I'll save you some time -- this is literally the only comment worth reading. Nebula has tons of great creators, and you can see originals, early releases, and all the usual stuff, except ad and sponsor-free, AND for a crazy low price. Us my custom link for 40% off an annual subscription, and you'll also be helping the channel! go.nebula.tv/citynerd
Ray, you can reduce the 'cat throwing-up' cost by making them wear a face mask apart from meal times. It's all the licking and washing that leads to furballs and the v*m*t on the carpet/on the stairs/on the duvet cover. Rob/UK.
Nebula has no interactive community. It really kills it for me. Even tho the TH-cam comments are a plague, I still like to post stuff, get replys, and read what others post. It's especially gratifying and enjoying when the creators acknowledge and even respond. Nebula needs this.
I live in Japan, one of the biggest car developers in the world, but also a country with possibly the best public transport system out there. I guess a clever dealer never uses his own product...
Japan has the 23rd highest car ownership per capita in the world, which puts it above most West European countries (though France and Italy are slightly higher). Germany is lower despite also being a country with a sizable car industry.
@@TheGreatWasian_ Of course, they are not directly related. But there must be some corellation - I can't imagine there are many highly car dependant countries with very low car ownership, for example. I'll caveat that I'm only talking about countries where people are generally rich enough to own cars though.
Going between the US and Japan, I always get annoyed when people mention that Japanese are healthy because of the food. They haven't seen the average fried meal people eat in Tokyo. People are healthy because they commute by foot every single day.
I'm sure you're right that the exercise is a major component of that, but the fast food might be a relatively new import from America. I imagine that even a generation ago, the average Japanese person had a much healthier diet than they do now. I could be totally wrong, but that's my hunch.
It's interesting that even though Japan has a thriving automotive industry (Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mitsubishi), they haven't built their own country around cars. Maybe that's just because there's no *room* for car-dependent suburban sprawl in a relatively small and mountainous country.
As I've gotten older (31 now driving since 16) I've just noticed how much society tries to push you into scams and debt. The "requirement" of a car, the "necessity" of a credit card etc. Drivers license fees, insurance, maintenance costs and parts... I used to buy 2nd hand cars straight from people so I didnt have to make monthly payments and when my last one burst into flames I bought an electric bike and wouldnt trade it for anything. I'm lucky my town has a sidewalk that runs all the way from my apartment to my workplace and a lot of businesses that I stop at regularly. Yes people still cant drive and dont pay attention to anything other than right in front of them. My big message is, you dont NEED a car.
Yet they are a symbol of freedom for those who wish to go out anytime they want. I wouldn't mind them being more of a niche instead of the norm. That being said cars are still going to be around either way.
I moved to pedestrian-friendly/public transit-friendly places long ago (Tokyo, HK, now Taipei) and my 34 year old daughter lives in Manhattan. Neither of us owns cars so I can rant all I like. She never even learned to drive. My 88 year old mother grew up in Queens and reminisces about the joys of streetcars. So I am lucky that my family has not drunk the Koolaid of the car culture.
@@erbiumfiber A lot of people have jobs that require them to be there. Public transport is good in a few big cities, but its poor in most places. Picking up groceries is not easy without a car anywhere. I think people are grossly under-estimating the advantages and freedom a car gives people.
I love annoying all my " you'll never take my car/truck" family and friends with facts I learn from your channel. Please keep making more content. Live your work!
@@Jorge.2004 yes, but objectively, on a population level, the vast majority of people subjectively find it ugly & depressing to be endlessly inundated with featureless highways, billboards, parking lots, strip malls .etc which isolates them from each other & incentivises them to remain in a small cocoon of a life.
I got a pair of hiking boots from Big 5 for literally free because they didn't scan it correctly or something. This was when I was a teen, and I still have them (as my backup shoes) 20+ years later.
Noise isn't considered. We are so used to constant noise pollution cars produce that we don't even take it into account. After traveling far away into the country the delicious silence seems to come as a surprise.
That is a fact but here is another fact, in order to get the quiet isolation you value so much the population of 8 billion would have to be so spread out that first it literally cannot be done, you would have to kill off about 3/4 of the population in order to have rural quiet and spread those people out till there is no wildlife habitat at all. I understand people are filled with anxieties and wants, but the fact that what makes you anxious or fills you with desire like getting rid of cars is just not going to happen, our society is the way it is for rock hard reasons you can change just by wishing it was so. Idealists and their utopian dreams have always been around usually whining about something, but those utopian dreams are actually nightmares for most of us. They look at one aspect of life and get all charged up like a kid on Christmas morning, but a few things never enter their heads, like economics and reality, the interconnections of all we see around us. You are like a person who stands on a street corner and can only see a few houses and maybe a few people outside. You do not take into consideration the things you don't see, like 8 billion other people in the world who just may not want your ideas of utopia governing their choices and lives. I am sure if you want to ride public transportation and not own a car you can find such a place and go live there. I live in an exurb in the Tampa region and the birds are just waking up, they make lovely music. I have no problem hearing them. I am satisfied with that level of nature in my life.
@@MAtildaMortuaryserver Their point is that only when one gets away from a city can one fully understand how much noise and pollution cars produce. Urbanist are interested in making metro areas better places to live. Yes, cities will never be as quiet as most rural or uninhabited areas. Yes, cars are not going away. The idea is for people to have alternatives to driving. With good alternatives, many people voluntarily decide not to drive, or drive less. Fewer cars make cities quieter, less polluted, and safer among other things. No one is being forced out of their car.
@@MAtildaMortuaryserver By the way, it is people in densely populated areas that are doing the most to preserve nature; city living is more efficient and therefore less impactful on nature. If you watched this video, you will understand that fewer cars on the road is better for the economy. If 8 billion people live as you live, it will be an environmental disaster. That is not an accusation, but the reality of the environmental effects of car-centric suburban living. I encourage you to learn more about these topics.
Motorists injuring peds and cyclists not considered an imposed cost is wild considering pretty much the only reason walking and cycling are dangerous is due to motor vehicles.
Incidents cost to those who pay for resolving them. It's a "water is wet" kind of deal. Virtually all such accidents happen because BOTH parties weren't paying any attention to the traffic around them. Trying to pin the blame here on either party is completely unfair. You should be thankful that the law puts responsibility mainly on the motorists here, which on the flipside gives pedestrians and cyclists a free pass to completely disregard basic traffic safety rules.
@@michaelbuckerspedestrians should not be held accountable if they were hit in a dedicated right of way for pedestrians, and to imply that every pedestrian hit and/or killed by a car was doing so by crossing a car-only space is naive at best. motorists should respect pedestrian right-of-ways as much as pedestrians should respect motorist right-of-ways, and there are many places in the united states where that respect is highly out of balance in favor of motorists. the amount of drivers that have barely seen me while turning right at an intersection is to the point where my guard has to be up when it shouldn't have to be, because drivers are expected to respect the right of way to pedestrians and look to see if there are any before turning
Yea, it's kinda like victim blaming on a whole new level. But then again, they just went with probably the most conservative assumptions and still got the same result as basically every other study on the matter out there. While the numbers and methodologies differ and putting an exact number to a thing is a huge pita (which they are usually very very open about), they all come to the conclusion that car traffic is heavily subsidised.
@@illusionismm Car drivers must always ensure that where they're going they're not gonna collide with anything. You won't be driving for long if you crash your car every 2 minutes. With that in mind, explain again why pedestrians should be exempt from having to ensure this as well, and should not bear any blame in an event of a car collision. I mean just as a mental exercise, because legally it's already codified that pedestrians are allowed to act like morons in traffic and get away with it except in extremely egregious cases.
I hate driving to do mundane things too, and I hate when people, like Neil Degrasse Tyson, think this will be solved 20 years down the line with self driving cars, like please, we have the solution now, it’s called taking a bus or a train, if they actually took you where you need to go
You have hit upon the reason we have cars, and will always have them, in the last phrase of your comment "if they actually took you where you need to go." No transit system other than automobiles, bikes and horses (walking isn't really a transit system) takes you where you want to go. Busses or trains, and every other system I have heard of, suffer from the Last Mile Problem. This is a problem of all networks, where the last mile is more costly than all of the other distance combined. Busses and trains "solve" this by not going the last mile. @@da4127
They believe they did when they added in the insurance costs. What they missed is all the costs that insurance does not cover adequately. Insurance might cover the car and the hospitalizations, but not walking around in pain for the rest of your life.
I like your use of the word "slain" as opposed to more a neutral word like "killed". "Slain" connotes a bit of intentiallity, a bit of causation, which I think is completely apropos. Pedestrians don't "die" when hit by a car. They do "die" of course, but it is more accurate to say they are "slain" by the car.
I honestly should've dug deeper into how they accounted for the safety externalities of driving, because it was realy hard to understand how it could be zero even GIVEN an (unreasonable) assumption of every single driver always having maximum coverage.
I'm an engineer in the U.S. and I have never heard it called "benefit-cost" analysis only "cost-benefit" analysis. I guess it's just different fields using different phrasing.
colloquially, they're generally pro/con lists. And "benefit-cost" has the advantage of being in alphabetical order. But yeah, when you're pitching a project, the first question is "how much is this going to cost me", so cost comes first. If you're just comparing how things are, you might as well start with the reason things are that way.
One of the most American things ever is a 10 lane highway that is extremely accident prone which doubles as a permanent construction site and is lined with accident attorney billboards. It baffles me how anybody can look at it and think “Ah yes, this is how to do it.”
This is how the US artificially grows their “GDP”. Just create more problems and employ people to solve them. The net productivity doesn’t change but the economy still grows…
Well said!! Even though I care about urbanism, this is so commonplace that I never realized how fucked up it all is until I read this and really thought about it
All the Appalachian trail stories talk about hikers going through 4 or 5 pairs of boots over the ~2000 mile journey, which can absolutely be broken down to a surprisingly high cost per mile. I've definitely walked the soles off a pair of boots and considered myself lucky that I was only about half a mile from the trailhead when it happened.
Just bought a new pair of hiking boots last week, so that when my bicycle has a flat, and my trucks onboard computer has crashed, I can still get around!
After I wear out the tread on my altra lone peaks from hiking, I then use them as my daily shoe around town... it doubles their life and I don't need to buy tennis shoes
I maintain my shoes/boots and get them resoled when necessary. My cobbler is so epic. I've been wearing the same oxford pumps and vintage ankle hiking boots for over 9 years. I walk/runforthetrain about 11 km a day and do 10km+ hikes on the weekends. It costs $40 AU to resole both shoes every 1-2 years. 10 AU cents a month to oil/polish them. ~1 AU cents to add my own finger loop braided laces. We need to rethink product longevity and consumption!
Look, we somehow need to talk to people about how they can love cars and love driving while accepting that the current state of things is too much. Like how you can love Thanksgiving dinner and recognize that having a heaping of turkey and mash twice a day, every day, wouldn't be good for you, your finances, or society.
I am going to my Joe Rogan clone of Brother-In-Law's place. I plan on just zoning out and finding some happy-place while they pass out such wisdom as: Colloidal Silver cures everything, how vaccines are a deep plot from the Rothschild, and "hey Nick, you like to walk, did you hear the 15-minute conspiracy?" - I made up that last bit, but it's only a matter of time.
Craziest part of all the discourse around car-centric infrastructure is that if walking or biking was more convenient, then only the people who want to drive would be on the road... Making it more convenient for drivers in the end even if they might have to go down a few blocks to find somewhere to park. It's literally a win-win if we make cities built for people instead of cars
That is a steaming pile. Romanticized bullshit put out by utiopian idealists that is so impractical it is not even worth discussion. Bicycles are great once you are old enough to use them out of sight of parental control, but not too old to still be able to ride, and of course people with disabilities cannot use them, like myself, a disabled vet who can barely walk. In your paradise we would be prisoners. But bicycles and cars cannot successfully share roads, one or the other has to lose out. Let's see you move furniture on a bike, or 400 acres of harvested corn, or 60 tons of iron ore, or 12,000 chickens. You long for a world like Belgium or Holland where you can live your entire life without ever having to go more than 3 miles from your home? What is stopping you? This nation is gigantic, mass transportation only works in high urban density regions. And it is high density populations that allow for the public transport Europe has. Holland has 1,353 people per square mile. The US has 93 people per square mile, and Canada 11. That is nowhere near enough people to economically provide public transit.
The problem is making walking and biking more convenient will generally make driving more inconvenient. Less drivers but worse infrastructure isn't really a net positive
@@racool911 The most that happens to inconvenience drives is maybe they have to drive a few extra blocks down or drive a little slower in a city, which is something they should be doing anyways. It doesn't really make driving *that* much worse. We see that in European cities! Cars are still prevalent there, but there's infrastructure for the people who actually live in the city too
@@JakeTheJay My point was that it doesn't make driving any better either. I found driving in European cities just as bad as America. It'll be hard to get drivers on board to make such drastic changes if they don't feel like they'll benefit. Getting rid of work time traffic is a great benefit, but I'm not sure if trains will actually reduce it enough for people to care.
Unfortunately, cities want to charge a million dollars a square foot for housing, yet all the jobs in the city don’t pay a salary to support that kind of lifestyle. Which means we have to commute and car vs public transportation all depends on where you live. For example, I drive 40 miles to work. Takes about an hour/hour and some change. Public transportation would be a mere 3+ hours EACH WAY!
Old guy here. We KNEW all this 50-60 years ago, but no one cared. We just kept building more and more roads, decimating transit systems and promoting car use every way we could. What a bunch of putzes we are in this country! Idiocracy!!
There are some fascinating books (I read one, can't remember the name) about car manufacturers lobbying Eisenhower-era politicians to create the interstate highway system at the expense of rail (we had some pretty good rail, family worked for the railroads, back in the day). So it didn't just "happen" it was the result of manufacturers wanting to sell product and the suburbanization of America (so bad planning along with lobbying, yes, we see the results).
the great American dream! How else are we gonna get our lard asses around!! Let's see, live in the burbs nearest public transport is a bus 4 blocks away and work on the other side of the city requiring changing bus 4 times to get there or twice plus a train plus another bus and 15 minutes walking each end. Moved to Singapore, 10min walk to MRT (20min trip in blissful aircon) and 10min walk at other end with time to grab a coffee! Could even take a bus at each end if I wanted to continue that blissful aircon door to door!! Didn't even consider driving, the cost of owning a car here would make most Americans weep!
As someone who lives in Canada, the moral of the story is that things suck here just like the U.S., but the difference is we quantify just how much it sucks!
There’s been more transit and urbanism activities in Canadian cities than US. The largest (most impactful) rail transit projects in the US are in Seattle and LA but aren’t expected to completed past 2040. Meanwhile Toronto, Vancouver and others are farther along their transformative projects. It feels like Canada is about 20-30 years of planning and investment of the US. And construction costs are expensive but not nearly the costs of similar projects in the US. So there’s more hope in Canada in my opinion… l mean here in San Francisco we have studied a subway line down Geary Blvd like 5 times and have surveyed the public many times showing enormous support - and 40 years later we don’t even have a real plan, or have even decided what we’re doing. We just keep waiting, waiting for nothing at all. Super annoying.
@@anthonysnyder1152 Montreal is leading the charge when it comes to urban redevelopment. Their municipal environmentalist party has had majority since 2017, and here's some of their goals: reduce car traffic give more room to pedestrians and cyclists increase the residents' quality of life reverse urban sprawl Toronto is slowly changing too but conservative provincial government is holding it back.
@@jamesrowlands8971 "Is that why I keep hearing reports about how many Indigenous people your government finds buried, but don't hear shit from the US?" 1) Not the government 2) No bodies or bones have actually been found. 3) You may want to actually research this properly. Try to find the results and context, rather than the ideological reactionary nonsense of the modern day.
I live in a location where everything is conveniently close; an Asian grocery store, Aldi, a shopping mall, McDonald's, and a major train station are all within a 6-minute walk from my place, making it unnecessary for me to own a car. Further distances I do with my e-bike and long distances I hop on a train. Greetings from Zurich, Switzerland.
@@The_Natalist that's not the point. we were robbed. there was a fine rail system which millions of people, irish and former slaves in the east, chinese immigrants in the west, died building mere decades before it was destroyed so the public would have no choice but to drive
12:40 is a really good point. I'm a truck driver, the cost to health when you start doing as many km's as I do is really tangible, and it's undoubtedly present to a lesser degree for all drivers. It's to the point that I set aside a chunk of income each week to staying in shape (good food, gym, massage), so it's a real cost and would be more (as result of poor health costs) if I was lax about it. Turns out humans haven't evolved for sitting in a chairs all day long.
