I love how that clip has multiple shots of trucks absolutely full of boxes, while making the case for a vehicle that could fit inside the truck as it’s replacement.
I think you just missed the point entirely. You don’t actually have to load up as many items in a cargo bike, because it’s inherent advantages in urban contexts more than makes up for its inability to load up as many items.
If I own a grocery, it’s going to take a hell of a lot of bike trips to and from the warehouse to restock every day. Or I could employ an army of bikers. Or one truck.
Ok, so deliver food via truck. Choose the appropriate means of transportation for each type of last-mile delivery. The 200 gram Amazon package most certainly does not require a heavy truck to deliver.
One thousand stops within a five mile radius means that you’re definitely going to make it out ahead with bike delivery. So yes, the bikes would very obviously come out ahead in this scenario.
It seems I missed the point. I had deliveries in mind where the truck is mostly empty most of the time. Restocking with a truck or cargo tram (depending on the environment) would make more sense.
whatever is convenient, for short distances (shops right next to where the tram stops) you can probably just straight up use the same pallet trucks used to unload it (they’re really quite speedy and flexible), for longer distances cargo bikes.
Mmh in my experience actually not. Very distinct streets in the centre are shopping streets (with residential on the higher floors). Many neighbourhoods are just residential.
while you could argue the specialized electric buses and delivery vans are “Cars” they cannot drive on normal roads and do not produce pollution, in terms of emissions or noise, like regular cars. It’s more than possible to build a car free city, its been done before.
I unironically want to see bicycle infantry back. Would also be a nice thing to have for the individual soldier, as time in the open is far more dangerous than being hidden or in a fortified position.
That sounds like a horrible idea logistically, you still need to ship stuff from a cargo terminal to the location its needed and putting single containers on rail as their own “train” makes traffic a absolute nightmare there will never not be some kind of truck unless we can Teleport shit around or airships become a cheap, fast and reliable option.
The problem is mostly that we don’t build rail spurs in industrial areas anymore. If we did, then these cars could detach from trains at a shunting yard, and split up to head to all their different destinations individually. But the only last-mile infrastructure we currently have is roads.
The thing with developers is that they build that density, but over ALL of the land. Apartments kill more trees and create more impervious cover than any other type of housing.
Our city requires parkland dedication for development. Single-family developments build public parks and preserve trees wherever possible. Apartments just pay a fee in lieu for tree mitigation and parkland dedication and improvements because they absolutely will not have a millimeter of land not dedicated to housing.
That sounds like the sort of thing that could easily be fixed by making it not legal to do that lol
It’s not a problem inherent to apartments, it’s a problem with lack of regulation in your area.
But more importantly, if that many people need housing, it’s better to put them in apartments than single family houses. Less nature will get destroyed. What are we gonna do, not give them housing?
The point of the graphics is 100 homes vs 100 homes. If you say “well, in the second picture developers would just keep building” then you’re comparing 100 homes to like 1000 homes. It makes no sense.
Apartments kill more trees and create more impervious cover than any other type of housing.
Is this per-acre, per-person, or per-unit?
Per acre doesn’t make a lot of sense, comparison-wise, because people have to live somewhere. It seems more logical to compare on a per capita basis than anything else, in terms of the number of people who will on average live in those units.
People like ignoring per-capita analysis because it would force them to rethink the sustainability of their own lifestyle. There is absolutely nothing sustainable about every single person living in ultra low-density, car-dependent sprawl.
If you refuse to build dense communities to house people, they’ll just build sprawl elsewhere, and more forest and farmland will be destroyed for it, more cars will clog up the streets because of it, and more neighborhoods will have to be demolished to build freeways because of it.
Typical apartment density still results in a higher per-capita impact. Yeah - that home lot may take up a lot of space, but it’ll be maybe 20-30% impervious cover. So you get triple the density with an apartment, but once you account for the parking (no garages inside the apartments), the higher percentage of impervious cover, and the lack of parkland dedication for the neighborhood you actually have more impervious cover per capita for multifamily than single-family.
And that’s not even touching the extra traffic mitigation in the road network required to accommodate a dense development. Traffic isn’t spread out, so more infrastructure has to be built everywhere to accommodate the choke points created by apartments. You throw in a 400-unit apartment complex you have to add another lane to the road, plus decel and turn lanes at the site. You add 400 single-family homes along that same road and it isn’t a problem because you don’t have the stress-point on the network created by having hundreds of cars using the same access point. When your peak-hour trips for a site get over about 100, you’re gonna cause a lot of traffic.
