A good observation from previous threads: “Whenever utility cycling is discussed on the internet, suddenly everyone has to move their fridge 100 miles in the rain”
As someone who doesn’t have a license or a car, but does bike a lot - there will be solutions.
I order my groceries delivered. When I needed to get my old bed recycled, I asked the second hand store and they came and picked it up. They weren’t interested in the broken mattress for it (obviously), so I contacted a moving company and they had it recycled for $40.
Now I get that that cost might be hard to swallow for some, but keep in mind that I don’t pay for my car, its insurance, the fuel, or maintenance, and it took less than five minutes for me to be done with the entire thing. All I had to do was open my front door and two burly men came and picked it up for me. I didn’t even have to wait at the recycling station.
Those $40 paid for themselves.
It’s also worth noting that I do live in the frozen north (not Canada, further north), where we don’t see the sun for half the year. I see people biking year round.
Where I live it costs $40 to drop a mattress off for recycling, and almost anyone who will sell you a mattress will take the old one away for about $40
I actually asked IKEA if they would recycle the old bed, but sadly they stopped that during corona and there hasn’t been much demand for the service since so they just don’t offer that anymore.
Segue: I’d bought my previous bed from MIO. It was a continental, bought right at the start of corona because at the time companies had massive discounts since they were scared that people would stop spending during the pandemic. At the time it replaced my 15 year old bed that was really worn, and at 50% off (7k instead of 14, currency is SEK) I was like “wow, what a steal!”
Then the middle mattress broke after less than three years. Couldn’t figure out why I had such a big divot in the middle of the bed, but as it turns out the side had broken and as such the springs had all gotten misaligned.
Called them in September, three years and six months or so after purchase. Turns out that the bed had a 10 year warranty but the mattress only had 3.
So I had to buy a new bed, much cheaper (like 6K with the mattress), from IKEA, and their mattress has a TEN year warranty. It’s also much firmer and more supportive so I regret not just going with them in the first case.
Never buying shit from MIO again.
Yeah, it depends on the context. Is the thread saying “we need to build out far more cycling infrastructure”? If so, no argument.
Or is the thread one of the naiive ones trying to argue about how we can completely eliminate cars? Then people start bringing up the edge cases that still require cars.
You’d typically hear this in the context of Dutch-style city planning, where direct routes through cities are only available to cycles and buses, and only indirect routes are available to cars.
So cars and other vehicles such as ambulances, furniture-removal vans etc. can still drive to every house from the ring-road, but it is no longer convenient to get from one place to another within the same city by car (which is obviously the design, as it promotes cycling and bus use)
People who drive within the city and would be inconvenienced then suddenly discover a newfound interest in the rights of, for example, disabled people, as they search for counter-arguments.
They don’t let ambulances use the bus routes?
I’m sure the transponders needed to access/cross the city centre would be given to any city or emergency vehicles that needed them, same as the buses - the point was more that every residential address is still accessible by road for those special cases such as deliveries, garbage collection, trade vans, emergencies, etc., even when you block roads to prioritise transit and cycling
Emergency vehicles generally have unrestricted access as far as I know, which also makes car-restricted infrastructure far superior to regular car infrastructure, on account of not being congested by cars.
Or is the thread one of the naiive ones trying to argue about how we can completely eliminate cars?
You say that as if those threads are actually a common thing, and not just a strawman accusation from the fevered dreams of car-brains.
I mean, y’all literally call the place “fuck cars.” You call anyone that disagrees with you a “car-brain.” Not a lot of nuance.
As someone scrolling by from all, I’m actually surprised to see any acknowledgement that some people may need to rely on private automobiles.
Maybe y’all need to work on your messaging.
Go into a thread on autonomous cars and all you’ll hear is about how they’re useless and we don’t need them because we’ll just eliminate all cars before they’re ready.
I have literally never seen that argument made.
Usually, what I see in those threads are a whole bunch of people arguing that autonomous cars would be some kind of silver-bullet panacea for traffic.
Frankly, what you wrote sounds like a strawman misinterpretation of an argument I myself make: I argue that autonomous cars are not a solution, but not “because we’ll just eliminate all cars before they’re ready.” They’re not a solution simply because they’re still cars, and therefore take up the same grossly excessive amount of space as non-autonomous cars do.
