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On January 11 2019 03:34 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 03:31 ticklishmusic wrote:
the parallels to a person's health slowly deteriorating due to starvation are pretty good. a couple days without food are okay, but then it's this little thing, that little thing, little things become bigger things and all of a sudden catastrophic failure. I'm supposed to be flying January 24, so I am actually somewhat scared with the whole FAA safety audit people being gone 
Speaking of which, wasn't there a whole thing a ways back about Trump trying to take credit for flight safety despite the long standing excellent record that well predated him?
Oh, yeah, yeah there was.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/02/news/trump-air-safety/index.html
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On January 11 2019 08:18 Simberto wrote:
And i still have the feeling that you are classifying far too much as "needed" expenses. Why does a family need two cars? Are both living so far from their jobs that not at least one of them could ride a bike or take public transit? Especially if both drive to some common spot together first? I am deeply sceptic of any budget that deems two cars as necessary.
In America, public transportation is against their religion. You can't apply German standards to American material conditions.
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They say having a car is freedom.
But I hate driving to work in shitty traffic.
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There are sections of this country that are so large and sparsely populated that they don’t have a local government. They are called called townships. But even in the more urban states we cannot rely on public transportation. Most of our states couldn’t afford to maintain a robust public transportation system sufficient to allow for zero car ownership.
Of couse we could improve, but it is doubtful we would ever be able to have transportation sufficient to ditch the two car per household lifestyle.
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On January 11 2019 08:57 Lazare1969 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 08:18 Simberto wrote:
And i still have the feeling that you are classifying far too much as "needed" expenses. Why does a family need two cars? Are both living so far from their jobs that not at least one of them could ride a bike or take public transit? Especially if both drive to some common spot together first? I am deeply sceptic of any budget that deems two cars as necessary. In America, public transportation is against their religion. You can't apply German standards to American material conditions.
Also, there's a lot of areas where public transportation is basically nonexistent. For years, the nearest bus stop to where I was living was over three miles (a bit over 5 km) away, and that was a steep mountain road.
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I grew up in an area where the closest bus stop was a half an hour drive away. And it took 40 minutes to get to a store to buy milk.
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On January 11 2019 08:57 Lazare1969 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 08:18 Simberto wrote:
And i still have the feeling that you are classifying far too much as "needed" expenses. Why does a family need two cars? Are both living so far from their jobs that not at least one of them could ride a bike or take public transit? Especially if both drive to some common spot together first? I am deeply sceptic of any budget that deems two cars as necessary. In America, public transportation is against their religion. You can't apply German standards to American material conditions.
There was a time between about 1900 and 1950 in the US when many cities had light rail networks so people could get around easily in the city. But some rich people wanted to sell more oil. And car manufacturers wanted to sell more cars. So they spewed some propaganda around about how trams are bad and now everybody has a car or two. Ka-Ching!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_streetcar_systems_in_the_United_States
https://i2.wp.com/www.marketurbanism.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/streetcar.jpg
But surely such propaganda wouldn't work in this day and age...
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On January 11 2019 09:37 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 09:25 Plansix wrote:
I grew up in an area where the closest bus stop was a half an hour drive away. And it took 40 minutes to get to a store to buy milk. And what % of the population is this? This is just more american exceptionalism, of course you could have way better public transportation and it would work for the majority. It is way more expensive to manage the amount of roads, overpasses and so than mass transport. People just don't want to do it and it isn't culturally expected. We also have a car culture here, and we are way more sparse than you and I have been to enough city planning sessions to know that what you are saying is simply not true.
Not that extreme, i'd agree.
To argue that you can't live in an area where cars are necessary is blatantly false though. The hint is in fact in what you said right there with the "city planning sessions". I don't know anything about Canada except there's a waterfall somewhere, but in germany for example you got rural towns where the "city planning sessions" are about how many cows are allowed to go on a field in september next year. In fact, i live in such a village (though, in the UK). We got a population of around 3000, you tell me how many "planning sessions" our council would spend on public transport, and how high a priority it would be. I can tell you that we have a train station (with trains that roughly work 75% of the time, thanks Arriva), with the next actual city being roughly an hour away (Cardiff). Oh and we have a bus stop at the train station, with busses going every hour to the next "settlement".
I mean, there's an awful lot of assumptions with people who're arguing that mass transport is the solution to everything. I don't even bother responding to Simberto, who seemingly can't even fathom the need for two cars in a family of four. Living in, you know, not the city with arguably one of the best infrastructures in germany.
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In the town where I live there is 2 train stops, both on the same line that head towards the city. Buses are nonexistant. Taxis are nonexistant. Unless you're working in the city or somewhere on the line between here and there, public transportation doesn't exist.
Coworker I used to have was let go because he couldn't get to work on time because he didn't have a car and was getting paid too poorly to uber/lyft to/from work. I saw the dude walking on the side of the road one day because that was the only option he had.
