Great article! I so appreciate your objective, first principles approach here--as against taking a pro- or anti-car general attitude.
You mention the Netherlands at the end. That in my mind raises the question of the role of bicycles. The single most striking thing when visiting that country is the hundreds of bicycles everywhere--the bike parking garages near train stations, the bike pathways that enable safe commutes, and just the presence of bikes everywhere.
I’m in the US, where heat, hills, and spread-out suburbs make biking as transportation less viable. But what about e-bikes? An e-bike is a legitimate single-modal transportation tool for distance up to maybe 15 or so km (10 miles). In many European and US East Coast cities, combined with good bike infrastructure they could take many cars off the streets. Even in a place like LA with its multi-center, car-centric development, 10 miles takes you from many neighborhoods to their local shopping areas, schools, and civic infrastructure. Right now, hardly anyone bikes here (biking is for exercise, not for transport) yet I think e-bikes, if we fully embraced them, could change that. They already are growing popular with young people: my kids’ high school this year installed e-bike parking and I’d guess about 10-15% of kids ride bikes now, reducing the drop-off car traffic jam considerably.
Interesting series of essays! I wanted to respond to a point. From what I understand, tunnelling a road is going to be a lot less cost-effective than tunnelling a train every time. A train can do 32000+ people per hour per direction and a road lane can do 2000 pphpd. If the problem is a capacity constraint and the demand is along a line that can be served by a train, a road tunnel is not going to look good on a cost-benefit analysis
This is before considering ventilation requirements for internal combustion cars and trucks
Great article! I so appreciate your objective, first principles approach here--as against taking a pro- or anti-car general attitude.
You mention the Netherlands at the end. That in my mind raises the question of the role of bicycles. The single most striking thing when visiting that country is the hundreds of bicycles everywhere--the bike parking garages near train stations, the bike pathways that enable safe commutes, and just the presence of bikes everywhere.
I’m in the US, where heat, hills, and spread-out suburbs make biking as transportation less viable. But what about e-bikes? An e-bike is a legitimate single-modal transportation tool for distance up to maybe 15 or so km (10 miles). In many European and US East Coast cities, combined with good bike infrastructure they could take many cars off the streets. Even in a place like LA with its multi-center, car-centric development, 10 miles takes you from many neighborhoods to their local shopping areas, schools, and civic infrastructure. Right now, hardly anyone bikes here (biking is for exercise, not for transport) yet I think e-bikes, if we fully embraced them, could change that. They already are growing popular with young people: my kids’ high school this year installed e-bike parking and I’d guess about 10-15% of kids ride bikes now, reducing the drop-off car traffic jam considerably.
I wrote about e-bikes and some of their potential here: https://open.substack.com/pub/heikelarson/p/e-bikes-cool-tools-with-hot-benefits
I just love how many different people choose e-bikes and wish we’d fine a way to use this new tool to make our cities more like Amsterdam.
Interesting series of essays! I wanted to respond to a point. From what I understand, tunnelling a road is going to be a lot less cost-effective than tunnelling a train every time. A train can do 32000+ people per hour per direction and a road lane can do 2000 pphpd. If the problem is a capacity constraint and the demand is along a line that can be served by a train, a road tunnel is not going to look good on a cost-benefit analysis
This is before considering ventilation requirements for internal combustion cars and trucks