Train oriented people always forget that trains don't transport people from the origin to the destination. You still need to get to and from a train station. With all your groceries, gear, children's things, etc. Oh and you might be odor sensitive, but there's a lady next to you on the train that covered herself in perfume.
Life is full of impossible choices. Do I worry about the perfume of a lady on the train or worry about death/disability from a drunk driver on the road. Car deaths per year in the US are about 40 - 45K; injuries, some of them permanent are most likely 20 - 30x. Deaths and disability from perfume on a lady on the train are most likely far higher.
I wish schools teach something, whats that called, math? probability? to help everyone make decisions to wisely use a car and keep themselves safe from lady with a perfume attacks on the train. This will also free up emergency room infrastructure, we don't need that many EMTs, ambulances, helicopters, trauma doctors and an incredible range of equipment and facilities to deal with odor attacks.
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Google search for "car accidents single largest cause of death under 50": motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for people under 50 in the United States, and for several specific age groups within that range, such as 1-54-year-olds and 5-29-year-olds globally.
> Do I worry about the perfume of a lady on the train or
As someone who will have a runny nose all day if I sit next to that lady, yes I do worry about her perfume more than I worry about the drunk driver. While the drunk driver is a worse situation if the odds hit me, the odds the perfumed lady is too close to me is much higher.
Thats right. The risks of a perfume lady are way too scary. Cars never have any odors, just fumes, soot and particulate matter, brake dust. The air quality of cities is so much better than that of forests because of cars. The risks couldn't be more clear: 10 million deaths from air pollution[1] and pollution causing every kind of disease (except STIs) from cars vs hundreds of millions of deaths from perfume lady in train.
This is what all economists get slightly wrong? They say humans are rational agents, soak in all the information, calculate the costs and benefits with the probabilities and make rational decisions. But humans almost always make emotional decisions. A perfume lady is way more scarier than a 5000 lb vehicle hurtling down at 60 mph, custom built to protect the person driving the vehicle, on surfaces built for vehicles and vehicles only (trillions of dollars in maintenance and tens of trillions of dollars healthcare costs).
Air Pollution Kills 10 Million People a Year. Why Do We Accept That as Normal? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-p...
For me the immediate effects of perfume lady are worse than the other effects. I'm not downplaying the others, I'm just stating the reality that she makes my life miserable in a way that is very clear.
Move to a different train car?
Statistics don't apply to individuals. If you are a single mom with a bad knee, a car will make your life easy, while public transport will be hard. The car will be safer, cheaper, more manageable because walking with kids and their things to the bus or train may be too challenging. An average human is a hermaphrodite because roughly half are men and half are women.
Oh yeah, public transportation is fucking horrible. Still, it is basically the only viable way to support a large population density and not turn everything into a wasteland of parking lots and car lanes. Let's face it: cars just take an order of magnitude or two more space than e.g. metro for the same number of passengers and, in big cities, space is a very scarce resource.
But why wouldnt I prefer having orders of magnitude more space, given the option?
Because there is only a fixed amount of land a city can ever possibly sustain. Urban sprawl all you want, but eventually you run out of land to keep expanding into or the city goes broke because there aren't enough revenue generating properties in a given area to cover the cost of servicing those areas. At some point more has to turn into better and more efficient.
If you think the time spent traversing all that space is completely worthless. Otherwise it makes sense to make things dense so that people can mostly reach whatever things they want to reach by walking a short distance or taking a quick tram connection, etc.
I mean, mine does lol. Of course this is the Netherlands so it'll be different to the states, but I literally live across the street from a train station, and it goes directly to the dead center of the city in less than 5 minutes. There's a train every 10 minutes. The same journey is, minimum, 15 minutes by car (or 10 by bus since we have dedicated bus lanes), at the end of which you have to find a parking spot. You then still have to actually get to your destination cause the chances of parking in the center are slim to none. People really underestimate how much of our public land is taken up by cars just... sitting there, doing fucking nothing.
With the train I step off at my stop, and get on a bicycle and it takes me max 15 minutes to get anywhere else I want to go. The cities in NL have been built in such a way that it's often faster to take a bicycle than any other mode of transport. Usually buses/trams are tied with cars unless you live in awkward spots where the coverage isn't great.
> Oh and you might be odor sensitive
I guess who cares about literally everyone else who isn't in your car that has to breathe in and smell your exhaust fumes? Sure we've got EVs these days, but they still contribute substantially to air quality degradation via tire shedding, and not every car out there is an EV yet either.
I have 4 supermarkets in a 10 min walk radius, to reach one of them I don't even need to cross a single public street. Same for schools, I know of 3 in my street, there are probably more but as I don't have kids I wouldn't know.
I think you missed the entire point, it's a design choice, if you design everything around cars of course going grocery shopping will require a car... my supermarkets don't even have parking lots.
