SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
An article over at Motherboard covers the growing inequities in the US resulting from the cultivation of individualized transport options.
Carsharing, ridesharing, ride-hailing, public transit, and cycling—"all of those things are needed to replace personal cars," said [Robin Chase, co-founder of Zipcar].
It's a nice idea, but to actually kill car ownership, we're first going to need to have some very uncomfortable conversations about class and equity in the United States. Public transit used to be the great equalizer, but affordable private rides have become the new favorite of the middle class. When richer people give their money to private ride-hailing or carsharing companies, public transit loses money—and that's not good for cities, societies, or the environment.
[...] This dependence on ride-hailing is having the adverse effect of increasing traffic congestion, which in turn makes bus service slower and more frustrating. Besides, until cities change dramatically—i.e. more parks, fewer parking lots, less sprawl, better accommodations for active and public transit—decreased rates of car ownership likely won't benefit the environment if we're still travelling the same distances in cars.
Those living in countries that still have good or remnants of good mass transit will have different insights. It is unlikely that without good, reliable, vast public transit networks, there will be social and economic equity, assuming that is a goal. While public transit can suck, especially in the US, it is sometimes necessary to take one for the team and vote with your wallet. Unfortunately the situation is often framed as a false dilemma, that there can only be private cars or only mass transit, but not both coexisting and used for different ends at different times by the same people.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 14 2018, @12:10AM (17 children)
When richer people give their money to private ride-hailing or carsharing companies, public transit loses money—and that's not good for cities, societies, or the environment.
It's better for the environment than all those richer people driving their own personal vehicles, and then needing to find places to park them. Fewer cars to manufacture, and no need for wasting valuable urban space on parking lots.
This dependence on ride-hailing is having the adverse effect of increasing traffic congestion, which in turn makes bus service slower and more frustrating.
Try building some subways then. And then try hiring competent people to run them. In advanced nations, they manage to do this just fine, and apologize profusely when the train leaves 20 seconds too early. In shitty countries, they have fatal accidents on the subways and city trains, and there's no exact timetable for the trains at all.
Ride-sharing/ride-hailing/whatever you call it is really a symptom, not a cause: it's a symptom of a shitty public transit infrastructure. There's absolutely nothing that middle-class people can do about it, so they're turning to these services as a band-aid, because they're better than cabs.
Why wasn't this writer at Motherboard complaining about cabs before?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday February 14 2018, @02:33AM (7 children)
You really need to get out of the city once in a while son. Its a beautiful world where you can actually open your eyes and see something beside inner city blight and bricks.
This whole article is geared toward people who live so deep in the canyons they have anxiety attacks any time the see an horizon.
Ride-hailing works fine in the suburbs, rural areas, and small towns. My sister uses it in her gated community in Florida, my long time college buddy uses Uber to get to the grocery store in Alaska, my car-less neighbor on the west coast uses it just to go to his grandson's soccer games.
But I see your point: If you get rid of those parking lots in the city core you can put up even more sky blocking apartment buildings. Take all those streets and use them for mass transit. Find other people to pay for it, because city dwellers never pay for their own mass transit.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @03:01AM
If you get rid of those parking lots in the city core[,] you can put up even more sky blocking apartment buildings
...or turn that space into municipal parks which don't add to the heat island effect.
...or maybe even a community "garden" where food is grown.
Stop thinking like it's still the 20th Century.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:30AM (4 children)
Yeah, it's just blighted areas, ghettos and darkies stealing stuff, Like these places:
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=Central+park+views&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=1 [google.com]
https://www.google.com/search?q=Paris+views+of+the+Seine&btnG=Search&hl=en&gbv=1&tbm=isch [google.com]
https://www.google.com/search?q=Amsterdam+views&btnG=Search&hl=en&gbv=1&tbm=isch [google.com]
https://www.google.com/search?q=Sydney+views&btnG=Search&hl=en&gbv=1&tbm=isch [google.com]
Yup, just nasty, nasty jungles with hostile, murderous natives.
"Of course you'll have a bad impression of New York if you only focus on the Pimps and C.H.U.D.s." [wikia.com], Frojack.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @07:49AM (1 child)
Dude, almost all of each of those URLs is noise.
