people travelling, how many of them are going to the same destination, how many roads are there (not how many lanes, how many roads), etc etc.
Sanctus@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I was talking more about where I live. In Arizona your options are car or a slow bus. The light rail only goes to the east side and inner city. You pretty much are forced to own a car and feed into that entire complex. Its bullshit and the congestion is getting exponentially worse each year. I’ve been voting in local elections for my lifetime and nobody cares. Guessing by this comment section everyone is content being forced to participate in the car market. So go ahead, be forced to buy insurance, tires, gas, and vehicle maintenance. Be forced to drive on crowded roads during early morning hours with thousands of others. Everyone loves it I guess. Instead of, maybe voting for public transit that is so reliable you can count on a tram or train every 30 minutes so we don’t have to spend multiple thousands of dollars on a vehicle to get to work and back.
ilmagico@lemmy.world 8 months ago
As much as I’d like to use public transport, even with LA traffic on a Thursday (for those who don’t know, Thursdays are always the worst in LA), even when the 405 is a parking lot, taking the metro / bus is still at least 2x slower than driving. Yes I tried, it’s that ridiculous. There are a lot of ongoing projects to build and extend metro lines, new bike lanes, etc. but progress is very slow. As others have said, the whole metropolitan area was designed with cars, and only cars in mind.
heyitsmikey128@lemmy.world 8 months ago
That’s the point, we can’t exactly just resign a city from the ground up to work with public transit especially when it’s not being pushed for by the majority
Sanctus@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yes but what is the alternative? Can civilians all have their own car when 10 million live in a city? What about 30 million? 100? It stops making sense the more people you have. And on top of that suppliers and transportation services use the same road, too. It is already like flying through the death star out here with half the road being eaten by transportation companies.
kalleboo@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The higher the density of the city, the better public transit works. You can live in Tokyo or London and get by without a car, but everyone in the world can’t live in Tokyo-dense cities.
heyitsmikey128@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Well with the way the birthrates are going, I think population is going to stabilize.
Sanctus@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Then you’re not looking.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/birth-rate
It is still going up just much more slowly. To say we shouldn’t worry about efficiency cause there will never be that many people disregards the benefits of unloading all of these personal costs to individuals. Vehicles are expensive on top of everything.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s definitely not “most”. You have to live and work near a train station for that to be viable option.
In Copenhagen, which has a wonderful transit network, trains still only cover 39% of traffic. And I assure you the other 61% is not cycling or walking.