Rockefellers Divesting From Big Oil

Yet, in the US, at least, most cities wouldn't exist were it not for the invention of the automobile. I realize that there are substantial differences when you compare European cities to US cities, but in general, the American cities grew, in terms of population, in much less time than their European counterparts did.

The economic growth powered by the automotive economy of the US lead to us having the highest standard of living in the world in the 1950s (the fact that we'd bombed the shit out of Europe prior to this didn't hurt matters, either). That it collapsed is no surprise, when you consider how protected the Big Three were from competition, and how utterly unprepared for it they were when they actually had to face it for the first time in decades.

Whereas how people are supposed to get to the commuter rail lines, well, let's not examine that too closely.

The commuter lines in the NY Metropolitan Area suffer from the same weather-related problems as the subways...often moreso since more of their track is outdoors.

So, can you evacuate an old - by U.S. standards - city of 8-11 million people efficiently on commuter trains?

Well, sure, if it isn't snowing, or raining too hard, or cold enough to freeze the switches, or there isn't a train stalled in the tunnels under the city that feed into Grand Central and Penn Station, or a jumper, or a water-main break, or...

What works on paper or in West Coast cities does not necessarily translate to a system built in the 19th century in an East Coast city.

Anyone who's actually ridden a train in the Tristate would know that.

What? So now instead of a day you want the system to clear everyone within a few hours?

Yeah, okay, you win, public transit couldn't handle that.

But neither could the road system, so not sure what you're point is.

False, most American cities saw a decline in population following widespread auto ownership.

Yes, American cities grew extremely rapidly... from the late 19th to early 20th century. Before the rise of the automobile.

Total and complete bullshit. Automobile manufacturing was no more or less revolutionary than the textile manufacturing that preceeded it or the digital age the followed. Since the late 19th century on to the present the US has maintained around 20% of world GDP. Various manufacturing cycles have come and gone, but the 20% has been pretty steady (within a range of course). The post war bump was almost completely due to the rest of the industrialized or industrializing world being completely leveled by WWII.

Fun factoid. For all the scarmongering about the 'Rise of China', they just reached their % of world GDP they had in 1800.

I don't know if it's related, but the number of TV homes decreased 1.7% from last year to this year.

This could be the most intellectually dishonest propaganda photo in a long time. Talk about comparing apples to rainbow trout...

Sure, you can fit a lot more people onto a bus than if they are each in a car. And that is great if they're all going to the same place. But they aren't. In fact most of them are going to different places. But since they're all in the same vehicle, many of them have to go to many of the other place before they get to their place. Or they have to settle for getting close enough and then either walk or get on another bus that is also not going directly to their location. So yeah, a bus is great if your time isn't valuable enough that you can afford to spend an afternoon sitting around the kinds of places that people who can't afford cars have to sit around.

And bikes are great. If you're not going much farther than 20 miles or so and at speeds of 10-20mph. Of course while 25 mph is fast for a bicycle commuter, it is painfully slow for a car. And, like a motorcycle, you'd better not need to stop for groceries. And if you're going 20 miles at 20mph, well first of all, you'd better have 2 hours to spend on your daily commute and second, you'd better have a shower and a place to change when you get to work. I don't know where you're going to put your suit on the bike. I guess you could drive into town on the weekend and hang a half dozen outfits in your cubicle.

Don't get me wrong, when I worked downtown and lived in NW, the bike was the way to get to work. I could take routes a car couldn't take so it took significantly less time (it was all downhill on the way in, too) and I didn't have to look for parking, which was free as opposed to $10 or so (although that would be different if everyone rode bikes). But for my current job a bike wouldn't work. One of my work locations is around 45 miles away. Who wants to ride 45 miles (on a highway) before 10 hours of physical labor--only to have to ride another 45 miles at the end of the day?

And when I lived in NW, the train was the way to the airport. Just lug your, um, luggage a couple blocks to the train station and for $2.50 you get a straight shot to the airport (with a dozen stops or so, of course) as opposed to a $55 cab ride or $12 a day parking. But now that I have a transfer so I have to ride in, past the airport, change trains, and then ride back out, the way I came to the airport, my time is almost valuable enough to take my car. Or I can take my motorcycle and park for free (if I don't have any luggage--apart from an 8 pound leather jacket). And forget about taking the train to work. Even where it is convenient, I'm going to spend a lot of time waiting around. I'm going to have to leave significantly earlier to ensure I make it to work on time, and if it is a short day I'm pretty much boned because the trains don't run 24/7. I guess I could take a nap on a park bench and wait for the trains to start running. But I'm not a bum. So I have no interest in that when instead I can step out the door, get in my car, and go immediately to my home at more than 3 times the speed I could do it on a bicycle. All while drinking a coffee and eating a delicious, healthy Egg McMuffin.

