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

SeanW

No Pants wrote: »

I can't be ****ing bothered.

Wow, that's me smacked down by your thorough rebuttal.

:cool:

No Pants

SeanW wrote: »

Wow, that's me smacked down by your thorough rebuttal.

:cool:

It's effort vs. reward. We can make another ten pages of posts each, but let's face it, we're unlikely to meet in the middle. I've given my view and you've given yours. Do I win the internet if we keep going?

bambergbike

The winner is winners are the people who don't die from air pollution, a sedentary lifestyle or global-warming induced famines first.

SeanW

No Pants wrote: »

It's effort vs. reward. We can make another ten pages of posts each, but let's face it, we're unlikely to meet in the middle. I've given my view and you've given yours. Do I win the internet if we keep going?

Meh, it just sounds like you are not posting a rebuttal because you can't.

bambergbike wrote: »

The winner is winners are the people who don't die from air pollution, a sedentary lifestyle or global-warming induced famines first.

Let's be absolutely clear about this:

1. Do you agree with my analysis that the effect of the more recent environmental regulation will be to severely hurt or make it impossible for poorer motorists?
2. If yes, is this a good thing and why? If no, how is my analysis in error?

(I would ask the same question of you, No Pants, IWH and virtually everyone with "cycl" or "bike" in their username)

No Pants

SeanW wrote: »

Meh, it just sounds like you are not posting a rebuttal because you can't.

What's in it for me?

Iwannahurl

No Pants wrote: »

What's in it for me?

Repetitive Strain Injury.

bambergbike

1. Do you agree with my analysis that the effect of the more recent environmental regulation will be to severely hurt or make it impossible for poorer motorists?

Motoring is eye-watering expensive for all sorts of reasons that are unrelated to environmental regulation. But I'll agree that environmental regulation may, for some, be the final straw that breaks the camel's back. So, yes.

1. If yes, is this a good thing and why?

People becoming poorer due to rising costs is not something to be celebrated as such, on that much we can agree. Nor would a lack of environmental regulation be something worth celebrating, we have enough people dying from pollution as it is. So we have to set priorities.

I agree that it's somewhat unfortunate if some motorists end up being priced out of motoring as a result of environmental regulation (among lots of other things that make motoring expensive). It's unpleasant and uncomfortable for people to realize that they are going to have to give up driving or drive less frequently because it is becoming unaffordable. Feeling poor is not nice, and I think we can agree that it is a bad thing when people lose their mobility and lose the many social and economic opportunities that are only available to people who are mobile.

But mobility can't simply be equated with car ownership (or even car sharing, which is much more affordable.) We already have a society with rich motorists, poor motorists and lots of people who are too poor to be motorists, or choose not to drive for other reasons, or are too young, too old or too blind to drive. We don't want a situation to develop in which all these people who don't drive are marginalized and excluded from social and economic opportunities because our society and our economy are completely organized around car-centred mobility to the detriment of public transport and of safe, comfortable, convenient conditions for walking and cycling. That's a matter of social justice. If we can make conditions sufficiently pleasant for those people, it's wouldn't be tragic if their numbers were swelled by people who had been priced out of motoring (at least the overall effect wouldn't be tragic; I'm not ruling out that there might be hardship in individual cases.)

I think peak car has come and gone and that we can now organize our society and our economy so that people who don't drive are still mobile, still have opportunities open to them, and aren't made to feel like second-class citizens. We should be doing that anyway for the benefit of all the people who currently cant/don't/won't drive, whatever about the people who may be priced out of driving for one reason or another in the near future.

Some people priced out of driving will eventually look back on the moment when they gave up their cars (altogether or for short trips) and identify it as a point in their lives when they made gains in mobility. We all know people who drove everywhere for years and basically lost the use of their legs as a result. Motorists who avoid using their cars when it isn't necessary boost their chances of maintaining their physical mobility and being able to live independently well into old age. And in many people will find that their journeys are quicker and more pleasant by bike once they have found nice routes, got some nice gear (basic stuff like gloves and hats!), adjusted their bikes to suit them and built up a bit of fitness. It takes a while to adjust, but life without a car can actually be quite pleasant.

Iwannahurl

bambergbike wrote: »

I agree that it's somewhat unfortunate if some motorists end up being priced out of motoring as a result of environmental regulation (among lots of other things that make motoring expensive). It's unpleasant and uncomfortable for people to realize that they are going to have to give up driving or drive less frequently because it is becoming unaffordable.

I understand the point you're making, and I know I'm plucking the above from a much longer and more discursive post, but my guess is that in general terms the issue is a red herring.

For starters, a substantial proportion of the population lives 4 km or less from work or education. In Galway that proportion is 47%, yet a substantial majority of them still drive.

The image of a motorist bleating about penury and penalisation, while driving a few kilometres down the road and back every day, is not one that moves me deeply I'm afraid.

On the other hand, in the Galway situation and perhaps throughout this benighted republic, many motorists driving longer distances chose to do so because they preferred to buy a detached hacienda in the countryside rather than a 3-bed semi in suburbia for the same money.