They’re not a solution simply because they’re still cars, and therefore take up the same grossly excessive amount of space as non-autonomous cars do.
Yeah, the only things autonomous cars might reduce are:
- Parking, but only if we forego our current private ownership model and everyone starts doing self-driving robo-taxis everywhere (unlikely)
- Road fatalities, but only if the self-driving tech proves statistically better than human drivers in a wide range of conditions (jury is still out)
It’s the same fundamental problem that electric cars have: geometry. Cars – even if electric and self-driving – are simply grossly inefficient at moving people for the amount of land they require:
The velomobile (electric or manual) is the most efficient transport in energy per mile. You could easily design something like a self driving podbike, maybe a little bigger, weighing maybe 100kg.
And self driving also allows for new configurations, e.g. two seats that face each other because you don’t need a steering wheel. That means much more narrow and aerodynamic “micro cars” that could solve a lot of edge cases for people who can’t drive or not that long or fast (50kmh / 30mph). They might compete with a big bus.
Except that the jury is not “still out” on number two, it is simply a matter of time, engineering, and training before they are statistically safer than humans.
Waymo’s cars are already safer than humans in their limited conditions.
I agree that they’re already statistically safer in limited conditions; the key part is when/if they will surpass in a wide range of conditions, including heavy snow or the disorganized and often unmarked roads of developing countries, for instance. For what it’s worth, however, I do think the tech will eventually get there.
Your failure to provide a reliable source for your claims is not my problem.
If you cannot provide a reliable source of your claims, your claim will be dismissed.
Congratulations that you haven’t, that’s evidently because youre not in there correcting people when they claim that autonomous cars aren’t a solution.
As long as cars are on the roads and humans are driving them they will continue to kill and maim people. Autonomous cars are the only remotely viable solution to that. They might not be fully ready for all situations yet, but they will be ready on the scale of a decade or two, whereas reorienting north American society to minimize human drivers (get everyone to move out of their homes in the suburbs and country) will take literally generations.
reorienting north American society to minimize human drivers (get everyone to move out of their homes in the suburbs and country) will take literally generations.
No, that’s defeatist bullshit.
It’s called risk analysis / wisdom / not planning exclusively for the best possible outcome in case the world doesn’t go exactly you as you hoped it would.
Your failure to provide a reliable source for your claims is not my problem.
If you cannot provide a reliable source of your claims, your claim will be dismissed.
Can’t agree more.
Fact is that we can’t get rid of cars completely in our current society without billions in infrastructure changes, displacement and forced developments and regulations. Which unfortunately also means most roads are here to stay.
Can the number of trips and lanes come down- absolutely. New developments take mass transit and alternative travel into consideration- I hope so. Eliminate- no.
…and they’d have a much better time of it if there were less car traffic.
Suddenly, all the north Canadians who live with snow storms 24/7 appear to comment how all the world infrastructure has to adapt to their specific needs.
What’s ironic is my city, Montreal, is arguably the biggest cycling city in North America. Even in winter the bike lanes are filled with cyclists. Why? Turns out that all you need is good-quality bike infrastructure that you actually maintain in the winter and people will happily bike year-round.
It’s amazing how people think skiing is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, yet think biking in the cold is somehow impossible.
Skis are optimized to move efficiently on top of snow, while bicycle wheels are not.
This is one of the big reasons why good plowing is a key feature required for winter cycling in snowy climates. My city has been doing alright in this regard, and I’ve been able to continue cycling for some of my trips. Transit is so good here though that I use that over cycling while the weather is really bad.
Thats terrible argument. Find a better one if you want to help move people from thinking they need a car.
Making bad arguments for good causes does more harm than saying nothing at all.
My sister can’t move her feet at the ankle. She’ll never drive unless we can afford a custom 50k car. She has a 3,000 dollar mobility scooter. We had to spend about a month mapping the city to figure out WHERE THE FUCK SHE COULD GET ON AND OFF THE SIDEWALK.
Edit: Let me elaborate further:
It was so bad, that if we didn’t think ahead, we would have to go back a half a mile. I’m not joking. You ever seen those roads between neighborhoods with no turn offs? Better make sure that side walk ends with a ramp, otherwise, you have to go ALL the way back. You also can’t lift the scooter, it’s over 100lb. If you’re reading this, please petition your town to add more ramps to the sidewalk.