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On January 11 2019 09:37 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 09:25 Plansix wrote:
I grew up in an area where the closest bus stop was a half an hour drive away. And it took 40 minutes to get to a store to buy milk. And what % of the population is this? This is just more american exceptionalism, of course you could have way better public transportation and it would work for the majority. It is way more expensive to manage the amount of roads, overpasses and so than mass transport. People just don't want to do it and it isn't culturally expected. We also have a car culture here, and we are way more sparse than you and I have been to enough city planning sessions to know that what you are saying is simply not true.
Over half the state is rural and lacks any form of public transportation. My home town still doesn’t have high speed internet or traditional cable TV. Am I am not even talking about a state like Maine where there are literally signs that warn travelers to buy gas because the next station is near the border of Canada half a day away. Think of the most rural town you know and that is vast swaths of America.
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On January 11 2019 10:19 JimmiC wrote:
I agree with both what you said.
m4ini there are farmers and small town people in the States and Canada and neither would have a public transportation solution. I was just pointing that the vast majority live in Cities that are a size that could support public transport and it would solve tons of problems, help the environment, save money, but be slightly less convenient. The biggest barrier is cultural it is not logistics.
Gahlo there is a big issue in many NA citizens that the infrastructure is not their because culturally people don't want it. And because it is bare bones, it sucks and then even less use it. Also, the way city budgets work are strange and in "silo's" so even though the city could overall save money by having a great public transport system they to not make that call because Transit saving roads budget doesn't matter to them (in some cases roads are provincial and transit city so there is that hurdle too). Also, because politicians like votes they do what people want not what is best. We just had a 100 million dollar parkade built at our local hospital, could have had a huge amount of public transit for that and downed the need for parking, which is a huge problem in most urban centers.
There is a bit of a chicken and egg thing going on no doubt. It is just silly to act like it just won't work because murica.
And that's the entire problem with the situation. There won't be a will for effective public transit unless there already is one. In the current situation having a car is a necessity and claiming otherwise is ignoring the reality of the situation. It's like telling a diabetic person they don't need to take insulin because their body should be able to regulate that just fine.
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On January 11 2019 10:35 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 10:32 Gahlo wrote:On January 11 2019 10:19 JimmiC wrote:
I agree with both what you said.
m4ini there are farmers and small town people in the States and Canada and neither would have a public transportation solution. I was just pointing that the vast majority live in Cities that are a size that could support public transport and it would solve tons of problems, help the environment, save money, but be slightly less convenient. The biggest barrier is cultural it is not logistics.
Gahlo there is a big issue in many NA citizens that the infrastructure is not their because culturally people don't want it. And because it is bare bones, it sucks and then even less use it. Also, the way city budgets work are strange and in "silo's" so even though the city could overall save money by having a great public transport system they to not make that call because Transit saving roads budget doesn't matter to them (in some cases roads are provincial and transit city so there is that hurdle too). Also, because politicians like votes they do what people want not what is best. We just had a 100 million dollar parkade built at our local hospital, could have had a huge amount of public transit for that and downed the need for parking, which is a huge problem in most urban centers.
There is a bit of a chicken and egg thing going on no doubt. It is just silly to act like it just won't work because murica. And that's the entire problem with the situation. There won't be a will for effective public transit unless there already is one. In the current situation having a car is a necessity and claiming otherwise is ignoring the reality of the situation. It's like telling a diabetic person they don't need to take insulin because their body should be able to regulate that just fine. It is more like telling a type 2 diabetic person to lose weight and then their body will be able to regulate their insulin.
Too bad half the body is just fine being obese so the other half has to put up with the situation.
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Some places have solid public transit. When I lived in Providence, RI I could pretty solidly rely on RIPTA to take me wherever I needed to go.
Does that mean that they didnt occasionally hit someone with a bus and drag them along the grill of the bus for a few blocks? Or crash the bus into a pillar supporting a bus stop?
Those things actually happened. America just is not good at public transit, although I actually do think RIPTA was pretty great overall, with regards to being able to go pretty much anywhere in the RI/MA area without too many serious gaps. The US CAN have good public transit, but implementing that in any semi-rural area would be horrible, I live in an area where a ton of people commute to Washington DC and the traffic is actual bullshit at all times, and people regularly spend an hour or more driving up there, bussing up there with a ton of stops would probably take like three hours, which is a little insane/unreasonable imo for a commute.
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most decent sized cities have some sort of bus system, and i would say almost every major metro area has light rail of one sort another, though the level of service varies.
my city suffers from a lot of NIMBYism where areas, mostly suburbs, have resisted having light rail extended into their neighborhoods because of concerns about importing urban elements/ crime (how's that for thinly veiled racism). but the tides do seem to be turning, as our highway system simply can't handle the growing population.
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San Diego has amazing public transport. So does Kansas City. I'll let you know how Chicago is in a few weeks when I move there. But there are places that have solid public transport and people use it like water. It just isn't possible to expand it to all cities. This is why Hyper Loop is so intriguing. If they implement it and make it actually work, it'll solve so many problems and save a lot of money.
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EPT