The solution we’ve implemented with single-family to make it less impactful is a super strict tree ordinance. Any trees removed have to be double, triple, or even quadruple-mitigated (depending on tree size) and we additionally charge $500/inch for tree removal. We make it so fucking expensive to bulldoze nature they have to build around it.
If they “accidentally” kill a tree, they have to pay quadruple the fee, mitigate on-site, and development in the critical root zone of an improperly-removed tree is permanently prohibited. We’ve had million-dollar pieces of land made worthless when they tried to get around the rules.
Single-family builds around the trees and incorporates them into the neighborhoods. Multifamily just pays the mitigation fees and passes the bill to the residents.
Of course, not everywhere has the space for single-family. But if you’ve got the space, single-family can be way less-disruptive to the local environment than multifamily.
Triple the density sounds quite low. A five over one is going to be more like 6x or more the density.
It sounds like most of the rest of that is parking minimums and car-dependant roads. The last apartment I lived in just had on-street parking because it was in a walkable neighborhood and a couple min from the subway. I don’t know how many people living there even owned a car.
The reality is that in most of the US a car is a hard requirement. Building apartments without parking means nobody will live there. You can’t solve the parking problem without first addressing the need for cars. The US is sprea out enough that installing enough public transit to remove the need for a car would be the largest civil project in history.
You do both incrementally and simultaneously. Yes, this is a terrible idea in the middle of exurban sprawl. Don’t build them there.
The people most likely to move into these buildings are the people best served by existing transit. If you’re able to bike, train or bus to work, you’re more likely to get one of those units than if you drive 120 miles to work.
A number of cities already have decent to ok transit networks. So you make it so expansions to those networks result in transit-oriented development, and upzone existing walksheds of your transit to transform them into pleasant walkable mixed-use areas if they aren’t already. You improve things over time and people who prefer walkable, bikeable urbanism will move in.
Simultaneously simply isn’t realistic. A developer isn’t gonna drop 40 million dollars on a TOD complex without the transit being in place. Otherwise they’re throwing away the money when the transit project falls through (which 90% do).
Aren’t those regulation issues? What’s stopping the municipality (or whoever is in charge) to mandate a maximum of say 70% of the land to be built on? Or buying back land to preserve its natural state? Developers will work ruthlessly whether they are building individual or communal housing. At the end of it, i think it may just come down to greed and greasing the right pockets.
70 percent is actually a high number, and is actually the highest we allow anywhere. Single-family is usually limited to 50%, and a lot of our city is in the recharge zone of an aquifer and limited to 15%.
I’d argue that 100 houses and 1 playground is much more destructive to the land than 1 building with 100 apartments and no playground. Single family homes still have a massive amount of impervious ground cover ranging from their roofs, driveways and patios.
Its also not an inherrent problem to the denser developments themselves but moreso an issue its legal to pay a fine to get out of a building standard. The city could just refuse any development that fails to meet their public park and tree goals.
Multifamily development requires large buildings and parking lots that are fundamentally incompatible with low impervious cover and tree preservation.
Attached garages are what allow single-family homes to be so efficient when it comes to impervious cover. The cars are parked inside the building, with living space above and around it within a door of the parking space. It’s extremely compact, and with proper minimum setbacks in the code you eliminate a lot of pavement.
The average apartment requires 2.2 parking spaces. The average house requires 2.5. Multiply that out by 100 units and you’ve got 220 versus 250, but by having garages the driveways can be shortened to only 2 have room for 2 spaces. Now you’ve got 4 spaces’ worth of parking for the impervious cover of 2, so the parking requirements for single-family are more than twice as efficient while being lower in absolute terms.
A parking space requires about 100 square feet of IC, so for a 100-unit complex you’re looking at 22,000 square feet of IC just for the parking spaces. Plus another 1500 for ADA spaces. Throw in drive aisles (which due to emergency vehicle access are just as wide as a SF road) and that number more than doubles. Also put in fire lanes, hammerheads/turnarounds, etc and you’re quickly looking at 150,000 square feet of pavement just for the parking lot, plus the extra road lanes and decel lanes required to support its traffic impact.