My sister has to have every bone from her pelvis to her ankle broken, REGULARLY. They have to cut all of her muscles, stretch them, reconnect them, and then inject them with botox. They then set them in a cast. This is just so she can properly grow, due to cerebral paulsy. And then, just to rub dirt in the wound, we can’t even use the sidewalk properly. We’re surrounded by beautiful nature and trails. She doesn’t get to experience that. Please petition your towns to add more ramps to the sidewalk. I’ll get off my soap box.
We had to spend about a month mapping the city to figure out WHERE THE FUCK SHE COULD GET ON AND OFF THE SIDEWALK.
Wow. It even worse than my shithole.
Dude it gets worse. They installed decorative boulders on our sidewalk instead of adding ramps. The stones were SANDSTONE AND IMMEDIATELY ERODED.
It was pointless, got in the way, and cost tax payer money.
The boulders used to take up 1/3 of the walk way, so I’m happy they’re being weatherd.
Jesus christ who is in charge of this, lol. I’m so sorry. That sounds frustrating as hell, I really have no good words.
Just make it national law to follow an industry standard that includes ramps everywhere a intentional transition between roads or entrances to properties are.
Germany has DIN 18317 and DIN 18318 for that. DIN = Deutsche Industrie Norm (German industry standard)
Same with GOSTs here.
GOST = ГОСТ = (Меж)государственный Стандарт = (Inter)national Standard
Was just National Standard during USSR.
For a second, I thought you had quoted a different paragraph.
That’s the logical result of decades of car-centric policies.
Sidewalks with ramps on them are a technology that has existed for a very long time. The only reason they aren’t there, is because somebody didn’t want to pay for them. I’m not blaming cars. I’m blaming politicians that are lazy as fuck about actually helping their people. And to an extent, many of those people, for not recognizing this as an obvious issue and pushing for it to be fixed.
Those who depend on cars would benefit too when they are the only ones in cars
See, this is why I’m convinced that Americans secretly love traffic congestion. Why else would they do vehemently oppose anything that takes cars off of the streets and highways, and out of their way?
I’m not even sure that I’m joking, anymore. It’s important for humans to have rituals that symbolically bind us to a larger community, like eating a big meal (usually turkey) on Thanksgiving Day, right? It feels like drivers want everybody stuck in traffic jams, so that they can feel that their own frustrating commute has some greater meaning, like this is how it is, and we’re all in it together. (Like the weather.) Those of us who escape the matrix just enrage them by proving that their effort is meaningless and dumb.
Anyway, just a random musing.
Our local newspaper is a write in section. Each week about 30-40% of the space is dedicated to complaining about cars, roads, traffic, idiot drivers, parking, car theft, cost of fuel, or injuries/danger to pedestrians. Yet, when anyone suggests maybe building a bike lane or tram in this city there’s a massive groundswell against it (funded by realtors and trucking companies).
Fuck cars.
Yup. I love traffic. As an owner of a car I seek out traffic jams daily!
I always think to myself “what if I could be in a bus, and be subject to a restrictive schedule other than my own?” Naturally, I like to seat myself next to the gentleman eating the cat food.
Say this to anybody who will listen, please! I’ve been using it on my car guy friends, and they’re receiving it loud and clear. They love the idea of having the roads all to themselves, many of the actual enthusiast types do anyways.
This is basically how I like to put it:
I’m a car enthusiast. I own half a dozen cars. I genuinely enjoy driving.
You know what I don’t like? Traffic. And that’s why, when I’m doing mundane stuff like commuting or errands, I leave all my cars parked and get on my bike instead.
This right here is a big part of why I wholeheartedly support the message of this community. There are way too many people behind the wheel who have no business there, are frightfully inept as drivers, but they’ll tell you that they need a car. And they’re probably right. But with more walkable and bikeable cities and better transit, that excuse evaporates, and a drivers licence can be a privilege, and not a necessity.
For what it’s worth, I like my car. I like driving my car. I also drive a truck for a living. But god damn, I’d drive my car a whole lot less if I had better alternatives. My commute is 15 minutes by car or 1.5 hours by bus. The bridge I have to cross on my way to work is car only, no bikes or pedestrians. Working days that can push 14 hours, another three hours of commute by transit is a no go, and I literally can’t bike to work. I like driving, but I don’t want to have to drive.