From what I understand, a lot of people prefer streaming to a laptop or handheld device rather than a big honking stationary device that takes up one whole wall of the room.

As for Anc's one-size-fits-all transit evacuation model, he might want to look at some RL data on how long it took to evacuate Manhattan on 9/11/01 when only a very small geographic area of the island was directly impacted. Some of the best evacuations that day were done by boat. And there were still people stuck sleeping in their offices for days afterwards...most of whom did not drive to work.

We won't even discuss Hurricane Sandy and the number of train stations that were underwater for weeks afterwards.

Sensible transit solutions aren't built on pixie dust and wishful thinking.

True, but I suspect a lot of those people who are ditching their televisions are Millenials.

Where do you get that idea?

Never said that the road system could handle everyone driving off in private cars. There is this crazy idea called "middle ground," its where I and garamet are standing on this issue. Perhaps you might want to come over and take a look at it.

My main TV is an ancient Toshiba that has incredible sound, but when it goes I probably won't replace it, and I can go weeks without even turning it on. The last time I had people over to watch Netflix, I had to search for the remote.

No more dishonest than the idea that people who seek to reduce single occupancy vehicle usage would disagree with this:

The idea behind the picture is to demonstrate that there are likely some inefficiencies in a system primarily designed for cars. If enough people switch to the bike or bus (mindful of it not working for all), then the roads would work better for the people who do need to drive. Aa things stand right now, we have underfunded all options other than automobile (a very expensive mode btw). That's why so many cities have inadequate bus networks. Improve that network, and we won't need to spend so much on commute hour car storage.

Also, @garamet: the problem on 9/11 was that the transportation network itself was damaged and/or secured against possible follow-up threats. Those people sleeping in their offices would also have had to do that if they had driven. There was not a general evacuation order, so even bringing it up is rather odd.

Flip side: Until about a month ago, I was working about an hour from home while also getting a small business started on the side. Both of those things involved plenty of work on the computer. I would have been perfectly happy to extend my time in transit by making some extra stops on a bus if it meant I could get some work done during that time instead of driving.

Actually, if you look at the numbers, you'll find that most of the decline is due not to the automobile, but to desegregation of school system, and "white flight," as whites moved to the suburbs, rather than subject their kids to be exposed to someone of a different ethnicity than them. If the automobile hadn't existed, they simply would have built commuter lines to those suburbs.

NYC had a pretty consistent population growth from 1900-2010, save for 10 years in the 1970s (right when the crime rate was skyrocketing). Here's Forbes list of the fastest growing counties. A rather large portion of them are not known for mass transit.

There are substantial differences in the social impact caused by the ability to move people and goods around rapidly that industries such as textile manufacturing do not provide. What gave Western civilization the ability to advance far greater than those civilizations in the Americas was the horse. It allowed people, ideas, and goods to move rapidly between various points. Not only did this stimulate trade, but it led to the exchange of ideas, new technologies, and propelled those societies forward at a faster rate than their counterparts in other places on the globe who didn't have domesticated pack animals. See Guns, Germs, and Steel for a discussion about part of this.

A textile plant doesn't enable people there to communicate better with people on the other side of the mountain. A car, does. Telegraph lines, phone lines, and the web do as well, however, they can't yet give you the kind of personal interaction which we as social animals find so valuable. It is the interaction between humans which allows ideas to form and take off, and that has a bigger impact on our society than does a textile plant.

Again, mass transit is part of the role in that happening, but it doesn't allow for everything. Nor does it automatically mean that an area is going to remain beholden to one form of transportation. Los Angeles, or rather, the suburbs around it, were built following the route of the Red Car Line. The Red Car Line was owned by the guy selling subdivision lots outside of the heart of LA. He didn't care about operating the line at a loss, since its existence was to make those lots sell. Once he ran out of lots to sell, the operating losses of the line became an issue, and it eventually folded.

Actually, we've underfunded all of our infrastructure to the tune of some $2 trillion. Were we spending what we should be spending to maintain our infrastructure, then we'd be vastly better off, no matter if it was for mass transit, cars, or high speed telecommunications. Ideally, we should spend them money on all three, but we won't. There's some brown people needing to be bombed somewhere.