The thing about SF roads is that they serve multiple purposes. They provide access to the site, as well as emergency vehicle access, fire lanes, etc. They also can do storm water detention under the roads to limit the required off-site detention, so they don’t have to clear-cut as large of an area for detention and water-quality facility as an apartment complex does.
So the road, drive aisle, emergency access, fire lane, storm sewer, and more can all be combined in a lower-density area in a manner that combines to decrease the per capita environmental impact.
There’s no additional ADA requirements because every parking space has open space on at least 1 side and they’re all close enough to the houses that reserving empty parking spaces for ADA isn’t required. And half the parking spaces are inside the house. And the occupancy rate of SF houses is half-again higher than an apartment, but with fewer drivers per capita (higher percentage of multiple-child households in SF).
You can’t just look at building sizes and get the full picture of a development’s impact.
I don’t know what houses you see that have garages but don’t have driveways long enough to park on. The drive up area of a multiunit can also allow emergency service access, often allowing full access to the perimeter of the building by using the sidewalks or lawns during emergencies.
As for stormwater it is very rare that it is detained underground or underneath the road, most developments have storm sewers that lead to a stormwater retention or detention pond and in some cases the sewers directly lead into creeks, lakes or empty land.
The more people try to “innovate” transportation the closer it gets to going back to trains. Driverless cars, for efficiency have them communicate with eachother, to accelerate and brake at the same time, for example. That’s just less efficient and more expensive trains.
There’s a massive failure condition for your example - sure, autonomous cars behave like trains when they communicate with each other to sync acceleration and deceleration, but they can also separate themselves from the collective to drive you to the door of your home. In the train metaphor this would be like you sitting in your own train car, and the train car separating from the rest of it and driving you to your doorstep.
Or you could have a train that drops you off either close to your home or close to a bus station that drops off near your home. This would require a walkable city, so it’s definitely not as simple as just building tracks and bus stations. The issue is that Americans are so used to car dependent infrastructure, that when they try to imagine what public transport would be like, they think of it in the context of where they live. That’s why I think so many are opposed to the idea. It’s not an impossible task, it’s just that it’d require money and effort, so it probably won’t happen.
It also won’t happen because not all of us live in cities. The “fuck cars” crowd never has any solutions for rural locations other than “don’t live there” as if rural areas serve no purpose. As long as farms are a thing there will be people out here, either farming themselves or supporting farmers,and things like scooters and trains either won’t work or only partially solve the problem.
Anyone who thinks getting rid of cars is a viable strategy in the US of all places is delusional.
You are talking about a minority of vehicles though. 77% of US personal vehicles are non-rural, hence, fuck them.*
I also don’t think many people want to get rid of every single car everywhere for every purpose. Most cars are personal vehicles in built up areas and that’s where they cause the most problems and make the least sense.
For some places rail is too expensive or inflexible. So you need driverless cars, but you can make them cheaper by not having so many of them, instead having really big ones, and since driverless is not ready we hire a human to drive for now.
So yesterday I’m cycling and I come to a spot where the bike lane disappears for a quarter-mile segment, so I slot in at pace behind a shuttle bus (the kind that gives a lovely draft, so I won’t be slowing traffic down) to get me to the next point where there’s a bike lane.
Well, dude in the truck following that bus didn’t want me there, so not only does he get on his horn, he did the Seattle-classic maneuver of accelerating into the merge-space to prevent me merging, and when I came in anyways, tailgated aggressively to the point where he was an arm’s span off my wheel, while I was a bike-length behind that bus. We’re not going slow at this point, I’m pacing in the draft of the shuttle bus at traffic’s speed (something close to 30mph is my guess). For what it’s worth, I’m comfortable drafting like that (I race bikes, it’s common practice, it can be safely done) but being tailgated by a hostile driver in this situation was terrifying.
Now I can understand not liking it when someone merges in front of you (but in my defense, my lane was just ending and it will resume in ~400M and in his defense, maybe he doesn’t know that), but I somehow don’t think vehicular assault is an appropriate response. I can get him thinking it was rude for me to get into traffic in his way, but in the end jumping in the draft of that bus was the least-disruptive way for me to be on that road.
So pretty soon the shuttle reaches its destination and turns off to the right, and by that point we’ve reached the spot where the bike lane begins. I overtook on the left as it turned off and was in the bike lane on the right before man-baby in the truck was able to come through. In the end he wasn’t slowed down in any way, traffic wasn’t disrupted at all, and maybe he thought I was rude, but fuck that guy.
