Road layout, use of space, and motoring vs cycling (off-topic from shared use thread)

bambergbike

No Pants wrote: »

I was reading a piece on copenhagenize.com that said that "In Denmark almost 4000 people die each year from pollution from cars. That number is ten times higher than those who are killed IN the traffic."

That's a frightening idea.

It is frightening. But it's not remotely surprising. It ties in perfectly with what we already know about air pollution (not all of this is transported-related, but much of it is.) It accounts for up to 9% of deaths in London and is probably among the top 10 causes of mortality in the UK (according to the BBC)

On a human level, what transport pollution does to families can look like this.

SeanW

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

those item lower the pollution impact of cars slightly but do not eliminate it by any means and certainly should not be deducted, no more than the cost of fuel or tyre or brakes pads should be.

You need tyres, brake pads, a working engine etc to use a car to go someplace. Those are internal costs, as is fuel, to the extent that you are paying for the fuel and not in the multitude of fuel taxes.

The environmental regulations demanding DPFs and fragile engines that have more maintenance costs and shorter lifespans are not internal costs, they're costs imposed from outside on motorists. Key difference.

Even if I assume for the sake of argument that the figures in that paper are correct, it is totally misleading because it only presents one side of the equation. "Motorists imposing costs on society" and intentionally excluded the "Society imposing costs on motorists" which, in Ireland and Europe with taxes and charges, various motoring regulations, vandalism etc eclipse the former by a large margin.

It would be like taking a wedge of cash out of the ATM with your credit card and saying "oh look, I just made all this money, I'm €500 (or whatever) better off now."

That's arguably not a benefit as many (most) car journeys are over a short distance and easily achievable by other methods in way more efficient and healthy manners (walking / cycling / PT). All those cars also add to traffic reducing the benefit to society; causing traffic, increasing pollution, loosing productivity etc.

50% of our nations' workforce would disagree with you there. Evidently the car has a massively positive influence on the owners quality of life or theres no way in hell all this nonsense would be put up with on such a large scale.

bambergbike wrote: »

On a human level, what transport pollution does to families can look like this.

Wow, you lost on the facts so you take the Greenpeace approach which is to go for the heartstrings with a "please think of the children" article from a blog that has an obvious radical eco-left agenda.

Classy.

No Pants

SeanW wrote: »

radical eco-left agenda.

Huh?

SeanW

No Pants wrote: »

Huh?

Just from the front page of that blog:

1. He admits to predicting the end of civilisation as we know it, and that all his associates regard him as "the resident weirdo." This puts him on par with a passionate Glenn Beck fan or a hardcore Alex Jones show listener, I watched one of GBs shows where he admitted his wife told him one day of his doom-mongering "We're going to a party, please try not to make everyone cry."
2. He admits he let his 6 year old child out on the roads on a bike on his own without knowing the rules of the road. Kid causes an accident, but it's the motorists fault 1: because, being a motorist, its automatically your fault regardless of circumstances and 2: the motorist was "speeding" above the limit of ... wait for it ... FOUR MILES PER HOUR.
3. He claims to be studying to be a carpenter, but he doesn't want to know about the tools of modern carpentry, like CnC machines. One of the machines at his institution had a botched software update and he referred to it (or the company that made it, I'm not sure which) as - and I quote "the capitalist-industrial machine".

   If you need me, I’ll be sawing dovetails while awaiting the inevitable collapse of civilisation.

   Well if that don't beat all.

No Pants

SeanW wrote: »

He admits he let his 6 year old child out on the roads on a bike on his own without knowing the rules of the road. Kid causes an accident, but it's the motorists fault 1: because, being a motorist, its automatically your fault regardless of circumstances and 2: the motorist was "speeding" above the limit of ... wait for it ... FOUR MILES PER HOUR.

I'm not going to bother reading the blog as I'm not that emotionally invested in it, but I'm confused by the above. Surely that's the law and nothing to do with the author. Besides, it only says what the speed limit is, not what speed the driver was doing.

Cookie_Monster

SeanW wrote: »

You need tyres, brake pads, a working engine etc to use a car to go someplace. Those are internal costs, as is fuel, to the extent that you are paying for the fuel and not in the multitude of fuel taxes.

