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OT: The Funnier Side of Tragedy: Memes and Such

Ontario should have reasonably good regional rail within 10 years or so. Between that, the growth of home delivery and working from home I could see vehicle ownership numbers decline some.
 
I think it's insane to think we ever should or would give up personal vehicles. It's one of the most revolutionary and democratizing inventions ever.

The good news is that EVs are just better vehicles.
 
zeke said:
I think it's insane to think we ever should or would give up personal vehicles. It's one of the most revolutionary and democratizing inventions ever.

The good news is that EVs are just better vehicles.
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Meh, there's lots of good reasons to push/hope for fewer personal vehicles. They require a fuckton of space and infrastructure (which is currently paid for largely with a fuel tax....when fuel consumption fucks off because of EV's, we're going to have to fill that funding gap), they're expensive, take up a significant amount of space, de incentivize government from investing in transit, de incentivize construction companies from building for walkability, incentivize urban sprawl, etc, etc.
 
MindzEye said:
Meh, there's lots of good reasons to push/hope for fewer personal vehicles. They require a fuckton of space and infrastructure (which is currently paid for largely with a fuel tax....when fuel consumption fucks off because of EV's, we're going to have to fill that funding gap), they're expensive, take up a significant amount of space, de incentivize government from investing in transit, de incentivize construction companies from building for walkability, incentivize urban sprawl, etc, etc.
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would you ever go car-less?
 
zeke said:
would you ever go car-less?
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I have before. I lived in downtown Calgary close to the C Train. It's amazing how easily the vast majority of our activities can adapt to not having a car. I picked a gym a short walk from a train station within 10 minutes, grocery store was ~2 blocks away and I'd either get enough for a few days (backpack) or if I was doing a whole grocery shopping I would uber/cab home and just tip heavy (was like a 4.00 trip), but given that I've seen the inside of a grocery store maybe 3 times in the last year, ordering my groceries would be preferably today if I was doing that all over again. Picked personal services (barber, masseuse, etc) based on walkability.

No car for 2-3 years, while making oil sands money.

If I wasn't living in a town that is the opposite of walkable, I would 100% consider it again.
 
You need it far less than you think you do.

An example. Currently live in Barrie, my wife is going to Scarborough to visit her aunt later this afternoon. Approximately 90 minutes through afternoon traffic from point A to B. Currently there's no other real option but to drive (Go bus is 2.5 hrs to union, another 25 minutes from Union to the Aunt's). Go's current modernization plan would have hourly day time service from Barrie to Toronto that takes 1:20 to Union, then another 25 minutes on the danforth line to Scarlem.

Why would anyone choose to fuck about on the 400 in February, the day after a snowfall to save 15 minutes, for roughly the same cost as the fuel burnt by the car when you can read a book or fuck about on your phone for more or less the same amount of time?

In a city it's even worse imo. Good transit is just flat out better than driving through busy surface streets. The trick is pushing your government into funding good transit.
 
MindzEye said:
I have before. I lived in downtown Calgary close to the C Train. It's amazing how easily the vast majority of our activities can adapt to not having a car. I picked a gym a short walk from a train station within 10 minutes, grocery store was ~2 blocks away and I'd either get enough for a few days (backpack) or if I was doing a whole grocery shopping I would uber/cab home and just tip heavy (was like a 4.00 trip), but given that I've seen the inside of a grocery store maybe 3 times in the last year, ordering my groceries would be preferably today if I was doing that all over again. Picked personal services (barber, masseuse, etc) based on walkability.

No car for 2-3 years, while making oil sands money.

If I wasn't living in a town that is the opposite of walkable, I would 100% consider it again.
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yup.

I've worked at home in a condo with underground tunnel access to the subway and a Loblaws for years now(and I could even order the groceries if I really wanted). I'm gonna pay for a car to sit down in the underground most of the time?? nah.

when taxis or uber won't do the odd time you actually really need a vehicle, you can just rent one.
 
Bleedsblue&white said:
I love my car and I don't want anybody else in it with me in the morning when I'm driving to work having said that it's ridiculous how many cars are on the road every morning with just one person in them
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The future - for urban centers and corridors at least - is that everybody logs into the traffic network when the enter the area and the computers drive the cars.

Poof, no more traffic. Hell, you don't even have to worry about parking.
 
Absolutely I always figured if all the cars were self-driving they would just attach to each other like a train and you would detach when you needed to get off the highway
 
zeke said:
The future - for urban centers and corridors at least - is that everybody logs into the traffic network when the enter the area and the computers drive the cars.

Poof, no more traffic. Hell, you don't even have to worry about parking.
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You're not going to see that in your driving lifetime though. Too many structural hurdles to jump. Autonomous vehicles are at least a decade away from being commercially ready. After that you need them to more or less fully replace traditionally piloted vehicles on the road, easily another 10-15 years and the whole way you need automakers to actually work together on creating network protocols that none of them actually own.
 
Ebikes have the potential to change a lot of infrastructure needs. They just need to come down in price.

For cold weather:

686B4BAC-BD5F-415F-A071-454B86051318.jpeg
 
If you want a talk about how cities/countries should all be constructed, look no further than Japan. We'll never have that level of sophistication here or in most places but that's a place that sorta shows the potential of what transit *should* be like in an ideal society. You can travel across the entire country in a couple hours on a high speed bullet train (can travel ~450km in ~2 hours in an incredibly comfortable, relaxing train), you can leave your house (no matter where it is) and walk a minute or two to a train/subway station to get wherever you need to go with minimal wait or inconvenience.

The country went to shit in the 90s economically but it's sort of beautiful to witness the work they did when they were a booming powerhouse.
 
MindzEye said:
You're not going to see that in your driving lifetime though. Too many structural hurdles to jump. Autonomous vehicles are at least a decade away from being commercially ready. After that you need them to more or less fully replace traditionally piloted vehicles on the road, easily another 10-15 years and the whole way you need automakers to actually work together on creating network protocols that none of them actually own.
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They could do it right now. The only hurdle with autonomous driving is interacting with non-autonomous vehicles.

If they're all automated, that problem disappears.

Some small town will eventually partner with some car company and just give everyone free cars and have everyone logged in. They would save so much money in traffic and policing costs it would easily pay for itself. Eventually the cars would be paid for the same way we pay for our phones now.
 
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