xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 3±1 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS at a screen resolution of 1024x1. Please enable your ad blockers, disable high-heat drying, and remove your device from Airplane Mode and set it to Boat Mode. For security reasons, please leave caps lock on while browsing.
Automatically deployed road spikes are the solution to all traffic infractions. Speeding? Road spikes. Ran a red light? Road spikes. Didn’t signal? Road spikes.
What is going on in this comments section? Building dense is massively better for the environment than SFH, both in the construction phase and for the life of the units as far more residents can be served with less infrastructure sprawl. It also doesn’t mean that detached housing will suddenly stop existing if we let developers build densely packed housing. Doesn’t even need to be high rises, it can be townhomes, duplexes, five-over-ones, etc. You’ll still be able to get a white picket fence suburban home or a farmhouse on some acreage if you want. In fact, it will become cheaper because all the people who want to live in cities will actually be able to move there and not take up space in that low density area you want to live in.
It’s the same attitutes that cause drivers to oppose public transit, despite the fact that public transit means less traffic. More dense housing options mean fewer people competing for the same low-density sprawl and farmland. Everybody wins by allowing more density to be built, instead of continuing our current model of government-mandated sprawl for all.
From an ecological POV I’m not so sure on the word density. More dense buildings, yes, but even more dense urban areas (read: than Paris/London) can lead to sealing of soils, UHI, recreational under-supply.
There is a sweet spot in population density for cities. I am not sure about the exact number, but you get it, when building houses, that have four or five stories.
People want to live in SFH’s. I just noticed this post from the all feed but it’s not that surprising that people who enjoy living in privacy with space would prefer the status quo and then say as much.
If I had the money to afford a downtown apartment that was large enough for my 5 member family, I would. I don’t want to live in an apartment complex with nothing to do in the suburbs.
People want to live in SFHs because cities are currently full of overpriced shoebox apartments with almost no options between that and car dependent suburban sprawl. It’s not for me personally, but townhomes and other mid density developments are perfect for most families and far easier to serve with public transport (see: streetcar suburbs). You can still mix in detached single family housing in urban areas where demand is low enough to make the financials work too.
Well yes, it’s definitely great as a temporary means of housing, but realistically we all want some breathing room, some privacy, expandability… This is great for cities and Metropolitan areas, but you’re not gonna get people elsewhere to prefer this over, say, a foresty cottage with full privacy, solar energy generation, your own crops, maybe even a water source that you can clean up to provide for your water needs.
The problem isn’t that kind of house, the problem is the suburban hellscape with perfectly cut lawns that offer little to no biodiversity, little say in house designs, and an infrastructure design that promotes transportation by cars.
If we simply moved away from big cities, worked from home, and aimed for personal regenerative agriculture or at the very least a more simbyotic relationship with our environments, we’d be leagues ahead.
It will become cheaper because all the people who want to live in cities will actually be able to move there…
Except when financial incentives line up so that it’s more profitable to let an apartment go vacant than it is to decrease rent to an affordable level.
Just go to Seattle - you’ll see apartment buildings at less than 50% capacity with rent starting at $2500/mo, immediately adjacent to homeless camps.
The financial incentives don’t line up because there isn’t enough (affordable) housing supply. Build more and they will be forced to drop their rates or sit vacant forever losing money. Some areas also have ass-backwards tax schemes that allow you to write off lost income from a “vacancy” as a loss. I’m not sure if Seattle does this but that is another major driver of those obnoxiously high rent vacant apartments in some areas.
I think it’s just Muricans being Muricans, everything seems to be poorly constructed there so they think being able to hear other residents having sex is just an intrinsic quality of apartments and flats
but something like this would get product coming-in from outside a metro area close enough to high-density population and business centers to where smaller EV delivery vehicles or postal services (they already go door-to-door each day) can do the 'last-mile'.
It really sounds like you’re inventing a use case for this technology, to be honest. Most logistics centres are on the outskirts of the city, and linehaul vehicles are loaded and unloaded there, having something like that in the city centre would be a very inefficient use of space.
It also wouldn’t reduce the vehicle movements inside the city by much at all.
Just build a fucking train, it’s stupid that Denmark doesn’t just have rail everywhere. DSB is a joke. Banedanmark is underfunded. Light rail doesn’t go anywhere useful unless you live in Copenhagen. Intercity is way too expensive to matter unless you get discount tickets a month in advance. IC trains are so frequently not-running that it’s become a major point in my buddys argument for working from home.
In USA/Canada we end up with population pimples with little in between. This is perfect for HSR, since there are very few required stations between primary cities.
