this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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[meme] There is no one-size-fits-all solution to transportation (lemmy.world)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (3 children)

You don't need full-sized cars for in-city accommodation.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Exactly, and I strongly suspect that most in-city accommodation can be done with neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

I’m a disabled person living in a city in the UK. We have a scheme that allows me to swap my disability benefits for a car or mobility scooter. The cars deemed suitable for disabled people using a collapsible wheelchair are “compact/small family cars” and that size is perfectly adequate.

My most recent car is a seat Leon - a self charging hybrid. The mobility scheme I mentioned is really pushing fully electric cars and I’d absolutely love one. But being disabled often means being poor and like many other disabled people I live in a rented flat. There’s no EV charging at my block of flats. There’s no EV charging in my local town. I cannot afford to move, I can barely afford to survive. There are just SO many obstacles that aren’t being addressed in the UK it’s beyond frustrating.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

It depends on the city. Many american cities have so much suburban sprawl that you're just not going to plan your way out of car dependency in our lifetime. The progress that can be made in these areas right now is zoning to break up the massive single use neighborhoods.

Edit: "full size" could mean a couple of things. Mall crawlers and pickups are ridiculous here. Sedans, hatchbacks, and even crossovers make sense here, depending on your individual lifestyle and needs.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If you start building out transit before you can use it effectively, it can help guide the buildout. You can not only zone for many concentrations of buildings but commit to an incentive to encourage people to live there. “I want to move into this apartment building because it is a nice walkable area of shops, parks, restaurants plus they’re building a train station”

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't disagree, but building transit for hypothetical use decades down the line is expensive and very unlikely to happen.

To be clear, I'm talking about places like where I live, i.e. no businesses at all for several miles in any direction. We need corner stores, neighborhood bars and restaurants, and retail space so people want to get somewhere that isn't miles and miles away.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Yeah I’m probably spoiled by some recent projects in Boston where I live.

  • for many years there was an industrial wasteland in the fan pier area that was underdeveloped and the industry had long since moved away. It was great cheap parking if you didn’t value your car. However the city spent years developing a master plan to connect the area with transit, funded a convention center, a courthouse, and brought in developers. In only a couple years, it went from a disconnected abandoned wasteland to an easy transit ride to convention center, hotels, entertainment, courthouse, many businesses, and is arguably one of the city’s hot spots. Good riddance to all the cheap parking.
  • new development are around was it Harvard or BU hinged on a new train station and agreement with the college for immediate development
  • a couple decades adding a new subway line. Granted the areas served already had lots of people, but building the stops was eventually followed by transit oriented development
[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That is simply untrue. Change can happen quite quickly if people care.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

That level of change is rebuilding the entire surburb to be more dense. There isn't the building capacity to do this to all of them , even if by some miracle you found the money.

You can't make a bus route work when the area it's travelling through is so spread out, it has to stop too much and drive for too long and costs more than it can make in fares.

If you want to change America then good luck, but it'll be your grandchildren that get the benefit should you succeed.