I don’t know if this goes in “War on Cars” or “Silicon Valley is Stupid”
This person used to work for the MTA, then worked at the infamous Bain Capital and some other places. Now they made a company, that seems very silicon valley VC-ish, called culdesac. It appears that this company is planning to build a corporate neighborhood in Temp Airzona.
This reeks of all the usual stuff we see from Silicon Valley. Just doing stuff and building stuff while avoiding the democratic process.
However, the one positive is that they are building a no-car neighborhood.
I’d say this is gonna be some vaporware like Musks hyperloop, but they broke ground already and say they will be open in Fall 2020. I think it’s basically a real estate situation. They bought enough connected land to build an entire private 1000 person neighborhood. They make money by being landlords. They can mostly ignore the town around them because it is a contained private land. Not like anyone from town can even drive through because it’s a no-car place. I guess people from nearby can walk in, or park outside.
I think what should happen is we let these fools build this thing, learn from it, study it, and then eminent domain their asses.
The idea is great, but I’m highly skeptical of what’s being sold. They say they’re already breaking ground and there are some serious questions I have that aren’t even hinted at.
how is the “no cars” enforced? The concept art basically shows a streetless suburbia, but what are the actual plans?
how will it accommodate the elderly and people with disabilities?
how will delivery services work? Do all the stores get set up on the outside of the town so trucks can park near them?
how will emergency services function? I could see some kind of modified golf cart for ambulances, but what about firetrucks?
they mention they’re going to landscape the hell out of the place, are there plans for locally sustainable Flora or is it gonna be another hackjob of unsuitable plants that die in extreme weather? Not to mention that this is gonna cost an assload of dosh to irrigate and maintain.
what is the incentive to live there? There’s obvious health and safety benefits (theoritcally), but like, does everyone in town work in town? Will people need to commute to adjacent cities for more specialized jobs? What incentive is there for businesses to move into the area?
I want to be optimistic about this, but historically these silicone valley deals are some jackass selling a dream first and thinking about plans later.
What’s the difference between this idea and just one of those big arcology proposals other than those try to be in some big mega structure?
It seems like just trying to make an entire (small) neighborhood in an urban area that has control over more than just one or two buildings, and then just cutting out the focus on paved roads.
It’s really not all that different from buying a big fucking plot of land and putting in some high-end outdoor plaza shopping centers, where there’s parking outside and the stuff happens in the middle; except people actually live above the stores.
And I’m not saying that’s a huge negative. It could work pretty well. I like the idea of not living in just some big monolithic apartment building. I’d be all for having some really complex different structures where apartments are crammed in all over, but not just being elevators and hallways and everyone having their one little cube among the hundreds of other cubes. And I like the idea of walking a few hundred feet down some little path to the bodega. And then the theater is down the other end of the neighborhood and its just a simple stroll. Having various community offices and a really fancy workshop makerspace, where you can rent out a 20x20 space for your personal projects and maybe having the ability to do startup incubator type stuff, I mean, it sounds pretty good. I’d love a place like that, really.
But it still just kindof sounds like a repackaged resort or some shopping outlets. So building it, at the minimum, doesn’t seem particularly risky. Whether it works out, whether it sucks or is great, will come down to management and community. And that can easily go to absolute shit.
In the interest of climate change alone, nobody should be allowed to purchase a truck, SUV, or other such vehicle without special permission after proving they really need it and use it.
I think a happy medium would be something similar to the Barcelona Superblock concept.
Culdesac sound interesting, but I’d have to see the blueprint of the place before passing judgement. The biggest drawback might be population density isn’t high enough to be anything more that an super-upscale neighborhood. Tempe has a population of a 185k, so would this be viable if replicated 185 times across the city limits?
And spoilers the train is about 5.5 times as efficient
Just in case it’s not obvious, the train used in this example is a steam locomotive. Powered by shoveling coal. We don’t really use those anymore because they’re so heavy and inefficient. (though they’re about 5.5x as efficient than the number of teslas it’d take to move the same number of people)
Shhhhhh! let Musk sell everyone the lie that they can have a future™ Tesla vehicle that can be both a status symbol of wealth and success and of how infinitely more humane you are for driving a Green™ car. Ignore the costs of lithium mining, production, literal gasoline generators powering Tesla charger stations, etc. not to mention the assumed additional expense for everything you do being a drive away and all material goods and services being distributed largely by trucks instead of rail to support this.
One thing that transit doesn’t help with is groups taking trips. Carpooling vs train or whatever.
If trains (or aircraft) could say “either you’re an individual paying one price, or you’re paying an only marginally higher ticket price and that’s good for up to 4 people in your berth, and up to 4 people’s worth of luggage, but must be used by at least 2 people.” then I could see more groups opting to travel by train.
A car allows me and 2-3 other people to drive a few hours, or a few days, and save a ton of money vs each person paying for a seat on some train or whatever. The cost of fuel is essentially the same on the highway unless the engine is particularly weak-sauce. Transit has to be like “you fill that seat we charge you X” meanwhile how often are those seats filled?
Bring more trains, and give the riders their own little private berths again like it used to be. Let me load up all my tactical paintball luggage that I really don’t want to take out in public, plug in my devices, setup a gaming console and have my friends play some games for a few hours or sing karaoke or just get mad-blasted-wasted in our own private space. But make the train mostly this with one or two cars of economy seating for those who are solo to be crammed in.
Then make these tickets about on par with the cost for a car to travel the same distance via highway. Cheap enough that even if I have a really expensive electric car, I’m still gonna go “that’s only $300 for me and my group to go from NYC to Chicago in the same time it takes to drive, but we can get up and do stuff the whole time.”
Until we actually do that, a car will be the better economy mode of distance transit, and an aircraft will be the better rapid mode of distance transit, and the train will just be the worst combination of both except for some fringe circumstances. Doesn’t matter what kind of messaging we put out, or what’s most efficient, or whatever the case.
And sure yeah if people diddn’t have cars then the per-ticket price is still cheaper in total yeah I get it. Sure. That bridge is a long way off before crossing.
In Germany there are those kinds of group tickets. Typically they are for families, but they work up to 5 adults. Also they only work on regional trains, not long distance intercity routes. Maybe only weekends too.
However, there is a way to connect all across Germany. Some friends bought one ticket for 30 euro and traveled from Berlin to Munich for a juggling convention. It took five connections, I think. I took the direct train and it took a quarter of the time and five times as much just for me.
The overwhelming majority of car trips are done solo. if you actually fill your car up with people and stuff, then it’s actually kind of an acceptable trip.
Going on a ski or biking trip? There’s a lot of gear you may have to haul, plus other people. Hard to do on mass transit. Going rock climbing in the wilderness? Bringing a boat to a river? Definitely car territory.
Even for the HVRR every year I consider taking a bus or a car to save the hassle of Metro North. I end up on Metro North anyway, but I do consider it.
Granted, if Amtrak actually could get me to Killington, I’d use it every time gear nonwithstanding. But as it stands, the schedule doesn’t work, it’s hard to bring the gear on the train, and I’d still have to call a devil car* to get from the train station to the mountain.
*“devil car” is what I am now calling all exploitative car hailing services like lyft or uber.
