Visiting Silicon Valley as I type this, and I didn't rent a car this time. Looking at the States with a pair of foreign eyes, I can assure you that this country in general, and California in particular, remains thoroughly wedded to the motor vehicle.
As a trivial example, there's a Taco Bell located literally about 300 feet from where I'm staying, but getting there on foot requires a detour of about a mile because it, like all other business establishments on El Camino Real (substitute your suburban highway of choice), is surrounded by concrete wall on all three sides except the one facing the highway. Which means the foolish pedestrian needs to walk around the entire block to get there.
Another trivial example of pedestrian-hostility: the city of Mountain View, being run by nice, eco-friendly hippies sucking on the Google bong, has banned plastic bags in supermarkets, mandating the use of paper bags instead. However, this also has the side effect of making it virtually impossible to complete your shopping by any means other than car, since paper bags disintegrate if you look at them sideways or attempt to carry them more than the distance from checkout to parking lot, much less (say) stuff them in your backpack, hang them from the handlebars of your bike, or even swing them a bit while waiting at the traffic lights.
No: Mandating the use of bags other than disposable plastic bags.
I typically carry a couple of reusable bags inside my messenger bag. For items which don't fit in the latter, I can lug a couple of bags worth of groceries or other shopping items easily. And the reusable bags are markedly more durable than even disposable plastic bags.
Which, despite being a nice idea in theory, now means that when you've forgotten (usually) and still need food, now you end up taking a car back with your paper-bagged groceries.
I don't understand what you're saying. I don't own a car. I live in Santa Cruz, where disposable plastic bags are also banned. I do my grocery shopping using reusable bags either on a bike or taking the bus. Where do "forgetting," cars, and paper bags enter into the equation?
Dunno, I'm here on a business trip. But the problem with reusable bags is that you have to know to bring them in advance, which is OK for the weekly massive shopping excursion, but not feasible for the "we're out of eggs and milk, please pick up some on your way back from work" situation.
Back in Melbourne I shopped a lot by bike, and I'd never put anything even in my backpack without a plastic bag around it, because meat leaks, yogurt bursts, glass jars break etc. A paper bag would rip if you tried this, and soak through instantly if something did spill.
> But the problem with reusable bags is that you have to know to bring them in advance
Or, you know, buy them in the store the time you forget. It adds a little expense, sure, but if your walking your not going to be buying more than one or two, and having a few extras around is useful.
> which is OK for the weekly massive shopping excursion, but not feasible for the "we're out of eggs and milk, please pick up some on your way back from work" situation.
Actually, there are ultracompact folding reusable bags that can easily be carried in a pocket or even fit on a keychain (and, also, would take a trivial amount of room in a backpack, briefcase, etc.) If you really have a non-car-using lifestyle, it really isn't that much of a burden to keep one handy for incidental shopping.
So what are you going to do when you can't get disposable plastic bags anymore?
Personally, I kind of like Finland's solution: plastic bags cost money, but not much ($0.25-ish), and they're way sturdier than the usual wispy ones in the US. So they're reusable (unlike paper bags), there's an incentive to reuse them, and they're way more functional and sturdy than paper bags.
I pretty seriously considered scaling the wall of the motel opposite Taco Bell, but a) I would probably have gotten shot, or at least had the cops called on me, and b) it's hard to climb when you're carrying a piping-hot Chalupa Steak Supreme. (And oh god, was it awful. Shudder.)
Incidentally, Taco Bell was happy to serve me my take-out in a plastic bag. Make of that what you will.
It would be nice if we could live in a world where Amtrak didn't cost as much or more than flying in a plane (source: travelling between Minneapolis and Milwaukee from 2007-2012).
Agreed! I would love to take trains more often, but when a flight takes 2 hours and a train ride takes 24, it's harder to justify also spending 1.5x as much for the train ride.
Source: Visiting family in California via California Zephyr vs planes.
Hmm. Why do Americans take trains at all, then? Only thing I can think of is "fear of flying", but is that enough demand to make trains worth running? Thanks in advance.
- There is no TSA gauntlet to run at Amtrak
- Trains do a decent job of serving nearby cities,
e.g. Boston-NYC-Philadelphia-DC and similar-distance commuter type traffic
- (most importantly) Train depots are in the center of cities, airports
generally 20-30min away
I think passenger traffic is run at a huge loss, which is only partially offset by freight income.
I take a train every year or so, from Los Angeles to Flagstaff, where my brother lives. It's an overnight trip that arrives at an annoying hour (5 am), but I always enjoy it nonetheless. I've take longer trips on the east coast, ATL to DC or Baltimore.
A large part of it, honestly, is the people. It's not really cheaper than flying for most trips, so what you mostly get are people who aren't really in a hurry.