A walkable city means everything is closer for everyone, so if you have mobility issues you can just use a slower, safer, more efficient vehicle like a scooter or a cart that still suits your needs since you don’t have to go as far as to need a car.
That’s why I always have a cart in my pocket for my handicapped wife. Just in case we have to go to the city to access resources not available elsewhere. /s
I am all for walkable, bikeable cities with good public transport. The next city, though, is just gutting accessability by car without doing the necessary changes to make it more accessible by other means.
Sounds easier to fit in your pocket than a 2 ton vehicle. Cars are only seen as convenient due to their ubiquity.
Yes, but with a car I could actually reach the city and get somewhere there. Using a golf cart or similar vehicle would require that those were available in the city, so I could get to the city by e.g. public transport, and continue the way in such a cart. Sadly, the public transport there is f-ed up, and there is no golf cart rental there, anyway.
I do support bike- and pedestrian friendly cities, but they have to actually work, and that’s were things simply fail.
People can only think in 100%s. They think it’s either 100% car, 100% transit, or 100% bike. So you have to tell them you want them all. Currently we have cars, we need to add transit and bikes.
I’ve heard it said that Houston’s annual transportation cost for total car-dependency is close to 20% of their budget.
NYC, which has the entire MTA plus a huge number of highways and still shocking amount of car dependency, is 10%.
Amsterdam with all of its trams and bike paths is closest to 4%.
Yet any resident of NYC or Houston will tell you it is fucking TERRIBLE driving in either of those cities. Meanwhile, Amsterdam is ranked one of the best cities for people who love to drive because its roads are maintained, safe, and aren’t congested.
It’s actually not possible to be 100% transit or 100% bike, outside of some weird Swiss vacation communities or Canadian island neighborhoods. But the more you invest in transit and bikeped, the more you address the actual cause of congestion and the more drivable your city gets. Even if you truly love and prefer driving, multimodal cities are still better. Downs-Thompson is inviolable.
Downs-Thompson is inviolable.
The simple truth that a lot of people don’t understand. Cars simply require too much space that you can never possibly meet all the latent demand for car trips within a city, as doing so would mean bulldozing the entire city in the process. The only way to meet latent demand for transit is via an array of vastly more space-efficient means, e.g., public transit, walking, and biking.
Cars simply require too much space that you can never possibly meet all the latent demand for car trips within a city, as doing so would mean bulldozing the entire city in the process.
1970s Houston: “hold my beer”
It’s actually not possible to be 100% transit or 100% bike, outside of some weird Swiss vacation communities or Canadian island neighborhoods.
You don’t even need the caveat. Even in weird Swiss vacation communities and Canadian island neighborhoods, the mode share of pedestrians is >0%.
It doesn’t help that so many people take “fuck cars” as literal and essentially demonize any car use. We’ll always need some “cars”, but let’s get that number nice and low.
Heck yeah! Me and my GF I feel like are a good example of this.
I use an escooter because I work from home, and my favorite grocery stores and dr office are within a mile. I’m also about 3 miles from a train station that goes up and down utah valley, so I see no reason for a car. I uber once every other month like when I needed to get something large to the post office.
My GF is a CNA that does free lancing. So it’s not unusual for her to have to drive an hour to the middle of nowhere with a shift that ends/starts in the middle of the night. A car just makes sense for her.
But people like me using micromobility/public transit means there are less cars on the road, less cars taking up parking, and even reducing the price of cars.
A lot of people think of themselves as too good for public transportation.
Cause they live somewhere where public transit is treated as a last thought thing for “the poors”. When public transit is designed as a method of moving people, rather than a last thought, it gets much wider adoption. Because it’s freaking great to not have to drive.
In my first job i used to work for a property management company. The owner had her office in the lavish flat of her parents in an upper class area of the city. When the mother of her asked, how i make it to work and i answered by subway. Her answer was something like “I couldn’t do that. It is always so dirty.”
Fuck rich people.
Maybe mentioned subway does have cleaning issues? Because for example Moscow subway has issues cleaning entrances.