Ug, if this got reported on in the media you just know they’d twist it into “Study finds that cyclists and pedestrians involved in crashes cost society money!” 🤦♀️ Anyway, really appreciated getting some actual numbers for this from a cited (and linked) source. Definitely not a perfect study, but a clear conclusion that cars are a net cost to society.
I'm not an anti-car person, but even I have to say that there are TOO MANY DAMN CARS in the USA! Not everyone in a 4-person family needs to have a separate car! We need real options for alternative transportation and MUCH better infrastructure...
This is my whole argument. I'm not saying no one should drive, I'm saying, make it easier for people like me who don't want to drive, so that people who want to drive can experience less traffic and more parking. It's a win-win situation, but instead people are demanding a system where everyone HAS to drive. It kills me.
I think a ugly or beautiful city environment can change the psychology of people, their happiness, their interests in culture, art, history, knowledge in general hence society productivity and health which is an immeasurable damage Edit: I mean it's the type of productivity that also matters, people tend to venerate money making rich individuals without asking if there is any culture or morality behind their business and maybe he's destroying entire forests in order to make the money he makes
Big time. My startup is looking to help this and provide some actionable insight to help drive this change. There’s jokes all over social media about the “cure to loneliness” being in the design of a city, but it’s very real.
@@jas.digitalnative Absolutely, in addition when it comes to loneliness there's an unacceptable amount of undiagnosed adults affected by neurological disorders that we're discovering in the recent years which is yet another failure of society. Keep the hard work 🙏
Children's independence is another interesting topic. Not Just Bikes acknowledged that in one of their videos. A safer city -and walkable- allows for exploration and free roaming of younger children who get to know each other and have a life outside of the constant "care" of a parent. Which also would give soccer moms a lot of freedom.
@@Sinpractica The counter argument to that is what happens to those kids who grow up in that environment currently. Cities are hotbeds of thought and behavior that the majority finds repulsive, which is why they were abandoned in the first place.
Wish I could like this 100 times. I'm a naturally cheerful, optimistic person. In 2017 I had to spend a month in Casper, Wyoming for my job. The place is so dismal and depressing, I didn't feel like myself the whole time. There's no culture, no good restaurants, no appealing architecture, no pleasant natural settings. There's a run-down mall which is mostly empty, and there's a movie theater but I never saw any cars in front of it. The people walk around like zombies. Nobody seems to be enthusiastic about anything or even interested in anything. I went to Cheyenne a few times just to get out of Casper. It wasn't much better, just bigger. When I finally left it felt like Christmas. Driving into Denver was like a dream.
Traffic is a trigger for my PTSD due to my experience as a combat driver in a war zone. When I detatched from this part of my culture, the damage to society has become clear to me. I have been kept poor all my life because I love cars. I am also permanently injured from a traffic accident. Its too bad the Netherlands is one of the only places that has realized this problem.
I live in the Netherlands. In our big family (7 people, grandpa, grandma, pa, ma and 3 kids) we have about 30 bikes. 8 electrical, 5 very light and fast and usual, cheap and old. We (pa, am, and 3 kids) are doing by car about 9000 km per year and about 3000 km by bike. Kids, shopping, fun, sport - everything by bike.
Sadly, it's also been long enough that car dependency is the status quo in most of the country, so a person doesn't have to think anything to fail to see the problem.
@@edwardmiessner6502 National City Lines, a dummy corporation run by GM, ARCO and other corporate conspirators, illegally sabotaged the nation's urban passenger rail systems, from Baltimore to Los Angeles. Then, the myth of the "love affair" with the car was fabricated to explain why passenger rail disappeared.
For cars, travel time also need to account for finding parking. I once drove back to my neighborhood in Nob Hill/Russian Hill in San Francisco. I was listening to a Giants baseball game on the car's radio. It was around the 3rd inning when I got back to my neighborhood. I circled and circled, looking for a spot. I didn't find parking until after the game was concluded. I could have walked with a limp carrying a 50-lbs bag of rice and still gotten home sooner.
I love your channel. I live in Texas, and I really want the transportation system here to adopt these ideas. I’m tired of being debt ridden because I have to own a car. Cars are literally debt traps and strong indicators of wealth disparity. I want to be able to walk to anything I need within 20 mins and ride a bike for anything that might be further than that. I don’t see it happening much here, a lot of suburban sprawl with very bad mixed-use design that just doesn’t make for healthy communities. I really want way more public transit to be built here. I live in Fort Worth and I’m hopeful for the future of this city/metro it will go in the right direction. I often take the train to DFW airport, or to Dallas less frequently. I do wish they ran more frequent trains with better hours. Personally, I find Dallas pretty bad to get around in via bike/walking so I almost never go there.
Interested if you think Fort worth is better for walkability/biking? I've been to dallas and would agree it is not the friendliest environment. Haven't tried Fort Worth though
@@f50elite IMO, FW has a more concentrated downtown which helps in its walkability. Dallas is fairly fractured with several different areas that are walkable but with varying levels of connectivity between them, but it has a more comprehensive transit system. I will say that both cities are improving, but at the same time the outer suburbs cities are unfortunately getting worse. I managed to get on a citizen committee to bring up issues and give ideas around our sidewalks and other elements of walkability, if you frame the issues from a standpoint of safety most people get on board. I'd recommend the same for everyone :)
@@f50elite yes, I would say that the core of Fort Worth is very walkable/bikeable. West 7th, West Magnolia, S.Main St are all very pedestrian friendly areas and I often cycle to these parts of town. I prefer it to Dallas as Curtis said it’s very fractured and there are small neighbor hoods that are walkable but if you want to get across town in anyway it is not friendly without a car. The metroplex as a whole has a lot of suburban sprawl, so these areas are rare and reserved only for the very central downtowns.
I have the same with meat. I'm absolutely supporting producing & eating less or even no meat but I'm also having a tough time chosing the vegeteratian/vegan option every time.
@@PaulSzkibik On the climate front, even choosing which meat you eat can make a huge difference. For example, beef is many times as polluting as chicken.
I agree. The world outside USA has a lot of cars, but not the imposed mandate of cars for everything and big roads everywhere. For example, in India people own cars mainly for status / prestige and weekend trips.
As somebody whose primary mode of transportation is walking, I can confirm that I absolutely go through shoes and socks faster than most people. A pair of sneakers lasts about 9 months before starting to fall apart, and socks last about 60 days (that is, a dozen pairs last two years) before I wear a hole in the bottom.
I have a couple pairs of coolmax socks that are 20 years old and still work fine. I'm still on a quest to find other socks that don't wear out after a couple months
I don't know, I mean to be fair, I guess cars are considered the base case in the US, and people who bike and walk experience huge surpluses over teat base case.
@@CityNerd Well they are happy to be outside their cell. Prisoners are the only people this study could be about because they are the only group you are allowed to pay 6$ an hour. The numbers look alot better for Cars if you use the average hourly wage instead of what you are allowed to pay chaingangs.
@@nox5555 Generally speaking, when estimating time cost you go by average income per hour including ALL hours of your life (not just the working ones). So $6/hr (average) is about $18/hr (wage) if you work an 8 hour day, 7days a week. If we assume their typical person works a typical 40hr per week full-time job, $6/hr (average) is between $25-30/hr (wage) depending on how much vacation they get. So yeah. If you make around $25/hr ($50k/yr) in the US, this study reflects you.
@@EanMoody this study looks even more fishy now. we have a market value for 1 hour of our time, its called hourly wage and we also have alot of real world calculations based on it for real situations that involve the loss of our time and they made up a new one that fits their agenda,,, Thats pure social studies and doesnt reflects the real world at all.
@@nox5555 You need to use different ways of measuring things for different purposes. Physicists use Kelvin sometimes, even though we have Celcius. It doesn't make their work "fishy", it's just the unit that's most useful in that context. If we were to use wage rate to figure the hourly cost of people's activities, a typical person's daily balance would work out to -100% of their wage: they spend 16 hours of time on other things each day, and earn for only 8 hours. Heck, the cost of sleep would equal 100% of your income, using that measure. That's an obviously absurd and misleading result, so they don't use it. You get a more helpful measure by considering a typical day as one unit of productive time, including all the support activities necessary to actually earn that hourly wage. Then sleeping only costs 1/3 of your income, instead of all of it.
Honestly as a young person it’s hard to feel hopeful about the future prospects of my generation, partly because no amount of facts and data will sway us from the course of big auto in America.
I like cars and I like driving, but I don't like sitting in traffic for hours or being dependent on my car for everything. For me it's just another form of transportation, but for most Americans it is a way of life.
I want a car for going to rural areas but driving around your own city every day makes no sense. There should be adequate transit and walkability. People shouldn’t be forced to own cars just to live
In places where there aren't better options, that's understandable. We simply want to get quickly and safely to and from our destinations. I say this as a weirdo who refuses to drive in a rural area with little-to-no walk/bike/bus/rail infra. I try to focus on supporting systemic change over convincing others to struggle against the current challenges.
@@NickCombs in rural areas it is different, but in the cities and suburbs no one is driving quickly anywhere. they're sitting in traffic, raging at bicyclists and pedestrians.
The land use costs are definitely grossly underestimated since an auto-oriented business that otherwise wouldn't be takes just as much infrastructure costs for the acreage of land consumed while paying 1/3 or less in property taxes due to cheaper land values. On top of that a thriving economic ecosystem of small businesses is replaced with a monoculture of corporate franchises where the franchisees themselves are corporations. 😔
SoCal resident here. I can guarantee that in the LA metro area, if one's workplace and residence is close to metrolink then the time cost of public transportation is *far* lower than driving. It is not legal (nor reasonable) to work on your laptop in the car even while stuck in traffic. With metrolink, once I take my seat I can start work (metrolink trains have desks) and I can watch all the immobilized cars on the freeway as I zip by checking and responding to emails. Public transit has significantly *lower* time costs than driving (at least in socal)
When I went to engineering school in the Midwestern USA a few decades ago, they taught us "cost-benefit analysis" in that order. "Cost-benefit analysis" seems to roll off the tongue better, but it does put the negative adjective (cost) first. When I lived in Europe a few years ago, not having a car was great. It saved me a lot of money, although I did rely on trams and busses instead of bicycling. I am hoping to move to an EU country again by some point in 2025.
Even outside of engineering, the phrase is more commonly cost-benefit analysis. In fact, this video is the first time I have ever heard someone reverse the order of those words.
"An Ubereats driver delivering a fried chicken sandwich gets to impose delay on a delivery truck carrying a million dollars worth of semiconductors. It’s just wild stuff." I really never thought of it that way and yes, that's extremely wild stuff.
It gets worse. Most gig economy "employees" are subsidising Wall st by devaluing their personal transport more rapidly than it's designed for by using it for commercial purposes. They're not small business operators, so they don't generally factor in running costs into their decisions and typically 'pick up some deliveries' as a "side-gig" while being happy to receive something resembling minimum wage BEFORE expenses. But the vehicles that are already in their 'inventory' are usually nowhere near as efficient as the types businesses choose.
Now consider the externalized costs of protestors blocking a bridge or road so that both the Ubereats driver and the delivery truck driver are delayed for hours.
@@richatlarge462 I considered them. The cost benefit of a free society where people are able to protest their government who are destroying the environment highly outweighs the chicken sandwich and the semiconductors. Thanks.
@@KudosToYou By that same measure, anybody could protest anything at all by blocking you from getting to the airport or hospital. As long as they just knew they were morally right lol.
I think we make a big mistake when we don't consider the resiliency of our transportation networks when we're doing evaluation. I-5 in LA and more recently US-50 in West Sacramento are great examples of car-centric infrastructure going tits up and leaving a whole bunch of motorists with no good option because they haven't considered resiliency in advance. Bikes are basically free resiliency as long as you don't live in a car-dependent suburb that is 30 minutes from everything. The astronomically inflated new and used car prices during the pandemic were another good example of something that could have been avoided: the people that absolutely needed to purchase cars at that time were the ones that didn't have access to a resilient transportation network.
You consider bicycles resilient transportation??? And before you answer no I'm not saying PERSONAL motor vehicles are resilient, hellllll no they're not, but bicycles is your best solution, really? You choose bicycles over TRAINS, and busses???
Very interesting study. Overall it makes sense, but I agree with you that it was a little odd what the authors of the study did with regards to crash costs. Even if you wish to avoid double-counting the costs of crashes by not including insurance, don't traffic fatalities still impose costs on society by reducing labor productivity because you know... they die??? I think the authors of the study really dropped the ball on that one. Other than that, it wasn't a bad study in my opinion.
@@isaacliu896 Possibly, but I don't think so. The health stuff was included on the benefits side because of the health benefits that walking and biking bring as well as their reduced burden on the healthcare system. I could be wrong though, CN can confirm if he wants.
"Even if you wish to avoid double-counting the costs of crashes by not including insurance, don't traffic fatalities still impose costs on society by reducing labor productivity because you know... they die???" That's what insurance is for. Insurance will, as a matter of course, fight to pay as little as is legally required, but they do pay out what is therefor (legally) the value of that life. It's just a problem inherent to boiling everything down to a dollar value. Plus, cars crashing into cars aren't fatal very often, especially when the roads & cars are well designed. You're surrounded by a safety bubble of metal crumple zones & air bags, the only way you're dying is if you get T-boned or into a high speed head on collision. Or, well, there's a lot of ways actually, but the point is, insurance is *supposed to* cover it. Again, it doesn't in actuality, but that's beyond the scope of this study, it isn't about insurance reform. Now, putting "a car could run you over" as an externality that walking imposes on the other hand, is absolutely bizarre. Like, I can maybe see the "you're not surrounded by a ton of metal keeping you safe" argument here, but the main reason that's a problem is if someone else hits you with their safety-ton-of-metal. Doesn't make sense that they're avoiding double counting Insurance, but don't mind that this should already be covered by the car's insurance. Maybe it's referring to bike-on-bike or pedestrian-on-pedestrian collisions, which tend to be uninsured?
Also, collisions and crashes increase congestion costs because some of the roadway lanes are blocked, particularly at intersections, and because people typically motorists literally have to stop and look out of their own compulsiveness.
In India, roads are made wider and with that, more cars are sold in the market and the traffic congestion increases. Wider roads don't make less traffic, it just worsens the traffic congestion. I lived in Spain for nine months. I loved the transportation system there and with less cars, air pollution was less.
In NA, you have to be either very lucky or very inconvenienced to have it as an option. Maybe a bit of both, speaking from personal experience. It's simply not a viable option for most people here.
Blame your own poor car decisions, not cars themselves. I've been driving the same car for 11 years which I purchased for $19k, so if you add cost of fuel, insurance and maintenance, it doesn't cost me more than 3k per year total. If $3k per year makes or breaks your home finances, there are much bigger problems here
@@FabioTerasaka Everyone's circumstances are different and cost of living varies wildly by location. Glad you're able to keep it low-ish with $3k/yr, but I'll stick with my Himiway $1.5k/5yr (very conservative estimate)
so I used to ride my bike to work every day for like 3 years, but it was getting way too dangerous(almost died like 3 times!) so now I drive(plus my commute got longer) and yeah my health has gotten worse for sure. Gained like 40 pounds in about a year, my blood pressure is rising, and my asthma is getting worse. I miss biking to work honestly... even if it was dangerous
Interesting aside. The number of miles you can get out of a pair of shoes is actually pretty important to people who do major thru hikes like the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail. These people will regularly walk 20-30 miles per day.
I’m 62. I don’t own a car. I just ride a bicycle. I remember when I was 12 and Telling my dad “When I grow up I’m not gonna have a car, just ride bikes.” He said you’re stupid. Then when I was 19 he saw me riding my bike everywhere and said You’re smart. LoL
I think we should create an "Interstate Highway System of Rail". Treat it the same way we did the interstate system starting in the 50s, give it the same amount of money, time, and far-reaching impact. The interstate highway system took about 35 years to "complete" (1992 is traditionally considered the year it was finished but of course they keep adding onto it), so if we started in 2025 we could set 2060 as a goal, which might seem like a science fiction year to us now, but I'm pretty sure 1992 seemed that way to people living in 1955. Our grandkids would benefit greatly from this and we should do it for them.
Recall that the excuse for the national highway system was so the military could get wherever they needed to go to "defend the homeland". To whatever extent the military is going to use the rails, the freight rails are quite sufficient.
