Re: Changing car-centric assumptions

Dave Vandervies wrote: 
In article <kYfYe.8206$0u2.1523739@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
The Wogster  <wogsterca@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Dave Vandervies wrote:

The Wogster <wogsterca@xxxxxxxx> wrote:



There are also the less tangable costs too, like for example, the fact that most people are overweight, and hypertension and type 2 diabetes are at epidemic levels. Speaking of costs, the Toronto Star reported today that the cost of diabetes in Canada is over $13.6 Billion annually. The most common type is type 2, which can be reduced by losing weight, and that means excersize, and you don't get any excersize in the car. 


This is true, and even a regular two-minute walk to and from the bus stop
will help, but it's not a benefit that's going to get out of their cars.
As noted elsethread, the cost-benefit ratio that matters to people is
assessed based almost completely on the direct up-front user-pays costs
and direct up-front user-gains benefits; everything else is ignored,
either because they get the cost or benefit no matter what they choose
or because it's too intangible or too far removed from the decision to
be noticed without a careful analysis (which most people won't do).

For example, people often don't include the cost of the car, insurance or maintenance in their costs of driving, they only include the cost of gas, and maybe parking... When you add on $100/month for insurance, and $400/month car payments, it gets more interesting, because that's 6,000/yr. When you figure $30/week for gas and $100/month for other stuff, it's not hard to figure almost $9,000/yr. However most people will want a car around anyway, so the cost of the car, and insurance is going to be there anyway. However a car that goes 10,000km a year is going to last longer and need less maintenance than a car that goes 150,000km a year....

Getting rid of the car culture doesn't mean getting rid of the car, just the every trip ever taken must involve the car, even if that trip is to the corner drug store which is well within walking distance. 

No disagreement with that, as far as it goes.  Where breaking assumptions
that cars will be used everywhere or almost everywhere helps is that
the more people use their car (even if it's out of necessity), the more
they'll think of it first for trips that don't really need it.

F'rexample: As somebody who walks everywhere (unless the weather is nice
enough and the distance long enough to make it worth taking the bike),
I would never decide to drive (or ride in) a car for a trip that I could
make on foot.  It's not that I object to riding in cars[1], but just
that it just wouldn't cross my mind, even if it was -20 with blowing
snow and I had access to a nice warm car that would make the trip much
more pleasant[2] - I walk everywhere else, why not now?

Similarly, somebody who drives everywhere because they're usually going
farther than a reasonable walking distance and they don't want to wait
20 minutes for a bus will be more likely to drive for a two-block trip,
even if it's great weather and traffic isn't moving much faster than
the pedestrians - not necessarily because it's more convenient to drive
or they're not willing to get out and walk, but because when they think
"go somewhere" they think "drive".

That's a good point, for example if you have the mind set to use the car when you need to, and not when you don't then for example going to grab something at the store two blocks away, means taking a walk, something I have always done.... My car lives outside, so when it's -20 I gotta clean off the car, shovel the driveway, and warm up the car, heck for a short trip, it's easier to walk or take the bus.

Today I am driving to work, finally got around to getting a $#@!% battery for the car, and spent two $#@!&% hours, monkeying with the $%#@! acid covered #$@!%& bolts, to get the old one out, and the new one in, it's funny when the bolt's a SAE and the only wrenches around are metric..... One thing, I often do, is multiple combined trips, like driving to work, I need to stop and get gas, drop some films at the lab, and go to work, that will all happen in one long trip......

Of course, better than either of these why-not-the-same-as-every-other-
trip decisions would be to get people used to choosing every trip based
on a sensible (if highly simplified) cost-benefit analysis, because they
don't have a single mode of transportation that they're used to using
all the time; if you walk to the farmers market every few days, take the
bus to work, and drive to the grocery store once or twice a month, and
multimode to/on/from the bike trails at the edge of the city on weekends,
you're a lot less likely to immediately assume that a trip somewhere
will use some particular mode of transportation - the first reaction
will be to choose an appropriate one based on what the trip involves.