In some areas, public transit can also be dangerous, with robberies, assaults, stabbings, sexual harassment and sexual assaults frequently making the news. As someone who used to live in Chicago, I wouldn’t recommend anyone taking public transit at night there unless you absolutely have to.
Even in Butovo public transport isn’t as dangerous as you describe. But you describe USSA.
I tried making it more a part of my routine, because I had a bus stop in my neighborhood and the buses stopped charging a fare. I figure it was a good way to travel around town for free. The times weren’t great, but I was using it for little trips. One time a neighbor saw me waiting for the bus and called to make sure I was okay, that there wasn’t some weird emergency that meant I couldn’t drive… Yeah, no, just wanted to take public transit.
A few months later, they removed the bus stop by me. It’s 3/4 mile of steep hill away now, so I’m back in my car full time. Oh well, I tried.
It costs me about 25 minutes of parking to catch a bus to the city while reading, have my meeting and take my time, then pay for the bus back home with a grand total of around 7 minutes walking.
Nearly door to door chauffeur that is cheaper than driving myself. Who’s too good for that?
It’s not that I think I’m too good for public transport, I just absolutely hate being near other people, especially ones I don’t know. It’s enough to endure 8 hours of office work, I’d rather be a hobo than commute.
I do own a e-bike as well as an EV, but I can only cycle to work pretty much half of the year, because snow/slush/ice, and even during summer and autumn, I take the car on days I’m going somewhere else than home straight from work (shop, gf, friends).
Public transport with closed separate sitting “boxes” is what it would take for me.
There’s a little old lady near where I used to live who drives up and down the country roads in her government-provided electric wheelchair every day. Everyone knows her.
On the one hand I think, “you go, girl!” but on the other hand, I feel like her life would be a lot easier if this town were more walkable/bikeable. She can’t walk to ride a bike but what a great benefit it would be for her to live in a place like that.
I remember getting into this with my wife. She is into buses and those were black magic, I liked the subways. Took a few bus rides with her and she converted me. Both are great options with pros and cons.
tiny electric cars you can drive onto trains and boats
Floating chair based transportation is the future
A much better idea than some teslas in a short tunnel.
That’s basically what the new scooters and unicycles are, though sometimes I worry about their safety compared to bikes.
My ebike was basically a mobility aid for me and I didn’t even realise fully at the time.
I have a congenial hip deformity that made walking as a kid challenging, it was worsened by an autoimmune condition and in my late teens I slowly lost the ability to walk. By 22 I was a full time forearm crutches user, and at 23 a part time wheelchair user.
I was 100% reliant on accessible public transport to do anything. I could occasionally afford a taxi, but it was a rare occasion. It made finding work really difficult. When I was 24 I had surgery to remove a bunch of adhesions and scar tissue among some other things, and afterwards started an intensive two year physical therapy rehab program.
It got to the point where I could walk about 500m without any aid, and I could cycle about 1km on a standard bike. It was a huge increase to me previous range of zero, and it included the local shops and a second bus stop with additional routes so I was wrapped.
But then I got an ebike, and suddenly my range went from 1.5km to 21.5km, I could lazily pedal 20km and let the motor take me, though in reality I can turn the motor down and lazily ride 30-40km.
Over time, this lazy riding in addition to my PT meant I was working harder without feeling like I was, my walking range was growing too because my leg strength and my endurance was growing from lazily cycling so much. Suddenly I was doing 20,000 steps a day in addition to a casual 15km ride to work. Last year I set a goal to jog for 10 minutes, and nailed it before June, setting myself the goal of a 5km by Christmas, I went over, but ran my first ever 5km on January 4th. Having never ran before, not even as a child.
All thanks to my ebike.
Which I could only use because I have semi decent bike infrastructure in my area, and ebikes are legal.
To add to this, one time when I visited a German town, the tour guide, a somewhat elderly guy, chose to walk his bike everywhere he went - odd choice, but he said it was useful for him to have something to lean on when he’s not riding.
Maybe the real one-size-fits-all solution is the car-dependent city planning we made along the way
/s
“Not everyone can walk or cycle”
The only response needed for that statement is the following video.
Nothing in that video matches your claim. It shows disabled and elderly people can benefit from walkable cities and non-car-centric road planning, just like everyone else can. But I, like many others, CANNOT walk, cycle or use public transport, no matter how inviting the infrastructure or how much I dislike cars.
