Yes, electric cars are loud, slow, and dangerous. It’s okay to accept such costs in order to quickly get a patient to a hospital or to put out a fire. It’s not okay to accept those costs as the result of business as usual.
Over a certain speed threshold, the noise from tires becomes a more significant factor than the noise from engines. The Netherlands has special sound dampening roads that they allow high speed travel on. But more importantly, they try to keep homes and businesses far away from roads. When a car is near an urban center, it has to travel on streets, which have a low speed limit.
Cars can move one person quicker than most terrestrial transit. But they absolutely suck at moving entire populations. They have to waste too much space. There’s too much space wasted in a car, and too much space between cars that’s required for safety. One railway line can move twenty times as many people as one car lane. In fact, a well designed bike lane like they have in the Netherlands moves commuters faster than a car lane.
Urban centers have a differentiated traffic speed, that is correct, and it is not an exotheric exercise to understand why that happens, as urban settings forces vehicles into confined space shared with a multitude of other moving (and unmoving!) entities.
In urban settings it is also easier to implement and use mass transportation solutions and, yes, car traffic should be more and more restricted in urban areas. My personal view goes so far as to purge any vehicle as much as possible from urban areas to allow for pedestrian movement solely.
Mass transportation is also viable to move people and cargo over large distances, yes, with trains being the undisputed best solution over land. There was even a time when cars could travel by train in my country and it was a very sought after option for vacationing. Then came a wave of very “smart” and “informed” of individuals to a succession of governments and those options went away, replaced by one of the largest highway networks in europe. And the least used, proportionally. Now, grudgingly, railways are being renewed, reactivated and built new, which is a good thing.
But now allow me to dive into a problem that is not easy to manage, that is providing those solutions to areas where mass transportation is not feasible.
Currently living in an area where 10.000 people live, theoretically, it should be easy to implement mass transportation solutions. At the lowest possible level, at least bus service. But with only a fraction of that population concentrated in an urban area and the rest scattered throughout a wide, mostly rural area, implementing a public transportation system is highly inefficient, making ten or twenty minute trips ordeals capable of taking an hour or two.
Mass transportation should be a goal. Must be. But there will always be the need for roads and cars. If - and I would very much like to live to see even if only the most tentative of beginnings to this - we can shift the paradigm to allow people to work from home more easily, make it the norm, even, that alone will drastically reduce the need for cars. Many more small changes need to be made but if that first one gains traction, others will follow.
Yes, electric cars are loud, slow, and dangerous. It’s okay to accept such costs in order to quickly get a patient to a hospital or to put out a fire. It’s not okay to accept those costs as the result of business as usual.
Out of morbid curiosity: define “loud” and “slow”. Indulge me.
Over a certain speed threshold, the noise from tires becomes a more significant factor than the noise from engines. The Netherlands has special sound dampening roads that they allow high speed travel on. But more importantly, they try to keep homes and businesses far away from roads. When a car is near an urban center, it has to travel on streets, which have a low speed limit.
Cars can move one person quicker than most terrestrial transit. But they absolutely suck at moving entire populations. They have to waste too much space. There’s too much space wasted in a car, and too much space between cars that’s required for safety. One railway line can move twenty times as many people as one car lane. In fact, a well designed bike lane like they have in the Netherlands moves commuters faster than a car lane.
Urban centers have a differentiated traffic speed, that is correct, and it is not an exotheric exercise to understand why that happens, as urban settings forces vehicles into confined space shared with a multitude of other moving (and unmoving!) entities. In urban settings it is also easier to implement and use mass transportation solutions and, yes, car traffic should be more and more restricted in urban areas. My personal view goes so far as to purge any vehicle as much as possible from urban areas to allow for pedestrian movement solely.
Mass transportation is also viable to move people and cargo over large distances, yes, with trains being the undisputed best solution over land. There was even a time when cars could travel by train in my country and it was a very sought after option for vacationing. Then came a wave of very “smart” and “informed” of individuals to a succession of governments and those options went away, replaced by one of the largest highway networks in europe. And the least used, proportionally. Now, grudgingly, railways are being renewed, reactivated and built new, which is a good thing.
But now allow me to dive into a problem that is not easy to manage, that is providing those solutions to areas where mass transportation is not feasible.
Currently living in an area where 10.000 people live, theoretically, it should be easy to implement mass transportation solutions. At the lowest possible level, at least bus service. But with only a fraction of that population concentrated in an urban area and the rest scattered throughout a wide, mostly rural area, implementing a public transportation system is highly inefficient, making ten or twenty minute trips ordeals capable of taking an hour or two.
Mass transportation should be a goal. Must be. But there will always be the need for roads and cars. If - and I would very much like to live to see even if only the most tentative of beginnings to this - we can shift the paradigm to allow people to work from home more easily, make it the norm, even, that alone will drastically reduce the need for cars. Many more small changes need to be made but if that first one gains traction, others will follow.
It was a pleasure having this exchange.