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It would sure be nice if I never had to drive again, but could still do so if I chose. It's just a dangerous, stressful, expensive chore at this point, what's worse is it leads to an ugly and oppressive landscape. Every time I imagine a future where cities embrace mass transit/walk-able city planning I remember that old picture of endless lines of cars waiting hours for gas during the oil crisis. And then a few decades later the SUV pandemic goes global and light duty pickups are the size of school buses. Then I'm reminded that we can barely even scare up enough funds to keep roads in decent condition. Just keep kickin that can down the road... good luck, kids!
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Jun 10, 2019 02:54
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redgubbinz posted:It would sure be nice if I never had to drive again, but could still do so if I chose. It's just a dangerous, stressful, expensive chore at this point, what's worse is it leads to an ugly and oppressive landscape. Having an entirely vehicle free city is never going to happen, just because of the need for stuff like deliveries, service vehicles for electrical/communications/HVAC/R, etc... but I'd say there seems to be a pretty decent push for adding lots of bus lanes, bike lanes, and bigger side walks. Boomers dying off won't solve everything, but once we have a generation that doesn't have their life built around car ownership, I can see this being a much bigger thing.
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Jun 10, 2019 03:04
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Wheeee posted:As an old millennial, I'm realizing that buying new expensive vehicles is stupid unless it's a toy. Like, if I got a Wrangler or MX5 it'd be new, but if you're buying something based on practical use there's not much reason not get something 2-3 years old, assuming you can get decent financing. And this is why manual options are severely limited now. There’s a tough balance to strike - consumers vote with their wallets and if you only buy used, you have no say in trends and companies have no incentive to cater to you. On the other hand, depreciation is a bitch and in some states you can avoid purchase tax on private party used vehicles. For example, I had considered the 2019 Miata with brembos and recaros. With tax you’re in the high 30s. For that price I bought an Exige private party and didn’t pay sales tax (literally one of two things Arizona gets right). After losing $9K on a GT350 for 18 months, I didn’t have the stomach for it anymore.
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Jun 10, 2019 05:08
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Zoom Zoom, motherfuckers
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As someone who has lived in Boston, moving there in order to save money on not having a car is... misguided.
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Jun 10, 2019 11:15
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Automotive Insanity: I'm kind of looking forward to not having a vehicle
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Jun 10, 2019 11:18
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incels interlinked posted:I might be moving to Boston from Tampa for work, and besides the cold weather and extortionate prices of rent, I'm kind of looking forward to getting a place downtown and not having a vehicle. Of course due to the aforementioned rent prices I'll basically have to do that anyway just to afford a loving 500 square foot studio Are you being forced to move there? I had an offer there recently and after doing the math I’d have to get a massive raise to just break even. The housing, the state income tax, etc. all negated anything more I would have made.
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Jun 10, 2019 12:25
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I would rather spend time gridlocked in traffic than have to suffer American public transport and get yelled at by a mentally ill man in a train that smells like piss and vomit. On the other hand, Japan and surprisingly China was pretty good. I used to take the train a lot when I was in Germany as well. I didn’t mind it at all. Ours is so loving cursed though, I want nothing to do with it. God forbid if you happen to be in the interior of the country.
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Jun 10, 2019 12:32
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big crush on Chad OMG posted:Are you being forced to move there? I had an offer there recently and after doing the math I’d have to get a massive raise to just break even. The housing, the state income tax, etc. all negated anything more I would have made. Forced in the sense of 'if you want a promotion you need to move because we aren't opening any positions within 1,000 miles of you for the foreseeable future' yeah. It would be about a 20% raise which would all go straight to taxes and rent so I'd probably be effectively making less. I also put in for the same job in a few other cities (Seattle, Phoenix, Salt Lake) but Boston is probably the most likely. Who knows though
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Jun 10, 2019 13:43
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it's almost as if public transportation has intentionally been made to be repugnant in the United States
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Jun 10, 2019 13:43
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dk2m posted:I would rather spend time gridlocked in traffic than have to suffer American public transport and get yelled at by a mentally ill man in a train that smells like piss and vomit. Public transport in DC doesn’t smell like piss and vomit. Public transport in NYC doesn’t smell like piss or vomit. Public transport in Boston doesn’t smell like piss or vomit. Public transport in LA doesn’t smell like piss or vomit. Public transport in San Francisco doesn’t smell like piss or vomit (but it does smell like weed and there’s human poo poo on the sidewalks). Stop being such a scared manbaby.
