Can I hire you to do my grocery shopping? My last trip entailed a 35lb container of scoopable kitty litter, a 12-roll of paper towels, two gallons of milk, and around 13-14 plastic bags of groceries. You're clearly superior in long haul carrying skills than I am, so I would love to contract for your services as I confess I would struggle with all of that on a bus OR bike.
Eliminating car use in cities
- Thread starter SS-18 ICBM
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Can I hire you to do my grocery shopping? My last trip entailed a 35lb container of scoopable kitty litter, a 12-roll of paper towels, two gallons of milk, and around 13-14 plastic bags of groceries. You're clearly superior in long haul carrying skills than I am, so I would love to contract for your services as I confess I would struggle with all of that on a bus OR bike.
Borachio
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The fact is, though, that shopping more frequently (say, every 3 days instead of forthnightly) means you don't have to carry so much on each trip. And most supermarkets can deliver bulky weighty items for you.
The motor car has only been with us for a little over 100 years altogether, and didn't become the preferred means of transport until maybe the 50s(?). (Depending where you live. The US has been wedded to the automobile for longer and more intensely than anywhere else, I suppose.)
So, it must be possible to live without one. And a minority of people do manage. A lot of elderly people I know use a taxi (a kind of à la carte public transport system) to transport their weekly shop.
Your own vehicle is incredibly convenient, though. And that's the trouble.
The motor car has only been with us for a little over 100 years altogether, and didn't become the preferred means of transport until maybe the 50s(?). (Depending where you live. The US has been wedded to the automobile for longer and more intensely than anywhere else, I suppose.)
So, it must be possible to live without one. And a minority of people do manage. A lot of elderly people I know use a taxi (a kind of à la carte public transport system) to transport their weekly shop.
Your own vehicle is incredibly convenient, though. And that's the trouble.
It's rare for a supermarket to offer delivery in the US. Some provide special services for people who can't get out for whatever reason, but that's the exception, not the rule.
Borachio
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That's very strange. It's becoming increasingly common here.
I would have expected it to become common in the US, too. The business model is to shop more on-line, isn't it? Having your goods delivered is just part and parcel (excuse the pun) of that, I think.
In overall efficiency terms, in makes more sense for a truck to make a circuit delivering groceries than it does to have everyone making individual trips.
However, having tried it myself, I wouldn't recommend it for fresh fruit, vegetable, meat and fish purchases. But for cat litter and toilet rolls? Ideal.
I would have expected it to become common in the US, too. The business model is to shop more on-line, isn't it? Having your goods delivered is just part and parcel (excuse the pun) of that, I think.
In overall efficiency terms, in makes more sense for a truck to make a circuit delivering groceries than it does to have everyone making individual trips.
However, having tried it myself, I wouldn't recommend it for fresh fruit, vegetable, meat and fish purchases. But for cat litter and toilet rolls? Ideal.
1 van can deliver to multiple residences, keeping those individual cars from making multiple individual trips. If course that's moot if those trips are on the way home from the job that work at...
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
Precisely what I was thinking, smaller commercial hubs to serve communities within walking distance.
Exactly. The discussion needs to be about where the subsidies are targeted and whether they're sufficient. We need the tech, then we need the affordability. Other discussion risks being a distraction.
It's not like the world is a worse place if we get emissionless transport more quickly by funding it sufficiently soon enough
Me walking for groceries is chicken feed compared to emissionless being commercially viable (to the consumer and producer) and month sooner than it 'would' have been
Great idea if you live in a suburb that gives you said lawn, but in the US, our urban cores often don't have basic transport...so you get the density that makes gardening at scale difficult, and crappy bus systems.
For those that are easily able to grocery shop by bus, what city do you live in, and how many people are you shopping for?
Peapod services every major metro along the East Coast and Chicagoland, although it's pretty expensive. Do they not have these out west?
I didn't. I said owning a car makes my life more convenient, which it does.
I own lots of things that I don't actually need but that make my life more convenient.
Get rid of cat, stop buying paper towels or milk. Problems solved!
Simple, buses are not an effective solution for cities with low populations densities, as is the case in most US cities. It would simply take too long for people to get anywhere, and you'd need a lot of buses.
It's not unusual in the US for people to live 20 miles or more away from work (and 10 miles is pretty normal). This would be considered insane and untenable in a city such as my hometown of Rio, where most people use the subway, trains or buses to get to work. In the US it's also pretty common for people to live miles away from the nearest commerce. This is totally unheard of in say Brazil (which is as big as the US but much more compact population-wise). So while in Brazil most people can do basic grocery shopping walking or with a quick bus ride of just a few blocks, in the US they just can't. I pretty much need a car to get out of the apartment complex I'm living right now in the US, such is the sheer size of it.
If most people live far away from each other, and they do in the US, buses suck. They have to stop too often to pick up too little people. The result is that a standard 10 miles drive to work (like mine), which I do in 20 minutes, would probably take well over 1 hour (maybe two).
Tahuti
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I live like 10 miles from both school and work and I go by bike.
Everyone I have told about this so far considers me insane.
Well yes, you're insane.
But not as insane as someone who would venture to do this in the Texan summer. Weather also plays a big role in what you can or cannot do by bike. I once spent a couple weeks in Amsterdam on a business meeting and I used to bike to work everyday. I would never do the same in Rio or Houston, even if the distance and biking infra-structure were identical, because I would arrive soaked in sweat.
Holland, however, barely has a summer worthy of the name.
Timsup2nothin
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This relates to what I said about designing around the automobile. There is a grocery store I shop at that I could walk to easily enough. It could be said that it is 'right in my neighborhood'.
It is cut off from the neighborhood by a substantial block wall. To get to it involves following the neighborhood streets to one of our 'major street access' points, which for more than half the people in the neighborhood actually means moving away from the store.
Once out of the neighborhood and on the 'major' street the sidewalk is a narrow strip wedged between a block wall and six lanes of blacktop, with no shade. Even when it isn't over a hundred degrees the desert sun baking that blacktop produces an oven.
The store itself is set back from the street to allow 'ample parking'. So as the sun beats on that acre of blacktop the trip ends with a trek across a little corner of hell. The return trip starts with it.
The 'close shopping' is a selling point in this neighborhood. Unfortunately the entire concept is built around the trip being made in a car.
Borachio
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10 miles is quite a distance, especially if it's raining. But I used to do 12 miles by bicycle to work, when I was a lot younger. It took me 40 minutes going, if I remember right, and a bit longer coming back. I was never a speedy cyclist, though.
I don't think it's an insane distance to cycle. Just a healthy stretch. And a bit time consuming.
Still, that sort of distance in London is probably a lot quicker by bike. I did 9 miles, to some course or other, by car across central London and it used to take 90 minutes.
And, yes, it depends on the climate. Bicycling in the Sahara would be a crazy idea. Unless you went at night.
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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I imagine bikes would just sink into the sand.
Which is why the only real viable alternative is, unfortunately, gas guzzling SUVs (and tanks..Brought to you by the good people at Camel)!
Link to video.
Link to video.
I don't know about other countries, but in the US a lot of people live in the suburbs but work in the city. There is very rarely reliable public transportation from the suburbs to the city thus people buy cars so they can get to and from their livelihood.
