I’d like to see lanes in major streets in Manhattan split for this purpose. Today, we have streets like:
CARS
CARS
CARS
BIKES
or
CARS
CARS
PARKING
BIKES (full lane, split bidirectional)
All equal width.
I’d like to see:
CARS (full lane)
CARS (full lane)
OTHER VEHICLES (half-lane 1)
OTHER VEHICLES (half-lane 2)
BIKES (full lane bi-directional)
Bicycle EMT. Fire fighting drone. Delivery drone. Construction drone.
For disabled people we make wheelchairs with bikes attached. Someone will come and pedal them around.
With no cars in the way we can easily put a ton of elevators at every subway station. It will be easy to put in the street car, or just expand the subway, so nobody ever has to go very far. Lots of things become very very easy when there are just no fucking cars in the way. All that space for parking and driving just freed up. I’d even say we could bring back horses, but they shit all over the place.
I’m mostly just enjoying imagining how this argument would go if Scott owned different forms of transport.
“Why the fuck would anyone bike? Why should anyone be ALLOWED to bike? You fall off your bike, bam, you hit the ground, you break your bones, you basically just die. And what if you hit someone else going 20 miles an hour, you both die! It’s SUPER dangerous, nobody should be allowed to to that! Now, you’re going 20 miles an hour on a boat, you fall out - which nobody would unless they’re dumb, because they’re not balancing on a skinny little metal thing - you fall in the water, the water’s soft! You fall on the hard ground, you’re all ow ow my bones, you fall in the water you’re just like ahhhhh, ahhhhh, so soft, you can’t hurt yourself. It’s great!.”
That’s utterly stupid.
Do you know how much necessary equipment is in an Ambulance? There’s a reason they’re big.
There is a time and place for a “light EMT” on a bike with small kit. But there is a reason EMTs come with a giant truck full of heavy and difficult-to-move equipment.
You realize horses killed people at rates similar to cars today, right? Horses were death machines in cities.
Good thing nobody can afford horses.
What if cars and trucks were never invented? There would certainly be some kind of solution to the problem of mobile emergency medical care. We never found out what that solution is because we did invent the car. Now it’s hard to even imagine a different world.
A lot of people died at home.
No I get that I just want to live where I can do the things I want to do and not crowded in with a shitzillion people and everything costs 10x what it should.
Well, also in those days they didn’t have a telephone, so it’s not like they could even call for help even if it existed.
The problem is one of the things I want to do is have a job 
And yes urban areas have that, but so do smaller urban areas thay aren’t oppresively crowded and you can commute to easily from the not so urban area. I work in Richmond and live about 30 minutes away. I have both, you can have both.
The kind of work I do only exists in maybe six cities on earth.
I meant you in the general sense. One can have both if one wants it. You are happy to live in NYC, I’d die of anxiety and frustration after a month.
I think I’d kind of split the difference between you and Rym with respect to NYC vs. other areas. I’m not opposed to big city life and I can see how nice it may be in certain respects, but I also like the idea of actually owning the building (or conceivably the apartment/condo/etc. portion of the building) I live in, something which I gather is prohibitively expensive in NYC for all but the most well-connected or well-to-do. I like having something of a yard to hang out in to do “yard” things, like play with my kid when he comes to visit. I also happen to live close enough to farms (and associated farm stands), nature sanctuaries, and stuff that I could ride my bike to them if I so chose. I also happen to live in one of the top tech markets in the country and I work in tech, so I’m lucky to have the job market for me in my area as well. But New York is also a top tech market (though I’m not sure how much in the way of low-level, systems programming is done there vs. things like web development, except for maybe in finance).
On the flip side, the ability to just walk across the street to buy groceries is nice too. Not having to own a car is nice, although my car is paid for and even when it wasn’t, my mortgage plus car payment was less than NYC rent would have been. So there are pros and cons.
Do you actually have to be in your office or do you think you could do your job remotely with occasional trips? ;-p
My engineers and a lot of other people work remotely regularly. But the reality I’ve found is that being present in-person has a huge impact on execution. =(
So in practice I can’t get away with working remotely.
I’m increasingly against the idea of private ownership of land or structures.
Even though I can do my job remotely, most employers won’t allow it. If they do allow it, they won’t pay the same NYC salary to someone who lives in the sticks and doesn’t show their face in person. I’m lucky to be able to work from home a few days here and there.
Well, let me clarify, I like the idea of actually owning the building I live in vs. paying some other private owner rent for the privilege of living in his building.
If land/structures/etc. were publicly owned, that’s a separate issue.