Here's all you need for a link to Google Images:
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=Central+park+views [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @10:41AM
Why do I care? A better question is why do you care?
I'm just showing some provincial moron how stupid he is. I'm not going to put effort into editing the URLs Straight up copypasta.
It's a waste of my time. Don't like it? Go ahead and edit the rest of them. That's a wonderful use of your time, I'm sure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @03:11PM (1 child)
Hard to claim the high ground when someone says "inner city blight" and you immediately say "darkies stealing stuff".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @05:48PM
Yes. I suppose you might think that. Perhaps you should re-read my comment, then view the links I posted. You might find it enlightening.
Given that you're probably too lazy for mouse clicks, I'll give you a hint: Poe's law [wikipedia.org] strikes again!
Sigh.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 14 2018, @01:36PM
Worth pointing out, having lived there, that those areas either don't have any public transit or their public transit is a joke of a checkbox that doesn't work and no one uses it.
Uber can't take money from a service that doesn't exist. They can take money from properly legally licensed and insured taxi services, which they do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @03:06AM
In Japan, they hire cute girls and at peak hours have them push the last passengers to board into the cars, saying "Excuse me. Excuse me." or something similar, so that the trains stay on schedule.
(Hint for any lonely guys needing a human touch.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Troll) by crafoo on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:00AM (1 child)
No you don't understand. Either you lay down in your own grave and express sorrow to your murderers OR you are an evil sonofabitch alt-right nazi that is accelerating the suppression, enslavement, and suffering of the expanding poor population. It's a simple either-or situation people! It's so simple you dummy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @03:49PM
Is it some sort of emotional release to cry like a baby? I hope your not one of those adult baby fetish people...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Wednesday February 14 2018, @12:02PM
Paris has experimented with making the metro free when their pollution levels get too high, to encourage people to use it instead of driving. I wonder what would happen if a city like Paris made the Velib and Metro free at point of use (maybe keep a refundable deposit for the Velib) for an extended period. Would the reduction in traffic have a sufficient impact on the air quality and economy to cover the cost of operating it?
When I was a student, in my first year I was living somewhere that was about 45 minutes walk from campus and was right at the top of a hill so not particularly fun to access by bicycle, but I could get a bus pass for around £200 that let me take busses anywhere in the city for the entire academic year (in my second year, I moved within easy walking distance of campus and the city centre, so took the bus a lot less and didn't bother with the pass). While I was living in the same city, the bus prices went up to the point where it was cheaper get a taxi for 2-3 people for most trips. When I went back last year, it was cheaper to get a taxi than to take the bus for anything other than really long trips by a single person. They'd tried deploying bendy busses and spent millions remodelling the city centre so that they could fit, and then three years later had cancelled the entire project and gone back to smaller busses because not enough people were riding the busses to make it worth having the larger ones.
London gets good use of the tube by capping the total cost per day. Once you've made a couple of trips, the additional cost of extra ones is zero, which means that if you're using the tube or bus to get to work then the cost of using it to go out in the evening is zero. If you're using the tube a lot, then an annual travelcard has a lower cap than the pre-pay version, so it's an even better deal. This is coupled with a congestion charge that increases the cost of driving a car into the city and makes public transport a much more attractive option most of the time.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 14 2018, @03:18PM (4 children)
Speaking of that, what causes mass transit debate?
The problem with SN is I'm not seeing any argument point in the article that is beyond the turn of the century. Let me drop some modern memes about the topic that no one has mentioned so far. Personally I think they kinda defuse the whole argument to the point of ending the debate, they are awesome memes.
I've read the whole "mass transit fandom" thing described as hipster imperialism and also as hipster colonialism.
Its really no different than a century ago, back then Londoners would rant and rave about how they have the right answer to govern an empire and they should naturally rule mere residents of India and why won't those stupid backwards inhuman savages cooperate and stay in the Empire as subjects which is what smart people would do, because we're better people, who know better than they do how to live, so at the point of a gun we have a moral obligation to improve those savages? Yeah that worked out real well, didn't it? We're "beyond" that way of thinking, right?