In our case we pay all the usual costs of motoring, yet we choose to leave the car in the driveway for 99% of the time (so much that the battery goes flat on occasion) because there are so many good reasons to cycle, walk or (eeuw) take the bus. Meanwhile, neighbours in broadly the same economic, geographic and social position as us drive to the same general localities as we do every day.

No Pants

Iwannahurl wrote: »

The image of a motorist bleating about penury and penalisation, while driving a few kilometres down the road and back every day, is not one that moves me deeply I'm afraid.

I have a neighbour that drives to and from the Spar that's less than 60 seconds walk from his house. We have occasionally left our respective front doors at the same time, yet he arrives at the shop after me because I can walk straight there while he has to either reverse the car out of his driveway or perform a three point turn. I'm sure he considers himself as being screwed for motor tax, VRT, fuel, etc.

Iwannahurl

There must be loads of such examples. Might be a good subject for a thread.

I knew someone who regularly drove her child 400 metres to a creche, with the last 40 metres invariably being along a footpath.

Reminds me of Steve Martin's scene in L.A. Story, where he drives next door. It's a TV trope known as Road trip across the street, a comic variation on Too important to walk.

No Pants

Iwannahurl wrote: »

Reminds me of Steve Martin's scene in L.A. Story, where he drives next door. It's a TV trope known as Road trip across the street, a comic variation on Too important to walk.

I can well believe it. I remember walking through a town in California a few years ago. Big footpaths on either side, stretching off into the distance. Yet I was the only person that I could see actually using them.

SeanW

No Pants wrote: »

I can well believe it. I remember walking through a town in California a few years ago. Big footpaths on either side, stretching off into the distance. Yet I was the only person that I could see actually using them.

So what? You had facilities that were (I assume) appropriate to your needs, and you used them. What's the problem?

No Pants

SeanW wrote: »

So what? You had facilities that were (I assume) appropriate to your needs, and you used them. What's the problem?

None of the locals were using them. At all. I was there for a month and I never met anyone on the footpath. At all. I think you'll agree that is unusual.

Iwannahurl

No Pants wrote: »

I can well believe it. I remember walking through a town in California a few years ago. Big footpaths on either side, stretching off into the distance. Yet I was the only person that I could see actually using them.

In the Land of the Free it is not highly unusual to hear reports of people being arrested for walking.

Here's one widely publicised example, that of a father in Tennessee arrested for insisting that insisting that is was perfectly OK for him to pick up his child from school on foot rather than in a car, as required by some lunatic local ordinance.

Odd how some "libertarians" in this country get, um, exercised about a repressive State trampling on the alleged rights of cars and their drivers but are rather sedentary in their espousal of bipedal locomotion.

No Pants

Iwannahurl wrote: »

In the Land of the Free it is not highly unusual to hear reports of people being arrested for walking.

I did get stopped for jaywalking by a cop in a patrol car. I crossed an empty road without using the crossing provided.

SeanW

No Pants wrote: »

None of the locals were using them. At all. I was there for a month and I never met anyone on the footpath. At all. I think you'll agree that is unusual.

Yes, I would agree that is unusual, perhaps even bizarre.

But by your own admission, you walked on these facilities routinely and found them adequate, even describing them as "big". Your post did not indicate issues with safety, discomfort or inadequacy of any description.

So I'm really puzzled as to how the choices of everyone else affected you when by your own apparent admission, your own journeys as a non-motorist were accommodated to a good standard?

I'm also puzzled as to why the local authority built such a good standard of facilities for no one to use them.

Iwannahurl wrote: »

Odd how some "libertarians" in this country get, um, exercised about a repressive State trampling on the alleged rights of cars and their drivers but are rather sedentary in their espousal of bipedal locomotion.

Even odder is how someone with no argument stays in only to post puerile, cheap, bizarre cartoon insults and straw-men.

No Pants

SeanW wrote: »

But by your own admission, you walked on these facilities routinely and found them adequate, even describing them as "big". Your post did not indicate issues with safety, discomfort or inadequacy of any description.

Don't get me wrong, they were fine footpaths.

SeanW wrote: »

So I'm really puzzled as to how the choices of everyone else affected you when by your own apparent admission, your own journeys as a non-motorist were accommodated to a good standard?

They didn't. It was just an observation as to how the locals seemed to go everywhere by car. There were houses in the town and near the town, closer than my hotel was.

SeanW wrote: »

I'm also puzzled as to why the local authority built such a good standard of facilities for no one to use them.

Good question. I've no idea how long they were there, when they were built or if they're forced to do so by law.

Iwannahurl

No Pants wrote: »

I did get stopped for jaywalking by a cop in a patrol car. I crossed an empty road without using the crossing provided.

Maybe you should have been waving a flag as well.

Remarkable, however, that you got stopped for alleged jaywalking while in the US for only one month. You could spend a month in Ireland deliberately driving on footpaths, parking on pedestrian crossings, breaking red lights while kids are walking to school and speeding within the city limits and you wouldn't even be noticed by AGS.