this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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You did kind of cite the actual issue, the one we want to fix, right in your complaint. A well-funded subway/bus infrastructure tends to suit most people's needs, such that the short trip to take one of these dinky ebikes/e-unicycles to the train station (or, taking a frequent bus on its route) would rarely be so uncomfortable. The key here is that climate-controlling an individualized vehicle is going to be inefficient no matter what.
The environment will always be a potential concern. If you live in a rainy area, but vacuum-seal yourself into your hamster ball before heading to work, you'll still need an umbrella after depositing your hamster ball into the Ball Collective before going into the office building. From my point of view, it seems like you're pushing the "problems" into the wrong domain of concern, and also kind of pretending cars solve that issue 100% - which they don't.
I’ll give up climate control as long as there’s decent protection from wind and rain and some level of safety.
Carrying an umbrella for a walk a couple of blocks is no big deal. Carrying an umbrella for 10 miles while traveling 15MPH is a bit much. Especially when you’re traveling against frigid winds.
And safety. Until cars are out of the picture almost entirely, any two-wheeled vehicle that has to share space with them is almost entirely out of the picture.
Yeah, in case it's not clear, I'm definitely not suggesting carrying an umbrella in one hand on a bike; or sharing a 4-lane road with Son Unaliving Vehicles.
Rainy days would basically be when a bus is a better option, if not a straight walk to a train station.
And that’s what I’m getting at.
New York (outside of NYC)/New England is a tough place for giving up a car. Our housing just isn’t dense enough to support a decent public infrastructure.
Now, granted, my office is a good 30 miles as the crow flies from my house. I took that job because pay is sooo much better in Boston. And I took the train…for a while. Until my wife was in her third trimester, and I needed to be able to leave at the drop of a hat. And then Covid happened. And then the train schedules went to shit, and the Red and Green lines collapsed behind them (though they weren’t in terrific shape to begin with).
But if I wanted to solely take public transit into work, I’ve gotta leave my house at around 4am to walk about four miles to a bus, that drops me off at the train station 2 minutes after the inbound train leaves. So then sit at the train station for an hour until the next train. Then ride the train for an hour. Then hope to get on the first subway car, that’s now packed like a sardine can and paced out 15 minutes apart. Then walk a few more blocks.
And then repeat it, except the last bus back towards home just left 2 minutes before the train arrived. So now it’s more like 7 miles to get back home on foot or bike.
Cities are great, but if we think housing is expensive now, just wait until everyone has to be within 5 miles of where they work. I’m not an exception in traveling in to Boston from practically the RI border. Lots of people I work with commute in from NH.
Hell, my boss just moved to NH. He used to live near southern terminus of the red line, the subway that gets within a couple blocks of our office. His commute from New-fucking-Hampshire is almost as long.