Could I use a mobility scooter? Sure! But not in the cold and wet and not when I can’t afford one. I could use it in addition to my car to get out on nice days or for short journeys to my local town but not instead of. And what am I meant to do when I get to the shops or cafe or whatever? Mobility scooters don’t fit in shops/cafes/restaurants unless they’re new buildings, which in the UK they’re invariably not.
Insisting that everyone can just use alternative means of transportation is untrue and unhelpful to the cause. A small percentage of people will always need cars, just like we’ll always need ambulances. Let’s focus on the abled bodied people who don’t actually need to be driving instead of blindly insisting that everyone is the same and one solution fits all.
Nothing in that video matches your claim.
What is my claim? I sure as heck responded to a claim. But what is my claim? Take your time and think about it please.
But I, like many others, CANNOT walk, cycle or use public transport, no matter how inviting the infrastructure or how much dislike cars.
Watch from 1:25 mark.
Don’t be an arse. There’s absolutely no need to be so condescending.
Don’t go on the internet calling people ableist, and then claim that other people are being condescending. You’re the condescending one. You got all hung up on the way someone said one thing, and then wrote an entire novel in response, basically pointing out that you somehow have no idea what you’re arguing over.
The only real argument you seem to have made, was that it’s difficult for you to get in and out of buildings that weren’t built more recently. And that has absolutely nothing to do with the argument that is going on right now. It’s a problem, yeah… But not at all what we’re talking about.
Nobody who you replied to is saying that we should get rid of cars. And the only way your arguments make any sense to me, is if I assume that you think that’s what would happen. As a car fanatic who enjoys working on vehicles, I don’t enjoy the car hate. But I very rarely see people say that we should straight up get rid of all cars. They just seem to want more people to take public transit. There are some people who seem to demonize cars entirely, and to those people I say, CHILL. We got to this point because cars seemed like the answer to all our transportation needs. And for a long time, we were right. You don’t have to be so hateful about the way things are, when talking about how they can be better. Your attitude isn’t convincing any of the old people that hold all the power. You seem like upset children to them, and everyone you’re trying to convince, because you behave like one when you say things like “Cars are ruining our society”. No. Lobbyists that make sure the agenda doesn’t change to anything actually helpful, are what’s ruining our society. Though, I can’t speak for anyone outside of America.
But I, like many others, CANNOT walk, cycle or use public transport, no matter how inviting the infrastructure or how much I dislike cars.
Not sure why you couldn’t use multi-modal transport with a scooter and public transport? Not all public transport is accessible, but accessibility can and should be part of the focus of building/improving public transit.
Could I use a mobility scooter? Sure! But not in the cold and wet
I’m not sure why you couldn’t use a mobility scooter in weather? I occasionally see some in Canada which are enclosed and temperature controlled. In the Netherlands, they have microcars which are an even better option for people with disabilities than a full-sized modified vehicle.
… and not when I can’t afford one.
Yet you can afford a car? Not only are mobility scooters usually cheaper than much bigger, more complex cars, but they are also subsidized (rightfully so) by medicare/health-plans.
Mobility scooters don’t fit in shops/cafes/restaurants unless they’re new buildings, which in the UK they’re invariably not.
Neither do full-sized vehicles/bikes/transit, so your point is moot. However, the smaller size of mobility scooters makes it easier to accommodate closer handicap parking than full-sized cars.
A small percentage of people will always need cars, just like we’ll always need ambulances.
Ironically, there’s an argument that ambulances are public transit. They might be inefficient public transport, but they are an alternate to individuals driving dangerously to try and get medical help ASAP.
I think overall, your view of active transportation is really limited. Of course cars aren’t going away but all your arguments seem to be limited by your experience of motonormativity.
I’m mainly bed bound. I cannot maintain my blood pressure when upright, even when sitting, I faint regularly unless prone. I still have to go to the hospital and doctors regularly however - that is in fact the only place I do go, excluding visiting my dying mum 100 miles away.
I’m on chemotherapy - I’m immunosuppressed and very vulnerable to infection. I’m also prone to chest infections and have to keep warm. I have cold urticaria - I’m literally allergic to the cold. I have severe Raynaud’s disease - again I have to stay warm. I have severe arthritis, the cold makes this much more painful and restricts my pitiful mobility further.
