You make a good point but only if your country has people.
If you live somewhere with no people and only animals, then you can’t get anywhere and must traverse the jungle with a machete and a canteen full of either rainwater or your own piss.
If you live somewhere, you’re a part of the body that decides things like that. If you want public transit in your community, and you certainly should, take the steps to get the action started.
Nobody is going to change the world on our behalf; it all falls on us.
Starts by being an active member of the community. Attend counsel meetings, town hearings, etc. Bring up the topic at these, gauge the response. Talk to the people who seem enthusiastic in response. Work together and build a petition, then seek signatures first amongst the people who attend, then talk to your neighbors.
I never said it was going to be easy, I only said nobody else is going to do it on your behalf.
Right? And the only thing adjacent to an apartment that you can own is a condo, which you still have to pay rent for, plus buy the damn thing, and on top of it all, you get to be forced into an HOA.
Then organise the renters, let them buy the house to transform it into syndicate or cooperative housing. Social apartment construction isn’t impossible.
I guess I would’ve thought that the collective unit is in charge of stuff like property taxes, but you can’t have that many names on a property deed, right? Or can you?
That seems to be what’s going on The Arconia apartments in Only Murders in the Building (in New York). They have a coop board, drama over who is the president of it, people not able to pay taxes on their apartment, auntie sold the apartment, now I have to move, etc.
Have you heard the term “Condominium”? Often shortened to “Condo”? Shared ownership, with an entity (usually organized as an HOA) shared by the owners who pay the shared bills.
Very, very, common throughout the US, probably the most popular way of dealing with the issue of more complex land/ownership than “single building on plot all owned by one person”
As the sibling post mentions, there are Housing Co-ops too, but, for example, if you wanted to get a low cost property in Florida, ideally with someone else doing the maintenance, but with you owning the property itself, you’ll almost certainly want to buy a Condo.
I suppose but HOAs are dicks. That’s a single controller. The above mentioned many people paying into the fund for taxes but what if one does not pay taxes? Do the rest suffer?
HOAs are the name given to a type of legal association, there’s nothing in the law that says they have to be made up of “Karens” (and male equivalents), or even have the powers that you generally see in the suburbs.
Additionally, for an apartment block, they literally can’t have the powers you generally see in the suburbs that people complain about. How are you going to paint the outside of your 3rd floor apartment? What grass do you need to keep short? How is the deputy chief officer of the HOA going to sneak into your non-existent yard and fine you for planting the wrong sorts of flowers?
Literally all an HOA can do in this instance is pay for (and organize the) maintenance of common areas and pay the taxes. So for these kinds of situations, it’s a positive entity.
The above mentioned many people paying into the fund for taxes but what if one does not pay taxes? Do the rest suffer?
The HOA pays the taxes, you pay the HOA. If you don’t pay the HOA, then the HOA can get a lein on your property and ultimately force you to sell it, like a local government would if it was a single family home and you refused to pay your taxes. Which given it is, ultimately, levied for the same reason as local government taxes, seems appropriate. Do others suffer in the mean time? In theory, they could, in the sense that they’d have to pay increased HOA fees, but ultimately there’s no incentive to not pay the HOA, any more than there is to not pay taxes.
I only the know the version of that in Germany and Austria where the property is being held by a GmbH, similar to a LLC, whose half owned by an e.V., a registered voluntary association acting as the united juridicial person of the inhabitants and half owned by a syndicate e.V. that acts as insurance and solidarity among the syndicate and makes sure that no one can overtake and profit from the property. Inhabitants pay off rent-like loans and but can leave anytime. Rent is usually really low and acts as solidarity towards other houses.
yeah the apartment I rent, bills are already separate so it wouldn’t be that different. We’d still all be paying the water company and power company. And for garbage. Like we already do.
I get that my text came off as sarcastic. I wasn’t being clever.
Let me retry:
I think it sounds like a great idea but I have concerns such as, who will pay the community bills? Who will be in charge? And other related administrative duty questions.
Right, well again refer to the fact that this is a solved problem in many countries, including the US. Housing co-ops consist of a nonprofit cooperative organization that owns the building and then residents own the right to live in an apartment, which comes with a monthly fee for maintenance and voting rights within the co-op.
It’s the same principle as HOAs owning and maintaining common infrastructure, just within a single building rather than a group of houses.
The issue here is, in my country at least, the people who could possibly afford to buy one aren’t wanting to live in an apartment and the people who live in apartments aren’t capable of buying one.
Not necessarily i don’t know about the situation all arouns the world but in atleast the herman speaking countries we have the concept to buy flats like one would buy a house and own it. So not all of it is owned by the same person. You still have the house maintainer which looks after the infrastructure but afaik you don’t pay them rent.
Yeah I’d say it’s pretty normal all over Europe, it might just be a common case of Americans being weird.
