Why have technical innovation at all, let's just outlaw stuff...
I really don't get this desire to outlaw cars. I like walkable cities, but I also like the comfort and privacy of car transport. I live in a place (Germany) with good public transport. I used to live in cities with very good public transport. I still don't enjoy being squeezed in with thousands of other people. Does that mean that people like me have to be reeducated and/or forced to see the error of their ways?
> Why have technical innovation at all, let's just outlaw
> stuff...
> I really don't get this desire to outlaw cars.
That's not the point, it's that in this case the infrastructure cost to clean up cities is astronomical. Forgetting air pollution, noise pollution, deaths from traffic collisions, congestion - you also have to consider the shear infrastructural costs that _already_ go into maintaining road surfaces, traffic control, policing, etc. And that's without tunnel boring.
> I like walkable cities, but I also like the comfort and
> privacy of car transport.
I think we just have to look at the practicality of private transport in cities.
> I still don't enjoy being squeezed in with thousands of
> other people.
Perhaps this is where public transportation can be innovated on.
> Does that mean that people like me have to be reeducated
> and/or forced to see the error of their ways?
Most likely - it's simply the march of progress. As horses were mostly outlawed/discouraged from cities, I suspect cars will be too.
> > Does that mean that people like me have to be reeducated and/or forced to see the error of their ways?
>
> Most likely - it's simply the march of progress. As horses were mostly outlawed/discouraged from cities, I suspect cars will be too.
I think I will pass. If you outlaw driving in cities without a good alternative, I will just not live in a city anymore. But let me guess: you want to outlaw that too...
If your aim is "Reduce pollution caused by cars" then changing people from car-owning city-dwellers into car-owning suburb-dwellers might increase total pollution.
For example, if a family with one car turns into a family with two or three.
I think a pay-as-you go road tariff would be a nice way to introduce some 'nudges' in the right direction.
It could be managed by GPS trackers in vehicles, with the ability to charge different amounts in different locations and time of day (i.e. driving in cities or during rush hour should be discouraged), level of congestion, vehicle type (weight, length, self-driving or not), and selective emission controls (e.g. high polluters banned from city centres).
Fuel taxes are a simple, proportional way to target carbon emissions (effectively a carbon tax). However things like this should all be done with care (see gilets jaunes).
Even if they're all electric cars? This is why I live in the suburbs. You can't champion density as the solution on the one hand, and then say, "you have to drastically change your lifestyle to support density!".
Just let people who don't want to live in density pay for the externalities of low density living (require EVs, higher cost for infra, etc).
I'm not saying anything. I'm relaying what everyone who studies global warming has said. I'm not "championing" anything either.
I am relaying the science on global warming which indicates that if we continue down this path then we are absolutely screwed.
Density is not my idea. Density is what you get if you want (a) 7 billion people and (b) anything remotely resembling a sustainable society. If you also want a not dense society, then tell me which of (a) and (b) you want to eliminate.
If you're saying you want to ween us off of our rapidly worsening fossil fuel addiction then I don't know what to tell you but I do have several bridges to sell you.
Most of America drives cars. Most of Americans are not giving up their cars. Besides HVAC and industrial, transportation is an enormous producer of CO2 emissions. Electrify transportation. Density becomes moot.
Density might still have a chance in developing nations if they can avoid developing around the idea of the car; TBD.
Most Americans are going to learn a very different way of life. Either they can start living sustainably or they can start living with the consequences of unsustainability. Those are the only options. Electric vehicles are not going to fix much when our electricity is still mostly made by fossil fuels.
We need to stop subsidizing suburban and rural living yesterday.
> Most Americans are going to learn a very different way of life.
Unlikely. America has enough wealth that aside from coastal areas, life won't change that much unless agriculture collapses entirely.
> Electric vehicles are not going to fix much when our electricity is still mostly made by fossil fuels.
Coal is rapidly declining in use in the US for electrical generation. Natural gas will eventually be replaced by overbuilt renewables and battery storage (and EVs are a component of that). Electrifying transportation would be a huge step forward for moving off of fossil fuels compared to natural gas generation currently in play [1].
