I live less then 5 miles from work, but both cycling and public transportation are not optional due to the shitty design of the roads and shitty drivers.
To cycle, if have to cross a light where the highway just becomes a city street, so people are doing 65+ in a 40 and often run the light. I’m honestly hesitant even in my car.
To take public transportation, I’d have to cross that same intersection, then cross a bridge over the river, with no sidewalk, and the same bat outta hell drivers. I’ve seen a single car wreck on this bridge where the car was on its roof. Then it would be an hour long bus ride filled with transfers to get ten minutes by vehicle away.
All this to say, I feel this message. I’d love to drive less, because I really don’t enjoy it. Unfortunately, the reality of my area doesn’t really make this possible.
We talk about fuel economy in miles per gallon, but fuel prices are shown per litre. And this is from 1980 - everything gets a bit weirder measurement-wise the further back you go.
Nah, driving distance is generally miles and speed is mph too. I think sometimes distances under a mile can be in metres (like signs that say, for example, no hard shoulder for 200m).
If you read the Highway Code, you’ll learn that it’s all over the place. Long distances on signs are in miles. But distance markers are placed in metres. But emergency phones are placed every mile. And distance markers, which are placed in metres and indicate distances in meters can also have a distance to the next emergency phone in fucking yards. One sign, two numbers, no letters, two systems. FUCKING HELL!!!
The only issue I have with this is there’s a British gallon (that is DIFFERENT from the American gallon) that is used to measure milk. :D. That was the only place I saw gallon being used.
Still british units :D. In 1826 Britain decided to redefine gallon to mean “10 pounds of water”. The earlier standard was 231 cublic inches (potentially meant to be 8 pounds of water). The US never adopted the new gallon.
Actually, as much as I dislike imperial units, when it comes to body temperature I do think in Fahrenheit. Mostly because that’s how my mum would tell if we were too sick to go to school. 99 - just a little ill, but you can have the day off. 100 - pretty ill, probably at least 3 days off. 101+ - super mega ill, off all week.
I don’t want to ride in the street. I want separate bike lanes. “Vehicular Cycling” was the biggest infrastructure mistake in history IMO.
First you redesign stroads with fewer car lanes and safe, unimpeded, separated bike lanes, and then you replace any unneeded roads with bike/pedestrian zones. This would improve any even slightly urbanized area.
So, are you upset that bicycles are being held to the traffic code sections that explicitly apply to them? Because it sounds like you’re one of those people who gives bike riders who know how to operate in pedestrian areas a bad name.
I drive on the sidewalk and behave like a pedestrian. I probably should have known about the traffic codes you are talking about, but this has nothing to do with bikes, he shows it to everybody including other people who are trying to cross. What concerns me them most, is that those traffic guards, break the habit of actually seeing if there are cars around, meaning I am actually less safe when they aren’t there.
I often ride my bicycle on the sidewalk around here, but I do so carefully and always give priority to pedestrians (of which there are few where I am to begin with, but I’ll get off the sidewalk for them). Legality be damned; this is the only way to not be flatted by some asshat in an SUV in some places. For instance, overpasses here have no shoulder at all but sometimes there is a sidewalk, and if you’re lucky there may even be a guard rail separating it from the car lanes where everyone is doing 60+ in a 35 zone with impunity.
l’ll speak up for airplanes, or at least airliners in particular. I concede the point they mostly burn non-renewable fuels, but they make excellent use of the resources. Rhetorically speaking, one can cross half the planet in half a day, for not much money, in a mode of transport that is the safest on the planet (typically an order of magnitude safer than cars as I recall).
Yeah, that’s why I put them in lawful. If we can get them to be more sustainable (maybe green hydrogen fuel), then they’d basically just be super fast and super safe sky buses, whereas they’re currently extremely polluting sky buses.
Although don’t forget that “for not much money” is partly because air travel is so subsidised. Fuel tends to be largely untaxed, even though fuel taxes on other modes don’t really cover the externalities
If I recall correctly, aren’t high speed trains the safest? At the very least, I recall that the Shinkansen has never had a single safety incident in its entire history, and as for the TGV, there have been a few derailments and a terrorist attack.
Especially on middle-distance routes where land transport would be faster (considering that airports can’t be downtown like train stations can be, the delays associated with airport security, etc.) if the rail infrastructure were decent.
In terms of fuel per passenger unit of distance, air travel is very efficient, the reason why there are so many emissions is the amount of distance you can travel.
Fuel makes up a significant amount of the aircraft’s weight at takeoff on long haul flights.
After reading up on this I’m actually going to have to side with the NIMBY’s on this one. Public space is maybe the only thing in California that’s in shorter supply than housing. And reportedly there are plenty of surface parking lots that could be built on since the university needs more housing.
The problem here is NIMBYs aren’t acting in good faith, if UC did take up on that suggestion, you know they will force UC to start from scratch and still fight UC every step of the way
I’m a Berkeley alum and the counterpoint is that, while People’s Park is some (relatively) rare green space near downtown Berkeley, it has been, for the past 20 years, solely the domain of the homeless, drug-addicted, and mentally unwell. It’s not usable public space for most residents. You cannot have a peaceful picnic in People’s Park. The housing proposal included a facility to house and offer services for homeless people, to its credit.
I have mixed feelings about it being turned into housing, but it was unusable as a park and Berkeley has a severe housing shortage. Only freshmen* are guaranteed on-campus housing, a large fraction of the housing in town is owned and operated by a convicted human trafficker, and there was a highly-publicized story about a student who recently completed his degree by living in SoCal and flying to Berkeley a few times a week. The situation is quite dire and Berkeley is really doing quite well when it comes to not having surface parking. There are a couple of lots near the football stadium that are surface lots, but most everything else is a parking structure, usually with an activated roof of some sort.
I work for an auto company. I can tell you they don’t want mass transit because it hurts profits. They would much rather jack up the cost of vehicles, offer deals on leases, and keep people locked into getting a new vehicle every few years. Just keep the machine running and fuck anything except their profits. You will see how shady the auto industry is once the strike happens next week
That one bus company in the nearby city that absolutely refuses to replace their miserable old buses 🥴🤡 while the others run modern air conditioned hybrids, and some fully electric
Multiple bus companies can be a good thing if done well. The busses in Taiwan are also privatized and the service is quite good. In Japan even the metro and rail networks compete in a private market.
When you privatize a company and make it a monopoly though you get the worst of both worlds.
That’s backwards from how it is here. Our crossing guards stop vehicular traffic, and give incredibly high priority to pedestrians. There’s one at the school by my house who patrols an intersection that includes a traffic light. He will routinely make lines of cars miss an entire green light to allow pedestrians to cross. If you fail to stop, they can ticket you. You’ll probably also get the shit whacked out of your car with an aluminum stop sign.
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