There's something sort of meditative about a train ride, the swaying and the clacking lull you. And with the very roomy seats (or sometime affordable cabins), you feel relaxed and open. I've always had much more open and revealing conversations on a train than on planes. Plus, you just have longer. There's no rush. Just pleasant getting-to-know you conversations. Strangely, it feels very American.
When I was 21, I did the Eurail-backpacking summer thing. Three months of wandering around Europe on trains with far too little money. It was the same sort of thing, though, great leisurely conversations getting to know people from all over. Definitely one of the better experiences of my life.
I suppose to some extent my Amtrak journeys are attempts to recapture that summer, and to some extent, it works.
The Northeast Corridor metro areas (Boston-NYC-Philadelphia-DC; dense, 4mm+ pop centers all located within a few hours of one another) and a handful of other regional short-haul routes (San Diego-LA, Boston-Portland, etc) account for almost all Amtrak traffic; the long-haul cross-country routes are basically tourist attractions subsidized by the commuter rail segments of the system.
There are some routes where trains are more efficient, especially if you consider delays and time waiting in the airport. It's just that most of them are on the east coast, where you have a lot of large, dense cities that don't require cars packed closely together.
When people talk about passenger rail in America, they tend to forget that cities are pretty far apart. Milwaukee to Minneapolis, from the parent post, is still over 300 miles - about the same as Paris to Frankfurt. Even with high speed rail, Paris to Frankfurt is ~$160 for a 4 hour train, vs. $140 for a one hour flight.
(Source: I just looked up prices on the internet, regular travelers of that route may know better ways).
Trains don't always cost more than flying. Trains between some areas are cheaper than flying, especially if your flight involves a layover (personal example: I travel between Pittsburgh and Albany often. I need to fly from Pittsburgh to Baltimore before I can get a flight to Albany, and it costs a fair bit, usually around $150. It'd cost me about $60 to take a bus to NYC then Albany, but it'd take about 2-3x as long). Also, at the airport you need to get through security, pray your flight isn't delayed and deal with a bunch of people who board very slowly. Despite these issues, it's usually pretty clear when the time savings of flying makes it worth the hassle.
Generally, I find the more challenging travel choice to be bus vs train. The bus is cheaper, but has a higher chance of being delayed unexpectedly and taking longer than the train. Otherwise, they take about the same amount of time.
I don't think people making cross-country train trips are doing so for the convenience or to save money. As you can imagine, it's sort of a cool way to "see America" from the romantic perspective of how the West was first reached by Americans. A friend of mine did it this past summer, and though he said he would never do it again, it was a cool experience. A lot of the US between the Mississippi and the West Coast is still pretty untouched.
I might be somewhat of a special case, but even though the train takes longer, since I'm 6'5" tall, the extra leg room is very worth it, especially if I'm not in a huge hurry to get wherever I happen to be going.
The train is a more pleasant, relaxing experience for medium-length trips, such as along the Northeast Corridor. There's no ridiculous security theater, extremely limited chances of getting stuck on the tarmac for hours...
Fear of flying, not wanting to deal with the TSA, enjoying the scenery (the train trip itself can be part of the experience on a vacation), and there are some places where it is actually more efficient or cost effective.
My friend and I took a train from Austin, TX to NYC once. ~54 hours on a train, with an 8 hour layover in Chicago. Definitely glad I did it, but maybe not something I would do again, especially without a friend.
The story of how the American rail system has gotten where it is winds over a century and is a fascinating clusterfuck of public and private interests colliding and colluding.
Railroads and streetcars were hugely profitable in the US, until the government subsidized cars by:
- giving everyone high-quality roads
- setting road tolls to zero or almost nothing
- making dense housing illegal to build with zoning laws
- requiring businesses to provide free parking
- requiring home builders to provide free parking
- all the crap US does internationally to secure oil supply lines
- not taxing pollution, noise, or other car externalities
- enacting crazy regulations on railroads; for example, American railroads can't buy European trains, they must build their own custom-designed trains at enormous expense
and on and on and on it goes, all at taxpayer (or business owner) expense. An American on a road trip thinks cars are cheap because everyone else is forced to absorb the cost.
In happy news, they actually broke ground within the last week in downtown Detroit to begin infrastructure upgrades required for the M1 (Woodward Avenue) rail project.
Public transit offers a large externality: it provides transportation to employees and shoppers, which means a benefit to employers and merchants. There's also a massive benefit to those who can't (or won't) use transit and benefit by reduced congestion.
Early transit systems were highly subsidized by just those same parties. Concentrating on farebox recovery is a false premise, ignores these benefits, and results in underprovisioning of transit systems.
For the record, providing transportation to employees and shoppers isn't an externality. Imagine if I said that providing a subsidy for buying milk was an externality, because it benefited milk sellers?
Carbon emissions would be an externality if it were proven that public transport really did reduce carbon emissions.
The externality isn't the transportation, it's the benefit that those transported offer to employers, merchants, entertainment venues, etc. Few transaction capture systems properly ascribe all value and/or costs, the more so in the case of public goods.
