Author Topic: Medium Article on The Hidden Cost of Cars  (Read 13081 times)

Morning Glory

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Re: Medium Article on The Hidden Cost of Cars
« Reply #100 on: May 19, 2018, 12:54:14 PM »
Another thing I was thinking, is that "biking is dangerous" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because people add cars to the road because they are afraid to bike because there are too many cars. The only way to make biking safer is to bike.

swampwiz

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Re: Medium Article on The Hidden Cost of Cars
« Reply #101 on: May 19, 2018, 02:17:09 PM »
You talk about time savings, but to me it seems silly to drive one mile to work or the store, one mile back, and then go out and walk the exact same distance for the hell of it. Essentially you just wasted the time/gas on the drive.
One mile walking takes about 15 minutes, so back & forth is 30 minutes.  About grocery shopping, if I need to haul anything that can't fit in my backpack (bookbag sized), I'll need the car.  As for work, those 15 minutes on the shoulder of work are important, especially the commute to work, as that allows me an extra 12 minutes of sleep.

As it turns out, I live very close to a Wal-Mart now (like 1/4 mile), so except for the times I need to get a lot of stuff, I just walk there with my backpack, and do it as part of my exercise time.  Of course, the key thing is that I have a lots of time to do this, instead of having the depressingly constrained free time of being a wage slave.

swampwiz

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Re: Medium Article on The Hidden Cost of Cars
« Reply #102 on: May 19, 2018, 02:20:07 PM »
Suburbia is not environmentally sustainable as the article mentions, nor is it fiscally sustainable. This is just as true for individuals as it is for governments. If you look at tax revenue on a cost per acre basis, urban places provide a higher rate of return, and are thus better for local government to be able to fund the things you want them to fund (ie: transportation investments, water/sewer lines, etc). Even if you live in a suburb, you need density to exist in order to subsidize your lifestyle. It's worth pointing out that I'm not talking about New York and San Francisco levels of density. I'm talking about the downtown of where you live, no matter what size.
If suburbs are not sustainable, than I suppose that rural areas are not either?  Suburbs have to be cheaper to install infrastructure like electricity, water & sewerage.  And just where are all those folks going to go?  Expensive central cities?

Arbitrage

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Re: Medium Article on The Hidden Cost of Cars
« Reply #103 on: May 20, 2018, 04:05:07 PM »
Regarding the biking injuries, I'd be willing to bet that biking (as a mode of transportation) injuries are skewed as well by those involved in riskier forms of leisure activity - racing or race training, single-track mountain biking, etc.  It would be somewhat akin to reporting car accident statistics by including motocross or drifting, if those were a significant percentage of all driving.  Also, another factor in the "well, I can just get my exercise somewhere else" argument is that many of the activities being chosen may have just as high an injury rate as biking.  Beyond that, there's the fact that while one person may choose to get their exercise elsewhere, statistically people are just not doing that.  70% overweight in the US, remember?

Deaths are probably more fairly representative of the bike commuting risk, though. 

 

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