US or Imperial inches ? /s
The problem is that we've given so much space to automobiles that there's no room for anything else (bikes, scooters, etc). Pedestrians have been given a sliver only because drivers need to walk between parking and their destination. This is true even in cities where the majority of people don't even drive!
I think Bacerlona hits a good compromise. The city has the concept of a superblock, which is a few city blocks grouped into one calm zone. Most car traffic stays on the streets around the outside, the perimeter of the superblock. Inside, driving is restricted and only at low speeds where allowed, so people and bikes get the space. So deliveries and residents can still but only slowly.
That’s far from the only example - many cities in Asia follow a similar model.
“I rarely drive and so I am stressed when I do” is not an issue that needs to be solved.
But maybe rethink whether they "need" to and whether said vehicles must live in dense residential neighborhoods.
https://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/window-washers-...
But go to a less central area, like Hendon and you’re still very much within London, but every street is lined on both sides with parked cars.
When I'm not driving I do enjoy it, so I understand that it's a tradeoff and I can't have it both ways. That doesn't make me not irritated when behind the wheel though.
As a motorist, the war on cars (and milking of motorists for tax revenue) would be less infuriating if we didn’t have the rising broad-daylight lawlessness of illegal e-bikes and scooters doing 30mph+ with no pedaling, no tax, and no insurance. Often with corporate branding in the form of Deliveroo or Just Eat bags. Sometimes balaclava-clad and engaging in dodgier activities.
(Would be in favour of regulating and policing these bikes and scooters rather than outright prohibition, but the UK government chooses to stick to prohibition and very inconsistent policing)
What you’re actually griping about isn’t criminals using e-bikes as getaway vehicles, but the presence of these unsafe e-bikes at all. You’re basically saying “how come I can’t drive my unsafe machine but they can drive theirs?” And yeah, I don’t want people zipping by at 30mph on scooters either, but the problem isn’t that the cars are gone.
Totally. Banning automobiles is usually a bad idea, especially for residential zones. Years ago, I remember seeing a presentation about redeveloping a bad public housing block that was built in the 1960s with no auto-access (the assumption being poor people don't have cars), but it turns out that it meant they couldn't even get pizza.
Some number of the people at the time likely noticed the lapse and thought to themselves "good, this will make it inconvenient for them to get a car that lets them easily get far from their designated area on a whim" so they kept their mouths shut.
A road network isn't the only solution. In the early 20th century, for example, there was a separate narrow-gauge tunnel network beneath Chicago dedicated to freight. Deliveries were made directly to businesses via subbasements or elevator shafts. The network had stations at rail and ship terminals for accepting freight arriving from outside the city. At its height in 1929, the network had 150 locomotives pulling 10 to 15 cars per train.
And what else could we do with that investment?
The tunnels in question also did not transport pedestrians and were essentially focused on coal delivery and ash removal.
New York has about 300 pedestrian deaths total from all vehicles every year. So my guesstimate is that if you eliminated all of the trucks from New York City, you might save 50 lives a year, max. I would also guesstimate that it would probably cost well north of $50 billion to create this tunnel system to connect all of the major buildings in New York City. So we’re looking at about $1 billion per life saved. I bet you could save more than one life per billion if you put that money somewhere more useful.
> What do you think, ready to imagine such a comparison?
What are you intending to accomplish with your snarky and condescending tone?
(Assuming financing happens cheaply by the federal state rather than via PPP grift; and assuming that $50bn is the number, which in NYC is an underestimate by a factor of at least five…)
But as you noted this 50 billion is likely a major underestimate (for comparison the recently built SR-99 tunnel in Seattle cost 1 billion per linear mile and connects to approximately zero buildings via elevators). NYC covers 300 square miles and estimates are that there are upwards of a million buildings across 120k city blocks.
Eliminating cars doesn’t eliminate the need for infrastructure for moving goods.
Burying other last mile utilities that waste less land was not insane when real estate was a fraction as valuable as now and engineering technology was worse.