All of the above is possible without density or everyone moving to urban areas. American politics are built around equality of votes between dense cities, the suburbs, and rural areas. That is not changing in the foreseeable future. You're going to have to rely on market forces to drive out the remaining fossil fuels used.
Everyone can buy an EV or renewable power though to send market signals to ramp production capacity of both. Same with insulating your home and ensuring you're using as little energy as possible to condition your home spaces. And batteries. We need as many batteries as we can make.
That is the idea. The implementation of cycling lanes often has unintended consequences. Getting the details right is important or we end up with "cycle lanes to nowhere", lanes more dangerous than what was there before, drivers so angry about the lanes that the next round of politicians ban cycling completely, or several other possible futures I'm not even aware of. (Note that all of the above objections are general, they can apply to lanes for any purpose - only by careful work as the car lobby able to avoid them 100 years ago...)
Well, maybe actually.
It’s reasonable to suggest that your driving is creating personal gain at the expense of others (pollution, congestion etc), and thus should be treated like many other things that fall into this category (theft, speeding) and be outlawed.
Of course it’s also totally reasonable to suggest that the harm to others is so small that it doesn’t justify the erosion of personal liberty.
Point being, the question warrants reasonable consideration rather than immediate dismissal.
> Point being, the question warrants reasonable consideration rather than immediate dismissal.
Sure, but it takes quite a bit of negatives to override the obvious and glaring benefits of anyone being able to transport oneself, one's family, one's stuff, at a moments notice, to any destination, in (almost) any weather, at an average speed of 30-60miles per hour, all at an amortized cost of approximately 50cents per mile.
The willingness and readiness of some people to disregard the large personal, societal, and economic benefits of having functioning automotive infrastructure - in concert with other methods of transit - quite frankly bewilders me.
> Sure, but it takes quite a bit of negatives to override the obvious and glaring benefits of anyone being able to transport oneself, one's family, one's stuff, at a moments notice, to any destination, in (almost) any weather, at an average speed of 30-60miles per hour, all at an amortized cost of approximately 50cents per mile.
The current discussion mostly centers on banning cars in cities or large agglomerations. In no city you'll reach average speeds even approaching 30 miles an hour - something around 20km/h is a more reasonable number to expect. That's btw. easily reachable with an electric bicycle or public transport. I can call a cab or a transport for larger goods at pretty much a moments notice, there's even car sharing services that have some parked in the street.
Also, you're disregarding that cars in cities have massive externalities - the current estimate for Berlin is that infrastructure for cars (roads and parking spaces) cost about 30% of the cities surface area at substantial cost to society (increased rent and building costs, maintenance etc) which is paid by the majority of people not owning a car. Not all of that could be recouped if private car usage is reduced, but substantial chunks could. Not to speak of noise and other pollution, risks of accident and injury etc.
So you're overplaying the advantages and disregarding the very real cost that other people shoulder for a minority driving.
You are correct for the dense part of large cities, once you get outside that things change fast. Anyone not living in those areas sometimes need to get to the dense part of the city, and driving their own car overall has the speeds of the non-dense part they pass through not the slow dense part near their destination.
Look, its simple. You are either on the side of the fence where you want/need a fast transport, and hence you own and use a car, or you don't. Each side then downplays the other's arguments and propel theirs. Its obvious also in this discussion.
Realistically, IMHO the switch from private transport will happen no sooner than there is a real, proper, easy to use at any time on a whim alternative that is same cost (ideally cheaper due to subsidies) than owning and using a car. Things are improving greatly, but we're not there, practically anywhere (apart maybe from Netherlands and Denmark, but even that not for many use cases). Proof - people driving everywhere.
Mass transit is cheaper than owning a car without subsidies. However there is a large hurdle before the word mass applies. The bus I took to work this morning had a peak of 5 people on it - it was only cheaper because of subsidies. If there were 100 people on it (it only has ~30 seats, and the route doesn't allow a bigger bus - but ignoring reality...) the fare would pay for the bus, driver and be less than everybody having their own car.