Maybe not treat it *exactly* the same way... the interstate system was used to bulldoze "undesirable" minority neighborhoods and caused irreparable harm in the cities it cut through. A train line would be far less disruptive than a highway, but still, no matter where you build, things will have to be bulldozed somewhere, and I would hope things would be done with more empathy this time around.
The issue is, to move from a clean safe surburb with a newer clean home to a newish clean home in a safe walkable inner city neighborhood is impossibly expensive. Real world example, trying moving from a Houston's Spring area to Houston's walkable Rice/Museums District area. Most absolutely cant afford it, and/or isnt willing to extensively downgrade their home.
walkable places are illegal to build due to zoning favoring sprawling single family suburbs. The walkable urban places are expensive because they're part of a dwindling supply of pre-WW2 areas in our cities. They're in high-demand with zero new supply. Prices go up. We need to fix zoning, remove mandatory parking minimums. Those two things would make massive differences in american cities.
@@ericwright8592 There should be ZERO dedicated space for parking PERSONAL motor vehicles OR BICYCLES, Single Family Housing needs to be OUTLAWED, housing complexes should be a MINIMUM of 20 floors high, BARE MINIMUM, and apartments should go as high 6 bedrooms for large families. The only reason people mentally associate apartment with single people is because developers on design apartments with 1 or 2 or 3 bedrooms at the most, anything beyond 3 bedroom you have to look at detached housing, APARTMENTS CAN HAVE AS MANY BEDROOMS AS THERE IS DEMAND FOR! Further, we need to demolish MANSIONS, and return the land that mansions occupy back to nature, for the rich people that can't stand the thought of living next to the rest of us, LARGE APARTMENTS WILL DO! We also need to BUILD AGRICULTURE INTO CITIES! With indoor growing technology it is easy to produce fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, nuts and seeds, grains, roots indoors, very easy, and indoor agriculture produces 5X the yield of outside agriculture with a fraction of the land use, and is NEVER affected by the weather! Return the land in rural areas back to nature! Rural Areas and Suburbs SHOULD NOT EXIST, return all that land back to nature!
I'm glad that many cities in Canada are starting to fix zoning, get rid of parking minimums, and work on getting some reasonable density to further promote walkable neighbourhoods. I'd love to be able to walk more places, but even my "local" commercial area involves me crossing two stroads with really shitty surface crosswalks. Safer to drive, honestly. I'd also love to be able to bike places, but bike theft is a problem.
I have been transit only for the better part of the last 15 years. It's just becoming untenable where I live now. Constant bus no-shows, safety concerns, rampant fare evasion, constant rail problems. I would absolutely love to be transit only forever but we're so far from that being feasible as I get older and need more reliable options.
I live in Southern California where people are dependent on cars and home price average a million dollars. A big reason for such high prices is because we built sparsely with the expectation of getting to places by cars and eventually ran out of space - sprawl. The insufficient supply of homes versus the high demand caused prices to skyrocket. What probably should cost $200-$300k if there weren't inefficient land use becomes $1M. For those homes, the infrastructure for the automobile are around 800 square feet of driveway and garage, +20% of space. Why aren't those costs included?
Southern California's main problem is having more than doubled its population in the past 50 years, in an area depending on external water. The freeways and roads are clogged because of the influx.
True. The average home in California is probably built on 1/4 acre (1,000 sqm) of land, while my apartment probably takes just 40-50 sqm of land when you divide the total area by the number of apartments in the residential complex. So basically you pay for land 20-25 times what I would pay.
I have a family living in SoCal, in awkward position in not being able to be in the suburban catchment area for commuting to Los Angeles or San Diego. Pretty much a lot of driving and getting stuck in traffic when I was there. Seeing that I am surprise how they are staying a float buying an expensive suburban detached house after living in townhouse, with not much new salary gained
@@TheRandCrews Young people are the ones most harmed. They must move far out to find affordable housing and end up stuck in traffic hours each day. When they give up and move out of state, the result is a graying of our population where we lose the mostly dynamic and productive sector of our workforce. My solution is for local governments to entice workplaces with +200 employees to convert 20%-50% of their parking spaces to affordable dense rentals for workers. Those that live there can give up the car and walk to work in 5 minutes. The savings from affordable housing and giving up of a vehicle may allow their spouse to quit long commute jobs and work nearby.
So basically, even if you blame the victims of car crashes and be as generous as possible in favour of cars, walking and biking are still orders of magnitude better for society than car-dependency.
@@TrinsicOfSosariaCar Dependency != personal autonomy. If anything, forcing citizens to own, and constantly operate a big, expensive depreciating asset, to reasonably participate in society, is the opposite of personal autonomy. I definitely get driving for fun, and wanting to get away on a whim, but commuting is undeniably a massive waste for everyone involved, in materials, maintenance, and time. It would be more productive to spend my hour/day commute reading, than working my way through traffic. Ideally, alternative means of transit should focus on reducing the costs involved in commuting, while preserving the ability of the citizen to take leisure drives as they see fit. As a side benefit, if a larger portion of drivers are driving because they actually want to, as opposed to being forced to (by circumstance), the quality of driving is likely to be improved. Theoretically, spending on transportation options could be of potential benefit to all, car drivers included. This is what I’d like to see, empowering people to select the most cost and time effective options that serve their needs and wants, at a given time. I want to keep my car and motorcycle, but I don’t want to be beholden to them to actually go about my life.
@@TrinsicOfSosaria Two counterpoints: a) How is it an increase in autonomy if you are forced to drive a car? I would argue that it is actually good for autonomy if you have a choice between multiple modes of transportation that each make sense. But you seem to view this differently, which is okay. We can agree to disagree here. b) Even if you say it is more autonomous, that is a purely subjective point, but this video tries to quantify monetary aspects. I, on the other hand, would argue that walking and cycling are much more fun than driving a car if the enviroment is suitable. That is just as subjective as your autonomy, but also does not factor into these calculations. The only way I could see actually quantifying autonomy for this kind of statistic is the faster travel speed of cars, which is already included and makes up a majority of the costs for walking and cycling.
One point about the time cost of biking, if you go to the gym regularly, and you bike every day, you can count your commute time as exercise time, and probably don't need to go to the gym as often
Yeah. Always smiling when my friends say that they need to commute by car, because they are going to gym after work and don't want to waste time. I am not saying that I am fitter than them, but man. I feel that by biking I am more time and money efficient.
Ten years ago, when I lived just east of the middle of no-where, I would scoff at driving and infrastructure problems. Then I moved to Atlanta, hands down the most dangerous city for driving I've ever seen. And it's been one of my favorite thought hobbies to think of ways to incentivise people to get in the buses and trains. The buses here are expensive and unreliable. The busiest routes run once an hour, and if the bus breaks down, forget it, they will send no back-up. You may as well go home until the next hour, and maybe it will be running. It also is $2.50 one way trip per passenger, and there is no monthly pass option. A family of five will be paying $15 to $25 a day. May as well drive. But public transit is the easy fix if you can just get butts in seats. The real challenge is persuading drivers to not drive. The least draconian way I've thought of to encourage using public transit and biking, is to gradually reduce most parking lots and structures (exceptions for hospitals, hotels, apartments, and businesses in rural areas) by 75%. Yeah, drivers and businesses will hate the politicians that make that demand in law, but we can't keep expanding the roads forever, and I think in the long run it would be a net good, especially for large cities, to lighten the burden on the roadways.
I really appreciate you doing what you do. Hopefully one day our cities will be better designed to allow more transportation options. I lived in South Korea for a bit, and coming back to Vancouver BC (I know... We have it good here but still...) It sure feels like I have to really stay committed to not using a car often because despite being ahead of most of North America... Other options are still generally more inconvenient compared to driving here. Anyways. Really hope we make great progress in transportation in north america, and I think your videos are helping that! If you want any footage of SK transportation, let me know. I was going to make videos of it myself but have been too busy to edit. 😅.
@@CityNerd I just returned from a trip to Malaysia (including Kuala Lumpur), Cambodia, and Thailand (including Bangkok) and the pedestrian and biking environments everywhere were really bad.
The enjoyment of the time really does play a big role to me. Sitting in a bus or car makes me annoyed about missing out on time on the bicycle. And the nuisances and dangers of cycling are almost all related to cars and their infrastructure. Dangerous bicycle gutters, bridges without cycling lanes, bad crossings... And yeah I do take about 2 km of detours a day to avoid car-centric places.
Surveys find that driving to work is accounted among the most stressful component of _American_ lives. Walking, biking, and taking nice trains are low stress. Urban public transit, in between.
If most people liked walking then they would be annoyed at someone awkwardly try to drive their car through it, not looking at them like a god. Also, that driver would feel annoyed at the difficulty of trying to drive their car through a crowd of pedestrians too. Since you did say a world build for people.
@@user-gu9yq5sj7cyou remind of a tiktok video of an American family driving through a town square plaza in Italy and wondering why locals are looking at them weirdly.
I live in the EU, and I do not understand why anyone would want a car. I have heard their reasons, and I think they are crazy. Walking and public transportation do it very well for me.
Taking transit is essentially teleporting, though. I spend about 70 minutes on the bus every day instead of 40 minutes driving, but I spend that hour working. If I drove, I'd have an extra 30 minutes at home, but I would have to spend all of that time and then some getting my work done.
I feel like doing a CBA is the wrong approach. I’ve genuinely tried to use my car less and the only thing I’ve realised is that the externalities to public transport are hard to measure and therefore bias against cars when it comes to doing a CBA. It’s arguably more stressful because you don’t have control over when and where you’re exactly you go, you’re stuck with all the crazies, you’re more likely to be robbed and/or SA’d, etc. It sounds entitled and like I’m saying it from a glass tower but it’s true and those are real issues that must be addressed if we want more people, especially ppl above poverty line, to use public transport.
I used to live in London near a major road, the noise, air pollution and stress of just walking around as a pedestrian would make you go mental, I wonder what would have happened to me by now if I was still there
It makes me wish that there was enough dense walkable housing for it not to be stupidly expensive. It puts a lot of people into the same sort of financial trap the renting does here. I know that in the long run I am spending equal if not more being in a non walkable area, but the patently offensive price of housing in the walkable areas makes such an up front cost that it blocks me from being able to pick the long term cheaper and better lifestyle.
"It makes me wish that there was enough dense walkable housing for it not to be stupidly expensive." But there IS! There are tons of neighborhoods with dense, walkable housing...where prices are very low. So low, in fact, that the problem is coming up with the money to knock down the empty, abandoned buildings. The problem is that dense cities in the US have a very hard time sustaining economic vigor, low crime, decent public schools, etc. The rare dense areas that have these positive attributes are very expensive. But the problem isn't that there aren't enough cities and neighborhoods with the right kind of 'bones', it's that so many of such places have become undesirable places to live.
@@markweaver1012 Is the social collapse inherent in high density housing? Much of it does appear to be an unsuitable environment for actual human beings to live in. Fortunately I don't think high density is essential to reduced car use, it's only necessary to utilise bicycles and public transport properly. I live in rural Ireland, about as low density as you can get in Western Europe (probably still "sub-urban" by US standards) and am still only a 20min cycle ride from mainline rail. I own a car (or 3) though, the roads are terrifying to cycle on...
@@highloughsdrifter1629 I don't think density is inherently unstable, but it has struggled in a US context, and dense U.S. cities seem to be in a decline phase again in recent years -- not just older eastern and 'rust belt' cities, but also SF and Portland, for example. Right now, as a society, we seem incapable of enforcing laws and norms against petty crime and anti-social behavior, and people who don't have to live around such disorder are increasingly choosing not to. Fortunately, I agree that high density is not mandatory for decreased auto use -- and the greatest changes in that direction have not been bikes and rail, but rather work-from-home and internet shopping (which, unlike bikes and rail, are also great time savers).
At last someone has said it: Cars Are a Disaster For Society! They are indeed. They are dirty, noisy, ugly, polluting horrendously expensive to buy, run, maintain, insure, service and park. They cause traffic jams that affect those of us who can't afford to, or who don't want to own a car. Oh, and cars also injure, maim and kill. The selfishness of car drivers! Why do you need to buy a ton of metal just because you want to make a journey? I have been a car owner (although never an enthusiastic one), but I now find myself dead set against them.
@@lioneldemun6033 You're right! Car ownership seems to breed irresponsibility: 'I've got the right to drive as far and as fast as I want to. I've also got the right to throw rubbish out of the window - someone else can clear it up.'
I live over 20 miles away from where I currently work, I've got a baby and all the stuff that comes with to ferry around whenever we go anywhere. Cars are a necessity for most people like it or not
@@Please_allow_me In the UK many, many people live 20 miles away from where they work, and a good many people live a lot farther than that. Not all have cars, and, in London it would be impossible to drive, as there is nowhere to park. So, they use public transport. Many people have babies too, but they can't afford a car. They manage. Cars are definitely not ever, never 'a necessity for most people'; this is nonsense. Cars are probably not a necessity for anyone: Cars are horrible, dirty, noisy, unsightly and polluting, and killing.
@@PatrickMcAsey Okay for a start there is a entire country outside of London so what applies there doesn't necessarily for everywhere else. I live in the Northwest and I use motorways everyday as do thousands and thousands of other people. If all those people suddenly switched to public transport, it'd cripple the already shit and unreliable system that is put in place. It would also easily at least double or maybe even triple my commuting times as it would for millions of others because I don't live or work particularly close to a train station. People like myself who work 10 or more hours a day don't have time to spending travelling to train stations and waiting, waiting around for buses and I certainly won't by cycling over 40 miles a day in order to get to work and back home, I also do shift work which means often finishing at times when these services aren't even available, again as do thousands (if not millions) of others so please explain how that doesn't make having my own transport a necessity?. Yes that's right those people 'manage'. Well I don't work hard to just so I can 'manage'. I see these people without cars having to get a taxi home after they've been shopping, or standing a a bus stop in the rain with a pram and a bunch of bags etc and none of them look like they're particularly happy with it, I'm sure anyone of them would love to have their own vehicle if they could. I wanna enjoy life as much as I can as opposed to being forced to just 'manage' because some do gooders online said so. The UK emits about 1% of global pollution so don't give me that shit, even if the UK suddenly emitted no pollution whatsoever it would not change anything. People die doing all sorts of things but we can't simply ban everything that involves risk or the world would grind to a halt. Average cars really aren't that nosy unless people modify them to be, I've seen this first hand as people are always stepping out in front of me without looking, if cars were really that noisy I'm sure they wouldn't because they'd know I was there. And 'unsightly' is purely subjective because most people love the look of cars (nice cars that is, some are shit admittedly but not everyone can afford the same thing).
Here in my little town in Czech Republic, the car nazism went too far, people go even like 100m by car, when they have 2 breaks in work, they go home for that few minutes, so they drive to work and back like 6 times, they "walk" the dog by car, they go with trash by car (when conteiners are more far than 20 m from their houses) and nobody goes anywhere. Everyone is like "I have no time" or "my wife would not let me go" and when their shift in work ends, they are already in cars 1 minute later and at home another 3 minutes later and when they are 2 minutes late, their fat wives already call them about where they are. Nobody goes to cinema, theater, for some trips to castles or walk in forest, nothing, they say "there is no way how to get there" (translation: I have to walk from parking and that's too far) or "there is no reason to go there" (translation: Why should I go to some stupid nature or visit some castle? I need just some food, gas and beer). As a person who is born in Prague (capital city) where people walk a lot and use public transportation, this village culture is absolute bizar for me, it really destroyed all relation ships here, you see people only in cars or in local supermarket, but if it was allowed, they would drive inside with their cars and shop just thru car windows. And it's even more crazy, they are that lazy, that they don't even park at their gardens or in their garages anymore, because to park a car is a work and they don't like work, so they just let their stupid cars on road in front of their houses, so when you walk there or go on bike, you have no space, it's unbeliavable, when I am telling it to someone in Prague, they don't believe me. When I was still in Prague, it was completely normal to walk from work or school in bigger group and talk or sit somewhere for some time or go to cinema or something, here in a little city? Nothing, they just rush to their cars, nobody goes anywhere. And we have bus and train here, it's not like you can't get anywhere without car, you can. But yeah, public transportation in villages is getting worse, buses go every 2 hours which is terrible, train goes more often, but becaue of neverending constructions, it's delayed very often, but that's not an excuse for going 100m by car. And it's even worse, when you don't have a car, they don't consider you a "real man" and they don't even want to speak with you because you are weird. These villagers talk only about 2 things - problems with their cars and things they would like to do, but their women will not allow that. 😀 This car nazism is really a plague.