It's the same reason why there are (in addition to specific taxes for gas or vehicle registration) general taxes for roads / streets / highways, or schools or other infrastructure. Even those who don't use them directly benefit indirectly.
Not all goods and services have such externalities, though in your specific case of milk it's interesting to note that agricultural marketing boards (the milk advisory board in the US, also commodity boards for raisins, cotton, beef, pork, and poultry) exist which pool marketing power among individual farmers / producers. Vaccination and public health is another case where there are very strong positive externalities which argue strongly for subsidized (or even mandatory) vaccinations to provide herd immunity. Another interesting case is the situation of totally drug resistant tuberculosis. I'd submitted an HN item on this a few weeks ago, the dynamics of treatment are such that it's very contrary to the principles of individual discretion / freedom and privatization:
In particular: there is no treatment. Once you've got the baccillus, you've got it for life. Some people are asymptomatic carriers, some exhibit symptoms and typically die, though over the course of several years (4-5 typically). Total isolation and quarantine is required to prevent spread. Which means that if you you want to encourage people to cooperate with quarantine, you'd better make it an appealing option. Which means: you're paying to put these people up in an isolated, shadow community, for the rest of their natural lives.
Gas taxes and tolls don't make up for the amount of spending we do on road repairs, police, rights of way, land for free parking, and the like to build the road network, but somehow public transit is expected to have a farebox recovery ratio greater than 1 when automotive transit is not expected to?
Accomplished mostly by fuel taxes of $0.38/liter, or approx $1.5/gallon. This is not far off 10x higher than the (ridiculously low) US rate of $0.18/gallon.
Does that include all indirect costs as well? For example, does it cover the taxpayer cost of buying and maintaining fleets such as police cars and heavy equipment?
> Not needing to drive is a big draw of living in New York City, where my oldest son lives.
Very much so.
For your son, it's certainly fun to be able to live in his 20s in a very trendy neighborhood with a vibrant nightlife, and within walking distance of work. :)
But for another one of my friends, New York is one of the only places where they can actually live comfortably.
He's legally blind. Not completely - he can read his phone if it's 2 inches away from his face, but that's it. You wouldn't necessarily know it when you first meet him (I didn't). He can hold a conversation with you and you wouldn't know that he can only make out your face in vague blurs.
If you live elsewhere (and especially if you live outside a major city), it's easy to overlook just how much of people's lives and culture in the US center around the act of driving.
For him, living in New York City allows him a level of mobility and independence that no other place in the country could provide. He doesn't feel like he's missing out on anything, because walking and taking the subway here are the norm. He doesn't really need much assistance beyond that (he can actually get by without the white cane or a seeing eye dog).
While blind people certainly can and do find ways to live their lives in other cities, it means a lot to my friend that he can live as "normally" as possible here.
This makes me wonder if it is possible to use the ADA to block roadway projects in some cases. Cars are inherently anti-accessibility in places where there is already tension between pedestrians and cars.
While you don't need to drive in NYC, you'll find plenty of people have cars. In fact, most do. Contrary to popular opinion, Manhattan is not the only borough.
I suspect the decline is largely related to the Internet and the increased ability of people to work from home. Work from home = no commuting = less miles driven.
Most other people not having cars is also a draw of New York City.
Every time I find out someone in San Francisco that lives in a neighborhood with convenient public transportation still chooses to drive regularly, I shudder. This city should be eliminating parking with a mighty vengeance.
Cars may become fewer in number, but not highways. Michigan's economy is still so dependent on the automobile industry that we spend a lot of time thinking about it.
I think out 25 years or so there will be a two thirds reduction in the need for cars. The rich will still be driving if they still choose to do so. But everyone else will primarily renting by the ride, aka Uber style transportation.
But Uber may not be in the picture by then because we will be talking driverless cars. We will order our transportation from Google. Do not be surprised if Google even buys one of the Big 3 to cut out the middleman. The only thing the average person will care about cars is how comfortable is the back seat.
As a trivial example, there's a Taco Bell located literally about 300 feet from where I'm staying, but getting there on foot requires a detour of about a mile because it, like all other business establishments on El Camino Real (substitute your suburban highway of choice), is surrounded by concrete wall on all three sides except the one facing the highway. Which means the foolish pedestrian needs to walk around the entire block to get there.
Another trivial example of pedestrian-hostility: the city of Mountain View, being run by nice, eco-friendly hippies sucking on the Google bong, has banned plastic bags in supermarkets, mandating the use of paper bags instead. However, this also has the side effect of making it virtually impossible to complete your shopping by any means other than car, since paper bags disintegrate if you look at them sideways or attempt to carry them more than the distance from checkout to parking lot, much less (say) stuff them in your backpack, hang them from the handlebars of your bike, or even swing them a bit while waiting at the traffic lights.