>and disregarding the very real cost that other people shoulder for a minority driving.
1.1 mio cars in Berlin * ( 1.8 = size of household ) = 2 mio households own a car.
I think everybody would appreciate a city without cars as long as there is a sufficient cheap fast and comfortable transport (which is not a car) available. If it were the case for Berlin then there wouldn't be 1.1 mio cars there.
In general if there are externalities then it's better to impose taxes that amount to the cost of that externality (plus the cost difference between enforcing the tax and enforcing the ban) rather than ban. That way if people really really want/need to use something like a car (e.g. the are mostly disabled and commute in from a country house) they still can.
I don't think that outlawing car is a solution, but disincentivizing them maybe is: higher taxes with which pay a better public transport network, less and more expensive parking, more lanes dedicated to public or unmotorized transport, traffic lights more favourable to public or unmotorized transport, stronger presumption of fault on the side of the motorized vehicle after accidents. All of these improve the value of less impacting transport.
After all, cars, especially when moving just one person, heavily overuse shared and scarce resources like space and environment. It's all too fair that they pay a higher share to public resources.
Maybe you will still use your car, accepting to pay a higher price for it, but other people will switch, making the world a better place also for you.
Well, you can start by banning houses and cramming people into small apartments, which should be more efficient. Not everybody drives, but everybody needs a place to live and private houses are just abuse of the land.
Jokes aside, come see gas and parking prices in Europe.
I perfectly support house taxing being super-linear in the size of the house, if this is what you mean, in such a way that a decent house is as affordable as possible for everybody, and those who want very large houses recognize that they have an above-than-average share of a common resource, and therefore contribute to the common needs more than others.
That said, I believe that road space has different rules than housing space, so it is hard to compare them directly.
I am Italian and live in Belgium, in case this gives more strength to my argument. I also have a car and pay European prices for it. Of course, I try to use it as little as possible, which is good.
Probably not. FTR, I never said they should. I didn't propose any dependency on the number of residents, but this does not imply that I think there should be none. There are probably many other variables to take into account, and I didn't want to state a complete proposal. Just one of the many criteria.
Nope. If you need high-throughput transportation in high-density areas, then cars are not the technically best solution since they need a lot of space to move only a few people each, and that's both when in use (space on the road) and when not in use (parking space).
With current and mid-term-future tech, high-frequency bus- and smalltrain/metro-lines are much more efficient for city-plus-suburbia-scale mass-transportation. Depending on topography and climate, add (electric) bicycles and similar to the mix.
The problem is with bootstrapping: A high-frequency public transportation network is expensive, especially if the demand is low since everybody (who can afford it) is driving by car because the current public transport is bad because setting up a good high-frequency public transportation network is expensive, especially if the demand is low since...
To break this circle, we have politics and law - but of course only few cities want to outlaw cars.
My personal opinion: While I really like driving my nice, expensive car, I would actually prefer taking the bus; as long as (1.) it's not more expensive [easy] and (2.) doesn't affect my travel time significantly [difficult] and (3.) is as reliable as going by car. Right now getting to the office by bus takes 40m instead of max. 10m by car, is unreliable (missed connections add 15m and leave me waiting in 2 to 5 degC) and god forbid there is a chance of snow, then I'm stranded. I'm leaving out recent strikes, which shut down public transportation in my city for 2 weeks, because I think as much as people should have a good public transportation, the people WORKING in public transportation deserve a proper payment.
If you want to be alone in your own mode of transportation in a city, there's no real need to use a ton of metal and gasoline for that. We can put a lot of innovation to bicycles and electric bicycles or scooters to make them more attractive to more people.
Will you come to my city in the middle of January when it will be -20 Celsius outside and show how you drive your kids to school on a said electric scooter?
Trying to solve some problem should start from understanding it not from the assumption what everyone has the same lifestyle as you.
