B. Carfree

The first date my future wife of over three decades and I went on was a weekend bike ride from somewhere south of Sacramento to Yosemite Valley and back. Just lucky, I guess.

Oh, and we do ride tandems quite a bit, though we didn't buy our first tandem until 1988.

tmac100

Recent reports of the wildfires in Portugal are/were due to the planting on non-native eucalypts - and then letting them grow wild without attending to the rapidly growing "undergrowth".

The Portuguese are now starting to re-think their previous ideas of planting non-native eucalyptus trees for paper and wood production...

tmac100

And who is going to pay for those enhanced structures? A fanciful suggestion - but not cost free. I'll bet you would not be willing to pay for someone's enhanced structure. I know many taxpayers who despise governmental intrusion into their lives - having already complied with current legislation.

Cheaper to cut the trees that are a danger to buildings and thoroughfares.

If you consider this comment an affront to you, and that I have stepped on your toes - well that is a totally unanticipated consequence of your suggestion - which I maintain is "fanciful". We all understand that local authorities are risk adversive and are subject to local taxpayers' "needs" and to fiscal realities.

Roody

Waitresses complain endlessly about the diners. Shopkeepers are annoyed by the customers. Nurse tell horror stories about patients. Are you going to quit eating and shopping and getting sick?

Maelochs

I have been a bus rider now and then .... so ...


maybe the horror stories are real. However, I no longer ride the bus, so you are safe.

Maelochs

Yeah, i agree ... that Is the probklem.



Just kidding. i was simply going to walk away here, but I think i need to respond as well.

There is such a tremendous gulf here, such a total lack of communication, that any further discussion would simply be debate,. bickering, where both parties try to be "right."

You started this series of posts feeling aggrieved and assaulted because someone disagreed with you, and it is likely that each passing post would only leave you feeling more attacked .... and I didn't come here to hurt people.

I thank you sincerely for taking the time and effort in crafting you r detailed response to my post.

I see that further discussion in this vein would be profitless.

I am not opting not to continue out of dismissal or disrespect, but so that we don't find ourselves later saying things which could be deemed disrespectful.

I close with this----if you want more trees in a city, you have to get involved somewhere besides here.

Mobile 155

My sister has retired from driving the bus, and she no longer uses the service in her daily life. Her stories simply confirmed some of what I already felt about riding on the bus. I can predict that in five years my desire to ride on a public bus will not likely increase. It would be my last choice. That is the reasoning behind my statement that I will never be a bus person. Just an opinion.

cooker

Thanks for the prediction! I'll make a slightly related prediction, that in 5 years more Americans will ride the bus and the stigma will be a bit reduced.

Mobile 155

People’s attitudes about other people will have to change drastically if you are correct. Right now half of our population dislikes the other half. I don’t see that changing anytime soon. You might be right but here in this country there is a spirit of resistance from one group to another with neither talking to the other. I cannot see the bus changing that.

cooker

There have been massive swings in our adult lifespan in mainstream attitudes towards gays, same-sex marriages, sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace, marijuana use, smoking, drunk driving and many other issues or topics.

Maelochs

I kind of wonder ... five years isn't enough time but in 15 years ... i think a Lot of what people fight over today will be uninteresting to the then "adult" community (by which I mean the people old enough to vote but too young to have learned enough about life to realize I am right about everything.)

I don't see transport modes changing much in five years ... but in 15 I expect the self-drive Uber and the autopilot mini-bus to have an hefty impact.

Bikes? I still don't see a lot of people who are eager to work to get to work.

Mobile 155

I could see that. Anything that caters to on time needs could make a great impact and solve the multitude of problems of mass transit. 15 years might be close however. But anything that picks you up from where you are and drops you off where you want to be will be light years ahead of mass transit today, in my opinion. Bikes on the other hand are unlikely to make any great jumps. The US population used bikes about .5 percent f the time to get to work when I first got into cycling back in 73-74. Today nationally it is way better if you listen to many here. But in truth it is still close to 1 percent after 45 years. If you had stock that only delivered that kind of return you would be better off putting your money in savings. But the numbers don't show cycling having much teeth in the commuting game. https://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/acs-25.pdf

For those that wonder how much better it might be from 2012-2014 to 2017 it isn't much brighter.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/09/...re-in-the-u-s/

But this thread's experiment will be over by 2020 and if we are still around we can see if anything changed.

Walter S

If this is the 15 year prediction thread I predict the number of cyclists will go down when driverless cars get common and inexpensive especially for short trips.

Walter S

Ain't it the truth! Night and day compared to when I was a kid in the 60s. It's changed a lot just since the 90s. The internet?

Rollfast

Well, it was good but sales weren't as good last year, they were down a good bit...but last year sucked.

Rollfast

That still sucks.

Rollfast

It goes back to those big yellow things...

Mobile 155

I can just remember school buses. My son called them twinkies.

By the time I got to high school all the cool kids had a car. I didn’t get one till my senior year. My son got one in his junior year and that was the end of his riding in a Twinkie.

My sister drove a city bus. Orange,blue and silver I think.

Roody

I predict driverless cars will never get inexpensive for short trips. The cost of the sensors, AI, and mapping will be astronomical. The waste and inefficiency will be great--empty much of the time, just driving around empty waiting for the next pic-up. They will be like taxis--used mostly by the well-to-do, and rarely by ordinary people on rainy days or when the human-driven car is in the shop.

jon c. 

