The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

Posted Mar 4, 2023 23:53 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
In reply to: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later by mathstuf
Parent article: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

> Who claimed that public transit is (only?) about commute times? I think after factoring in how much space is wasted on places for cars to sit while their owners do…anything else versus more affordable housing, small businesses, etc.

Actually, it doesn't. Transit pretty much always increases the housing cost, making it more unaffordable. Sometimes in a runaway fashion (see: Manhattan). Small business impact is a mixed story. A mall with a lot of parking space nearby might be a better space for a small business than a small shop on a transit-enabled street.

The density is basically the only "advantage" that transit provides. People in Houston mostly live in single-family houses with lots of space per capita, while people in NYC mostly live in smaller apartments.

The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

Posted Mar 5, 2023 3:09 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (4 responses)

> The density is basically the only "advantage" that transit provides.

It also makes it possible to sustain the same population on much smaller consumption of fuel.

It would be interesting to see what US would be doing when it would lose the ability to get resources for free in coming years.

Would it switch to public transit or to bikes when it would lose the ability to drive so many cars?

I guess we'll see that soon.

The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

Posted Mar 5, 2023 3:44 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (2 responses)

> It also makes it possible to sustain the same population on much smaller consumption of fuel.

That is true. But at this point in time we can safely assume that most gas cars will simply be replaced with EVs. Several US states already have programs to start phasing out gas cars by mid-2030-s.

And carbon footprint of EVs can actually be pretty competitive with public transportation: https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint

The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

Posted Mar 5, 2023 23:17 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

But electric cars are just as energy hungry as gas cars. No fuel = no electric cars either.

Okay, most electric cars have regenerative braking, which gives them better fuel economy, but not THAT much better.

Cheers,
Wol

The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

Posted Mar 5, 2023 23:31 UTC (Sun) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

But at this point in time we can safely assume that most gas cars will simply be replaced with EVs.

Never mind how cars work. The big advantage of public transport – certainly in the city where I live here in Germany – is that if even a fraction of the people who are now taking a train, tram, or bus came to the city centre in their own car, there would be no space to park all those cars.

The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

Posted Jan 5, 2024 13:45 UTC (Fri) by antidopinguser (guest, #168932) [Link]

here in rome the situation is unbearable, evry movement you have to do with your car lasts on average 45 minutes. Public transport is a joke and the quality of life is zero.
just to make it clearer, it took just five minutes more (50 min) to go from rome to palermo by flight. Go figure

The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

Posted Mar 5, 2023 10:06 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> Actually, it doesn't. Transit pretty much always increases the housing cost, making it more unaffordable. Sometimes in a runaway fashion (see: Manhattan). Small business impact is a mixed story. A mall with a lot of parking space nearby might be a better space for a small business than a small shop on a transit-enabled street.

One only has to look at the impact of the Elizabeth Line in London. I guess house prices near the Abbey Wood terminus have maybe doubled. I use that line to commute, and it's brilliant, it's halved journey times to Central London from 40 minutes to 20. But then of course you've got to get from the station to work ... which for me is a second journey. My commute is about 90 minutes, but it is from the edge of SE London, to outside North London, via the centre.

And I can sit and read!

Cheers,
Wol

The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

Posted Mar 5, 2023 23:25 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

The other brilliant thing for me, is that the way London transit is charged, I effectively pay for my trip into Central London, and get the trip out the other side for free. When diesel prices shot up with the Ukraine War, plus the toll fees, public transport was cheaper than driving, and once I started using the train (helped by the fact the Elizabeth Line opened ...) I've never wanted to go back to driving ...

Cheers,
Wol

The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

Posted Mar 5, 2023 14:04 UTC (Sun) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (4 responses)

> Actually, it doesn't. Transit pretty much always increases the housing cost, making it more unaffordable. Sometimes in a runaway fashion (see: Manhattan).

That's because it provides a value that people are willing to pay for. If you give me a choice between 20 minute transit by car or 40 minute by train, I'll take the latter. In a train I can read a book (that's how I got through the Song of Ice and Fire in a reasonable time), whereas in a car that time is simply wasted. Ditch the car and you have more disposable income you can spend on other things.

> Small business impact is a mixed story. A mall with a lot of parking space nearby might be a better space for a small business than a small shop on a transit-enabled street.

Around here it seems to be going the other way. The malls are dying, the small businesses seem to prefer to be near transit-enabled residential areas. But then, this isn't America, so the way cities are laid out is entirely different.

The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

Posted Mar 5, 2023 20:22 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

> That's because it provides a value that people are willing to pay for. If you give me a choice between 20 minute transit by car or 40 minute by train, I'll take the latter. In a train I can read a book (that's how I got through the Song of Ice and Fire in a reasonable time), whereas in a car that time is simply wasted.

As I've said, you can listen to audiobooks and podcasts in a car. And very soon you'll be able to read as well, once the self-driving tech gets up to speed.

> Ditch the car and you have more disposable income you can spend on other things.

I haven't verified this, but I've read that households in Houston, TX actually have a slightly higher income after taxes and housing than NYC-ers.

Off topic

Posted Mar 5, 2023 20:29 UTC (Sun) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (2 responses)

This conversation has gotten pretty far off topic, perhaps it's time to wind it down.

Off topic

Posted Mar 20, 2023 22:18 UTC (Mon) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (1 responses)

That's entirely my fault, and my bad.

I genuinely thought nobody would interpret "a 24 lane highway" as anything other than cartoonish hyperbole for the sake of an analogy to big iron mainframes, and definitely did not imagine a flame war defending the existence of such things. Since writing that comment I've been exposed to photographs of one with 26 lanes.

Perhaps car analogies as a whole concept should be consigned to history like SCO. It's hard to keep up with reality.

Off topic

Posted Mar 22, 2023 10:45 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

"Argumentum ad vehiculum" - the logical flaw of arguing by analogy, as analogies are never perfectly coherent - and very often, the analogies involve cars and the like.

(Analogies may be useful for bootstrapping understanding of one problem with knowledge from another domain, but one can not use them to /reason/ about one domain using the logic of another domain - unless one can prove the domains are isomorphic).