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Keep cars out of cities

thewhyteboar
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BloodyHell

BloodyHell

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4 hours ago, Uaarkson said:


Too bad the only thing more sacred than guns in this country is property rights.

As it should be. But unused property should be highly taxed to make it untenable to keep those properties empty.

 

Im never for taking property. Thats many steps too far.

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Jason

Jason

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6 hours ago, Uaarkson said:


Yeah 

 

Elon's own debut promo vid (the one playing at the start of this video) made the idea look dumb as shit. It shows slow elevators getting in and out of the tunnels and cars having to line up for the elevators. It was blatantly obvious right from their own debut video that it couldn't solve traffic and was just shifting it to being focused around the tunnel access points.

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Jason

Jason

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Rode this bad boy back and forth to work today. Solid tires (rockier ride than air tires but every video I've seen of replacing the tires on an e-scooter makes it look like a nightmare and solid tire scooters are zero maintenance), rated up to 20 mph but my fat butt was only getting like 18, realistic range is like 12 mi based on today but that's enough for my use and it's lighter than the Segway Ninebot ones (they have better range but are also a bit slower, I'd trade some range for faster and lighter). But as I discovered today not light enough to want to carry it all the way into my office every day, carrying it from my apartment door to front door was fine (still important) though so still better than having to drag a Segway one outside, so probably gonna start bringing the U-lock for my bike for that, I don't intend to leave it outside for stuff like going into the gym but the work garage has bike parking so that seems like it should be fine. You can wheel it around by the handlebar while it's folded up but the post is juuuuust to short for it to not be kind of awkward to move it around the way. It does come with a carrying satchel but I feel putting it into the satchel every single day to take it inside the office would get tiresome quickly, it seems like it's more for if you want to drive somewhere with the scooter in the trunk and then scoot around at your destination.

 

Main unexpected bit based on all the shared ones I've used is that the rear foot brake is not as responsive as the other ones I've used. It definitely slows you down when you need to in order to navigate a tricky spot but it doesn't seem like it'll actually get you (at least most of the way) to a stop like the other ones I've used.

 

image.png

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Fizzzzle

Fizzzzle

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In massive sprawling cities like Houston, it's a snake eating its own tail kind of situation. Congestion is bad? More freeways. What about more rail infrastructure? It doesn't reach enough people effectively. Why not build more rail infrastructure? Because the population keeps expanding outward. Why does the population keep expanding outward? Because they can get around on freeways. Round and round it goes. The congestion will never get better because all it's doing is inducing demand. Outlying suburbs become more desirable, rail infrastructure that does exist becomes even less effective, support for it dies, more freeways, etc etc etc.

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Jason

Jason

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3 hours ago, Fizzzzle said:

In massive sprawling cities like Houston, it's a snake eating its own tail kind of situation. Congestion is bad? More freeways. What about more rail infrastructure? It doesn't reach enough people effectively. Why not build more rail infrastructure? Because the population keeps expanding outward. Why does the population keep expanding outward? Because they can get around on freeways. Round and round it goes. The congestion will never get better because all it's doing is inducing demand. Outlying suburbs become more desirable, rail infrastructure that does exist becomes even less effective, support for it dies, more freeways, etc etc etc.

 

Well for starters here's where all the transit in Houston apparently converges and as far as I can tell there's very little housing within walking distance of it. Seems like an obvious place to start.

 

https://www.google.com/maps/search/apartments/@29.7586013,-95.363655,17z/data=!5m1!1e2

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Guest

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14 hours ago, Fizzzzle said:

In massive sprawling cities like Houston, it's a snake eating its own tail kind of situation. Congestion is bad? More freeways. What about more rail infrastructure? It doesn't reach enough people effectively. Why not build more rail infrastructure? Because the population keeps expanding outward. Why does the population keep expanding outward? Because they can get around on freeways. Round and round it goes. The congestion will never get better because all it's doing is inducing demand. Outlying suburbs become more desirable, rail infrastructure that does exist becomes even less effective, support for it dies, more freeways, etc etc etc.


Houston has and continues to be massively increasing the metro rail system. Unfortunately still likely a decade away from pulling lines out to the major burbs, but there are now actually usable routes from the residential areas around the perimeter of the 610 loop into the center of the city. Couldn’t say that even 5 years ago.

