[gg3]

Now we're getting somewhere.

The point I've been trying to make with regard to "definition of car" and "what specific regulations," is the difference between moral crusades and policy.

The language used early in this topic, has a righteous moralizing tone whose emotional underpinnings are indistinguishable from those of the Moral Majority. "Cars are bad! People who drive are bad! We're better than they are!" or, for a Monty Pythonesque reductio-ad-absurdam, "She's a witch! Burn her!"

"The" private automobile, is the same type of grammatical and psycholinguistic construct as "The" family and "The" unborn child. Use of the word "the" in this manner changes a concrete plural noun into an abstract noun that has no relationship to the specific cases it purports to speak for. "The" private automobile, as an abstraction, is an entirely differnt animal than "private automobiles" as a concrete plural noun. You can't make policy about an abstraction. You can make policy about a concrete plural noun and design systems accordingly.


1) Rising fuel prices will not solve transportation issues.

The anticipatory timeline of pricing mechanisms is shorter than the timeline needed to build new infrastructure. For our purposes, price mechanisms are effectively reactive rather than anticipatory.

It takes three to five years to build a wind farm, seven to ten for a nuclear reactor, fifteen to seventeen to replace a generation of vehicles, and fifty or longer to replace a generation of real estate development.

If price were a viable mechanism for solving transportation issues, given the timelines cited above, we would presently be paying about $12 to $15 per gallon of gasoline. Most of that would be in the form of taxes to offset tax credits and direct funding for R&D and deployment of new energy, transport, and real estate infrastructures.

2) No Silver Bullets.

Transportation is part of a web of infrastructure, no one piece of which can be addressed alone. Claudia's posting has an excellent grasp of the problem and the practicalities. Planning & zoning, and development, are the core issues. Those things shape the geography, which in turn shapes the transportation mix.

If you called for banning cars, what are you going to do about planning & zoning? If you're serious, you'll start going to the meetings of P&Z officials in your city and county. And you'll start a local action group to serve as a check-and-balance against unsustainable development decisions, and to raise funds for direct implementation of sustainable development projects. In the latter case we're talking about tens of millions of dollars for anything on a scale that demonstrates viability.

3) A modest proposal.

Cities and suburbs both consist of streets with buildings along them. The only real difference is that in cities, the buildings serve a multitude of functions, whereas in suburbs they serve only one function (housing).

The problem is not in the buildings themselves, it's in the functions they serve. Or more precisely, the functions they are ALLOWED to serve.

There is nothing about a quarter-acre parcel that prevents it being used for a grocery store, hardware store, neighborhood school, or anything else that will physically fit on the land. And there is precious little about the average suburban house that prevents it being remodeled to serve any of those functions. The only thing standing in the way is bad P&Z policy, any and all of which can be reversed.

Consider this:

Take an existing "sprawl" development. Revise the P&Z. Along key sections of each of a number of strategically-located streets, a few houses get converted into shops, schools, churches, libraries, offices, and so on. Most of this can be done through clever interior remodeling. In a few cases, buildings will have to be torn down and new ones built; but the exteriors of those can be consistent with the prevailing local architecture.

The fear of "declining property values" is mitigated via a compensation mechanism: buy out nearby residences that suffer a downturn in their real estate values. In fact this won't be a problem because what will actually happen is that values will rise in a development of this kind.

For example, if you have three houses in a row converted to new uses, and their neighbors don't want to be next to commercial properties, then tear down a house on either side, convert the new open space to a park and a playground, each with community gardens. Now what you have is something that actively enhances the amenity value of nearby residences.

What you end up with is a small town with integral housing, commercial, and recreational functions, all within distances that can be covered via walking, electric buses, and small electric cars.

With suburbs reborn as small towns, most of the need for (and use of) large inefficient motorized vehicles will evaporate. On its own.

[JohnDenver]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', ' ')"Cars are bad! People who drive are bad! We're better than they are!"

[Wildwell]

Good points GG3.

Essentially the problem is ‘the system of living’. This is really well illustrated by ‘The end of Suburbia’. Simply put, during the planning process lifestyle was designed about private, personal, individual transport. This is a system where people have to travel miles to work, live, socialise and go about their daily business – based on cheap fossil fuels. Therefore it’s no surprise that people have aspired to or have had to buy cars in order to live. We cannot blame the ordinary man or woman in the street for aspiring to buy cars or having to run them and demonise them for doing so. That said, there’s no doubt about it there is a hardcore of planners, councillors, and special interest groups that think this methods of transport is king and should be catered for at any cost.

I am not in the business of banning things or victimising ordinary motorists for any of these planning ‘mistakes’. But let’s not beat about the bush, cars do have a downside, and if more people were aware of this instead of this state of delusion about life we’d be better off for it.

If peak oil does mature into a crisis scenario like many think it will, it will be down to those planning decisions made in the last 50 years. In the last 15 years or so in the UK, these mistakes have been recognised. The trouble is, the schemes are still a watered down version of what needs to be done, with token tree planting in wood shavings, statues of local egotists, free buses to bingo and a lot of hype and gloss.

