Post #436,150
9/10/20 1:34:58 AM
9/10/20 1:38:47 AM
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They're outliers, then.
Sorry, but the buses in Reading are no better than the buses up here, to wit: shit.
I'm happy that they've found a way of living that means they don't need a car, but their experience is absolutely unrepresentative of the not-London mass transit situation. People around here (a very ordinary small town in England albeit on the coast) who don't have cars find themselves either considerably disadvantaged (good luck taking a job with irregular hours, because if you finish at midnight or later, getting home is going to be an ordeal) and/or flinging themselves on the mercy of their car-owning friends and family.
For example: my office (that I don't go to any more, because WFH :D) is 30 miles away, which is 40 minutes by car. By public transport? Two hours, five minutes. And I live literally 5 minutes walk (about a third of a mile) from a (very minor) railway station.
There's a saying: in England, a hundred miles is a long way. In America, a hundred years is a long time.
The thing with cars is this: they give you agency. You get to go where you want, when you want. This is very powerful. Public transport, as much as I'm a huge proponent of it, is best suited to solving the commuting problem - as evidenced by its obvious success in London (and, to be fair, NYC, and other giant cities). But it's inherently travelling at the pleasure of someone else, and that's a very conditional freedom.
Edited by pwhysall
Sept. 10, 2020, 01:38:47 AM EDT
They're outliers, then.
Sorry, but the buses in Reading are no better than the buses up here, to wit: shit.
I'm happy that they've found a way of living that means they don't need a car, but their experience is absolutely unrepresentative of the not-London mass transit situation.
For example: my office (that I don't go to any more, because WFH :D) is 30 miles away, which is 40 minutes by car. By public transport? Two hours, five minutes. And I live literally 5 minutes walk (about a third of a mile) from a (very minor) railway station.
There's a saying: in England, a hundred miles is a long way. In America, a hundred years is a long time.
The thing with cars is this: they give you agency. You get to go where you want, when you want. This is very powerful. Public transport, as much as I'm a huge proponent of it, is best suited to solving the commuting problem - as evidenced by its obvious success in London (and, to be fair, NYC, and other giant cities). But it's inherently travelling at the pleasure of someone else, and that's a very conditional freedom.
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Post #436,155
9/10/20 2:03:47 AM
9/10/20 2:03:47 AM
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Yeah, personal transportation is not going away
For those that can handle it the electric bikes, scooters, unicycles have crossed from toys to amazing long-distance transport vehicles.
Long-distance meaning under a 15-mile commute. Each way. At around 30 mph.
I would have loved to have any of them to get from my house to the train station and then from the train to my office. We could have cut a multiple car family down to a single car.
But they're not carrying a family and they're not enclosing you in the weather and you better be able to balance and stand. But for commuter vehicles for healthy people they look great. Until it rains or snows.
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Post #436,162
9/10/20 10:34:37 AM
9/10/20 10:34:37 AM
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Nit Re: You get to go where you want, when you want.
Provided, of course, somebody has built you a road to there. I'm not arguing that the same doesn't apply to buses, trains, subways, etc. It's just that there's this commonly held American fantasy (also, I'm not ascribing that to you personally) that the "highway is Merkin Individual Freedumb" and that is plainly not true.
I'll concede that, sadly, cars remain a necessity because of the ways we've chosen to arrange ourselves. That is a choice I'd hoped to see withdrawn in my lifetime, but that's not going to happen. And I'm as guilty as anyone for making that choice.
In non-Covid days, I commute by car to work 40 miles from home and there is no mass transit of any sort between me and where I work, despite my office being in the second largest city in my state. In fact, Moffat Scotland has more regular bus service than that second largest city in my state has within its city limits. So, I could say, "I must have a car in order to get to work." But, that accepts as fact that I "must live 40 miles from where I work." TBH, that's a dubious claim. bcnu,
Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #436,165
9/10/20 11:11:37 AM
9/10/20 11:11:37 AM
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Nah, that's not it.
It's that you don't have to wonder if there is a bus to your destination, and if it's running today, and whether you can take the dogs with you, and is there a return service, etc. You don't have to stand in the pissing rain waiting for the bus that isn't coming because they're running a reduced schedule due to strikes, driver illness, or whatever. Also, when The Man decides you're not travelling, well. You're not travelling.
There are simply too many people now for everyone to live within walking or even cycling distance of their place of work. It was practical when, in a town of 10,000 people of working age, they almost all worked in the local industries, and lived in the kinds of housing that was within a mile or so (aka shitty slums).
There are a couple of correct answers here:
1. Eliminate the need to commute. People should work from home where it is practical. This is a lot of people. And this will lift the load on the transport infrastructure for those who do need to commute.
2. Improve mass transit. This should be entirely focussed on commuting right now.
3. Eliminate ICE vehicles. This will make everything quieter and cleaner.
4. For shorter journeys, greatly improve sustrans infrastructure - this means proper cycleways everywhere, nice wide footpaths, properly engineered crossings where peds and cyclists have to traverse roads, mass transit vehicles that can accommodate a lot of bikes, etc.
tl;dr: the ability to partake of personal travel, without recourse to a third party for permission, is freedom. There are a very large number of journeys made, however, that are either unnecessary, or could be made via sustrans and/or mass transit. But personal travel is still freedom, and doing these things makes it better.
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Post #436,167
9/10/20 12:20:32 PM
9/10/20 12:20:32 PM
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Real estate and rent is significantly more expensive the closer to a city center you get.
Someone I work with just bought an extremely nice house out in the burbs for the same monthly outlay as a 2br apartment in downtown Detroit.
Personally I despise apartment living. Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
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Post #436,170
9/10/20 4:16:48 PM
9/10/20 4:16:48 PM
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apartment==kennels don't like them either rather live in a trailer park
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
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