Yes, we should spend on all forms of infrastructure, something this country did way back in the early decades of the 19th century.

I find it fascinating that transit opponents have to frame their argument in terms of getting rid of all cars, since nobody actually advocates for that.

I'd be interested in a source.

So we're only talking about natural disasters? All right then, Sandy. Or your standard winter ice storm with wind-chills in the minuses where the switches freeze and a whole line grinds to a halt.

And the fact that all of the commuter lines feed into Midtown Manhattan. That's a bit of a schlep if you live Uptown, Downtown, or in any of the outer boroughs. There's no convenient little state-of-the-art ground-level station every few blocks the way there is in Seattle or Calgary or that will eventually connect most of L.A. County. A little something that anyone who's actually ridden transit in NYC or even looked at a map would understand.

In the NY of my dreams, all five boroughs are interconnected by silent, solar-powered monorail systems akin to the AirTrain at Newark Airport, and Robert Moses can rot in hell. That's still not the Magic Kingdom Anc's envisioning. I doubt he even knows how few people actually drive personal vehicles to work in Manhattan. Even when I was a kid, the reaction was "Take your car into the City? Whatta you, fuckin' nuts?"

I had to stop at this:

There is not a single word in that statement that isn't complete and utter bullshit. Have you ever been anywhere besides your own block, or looked at a map?

I lied. I did read the second paragraph. It's like you are imagining what Ancalagon said, and responding to these imagined thoughts. The ADS is massive in this thread!

Point of order: wind chill doesn't affect mechanical systems.

I lived in NYC for half a century. Haven't been to Seattle, but I have been to Calgary, and I'm watching L.A. Metro's Expo 2 extension connect my town with the rest of the county.

You want to back up and reread that post for comprehension this time?

Granted. Just the people standing on the elevated stations wondering "Where the fuck is my train?"

So I'm only imagining that Anc thinks "people are being forced to use cars" and "commuter lines will solve everything"? You gonna give Tuckerfan the same lecture?

You are imagining all kinds of things if you believe this:

Especially since that pretty much backs up his entire argument regarding the transit tangent. As I said, you aren't reading what he wrote. Tuckerfan is, so no, I won't be giving him the same lecture.

His argument is "NYC can be evacuated within 24 hours using commuter rail lines." Note: Not the subways, but specifically commuter lines, i.e., LIRR, MetroNorth, and NJ Transit.

Now, riddle me this: You're in Bay Ridge and the subways are down. How do you get to Penn Station, Grand Central, or Queens Plaza? Hint: It's a very long walk. Stranded in Staten Island? As God said to Noah, "How long can you tread water?"

I'd have thought you of all people would get it. Your subway's about the same age as NY's, your streets even more narrow and twisted. Riddle me this: The T's been contaminated with anthrax, ricin, or a suitcase bomb, and everyone with a car is trying to evacuate. How do you get out of Dodge?

If you're still confused about what I'm saying, it's this: I'm a lifelong transit rider and 110% behind mass transit. But what works in Seattle will not work everywhere. In Boston and NY you're talking 19th century infrastructure, not building a system de novo. Not saying it can't be done, but that it needs to be tailored to the locale.

Still too deep for ya?

Well this conversation has taken a turn for the genuinely intersting.

Good show folks, ice cream sandwiches all round.

Seems to me that bikes are a great idea.

When the daily temp is above 50 and below 80 degrees fahrenheit.

But we have several million person cities and metropolitan areas that spends weeks with temperatures of around 100 degrees, and cities with millions more where it is below 50 for weeks.

What do people do then regarding travel?

Here's the other thing that disturbs me about having a city built around mass transit: Where's the competition coming from to keep transportation costs low? If it takes me two hours to drive into work because the city has given up on improving the roads for commuters and instead is focusing on building up bus and rail lines that cost twice as much as it does for me to drive, I'm fucked. Having the bus and rail lines municipally owned doesn't guarantee that riders will be charged honest fares, or that the service will be adequate. Nor does privatizing the lines guarantee you won't be screwed over. Even if one company buys the bus line, and another company buys the rail line, collusion between the two is highly likely, regardless of the legality of it.

One can argue about how having an "honest" government is up to the residents of that city, but quite frankly, until you can get the state or the Feds to look into the matter, nothing is probably going to be done. Even in cities where corruption is known to be rampant, you don't see the Feds moving quickly to solve the problem. Witness the clusterfuck that's post-Katrina New Orleans, Naygin didn't get taken down until after he was out of office.

Too deep for me, I guess, because what you are saying is all over the map and contradictory.