> it's a design choice
Yes. Americans chose big houses and yards.
They by and large don’t though. Instead, big houses and yards are the only options on the table for most Americans because of zoning regulation and developers just copy/pasting designs to save money.
There isn’t an option for new brick house in neighborhood built before cars were a thing. You either have the existing housing stock, which is astronomically more valuable, or you don’t. There’s no developer building those formats anymore.
>big houses and yards are the only options on the table for most Americans because of zoning regulation
Worse, they're not an option for more americans specifically because of zoning and regulation. If not for government micro management there'd be more density, more cheap housing and you wouldn't need to drive 4hr out of the city to find a single family that's affordable.
>There isn’t an option for new brick house in neighborhood built before cars were a thing.
There would perhaps be if not for all the regulation. Maybe not brick, probably something with brick veneer, but someone would be shoehorning them into small lots.
> There isn’t an option for new brick house in neighborhood built before cars were a thing
Every time I look those houses are on lots of similar sized to modern lots. People back then choose space as well. They did allow stores in those neighborhoods though, so you could do some of the basic things in life without getting on the streetcar or walking. Those neighborhoods were also closer to jobs or close to a streetcar (depending on era) because you obviously couldn't drive. However the size wasn't much different from today.
Brick is much less common today - but that is because brick is a terrible building material if you look at it like an engineer. It is hard to change, has a poor R value, it is expensive, and slow to put up. People whose knowledge of building comes from "the three little pigs" think brick is great and sticks are bad, those who understand real engineering understand the real complexity and trade offs. You can get brick today if you want - but it is almost always a decorative facade for engineering reasons.
The mixed-use development, which was practically banned during the automobile era, is a great example of doing more with less. As you mention, being able to walk over to your local school, or park, or market, or clothing shop, etc. helps reduce the need for car travel for small things, which allows us to have fewer cars on the road, spend less on infrastructure, and make driving a little more pleasant.
But there are other benefits. That local coffee shop or clothing store is better able to compete, because they don't have to compete on efficient product delivery which is something that you see in the suburbs Ala Starbucks or Wal-Mart. This increases entrepreneurial activities and helps money spread instead of concentrate. It's no coincidence in my mind that income inequality has increased partially because of tax rates, but also because of concentration of businesses that can best realize supply chain efficiency.
To your point about brick, sure yea homes don't have to be brick, but generally plastic siding sucks visually, plus suburban houses are built incoherently, so if we could just get something that looks good that's half the battle. But perhaps the most important part, which I'm not sure suburban housing design can really accommodate, is the layout and streetscape design that enables a healthy mix of SFH, apartments, and other living arrangements mixed with businesses and amenities.
I think you are making an actively counterproductive conflation between "banning random crap" and the automobile. I think they only happened together because of luck and timing.
Zoning became a thing during the height of the greatest generation's political relevance[1]. Pretty much everything that generation did was use government authority and planning as a cudgel. It's understandable that they would make this error considering that when they were young they saw central authority save the world. But they banned a hell of a lot of things that didn't need banning and they had the government meddle in all sorts of things that would've naturally turned out fine. This worked initially, but the problem is that democratic-ish government always leans toward stabilization and status quos and existing interests and whatnot. They are always re-active and never pro-active because it literally cannot be any-active until after the public cares so much as to vote based on it (whereas a dictator or whatever is substantially more free to take speculative action).
Now, here we are generations later with a substantially different society, different economic situations, different problems, the institutions those people created have run the usual course of expansion and co-option over time, etc, etc, and it's clear that what they built is acting as a force that tries to keep society stuck doing things that are no longer appropriate. What was fine to have the government regulate in favor of when there were half as many people, twice as much opportunity and everyone shared mostly the same values and desires no longer works.
Doing more of the same, having government intervene and micro manage cars, use zoning and other rules to encourage "the right kind" of development (which is exactly what they were trying to do back when they adopted zoning) or transportation or whatever won't work because the entire premise that we can do it this way and get good overall results is flawed. The whole approach we are trying to use does not work except for nearby local maximums and on short timelines. We need to get the government out of managing land use, out of managing transportation, or at least as out of these things as it possibly can be, and let the chips fall where they may. Developers will build slummy SROs, people will sit in traffic, but eventually it will all work itself out and reach equilibrium. But the longer we dam up demand behind regulation the higher the pressure the leaks we are forced to chase are.
[1] Dare I say it came about partly a reaction to the fact that they had to start sharing society with the quality of adults that resulted from their "quantity has a quality all it's own" approach toward producing children.
I broadly agree with you, and frankly what I'm advocating for is to get the government out of zoning and transportation precisely because of the problems you mention, but also because of the negative externalities caused by it.