@@skitlus335 Yes, as a person born in Prague who moved to a village (and I lived in other small cities also), I am still shocked with this car culture. It really went to far, these people for example never visited some nice places like 1 km from their houses because "there is no road" or "there is no reason to go there" and as a Praguer, I really don't understand this culture of beying locked behind walls or sit in car, they never been anywhere, they will die with no memories, never visited anything, they know just grass cutting and traffic jams.
@@Pidalin I moved to Czechia from a bigger more spread out country and was pretty shocked to see how car dependent people are there, despite the country being so small and, generally speaking, well-connected in terms of rails and bus services. One of the few good things the communists did achieve was to build sidliste with most things nearby and public transport to get other places too, so it's weird to see how new development usually is without basic amenities and public transport. Even worse are the "sleeper cities" of single-family houses that pop up outside of Prague, where you're essentially stuck without a car - growing up there, completely dependent on your parents driving you places, must be torture.
Great video. Driving in Los Angeles, totally sucks. Never seen a city so dependent and with so many cars. It's disgusting. People in LA never walk anywhere. It's actually not the cars themselves, it is the people who insist on owning and driving them, everywhere. Even the cycling walking trails in LA, you have to wait longer than cars at each stop on the road and you have to press a button and wait for a really long time. It's ridiculous.
Another thing: There was a german guy, that calculated the cost of parking in a city. Because people complain that "annual parking vouchers should be less than 300€". Since these parking is valuable land in prime locations, he comes up that a parking lot comes out at around 5000€/year cost of the opportunity lost to not being able to use the land to build much needed apartments.
In US materials, there's Donald Shoup's _The High Cost of Free Parking_ or Henry Grabar's more recent _Paved Paradise_. Urban parking is probably collectively more valuable than the cars.
@@mindstalk Valuable or cost intensive? I would argue that the VALUE of free parking is minimal. As it doesn't generate much future income. A bit like having a factory with huge, expensive machines... that you don't use.
Where can I find that? I’ve always wanted to calculate an equivalent ‘rent’ for a parking space. That is how much would the space cost per hour if it was valued at the same rate as additional square footage in an urban apartment?
@@julianpowers594 Yeah, that's an interesting if difficulty quantity. 'per hour' may not be the best metric. Metered parking is hourly or less, but also a spot market, but also usually not managed well. For comparison to actual rent, you can sometimes find lots or garages with monthly rates, commercially or attached to apartments. A Boston apartment building I lived in had a limited parking lot, leased at $125/month per space, so that indicates a minimum that tenants were willing to pay to not deal with free but unreliable curbside parking. Of course, the US rarely has commercial parking in residential neighborhoods. Sometimes you can find sale prices per sqft from the sale of empty lots, which also gives land value. You can also imagine what someone in an RV might be willing to pay for a guaranteed spot, even if it doesn't have any power or utility hookups. Where a 1BR goes for $2000/month, it seems that someone might well pay a few hundred, even if they have to drive off periodically to exchange fluids. Or what a food truck might be willing to pay (far more than most metered rates), or a restaurant expanding into outdoor seating. Anyway, at 4 parking spaces per car, if you can justify urban spaces being worth at least $10,000 each, that's $40,000 of parking value per car. Compare to the average price of a new car...
Just a note: Laval University is in Quebec City. The city of Laval is outside Montreal, but it doesn't have a university. Not surprised that Laval University is doing this kind of study, Quebec City has been trying to get the provincial and federal governments to pay to develop their public transit system for decades. They had a tram project shot down by the provincial government just a few weeks ago, so back to square one for them unfortunately.
I've always truly hated cars. Never wanted a license or a vehicle, but the problem is the basic infrastructure of the city I live in renders it so the only places I can shop are (At closest) a half hour to 45 minute walk away. That's only going to, not coming back.
I’m a car enthusiast but, I think that if we had more public transportation options it would benefit me a lot. We would definitely have less people on the road who doesn’t want to drive, and driving would more enjoyable for people like me with less people around.
NotJustBikes has a video on this called "the best country in the world for drivers" Not just less drivers, but also the drivers are less pissed off, and fewer conflict points with other modes makes driving less stressful too
Solid video. Former transportation professional here. I think a good cost-benefit analysis is "one" useful input in planning. Many cost-benefit analyses have a major flaw however. They seldom account for the distribution of benefits and costs, which are seldom uniform. In a worst case scenario, one group could pay all the costs while another group reaps all the benefits. Also cost-benefit analyses don't generally include "intangibles," such as the pleasure derived from travelling by bike or public transit. Typed while travelling by high speed train through the mountains of Switzerland while sipping a cappuccino from the restaurant car. Point made.
I know MY family is tired of me bringing up how bad cars and our dependence on them is 🤣 can’t wait to add this fodder to the argudiscussionment 😁 All the more painful having just moved from my VERY walkable and public transportation-accessible center of Houston to the boondock suburbs 😖 of San Antonio to live with family/save some money. It is TERRIBLE, my car 🙄 has been in the shop and I literally cannot go anywhere here without it. Not even to a corner store (2mi one way up and down hills) and there’s no option to take a city bus without walking _over_ 2mi to the nearest transit center that only has one route servicing it that’ll take me downtown (not where I need to go at all). The special van service doesn’t even serve this area. The struggle is so real 100% looking to move to a nice urban! area where having a car isn’t necessarily required, and your videos are definitely helping my research 🎉
IMO one of your best and most interesting videos! Great breakdown. 8:47 So, to convince the car-brained zeitgeist, could we argue (as a rule of thumb) that transit/cycling/pedestrian funding should be priority #1 until congestion drops until it is negligible? In other words, even die-hard drivers should be in favor since it would make their drive so much better.
I love how even in his cost / benefit analysis cars get to impose their externalities (i.e sprawl and hugely enlarged distances) on biking / walking as a cost
Sometimes it’s really as simple as just running buses more frequently. For instance in west Seattle some have run some numbers and found GHG emissions would be broadly the same if more rapid rise bus service served the neighborhoods at
I won't even bother to debate the study discussed, as I'm sure its at least directionally correct, although there's no examiniation of mass transit options such as buses or trains, only comparing driving to walking and biking, neither of which is practical or desirable for most folks in winter. As a non-city dweller who loves his cars, the thought of living in high-density housing just so I can walk/bike/take mass transit is a non-starter. I have no desire to live in some dismal tenanment that costs me more than my suburban mortage plus taxes and insurance (plus there's better public schools). In short, nothing beats an auto for that sense of personal freedom to go or live anywhere you want. Sure, there's a steep personal cost, particularly in gas tax, But my freedom is worth it. The fact that millions of Americans left the cities (and did not return) when autos and road networks became practical tells me that they feel the same way. The amenities of large cities, particularly with respect to the arts and other cultural attractions are something I enjoy occasionally, but I get to visit them and leave afterwards.
My wife and I live in the city core of Cincinnati and walk/bike a lot. We only have only car (Cincy isn't a no-car city yet) and I wanted good shoes that held up, so we literally compare the bike and shoe costs against the cost of buying, insuring, maintaining, and gassing up a car. The irony is how some of my family was like "that bike is so expensive, you're crazy" or "why spend that much on shoes?!" while also asking when we'd get a second car! It's so engrained that the ballooned cost of a car is needed.
Governments are almost certainly aware of this. But between the lobbyists and NIMBYs, why would any government change anything? (Please apply this comment to every societal problem that has an obvious solution.)
Not to mention we socialize losses with car manufacturers and privatized losses with individual car ownership. Dollar for dollar, car ownership is an entropic endeavor and very costly both monetarily and socially ($600-$1000 a month of household income devoted singularly to car use). If that magnitude of money were to be allocated to a national railway system we’d be the leading country for transit overnight. Just embarrassing that we’re losing in this regard because of the car lobby.
To me, the biggest madness is that all that traffic is averaging under 10% payload. We are buying image, not transportation. If you start with a velomobile, it is easy to get around in any weather at 50% payload. For freeway use, the express lane should be equipped to let traffic run in convoys at almost no clearance, using automatic controls, and even re-charging while the driver relaxes, waiting for their chosen exit.
If you look at fuel efficiency of cars, standards are a lot lower in countries with a lot of oil (fuel) and not a lot of interest in the environment. The US is a prime example: cars are on average less efficient, much heavier, and have higher horsepower-per-weight (gas-guzzling) engines. Pickup trucks like the Ford F-150 or Dodge Ram are really rare in Europe; they are seen as too expensive, and unwieldy in urban environments. SUV's are about as common in Europe as trucks are in the US, and SUV's are about twice as common in the US as in Europe. That probably skews the cost picture of driving quite a bit. To illustrate, the reimbursement rate you talk about to be 65 cent per mile in the US, is only 19 euro-cent per kilometer in the Netherlands, while our fuel prices are actually much higher. Europe also has a higher percentage of electric cars on the road, that are much better for the environment and thus human health. Cars become cheaper for society when they are smaller, lighter, and electric. But as someone living in a city where bikes are ubiquitous and mass transit pretty good (Amsterdam) I can say that cities become a lot better with fewer cars of whatever kind. Cars are basically the only things making a lot of noise in urban environments, construction or mass transit are nothing compared to car traffic; the space that cars need to be parked is insane in an urban environment; and cars are also the main cause of accidents and street-level pollution in a city. Less is definitely more when it comes to cars.
One of the factors that contributes to poverty and homelessness in the US is that potential workers need a car to get to the places of employment, and they can't afford to have one. Public transportation is mostly in cities, whereas many of the jobs are in the outskirts and beyond, and not on any bus or train route.
Company towns developed around a large industrial business (mine, mill etc.) because the people had to live within a short walking distance of their job. The owner of the business created a town where all services were available but expensive. The workers never improved their economic state. Once transportation was available to the workers, they no longer were forced to live in the town where the job was. Now the owner had to pay market wages and the grocer had to compete with other grocers. The freedom of personal transportation changed the economic system from a serf/owner system to a more free market system, leading to the rise of the middle class and well worth the cost of owning a car.
Good point, but here in the UK that change first happened after the Black Death, so well before the era of road transport. The second time it happened was in the 1800s, largely due to the development of the railways. Cars were very late to the party. My point is, mass transit/public transport systems are better for the health of the environment, people and personal finances.
The thing with travel time is that a brisk walk saves you exercise time that you would have to spend in a gym or on a track if you used a motorized transport (car, motorcycle, moped, ebike, motorized kickbike). Same goes for cycling of course, except you need a longer commute to avoid the exercise. This is why a good commute length of about 30 minutes each way actually gives you more time than driving the same distance in five minutes (for the walk) or 45 minutes (in congested traffic against a bike on a bike path).
I'll save you some time -- this is literally the only comment worth reading. Nebula has tons of great creators, and you can see originals, early releases, and all the usual stuff, except ad and sponsor-free, AND for a crazy low price. Us my custom link for 40% off an annual subscription, and you'll also be helping the channel! go.nebula.tv/citynerd
I'd love to sign up. I don't own or want a credit card, so how can I pay for it?
Ray, you can reduce the 'cat throwing-up' cost by making them wear a face mask apart from meal times. It's all the licking and washing that leads to furballs and the v*m*t on the carpet/on the stairs/on the duvet cover. Rob/UK.
😄@@nineoneten
Nebula has no interactive community. It really kills it for me. Even tho the TH-cam comments are a plague, I still like to post stuff, get replys, and read what others post. It's especially gratifying and enjoying when the creators acknowledge and even respond. Nebula needs this.
For me, Nebula should add 5 or 10 seconds rewind on double tap and full screen in landscape mode on mobile (or a button to do it).
I live in Japan, one of the biggest car developers in the world, but also a country with possibly the best public transport system out there.
I guess a clever dealer never uses his own product...
I know, isn’t that ironic 🤣
Don’t get high off your own supply
Japan has the 23rd highest car ownership per capita in the world, which puts it above most West European countries (though France and Italy are slightly higher). Germany is lower despite also being a country with a sizable car industry.
@@the_handelian car ownership is different than car dependency where everyone is forced to drive their car for every single task.
@@TheGreatWasian_ Of course, they are not directly related. But there must be some corellation - I can't imagine there are many highly car dependant countries with very low car ownership, for example. I'll caveat that I'm only talking about countries where people are generally rich enough to own cars though.
Going between the US and Japan, I always get annoyed when people mention that Japanese are healthy because of the food. They haven't seen the average fried meal people eat in Tokyo. People are healthy because they commute by foot every single day.
Tokyo dweller here, don’t forget better air quality from less cars
I'm sure you're right that the exercise is a major component of that, but the fast food might be a relatively new import from America. I imagine that even a generation ago, the average Japanese person had a much healthier diet than they do now. I could be totally wrong, but that's my hunch.
It's interesting that even though Japan has a thriving automotive industry (Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mitsubishi), they haven't built their own country around cars. Maybe that's just because there's no *room* for car-dependent suburban sprawl in a relatively small and mountainous country.
Same thing in most cities in China, and other parts of developed East Asia.
@@evandempsey7613Thanks for your honesty that you have a hunch, it supports the discussion.
As I've gotten older (31 now driving since 16) I've just noticed how much society tries to push you into scams and debt. The "requirement" of a car, the "necessity" of a credit card etc.
Drivers license fees, insurance, maintenance costs and parts...
I used to buy 2nd hand cars straight from people so I didnt have to make monthly payments and when my last one burst into flames I bought an electric bike and wouldnt trade it for anything.
I'm lucky my town has a sidewalk that runs all the way from my apartment to my workplace and a lot of businesses that I stop at regularly. Yes people still cant drive and dont pay attention to anything other than right in front of them.
My big message is, you dont NEED a car.
Yet they are a symbol of freedom for those who wish to go out anytime they want. I wouldn't mind them being more of a niche instead of the norm. That being said cars are still going to be around either way.
My family has started avoiding trigger words so that I don't go on long rants about car infrastructure. Doesn't always work though.
Meanwhile, I haven’t even had the courage to bring it up once😅
ty for underminding cars!
after all it’s not a crime to talk and educate with patience and facts!
They don't like hearing the unvarnished truth? Maybe they need a safe space
I moved to pedestrian-friendly/public transit-friendly places long ago (Tokyo, HK, now Taipei) and my 34 year old daughter lives in Manhattan. Neither of us owns cars so I can rant all I like. She never even learned to drive. My 88 year old mother grew up in Queens and reminisces about the joys of streetcars. So I am lucky that my family has not drunk the Koolaid of the car culture.
@@erbiumfiber A lot of people have jobs that require them to be there. Public transport is good in a few big cities, but its poor in most places. Picking up groceries is not easy without a car anywhere. I think people are grossly under-estimating the advantages and freedom a car gives people.
My friends and family are so sick of hearing me talk about this subject.
Never gonna stop though
Same here
truth hurts
Gotta plant those seeds man. Life will take over from there.
lol same
I love annoying all my " you'll never take my car/truck" family and friends with facts I learn from your channel. Please keep making more content. Live your work!
These are fun to make! Thanks.
One of the biggest costs is the unnecessary ugliness of American cities. That alone imposes a massive psychological burden.
real
thats subjective
@@Jorge.2004Current research on societal psychology would disagree with you on that.
Yep. People are products of their environments. That said, I do appreciate brutalist architecture.
@@Jorge.2004 yes, but objectively, on a population level, the vast majority of people subjectively find it ugly & depressing to be endlessly inundated with featureless highways, billboards, parking lots, strip malls .etc which isolates them from each other & incentivises them to remain in a small cocoon of a life.
For the sake of consistency, I will now amortize my sneakers, bikes and transit passes on a per mile basis
Hell yeah! Post results.
Especially if you have old-fashioned, repairable shoes rather than throw-aways like Nike.
LOL that part of the analysis killed me
@@Warriorcats64 Aldi shoes - indestructible! I've had a pair of Aldi tennis shoes for a couple of years and they still are going strong.
I got a pair of hiking boots from Big 5 for literally free because they didn't scan it correctly or something. This was when I was a teen, and I still have them (as my backup shoes) 20+ years later.
Noise isn't considered. We are so used to constant noise pollution cars produce that we don't even take it into account. After traveling far away into the country the delicious silence seems to come as a surprise.
Yes, there is also the smell.