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Jun 10, 2019 13:49
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drgitlin posted:Public transport in NYC doesn’t smell like piss or vomit. I found it. The biggest lie on the internet. I did security consulting for the MTA and the poo poo people do down there would curl your toes.
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Jun 10, 2019 13:56
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There’s plenty of reasons to dislike the MTA, like the fact that it’s 2-18 and it still can’t give us displays that tell you when the next train is coming, or the awful map design, or the stations with no garbage bins, but in my experience over the past few years it has never really smelled like a stadium urinal.
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Jun 10, 2019 13:58
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That's because they have surprisingly good airflow. People piss down there all the time. I know this because I literally helped program the system that they use to document and report it.
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Jun 10, 2019 14:01
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Public transit kinda sucks in most American cities, but even if it didn't, it still wouldn't be feasible for most Americans outside of large urban areas.
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Jun 10, 2019 14:23
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I live in Toronto and have multiple locations that I have to be present in for work. Almost all of them take me between 10 to 15 minutes. If I took public transit this number jumps to 1 hour. It’s longer if the bus that was supposed to be there doesn’t show up at its designated time and I’m waiting extra. For some reason Toronto transit has this problem where a bus doesn’t show up for 45 minutes and then 2 buses with the same line number show up simultaneously one after the other and you’re stuck waiting 45 again if you miss those. Meanwhile ostensibly there should be one every 15 minutes. They’re cramped with people, and overall it makes you feel poor and miserable to the point that all the expense and hassle of car ownership pale in comparison to spending a year doing that. What’s worse is the real-estate demand is completely inelastic. I’ve done the numbers and it’s like slider bar. The further you go from Toronto, the slightly cheaper the real estate. But you make those savings up with extra gas costs and other transit costs. Going car free doesn’t save you a nickel because your rent will be something like 2000 per month for a 1 bedroom apartment designed for a solo occupant but likely shared by a couple that couldn’t swing a 2BR. As people try to get further from the city, car dependence increases. Essentially the only way you can survive is if you go live in a place nobody else wants to live. Even the compromise towns and cities where you might save 100/month but commit to a 1hr commute to work and an extra long weekend trip for city fun is now too expensive. If you do go to a place nobody wants to live you’re back to car dependency but you’re saving in the long run due to reduced costs on absolutely everything. If you’re working remotely, you might as well just become a digital nomad and move to some lower cost of living country where your salary is worth more and your buying power effectively doubles. I find the ones who can do that usually work for whatever flavor of the month SAAS company is in vogue at the time and just code remotely while expensing flights if in person meetings are needed. Basically no matter what you do you’re hosed. You have to have one of very few and limited plum jobs that pay really well or you’re living paycheque to paycheque thanks to rising costs.
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Jun 10, 2019 14:38
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drgitlin posted:Public transport in DC doesn’t smell like piss and vomit. Public transport in NYC doesn’t smell like piss or vomit. Public transport in Boston doesn’t smell like piss or vomit. Public transport in LA doesn’t smell like piss or vomit. Public transport in San Francisco doesn’t smell like piss or vomit (but it does smell like weed and there’s human poo poo on the sidewalks). I live in Philadelphia, take public transport, and although the regional rail out to the suburbs is clean, I can confirm that the downtown subway does, in fact, smell like piss and vomit. A few weeks ago I was in Paris and the comparison was just completely absurd. Not only is the system clean, people are even polite/considerate about moving over and keeping their bags out of the way to minimize inconvenience for others.
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Jun 10, 2019 15:22
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Residency Evil posted:I live in Philadelphia, take public transport, and although the regional rail out to the suburbs is clean, I can confirm that the downtown subway does, in fact, smell like piss and vomit. Can confirm almost any European public transit system is better than whatever America has. Both in etiquette and cleanliness.
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Jun 10, 2019 15:34
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Jiminy Christmas! Shoes! posted:Public transit kinda sucks in most American cities, but even if it didn't, it still wouldn't be feasible for most Americans outside of large urban areas. Yeah there's no way for me to get to work using any kind of public transportation. There is a bus stop a block away but it's the bus's furthest stop east, and I work 30 miles further east. I do live by a river and would totally boat to work, though, if I could. Pretty certain that's not allowed though. There are a couple of dams that don't have a portage around them.