The environmental regulations demanding DPFs and fragile engines that have more maintenance costs and shorter lifespans are not internal costs, they're costs imposed from outside on motorists. Key difference.

so where do you draw the line is what is and is an enforced cost because of 'environmentalism'? should we all go back to using 85 RON fuel as it's cheaper to produce, leaded petrol, asbestos insulation?

All you need to do is compare the EURO I-VI emission limits to see the massive pollution reduction and resultant benefits as a result
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_emission_standards#Emission_standards_for_Large_Goods_Vehicles

50% of our nations' workforce would disagree with you there. Evidently the car has a massively positive influence on the owners quality of life or theres no way in hell all this nonsense would be put up with on such a large scale.

People are lazy and will drive simply because it's the easiest thing to do rather than the cheapest, cleanest, healthiest, quickest, what-have-you. where's your evidence for this massive quality of life influence if it's so obvious?

Iwannahurl

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

People are lazy and will drive simply because it's the easiest thing to do rather than the cheapest, cleanest, healthiest, quickest, what-have-you. where's your evidence for this massive quality of life influence if it's so obvious?

As stated previously, many of the costs of car use and especially car dependence are externalised and are not being met by motorists.

The costs of car dependence are borne by all of us, whether we drive habitually or not, whereas each individual motorist still gains something which is why they keep doing what they are doing.

It's a well known, and routinely ignored, phenomenon: ie the tragedy of the (unregulated) commons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

The ultimate commons is planet Earth itself (and climate change perhaps the ultimate tragedy, unless serious preventative measures are taken). Here's what the EU Commission has to say about CO2 emissions from the transport sector:

Transport is responsible for around a quarter of EU greenhouse gas emissions making it the second biggest greenhouse gas emitting sector after energy. Road transport alone contributes about one-fifth of the EU's total emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas. While emissions from other sectors are generally falling, those from transport have increased 36% since 1990.

CO2 emissions in Ireland's transport sector increased by 113% between 1990 and 2012. However, that aggregate figure also includes a 25% lower level of emissions in 2012 compared to 2007, a reduction at least partly due to the economic downturn. Transport-related CO2 emissions in 2006 were 168% higher than those in 1990, an average annual growth rate of 6.4%. (Sources: EPA & SEAI).

Spook_ie

So we need to kill off some of the cows then seeing as agriculture produces 8.2% more greenhouse gas than ALL transport
http://www.epa.ie/climate/communicatingclimatescience/whatisclimatechange/whatareirelandsgreenhousegasemissionslike/#.Uue2V_tFB0s

Iwannahurl

Spook_ie wrote: »

So we need to kill off some of the cows then seeing as agriculture produces 8.2% more greenhouse gas than ALL transport
http://www.epa.ie/climate/communicatingclimatescience/whatisclimatechange/whatareirelandsgreenhousegasemissionslike/#.Uue2V_tFB0s

Much of what humans currently do is unsustainable one way or another, unfortunately. No surprise there.

Perhaps, in the interests of balance and rational argument, we should factor into the CO2 budget the humans "killed off" by road crashes every year, 36000 of them in the EU and an estimated 1.24 million worldwide.

Alias G

Spook_ie wrote: »

So we need to kill off some of the cows then seeing as agriculture produces 8.2% more greenhouse gas than ALL transport
http://www.epa.ie/climate/communicatingclimatescience/whatisclimatechange/whatareirelandsgreenhousegasemissionslike/#.Uue2V_tFB0s

Yes the world would benefit if people turned to more plant based diets. Not sure why this is relevent here though.

Spook_ie

Alias G wrote: »

Yes the world would benefit if people turned to more plant based diets. Not sure why this is relevent here though.

It's relevent because skimming through a few posts it would seem that vehicle exhausts are being blamed to the the exclusion of everything else, where as even the EPA tell us that agriculture is prodcing more, I assume excluding particulates , therefore why not kill off some cows to reduce the pollution.