That is a fact but here is another fact, in order to get the quiet isolation you value so much the population of 8 billion would have to be so spread out that first it literally cannot be done, you would have to kill off about 3/4 of the population in order to have rural quiet and spread those people out till there is no wildlife habitat at all. I understand people are filled with anxieties and wants, but the fact that what makes you anxious or fills you with desire like getting rid of cars is just not going to happen, our society is the way it is for rock hard reasons you can change just by wishing it was so. Idealists and their utopian dreams have always been around usually whining about something, but those utopian dreams are actually nightmares for most of us. They look at one aspect of life and get all charged up like a kid on Christmas morning, but a few things never enter their heads, like economics and reality, the interconnections of all we see around us. You are like a person who stands on a street corner and can only see a few houses and maybe a few people outside. You do not take into consideration the things you don't see, like 8 billion other people in the world who just may not want your ideas of utopia governing their choices and lives. I am sure if you want to ride public transportation and not own a car you can find such a place and go live there. I live in an exurb in the Tampa region and the birds are just waking up, they make lovely music. I have no problem hearing them. I am satisfied with that level of nature in my life.
@@MAtildaMortuaryserver Their point is that only when one gets away from a city can one fully understand how much noise and pollution cars produce. Urbanist are interested in making metro areas better places to live. Yes, cities will never be as quiet as most rural or uninhabited areas. Yes, cars are not going away. The idea is for people to have alternatives to driving. With good alternatives, many people voluntarily decide not to drive, or drive less. Fewer cars make cities quieter, less polluted, and safer among other things. No one is being forced out of their car.
@@MAtildaMortuaryserver By the way, it is people in densely populated areas that are doing the most to preserve nature; city living is more efficient and therefore less impactful on nature. If you watched this video, you will understand that fewer cars on the road is better for the economy. If 8 billion people live as you live, it will be an environmental disaster. That is not an accusation, but the reality of the environmental effects of car-centric suburban living. I encourage you to learn more about these topics.
Trams are really loud too though
Motorists injuring peds and cyclists not considered an imposed cost is wild considering pretty much the only reason walking and cycling are dangerous is due to motor vehicles.
Incidents cost to those who pay for resolving them. It's a "water is wet" kind of deal. Virtually all such accidents happen because BOTH parties weren't paying any attention to the traffic around them. Trying to pin the blame here on either party is completely unfair. You should be thankful that the law puts responsibility mainly on the motorists here, which on the flipside gives pedestrians and cyclists a free pass to completely disregard basic traffic safety rules.
@@michaelbuckers How often do pedestrians get killed because they didn't pay attention and walked into another pedestrian?!
@@michaelbuckerspedestrians should not be held accountable if they were hit in a dedicated right of way for pedestrians, and to imply that every pedestrian hit and/or killed by a car was doing so by crossing a car-only space is naive at best.
motorists should respect pedestrian right-of-ways as much as pedestrians should respect motorist right-of-ways, and there are many places in the united states where that respect is highly out of balance in favor of motorists. the amount of drivers that have barely seen me while turning right at an intersection is to the point where my guard has to be up when it shouldn't have to be, because drivers are expected to respect the right of way to pedestrians and look to see if there are any before turning
Yea, it's kinda like victim blaming on a whole new level. But then again, they just went with probably the most conservative assumptions and still got the same result as basically every other study on the matter out there. While the numbers and methodologies differ and putting an exact number to a thing is a huge pita (which they are usually very very open about), they all come to the conclusion that car traffic is heavily subsidised.
@@illusionismm Car drivers must always ensure that where they're going they're not gonna collide with anything. You won't be driving for long if you crash your car every 2 minutes. With that in mind, explain again why pedestrians should be exempt from having to ensure this as well, and should not bear any blame in an event of a car collision. I mean just as a mental exercise, because legally it's already codified that pedestrians are allowed to act like morons in traffic and get away with it except in extremely egregious cases.
Sick and tired of all the optimism as of late. Crush me with the numbers, Ray.
Thank you, you've just articulated my whole world view
If the numbers don't bring you joy, get rid of them
@@CityNerdbe careful, that's a common form of political demagoguery that should be discouraged rather than encouraged
@@matthewhall5571I think he was making a Marie Kondo joke
I’m so very tired of essentially being forced to buy a car out of necessity, rather than desire.
Don’t
Come to Europe, bought a first car when i was 30, when my wife got pregnant;)
I hate driving to do mundane things too, and I hate when people, like Neil Degrasse Tyson, think this will be solved 20 years down the line with self driving cars, like please, we have the solution now, it’s called taking a bus or a train, if they actually took you where you need to go
You have hit upon the reason we have cars, and will always have them, in the last phrase of your comment "if they actually took you where you need to go." No transit system other than automobiles, bikes and horses (walking isn't really a transit system) takes you where you want to go. Busses or trains, and every other system I have heard of, suffer from the Last Mile Problem. This is a problem of all networks, where the last mile is more costly than all of the other distance combined. Busses and trains "solve" this by not going the last mile. @@da4127
@@da4127 Or safe biking infrastructure, for shorter trips.
The likelihood of a pedestrian being slain by a car also increases the cost of car insurance. Why dont they add a few more cents for that?
They believe they did when they added in the insurance costs. What they missed is all the costs that insurance does not cover adequately. Insurance might cover the car and the hospitalizations, but not walking around in pain for the rest of your life.
I like your use of the word "slain" as opposed to more a neutral word like "killed". "Slain" connotes a bit of intentiallity, a bit of causation, which I think is completely apropos.
Pedestrians don't "die" when hit by a car. They do "die" of course, but it is more accurate to say they are "slain" by the car.
I honestly should've dug deeper into how they accounted for the safety externalities of driving, because it was realy hard to understand how it could be zero even GIVEN an (unreasonable) assumption of every single driver always having maximum coverage.
It's not the car that slays the pedestrian, it's the human who choosed to slay the pedestrian, by using a car.
I think it's because the cost of insurance is categorized as a personal cost vs a societal cost.
I'm an engineer in the U.S. and I have never heard it called "benefit-cost" analysis only "cost-benefit" analysis. I guess it's just different fields using different phrasing.
colloquially, they're generally pro/con lists. And "benefit-cost" has the advantage of being in alphabetical order. But yeah, when you're pitching a project, the first question is "how much is this going to cost me", so cost comes first. If you're just comparing how things are, you might as well start with the reason things are that way.
as an engineer, it's important for you to let people know you're an engineer
I'm not an engineer, but I am in the US. And I've also only ever heard it called cost benefit analysis.
@@connor_flanigan I heard that was the first thing they taught you in engineering school.
@@chrisjohnson7929bruh
One of the most American things ever is a 10 lane highway that is extremely accident prone which doubles as a permanent construction site and is lined with accident attorney billboards. It baffles me how anybody can look at it and think “Ah yes, this is how to do it.”
Great comment
The ruling class can because it makes them richer and they never have to drive on it (or rarely).
This is how the US artificially grows their “GDP”. Just create more problems and employ people to solve them. The net productivity doesn’t change but the economy still grows…
Well said!! Even though I care about urbanism, this is so commonplace that I never realized how fucked up it all is until I read this and really thought about it
America, America...
As somebody who does a lot of hiking, how many miles a pair of boots will last for is actually a pretty major concern.
All the Appalachian trail stories talk about hikers going through 4 or 5 pairs of boots over the ~2000 mile journey, which can absolutely be broken down to a surprisingly high cost per mile. I've definitely walked the soles off a pair of boots and considered myself lucky that I was only about half a mile from the trailhead when it happened.
Just bought a new pair of hiking boots last week, so that when my bicycle has a flat, and my trucks onboard computer has crashed, I can still get around!
Running has the same issue. The rule of thumb is to replace your shoes every 300 to 500 miles.
After I wear out the tread on my altra lone peaks from hiking, I then use them as my daily shoe around town... it doubles their life and I don't need to buy tennis shoes
I maintain my shoes/boots and get them resoled when necessary. My cobbler is so epic. I've been wearing the same oxford pumps and vintage ankle hiking boots for over 9 years. I walk/runforthetrain about 11 km a day and do 10km+ hikes on the weekends.
It costs $40 AU to resole both shoes every 1-2 years.
10 AU cents a month to oil/polish them.
~1 AU cents to add my own finger loop braided laces.
We need to rethink product longevity and consumption!
I cannot wait to completely ruin Thanksgiving dinner saying that cars are killing our country. (My family loves their cars).
😂 Yes!
i suggest you just keep your ideas to yourself 😂
Look, we somehow need to talk to people about how they can love cars and love driving while accepting that the current state of things is too much. Like how you can love Thanksgiving dinner and recognize that having a heaping of turkey and mash twice a day, every day, wouldn't be good for you, your finances, or society.
You can love cars, and still think cars are a disaster.
I am going to my Joe Rogan clone of Brother-In-Law's place. I plan on just zoning out and finding some happy-place while they pass out such wisdom as: Colloidal Silver cures everything, how vaccines are a deep plot from the Rothschild, and "hey Nick, you like to walk, did you hear the 15-minute conspiracy?" - I made up that last bit, but it's only a matter of time.
Craziest part of all the discourse around car-centric infrastructure is that if walking or biking was more convenient, then only the people who want to drive would be on the road... Making it more convenient for drivers in the end even if they might have to go down a few blocks to find somewhere to park. It's literally a win-win if we make cities built for people instead of cars
That is a steaming pile. Romanticized bullshit put out by utiopian idealists that is so impractical it is not even worth discussion. Bicycles are great once you are old enough to use them out of sight of parental control, but not too old to still be able to ride, and of course people with disabilities cannot use them, like myself, a disabled vet who can barely walk. In your paradise we would be prisoners. But bicycles and cars cannot successfully share roads, one or the other has to lose out. Let's see you move furniture on a bike, or 400 acres of harvested corn, or 60 tons of iron ore, or 12,000 chickens. You long for a world like Belgium or Holland where you can live your entire life without ever having to go more than 3 miles from your home? What is stopping you? This nation is gigantic, mass transportation only works in high urban density regions. And it is high density populations that allow for the public transport Europe has. Holland has 1,353 people per square mile. The US has 93 people per square mile, and Canada 11. That is nowhere near enough people to economically provide public transit.
The problem is making walking and biking more convenient will generally make driving more inconvenient. Less drivers but worse infrastructure isn't really a net positive
@@racool911 The most that happens to inconvenience drives is maybe they have to drive a few extra blocks down or drive a little slower in a city, which is something they should be doing anyways. It doesn't really make driving *that* much worse. We see that in European cities! Cars are still prevalent there, but there's infrastructure for the people who actually live in the city too
@@JakeTheJay My point was that it doesn't make driving any better either. I found driving in European cities just as bad as America. It'll be hard to get drivers on board to make such drastic changes if they don't feel like they'll benefit. Getting rid of work time traffic is a great benefit, but I'm not sure if trains will actually reduce it enough for people to care.
Unfortunately, cities want to charge a million dollars a square foot for housing, yet all the jobs in the city don’t pay a salary to support that kind of lifestyle. Which means we have to commute and car vs public transportation all depends on where you live. For example, I drive 40 miles to work. Takes about an hour/hour and some change. Public transportation would be a mere 3+ hours EACH WAY!
Old guy here. We KNEW all this 50-60 years ago, but no one cared. We just kept building more and more roads, decimating transit systems and promoting car use every way we could. What a bunch of putzes we are in this country! Idiocracy!!
Car dealers are just too good with words
There are some fascinating books (I read one, can't remember the name) about car manufacturers lobbying Eisenhower-era politicians to create the interstate highway system at the expense of rail (we had some pretty good rail, family worked for the railroads, back in the day). So it didn't just "happen" it was the result of manufacturers wanting to sell product and the suburbanization of America (so bad planning along with lobbying, yes, we see the results).
Cars are financially yummy for capitalism.
...Things aren't done the _best_ way, they're done in a way that will make someone money.
It's really sad how many decisions in this country are made for a few rich corporate benefits at the expense of the rest of us.
the great American dream! How else are we gonna get our lard asses around!! Let's see, live in the burbs nearest public transport is a bus 4 blocks away and work on the other side of the city requiring changing bus 4 times to get there or twice plus a train plus another bus and 15 minutes walking each end. Moved to Singapore, 10min walk to MRT (20min trip in blissful aircon) and 10min walk at other end with time to grab a coffee! Could even take a bus at each end if I wanted to continue that blissful aircon door to door!! Didn't even consider driving, the cost of owning a car here would make most Americans weep!
As someone who lives in Canada, the moral of the story is that things suck here just like the U.S., but the difference is we quantify just how much it sucks!
There’s been more transit and urbanism activities in Canadian cities than US. The largest (most impactful) rail transit projects in the US are in Seattle and LA but aren’t expected to completed past 2040. Meanwhile Toronto, Vancouver and others are farther along their transformative projects. It feels like Canada is about 20-30 years of planning and investment of the US. And construction costs are expensive but not nearly the costs of similar projects in the US. So there’s more hope in Canada in my opinion… l mean here in San Francisco we have studied a subway line down Geary Blvd like 5 times and have surveyed the public many times showing enormous support - and 40 years later we don’t even have a real plan, or have even decided what we’re doing. We just keep waiting, waiting for nothing at all. Super annoying.
Is that why I keep hearing reports about how many Indigenous people your government finds buried, but don't hear shit from the US?
@@anthonysnyder1152 Montreal is leading the charge when it comes to urban redevelopment. Their municipal environmentalist party has had majority since 2017, and here's some of their goals:
reduce car traffic
give more room to pedestrians and cyclists
increase the residents' quality of life
reverse urban sprawl
Toronto is slowly changing too but conservative provincial government is holding it back.
@@CorporateShill66 Montreal highest for jihad inspired murders and human trafficking rates.
@@jamesrowlands8971 "Is that why I keep hearing reports about how many Indigenous people your government finds buried, but don't hear shit from the US?"
1) Not the government
2) No bodies or bones have actually been found.
3) You may want to actually research this properly. Try to find the results and context, rather than the ideological reactionary nonsense of the modern day.
I live in a location where everything is conveniently close; an Asian grocery store, Aldi, a shopping mall, McDonald's, and a major train station are all within a 6-minute walk from my place, making it unnecessary for me to own a car. Further distances I do with my e-bike and long distances I hop on a train. Greetings from Zurich, Switzerland.
Your country is tiny, very lovely, don't get me wrong, but small 😅
@@The_Natalist that's not the point. we were robbed. there was a fine rail system which millions of people, irish and former slaves in the east, chinese immigrants in the west, died building mere decades before it was destroyed so the public would have no choice but to drive
@@intellectually_lazy Ride the bus?
@@The_Natalist What bus? I don't have a bus in my town
@@narnianninja4964 If you don't even have a bus? Why would you expect a train?
12:40 is a really good point. I'm a truck driver, the cost to health when you start doing as many km's as I do is really tangible, and it's undoubtedly present to a lesser degree for all drivers. It's to the point that I set aside a chunk of income each week to staying in shape (good food, gym, massage), so it's a real cost and would be more (as result of poor health costs) if I was lax about it.
Turns out humans haven't evolved for sitting in a chairs all day long.
kms, huh? thats something an american would never say, lol. greetings friend, thanks for your point of view
Ug, if this got reported on in the media you just know they’d twist it into “Study finds that cyclists and pedestrians involved in crashes cost society money!” 🤦♀️
Anyway, really appreciated getting some actual numbers for this from a cited (and linked) source. Definitely not a perfect study, but a clear conclusion that cars are a net cost to society.
LOL! Love the headline!
😂 omg I'm dying. You're killing me with laughter.
@@keinschwein8467because *sigh* it’s the way media rolls with cash
"Study finds that UNINSURED cyclists and pedestrians involved in crashes cost society money!" Fixed it for you.
Lol, I hate how accurate this is
I'm not an anti-car person, but even I have to say that there are TOO MANY DAMN CARS in the USA! Not everyone in a 4-person family needs to have a separate car! We need real options for alternative transportation and MUCH better infrastructure...
This is my whole argument. I'm not saying no one should drive, I'm saying, make it easier for people like me who don't want to drive, so that people who want to drive can experience less traffic and more parking.
It's a win-win situation, but instead people are demanding a system where everyone HAS to drive. It kills me.
I think a ugly or beautiful city environment can change the psychology of people, their happiness, their interests in culture, art, history, knowledge in general hence society productivity and health which is an immeasurable damage
Edit: I mean it's the type of productivity that also matters, people tend to venerate money making rich individuals without asking if there is any culture or morality behind their business and maybe he's destroying entire forests in order to make the money he makes
Big time. My startup is looking to help this and provide some actionable insight to help drive this change. There’s jokes all over social media about the “cure to loneliness” being in the design of a city, but it’s very real.