Nice assumption, but no I can’t afford a car either. I swap in my disability benefit in for a car on the “motability scheme”. It leaves me with a whopping £100 a week to live off of. I could have an electric scooter instead but I have nowhere to store it and it’s not suitable for someone so vulnerable to the cold. My car is a self charging hybrid. I would love an electric car but I rent a flat - there’s nowhere to charge it.
My point is not moot, because manual wheelchairs can fit into the majority of places. I cannot just walk in when I arrive, I need my wheelchair.
We only have the one compact/small family car for our household, plus my manual wheelchair. Getting an electric scooter wouldn’t, couldn’t replace the car so getting one (with some hypothetical money) would be even worse for the environment.
I don’t actually live in a “motornormative” culture. I grew up in London and live in Birmingham. There’s trains, buses, trams, electric scooters and the tube, which the vast majority of people I know use over cars. Your questions (and assumptions) are pretty ableist tbh, and all I’m trying by to point out that disabled people aren’t the enemy. “Not everyone can walk or cycle” is a true statement. Let’s focus on the people that can walk and cycle instead of the small minority of us already penalised by society for having the misfortune to be sick or disabled.
Your original comment compared full-sized standard vehicles to mobility scooters. No where did you mention (and still haven’t clarified) how you get around having to be prone at all times. No, it’s not “ableist” to take what you say at face value.
Nice assumption, but no I can’t afford a car either. I swap in my disability benefit in for a car on the “motability scheme”. It leaves me with a whopping £100 a week to live off of. I could have an electric scooter instead but I have nowhere to store it and it’s not suitable for someone so vulnerable to the cold. My car is a self charging hybrid. I would love an electric car but I rent a flat - there’s nowhere to charge it.
This all is based on “what is” not “what can be”. I too live in the real world where I still share a car with my spouse, but I also advocate for the future I want to see, where we can rent/carshare a few times a year. This conversation is not about the status quo, but the potential of our communities.
If you were provided an accessible flat with a place to store a mobility device, less of your income would go towards transportation.
My point is not moot, because manual wheelchairs can fit into the majority of places. I cannot just walk in when I arrive, I need my wheelchair.
So you ignored my link about microcars. The video shows one with the seat removed and a ramp to allow a wheelchair to be ridden straight in and out (here’s it queued up for you).
Let’s focus on the people that can walk and cycle instead of the small minority of us already penalised by society for having the misfortune to be sick or disabled.
You’re reduced to “£100 a week to live off of” because of cars. Urbanists don’t want to penalize you for having the misfortune to be sick or disabled, they want to enable mobility for all, including the elderly and disabled. You’re just too stuck in car-brained thinking (and while it’s not the US, London and Birmingham are exceptionally motornormative).
Exactly. Which is why people who ate on the opposite end of the extreme, insisting that all cars of all kinds must be banished, are so annoying.
There’s no one size fits all system, so stop with the “everyone should just ride the bus or train you don’t need cars” rubbish. Neither extreme are correct. We live in the real world.
We should make it such that people don’t need cars though.
So how would you get a handicapped person to a specialized doctor in the center of a city with f-ed up public transport?
EDIT: The downvotes show me that you don’t have any meaningful answers to that real-world problem.
By investing in better public transport and by investing in public healthcare.
That would be nice, but with that town, this does not seem an option. The mayor is a bit … bonkers.
Mayors change far more easily and frequently than infrastructure.
Nobody really believes that she’ll survive the next election in office.
So, fucked up public transport is a necessity?
No, it just happens that the city I’m talking about has a mayor that has done a bunch of traffic “reforms” for political reasons without thinking or professional guidance. She basically made half-hearted attempts to improve bike traffic (which were not really improvements, neither for bikers, nor for everyone else), didn’t do squat for public transport (except that the central bus station is now way worse, and she wants to “start planning an overhaul” in a few years), and the central traffic pipeline, the city ring, is now broken.
Glad you asked. Watch the 1:13 minute mark in this video.
I expected powered wheelchair
I would not want to be too close if my wife tried that. There are reasons she’s got no driving licence.
Visual disability? Mental instability?
Visual Disability. Cannot properly estimate distances and speeds. Which is quite a problem for driving anything.