The type of arrangement I’m used to, property of the building is shared among the owners of the flats, who vote on how to run it in an assembly. They also appoint (and pay for) the maintainer you spoke of, but their role is more centered on overseeing/administering the building, handling paperwork, hiring contractors and such. Also, even for very large flats you end up paying a couple hundred euros a year for their services, so it hardly compares to rent.
We have em in the US too. They’re called HOA’s. Most get a bad wrap for being ran by shitty people/busybodies with nothing to do but fine other homeowners. All condos have em here.
The problem, in the US, with the picture is that a condo would cost you pretty much the same as a house with a yard so why opt for the condo at all. If they were cheaper I would own one to live in now VS just trying to save to buy a house since they’re all expensive.
Canadian condos are like that, generally individually owned and there’s a condo board made up of residents that deals with management of the building. I don’t know of many buildings that are mostly owned by corporations in Toronto.
Maybe in the US. In Germany this defintly isn’t the rule. Many people own their own flats and a lot of people own 2-4 flats to rent them out as an extra income.
No, maybe you are in a more wealthy environment. It is not possible that everyone has multiple flats to rent out. In fact, Germany has one of the lowest ownership rates.
But it is defintly not a given that an apartment has to be the tool of a slum lord, the way they portrayed it to discredit the idea that appatments are a more sustainable way of living…
Apartments can be owned by the people who live in it and this is quite common in many countries.
If one person rents out 4 appartments, that means that at least 4 others do not own their home. It’s the same with houses of course.
Germany is just a particularly bad example unfortunately. Low ownership is a problem because it increases wealth inequality, which is also worse in Germany than many other nations.
Low ownership is a problem because it increases wealth inequality
True, but even here their statement that “all of those apartments are owned by one person” is far from a given. Especially with new developments this is rarely the case, even here.
So the very first result on Google for “double decker fuel efficiency” give the result “per gallon, while a ‘double-decker’ bus with a Diesel engine will run 11 miles per gallon”.
44 / 5 days is approx 9 miles poet day. 4.5 miles to and 4.5 miles back.
I didn’t want to believe this but I guess city dwellers where double deckers operate would probably have short commutes like this on average
Home Owners Association, it’s a sort of mob made up of Karens that people in US suburbs like to impose onto themselves.
Bermuda is a variety of grass, easy to grow but not so fast as to require too much mowing, it needs a lot of sun though.
HOAs like to dictate stuff that residents need to do in order to keep the neighborhood “look good” and increase home valuations, like what kind of grass to grow on their lawn (because, y’know, a uniform neighborhood is a rich neighborhood… or something)
Maybe but that doesnt change that the forest and ecosystem is eradicated. Clearing an ecosystem and outting in a suburb is still a problem even if theres some trees and shrubs. The wildlife still suffers
It is actually possible to live comfortably without an acre of sterile centimeter high grass around you. Many people around the world actually live in places that arent a suburban hellhole and are very happy
Remember, if there is no bike lane, then bikes get a spot in the car lane. Yes, cars are supposed to be respectful when they pass, and only do so when a passing lane is free.
They don’t and even motorcycles are pressured to move. (And curiosly, small cars are ignored by bigger cars).
It's a dead-simple concept that can be applied to everything: public money should only be used for public services. If the private sector is viable, it shouldn't need public money to prop it up.
Public money should fund public transit. No public money for private transport infrastructure.
Public money should fund public schools. No public subsidies for charter and private schools.
Public money should fund public health care. No public funding should be wasted on propping up a wasteful private healthcare industry. ACA wastes so much money buying insurance for people when we could just build public hospitals and public clinics.
It's not that private industry shouldn't exist. It's just that private industry, conceptually, shouldn't need to be propped up by social funding. But currently it is. And it's a tremendous waste of money. Public money should only fund public programs. So simple.
Shared-use paths work best when they’re low use and low-speed. Ergo why people will walk, bike and drive in the road on a cul de sac but not on a main stroad.
It’s common to have separate sidewalks and bike paths on faster, more commonly used routes, because bikes don’t actually mix all that well with pedestrians. It’s the same reason we don’t make sidewalks wide enough to drive a bus down.
By your logic, public car roads are fine so long as there’s a bus that drives down them. Even if 99% of the people on them are in a privately-owned bike or car.
Fair enough, it was an unthought retort to “bikes are private, cars are private, same thing.”
I’m against building roads for personal vehicles because it is very expensive. Sidewalks and bike paths are cheap to build, cost nothing to maintain (other than SNIC) and last 30+ years.
I’m also not opposed to building roads for the transport of goods and services, that’s why humans have built them for recorded history. I’ve got nothing against personal vehicles using roads built for trucks anyways (the maintenance cost of one truck on a road is equivalent to a lot of cars); so long as the cars don’t impede trucks.
My bigger issue the the building of roads specifically for personal vehicles and the building of free (or under market value) parking alongside roads, increasing their cost.
