.
I do carry the family shopping. Am I doing the impossible? The trick is not to rely on shopping once a month but to shorten your supply chain by popping into the shop on your way home from work according to your needs. Business these days has recognised the beauty of lean production as an alternative to tying up their capital in stockpiles of supplies, but too few people have seen the message in this for their private lives.
So the taxpayer should build new roads instead?
see above.
old excuse. So what percentage of the people who drive to work are invalids?
Nobody is suggesting this. It's just about not adding to them beacuse investment in roads is throwing good money after bad.
If transport were more expensive, manufacturers would find ways of transporting their stuff around less. There is no inherent reason that tomatoes that were grown in Spain need to packaged in Egypt for example. If your packer still thinks that is a good idea to retain that model when transport costs triple, then maybe a cleverer competitor will put him out of buisness. Overall costs will only triple in this scenario if nothing else changes. The whole point whoever is to enable change. It is those who oppose such schange that are living in some sort of 1960s utopia.
And if people shifted from air travel to surface transport, roads and trains will become clogged, so let us encourage air travel.
Go on, I am listening
It still comes down to the fact that it is more convenient for some people to drive. As has already been pointed out the public transport system is running pretty much at capacity during rush hours as it is. Purposely creating gridlock in the city is not going to solve any problems. The anti car brigade are are very quick to put down the use of cars without offering any real alternatives.
I'm all for progress in terms of energy efficient vehicles etc, but if you open a tunnel to alleviate congestion, but then just strangle regular traffic then it smells of either very bad planning or some people cutting off their nose to spite their face.
so, you argument is:
public transport at gridlock = public transport not good
roads at gridlock = good reason to build more roads
this is not about creating gridlock. The gridlock exists. It is there. It is real. It will not go away It can however be managed.
what is so bad about opening a tunnel and closing down other routes at the same time? The whole point is moving the traffic to a place where it is less of a nuisance and where it can flow more efficiently causing less emissions. If you leave the old route open it will only get congested again and you'll be back to square one withine a very short period. It is a proven fact that no matter how much capacity you provide, traffic will grow to the point of gridlock.
The solution you offer (right-subsidy) is just right, but hard to implement because the business lobbies are more powerful than cyclists/pedestrains lobby. And whether the debate is in parliament or on EF, "wars are won by those who are left, not those who are right"
Myopic thinking like cars are cheaper than public transport will continue, even when population is well-educated, and car makers continue to get government support, and oh, it is all so depressing now .
Yes, that's my rationale, and you hit the nail's head. Now a train between India and Europe may seem ludicrous to you now. My reply is, yes, for intra-continental travel if there is price rationalization , there is no reason why common citizens like me should be travelling by air.
Eire, we can't get to a point of agreement when our planning horizons are vastly different. What the anti-car brigade is thinking is for a timespan of centuries, and what you are thinking seems to be for about 10-20 years horizon. No amount of widening of roads/burrowing alternate roads, and cheaper production of cars can ever replace public transport and self propulsion...but I am not sure we can close such a large debate on an online discussion forum, can we
The rich get to vacation in all the cool places while the rest of have to go to the place we can afford.
The rich get the nice likefront villas and the rest of us get crummy appartments.
They get to send their kids to decadently expensive private schools. They get to wear designer clothes and have designer furniture while the rest of us have to tolearte IKEA and Aldi.
Sure, the rich have a good life.
They also miss out on many things and end up living in an ivory tower. Many of them are clueless arrogant fools.
I wouldn't want to change with them.
Now what do you want to do about it?
Unless you abolish the very right to be rich these things will happen.
All people will never be equal.
That's life.
Erehmm. I'd for one would like to change with them...
The only way to make public transport a winner over private motoring, is not to force out the car by ever steeper fines, fewer parking spaces, narrower roads and so on, but to actually make public transport so much better that driving a car is just plain stupid.
This radical plan will need a lot of though and money. But with technology and innovation it could be done. What about moving sidewalks, like at the airport, and undercover so than can be used all year? Free bikes, and free Smarts (or electric cars) that can be used by anyone to get around cities - that find their own way back to base when you step out. Driver-less drone buses that follow route and are stopped by a remote control anywhere and not at bus stops.
The idea is to make car driving old-fashioned and inferior to a public transport network...
The only problem is the mindset of some people which have decided before all options are even discussed, that "come what may we can't do without cars. Period."
My feeling is, the state that you are dreaming of isn't utopian, it is quite within reason and a very viable option if we consider all costs to society on a long term basis.
In Montreux, they have several public escalators that run along steep pedestrian streets. Some of them are covered, some of them aren't. We also have a couple in Lausanne (by the Olympic museum, under Place St Francois, plus a public elevator going between Bel Air and Flon).
Several Swiss cities run free bike rental programs, but unfortunately you have to return them yourself to one or two locations. Paris has been very successful with their "Velib" bike rental program, where you can pick up and drop off a bike at any of hundreds of locations around the city, which are never any more than 300 metres apart. There is a cost for how long you have the bike for, but it is quite small. This program has worked so well that several other major cities are starting similar schemes, including London by next year. I've haven't heard about something similar for Zurich yet, maybe you should start lobbying your local council. Free Smart or electric cars might be dreaming a bit too big.
Having buses stop anywhere would make them very slow because they would be stopping all of the time, and so that doesn't sound like a good idea. Lausanne's new Metro train line is driver-less, but you need a fully fenced-off track and special doors on the platform to make this possible.
Oh, and using it saves you so much money that you can actually afford to get a taxi on those rare occasions that you need to go somewhere that the bus won't take you.
Sounds like the better of the two worlds doesn't it?
If I lived in the sticks, I'd use a car... because the powers that be don't deem it feasible to extend public transport to where people can afford to live.
I assume that the bus and/or bike has a fridge compartment for my yogurts.
-What is happening out there?
-A revolution! People's revolution!
-Oh how great, my grandfather has dreamt of it all his life, what do they want?
-They want that there'd be no rich any more!
-Oh how sad, he wanted that there'd be no more poor...
Banning things & blocking roads is the ostrich approach; ignore the problem & hope it will go away.
Marton
Is this a good solution?
Marton