Wow. While inability to estimate speeds has workarounds, I have no idea what to do with inability to estimate distance other than using only public transit or living in city without cars.
I don’t think anyone is arguing for the complete abolishment of cars, they just don’t feel the need to caveat everything anti car they say with of course we still need ambulances etc just in case someone doesn’t understand that.
Cool but I still am stuck in a car-only area for now. I wish it was better. Anything would be better.
I’m stuck in Houston, but we do still very occasionally succeed in implementing walkable/bikeable/mass transit improvements here and there. Whenever we do, the economy in that corner of the city balloons.
But then the state government steps in and quashes any effort to expand or improve on these developments, and we’re back to spending $10B to wiggle the I-45 a bit so trucks can travel faster.
I think the Katy freeway should be a model for all roads. Every single shop and store should be fronted and backed by a 26 lane monstrosity of a slowly moving parking lot. /s
I find it impressive how stubborn people can be about building more roads. It’s a case of having only a hammer, so everything looks like a nail. Just hit it with more surface road and parking to make a place ‘better’ despite cars never making a city better for people, just briefly more convenient for the first cars until it blocks up the roads and makes being outside a terrible experience.
Let’s look at the reasons car-owning motorcyclists (me) don’t ride their motorcycles:
-Weather exposure. Piling on gear in the cold sucks, sweating through your clothes sucks, and riding in the rain sucks. In addition to this: tempurature changes are really annoying because your gear needs change.
-Effort. Getting ready to leave takes more effort and longer than hopping in the car. Also driving a car is effortless compared to riding a motorcycle.
-Utility. Simply hauling my boots to work is super annoying because i don’t currently have my box installed.Solutions:
-Weather. Having the proper gear. Better, high-end gear will be better adaptable to wearher changes. Expensive, though.
-Effort. Preparing in advance due to not deciding at the last minute would help here. Riding will always take more effort than driving.
-Utility. If i didn’t own a car i would simply have a sporty moto and a cargo moto so hauling the basics wouldn’t be an issue however obviously hauling anything sizeable would still be an issue.How do these apply to cycling?
-Weather. Cycling in the cold and rain is not as bad as moto in the cold and rain howver cycling in the heat is much worse. Proper gear for cold and wet will make it suck less (it still sucks) but I would rather die than cycle in the heat.
-Effort. Cycling takes the same effort to get ready and more effort to ride (especially mentally due to the current road situation)
-Utility. Cycling and moto offer similar utility but there are less opportunities to strap boxes and bags to a random bicycle. You would probably need a large pannier or a cargo bike for most things. Hauling anything sizeable is, again, not realistic.The final problem: travel time. Cycling takes like triple the time to get anywhere in my situation and experience.
Seems most of the complaints are related to comfort.
This was a thought experiment done for my own benefit for my specific situation that i decided to share. Obviously other situations would lend similar yet different results.
I’m aware travel time in large cities is highly dependent on traffic—traffic is not something that I personally deal with.This comes from my experiences as a car driver, motorcyclist, and former cyclist.
Cycling takes longer bc the trip is not optimized for a bicycle.
I get what you’re saying for shorter trips, but once you get into the 20km range that’s an hour bike ride (unless you’re really going for it) no matter how optimised
Yeah, that’s where multimodal really makes sense. Like, take the bike to the train, take the train close, ride the bike the rest of the way. There are train cars marked specifically for bikes. Here in the Netherlands. I still haven’t tried it, but I see people using them all the time.
So my commute is on the order of 20km, and that’s quicker by bicycle than bus (on my specific bus route), and much cheaper than parking a car
As a bonus I can park my bike in the office basement parking, versus walking from the nearest bus stop, or parking a car and walking from however far away your budget allows
Should I check the cycling data I have of me traveling in a straight line down the main street of my town without stopping and compare it to the drive time for the same distance?
Go, measure the land dedicated to cars in a circle the distance to the end of main st. All that area is distance you wouldn’t need to bike if cars didn’t exist.
Not sure why i would do that. It’s clearly not within the scope or the stated context of my comment.
Then you failed to understand my point.
![[meme] There is no one-size-fits-all solution to transportation](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0bfe1df9-1b6b-414f-88b3-4e7d57514682.webp){kind=link}