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Jun 10, 2019 15:44
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A carless city shouldn't be the goal - rather a city built to a human scale that also makes room for cars, instead of a massive swaths of real estate being taken for the simple storage of cars when they're not being used and having pedestrians cling to the sides of buildings to get anywhere...on the rare occasion this "anywhere" isn't 3 miles away.Kraftwerk posted:Can confirm almost any European public transit system is better than whatever America has. Both in etiquette and cleanliness. Public transportation is viewed as a punishment in (North) America instead of a public service by the designers, general public and even the riders.  "Creeps and Weirdos"
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Jun 10, 2019 16:15
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I live in urban sprawl southwestern CT along the I95 corridor which is a traffic nightmare. I work about 10 miles from my home. In the morning I get to work in 20-30 minutes since I'm on the road before 7am. Heading home at around 3:30pm takes me 30 minutes on a good day but it can be 40-45 sometimes. If you work normal hours ie 9-5 or so, you're looking at an hour each way for the same trip. If I take the bus, I'm looking at minimum one hour door to door. The train ride is 10-15 minutes but first I have to get to the station a mile or so away (walkable in nice weather, otherwise I need a ride or I have to pay an insane amount and get on a waiting list to use the parking at the station) and then I'm at the whim of the once an hour train that makes the trip. Driving a car is absolutely worse for the world, but public transportation will never be more convenient or faster than driving unless you live somewhere that was built from the ground up around public transportation. And America ain't that. I also very much enjoy sitting in my private air conditioned tinted space blasting whatever music I want and not being anywhere near another human being. Most people also enjoy that even if they aren't willing to say it. Wamsutta fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Jun 10, 2019 |
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Jun 10, 2019 16:23
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redgubbinz posted:A carless city shouldn't be the goal - rather a city built to a human scale that also makes room for cars, instead of a massive swaths of real estate being taken for the simple storage of cars when they're not being used and having pedestrians cling to the sides of buildings to get anywhere...on the rare occasion this "anywhere" isn't 3 miles away. I’d rather take a bus than be caught dead in that chunk of poo poo.
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Jun 10, 2019 16:26
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Wamsutta posted:If I take the bus, I'm looking at minimum one hour door to door. The train ride is 10-15 minutes but first I have to get to the station a mile or so away (walkable in nice weather, otherwise I need a ride or I have to pay an insane amount and get on a waiting list to use the parking at the station) and then I'm at the whim of the once an hour train that makes the trip.
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Jun 10, 2019 16:31
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redgubbinz posted:A carless city shouldn't be the goal - rather a city built to a human scale that also makes room for cars, instead of a massive swaths of real estate being taken for the simple storage of cars when they're not being used and having pedestrians cling to the sides of buildings to get anywhere...on the rare occasion this "anywhere" isn't 3 miles away. Make cities walkable, prioritize pedestrians first and foremost in layout and design. This includes solid public transport with multiple layers, ie. trains for longer distances, busses for medium distances and bike/scooter sharing at prioritized stations/stops for short hops. Telebus services take care of hard to service, low rider occupancy areas. Personally I am in favor of completely banning personal cars from city centers. You would obviously still need to allow deliveries and various other service vehicles, vehicles for people with disabilities, emergency vehicles and so on. Ideally all of these would be electric and can in many instances be replaced with bicycle or motorcycle-based alternatives. Cars used purely for personal transport out of laziness can gently caress right out of the city and stay out. Traffic engineering is always a compromise. I want that compromise tilted hard towards benefitting pedestrians first and foremost, because a highly walkable city is also very easily a highly bikeable city, and much more friendly to people, rather than to cars.
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Jun 10, 2019 16:40
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Wamsutta posted:I live in urban sprawl southwestern CT along the I95 corridor which is a traffic nightmare. I work about 10 miles from my home. In the morning I get to work in 20-30 minutes since I'm on the road before 7am. Heading home at around 3:30pm takes me 30 minutes on a good day but it can be 40-45 sometimes. If you work normal hours ie 9-5 or so, you're looking at an hour each way for the same trip. The irony is that the USA used to be a heavily public transit oriented society, with entire cities springing up out of nowhere purely because of the railroads. Then everyone from Dow Chemical, Standard Oil to the automotive industry lobbied hard to get the interstate highway system built and get 60% of the public off transit and into cars. It even got to the point where automotive companies were buying out public transit infrastructure and decommissioning it on purpose in order to force people to use cars due to lack of alternatives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qaf6baEu0_w
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Jun 10, 2019 17:23
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Residency Evil posted:As someone who has lived in Boston, moving there in order to save money on not having a car is... misguided. To be fair, living anywhere in or around Boston is ridiculously expensive, so you might as well live and work as close to downtown as possible so you don't need a car at least. It's not just the costs either, it's one less bullshit thing to worry about, and if you're a minimalist (like me) that's a HUGE deal.