Personally I live hours away from the nearest town, use only my bicycle even when it's snowing, and I don't have any heating in the house. So I quite understand that not everyone have the same lifestyle as me :)
But you are right that there will not be a unique solution to the transportation problem. In warmer climate we already have (electric) cargo bikes that are nice for moving kids around in the city, but we'll need more innovation for colder climate and longer distances. And that was exactly my point.
Yeah, but putting together a good solution is hard and boring, while tearing down a bad solution is easy and fun, so let's just go around tearing down bad solutions and calling it progress!
Not sure if the boring company approach is a bad solution.
For 30 years, I have heard from environmentalists that electric cars will need to have short range and shitty performance, but we have to outlaw ICE cars anyway for the greater good.
There comes Tesla and builds a car that is just objectively better in every metric than an ICE car. Now my next car when my 13 year old Prius gives up the ghost will be a Model 3.
For public transport it is similar. Offer me something that is better in every way than a car (on demand, point to point, with privacy), and I will happily use it instead of a car. A self-driving taxi fleet with dedicated right of way, as envisioned by the boring company, would fit the bill.
If the boring company plans don't work out, a high frequency electric bus system with dedicated rights of way would fit the bill, with something like trackless trams (http://theconversation.com/why-trackless-trams-are-ready-to-...) for the very high demand parts.
But don't try to sell me a tram as the best 21st century solution for transit and then try to outlaw all the alternatives...
From an environmental POV electric cars will change almost nothing. The energy per passenger mile is still terrible as you still need to move, in the case of Tesla, at least 2500kg of material to move 1 person.
For meaningful energy savings the transportation model itself has to change. Here is one example for Hamburg, Germany, showing over 80% decrease in CO2 emission by shifting to public transport: http://www.mobilitaet-in-deutschland.de/pdf/infas_Vortrag_if... p.18)
What if the energy comes from solar? Then the energy consumption does not matter that much. Also, even a tesla is not 2500kg and many people with family rarely drive with a single occupant.
Also, have you looked at the energy consumption of light or suburban rail? It might look somewhat attractive if you assume that the rail cars are packed, but in reality where they often drive almost empty at night and during off hours, the numbers are actually pretty bad.
Electric buses are much better, but even they have the huge downside that they run according to a schedule, don't go where you want to go, and offer no privacy.
The energy source is an orthogonal topic. Public transport is far easier to convert to renewable sources because the number of stakeholders is usually in the single digits.
> Also, even a tesla is not 2500kg
A model X is 2500kg, a model S is 2100 kg.
> many people with family rarely drive with a single occupant.
> Also, have you looked at the energy consumption of light or suburban rail?
Yes, and I've even linked a source showing that energy used per passenger mile is 8 times higher with cars :)
Edit: That light rail is more efficient also makes sense if you look at weight and capacity of trains: The local commuter trains around here have a weight of about 105t, so about 50 teslas. But they fit up to 500 people. Power is 2400kW - you can transport 500 people for the power equivalent of 10 Tesla model S. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/DB-Baureihe_423
It is also about twice as big as a typical European car. Even a model 3 is on the big side. The most produced electric car by tesla is the model 3, which is much lighter. 1611kg, not even that much heavier than my Prius.
> For Europe, the average is 1.4 people per car
For the people (families with young kids) that are most in need of a car, the average occupancy is much higher.
> Edit: That light rail is more efficient also makes sense if you look at weight and capacity of trains: The local commuter trains around here have a weight of about 105t, so about 50 teslas. But they fit up to 500 people. Power is 2400kW - you can transport 500 people for the power equivalent of 10 Tesla model S. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/DB-Baureihe_423
So light rail/commuter rail is more efficient than an electric car when you assume that the car is single occupant and the light train is fully packed. That is a way of tipping the scales, but not an honest argument.
Trains are never fully packed except maybe during rush hour. Besides, traveling in a fully packed train is horrible. I know, I frequently have to take Munich public transport with exactly the 423...