Did you read my comment about the cost of laying fiber being far different from the cost of digging truck-sized tunnels and make a conscious choice to pretend I was making a nonsense argument about diesel-powered fiber, or did you construct this strawman without realizing it?
I’m not optimistic that a bunch of robots sharing stairs with pedestrians is going to work out great.
How will they be autonomous considering bipedal operation in random environments is MUCH, MUCH harder that full self driving for cars on public roads? And that's just moving around, we're talking about actual judgement to do a human job that requires reasoning and practical skills.
Jetson type robots are a pipe dream at this point. I don't expect to have a robot maid within my lifetime.
Let's be realistic and not plan society today around scifi fantasies, please.
We're probably lacking 80% of the basic science needed for autonomous robot maids.
Warehouse automation is a reality today. Package delivery is also, just not broadly across the US. But it is very much happening right now.
Specifically my comment was about package delivery, which appears to be around the corner for most major cities, and already in place in several major cities around the world.
For indoor delivery, you don't really need Atlas. A 4 wheeled "full self drive" can fairly easily navigate cubicles and press elevator buttons. It's really not that crazy, and doesn't require any reasoning whatsoever. Basic preprogrammed pathfinding borrowed from any modern video game works fine for this. I don't think you need any advanced AI, let alone AGI.
It's a split-level street, more-or-less with local traffic on the surface and with through traffic at the subterranean level. It's a quick way to get through the area.
And beneath parts of that that is an road I've heard referred to as Lower Lower Wacker. This is almost entirely the realm of delivery and service vehicles (except for a time in fairly recent years when those darned kids were using it for drag racing at night).
It's all crazy-expensive to build anything like underground local delivery rail and underground roadways.
(But the stuff at the surface is crazy-expensive, too, and often can't be expanded horizontally without demolition of the very buildings that it seeks to benefit.
But expanding down? Sometimes, yeah -- that can happen.)
Trucks or delivery vans should only be allowed on roads farther apart than 1-2km, with some exceptions (supermarkets, regular markets, etc).
We have all the technical tools needed, this is about political will.
I dunno... in New York City there are an awful lot of bike lanes now:
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7355559,-73.9921499,13z/data...
There's still room for a lot more, but plenty of space has been taken away from automobiles precisely for bikes, scooters, etc. It's trending in the right direction. Especially now that bike lanes are increasingly being designed with parking between the bike land and vehicle lanes.
Residential streets with little traffic don't even need bike lines. But many of the busiest avenues have them.
NYC could always do better, but there's nothing "table scraps" here? It's massively improved my cycling experience. And it gets better every year.
The last is far, far higher than the others. Depending on the city, cats get dedicated infrastructure covering 25-75% of all land! Add buildings and parks and you get scraps for everything not cars.
In a place like Manhattan, the sidewalks are wide and, like I said, plenty of space has been made, and continues to be made, for bike lanes.
The good thing is that space for pedestrians and cyclists doesn't actually require taking away that much space from cars as a percentage. There's plenty of room, you just knock out a lane, as NYC has been doing.
So I don't really know what you're arguing? It's not "table scraps". You certainly don't need the width of a 4-lane highway just for pedestrians and cyclists.
2000s : Damn these cars clogging up the road!
1900s : Damn these buggies clogging up the road!
1800s : Damn these carriages clogging up the road!
1700s : Damn these horses clogging up the road!
1600s : Damn these " " " " "
100BC : Damn these romans clogging up the road!
I would think in some places there was bumper to bumper for short distances. I would expect in parts of NYC it existed. I think it was in the 1920s when traffic lights started to appear.
But 110 years ago, I agree with you on this.
Cities like NYC, London, Paris, LA, Chicago, Denver, Seattle all had traffic problems with cars in 1925.
In 1825 it was carriages and horse and buggy leaving horse manure all over the cobblestone or pavers.
In 1725 it was horses and heavy hooves turning the dirt road into mud and clay muck.
In 1625 it was much the same.
We had a large population centralized in cities long before the Industrial Revolution.