The same Londoners today are jerks demanding that their choo choos rule the waves and only morons, whom they should rule over, would live any other way, so its OK for us superior people to force them at the barrel of a government gun to live like us, so hope you enjoy your new choo choos we're forcing you to pay for via massive tax increases.
Hipster Colonialism, not even once. Down with the Imperialists! Hipster Imperialism is not exactly the Federation Prime Directive.
From the outside looking in, even the most jaded outsiders think there's nothing wrong with a London solution to a London problem, but the failure of Hipster Colonialism is you need the Imperial Army Muskets to gun down 1247 unarmed civilians to enforce a London solution to a New Dehli problem, to mix some historical metaphors.
There's people who just can't be made to understand that colonialism failed for a reason, not because "we didn't try hard enough" or "bad luck". A century ago they wanted an Empire, today they want choo choos, but its the same thought process across centuries.
Another meme, respect of the ancients: Wikipedia seems to claim the first subway opened in London in 1863... its 2018... anywhere mass transit makes sense it was profitably installed a century ago, and relatively slow rate of change means any change or expansion is going to be glacial compared to the amount of talk about the topic.
Another modern mass transit meme: There's an anti-globalist rant meme on the topic where all real estate must be the same across the world, so if a London solution works in London then at the point of a gun the whole world needs to be like London or else. With a side dish of Hipster Taliban gonna bulldoze the Statue of Liberty and the Great Pyramid because if every city can't have a French statue with Jewish poem on it, and huge piles of rock, then no cities should have them because all cities have to be the same, see the subway/transit rant. So you "must buy choo choo's or else" are gonna get ignored until you put up or shut up by bulldozing the Statue of Liberty. I live near a "great city" (not so great, but whatever) that does not have a London Eye ferris wheel so we'll build a shitty subway after London bulldozes their ferris wheel, because all real estate must be identical to be good globalists, right? I mean its a moral injustice that some cities don't do mass transit, right? So why don't you guys fire up the bulldozers first, then we'll think about buying ridiculous choo choos.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @03:53PM
Were you the series of contracts guy? Would explain your previous absence and your current vocal posts with no sign of the AC troll now.
How would society work without gov again?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:03PM (1 child)
You need to get your meds prescription checked.
Basically, you seem to be arguing that people in a municipality have no right to govern themselves, and make laws to benefit their community, which is asinine and amounts to anarchy.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:30PM
Not really.
The hipster imperialism meme is based on the idea the left is very proud about being "post imperial" and "post colonial" WRT the whole superiority implies inherent dominion thing. So the same people that thought themselves better than Indians therefore British India is a great idea, a century later spend endless electrons lecturing the entire world must give up cars because it works great for us in London and we're superior therefore have dominion over the world and what we say, must be done. Hipster Imperialism, or Hipster Colonialism awesome. Its a variation on the theme of Californication where CA residents who ruined CA, move to another state and ruin it. Kinda like the immigration/invasion argument.
Another meme is actually a recycled old logical fallacy where you drop a $20 on the ground in front of three economists and they refuse to pick it up because an efficient marketplace means $20 bills don't fall to the ground. So we've had subways for 160 years depending on finer definitions and where they work they've appeared and where they don't work, frankly by now they're never gonna work. Its exactly like demanding more hydroelectric dams be installed, its old old old tech, if it hasn't been installed for centuries, there's a reason, and it isn't going to be installed, ever.
The final meme is a variation on cultural imperialism, people that think they're superior because they don't want McDonalds in every world capital city on the planet none the less want choo choos. So one named corporation to rule them all is bad, but strict enforcement of one architectural style, according to a certain level of authoritarian personality, is inherently good thus the whole world need choo choos because they work in London, or whatever.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:38AM
Where can I find *any* references to such a "meme"?
Not here: https://me.me/t/public-transportation [me.me]
Or here: http://knowyourmeme.com/search?q=public+transportation [knowyourmeme.com]
Or here: https://www.memecenter.com/tag/%20public%20transportation [memecenter.com]
Or here: http://memebase.cheezburger.com/tag/public-transportation/page/6 [cheezburger.com]
Quit making stuff up. It just confirms what we all know -- you're full of it.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr