Senate The future lies in automation..?

Yeah, I'm so woke for being against car culture and sprawl. And so intelligent that I listen to actual experts with regards to the environment and climate change. Really ahead of the curve; my brain is bursting out of my skull.

 

I was, in fact, paying you a compliment.

 

Good point. The ONLY way forward is personalized luxury vehicles with robot waitstaff. Anything else is the end of humanity.

It would be totally unreasonable to even consider that, for instance, it takes less resources to make a transit vehicle for 100 people than it does to makes 100 separate vehicles for one person each.

Are we going to be savages now?! It’s not like you’re spouting some loud mouthed over-confident claptrap that assumes we are just days shy of zipping around in spaceships while our minds are plugged into alien virtual reality sex machines.

Oh, wait.

 

?

 

Stephen Hawking

 

Danna, the basic issue is that some people (and I use the term people in a way that only Saudi courts recognise for one of them) like to point out problems and skip any attempt at solution except to reiterate some vague, utopian ideal with a murky to tattered roadmap underpinning their "journey".

 

Pray for Fusion.
It will save us all

 

the problem with some of these discussions, or just internet message boards generally, is that people tend to take hard stances in one clear direction.

it's unreasonable to think we can just get rid of all personal cars, that humanity will accept that, and we will all live this utopian dream of harmonised public transport that helps protect the environment.

it's also unreasonable to think we can continue to live the way we do, sapping resources, driving polluting cars, damaging the environment, and being lumbered with inefficient public transport.

so perhaps instead of advocating either extreme side, we can accept that - even though we may be against the idea of personal cars - that they will continue to exist because they are convenient, and humans are lazy, and personal freedom and all that. but at the same time they should be made as clean and as environmentally sound as possible. automation can feed into this, as it will help save lives, which is also important. again, not everyone will want an automated car either, and that's also fine. however at the same time yes we do need to put less focus on individual cars that are ultimately inefficient, particularly if it's moving just one person and not a family, and better develop the infrastructure in cities in terms of public transport. as more and more people choose to live in more densely populated urban areas, we can build on that. it's not going to work everywhere though. but none of this is an exact science.

ultimately we're probably screwed either way at the rate the planet is being used up.

 

I’ve got mostly no problem with that post. It’s one thing to discuss likely policy outcome given current public preferences and the power of the corporations involved.

It’s quite another to try and ridicule someone as a “Luddite” for pointing out that there are environmental problems with personal vehicles. That’s what I was reacting against.

 

@epic I don't think the prevalence of car usage can be boiled down to innherent convenience and "humans are lazy." I live in Southern California, the epicenter of car culture and what it has done. People usually drive out of necessity; everything is spread out-- designed for cars-- public transportation isn't great (though improving in the immediate Los Angeles area), cities have only recently realized that maybe it's a good idea to accommodate cyclists and pedestrians, and for many people it's far too expensive to live close to their jobs. If people don't want to take even longer to commute to work or go to the store or whatever, they usually have to drive. Cars are also an expensive purchase which often quickly lose value; rideshare services quickly add up as well. I think that if the cities were actually designed to be more friendly to alternatives (i.e., denser), a lot more people would use them. Around here there was literally a corporate conspiracy to prevent that.

 

I'm on board for razing 75% of cities.

 

What I actually said...

I recommended 'we' all become luddites, not a single individual.

 

I meant that comment not to describe current behaviour, but more in terms of the fact there will always be some (probably a lot of) individuals who want to use a personal car, no matter what - you will not change the behaviour of everyone, despite improving things like public transportation. I agree that we should continue to introduce such measures - in London, for example, we have a congestion charge to discourage the usage of cars centrally, they're talking about making Oxford Street pedestrian only, there is obviously extensive pubic transport (and it's expensive, but that's another discussion) - but people still use cars.

 

There are buildings being torn down and built all the time in cities, roads being widened, infrastructure being rebuilt and maintained. All planners have to do is think beyond 2 seconds into the future and officials can't respond to developers who want to build more tracts of single-family homes with "Okay, as long as you have strips of grass that we charitably call 'green space'!" It's not as though there aren't cities who already recognize the need for greater density if we want housing for everyone and manageable infrastructure, though they still fail at cooperation and unified planning most of the time.

I don't see how the ideas I'm advocating are any less realistic or more "utopian" than an ubiquitous fleet of personal vehicles using a technology that has yet to be proven and built and maintained without being an unsustainable burden on the environment and equitably serve suburbs and dead/dying/impoverished rural areas.

 

No, but changing “everyone’s” behavior isn’t necessary. People with strong preferences in either direction aren’t movable.

But most really don’t care that much. They’re just doing what is workable for their lives. For millions, that has meant adapting to the many ways public policy and city planning favors cars. Shift those policies away from cars, and people will very likely shift with them.

 

London is obviously much better than Los Angeles, but it still falls victim to many of the same influences.

 

Unless you invest in pubic transport, which is very poor in countries like the UK, the shift is not happening. British railway system is a bizarre hybrid of public/private and is a total nightmare; I am subjected to the Southeastern franchise in Kent and they have a worse human rights record than China.

 

So does Europe, with its denser cities, actually emit significantly less pollution? Last I heard, trying to meet the Paris climate accord is going to be painful, even for them.

And why did we promote personal cars anyway? It's not like people didn't see America becoming a net oil importer from years away...and also we've done nothing to change this in the decades since?

 

The UK model is pretty bad. Privatizing something like transport--especially rail--is just creating a monopoly, even if the UK rail is broken out into a few private--and foreign--companies. They create local monopolies, and, worse, make integration more difficult.

 

I know.

 

Because I told you.

 

Having said that, what's the general through time from the home counties to say, Waterloo? 30-45mins from Kent, Surrey, Essex, Sussex etc? The private companies have frequent issues around inconsistencies of ticketing (or overcrowding, which mostly seems to be situations where Corbyn can't have a whole row to himself so he stages a photoop), timetables etc but given you have a large population travelling in from commuter towns like Woking or Sevenoaks to the City, it works as well as can be expected. Adding in state run rail might force a baseline of competition against the private operators, but of course that assumes they're not striking because the redundant drones who used to sell tickets might sacked for being redundant because of the automation Wocky desires.

 

Since the upgrades, I can get to London (Kings Cross) from East Kent in just over an hour. Which is very good; brought a lot of investment into my city because we're now a major commuter hub. Canterbury's economy has drastically improved with people moving out of London (due to cost of housing/lack of).

The biggest complaint, which the Left forgets is caused by the state, is network repairs occurring at the worse times; the infrastructure is owned by the state - and has nothing to do with the train companies themselves. That's the real problem. A lot of people, judging by polling data, seem to think it is down to the individual franchises. Upgrading lines is down to the state.

 

East Kent as in you're in Canterbury, and you're crossing the whole county?

I remember looking at Sevenoaks, or around there, and it's like 20mins train in. Bananas.

But um capitalism bad!