Today we do not have market choices, because the Federal Highway Administration and every state department of transportation enforces and reinforces centralized design patterns that as we can see today no longer work (and likely never did). It's baked into their raison d'être. Unfortunately, as you also note, items like roads and housing developments live in the public sphere and so we can't and won't completely divorce the government from managing those projects or regulations, but we can examine what works well and increases attributes we want more of and do our best to drive regulation toward those attributes, and in some cases remove regulation to see more of those attributes. In my mind, work that increases walking, biking (or other similar transportation), and rail provide the best mix of low government regulation and effective development patterns which preserve most of the other things we like, such as cars and convenience.
I'm not sure I'm in favor of banning random crap, or maybe you read something into my comment that I didn't intend?
Plenty of big houses with yards in the surburbs in European cities, almost exclusively actually, and very often cheaper than much smaller flats in the city centers. They're still connected to the public transport system too.
If that’s what they choose then why make it illegal to build anything else?
Design won't mean you won't get soaked if it happens to rain when you need to walk to the nearest bus station to get to work. You can reduce the issues with public transport somewhat (at the expense of its density and cost advantages) but you can never completely eliminate them compared to personal vehicles that get you from door to door.
> Design won't mean you won't get soaked if it happens to rain
Sometime I wonder in what alternative world people live in which rain is a problem... Yes it's life, sometimes it' warm, sometimes cold, sometimes dry, sometimes wet. Buy a $10 rain poncho or umbrella and move on lol. How fragile are you that you can't deal with basic things like rain ? There are hard things in life, like your kid getting diagnosed with leukemia or your spouse dying, rain is waaay down the list.
We need a reality show about you people, I don't pay for netflix but I'd pay for that
Rain has been solved: with enclosed vehicles that take you from your home to your destination.
If you have streets as narrow as in e.g. Florence, the rain can only hit you from above, whereas in car-centric suburbia rain can hit you from the sides in basically all directions - so an umbrella blocking the top isn't enough, you need a car.
In other words, the problem here that the car is solving, is a problem that the car is causing.
Yes. People at ancient times like the 20th century had technologies that could protect them from the rain while they walked.
It's too bad that we lost that knowledge. But we could probably rediscover it with a moderate investment on research.
There's things like umbrellas, you know.
No need to wrap yourself in two tons of steel, aluminum and plastic. 100 grams is enough.
You can also design things so that people are not crammed in at a rate of hundreds of thousands per square km. Then, car-based infrastructure gives you a lot of freedom to place homes and businesses far apart and have reasonable travel time and capacity for everyone.
When I moved from Manhattan to an "evil" suburb full of "stroads," my door-to-door time to pretty much everything decreased. Getting rid of waiting for the elevator was a big time saver. Waiting 10-15 minutes if you get unlucky about the arrival of the train was pretty bad. Added all up, most walks took at least 10 minutes to go each direction and non-local trips took 30 minutes or more.
> You can also design things so that people are not crammed in at a rate of hundreds of thousands per square km.
Yeah I mean that's like 99.9% of the surface of the world, nobody is preventing you to go live your dream. We're specifically talking about cities, a city without population density is not a city by definition
For some reason, urbanists like to attack suburbs while also saying that everything is so far apart and takes so long. If you want to live in a city, live in a city, but don't pretend that it's the only way to live.
Sure. Now tell us how much time it took to get to your office in Manhattan and how much it cost to park there. The suburb is built around the fact that people live there but travel to the main city every day.
Now if you have decent train service to the main city, this is starting to be interesting urban design.
There is great train service from the suburbs to Manhattan, but I worked from home and moved to a different metro area. As it stands, parking by the office in the city I live near is about $150-200/month. Taking the train there and back every day from somewhere in the city would be about $150/month.
> Now tell us how much time it took to get to your office in Manhattan and how much it cost to park there.
Most people do not work in Manhattan. I'm not sure about OPs situation, but there are a lot of other places people work in New York City, not to mention other cities.
You're just rejecting his hypothetical - Manhattan is dense.
Yeah, that's why you build stations periodically and run trains at faster speeds than cars.
I always found it infuriating to have a discussion like this with people who prefer to fly.
For example, a flight from Copenhagen to Stockholm (or, Malmo to Stockholm) is about 50 minutes.
But a train is four hours.. clearly the train is slower!
Except the train takes you into downtown Stockholm- no express train, no getting to the airport 1hr+ before your flight and no travel to the airport in the first place.
I once raced my girlfriend (our travel plans lined up pretty perfectly) and the train ended up 25 minutes faster back to Malmo from Stockholm.
So, even though I have an anecdote that supports your claim, I'm going to go ahead and say that if you have congested traffic a train can easily be faster- even with the time at both ends. But yes, we should be making rail a much more attractive option, not running trains at the same speeds as cars.