My point is there’s always some person complaining about the X on the road (as if their presence on the road isn’t somehow the opposite).
Also there’s a dump site in New York called Dead Horse bay.
Now doubt there’s many people here who have been to New York, I’ve just seen YouTube videos about this.
Stoops in London? I’m guessing quite a few properties have steps up to the entrance. Going through YouTube videos of shooting locations of the Sweeney and it doesn’t seem that prevalent.
Our roads and highways will metamorphose into logistics corridors and optimal public transit systems.
Everything will be delivered same hour. The cost of this will drop and entire new business models will be built on top of the "direct to you" model.
Self-driving cars will replace public transit. They connect every destination on demand. Short hops, cross-country long-haul. Waymo alikes will become cheaper than the city bus.
Van life will accelerate. People will live in their automated vans and SUVs. They'll become luxury and status items for knowledge workers who are constantly conveying themselves coast to coast, from cozy fire pits by the sea to hidden mountain getaways. Life in America will become one of constant travel, because we can take our life with us without lifting a finger. People will have large home bases in the affordable suburbs - possibly one on each coast. They'll wine and dine in the city, then be off to hike the next day.
Life will turn into adventure and it'll be accessible to almost everyone. Rich, poor. Young, old. Busy, retired.
Nobody will lift a finger for any of this.
We're going to want more roads.
Bikes don't stand a chance. They're inequitable. Old people, pregnant people, sick people, and children are all left out. They suck in the rain and the snow. You can't move anything of size or scale.
Automated self driving cars will win.
I would invite you to come and have a look in the Netherlands. It’s very common for octogenarians to cycle. My wife cycled up to the day of the birth of our daughter. Children have more independence because they can cycle to football practice on their own. Bike lanes are great for mobility scooters. It rains here, a lot! And it snows. I picked up our Christmas tree with our cargo bike. When I need to transport anything larger I will book a carshare, which are dotted around our neighbourhood.
And the result? People are happy and healthy.
Americans are fatter and less healthy.
Americans are busy and work longer and harder. ("Work hard, play hard.")
Americans buy more stuff. Big stuff. Lots of stuff. Frequently. (This is actually a superpower of our consumer economy.)
We have invested hundreds of trillions of dollars in our infrastructure. We might be able to put in a bike land here or there in a majorly dense city or two, but we're not changing all of this.
And more than anything else, America is fucking huge.
I know you Europeans love your model, but it doesn't apply to us. The proponents in the US trying to make it happen misunderstand the fundamental differences.
Just five years ago I would have said you were selling a monorail fantasy or sight to the blind to us. And an unfortunate few in the US were lapping it up as something we could actually do.
Now that self driving is finally arriving, what I'm saying is that our future is even brighter than most countries. We have the road infra to really make this magic.
I can wake up one day, make my coffee, hop into my car with my wife, and through no effort of my own, wind up at a mountain resort. No security checkpoints. No hassle packing. No screaming babies. We can listen to music, read, cuddle. It's our own space taking us wherever we want at complete and total leisure, affordably, comfortably, privately. We can even detour for food or whatever.
It's going to be pure magic. As big a revolution as the internet was.
lol. You're what we call "carbrained".
Explain how the climate of the coastal West coast is unsuitable for year-round bicycling. Much of it is nicer than the Netherlands and has several times the population.
Remove all zoning but for industrial zoning, and remove prop 13, like it is in most of Europe, and the invisible hand of the market will transform most of cities into medium-density mixed-use like in Europe, though in your case likely accomplished with 5-over-1s instead.
And with increased density, maybe you'd even have space for some public parks again.
Your sampling is skewed.
It's been freezing cold here and any destination within our major city you want to reach is 30+ minutes away by bike.
The "carbrained" insult is so stupid, btw. Once autonomous vehicles are commonplace you'll either come around or be complaining about it nonstop. Car usage is going to 2-10x.
What a bleak vision of the future.
Automated conveyance from front door to anywhere.
Perfectly comfortable, unscheduled, private.