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Jun 10, 2019 18:20
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I thought the interstate highway system was built first as a public works program during the depression and second as a war materiel transport system should the enemy make landfall during WW2. I was under the impression the lobbying of which you speak took place in CA to get the railways torn out so GM could sell more buses to Los Angeles.
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Jun 10, 2019 18:23
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BloodBag posted:I thought the interstate highway system was built first as a public works program during the depression and second as a war materiel transport system should the enemy make landfall during WW2. I believe this documentary will answer your questions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Framed_Roger_Rabbit
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Jun 10, 2019 18:28
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By the time the trolleys and trams were decommissioned in LA ridership had already fallen off a cliff and the bus system had become a far superior mass transit system.
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Jun 10, 2019 18:31
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Am I weird to say that I really enjoy the 30-40 minutes (each way) I spend driving to and from work everyday? I get to be alone, and listen to whatever I like on a bitchin sound system, and the seats in my car are super comfortable. Gridlock? Don't care more music. Rain/snow? Don't care still warm and dry.
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Jun 10, 2019 18:50
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Mental Hospitality posted:Am I weird to say that I really enjoy the 30-40 minutes (each way) I spend driving to and from work everyday? I get to be alone, and listen to whatever I like on a bitchin sound system, and the seats in my car are super comfortable. It's my favorite part of the day. I could never work closer than ~30 minutes to work. Although I intentionally work in an area that never sees a lot of traffic and has some scenic (well, if you count vast expanses of cornfields scenic...) roads.
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Jun 10, 2019 19:06
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BloodBag posted:I thought the interstate highway system was built first as a public works program during the depression and second as a war materiel transport system should the enemy make landfall during WW2. It’s my understanding Eisenhower got the idea back in his army days for the reasons mentioned but the actual highway system was started under his presidency in the 1950s.
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Jun 10, 2019 19:12
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Mental Hospitality posted:Am I weird to say that I really enjoy the 30-40 minutes (each way) I spend driving to and from work everyday? I get to be alone, and listen to whatever I like on a bitchin sound system, and the seats in my car are super comfortable. I love driving. I hate commuting. On the train, I get to zone out and listen to podcasts/shitpost. The few days where I have to drive, the awesome 6am drive in to work turns in to a bumper-to-bumper hellscape at 530pm.
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Jun 10, 2019 19:14
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If your commute is 10 miles or less just bike it imo. If your commute is greater than 10 just bike it anyway
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Jun 10, 2019 19:38
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big crush on Chad OMG posted:If your commute is 10 miles or less just bike it imo. If your commute is greater than 10 just bike it anyway Haha you must live in part of the country that never gets below 40. Also I can think of few things less pleasant than biking in rush hour traffic.
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Jun 10, 2019 19:41
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Jiminy Christmas! Shoes! posted:Haha you must live in part of the country that never gets below 40. Also I can think of few things less pleasant than biking in rush hour traffic. Oh word? The warmest temp at the beginning is my garage. The actual outside temp is where it bottoms out at 21F.  Rush hour? Just ride up on to the front of the light
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Jun 10, 2019 19:46
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Jiminy Christmas! Shoes! posted:Haha you must live in part of the country that never gets below 40. Also I can think of few things less pleasant than biking in rush hour traffic. I learned today that riding a bike on the freeway in California isn't illegal unless the onramp explicitly notes it as such.
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Jun 10, 2019 19:46
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big crush on Chad OMG posted:Oh word? The warmest temp at the beginning is my garage. The actual outside temp is where it bottoms out at 21F. So have you ever tried riding a bike for 10 miles in 20 degree weather?
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Jun 10, 2019 19:53
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I knew a guy who’d cycle about 20km to our office. His rationale was you spend an hour in the gym anyway so by cycling to work and back you get double the exercise and only take 15 minutes more on your commute when you factor in traffic. I don’t know what he did in the winter time but I know he was one of the only regular users of a shower room in one of the bathrooms. When the weather is good it’s hard to argue with this logic though. We North Americans are fat or overweight because we never walk or cycle anywhere. Europeans take more steps on avg just to do anything since there’s still quite a bit of walking involved outside the public transit system. The difference is the city makes that walking easy for you. Over here you could be walking for an hour looking at the samey landscape of 3 lane roads and strip malls. Kraftwerk fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Jun 10, 2019 |
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Jun 10, 2019 20:02
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Jiminy Christmas! Shoes! posted:So have you ever tried riding a bike for 10 miles in 20 degree weather? Literally for months out of the year
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Jun 10, 2019 20:09
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Geography of Nowhere does a great job of summing up a lot of these problems, I highly recommend it.
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Jun 10, 2019 20:17
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