Iwannahurl

When the congestion and environmental degradation caused by single-occupant cars driven by cows reaches the same ridiculous level as that caused by human-occupied cars, perhaps Commuting & Transport might be a suitable forum for such, ahem, ruminations.

Cookie_Monster

Spook_ie wrote: »

So we need to kill off some of the cows then seeing as agriculture produces 8.2% more greenhouse gas than ALL transport
http://www.epa.ie/climate/communicatingclimatescience/whatisclimatechange/whatareirelandsgreenhousegasemissionslike/#.Uue2V_tFB0s

agriculture is different, firstly there's two types of emmissions

1) oil based from equipment, processing etc which is just as unsustainable

2) emmisions from animals / biomass which is a short term cycle rather than the extreme long term cycle of oil. Still problematic but much less so than oil based emmissions

Alias G

Spook_ie wrote: »

It's relevent because skimming through a few posts it would seem that vehicle exhausts are being blamed to the the exclusion of everything else, where as even the EPA tell us that agriculture is prodcing more, I assume excluding particulates , therefore why not kill off some cows to reduce the pollution.

No-one is blaming vehicle exhausts to the exclusion of everything else, merely that vehicle exhausts are relevent to this thread...not cows flatulence.

No Pants

Spook_ie wrote: »

It's relevent because skimming through a few posts it would seem that vehicle exhausts are being blamed to the the exclusion of everything else, where as even the EPA tell us that agriculture is prodcing more, I assume excluding particulates , therefore why not kill off some cows to reduce the pollution.

Because we eat to survive and beef tastes good. Cars are not necessary.

bambergbike

To drive this back from cows to transport: I bought a pair of leather shoes the other day, was overtaken by the large shoe shop delivery truck on the way home, and decided that that delivering a few thousand pairs of shoes to a shop is probably a valid excuse to use an internal combustion engine. It's not green, but it's an efficient use of resources.

What made less sense was that I seemed to be the only person in the entire out-of-town retail complex who had got there by human-powered transport. People weren't, by and large, buying anything they couldn't easily have carried home on foot or by bike (or had delivered, of course.) So they were using hundreds of cars basically just to haul their own bodies a few miles. That's not an efficient use of resources. Some of these retail developments are new builds, so it seems that my local authority has recently granted planning permission for a series of developments that incentivize people to use resources inefficiently by making it easy for them to shop by car (loads of free parking for cars) and making it difficult for them to shop on foot (there was no footpath coherently connecting one shop to the next without people first having to trek through car parks to get back onto the road and then trek through another carkpark to get into the next retailer.)

Iwannahurl

^^^Irish "planning" summed up in one post.

There a retail park in Galway where you can be clamped if you have the audacity to leave your car and walk rather than drive across the road to another shopping centre.

No Pants

What a weird sign. You can park here for three hours and walk around the car park, but if you go into any shops, your car may be clamped. What is the car park for then?

Seweryn

Iwannahurl wrote: »

^^^Irish "planning" summed up in one post.

There a retail park in Galway where you can be clamped if you have the audacity to leave your car and walk rather than drive across the road to another shopping centre.

Well, leaving the car park means going to shops, I would think .

This is one of the most stupid sign post I have seen recently.

SeanW

Iwannahurl wrote: »

^^^Irish "planning" summed up in one post.

There a retail park in Galway where you can be clamped if you have the audacity to leave your car and walk rather than drive across the road to another shopping centre.

Because Ireland is the only country in the world where shopping centres have provided parking for their customers :rolleyes:

Iwannahurl

Seweryn wrote: »

Well, leaving the car park means going to shops, I would think .

This is one of the most stupid sign post I have seen recently.

The signs are in a retail park, and are clearly aimed at people who would park their car there for whatever reason (including going to the shops within the retail park) and then walk across to the other shopping centre on the opposite side of the same road.

The shopping centre opposite does not do the same, thankfully.

Therefore, in order to avoid the risk of being clamped, shoppers travelling by car will feel compelled to drive to the other shopping centre, even though it's only about 200 metres away as the crow flies.

Such urban design, which clearly does not occur by chance, is known as "planning" in Galway City.

