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.
Robotaxis? Probably not. But autonomous vehicles that can communicate and drive as a group? Yes that will help. Then induced demand and all that, but it will increase capacity.
Robust public transportation will help a lot more. But go ahead and argue with the MIT scientists who wrote this article if you like. Their research seems to show you’re wrong.
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.
In civilized places, buses take about as long as a car, as they’re prioritized in infrastructure. The added benefit is that you don’t even need to own a 2 ton death machine.
Fair, but it is the reality a lot of people live with. I would love for us to have a Netherlands approach to biking, but we don’t. And we have brutally cold winters, where waiting for a bus is made even more undesirable, and biking less of an option because of how treacherous the snow makes everything (including driving).
To me it seems more like a pleasant fantasy than a realistic expectation. For other places I’m sure it is an attainable reality.
I don’t think you’ll meet a transit/urbanism advocate who will tell you to ride transit that doesn’t exist where you are or that is wildly impractical for you. I certainly won’t. For me, it’s more about doing what makes the most sense for you, while also pushing to change the infrastructure where you are to make transit and urbanism better and more feasible for more people.
I have written my council pushing for changes to existing biking laws to make it safer in my city. So you’re rightz we have to push for what we need. Nothing changes if we don’t voice our concerns.
Local climate really isn’t a reason to avoid public transportation infrastructure, as you have VERY hot and humid places (São Paulo, Brazil during summer) and very cold places (Netherlands during winter) with perfectly functional services. It’s all about HOW said infrastructure is deployed and cared for.
Netherlands is quite warm from my perspective and a poor comparison to the extremely harsh winters we experience.
Thier average winter temperature is our late fall and early spring temp (November and March). The months of December, January and March are more comparable to Siberia.
Isn’t the point of a 15 minute city that you can get anywhere within 15 minutes without a car?
(By the way, from a European standpoint it sounds really funny that 15 minute cities are not a reality for you. Like, why would you ever build a city differently in the first place?)
It’s pretty disingenuous to claim that your city founded in 1300 has tight streets and isn’t car-friendly because people in 1300 were really big on public transport.
And the answer is that cities grow descriptively rather than prescriptively. They generally add what is in demand/what they need piecemeal, and most US cities really grew in the 20th century.
That’s why NYC, for example, has significantly better public transport than most of the nation - it’s one of the oldest cities
This is also why moving to mass transit is a hard sell. It’s expensive and there is less demonstrated need and more forethought behind the switchover.
There’s an few distinctions about American culture as it relates to car culture.
America had/has a lot of land
Much of this is/was vastly underdeveloped right outside of urban hubs, unlike Europe/related which benefits from a tighter interconnected network of cities that more immediately benefit from mass transit systems
In the US post-WWII middle class and privileged were often sold an idea of peaceful suburban lifestyles away from urbanized areas
Car manufacturers marketed this successfully as a way to encourage families away from city life and thus build a more solid reliance on their vehicles
City planning was therefore often built around a suburban-city sprawl rather than a cohesive urban community designed around efficiency
Like, why would you ever build a city differently in the first place?
Exactly. Unfortunately, in Australia, we tend to borrow stupid ideas from the US to make money and have sprawling suburbs with zero amenity.
For instance, we had a new suburbian development within 20km from the CBD with the promise of schools, community centres etc. in the early 2000s. When all the houses were bought and built, suddenly there’s no money for amenities so they just sold the land to developers who then put more houses in. Now the only way to get anything you need is by car because there’s no train or buses because it was supposed to be accessible by bike/walking but now isn’t. And not to mention gridlock of vehicles looking to get out of the suburbs for food etc. out of the one intersection provided.
I would love 15min cities without cars for my country but the attitude to cars here is similar to the attitude about guns in the US.
Have you not heard of mixed density? There should be houses, semi, townhomes, 3 story walk-ups and apartment buildings. You could probably do all that and still keep 50% of the island nature.
Not only this, but in the second picture, that other 96% is ripe for rezoning - money men will not stop until they buy off enough politicians to develop it into something resembling the first picture.
Edit: I’m not saying I like it, I’m just stating facts.
The shores become resort property. The rest becomes a mini-mall. The resort buys the apartment complex a year later. With any houses, all houses get bought by cooperations and rented out as overpriced Airbnb houses. Fuck we can’t have anything nice with unfettered capitalism.
Having trees != ecosystem. The mere presence of tons of roads, buildings, and infrastructure (not to mention monocultured grass lawns, pesticides, herbicides, etc.) is super disruptive to ecosystems. If our cities needlessly sprawl all over the place, we’re forced to drive more, pollute more, spend more (all that infrastructure and cars are super expensive!), and our built environment disrupts much more actual ecosystems.
fuckcars
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