@@jas.digitalnative Absolutely, in addition when it comes to loneliness there's an unacceptable amount of undiagnosed adults affected by neurological disorders that we're discovering in the recent years which is yet another failure of society.
Keep the hard work 🙏
Children's independence is another interesting topic. Not Just Bikes acknowledged that in one of their videos. A safer city -and walkable- allows for exploration and free roaming of younger children who get to know each other and have a life outside of the constant "care" of a parent. Which also would give soccer moms a lot of freedom.
@@Sinpractica The counter argument to that is what happens to those kids who grow up in that environment currently. Cities are hotbeds of thought and behavior that the majority finds repulsive, which is why they were abandoned in the first place.
Wish I could like this 100 times.
I'm a naturally cheerful, optimistic person. In 2017 I had to spend a month in Casper, Wyoming for my job. The place is so dismal and depressing, I didn't feel like myself the whole time. There's no culture, no good restaurants, no appealing architecture, no pleasant natural settings. There's a run-down mall which is mostly empty, and there's a movie theater but I never saw any cars in front of it. The people walk around like zombies. Nobody seems to be enthusiastic about anything or even interested in anything. I went to Cheyenne a few times just to get out of Casper. It wasn't much better, just bigger. When I finally left it felt like Christmas. Driving into Denver was like a dream.
Traffic is a trigger for my PTSD due to my experience as a combat driver in a war zone. When I detatched from this part of my culture, the damage to society has become clear to me. I have been kept poor all my life because I love cars. I am also permanently injured from a traffic accident. Its too bad the Netherlands is one of the only places that has realized this problem.
I live in the Netherlands. In our big family (7 people, grandpa, grandma, pa, ma and 3 kids) we have about 30 bikes. 8 electrical, 5 very light and fast and usual, cheap and old. We (pa, am, and 3 kids) are doing by car about 9000 km per year and about 3000 km by bike. Kids, shopping, fun, sport - everything by bike.
Since the ‘70s, I’ve been saying this, to little or no avail in a society whose thinking is programmed by repetitive advertising, not reason.
Sadly, it's also been long enough that car dependency is the status quo in most of the country, so a person doesn't have to think anything to fail to see the problem.
Precisely! The dysfunction looks normal for the lack of any comparison.
@@brianarbenz1329literally 1984
And the slogans from 1984 are literally true. What a dystopia that Ford, Chrysler and GM have wrought!
@@edwardmiessner6502 National City Lines, a dummy corporation run by GM, ARCO and other corporate conspirators, illegally sabotaged the nation's urban passenger rail systems, from Baltimore to Los Angeles. Then, the myth of the "love affair" with the car was fabricated to explain why passenger rail disappeared.
For cars, travel time also need to account for finding parking. I once drove back to my neighborhood in Nob Hill/Russian Hill in San Francisco. I was listening to a Giants baseball game on the car's radio. It was around the 3rd inning when I got back to my neighborhood. I circled and circled, looking for a spot. I didn't find parking until after the game was concluded. I could have walked with a limp carrying a 50-lbs bag of rice and still gotten home sooner.
next time have it delivered.
@@tomfields3682LOL! Have WHAT delivered??
@@benpholmes Your 50 lb. bag of rice !😉
@@tomfields3682 I didn’t actually buy a 50-lbs bag of rice. I just used that as a comparison.
@@ericdew2021 I know, just kidding 👍
Never had one and never missed one, 76 years old and walking has kept me super fit..
You are blessed
I strive to be like you
super fit huh? i bet you couldn't even fight your way through two hungry adult grizzly bears
Quick note: Laval University is in Quebec City, not close to Montreal, even if it shares a name with Laval, a suburb of Montreal!
The clip that displays the report indicates data for its research comes from Québec City and the neighbouring Lévis.
Laval sucks so much. It's a car paradise filled with stroads ew 😂
I love your channel. I live in Texas, and I really want the transportation system here to adopt these ideas. I’m tired of being debt ridden because I have to own a car. Cars are literally debt traps and strong indicators of wealth disparity. I want to be able to walk to anything I need within 20 mins and ride a bike for anything that might be further than that. I don’t see it happening much here, a lot of suburban sprawl with very bad mixed-use design that just doesn’t make for healthy communities. I really want way more public transit to be built here. I live in Fort Worth and I’m hopeful for the future of this city/metro it will go in the right direction. I often take the train to DFW airport, or to Dallas less frequently. I do wish they ran more frequent trains with better hours. Personally, I find Dallas pretty bad to get around in via bike/walking so I almost never go there.
Interested if you think Fort worth is better for walkability/biking? I've been to dallas and would agree it is not the friendliest environment. Haven't tried Fort Worth though
@@f50elite IMO, FW has a more concentrated downtown which helps in its walkability. Dallas is fairly fractured with several different areas that are walkable but with varying levels of connectivity between them, but it has a more comprehensive transit system. I will say that both cities are improving, but at the same time the outer suburbs cities are unfortunately getting worse.
I managed to get on a citizen committee to bring up issues and give ideas around our sidewalks and other elements of walkability, if you frame the issues from a standpoint of safety most people get on board. I'd recommend the same for everyone :)
@@CurtisGreenthanks for the tip about framing things as a safety issue; i will take note of your words!
@@f50elite yes, I would say that the core of Fort Worth is very walkable/bikeable. West 7th, West Magnolia, S.Main St are all very pedestrian friendly areas and I often cycle to these parts of town. I prefer it to Dallas as Curtis said it’s very fractured and there are small neighbor hoods that are walkable but if you want to get across town in anyway it is not friendly without a car. The metroplex as a whole has a lot of suburban sprawl, so these areas are rare and reserved only for the very central downtowns.
You want the portion of the slave system…to continue to be aligned in ways that continue human slavery?
What are you marketed as?
It’s acceptable to own a car and be a fan of car culture, and also recognize the problem with car dependency and want to do something about it
I have the same with meat. I'm absolutely supporting producing & eating less or even no meat but I'm also having a tough time chosing the vegeteratian/vegan option every time.
Yep. Love racing (on a track). Hate sitting in traffic, would much prefer to bike. Almost all the F1 drivers are keen cyclists.
The more people use alternatives, the more pleasant driving will,become
@@PaulSzkibik On the climate front, even choosing which meat you eat can make a huge difference. For example, beef is many times as polluting as chicken.
I agree. The world outside USA has a lot of cars, but not the imposed mandate of cars for everything and big roads everywhere. For example, in India people own cars mainly for status / prestige and weekend trips.
As somebody whose primary mode of transportation is walking, I can confirm that I absolutely go through shoes and socks faster than most people. A pair of sneakers lasts about 9 months before starting to fall apart, and socks last about 60 days (that is, a dozen pairs last two years) before I wear a hole in the bottom.
Insoles can help with the shoe part, and you might even find some that make your feet more comfortable.
these values align with my experiences as well. not to mention the added time of all of the people saying "there's holes in your socks" :D
Wow, you get 9 months? I only get 6.
I have a couple pairs of coolmax socks that are 20 years old and still work fine. I'm still on a quest to find other socks that don't wear out after a couple months
This is why I own a car. Why would I want to spend so much money on transportation?
12:49 imagine how much accounting for negative physical (and mental) health benefits would have put the number for cars higher
I don't know, I mean to be fair, I guess cars are considered the base case in the US, and people who bike and walk experience huge surpluses over teat base case.
@@CityNerd Well they are happy to be outside their cell. Prisoners are the only people this study could be about because they are the only group you are allowed to pay 6$ an hour.
The numbers look alot better for Cars if you use the average hourly wage instead of what you are allowed to pay chaingangs.
@@nox5555 Generally speaking, when estimating time cost you go by average income per hour including ALL hours of your life (not just the working ones).
So $6/hr (average) is about $18/hr (wage) if you work an 8 hour day, 7days a week.
If we assume their typical person works a typical 40hr per week full-time job, $6/hr (average) is between $25-30/hr (wage) depending on how much vacation they get.
So yeah. If you make around $25/hr ($50k/yr) in the US, this study reflects you.
@@EanMoody this study looks even more fishy now. we have a market value for 1 hour of our time, its called hourly wage and we also have alot of real world calculations based on it for real situations that involve the loss of our time and they made up a new one that fits their agenda,,,
Thats pure social studies and doesnt reflects the real world at all.
@@nox5555 You need to use different ways of measuring things for different purposes. Physicists use Kelvin sometimes, even though we have Celcius. It doesn't make their work "fishy", it's just the unit that's most useful in that context.
If we were to use wage rate to figure the hourly cost of people's activities, a typical person's daily balance would work out to -100% of their wage: they spend 16 hours of time on other things each day, and earn for only 8 hours. Heck, the cost of sleep would equal 100% of your income, using that measure. That's an obviously absurd and misleading result, so they don't use it.
You get a more helpful measure by considering a typical day as one unit of productive time, including all the support activities necessary to actually earn that hourly wage. Then sleeping only costs 1/3 of your income, instead of all of it.
Honestly as a young person it’s hard to feel hopeful about the future prospects of my generation, partly because no amount of facts and data will sway us from the course of big auto in America.
The fact is that people of all generations value freedom and privacy.
@@richatlarge462hardly anybody feels free or like they have a right to privacy in the US anymore
@@Skelekin13 Agreed. Which is why we try to cling to what's left.
@@richatlarge462What exactly is free about having exclusively cars to get around?
@@habe1717 the need for licensce, insurance, consent to being stopped by road pirates, taxes, presumably this is what ameritards call "freedom"
I like cars and I like driving, but I don't like sitting in traffic for hours or being dependent on my car for everything. For me it's just another form of transportation, but for most Americans it is a way of life.
cars today are good for sport, not efficient transportation for people.
I want a car for going to rural areas but driving around your own city every day makes no sense. There should be adequate transit and walkability. People shouldn’t be forced to own cars just to live
In places where there aren't better options, that's understandable. We simply want to get quickly and safely to and from our destinations. I say this as a weirdo who refuses to drive in a rural area with little-to-no walk/bike/bus/rail infra. I try to focus on supporting systemic change over convincing others to struggle against the current challenges.
@@NickCombs in rural areas it is different, but in the cities and suburbs no one is driving quickly anywhere. they're sitting in traffic, raging at bicyclists and pedestrians.
@@Alex-od7nl Oh I know it. Just agreeing with you that on the right stretch of road, driving can be the best option and quite enjoyable.
The land use costs are definitely grossly underestimated since an auto-oriented business that otherwise wouldn't be takes just as much infrastructure costs for the acreage of land consumed while paying 1/3 or less in property taxes due to cheaper land values. On top of that a thriving economic ecosystem of small businesses is replaced with a monoculture of corporate franchises where the franchisees themselves are corporations. 😔
SoCal resident here. I can guarantee that in the LA metro area, if one's workplace and residence is close to metrolink then the time cost of public transportation is *far* lower than driving. It is not legal (nor reasonable) to work on your laptop in the car even while stuck in traffic. With metrolink, once I take my seat I can start work (metrolink trains have desks) and I can watch all the immobilized cars on the freeway as I zip by checking and responding to emails.
Public transit has significantly *lower* time costs than driving (at least in socal)
Or you could do something other than work.
@@richatlarge462 sure, but I am discussing commuter time efficiency specifically.
@@homomorphic you could *still* do something other than work... Life is too short
I didn't realize just how difficult it is to know the true cost of anything.
ikr
Yeah, externalities are hard to quantify. Especially for environmental impact, where much of the cost occurs in the future.
And by the time we do, it's already too late.
the only one who knows, ultimately, is Mother Nature.
"I didn't realize just how difficult it is to know the true cost of anything."
- Some people say it was one of the reasons why Soviet Union failed.
When I went to engineering school in the Midwestern USA a few decades ago, they taught us "cost-benefit analysis" in that order. "Cost-benefit analysis" seems to roll off the tongue better, but it does put the negative adjective (cost) first. When I lived in Europe a few years ago, not having a car was great. It saved me a lot of money, although I did rely on trams and busses instead of bicycling. I am hoping to move to an EU country again by some point in 2025.
Even outside of engineering, the phrase is more commonly cost-benefit analysis. In fact, this video is the first time I have ever heard someone reverse the order of those words.
@@TakenTook Same. I'm also midwestern, like the OP
Just don't use long distance trains ( save fast railways like the German ICE ). They are slow expensive break down often and strikes happen.
@@lioneldemun6033 Wrong TH-cam channel.
"An Ubereats driver delivering a fried chicken sandwich gets to impose delay on a delivery truck carrying a million dollars worth of semiconductors. It’s just wild stuff."
I really never thought of it that way and yes, that's extremely wild stuff.
It gets worse. Most gig economy "employees" are subsidising Wall st by devaluing their personal transport more rapidly than it's designed for by using it for commercial purposes. They're not small business operators, so they don't generally factor in running costs into their decisions and typically 'pick up some deliveries' as a "side-gig" while being happy to receive something resembling minimum wage BEFORE expenses. But the vehicles that are already in their 'inventory' are usually nowhere near as efficient as the types businesses choose.
Now consider the externalized costs of protestors blocking a bridge or road so that both the Ubereats driver and the delivery truck driver are delayed for hours.
@@richatlarge462 I considered them. The cost benefit of a free society where people are able to protest their government who are destroying the environment highly outweighs the chicken sandwich and the semiconductors. Thanks.
@@KudosToYou By that same measure, anybody could protest anything at all by blocking you from getting to the airport or hospital. As long as they just knew they were morally right lol.
@@richatlarge462 lol, nice concern troll.
I think we make a big mistake when we don't consider the resiliency of our transportation networks when we're doing evaluation. I-5 in LA and more recently US-50 in West Sacramento are great examples of car-centric infrastructure going tits up and leaving a whole bunch of motorists with no good option because they haven't considered resiliency in advance. Bikes are basically free resiliency as long as you don't live in a car-dependent suburb that is 30 minutes from everything.
The astronomically inflated new and used car prices during the pandemic were another good example of something that could have been avoided: the people that absolutely needed to purchase cars at that time were the ones that didn't have access to a resilient transportation network.
You consider bicycles resilient transportation??? And before you answer no I'm not saying PERSONAL motor vehicles are resilient, hellllll no they're not, but bicycles is your best solution, really? You choose bicycles over TRAINS, and busses???
Very interesting study. Overall it makes sense, but I agree with you that it was a little odd what the authors of the study did with regards to crash costs. Even if you wish to avoid double-counting the costs of crashes by not including insurance, don't traffic fatalities still impose costs on society by reducing labor productivity because you know... they die??? I think the authors of the study really dropped the ball on that one. Other than that, it wasn't a bad study in my opinion.
maybe that was part of health costs? not clear
@@isaacliu896 Possibly, but I don't think so. The health stuff was included on the benefits side because of the health benefits that walking and biking bring as well as their reduced burden on the healthcare system. I could be wrong though, CN can confirm if he wants.
"Even if you wish to avoid double-counting the costs of crashes by not including insurance, don't traffic fatalities still impose costs on society by reducing labor productivity because you know... they die???"
That's what insurance is for. Insurance will, as a matter of course, fight to pay as little as is legally required, but they do pay out what is therefor (legally) the value of that life. It's just a problem inherent to boiling everything down to a dollar value. Plus, cars crashing into cars aren't fatal very often, especially when the roads & cars are well designed. You're surrounded by a safety bubble of metal crumple zones & air bags, the only way you're dying is if you get T-boned or into a high speed head on collision. Or, well, there's a lot of ways actually, but the point is, insurance is *supposed to* cover it. Again, it doesn't in actuality, but that's beyond the scope of this study, it isn't about insurance reform.
Now, putting "a car could run you over" as an externality that walking imposes on the other hand, is absolutely bizarre. Like, I can maybe see the "you're not surrounded by a ton of metal keeping you safe" argument here, but the main reason that's a problem is if someone else hits you with their safety-ton-of-metal. Doesn't make sense that they're avoiding double counting Insurance, but don't mind that this should already be covered by the car's insurance. Maybe it's referring to bike-on-bike or pedestrian-on-pedestrian collisions, which tend to be uninsured?
@@LibertyMonk Oh yeah you're right about the insurance thing. That's my bad.
Also, collisions and crashes increase congestion costs because some of the roadway lanes are blocked, particularly at intersections, and because people typically motorists literally have to stop and look out of their own compulsiveness.
In India, roads are made wider and with that, more cars are sold in the market and the traffic congestion increases. Wider roads don't make less traffic, it just worsens the traffic congestion. I lived in Spain for nine months. I loved the transportation system there and with less cars, air pollution was less.