No Pants

Iwannahurl wrote: »

The signs are in a retail park, and are clearly aimed at people who would park their car there for whatever reason (including going to the shops within the retail park) and then walk across to the other shopping centre on the opposite side of the same road.

But the sign doesn't say that they won't be clamped if they go to the shops at the retail park. It's a really dumb sign.

SeanW

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

so where do you draw the line is what is and is an enforced cost because of 'environmentalism'? should we all go back to using 85 RON fuel as it's cheaper to produce, leaded petrol, asbestos insulation?

I am not saying these things should be reversed, but rather that their costs should be accounted for.

From what I can tell, the conversion to unleaded petrol added little or nothing to the cost of a car, certainly added nothing to the cost of used cars.

Indeed, even today, a person with limited resources can go get a 10 year old Toyota or Nissan something and get a car for around a thousand or so, i.e. residual value, and providing some due diligence is applied, can expect to have reasonably cost-effective, hassle free motoring. Until recently, you could also do the same with diesel cars.

The reason for this is that cars were until recently made of relatively inexpensive, reliable (depending on the manufacturer) parts. But in recent years, that has changed because of environmental regulations.

The ability of a person to pick up a cheap, reliable diesel car is gone now, or very soon will be, because of the particulate filtration requirements add massively to the cost and complexity of the cars systems. DPFs alone are major source of complexity, and no matter how well run the car, they are guaranteed to fail regularly costing €2000+ each time. Throw in more fuel efficient (but more frail and sensitive, with near guaranteed shorter lifespan) engines, and anyone that's looking to buy a 10 year old diesel in a few years time would need to have their head examined.

The same thing, if I understand correctly, is now happening in petrol cars.

The end effect of this I suspect will be to undo the democratisation of car travel, to drive poor people off the road. Maybe some people think this is a good thing. I don't.

where's your evidence for this massive quality of life influence if it's so obvious?

There's an old saying out here "The proof of the pudding is in the eating" which basically means that the merit of something is revealed when it is tried. I.E. very simply all these people are driving, because they clearly understand themselves to be benefitting very significantly by doing so.

And unless you are claiming that being a motorist disqualifies one from being considered a first class citizen and full member of society, or that a person becomes an un-person when they get behind the wheel, then those benefits accruing to large numbers of people must be considered, to an extent, societal benefits. As must all of the taxes and charges they pay.

No Pants

SeanW wrote: »

undo the democratisation of car travel, to drive poor people off the road.

I know, it's not right. Poor people should be able to poison us all too. It's class warfare.

SeanW

No Pants wrote: »

I know, it's not right. Poor people should be able to poison us all too. It's class warfare.

So you agree that the end result of all this regulation is to drive poor people off the road, and you believe it to be a positive?

No Pants

SeanW wrote: »

So you agree that the end result of all this regulation is to drive poor people off the road, and you believe it to be a positive?

No, I think your argument is horse****.

Note to self: must use more emoticons.

Chris_5339762

I always find this one hilarious.

http://goo.gl/maps/fBcKy

Two car parks and two shopping centers right next to each other. The first one had a stub of road put in so you could get to the future second one.

The second one built a wall to stop this and elevated the entire center so you have to walk about a kilometer... or just drive between the two. Madness.

http://goo.gl/maps/ITt4g

Iwannahurl

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

I always find this one hilarious.

http://goo.gl/maps/fBcKy

Two car parks and two shopping centers right next to each other. The first one had a stub of road put in so you could get to the future second one.

The second one built a wall to stop this and elevated the entire center so you have to walk about a kilometer... or just drive between the two. Madness.

http://goo.gl/maps/ITt4g

All approved by the local "planners", presumably, and who knows maybe even by An Bord Pleanala.

SeanW

No Pants wrote: »

No, I think your argument is horse****.

Note to self: must use more emoticons.

Fine then, you should have no trouble explaining why my analysis is incorrect?

No Pants

SeanW wrote: »

Fine then, you should have no trouble explaining why my analysis is incorrect?

I can't be ****ing bothered. You go right on thinking that cars are great or whatever and that people who don't like exhaust fumes secretly hate the poor.