If anyone thinks about this sensibly, it is completely ridiculous and barmy that any government should subside and plan for such a form of transport that excludes socially, pollutes, wastes space and resources and in the long term – we think – is unsustainable.

Just on the social exclusion level alone, it is criminal that 30% of people in the UK cannot afford to drive, or don’t have the ability to drive, or are to young, old or ill to drive – yet the government believes in planning the entire system of living around this method of transport. Yes, motorists do pay a lot of tax, but that’s beside the point. The government should never have got into the business of skewing planning in such a socially exclusive way, which puts whole strata of society, possibly the poorest strata of society at a complete disadvantage. Moreover, they have wholly brought about congestion and pollution which now blights our cities and totally screws business to the tune of $50 billion per year. Companies are now going abroad as they recognise the infrastructure is essentially in a state of terminal risk of collapse or labour markets are either not there or are too fragmented.

Two people are now required to work in most households just to pay for the transport, yet many do not realise for £200 per year per head they could have free, unlimited public transport. I’m not saying this should be done, but that’s the cost. Instead they are committed to spend several thousand pounds and 42p per mile (except external costs) to run the family transport, which includes a vehicle which spends 95% of it’s time doing nothing.

Just yesterday motorists were trapped in their cars for two hours as temperatures were heading for 90 degrees because the entire road system is at gridlock.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/4108426.stm

As every urban planner knows, they cannot build their way out of this, in urban areas there simple isn’t the room for extra roads – it would require large scale demolition of whole areas - very costly – which would succeed to generating more traffic along that route. You would still be faced with flow problems at pinch points at critical junctions. Every morning 2 million people head into central London by train, tube and bus – a few square miles. If they all drove in using individual cars, those cars would stretch 3500 miles!! This is about equal to the distance between London and fucking New York. Yet the thicko motoring lobby would actually like to have everyone driving into these few miles with free parking and close down the trains and buses, saying this is all out of date and everyone should bring huge gas guzzling SUV egobeasts with leather seats and condom dispensers up to the gates of buck house. This is mainly because they haven’t learnt to add up, the distraction being their hands too busy flicking between the SUV manual, the petrol pump and their crotch.

So they [The government] have suggested pricing motorists off the roads, levying a toll of $2 PER MILE in busy areas. As expected there was uproar. The government hopes people will get out of their cars to travel on buses instead, but the whole planning system has made buses a not especially attractive option because of the distances involved with sprawl. Indeed, most middle class people would never be seen dead on a bus. They are happy to travel by train, but the railway system is essentially limited these days, with very large towns not having any sort of connection. Tramways are enormously expensive to retro-fit.

Then we come to climate change, the peaking of world oil supply. The system of living that has been created may be looked back upon as an enormous scandal. It is not only social divisive, wasteful of resources and architecturally and socially shallow – with huge health and social problems – it’s going to take an slap around the head with huge wet fish in every aspect of life to put right – I doubt in many areas, especially in the US it can be put right. Misallocation of resources is an understatement.

The only way to solve it, is not to charge people $2 to drive a mile, or demonise them for going about their business, but some imaginative planning around schemes where walking, cycling is the norm, a huge push for social values and around the family and re-localisation of business, social activities and a whole way of life that has been lost. As well as planning for clean, fast, space efficient transport that people want to use. Sadly, I think the chances of achieving this, in a planned, reasoned, cost effective way are nil in 90% of cases.

But damn right I’m going to point out cars aint all that good.

[I_Like_Plants]

Wildwell WONDERFUL post!!

I'm getting rid of my car as soon as possible, because the benefits for me of not having it and not having to pay for it will be huge, even assuming, as I am, that our doofuses in charge will find a way to keep gas prices low here in the US for the next few years at least.

The health benefits, financial benefits, and intangibles like, it's fun to ride a bike and I end up learning more about what's where in my neighborhood when riding one, far outweigh the benefits, and certainly there are some, of owning the car.

[Hawkcreek]

--

[nocar]

Hawcreek, I am not sure it is always easier to tackle a technological problem than changing attitudes. More efficient cars can certainly be made, but in the first place, to build them takes energy, and then they will still use energy to move the car itself as the well as the person inside.

Cars as currently used are immensely inefficient, the most energy intensive way to do everyday travel ever invented (air planes are worse, but not used for everyday travel) A fast way to improve mileage is of course to car-pool, filling up the seats in a car with people going in the same direction. Much easier to organise today with cell phones and computers than ever before. At the same time you build cooperation and trust between people.

I seriously think that car travel erodes communities. Driving your own car, you have to look at all fellow travellers on the road with a suspicious mind (what is that guy going to do? Will he stop at the intersection to let me by, or must I stop? etc) People always seem to think that other drivers are bad, and certainly other cars on the road at normal speeds are deadly threats. albeit unintentional, or at least hindrances. If the only way you know to go places is in your car, you will start to look at other people with suspicion.