Cars were a disaster for my home finances. Got rid of them, and it was the best decision ever. I bet the car-free living joy can be scaled up.
In NA, you have to be either very lucky or very inconvenienced to have it as an option. Maybe a bit of both, speaking from personal experience. It's simply not a viable option for most people here.
Blame your own poor car decisions, not cars themselves. I've been driving the same car for 11 years which I purchased for $19k, so if you add cost of fuel, insurance and maintenance, it doesn't cost me more than 3k per year total. If $3k per year makes or breaks your home finances, there are much bigger problems here
@@FabioTerasaka Everyone's circumstances are different and cost of living varies wildly by location. Glad you're able to keep it low-ish with $3k/yr, but I'll stick with my Himiway $1.5k/5yr (very conservative estimate)
@@FabioTerasakathey were just sharing their personal experience... Everyone has different lives and circumstances, believe it or not
Unfortunately I realistically cant give away my car based on where i live and how im financing it
so I used to ride my bike to work every day for like 3 years, but it was getting way too dangerous(almost died like 3 times!) so now I drive(plus my commute got longer) and yeah my health has gotten worse for sure. Gained like 40 pounds in about a year, my blood pressure is rising, and my asthma is getting worse. I miss biking to work honestly... even if it was dangerous
sad story, wish I had a solution for this. I stopped biking for years and start again recently, but is tuff, really dangerous here too.
move if possible so your route is less dangerous
A disaster for society, a disaster for individual drivers, easily quickly and cheaply replaceable, yet still around. Absolutely maddening.
Interesting aside. The number of miles you can get out of a pair of shoes is actually pretty important to people who do major thru hikes like the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail.
These people will regularly walk 20-30 miles per day.
And they think making all cars electric is gonna help?
Oh, it's gonna be bad lol
I’m 62. I don’t own a car.
I just ride a bicycle.
I remember when I was 12 and
Telling my dad
“When I grow up I’m not gonna have a car, just ride bikes.” He said you’re stupid. Then when I was 19 he saw me riding my bike everywhere and said
You’re smart. LoL
I think we should create an "Interstate Highway System of Rail". Treat it the same way we did the interstate system starting in the 50s, give it the same amount of money, time, and far-reaching impact. The interstate highway system took about 35 years to "complete" (1992 is traditionally considered the year it was finished but of course they keep adding onto it), so if we started in 2025 we could set 2060 as a goal, which might seem like a science fiction year to us now, but I'm pretty sure 1992 seemed that way to people living in 1955. Our grandkids would benefit greatly from this and we should do it for them.
Recall that the excuse for the national highway system was so the military could get wherever they needed to go to "defend the homeland". To whatever extent the military is going to use the rails, the freight rails are quite sufficient.
Maybe not treat it *exactly* the same way... the interstate system was used to bulldoze "undesirable" minority neighborhoods and caused irreparable harm in the cities it cut through. A train line would be far less disruptive than a highway, but still, no matter where you build, things will have to be bulldozed somewhere, and I would hope things would be done with more empathy this time around.
@@stevengordon3271 The real trick for the military would be having multiple routes to transport a carrier group across the continent by rail.
@@claussenmusic That was certainly a byproduct, sacrificing what local leaders did not value, but it was not the purpose or motivation for the system.
Rail Highway System (just kidding, your proposed title sounds better because it harkens back to the 50s)
The issue is, to move from a clean safe surburb with a newer clean home to a newish clean home in a safe walkable inner city neighborhood is impossibly expensive. Real world example, trying moving from a Houston's Spring area to Houston's walkable Rice/Museums District area. Most absolutely cant afford it, and/or isnt willing to extensively downgrade their home.
Yeah, that's the big problem with finding somewhere to live in the US. Walkable, affordable, or safe: Pick any two.
If we can build more walkable and livable spaces, prices will go down, it's a complete lack of supply that causes those prices in large part
walkable places are illegal to build due to zoning favoring sprawling single family suburbs. The walkable urban places are expensive because they're part of a dwindling supply of pre-WW2 areas in our cities. They're in high-demand with zero new supply. Prices go up. We need to fix zoning, remove mandatory parking minimums. Those two things would make massive differences in american cities.
@@ericwright8592 There should be ZERO dedicated space for parking PERSONAL motor vehicles OR BICYCLES, Single Family Housing needs to be OUTLAWED, housing complexes should be a MINIMUM of 20 floors high, BARE MINIMUM, and apartments should go as high 6 bedrooms for large families. The only reason people mentally associate apartment with single people is because developers on design apartments with 1 or 2 or 3 bedrooms at the most, anything beyond 3 bedroom you have to look at detached housing, APARTMENTS CAN HAVE AS MANY BEDROOMS AS THERE IS DEMAND FOR!
Further, we need to demolish MANSIONS, and return the land that mansions occupy back to nature, for the rich people that can't stand the thought of living next to the rest of us, LARGE APARTMENTS WILL DO!
We also need to BUILD AGRICULTURE INTO CITIES! With indoor growing technology it is easy to produce fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, nuts and seeds, grains, roots indoors, very easy, and indoor agriculture produces 5X the yield of outside agriculture with a fraction of the land use, and is NEVER affected by the weather! Return the land in rural areas back to nature! Rural Areas and Suburbs SHOULD NOT EXIST, return all that land back to nature!
I'm glad that many cities in Canada are starting to fix zoning, get rid of parking minimums, and work on getting some reasonable density to further promote walkable neighbourhoods. I'd love to be able to walk more places, but even my "local" commercial area involves me crossing two stroads with really shitty surface crosswalks. Safer to drive, honestly. I'd also love to be able to bike places, but bike theft is a problem.
I have been transit only for the better part of the last 15 years. It's just becoming untenable where I live now. Constant bus no-shows, safety concerns, rampant fare evasion, constant rail problems. I would absolutely love to be transit only forever but we're so far from that being feasible as I get older and need more reliable options.
Just curious, do you live in Denver?
@@jenesoleil3922 No, but I used to.
I live in Southern California where people are dependent on cars and home price average a million dollars. A big reason for such high prices is because we built sparsely with the expectation of getting to places by cars and eventually ran out of space - sprawl. The insufficient supply of homes versus the high demand caused prices to skyrocket. What probably should cost $200-$300k if there weren't inefficient land use becomes $1M. For those homes, the infrastructure for the automobile are around 800 square feet of driveway and garage, +20% of space. Why aren't those costs included?
Exactly-- cars are responsible for urban sprawl and low-density cities/suburbs, which further compounds the externalities.
Southern California's main problem is having more than doubled its population in the past 50 years, in an area depending on external water. The freeways and roads are clogged because of the influx.
True.
The average home in California is probably built on 1/4 acre (1,000 sqm) of land, while my apartment probably takes just 40-50 sqm of land when you divide the total area by the number of apartments in the residential complex.
So basically you pay for land 20-25 times what I would pay.
I have a family living in SoCal, in awkward position in not being able to be in the suburban catchment area for commuting to Los Angeles or San Diego. Pretty much a lot of driving and getting stuck in traffic when I was there. Seeing that I am surprise how they are staying a float buying an expensive suburban detached house after living in townhouse, with not much new salary gained
@@TheRandCrews Young people are the ones most harmed. They must move far out to find affordable housing and end up stuck in traffic hours each day. When they give up and move out of state, the result is a graying of our population where we lose the mostly dynamic and productive sector of our workforce.
My solution is for local governments to entice workplaces with +200 employees to convert 20%-50% of their parking spaces to affordable dense rentals for workers. Those that live there can give up the car and walk to work in 5 minutes. The savings from affordable housing and giving up of a vehicle may allow their spouse to quit long commute jobs and work nearby.
So basically, even if you blame the victims of car crashes and be as generous as possible in favour of cars, walking and biking are still orders of magnitude better for society than car-dependency.
Bullseye
Only problem is bicycles are completely useless to 99% of us
Not if you value autonomy. The lack of opposing perspective in this comment section is baffling.
@@TrinsicOfSosariaCar Dependency != personal autonomy. If anything, forcing citizens to own, and constantly operate a big, expensive depreciating asset, to reasonably participate in society, is the opposite of personal autonomy.
I definitely get driving for fun, and wanting to get away on a whim, but commuting is undeniably a massive waste for everyone involved, in materials, maintenance, and time. It would be more productive to spend my hour/day commute reading, than working my way through traffic.
Ideally, alternative means of transit should focus on reducing the costs involved in commuting, while preserving the ability of the citizen to take leisure drives as they see fit.
As a side benefit, if a larger portion of drivers are driving because they actually want to, as opposed to being forced to (by circumstance), the quality of driving is likely to be improved. Theoretically, spending on transportation options could be of potential benefit to all, car drivers included.
This is what I’d like to see, empowering people to select the most cost and time effective options that serve their needs and wants, at a given time. I want to keep my car and motorcycle, but I don’t want to be beholden to them to actually go about my life.
@@TrinsicOfSosaria
Two counterpoints:
a) How is it an increase in autonomy if you are forced to drive a car? I would argue that it is actually good for autonomy if you have a choice between multiple modes of transportation that each make sense. But you seem to view this differently, which is okay. We can agree to disagree here.
b) Even if you say it is more autonomous, that is a purely subjective point, but this video tries to quantify monetary aspects. I, on the other hand, would argue that walking and cycling are much more fun than driving a car if the enviroment is suitable. That is just as subjective as your autonomy, but also does not factor into these calculations. The only way I could see actually quantifying autonomy for this kind of statistic is the faster travel speed of cars, which is already included and makes up a majority of the costs for walking and cycling.
I moved to Buenos Aires and don't need a car.
Back in Miami I needed to drive daily. The public transportation was horrendous. So was the traffic.
There are millions of work and home combinations available in Miami if you couldn't get one that's on you
One point about the time cost of biking, if you go to the gym regularly, and you bike every day, you can count your commute time as exercise time, and probably don't need to go to the gym as often
Yeah. Always smiling when my friends say that they need to commute by car, because they are going to gym after work and don't want to waste time. I am not saying that I am fitter than them, but man. I feel that by biking I am more time and money efficient.
People driving to the gym and then warming up on the treadmill are my favourite symbol for idiocracy
Ten years ago, when I lived just east of the middle of no-where, I would scoff at driving and infrastructure problems. Then I moved to Atlanta, hands down the most dangerous city for driving I've ever seen. And it's been one of my favorite thought hobbies to think of ways to incentivise people to get in the buses and trains.
The buses here are expensive and unreliable. The busiest routes run once an hour, and if the bus breaks down, forget it, they will send no back-up. You may as well go home until the next hour, and maybe it will be running. It also is $2.50 one way trip per passenger, and there is no monthly pass option. A family of five will be paying $15 to $25 a day. May as well drive. But public transit is the easy fix if you can just get butts in seats.
The real challenge is persuading drivers to not drive. The least draconian way I've thought of to encourage using public transit and biking, is to gradually reduce most parking lots and structures (exceptions for hospitals, hotels, apartments, and businesses in rural areas) by 75%. Yeah, drivers and businesses will hate the politicians that make that demand in law, but we can't keep expanding the roads forever, and I think in the long run it would be a net good, especially for large cities, to lighten the burden on the roadways.
I really appreciate you doing what you do. Hopefully one day our cities will be better designed to allow more transportation options. I lived in South Korea for a bit, and coming back to Vancouver BC (I know... We have it good here but still...) It sure feels like I have to really stay committed to not using a car often because despite being ahead of most of North America... Other options are still generally more inconvenient compared to driving here. Anyways. Really hope we make great progress in transportation in north america, and I think your videos are helping that! If you want any footage of SK transportation, let me know. I was going to make videos of it myself but have been too busy to edit. 😅.
Great comment! Would love to do more with South Korea and the far east.
@@CityNerd I just returned from a trip to Malaysia (including Kuala Lumpur), Cambodia, and Thailand (including Bangkok) and the pedestrian and biking environments everywhere were really bad.
The enjoyment of the time really does play a big role to me. Sitting in a bus or car makes me annoyed about missing out on time on the bicycle.
And the nuisances and dangers of cycling are almost all related to cars and their infrastructure. Dangerous bicycle gutters, bridges without cycling lanes, bad crossings...
And yeah I do take about 2 km of detours a day to avoid car-centric places.
Surveys find that driving to work is accounted among the most stressful component of _American_ lives. Walking, biking, and taking nice trains are low stress. Urban public transit, in between.
I lived in the city in a very walkable neighborhood and now live in the suburbs where driving is more of a necessity.
Why? In one word: crime.
American car culture needs to stop. Driving should never be a requirement to succeed in life.
In a world built for people, driving a car makes you a god. In a world built for cars, driving a car makes you traffic.
facts
If most people liked walking then they would be annoyed at someone awkwardly try to drive their car through it, not looking at them like a god. Also, that driver would feel annoyed at the difficulty of trying to drive their car through a crowd of pedestrians too. Since you did say a world build for people.
@@user-gu9yq5sj7cyou remind of a tiktok video of an American family driving through a town square plaza in Italy and wondering why locals are looking at them weirdly.
It literally feels like an asphalt wasteland of noise and ignorance every time I go outside
I live in the EU, and I do not understand why anyone would want a car. I have heard their reasons, and I think they are crazy. Walking and public transportation do it very well for me.
It's got to be the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of mankind.
greedy people in power pushing for what makes them more rich, not the most sensible thing
@@SkyForceOne2 True that, homes.
Love the dry, deadpan (and often dark) humor of your delivery.
Taking transit is essentially teleporting, though. I spend about 70 minutes on the bus every day instead of 40 minutes driving, but I spend that hour working. If I drove, I'd have an extra 30 minutes at home, but I would have to spend all of that time and then some getting my work done.
I feel like doing a CBA is the wrong approach. I’ve genuinely tried to use my car less and the only thing I’ve realised is that the externalities to public transport are hard to measure and therefore bias against cars when it comes to doing a CBA. It’s arguably more stressful because you don’t have control over when and where you’re exactly you go, you’re stuck with all the crazies, you’re more likely to be robbed and/or SA’d, etc. It sounds entitled and like I’m saying it from a glass tower but it’s true and those are real issues that must be addressed if we want more people, especially ppl above poverty line, to use public transport.
I used to live in London near a major road, the noise, air pollution and stress of just walking around as a pedestrian would make you go mental, I wonder what would have happened to me by now if I was still there
It makes me wish that there was enough dense walkable housing for it not to be stupidly expensive. It puts a lot of people into the same sort of financial trap the renting does here. I know that in the long run I am spending equal if not more being in a non walkable area, but the patently offensive price of housing in the walkable areas makes such an up front cost that it blocks me from being able to pick the long term cheaper and better lifestyle.
"It makes me wish that there was enough dense walkable housing for it not to be stupidly expensive." But there IS! There are tons of neighborhoods with dense, walkable housing...where prices are very low. So low, in fact, that the problem is coming up with the money to knock down the empty, abandoned buildings. The problem is that dense cities in the US have a very hard time sustaining economic vigor, low crime, decent public schools, etc. The rare dense areas that have these positive attributes are very expensive. But the problem isn't that there aren't enough cities and neighborhoods with the right kind of 'bones', it's that so many of such places have become undesirable places to live.
@@markweaver1012 Is the social collapse inherent in high density housing? Much of it does appear to be an unsuitable environment for actual human beings to live in. Fortunately I don't think high density is essential to reduced car use, it's only necessary to utilise bicycles and public transport properly. I live in rural Ireland, about as low density as you can get in Western Europe (probably still "sub-urban" by US standards) and am still only a 20min cycle ride from mainline rail. I own a car (or 3) though, the roads are terrifying to cycle on...
@@highloughsdrifter1629 I don't think density is inherently unstable, but it has struggled in a US context, and dense U.S. cities seem to be in a decline phase again in recent years -- not just older eastern and 'rust belt' cities, but also SF and Portland, for example. Right now, as a society, we seem incapable of enforcing laws and norms against petty crime and anti-social behavior, and people who don't have to live around such disorder are increasingly choosing not to. Fortunately, I agree that high density is not mandatory for decreased auto use -- and the greatest changes in that direction have not been bikes and rail, but rather work-from-home and internet shopping (which, unlike bikes and rail, are also great time savers).
At last someone has said it: Cars Are a Disaster For Society! They are indeed. They are dirty, noisy, ugly, polluting horrendously expensive to buy, run, maintain, insure, service and park. They cause traffic jams that affect those of us who can't afford to, or who don't want to own a car. Oh, and cars also injure, maim and kill. The selfishness of car drivers! Why do you need to buy a ton of metal just because you want to make a journey? I have been a car owner (although never an enthusiastic one), but I now find myself dead set against them.
