this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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Reclaimed By Nature
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Or you could design cities to have green in the first place by designing for better modes of transport than cars. Cars take up a huge amount of space both while traveling and while not in use, instead of spending all that money and space on cars you can have public transit, cycling infrastructure, walking infrastructure, and greener cities.
Easier is just to have covered parking lots, with a green roof. No massive societal changes requires, just an expensive parking garage.
But there are no better modes of transport than cars. They are literally the most used vehicles on earth. This means they have topped every other form so far. The natural next step in the cars evolution is self driving electric vehicles. So cars will be used by multiple people, so there are less cars overall and those cars could be stored in large strategically well placed big parking lot buildings.
I agree on cycling infrastructure and other forms of public transport. The more options people get, the better. But cars are irreplaceable. Car infrastructure is the most flexible we have. Ambulances, police, craftsmen, busses, taxis, you can easily transform them into pedestrian territory, or turn them into bike lanes. And as I claimed before, if the next 100 years bring us new technologies and self driving cars revolutionise public transport, then this infrastructure offers the option to increase green surfaces in cities.
This is an appeal to popularity. Something being popular does not make it the best or good. Bikes are also insanely popular - with around ⅔ as many bikes as cars world wide. Car usage also varies highly from city to city. Unsurprisingly those that have good viable alternatives have much less car usage. Build lots of roads you get lots of cars.
Self driving is not a solution to the massive inefficiency of cars; it's likely to make it worse. Improving the quality of a mode of transit generally results in increased usage - this is known as induced demand. Not needing a license nor having to pay attention means more people will opt for the car instead of alternatives, resulting in more congestion.
They're also unlikely to reduce the number of cars per person. Assuming self driving cars are cheaper than the current situation why would people voluntarily sit next to a stranger in a locked metal box when - for less than they were paying before - they could not do that. They'd also be trading off journey time - the number one thing people care about in regards to transit.
So more people would use cars, but cars are parked unused 95% of the time, isn't there efficiency to be gained there? Yes, most likely. But the thing to remember is the majority of cars are on the road at the same time during peak hours. Even if you double the efficiency here you'd at best be reducing the parking needed by 5%.
You are right though in regards to cars not going anywhere. They are a valuable mode of transportation, especially in rural areas. Hopefully self driving won't make car dependence even worse.
Let me quickly comment. I think I got banned for shitposting in the shitposting community.
Edit1: no I am still here.
So let me start with my answer:
And to my understanding this means that bikes are also a great way of transport. Second to cars.
Bikes also need roads. And you need roads in cities anyway. You need them for emergency vehicles, such as ambulances, the police, fire trucks, you need them for trucks transporting goods, you need them for craftsman repairing your housing. You need them to build housing in the first place. Car infrastructure is irreplaceable from the beginning. And I believe to already repeat myself: you might use it if it’s already there.
Cars are already extremely efficient at maximum loadout. And self driving might not increase the efficiency further (electrical vehicles will), but if cars become self driving, than this car can drive to you. It doesn’t need to be placed in some cramped up neighbourhood. It can be stored in specialised parking lot building. Now if those cars are owned by some company, as a car sharing offering, then this would reduce the overall need for more cars, as cars are most of the time standing on the side and not in use. This way cars would be used much more frequent.
This is partially correct. Self driving EV under control of a. At sharing company would solve this problem. The solution to the current situation (even though I don’t think it’s so dire) would be to invest into research for self driving vehicles and battery technologies. Only a fool tries to go back. Back to old practices. We need innovation instead of backwards looking thinking. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t look into other ways of transport, such as rail. It does indeed have its applications. But cars are there to stay.
As I already said, self driving cars come with the benefit to reintroduce the concept of the taxi, just with less cost for a driver.
Not quite, as those cars could be used for transport at night. To deliver goods to destinations in a city. Especially smaller shops could make use of said system. There might also be other uses that I do not remember.
The future will be a dystopian shitshow. No matter what kind of transport will be there. But innovation will go on. Just think about all the life improvements of the past decades. In only a hundred years so much changed. So quickly.
And now AI is coming. And this comment has been partially written with AI. Because my English sucks.
At this point I am sure that every problem will be solved eventually. The only problem will be that each solution creates new problems. But what would we do without our problems. And without the constant need to solve them?