The idea of needing specialized transport as an individual beyond just walking is a failure of society. Replacing cars with "not-cars" isn't really helping that aspect. You should be structuring society so that cars or "not-cars" have no need to exist for almost everyone.
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
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Someone versed in urban ecosystems could chime in better, because there's gotta be proper terms for city to city transport, city to neighborhood, neighborhood to street, street to home.
Bikes or some kind of personal vehicle are still probably necessary to get you from city to home, because they can't put train stations next to every house (unless they figure out how to shoot us through tubes or something).
@dessalines @PowerCrazy No, it really is feasible to have PT close enough to everyone's house. Some will choose a bike to cut 15m walking into 5m riding, but it isn't required.
Part of that is that every neighbourhood needs all types of housing. Okay, not every one needs high rise apartments. But medium rise next to the station above the restaurants and retail, surrounded by town houses, surrounded by units, surrounded by 1/3rd acre house blocks
It really isn't crazy
Utopia needs many changes
Indeed, and currently there exist several cities that execute that ideal more-or-less. NYC is the obvious one, but Washington DC, Chicago, hell even the worst city in America, San Francisco does it adequately. The only reason we can't have that kind of public transit everywhere is because no one is forcing city officials to plan for the long-term, and reduce sprawl.
Zero Growth Lines are a great way to mandate density, without any other policies needed.
The transition needs to be easy for adoption to happen though. I think first replacing cars with not-cars, and only then scaling cities to be more walkable makes sense.
I don't see how going from car to proper city planning is any harder than going from not-car to proper city planning. This just feels like an extra unnecessary step that could be taking resources away from the city planning part.
If you make a city hostile to cars first, people will still have their cars and their commutes, it will just double the time it takes for them to get anywhere. You will lose support for any further changes.
If you replace the cars first, such that no one's daily schedules are significantly altered, and then condense the cities, then the change might be less jarring for those who can't weather dramatic changes in their lifestyle.
If you replace the cars first, such that no one's daily schedules are significantly altered,
Is that going to happen if you replace cars with another vehicle that still requires car infrastructure?
it shouldn't, should it? Switch an ICE for electric, as long as they travel the same daily distance and meet the same use cases, the only lifestyle change would be the expense.
this looks unsafe as fuck
Well, unsafe if there are cars all around you. But if we replaced a lot of cars with these vehicles which typically go around 40 to 70 km/h cruise speed, I think it would become way safer than cars.
A colleague of mine has one. They are easy to overlook and he sometimes has pretty bad looking crashes (from the outside) but the chassis themselfs are extremely sturdy and protecting. He slid down a road 25m at one point, crashing into a pole, but only got a bruise from it. Because, and that's the main point: these things are not going down 50mph, they are at 18mph and the only dangerous parts are intersections where cars are slower anyways
I feel there's probably some reasons they haven't become popular.
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Don't turn as nimbly as a bike
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Can't put them on your shoulder and carry them indoors, onto a train, etc. like as a bike
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Don't climb hills as well as a bike (source)
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20× the cost of a bike, maybe that could be brought down by economies of scale if they were more popular
I could imagine a velomobile being preferable if you're commuting from a satellite town to the city, and the journey consists of a long straight road.
I'd definitely say they're worse for getting around the city, and their comparative advantages are bought at the price of significant extra overhead.
They also have e-scooters now that can do like 80 mph / 130 km/h .
This wiki page on Efficiency of transport is really well done. But if you sort by km / MJ, e-scooters and bikes are the most efficient forms of transport.
the biomass powered motor, also known as the driver
okay that's funny