I cannot fathom the bleak pessimistic perspective of wanting fixed trains and busses over this. Crying babies, rude people.
American transit sucks and it's not getting better. It's tolerable in cities like NYC, but even so it's a far cry from Asia. If you're not American, please don't project. We'll never have that here. We are not dense enough for it.
The main problems with cars are not about the fuel they run on, or the level of automation. They're the space they occupy per passenger and duration of use, the mass they have to move around, the materials required to build them, tire particulates, and the danger they pose to other traffic participants. None of these are alleviated by the thing-du-jour the car industry presents as a solution to all the problems on any given day. The real issues are all endemic to the concept of a car in the first place.
And, maybe, if more people stopped seeing random encounters with some of their co-humans as just an annoying moment of having to deal with icky other people, we'd make some progress on our loneliness, aggravation and political polarisation problems.
In the US average commute is 42 miles daily, that's over 67 km, or more than two weeks of riding a Dutch 12-18 y.o. does, or a month of riding of a Dutch 35-50 y.o. I'd like to invite any Dutch, who believes it's the same in the US, to ride 67km daily for 5 days straight, even in their own flat neighborhood. It might enlighten them why cyclists elsewhere wear special clothes too! And this is without hills...
1. https://longreads.cbs.nl/the-netherlands-in-numbers-2022/how...
First is the cost of driving. A reasonable rule of thumb is $0.50/mile all in (i.e. including depreciation, repairs, gas, etc) -- you can get down to half that pretty easily and maybe a little lower, but especially if you're spending tons of time in this car you're probably going to want a nice comfy one, which will cost more and depreciate faster. So, these trips you're imagining everyone taking constantly are not going to be accessible to most people. Cars are already the second biggest expense in most Americans' budgets, one which scales with mileage, and which self driving would only increase (have to pay for the lidar, on-device compute, whatever remote service handled edge cases, etc).
The second thing your predictions miss is geometry. Despite the decades of predictions about self-driving cars being able to run safely at much higher speeds and with much tighter tolerances than human-run cars, the tyranny of geometry and stopping distances (which actually won't change much even with millisecond reaction times) means that throughput of car lanes is unlikely to change much (though we could all imagine top-down infrastructural changes helping this a lot, eg coordinated self driving cars and smart roads, those seem unlikely to land anytime soon given American political inclinations). Imagine how spaced-out people are on the highway -- in each lane, 1.6 people (average car occupancy) every football field (300 feet -- safe stopping distance at 70mph). If you're trying to go anywhere more densely packed than that -- e.g., a city, a restaurant, a ball game -- you're going to start to run into capacity constraints. Mass transit, walking, and cycling all can manage an order of magnitude higher throughput.
So while I think your prediction -- that self driving cars will increase demand for road space -- is right, the valence that takes for me is much more negative. The wealthy will be able to take up way more space on the road (e.g., one car each dropping off each kid at each extra curricular activity), condemning the poor to even worse traffic (especially the poor who cannot afford a self driving vehicle, who will not even be able to play candy crush while they're waiting in this traffic). People will continue to suburbanize and atomize, demanding their governments pay for bigger and bigger roads and suburbs, despoiling more of the areas you'd like to hike in, with debt that will keep rolling over to the next generation. Bikes and peds will continue to be marginalized as the norm for how far apart people live will continue to grow, making it even more impossible and dangerous to get anywhere without a car. I hope I'm wrong but this is how mass motorization played out the first time, in the post-war period, and if anything our society is less prepared now to oppose the inequitable, race-to-the-bottom, socialize-your-externalities results of that phase of development.
A Fiat 500/Panda is perfectly fine in cities.
If people stay further away from tractor trailers, they’ll stay further away from SUVs too.
Even in an urban environment, if you stop X feet of distance from the back of the vehicle in front, if that vehicle is longer…
Anyways, street parking should be paid by the square foot * 1.25 to account for getting in/out/around parked vehicles.