I can't see it. I don't think it is as much about stigma as it is convenience. Outside of perhaps a few major urban areas, we're becoming more spread apart in where we live and work. The rise of suburban office parks and industrial 'campuses', we've past the time where most residents went to ' city center' to work. The classic bus is declining in utility.

cooker

Urban centres are making a comeback and transit is expanding, at least there. For example, the criteria Amazon set for the city to house HQ2 included good highways and good public transit.

Maelochs

One-time investment for development, and electronic tech is cheap and always cheaper ... you don't think an iPhone costs Apple that much, do you?

This is why mini-vans or buses leading to self-driving rent-a-mini-cars will work. Everyone rides to a "distribution center," as it were, and hops into a two-passenger electric minicar to travel the eight blocks to the office.

Buses and train have always been compromised by the need for central station---too many stops and the ride takes too long, too few stops and passengers find it inconvenient. That is why multi-modal nodes will grow.

A lot of the change will be in the perceived need to own a personal car and use it frequently. A lot of people in dense urban areas either don't own a car, or would probably welcome an alternative which gave them equal freedom at lower cost.

Suburbanites might find it less economical, as they would need a car anyway, and the complexity of trips---drop the kids at two different schools, stop for coffee and a muffin, head to the office where no one else has kids in the same two schools--make ride-combining more difficult.

What I see though is that the options (like Uber) make the attachment to the idea of owner a car a little less strong. Uber might cost more than a weekend car rental, but it is more convenient for the occasional trip.

Self-driving cars won't be a Lot cheaper than Uber or taxis--market forces---but could be a little cheaper because the operating companies wouldn't need to pay for those pesky humans which always seem to gum things up.

As the need for a personal car grows less, the desire for a personal car can also start to diminish--"Freedom" will no longer involve an SUV bigger than an airliner, or a pick-up truck powerful enough to pull a semi-trailer.

None of this will impact bike ridership at all ... the downside to riding a bike will always be that it involves riding a bike.

jon c. 

I read that is the popular media. But I'm not sure it's really true. I get that millenials want to live downtown in Portland and Seattle, but I'm not seeing major pattern shifts in living and working in most the country. I don't think surveys of the preferences of twentysomethings present an accurate picture of where the nation as a whole is trending.

I was surprised some years back to visit the city I grew up in to find that rush hour didn't exist any longer as so few people went to and from the city center. That trend might reverse a bit, but it will never revert to what it was 40 years ago. And I think that's generally the case with small and mid sized cities. The decentralization has gone to far to reverse IMO.

Maelochs

Another question here is "What is an 'urban center'?" I think if most commuters have to walk eight city blocks in snow or rain from a bus- or train stop they are still going to look for alternatives.

How much area does an "urban center" encompass? The amount an Amazon delivery truck can reach to make a profit in an eight-hour day is not related to what a commuter trying to get to work on time might consider "sufficiently well-served by surface routes" or whatever.

A lot of cities don't have elevated or subterranean trains, so commuter traffic is necessarily on roads (or sidewalks.) If people density (not necessarily residential density) increases, that means more vehicles on the road, of one sort or another ... and how many people really live and work close enough to their jobs to not need Some form of vehicular transport?

"Urban center" for a while was buildings with shops and stores on the ground floor and apartments above. Now we have office towers packed together but not many residential towers nearby ... and the ones that are, are pricey.

I don't see a return to real "mixed-use" zoning on a level sufficient to let people not need some sort of vehicular transport.

There was a movement a couple decades back for mixed-use, walkable suburban planning, with little "villages" where there would be markets and such that people could walk or bike to, only making big "shopping trips" periodically.

I don't see the trend having caught on, probably because people don't have time to walk to the store each evening ... (or don't make time) and would still live their car-based suburban lifestyle ... it is more efficient time-wise to do all the grocery shopping once a week or every ten days even if that takes a major expedition in the family SUV.

It is like the cycling problem ... people don't necessarily Want to walk to the store and carry stuff back. It is healthy, can be convenient, can improve mental health .... and people don't want to do it.

All that could change ... but what I see is time gets more "precious' (wasted just as much, but we all want to waste time doing what we Want, not what we Have to do) and people still head for the car if they have to leave their homes. It preserves that "personal space" feeling.

The "freedom" offered by cars used to be "The thrill of the open road," where people could imagine going for a long drive into the open spaces with no cars around .... Now "freedom" is "personal space" where all intrusions are filtered and controlled (like Facebook "News" which only tells the reader what the reader likes to hear.)

When people have to leave the womb of the home, why not climb into the womb of the car, with all the same electronic connections and distractions .... an extension of the insulated home environment?

Big change I see .... "Freedom" used to be perfectly personified by a convertible---"Open spaces, wind in your hair." Next on the list was "All the windows wide open, the wind in your face."

Now "freedom" in a car is climate control, noise reduction,driver aids ... everything possible to insulate the driver from the world, to create a second insulated "personal space" where no one else is allowed.

My prediction is that in five years, this aspect of human nature won't change much.

I-Like-To-Bike

iPhone don't have parts that involve suspensions, steering, braking, air conditioning, heating, wiring, tires, upholstery, doors, window opening mechanisms, etc. that are mechanically complex. Vehicles will still need these systems and these systems will still require periodic maintenance and the systems will not go away because the vehicle is equipped with self driving electronics and/or a battery driven motor.