Also, why wouldn’t build bike paths the same width as a bus road? It lets you use the same SNIC fleet on paths and sidewalks as roads, allows emergency vehicles to pass, and provides easier access to path amenity maintenance.
but this isn’t new technology where you can write a 100 bullshit news article about and prais it as the next big thing because it actually works and is efficient
Those super long electric busses will become more popular than trains. They are muuch cheaper to get. You can just send in a new one in case the first one breaks down, etc.
Though we also cant all live nrar these “train stops”?
What needs to happen first is fuel price needs to be so high that people are incentivized to
a) switch to public transit no matter how shitty it is because they just can’t afford a car anymore
b) start public transit companies because there is money to be made and the oil lobbies don’t have enough money anymore to lobby effectively
My guess is before 2050 nobody will really get anything done because the oil lobby is just too powerful. Would be great though.
What needs to happen first is fuel price needs to be so high that people are incentivized to
Absolutely. The fossil fuel industry recieves billions upon billions of dollars in subsidies every year. Why in the actual fuck are we still paying for something that is actively killing us? It makes no sense. All of the subsidies to fossil fuels needs to be re-routed towards public transportation and green energy.
making consumables more expensive just makes them cheaper for the rich. poor people in areas with inadequate public transit will largely just keep driving and become poorer (maybe some of them will switch to the inadequate public transit, then they’ll be even poorer, and it likely won’t improve the transit systems either).
tax the rich in proportion to their wealth., spend it on better public interest transport infrastructure
Those markets can’t run on the rich alone. And yeah it will make rural poor people poorer. That’s actually also the goal. Urban sprawl should be stopped. Why do people need to build houses and villages out in bumfuck nowhere and then complain when amenities and authorties are shitty out there? These people should imo be forced to make a hard decision because if they can’t afford gas anymore they will move closer to a city since the move is more affordable than paying for gas. Hence prevention of sprawl and reducing of gas use. The only people that can stay are the ones that a) are rich and b) require it for their work (e.g. farmers) or c) ones that can work locally without driving around.
I totally agree that urban sprawl sucks, and should be stopped. a much more direct and fair way to do this would be to remove zoning restrictions that only allow building single family homes (instead of any higher-density housing) in most urban parts of north america, and remove minimum parking requirements for businesses – and hope that the cultural shift propagates to other places where these car-dependent designs have taken hold.
secondly, calling people needing transport a “market” seems like part of the same faulty thinking where public services need to turn a profit. taxing the rich could absolutely pay for a lot more public transport: before the Beeching cuts in the 1960s, the UK had around twice as many passenger railway lines – this was also at a time when the top rate of income tax there was 83%, as opposed to 45% now.
lastly, maybe think about who rich people exploited in order to get their (your?) money before proposing policies that explicitly aim to make poor people poorer, while letting the rich continue to live where they (you?) please
100% depends on where you’re going and how far journeys are.
For a small inner city area, a subway is great. For a larger urban area, a tram system. For intercity travel, trains. Out in a rural area, buses would be the way, although more remote locations would need government subsidies to be even remotely functional, and even then it may resemble on demand taxis rather than a scheduled bus service.
No single solution will get you all the way there.
No single solution will get you all the way there.
Except for the car, which is why it’s such a popular choice. Also no need to worry about catching the next thing, or buying the right tickets, you just get in and go.
I haven’t heard of any solution or combination of solutions that would be convenient and work in most cities.
Yep there’s nothing else as good as having your own vehicle to freely travel wherever you want to on your own schedule and in relative privacy. The rest of y’all can enjoy your trains as much as you want, but there’s no train or bus that comes out to my house in the woods so I’m going to keep driving my car for the foreseeable future. After that it will probably be an electric SUV that I keep driving. I’ll charge my car from my solar power at home and be energy independent.
No, I’m saying there’s a huge difference between a 15 foot turning radius and a 400 foot turning radius. Trying to put trains in the existing 50 foot x 50 foot road intersections is not going to work without moving a lot of buildings.
You’d been trams,not trains. Trains are great at covering long distance quickly, but if they have to navigate tight turns and stop every few minutes then they’ll be pointless.
Not sure why people aren’t talking more about busses here, it would make way more sense to utilize busses for local travel.
The distinction between tram, train and subway is not relevant. There are full trains navigating Paris for example, but also tram and subways. They are all very good, and you can navigate the city without ever taking a bus.
Those super long electric busses will become more popular than trains.
Though heavy batteries are bad for energy efficiency and big capacity batteries are long to charge. Well, it can be solved by constantly charging them. This also allows to reduce required capacity, thus reducing weight. Constant charging most efficiently can be done by using wires. Oh, wait. I just reinvented trolley.
Though we also cant all live nrar these “train stops”?
Have any of you tried getting 3 kids around town with public transport? 10 minutes of kids songs in the car = 45 minutes of screaming and accusatory stares in the bus.
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