Maybe if we didn't build our cities and communities so hostile to humans, this wouldn't be as much as a problem.
Magiccupcake
joined 1 year ago
Because lemmy search sucks. Its very specific, and usually the most relavant stuff is buried by tangetially related things.
In the Netherlands they use bike lanes.
A two way bike lane is wide enough for emergency vehicles like an ambulance, and bikers get out of the way.
Do really need need 4?
If you cant get by on 2, you might have less power, but you can get better efficiency. With better efficiency you can have a smaller battery for the same range and reduce some of your increased cost that way.
If you're gonna go through all this trouble, why not put motors directly into the wheels? Then you can bypass the drivetrain all together and directly power the wheels.
The newer technology at that time was cars and roads, and many European countries did try the American system of roads and suburbs.
Its just that most of them realized it wad a bad idea around 20 years ago and started rethinking their cities.
Many city centers were even turned into parking lots like American ones.
Again cities arent supposed to be static, and normally they grow denser, rather than sprawling.
The problem with American cities is partly zoning, and partly nimbyism, where people don't want their places to change.
And sprawl sucks for pretty much everyone. Less arable land for farming, poorer anmeties, longer travel times, and finally huge transportation costs. Cars are by far the most costly method of travel, both personally and for governments.
The stupid thing is that fixing it isn't even that hard.
Step one Get rid stupid zoning laws like single family housing and reduce parking minimums.
Step 2 Modify existing roads piece by piece to include alternative transit methods. Add bike lanes, if you can't slow down roads and people will bike.
Actually run decent buses where peoole want to go, not oversized 50 person buses on 3 routes that nobody uses becasue it doesn't go anywhere, and has an hour between the next bus.
That's it, the market will build more housing in areas that need it if its profitable, then use that new tax money to drive transit infrastructure.
There's a lot of fine details, but we're bankrupting cities with cars right now.
It's a good point that cities aren't built anymore, and that's part of the problem. Our population has grown drastically, but we don't build hardly any new infrastructure for them outside of roads. So traffic is terrible despite enormous amounts of money from both government and people.
Cities aren't supposed to be static, they're supposed to grow and adapt to the needs of those that live there. There is a large need for non-car transport that is either ignored or sidelined for cars.
I'm not talking about 90% empty land, that's not where people are.
When the car was invented, governments had little issue buildozing entire neighborhoods for highways, but now that some places are realizing that's a bad decision, its really hard to undo.
There are places that would be wonderfully served by trains, but just aren't.
Cars are best in rural areas, but by far the majority of peoole live in cities where cars are the worst, yet we still build them for cars.
Ah I understand, let me be more specific, and answer some questions.
When it comes to farming, we don't put farmland in cities, in rural areas cars do make sense.
Energy generation doesn't have to be done in cities either.
As for sewage, yeah it takes up space in cities because you can't tranport it out, but it's small compared to the entire city.
The parts that are unsustainable are the vast swaths of single family homes.
The maintenance costs for these areas, in the form of electcity, water, sewage, roads, are higher than the tax revenues generated by property taxes.
It takes a long time for this tax deficit to show, about 30ish years, and it can be delayed by builidng and developing new suburbs. The taxes from the sales and other newness generate some new income. The federal government will also subsidizie a lot a building a new road, but notably not maintaing them. Which after 30 years can be more than the road would cost to build new!
But after a while the maintenance comes due, roads fill with potholes and need replacing, sewer and water pipes start leaking due to wear, or even the ground moving. Electricity lines blow over, knocked by trees, or hit by drivers need to be fixed.
The cost of roads and car dependency is not cheap. A study came out that it costs Americans an average of $20k a year for car dependency. About half that is owning a car, and the other half is taxes spent on road infrastructure.
In just slightly denser areas, where the government hadn't regulated things like setbacks, minimum parking requirements, and soley single family housing, there is enough revenue.
So what ends up happening is these denser areas subsidizie car dependent suburbs.
And all the while suburbs with car only transportation have tons of traffic, because when you get down to it, a single lane of cars just can't move that many people.
Now there are some exceptions to this. I live in an area with astonishingpy high property values, nearing 1 million for a normal house. This generates a lot of revenue, but it creates an housing affordability problem. This problem would be alleviated if there was increased density if the local government didn't zone 84% of the land into single family housing only.
And it would still increase tax revenues in my area.
Cars are fucking terrible for the economy.
Possible productive hours are wasted with long commutes, because driving takes effort and work.
They caused us to build urban areas spread out in a density that is not self sustaining.
Its horrible for the environment, and climate change is gonna be absolutely great for the economy in the next decades. /s
Not too mention all the money and engineerimg that went into the technology of ICE cars that's now obsolete.
Drivers don't t have to look left on right in green, so should naturally look in the direction they're going, and thus see pedestrians and cyclists.
They also have time to spot them while waiting.