Another problem with cars you didn't mention is the number of users who throw trash out of their windows on the side of roads !
@@lioneldemun6033 You're right! Car ownership seems to breed irresponsibility: 'I've got the right to drive as far and as fast as I want to. I've also got the right to throw rubbish out of the window - someone else can clear it up.'
I live over 20 miles away from where I currently work, I've got a baby and all the stuff that comes with to ferry around whenever we go anywhere. Cars are a necessity for most people like it or not
@@Please_allow_me In the UK many, many people live 20 miles away from where they work, and a good many people live a lot farther than that. Not all have cars, and, in London it would be impossible to drive, as there is nowhere to park. So, they use public transport. Many people have babies too, but they can't afford a car. They manage. Cars are definitely not ever, never 'a necessity for most people'; this is nonsense. Cars are probably not a necessity for anyone: Cars are horrible, dirty, noisy, unsightly and polluting, and killing.
@@PatrickMcAsey Okay for a start there is a entire country outside of London so what applies there doesn't necessarily for everywhere else. I live in the Northwest and I use motorways everyday as do thousands and thousands of other people. If all those people suddenly switched to public transport, it'd cripple the already shit and unreliable system that is put in place. It would also easily at least double or maybe even triple my commuting times as it would for millions of others because I don't live or work particularly close to a train station. People like myself who work 10 or more hours a day don't have time to spending travelling to train stations and waiting, waiting around for buses and I certainly won't by cycling over 40 miles a day in order to get to work and back home, I also do shift work which means often finishing at times when these services aren't even available, again as do thousands (if not millions) of others so please explain how that doesn't make having my own transport a necessity?. Yes that's right those people 'manage'. Well I don't work hard to just so I can 'manage'. I see these people without cars having to get a taxi home after they've been shopping, or standing a a bus stop in the rain with a pram and a bunch of bags etc and none of them look like they're particularly happy with it, I'm sure anyone of them would love to have their own vehicle if they could. I wanna enjoy life as much as I can as opposed to being forced to just 'manage' because some do gooders online said so. The UK emits about 1% of global pollution so don't give me that shit, even if the UK suddenly emitted no pollution whatsoever it would not change anything. People die doing all sorts of things but we can't simply ban everything that involves risk or the world would grind to a halt. Average cars really aren't that nosy unless people modify them to be, I've seen this first hand as people are always stepping out in front of me without looking, if cars were really that noisy I'm sure they wouldn't because they'd know I was there. And 'unsightly' is purely subjective because most people love the look of cars (nice cars that is, some are shit admittedly but not everyone can afford the same thing).
Here in my little town in Czech Republic, the car nazism went too far, people go even like 100m by car, when they have 2 breaks in work, they go home for that few minutes, so they drive to work and back like 6 times, they "walk" the dog by car, they go with trash by car (when conteiners are more far than 20 m from their houses) and nobody goes anywhere. Everyone is like "I have no time" or "my wife would not let me go" and when their shift in work ends, they are already in cars 1 minute later and at home another 3 minutes later and when they are 2 minutes late, their fat wives already call them about where they are. Nobody goes to cinema, theater, for some trips to castles or walk in forest, nothing, they say "there is no way how to get there" (translation: I have to walk from parking and that's too far) or "there is no reason to go there" (translation: Why should I go to some stupid nature or visit some castle? I need just some food, gas and beer).
As a person who is born in Prague (capital city) where people walk a lot and use public transportation, this village culture is absolute bizar for me, it really destroyed all relation ships here, you see people only in cars or in local supermarket, but if it was allowed, they would drive inside with their cars and shop just thru car windows.
And it's even more crazy, they are that lazy, that they don't even park at their gardens or in their garages anymore, because to park a car is a work and they don't like work, so they just let their stupid cars on road in front of their houses, so when you walk there or go on bike, you have no space, it's unbeliavable, when I am telling it to someone in Prague, they don't believe me. When I was still in Prague, it was completely normal to walk from work or school in bigger group and talk or sit somewhere for some time or go to cinema or something, here in a little city? Nothing, they just rush to their cars, nobody goes anywhere.
And we have bus and train here, it's not like you can't get anywhere without car, you can. But yeah, public transportation in villages is getting worse, buses go every 2 hours which is terrible, train goes more often, but becaue of neverending constructions, it's delayed very often, but that's not an excuse for going 100m by car.
And it's even worse, when you don't have a car, they don't consider you a "real man" and they don't even want to speak with you because you are weird. These villagers talk only about 2 things - problems with their cars and things they would like to do, but their women will not allow that. 😀 This car nazism is really a plague.
I feel your pain.
The autofascists from the villages move to Prague and bring their shitty car obsession there too. Czechia is overall incredibly carbrained.
@@skitlus335 Yes, as a person born in Prague who moved to a village (and I lived in other small cities also), I am still shocked with this car culture. It really went to far, these people for example never visited some nice places like 1 km from their houses because "there is no road" or "there is no reason to go there" and as a Praguer, I really don't understand this culture of beying locked behind walls or sit in car, they never been anywhere, they will die with no memories, never visited anything, they know just grass cutting and traffic jams.
@@Pidalin I moved to Czechia from a bigger more spread out country and was pretty shocked to see how car dependent people are there, despite the country being so small and, generally speaking, well-connected in terms of rails and bus services. One of the few good things the communists did achieve was to build sidliste with most things nearby and public transport to get other places too, so it's weird to see how new development usually is without basic amenities and public transport.
Even worse are the "sleeper cities" of single-family houses that pop up outside of Prague, where you're essentially stuck without a car - growing up there, completely dependent on your parents driving you places, must be torture.
Just moved to New York and this will be my first Thanksgiving back, getting ready to answer all the "why do you hate cars" questions
If you live in New York City it's usually not a good move to own a car. If you live in most places in the US, it is a good idea to own a car.
@@richatlarge462 What is and is not a good idea is not only highly subjective to the individual but the situation.
Great video. Driving in Los Angeles, totally sucks. Never seen a city so dependent and with so many cars. It's disgusting. People in LA never walk anywhere. It's actually not the cars themselves, it is the people who insist on owning and driving them, everywhere. Even the cycling walking trails in LA, you have to wait longer than cars at each stop on the road and you have to press a button and wait for a really long time. It's ridiculous.
Another thing: There was a german guy, that calculated the cost of parking in a city. Because people complain that "annual parking vouchers should be less than 300€". Since these parking is valuable land in prime locations, he comes up that a parking lot comes out at around 5000€/year cost of the opportunity lost to not being able to use the land to build much needed apartments.
In US materials, there's Donald Shoup's _The High Cost of Free Parking_ or Henry Grabar's more recent _Paved Paradise_.
Urban parking is probably collectively more valuable than the cars.
@@mindstalk Valuable or cost intensive?
I would argue that the VALUE of free parking is minimal. As it doesn't generate much future income.
A bit like having a factory with huge, expensive machines... that you don't use.
Where can I find that?
I’ve always wanted to calculate an equivalent ‘rent’ for a parking space. That is how much would the space cost per hour if it was valued at the same rate as additional square footage in an urban apartment?
@@julianpowers594 Yeah, that's an interesting if difficulty quantity.
'per hour' may not be the best metric. Metered parking is hourly or less, but also a spot market, but also usually not managed well.
For comparison to actual rent, you can sometimes find lots or garages with monthly rates, commercially or attached to apartments. A Boston apartment building I lived in had a limited parking lot, leased at $125/month per space, so that indicates a minimum that tenants were willing to pay to not deal with free but unreliable curbside parking. Of course, the US rarely has commercial parking in residential neighborhoods.
Sometimes you can find sale prices per sqft from the sale of empty lots, which also gives land value.
You can also imagine what someone in an RV might be willing to pay for a guaranteed spot, even if it doesn't have any power or utility hookups. Where a 1BR goes for $2000/month, it seems that someone might well pay a few hundred, even if they have to drive off periodically to exchange fluids.
Or what a food truck might be willing to pay (far more than most metered rates), or a restaurant expanding into outdoor seating.
Anyway, at 4 parking spaces per car, if you can justify urban spaces being worth at least $10,000 each, that's $40,000 of parking value per car. Compare to the average price of a new car...
@@julianpowers594
Sorry, I can't find it anymore either...
But I think it was in english.
I hate cars. We need alternatives and a new architecture.
Just a note: Laval University is in Quebec City. The city of Laval is outside Montreal, but it doesn't have a university. Not surprised that Laval University is doing this kind of study, Quebec City has been trying to get the provincial and federal governments to pay to develop their public transit system for decades. They had a tram project shot down by the provincial government just a few weeks ago, so back to square one for them unfortunately.
I've always truly hated cars. Never wanted a license or a vehicle, but the problem is the basic infrastructure of the city I live in renders it so the only places I can shop are (At closest) a half hour to 45 minute walk away. That's only going to, not coming back.
I’m a car enthusiast but, I think that if we had more public transportation options it would benefit me a lot. We would definitely have less people on the road who doesn’t want to drive, and driving would more enjoyable for people like me with less people around.
Exactly
And as a non-driver who loves road trips, I'd happily be the passenger 🙂
NotJustBikes has a video on this called "the best country in the world for drivers"
Not just less drivers, but also the drivers are less pissed off, and fewer conflict points with other modes makes driving less stressful too
@@complainer406 I watch him myself.
Instead of making cars smaller they keep producing gigantic, loud monstrosities that are usually used by one single person.
Blame environmentalism for that
Solid video. Former transportation professional here. I think a good cost-benefit analysis is "one" useful input in planning. Many cost-benefit analyses have a major flaw however. They seldom account for the distribution of benefits and costs, which are seldom uniform. In a worst case scenario, one group could pay all the costs while another group reaps all the benefits. Also cost-benefit analyses don't generally include "intangibles," such as the pleasure derived from travelling by bike or public transit. Typed while travelling by high speed train through the mountains of Switzerland while sipping a cappuccino from the restaurant car. Point made.
Do these plans include you being kept as a slave? Do you think humans plan to be kept as slaves?
I know MY family is tired of me bringing up how bad cars and our dependence on them is 🤣 can’t wait to add this fodder to the argudiscussionment 😁
All the more painful having just moved from my VERY walkable and public transportation-accessible center of Houston to the boondock suburbs 😖 of San Antonio to live with family/save some money. It is TERRIBLE, my car 🙄 has been in the shop and I literally cannot go anywhere here without it. Not even to a corner store (2mi one way up and down hills) and there’s no option to take a city bus without walking _over_ 2mi to the nearest transit center that only has one route servicing it that’ll take me downtown (not where I need to go at all). The special van service doesn’t even serve this area. The struggle is so real
100% looking to move to a nice urban! area where having a car isn’t necessarily required, and your videos are definitely helping my research 🎉
IMO one of your best and most interesting videos! Great breakdown.
8:47 So, to convince the car-brained zeitgeist, could we argue (as a rule of thumb) that transit/cycling/pedestrian funding should be priority #1 until congestion drops until it is negligible?
In other words, even die-hard drivers should be in favor since it would make their drive so much better.
NJB mentions this a lot - driving in places where there are other options is usually better too.
I love how even in his cost / benefit analysis cars get to impose their externalities (i.e sprawl and hugely enlarged distances) on biking / walking as a cost
Sometimes it’s really as simple as just running buses more frequently.
For instance in west Seattle some have run some numbers and found GHG emissions would be broadly the same if more rapid rise bus service served the neighborhoods at
I’m going to go out on a limb and say, automobile drivers aren’t paying their fair share of costs to society.
I won't even bother to debate the study discussed, as I'm sure its at least directionally correct, although there's no examiniation of mass transit options such as buses or trains, only comparing driving to walking and biking, neither of which is practical or desirable for most folks in winter. As a non-city dweller who loves his cars, the thought of living in high-density housing just so I can walk/bike/take mass transit is a non-starter. I have no desire to live in some dismal tenanment that costs me more than my suburban mortage plus taxes and insurance (plus there's better public schools). In short, nothing beats an auto for that sense of personal freedom to go or live anywhere you want. Sure, there's a steep personal cost, particularly in gas tax, But my freedom is worth it. The fact that millions of Americans left the cities (and did not return) when autos and road networks became practical tells me that they feel the same way. The amenities of large cities, particularly with respect to the arts and other cultural attractions are something I enjoy occasionally, but I get to visit them and leave afterwards.
My wife and I live in the city core of Cincinnati and walk/bike a lot. We only have only car (Cincy isn't a no-car city yet) and I wanted good shoes that held up, so we literally compare the bike and shoe costs against the cost of buying, insuring, maintaining, and gassing up a car. The irony is how some of my family was like "that bike is so expensive, you're crazy" or "why spend that much on shoes?!" while also asking when we'd get a second car!
It's so engrained that the ballooned cost of a car is needed.
Just wish our government realize it sooner than later
Oh they already have. This is be design. The car and oil industry bought the politicians to write our car depenseny into law.
Governments are almost certainly aware of this. But between the lobbyists and NIMBYs, why would any government change anything?
(Please apply this comment to every societal problem that has an obvious solution.)
Not to mention we socialize losses with car manufacturers and privatized losses with individual car ownership. Dollar for dollar, car ownership is an entropic endeavor and very costly both monetarily and socially ($600-$1000 a month of household income devoted singularly to car use). If that magnitude of money were to be allocated to a national railway system we’d be the leading country for transit overnight. Just embarrassing that we’re losing in this regard because of the car lobby.
To me, the biggest madness is that all that traffic is averaging under 10% payload. We are buying image, not transportation. If you start with a velomobile, it is easy to get around in any weather at 50% payload. For freeway use, the express lane should be equipped to let traffic run in convoys at almost no clearance, using automatic controls, and even re-charging while the driver relaxes, waiting for their chosen exit.
If you look at fuel efficiency of cars, standards are a lot lower in countries with a lot of oil (fuel) and not a lot of interest in the environment. The US is a prime example: cars are on average less efficient, much heavier, and have higher horsepower-per-weight (gas-guzzling) engines. Pickup trucks like the Ford F-150 or Dodge Ram are really rare in Europe; they are seen as too expensive, and unwieldy in urban environments. SUV's are about as common in Europe as trucks are in the US, and SUV's are about twice as common in the US as in Europe. That probably skews the cost picture of driving quite a bit. To illustrate, the reimbursement rate you talk about to be 65 cent per mile in the US, is only 19 euro-cent per kilometer in the Netherlands, while our fuel prices are actually much higher. Europe also has a higher percentage of electric cars on the road, that are much better for the environment and thus human health. Cars become cheaper for society when they are smaller, lighter, and electric.
But as someone living in a city where bikes are ubiquitous and mass transit pretty good (Amsterdam) I can say that cities become a lot better with fewer cars of whatever kind. Cars are basically the only things making a lot of noise in urban environments, construction or mass transit are nothing compared to car traffic; the space that cars need to be parked is insane in an urban environment; and cars are also the main cause of accidents and street-level pollution in a city. Less is definitely more when it comes to cars.
One of the factors that contributes to poverty and homelessness in the US is that potential workers need a car to get to the places of employment, and they can't afford to have one. Public transportation is mostly in cities, whereas many of the jobs are in the outskirts and beyond, and not on any bus or train route.
Company towns developed around a large industrial business (mine, mill etc.) because the people had to live within a short walking distance of their job. The owner of the business created a town where all services were available but expensive. The workers never improved their economic state. Once transportation was available to the workers, they no longer were forced to live in the town where the job was. Now the owner had to pay market wages and the grocer had to compete with other grocers. The freedom of personal transportation changed the economic system from a serf/owner system to a more free market system, leading to the rise of the middle class and well worth the cost of owning a car.
Good point, but here in the UK that change first happened after the Black Death, so well before the era of road transport. The second time it happened was in the 1800s, largely due to the development of the railways. Cars were very late to the party. My point is, mass transit/public transport systems are better for the health of the environment, people and personal finances.
The thing with travel time is that a brisk walk saves you exercise time that you would have to spend in a gym or on a track if you used a motorized transport (car, motorcycle, moped, ebike, motorized kickbike). Same goes for cycling of course, except you need a longer commute to avoid the exercise.
This is why a good commute length of about 30 minutes each way actually gives you more time than driving the same distance in five minutes (for the walk) or 45 minutes (in congested traffic against a bike on a bike path).
cars suck…buying them sucks…maintenance sucks…driving sucks…parking sucks…paying for the insurance sucks…I look forward to no longer needing a car!