Ottawa-Montréal, for example, is ~200km apart with no major centers in between, so an HSR can cross that distance with no stops
Toronto-Montréal is ~550km apart, with one possible stop in Kingston if the train splits for Ottawa. Again an HSR could make great time here. With the TGV’s 270kph station-station time, it would be 2 hours, slightly faster than flying + security (2h10-2h30) and less than half the driving time.
I’m knot as knowledgable about US geography, but I’m positive there and many city pairs like this on the east and west coasts.
This is perfect for travel but not passenger load which is what makes a transport system economical. Rail costs several million dollars per kilometre, so a Toronto to Montreal would cost at least 500 million, closer to a few billion. And if it travels through low density land you won’t be getting many additional passengers except those that actually live in Toronto and Montreal. This is why HSR is in densely populated areas like France or Japan, or China. There is an actual large passenger load that makes the investment worthwhile. An even easier-to-see example is that city driving is much slower than on highways, if point-to-point travel time was really the function of public transit then intercity travel would be prioritised not the much larger and more economical street stops that every public transit system uses.
so a Toronto to Montreal would cost at least 500 million, closer to a few billion
$3 billion on 1.7km of Gardener Expressway repair. $3.6 billion for Turcot interchange replacement. No one bats an eye at those costs.
passenger load which is what makes a transport system economical
Toronto-Montréal is the busiest domestic flight route, followed by Toronto-Ottawa. Add Chicago and New York to capture the two busiest routes between the two countries (both in the top 20 international flights). Plus however many bus, train, and drive.
Edit: just plugged 15 Nov into Google flights; there are 46 flights from Toronto to Montreal that day (Pearson and Island combined).
Come to BC. We have trains from Vancouver going to Seattle and Portland(via US run Amtrak(70-100$ US), a transit train from Mission to Vancouver and back, once a day each way(5-15$ depending on distance) and a 3000$ a ticket train going to Jasper, Alberta from Vancouver BC and back.
Yaaay Conservatives. Thanks for ruining passenger rail.
Now look, I’m not a bus commuter, but I’ve been riding buses all over Europe and beyond, and I immediately just hold onto anything that’s in reach.
As a matter of fact, as long as there’s not a visibly old/pregnant/disabled/etc person around, I’ll make sure getting a seat no matter what and something to hold onto.
At this point I’m quite certain there’s a secret society of bus drivers with chapters all over the world, and their motto is “drive like there’s no tomorrow” and they all have “NO FUTURE” tattoed in huge black capital letters on their chests.
Bars, because I live in a third world country with subpar and barely maintained public transport handles aren’t even an option. I suspected what handlers are but I actually had to look them up just to be sure.
Garbage article. Completely manufactured conclusions on the article’s author not even supported by they “supporting” links. I read 3 of the “supporting” are articles and one is straight up an opinion piece, and the other supposed sources contradict the techdirt article suggesting EVs are getting singled out. Its the opposite, heavy vehicles in general, and EVs are actually getting a pass in some cases. In one case the author claims EVs are getting extra scrutiny and the very next line shows that its nothing specifically about EVs, but all heavy vehicles regardless of how they’re powered.
Nah, not angry. Its presented as a news article presenting factual evidence. Not only doesn’t it present facts, its own sources contradict the author’s conclusions.
Its a waste of time to consume it.
until people start dying.
…and you’re doing the same thing. Heavy vehicles aren’t new. Vehicle design isn’t new. The outrage presented in the article, and your incendiary statement, have existed for decades. Why are you only now outraged?
Your quote of me is a simplification of the excerpt the OP provided (the corpses pile up line). But if I were outraged (I’m not), my comment about your emotional denouncing of the article doesn’t magically become the starting point for your imagined outrage.
I read the article. I read techdirt often for their good sourcing and no pulled punches. I fail to see how using other articles for a source is a problem, especially when the source is supporting a claim like, “pointy cars.”
There were other sources for the facts of the article, like the NSC for fatality data.
I fail to see how using other articles for a source is a problem,
One of the sources is someone’s unsubstantiated opinion. Its fine for someone to write an opinion piece, but the techdirt article’s author is citing the opinion piece as fact. Other sources completely contradict the techdirt author’s statements where techdirt cites the other source as where that wrong statement came from. After checking 3 sources and finding problems with all three I gave up. The article and the author have zero credibility.
You’re welcome to keep reading that author’s work, just don’t make the same mistake the author makes and passing the article off as credible.
Tall people vibes right here. When I used to take the train daily at rush hour, I’d squeeze into the car and pin my hand to the ceiling to stabilize myself. Never lost my balance.
fuckcars
Active
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.