zlacker

>>amathe+(OP)
> The fact that it takes six hours to get from Baltimore to Boston, when a faster train can cover the longer distance between Paris and Marseille in four, does not move us to protest the obvious failure of ambition.

By this logic, since planes can cover longer distances in shorter times than trains, should we quit trains in favor of planes?

>>joseph+C9
When you factor in a couple hours of wading through security checkpoints (at least in the US), it flips the timescale again for the short/medium trips.

>>dfinni+2b
It’s not only that. Even ignoring security checkpoints, jet planes almost always take people from where they do not are to where they do not want to be. Using them to go from where you are to where you want to be means spending additional time to travel to and from the airport.

Trains (most of the time) are a bit better in that regard because stations are more plentiful and often closer to where people want to be.

Cars, bicycles, and feet (mostly in that order; depending on infrastructure, it may be faster to get into your car than to hop on pot your bicycle) are even better.

Speed wise, it’s reversed. If there are no obstructions, speeds are feet < bicycle < car < train < jet plane.

That means that, only looking at trip duration, the detour to an airport and from the destination airport only is worth it for fairly long trips. Similarly, walking can be faster than cycling if you don’t have to go far, cycling can be faster than taking the car, etc.

Unfortunately, people also take trip costs into account, and those often are cheaper for air planes, compared to trains.

So, to ‘quit’ cars, we have to make it easier for people to go to a train station or to hop onto their bicycle and/or have to make it more difficult to hop into their car.

Banning on-street parking, requiring car drivers to walk a few hundred meters to a parking garage cuts multiple ways there. Using less space for parking allows for higher density, which leads to shorter travel distances, and increases the time to hop into one’s car.

>>Someon+wh
> we have to make it easier for people to go to a train station or to hop onto their bicycle and/or have to make it more difficult to hop into their car.

The former is fine, since it's an improvement to society. The latter is not fine, since it's a worsening of society.

>>joseph+vz
I get that humans would rather have the carrot than the stick. However, there are arguably a lot of positive benefits that result from making cars a more inconvenient choice. For example, one design choice that makes cars convenient is that towns and cities in the U.S.A often prioritize parking lots. Parking lots take up a lot of valuable space. If we used that space for something else (housing, a restaurant, a park, a museum, office space, anything really), then it becomes much less convenient for cars to be in the area, but more attractive for people who do not depend on a car. If that happens at scale in area, you also get other nice benefits like less air pollution, less noise pollution, fewer traffic accidents, etc.

>>Utopia+v41
The problem is you need to be able to get to that area before you can eliminate cars. If you are not careful you can kill an area because the people who used to drive there cannot anymore and so they just go elsewhere. If you already have a lot of people arriving by something other than cars, then you can replace the parking lot with something else and make better use of the space, but most areas don't have that advantage.

Building such places is not easy where they don't already exist. It isn't impossible, but you need to start there.