 

10 hours ago, Jason said:

 

Well for starters here's where all the transit in Houston apparently converges and as far as I can tell there's very little housing within walking distance of it. Seems like an obvious place to start.

 

https://www.google.com/maps/search/apartments/@29.7586013,-95.363655,17z/data=!5m1!1e2

 

I’d guess 90% or so of those complexes are 5 years old or less. Tons of residential going into downtown and other areas inside the 610 loop. But mostly luxury units.

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Jason

Jason

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On 6/18/2021 at 9:12 PM, Jason said:

Rode this bad boy back and forth to work today. Solid tires (rockier ride than air tires but every video I've seen of replacing the tires on an e-scooter makes it look like a nightmare and solid tire scooters are zero maintenance), rated up to 20 mph but my fat butt was only getting like 18, realistic range is like 12 mi based on today but that's enough for my use and it's lighter than the Segway Ninebot ones (they have better range but are also a bit slower, I'd trade some range for faster and lighter). But as I discovered today not light enough to want to carry it all the way into my office every day, carrying it from my apartment door to front door was fine (still important) though so still better than having to drag a Segway one outside, so probably gonna start bringing the U-lock for my bike for that, I don't intend to leave it outside for stuff like going into the gym but the work garage has bike parking so that seems like it should be fine. You can wheel it around by the handlebar while it's folded up but the post is juuuuust to short for it to not be kind of awkward to move it around the way. It does come with a carrying satchel but I feel putting it into the satchel every single day to take it inside the office would get tiresome quickly, it seems like it's more for if you want to drive somewhere with the scooter in the trunk and then scoot around at your destination.

 

Main unexpected bit based on all the shared ones I've used is that the rear foot brake is not as responsive as the other ones I've used. It definitely slows you down when you need to in order to navigate a tricky spot but it doesn't seem like it'll actually get you (at least most of the way) to a stop like the other ones I've used.

 

image.png

 

Whelp the first charge only got 6 miles. I intentionally didn't charge it after the first round trip to work to see what the range is like and on the second round trip I did get home but the roundtrip to my office is 3 miles and on the second roundtrip it dropped from showing two out of four bars to zero bars and beeping at me that it was urgently low on battery. Gonna futz with the settings to see if I'm pushing it unnecessarily hard but if I can't get it to 9-10 miles on a charge without severely limiting the speed it's going back to Costco. I guess next up is the Segway Ninebot ES3Plus they have if it comes to that. The one I have is advertised for 15 miles and range the Segway is rated for 28 miles so even if the ratio of actual:advertised is the same that's 11 miles, which is a lot more usable.

 

I knew the range would be lower than advertised since that's true for all of these scooters since they'll pick someone who's like 170 lbs no cargo as their baseline but this is extreme. For something like home->doctor->office->home that's 4.5 miles, so 9-10 miles is comfortable cushion for if I want to do another stop out of the way somewhere on a day like that, whereas ~6 miles is either "have to carry the thing into the office to charge" (and despite being lighter than other scooters it's still too heavy to do that all the time) or be sweating about doing anything other than going straight home/only making additional stops that are directly on the path between work and home.

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Guest

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Posted
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19 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

lol that's just a marketing term new housing has always been built at the high end of the market.


Not here. 

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Guest

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3 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

The top of your housing market just isn't as high as in NYC or Los Angeles. 


No, literally just outside the downtown loop they are building units that run half that of the ones .5 miles away inside the downtown loop. Same thing for condos/town homes in that area. You go inside the downtown loop and they start at $400k, but just outside it and you can find stuff for $200k. And I’m talking specifically about new construction.

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b_m_b_m_b_m

b_m_b_m_b_m

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Posted

New housing always goes to those who can afford it. If you're severely restricted on how, what, and where you can build that pushes new housing construction up the income ladder. It's why we can't just build, for good or ill, something like favelas here in this US. It's why when we push for new housing supply it *must* include some sort of affordability component or government provided/subsidized development or the people at the bottom get completely left out for the middle class and higher income people. Yes, eventually rents and housing prices may come down to a level that lower income folks may be able to afford but that takes time

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