As in... expanded using generative AI? (The perspective on the lamps is really off unless they're different size lamps)
[0] https://8400e186.delivery.rocketcdn.me/articles/wp-content/u...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priscilla_Norman#/media/File:L...
The root problem is that we don’t have very robust epistemic standards. We mostly go by vibes and what we want to be true.
That would be relatively benign, the other possibility is that the whole thing was encoded and then decoded through some neural representation.
Little ICE scooters. They were a lot of fun and not very safe. We had drunk guests damaging themselves in the street.
They became toys for my brothers and I, who had plenty of accidents but learnt to ride them reasonably.
The engines didn’t idle particularly well and had no gears. You had to pull start, hop on and go quickly while reving just enough to idle without it moving. It took practice. You could push start too with some practice, especially once warm.
Lots of fun, but mileage wouldn’t have been great for serious use and refilling a pain at a regular petrol station. Might have been 2-stroke, I can’t remember. Tiny engine, closer to a strimmer than lawnmower.
Huge fun though for just bombing around on as a tween and young teen.
> The engine was an air-cooled, 4-stroke, 155 cc engine over the front wheel
I’m enjoying my last year or so of visual media trust, as ephemeral as that is in reality.
And it looks bad. The streetlamps on the right are way too close together and the building on the left looks like a prison or something out of Dickens.
You could drive a moped on city streets before you turned 16 which got a lot of teenagers in my hometown to work and sports in the summer when their parents couldn’t.
But they were slow, noisy, and smelly compared to a modern ebike.
So, yes. Things do get invented so it’s not surprising. Luggage with wheels is a pretty recent invention considering when luggage and wheels were invented.
We rode the hell out of it all over our weird, empty, pre-planned city.
If I remember it got just over 100mpg. The grown ups didn't even mind buying us gas.
Now of course they're very common, my son has one.
https://horizonmicromobility.com/blogs/micromobility-blog/hi...
Great, now accidentally click the big green button that says "allow all" and overrides the toggles you just spent time selecting!
And now the popup will disappear forever. Goodbye.
Second, the scooter may not be new, the cluttering certainly is. Look at that empty street!
Made how much? I have no idea how to parse this
A shilling was 1/20th of a pound. 12 pence were in a shilling (so 240 pence in £1)
L being pound, libre
S being shilling
D being pennies, I’m guess denari because someone went to grammar school
The way to write and "pronounce" a sum is like this: £2 3/6: "two pounds, three and six".
There are lots more "rules": 1d is a penny, 2d is tupence and 3d is thrupence, 1/2d is a ha'penny (pronounced something like "hayp-knee"). So 2 1/2d = tuppence, ha'penny.
For good measure you also have terms such as: "ha'perth" (half penny worth). So: "For want of a ha'perth of tar, the ship was lost" which is what your ISO9000 system should be all about.
In 1915 or so, a single pound (GBP int al) was a banknote ie paper money and was thus until the coin took over in the '80s I think it was. The pound coin is not made of gold.
A gold sov. is something completely different. However "sov" is a nickname or perhaps a euphemism for a pound (GBP).
A sovereign was officially the pound coin from 1817 until 1931, when gold convertibility was abolished. Although it slowly vanished from active circulation from the beginning of WWI.
(On a similar note, in 1919 the silver coins were actual sterling silver with £1 being approximately 113g of sterling silver.)
I do appreciate the dive back into history, but ianvisits.co.uk (which I usually like) can do much better.
It's interesting that the engines are roughly the same as the 4 stroke china girl engines you can get for bikes and scooters today, a 155cc and 191cc model.
I wonder if it was a weight/size to power tradeoff, or convention that stuck - was there a targeted engineering reason behind the similarity in size, or have enough things stayed similar in the world of standard parts and sizes that we still have roughly the same engine sizes?
Neat article.
When escooters became a thing, I looked for this newsreel for a while and never found it. Anyone else remember this?
It had a novel idea of pushing/pulling the handbars to engage the clutch/apply the brake.
Shit not snot. Please do the job properly! I agree: Autoped is a far better name.
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