(But I still think the "pedestrian culture" we'd get if everybody did
it the way I do would be healthier, less stressed, friendlier, and in
general better than the car culture we have now.)


Very true, especially since a pedestrian culture is probably more bike friendly. Here is what I would find interesting, the freeway in a pedestrian culture would be very different. For example instead of a 6 lanes in each direction "freeway", you might have a one lane MV road, a one lane railway, a 2 lane bike road, all intended for longer distance travel. In major cities that might add a segregated streetcar lane as well.

Well, if fewer people drove, then transit, even in smaller places would improve. My mother lives in a small city, and she quit driving, must be at least 10 years ago, she takes the bus everwhere, then again at 81 she really doesn't need to go many places. 


Works for her, works for me, but it doesn't work for the guy who makes
a habit of giving himself 15 minutes to get somewhere he can drive in 10
but needs 20-30 to get to by bus.  Once again, this is more a matter of
"car is needed for my lifestyle" than "car is needed for my life"; if the
bus runs every half hour, there's nothing to stop him from scheduling
things 45 minutes apart instead of 15 - there's almost definitely
something he can carry with him to make those 45 minutes productive -
but since It's Not The Way We Do Things, it isn't going to happen.

Actually they usually give themselves 8 minutes to get somewhere that takes 12 with no traffic, then they get steamed that it ends up taking 25, when they could have taken the bus in 20 and biked it in 15.

An interesting point here, is Hwy 401 between Oshawa and Pickering, for a long distance the cars lined up can watch the GO train go speeding by, as they sit in traffic. Funny thing is, even though parking at GO stations is free, they keep taking their cars.......

Modern technology actually can help transit, imagine if the train could offer a wireless internet connection, use your laptop, and check your email, update your appointment schedule and read rec.bikes.misc all before you get to work......


Small/medium city transit, in my experience, usually only works if
you're not in a hurry to get somewhere, and I'm not noticing enough
people who make a habit of not being in a hurry that they'd make much
of a difference in volume.

Of course, if the people who wanted to get somewhere NOW (or even who
would prefer a 20-minute drive over a 5-minute wait and a 10-minute bus
ride, because they're at least moving) would for some reason all decide
they'd rather take transit instead of driving, the transit schedules
would adjust to accomodate them pretty quickly.  I just don't see it
happening without a big external push to get it started.


Very true, but big city transit sometimes is a pain too, for example, when there is supposed to be a bus every 6 minutes, you wait 25, and then 5 buses all come along in a hurd. The first 2 are packed full, the next one is mostly full, and the other two (empty) leap-frog the hurd and skip your stop......

The cost/benefit ratio is interesting, as fewer people drive, the costs increase the benefits decrease. 

Exactly.  And as more people don't drive, the CBR of not driving gets
lower.

When the average-car-CBR/average-non-car-CBR ratio gets above 1, we get
the feedback loop pushing more people out of cars and the ratio even
higher, instead of pushing more people into cars and the ratio lower
(which is what's been happening for the last half-century or so, or at
least as long as I've been around and paying attention).

So the key to getting rid of the car culture is to raise that ratio
of cost/benefit ratios past the tipping point.

Current gas prices help, and we may get another boost from a lady named Rita who is about to kick the stuffing out of the gulf coast of Texas. 


Yep, rising energy costs is about the only thing I can think of that'll
push it over, but once it gets started we'll probably start seeing
other things start coming up to add momentum.  I suspect there might be
a nontrivial number of people who would never try transit without some
kind of major push but once they've gotten that push and stuck with it
for a while will end up preferring it (at least for daily commuting)
and not wanting to go back to a car - if a few of these start telling
friends/family/coworkers how much better transit works, it'll pick up
speed with the people who would currently see a comparable or better CBR,
and enough of that will give the volume-based component of the feedback
loops discussed above a nice start.


Well, my brother-in-law said he heard that gas might hit $2/L if Rita does a similar job to TX that Katrina did to LA/MS...... With Rita as a Cat-5 this morning, that may be a good bet, guess I'll fill the tank on the car before the prices go up........

W
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