If you go by public transport, you have to put some faith into the human organisation behind. Fellow travellers are resources, e.g. for information, not hindrances (unless it is very crowded). If you walk or bike you "meet" people with you whole person and body. You can exchange words, very different from when you drive with a steel cage around you.

If driving alone in rush hour will be seen as shamefully egoistical, and people therefore will start to make some effort to avoid that, we will soon be on our way to a more energy efficient and cooperative society.

nocar

[shakespear1]

Considering the US gov. is spending 4-5 billion/month in Iraq and Afganistan and getting nothing for it except grief. You would have to be totally insane to continue on this path when you could be spending the money on a War for Oil Independence.

Hell, more Americans would have good jobs and not getting killed/injured in a foreign land.

[Macsporan]

Another thing about cars is that they kill people, lots of them, all the time.

I read somewhere that about 80 million people have died of car since the dawn of the last century. Thats more than WWs I and II combined. And lets not talk about the wounded, paralysed and maimed and what that has cost the world in grief and money.

Still less would you want to know what all these roads cost to keep up every year.

They are expensive, inefficient and dangerous so let's be rid of them.

Me, I'm a train nut. 'Thomas the Tank Engine' is my best friend. So let's do rail between cities, light rail (tramcars) within them. These can be electrified so as to run off the grid. Trains can carry goods and people at one third of the cost of motor vehicles and maintainance costs for them are very small. Steel rails wear a lot more slowly than bitumen roads.

What we need to do as PO looms is run a crash construction program for railways. Restore the ones we have and extend them. Build them over the roads, double track if possible. This will become easier with time as the suburbs thin out we'll be able to knock routes through them hither and yon.

If you have a good service with a tram/train arriving every ten minutes and no one more than ten minutes away from one that's all the transport you could possibly want.

We're going to have to be inventive and learn how to carry people's bicycles, prams and shopping inside the carriages. I'm sure it can be done.

So shoot the Fat Controller, rise up and learn to love trains.

[Wildwell]

I’ve just been listening to the radio, yet another pro-lobbyist was on there talking about…and I quote…Victorian activities such as ‘Walking and cycling?’ Pardon? I wasn’t aware in evolutionary terms our legs were now redundant! But here is a classic case where technology has provided a useful machine like the car and it’s use is being abused at the expense of local community, pollution and all the other unsavoury things that go with *overuse*.

[nocar]

Macsporam wrote
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')e're going to have to be inventive and learn how to carry people's bicycles, prams and shopping inside the carriages. I'm sure it can be done.

[SchroedingersCat]

Why don't we just ban parking?

[nocar]

Schroedingerscat,

At first I thought "what a great idea!" because cars are really no good if you can not leave them at your destination - I suppose you did not mean banning parking at people's own homes?

But then I remembered what I have seen practiced when parking is a real problem - you have two people in hte car, one has the duty to keep driving around the block, the other does the errands. So people can easily can get around the parking ban by chauffeuring. So what you get is a more labor-intensive transport system, that might produce even more vehiclekilometers.

Nice try though

nocar

[turmoil]

Why don't we just say that driving causes cancer? With, you know, one of thse 'studies.'

[johnmarkos]

Are cars obsolete? This blogger seems to think so. If they are, then trends are moving in our favor.

[skyemoor]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'S')cooters, eh?

Okay, there's one definition. It says in effect, that anything with wheels *and* a motor with which it propels itself, is an automobile. Therefore including what we ordinarily call motorcycles, scooters, etc. Question: what about mopeds and what about electric-assisted bicycles?

Anyone else have a clear, concise, and consistent definition to offer..?

[Caoimhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'T')here is nothing about a quarter-acre parcel that prevents it being used for a grocery store, hardware store, neighborhood school, or anything else that will physically fit on the land. And there is precious little about the average suburban house that prevents it being remodeled to serve any of those functions. The only thing standing in the way is bad P&Z policy, any and all of which can be reversed.

[johnmarkos]

Eliminating the driver is a step towards eliminating the private automobile. Why? Because without a driver, the feeling of control and much of the romance of the car is gone. However, car buyers will sacrifice the romance of driving for perceived safety: the evidence for this is the ugliest generation of cars in history, bloated for safety. Since robot-driven cars will be safer than human-guided ones, driving is on its way out.

Last weekend's successful DARPA Grand Challenge is a step towards robot cars and thus towards a car-free future.

[SHiFTY]

I don't think that's realistic; in fact I think that's a totalitarian way of going about things.

What you want to reduce is unneccessary car journeys, especially commuting to work and back. By taxing fuel and providing fast, relable train services, much of europe does this.

Cars are great for holidays, off-peak driving, et ceterera.

For example here in the UK, I catch trains to work every day, costs me 25 pounds a week for a pass. Don't need a car to get to work at all.

If I want to go on holiday, I hire a brand new VW diesel for 100 pounds a weekend.

Simple!

[johnmarkos]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SHiFTY', 'I') don't think that's realistic; in fact I think that's a totalitarian way of going about things.