> For the people (families with young kids) that are most in need of a car, the average occupancy is much higher.
But obviously they are dwarved by the single commuters, or else the average wouldn't be 1.4 persons per car.
> So light rail/commuter rail is more efficient than an electric car when you assume that the car is single occupant and the light train is fully packed. That is a way of tipping the scales, but not an honest argument.
Let's look at the numbers again. To not disadvantage the car, we assume 20% capacity, which is the minimum possible for a car.
A single instance of the named train at 20% capacity accomodates 100 people while needing 2400kW. A single Tesla at 20% capacity accomodates 1 person at lets say 175kw if it is model 3. That is 24kW per person for the train and 175kW for the car. A factor of 1:7.
To reflect the real world data, we'll assume 1.4 persons per car from the souce above, which would mean a capacity of 28%. The train equivalent is 140 persone, meaning a factor of a bit more than 1:7 in favor of the train.
In my area the actual train during communiting hours is at least 70% occupied, BTW.
I'm not trying to win internet points here; there just is no way around the fact that electic cars are not in any way a meaningful solution to our climate problem.
So a subway car or a commuter rail car gets 12.5 kWh per 100 person kilometers. That is still better than a tesla model 3 of 160 Wh / km or 16 kWh / 100km. But not by much.
If you assume 1.4 people on average, you get 11.4 kWh / 100km / person, so basically the same.
And if you have 3 or 4 people, the model 3 is significantly more efficient than the average commuter rail.
> In my area the actual train during communiting hours is at least 70% occupied, BTW.
But trains also go outside commuting hours. That is the whole problem with a system that has large units and is not on demand.
> I'm not trying to win internet points here; there just is no way around the fact that electic cars are not in any way a meaningful solution to our climate problem.
Neither am I. I was doing back of the envelope calculations about what it would take to do a battery powered commuter rail for the relation I frequently use, and was genuinely surprised how inefficient commuter rail is on average.
It would be good to have figures for trains that are up to 10 years old (rather than everything up to 40 years old or whatever), which should be more efficient, and the manufacturing energy cost for the vehicles -- I suspect the cars will fare quite badly here.
We can also take into account the cost of accidents, which we could probably assign an energy value to avoiding.
Where are you getting 175kW for a Model 3? A standard model 3 uses 25 kWh per 100 miles according to [1]. If we assume it is traveling at 50 mph, that is 12.5kW continuous
Yes, I have misremembered the power, which seems to be 211 for most models. You are quite correct that it would make more sense to compare actual usage per distance, but I couldn't find this number for a train, so just compared the motors itself.
> So light rail/commuter rail is more efficient than an electric car when you assume that the car is single occupant and the light train is fully packed. That is a way of tipping the scales, but not an honest argument.
The past 100 years of history have made it abundantly clear that cars are made completely unaffordable to the middle class, most of them will be on the road with only one occupant. A rare few will have two.
For some reason, families rarely have to commute to the same place, and lone drivers aren't super keen on carpooling with strangers.
>There comes Tesla and builds a car that is just objectively better in every metric than an ICE car.
Wait, what? I can think of many metrics where Teslas are not "objectively better" than ICE cars, one of which is price. Why buy a Model 3 when you can buy a used Prius or Corolla, and spend the money you save on energy saving measures around your home?
Private transit as you propose can only exist in suburbs where everybody has large lots, and will be more expensive than owning your own car. Those private cars will always take up a lot of space per person.
If you live someplace where you take the shared tram for the vast majority of trips, then what you propose can work for the few trips where you the tram doesn't work. How often do you really need the private space? If it is all the time you have agreed to forever live in suburban sprawl, with potentially long commutes.
I really don't get this desire to outlaw cars. I like walkable cities, but I also like the comfort and privacy of car transport. I live in a place (Germany) with good public transport. I used to live in cities with very good public transport. I still don't enjoy being squeezed in with thousands of other people. Does that mean that people like me have to be reeducated and/or forced to see the error of their ways?