Pretty similar for me - I travel to London from Edinburgh quite a lot and I much prefer taking the train.
Before Brexit I got the train from London to Amsterdam. 3h45 direct, clean, comfortable and so much more civilised than flying.
Even after brexit it’s very possible. I understand InOui may start offering competing services in the channel tunnel.
I actually don't mind the flying bit of flying - but I loathe all the faffing about and waiting at airports.
I'm actually the opposite, it really fucks with my ears - I think it's probably the pressure change but I don't care to experiment too much, I'm lucky if I'm not out of action for a week after landing.
I could stand to wait an hour, have to do a ridiculous dance for "security", traipse two miles across a vast building designed on the wrong scale for humans and so on, that's all fine, but the flying I do not like at all.
In Germany, even if it takes the same amount of time, door to door, usually flying is half price, and isn't hit as often in delays as having your ICE stopped in the middle of nowhere, and then miss one of the two connections yet to come.
It is an interesting exercise to see how frequently people start using their Bahn app, trying to work around what might be their way to still make it into the destination, as the pause times between stations increase.
I’m worried that my young child will die crossing the street. Sorry—these two just aren’t the same!
Exactly. Cars isolate you from other people and just as importantly the weather all the way.
>there's a lady next to you on the train that covered herself in perfume.
Or urine.
Or they want to beat you up, or worse. I can't imagine good public transport without the "good public".
Come to Europe, especially northern Europe.
The wealthy population also take public transport, it's sort of expected that its for everyone... this seems to alter the behaviour of people in a positive way. Maybe through enhanced enforcement by police? or perhaps social conditioning through higher expectations? idk.
US Public transport is not a model of what public transport is like; it's only an example of failed infrastructure that has been intentionally sabotaged over half-a-century.
> Come to Europe
Anecdotally, among myself and my friends we have more stories of problems with theft and encounters with hostile people from very brief travels to Europe than all time spent on public transport in the USA. To be fair, I haven’t lived in NYC where public transport is famously more dangerous.
I also suspect that foreigners are more targeted for wallet thefts while traveling in Europe.
However, watching multiple friends get pickpocketed on European public transport and having to shake some sketchy people who were being aggressive with women in our group during our brief travels shattered my illusions that European public transport is universally superior in safety.
Edit to add: I also thought it was funny when we met up with someone’s friend in a populous European city who refused to ride public transportation with us. He would drive his car from point to point and meet up with us at the destination. He seemed to believe that the underground was not something people his age liked and was surprised we were riding it without a second thought.
Famously more dangerous? NYC? What on earth are you talking about
It’s mostly a meme not backed up by any serious facts. Politically, both sides get kudos for pretending cities are more dangerous than they actually are.
I was quite careful to say "Northern Europe" because there are some very touristy places that attract criminals who specifically prey on tourists.
I could imagine Paris and London in that list, despite both being very safe for locals (and.. both being Northern Europe)- but perhaps less safe for tourists.
I would imagine Prague being a middle-European tourist destination that is plagued much worse by this (but, also, very safe for locals- I lived there briefly).
Where were you in Europe?
Not to pick on you specifically as I think your comment was fine but I always get a chuckle[1] about the "duality of europe" that you see on the parts of the internet that are dominated by the white collar english speakers.
Depending upon the issue you might reduce europe down to the rich western bits. You might include or exclude the former soviet influenced areas depending upon the context. You might only look at nations on the Mediterranean or only exclude them, etc, etc.
Yet whenever you look at the US you always include the whole thing no exceptions.
[1]just to be clear, by "I get a chuckle" I mean "the way we just accept this behavior is a condemnation of the community and the people who make it up"
> I was quite careful to say "Northern Europe" because there are some very touristy places that attract criminals who specifically prey on tourists.
Okay, but then why can’t we Americans just exclude the bad parts of America and only allow you to compare to the good parts?
Why must every America-Europe comparison be about the worst case American cities (usually taken from headlines) but only compared to a select subset of European locations?
Because the USA is one country and Europe is a collection of vastly different countries.
You would likely agree that the USA and Mexico are incomparable and its sort of the same, though the EU evens some things out: its much less far reaching than a federal government.
That said: happy to compare the best case US public transport to the Nordics. Literally anywhere in the Nordics to anywhere in the US.
The upper middle class in the US also takes public transit, but there is not enough sense of social shame to get people to behave well. I also highly doubt that people who are truly wealthy in northern Europe take the train.
I'm in Europe. Hungary though, mind you, not the fancier part of Europe. Trains here are late, sticky, and lawless.
Southern Europe is quite far from the well connected city dream that often gets discussed here.
The same points also apply to EU public transport. Maybe your area is better but where I live it's definitely mostly the poorer and less domesticated that you find in public transport.