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The authors are calling on national and local governments to set targets for the proportion of trips made on foot, by bicycle and by public transport, including national targets of:
- Doubling the proportion of trips walked to 25 per cent by 2050.
- Doubling the proportion of cycling trips in each of the next decades, with the ultimate goal of 15 per cent of all trips being on bicycles by 2050.
- Increasing the proportion of all trips by public transport to 15 per cent by 2050.
The report's authors further recommend:
- The government develop a national promotion and education campaign to persuade people to walk or cycle to schools and work-places
- That investment is made in liveable cities and creating urban environments designed for people, rather than cars
- That new regulations are introduced to make walking and cycling safer
The report prominently cites health concerns as a key reason to not drive, because people need to exercise more. Is it a tacit acknowledgement of electric vehicles' (EVs) imminent takeover of global car fleets?
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Urgent Action Needed to End Our Love Affair with Cars, Report Finds
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New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday April 30 2019, @08:04AM (1 child)
Funny how you see in this a conspiracy to take our cars away, but you don't see all the pro-car and pro-oil conspiracies. Things like automobile manufacturers and oil companies working to destroy public transportation, designing roads to make walking and biking extremely unsafe or impossible-- a favorite is the bridge that has no sidewalk and no shoulder-- getting the public on board with footing the massive bill for the public highway system, and even going to war to ensure a supply of oil.
In the early 1920s, most automobile roads were private, and the owners of these roads were not above milking and cheating travelers with such stunts as deliberately neglecting incorrect signage, and directing travelers on roundabout routes, to increase the profits of the businesses and towns along the roundabout route at the expense of the travelers. The AAA was formed to fight back against such shenanigans. Another thing the private roads did was simply charge massive tolls. But mostly, their funding came from the towns along their route. Towns that balked at paying got bypassed.
The main competition was passenger rail, and being private, they had similar issues with abusing their monopolies on travel. They went too far, and today, there is very little passenger rail in the US, really only Amtrak for intercity travel. And Amtrak is a notoriously bad way to travel. Extremely expensive, even more costly than flying, stunningly shabby at timeliness (an hour late? Ha! A day late is all too possible), slow (no TGV bullet trains), and lacking in routes. Amtrak is a political football, with special interests constantly working to make sure Amtrak continues to suck. They'd rather just kill it dead, but there continues to be enough support for passenger rail that they can't. For years there's been talk of making high speed passenger rail links between major cities, such as a San Francisco to Los Angeles connection, or Dallas to Houston, but somehow nothing ever comes of those schemes.
And so, there are only 2 practical ways to travel in much of the US: for longer distances for the well-to-do, flying, and driving for all else. Yes, those special interests absolutely do conspire to mess up all other forms of travel. Often, they don't have to work at it, the public unwittingly does the work for them.
So why aren't you up in arms about these very real and ongoing conspiracies to maintain the car as the only practical way for local travel?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Shire on Tuesday April 30 2019, @02:38PM
Ok, let me address some of those points. First point - that roads used to be private. I spend a fair amount of time in Colorado and I can tell you that the 470 here is privately owned. This is a major highway loop around Denver, all of it privately owned and well maintained. So it's not like that setup isnt possible, it's simply not always practical. And more to the point - had the government not created the interstate highway system this country would probably not be nearly as prosperous as it has become. Maybe NZ has all the shenanigans you speak of, but as someone who has traveled coast to coast by car several times (and even up beyond the arctic circle), I have yet to encounter any deliberately incorrect signs and I can't even imagine how they could increase business traffic unless you're a gas station.
As for passenger rail... it sucks, it has always sucked. I had to take the Chicago Northwestern everyday into work for a year and I hated it. You had to drive to get to the station, you had to bus from the station to wherever you needed to get. It was always a case of "hurry up and wait" for the next link of your journey. It chewed up huge chunks of your day just standing and waiting. And then there are the parking fees at the station and the ever present risk of someone breaking into your car while you were gone. No, rail failed because it wasn't practical. As for taking rail cross country in lieu of flying, again you're talking about chewing up huge segments of your time. America is a working country, if you're moving around its because you need to get things done, and you can't waste your time taking slow rail to get where you need to be.
Time is money friend, and the US is in a big hurry to get things done. Of course, other countries are much more laid back and maybe they can be convinced to sit on their butts in a train for a day, but that doesn't wash here.
Cars drive the economy, the are the single most productive tool ever created by man.
As for your conspiracy theory that the auto and oil industry blocks the creation of sidewalks and bike paths let me point out that unless you're living in a heavily congested city that has stores at every corner, it's impractical to get groceries on foot and if you're buying for your family, it's impractical to haul it all on a bike. Additionally, most people work 10 or 20 miles away from where they live. Do you really expect anyone to walk that far every morning and evening, in rain or snow? Of course not.
The second factor is this - here in the US at least, we have sidewalks EVERYWHERE and bike lanes almost everywhere. Very few people use them because again, it's just not practical to cover that much distance that way. Your claim that the car and oil industry has conspired against sidewalks and bike lanes clearly falls flat in the face of the fact that all major cities have them.
As for the greenhouse gas emissions refered to in the article, cars in the US already have very strict polution controls and new cars are moving towards electric as the infrastructure permits. This paniced handwaving about "URGENT NEED" is like yelling fire in a theater when there isn't one. It's the same overblown rhetoric you hear from the far left every day - the end of the world is coming in 12 years! These people are better suited to street corners holding carboard signs. They can't be taken seriously.