Yeah the reason people shit on bicycles is we inconveniently insist on existing in spaces where accommodating our use is often an afterthought. I don’t like the spots where the bike lane isn’t either, but getting anywhere involves stitching up segments of bike lane with segments of that shit and when I traverse those things I go to the effort to get up to the speed limit to do it- and 99% of drivers are really good about sharing and giving space, it’s that other 1% that consistently seem to think driving like an asshole will teach us a lesson or something.
I don't have the answer, but about 10 years ago I was invited to go on a group ride. I'm more of a commuter, but have done longer rides. Anyway, the behavior of the folks I was with made me never want to ride with others again. It was terrible! I think that is why pedal bikes get lumped into this scenario. You could replace the pickup with a Porsche and I think it would be the same scene.
Haha no, nothing like that. We were riding on a narrow, windy, river road in the mountains. No ability for cars to pass, but many places for slow moving vehicles to move o er and not even have to stop! Essentially, they wanted the cars to share the road with them but they wouldn't share with the cars. Most people in that area don't care to pause, but after passing multiple pullouts they can become irritable.
I know this is fuckcars but that particular situation was, for me, untenable.
I personally pull over when there’s a line of cars behind me and there is space, even if I have to stop for a moment.
But the general view that cyclists are assholes if they don’t pull over for the convenience of car drivers grinds my gears.
Cyclists aren’t lesser traffic users, they have the exact same right to keep moving and take up the space they need on the road.
Sure, but slower vehicles, may they be cars or farm equipment or whatever else they may be (including bikes), can be dangerous to themselves and others by not letting traffic (that obeys the speed limit) through.
I think you captured best what I was thinking. I have also driven farm machinery quite often on this road, and it just the same. In both cases I will use the lane for as long as needed, but also in both cases I will pull over to allow others to pass. It takes no longer for me but affects them much more if I don't.
Many states have slow moving vehicle laws that require them pull over and allow othe vehicles to pass if there are 3 or more behind them. I don’t care if you’re on 2, 4, 6, or 18 wheels. If you are obstructing traffic, get out of the way. I don’t have the right to arbitrarily close down a road to play tag football, hold a party, or anything else, I have to get special permits to do so. I even have to get permits to move very slow/large loads by semi-truck. But some bikers think that just because there are more than 2 of them, they get to organize a rolling road block. To avoid shitting on just bikers, this happens with farm equipment and many other things too.
In addition, most bikes and farm equipment don’t pay road taxes. The fuel for farm equipment is specifically exempted from pay tax on their fuel and bikes obviously don’t use fuel. Here is a golden rule I use when riding a bike, a motorcycle, a 4 wheeler, or driving a car, “Don’t be a dick.”
Bikes shouldn’t have to pay road tax because they don’t cause wear on the roads, and the roads aren’t built for them. Road tax doesn’t come close to covering the cost of roads, the rest comes from general tax, so in reality it’s bikes subsidizing cars.
Bikes aren’t riding in the middle of the lane just for the sake of it, there’s nothing worse than having a car riding up your ass. They’re riding in the middle of the lane because of visibility and to prevent unsafe passing. Once it’s safe to pass, they will pull over and let you pass. They aren’t “obstructing traffic” by riding along as fast, safe and courteously as they can, even if why they’re doing it isn’t always obvious to you.
Same phenomenon with motorcycles, I can’t go on rides with more than two other riders and we need to be able to communicate via intercom. People act like idiots to impress each other when the group gets big enough.
If they can walk, they can bike. If they can’t walk, how safe is it for them to drive a car? Calling a taxi or an ambulance is not out of the question.
i detest signs like these with such a burning passion, they show that people want their streets to be safe but cannot be arsed to actually get them to be made safer, so they put up a sign as if that’s going to do jack shit.
If you want people to drive safely, get the local government to traffic calm the street, if nothing else it’s common for there to be a procedure for getting permission to place some flower boxes on the street to make your own traffic calming.
I’d go even farther than that: I’d argue that those signs are an admission of incompetence by the engineer who approved their installation.
I’m becoming more and more convinced that the path towards improving the situation is to directly target the engineers themselves by going after the license of those who fail to design streets appropriately for all users. Even if they follow established government guidelines or industry best practices, that shouldn’t be a defense because the guidelines and best practices are wrong to begin with.
fuckcars
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.