The point he makes is correct of course, but the way he does the comparison is not very honest. If he wants to compare to the maximum capacity of a tube train, he'd also have to take the maximum capacity of a car, not the average passengers.
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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But this is what happens. Every rush hour the roads are packed with cars, mostly just with one person in them, while the trains are actually full.
During rush hour you definitely won't have a distance of 10 meters between each car though.
If they're moving there should be, and if not it doesn't seem fair to me to compare transport to a car park.
The comparison is completely honest. It is dishonest to pretend that trains aren’t generally full and a line up of cars ever are.
Trains are generally at their fullest when cars are at their emptiest, during commuter hours. Tube trains are near empty (maybe 10-15% of capacity) for most of the day and night, whereas those who do drive at those times are likely groups of workmen or otherwise groups of people going to the same place
Trains are generally at their fullest when cars are at their emptiest, during commuter hours.
If that's true, then we are obviously comparing like-for-like: busy train commute time, busy car commute time. Which makes it a completely fair and representative comparison. "This isn't fair because what about when no one is commuting?" is a weird complaint.
That said, I'm skeptical that for most of the day trains are "near empty" and that for most of the day cars are "likely full of groups of workmen". Do you have a source for that?
If I were to say "at 3am, almost all grocery stores are empty, yet almost all houses are occupied, so look how much land is being wasted by grocery stores" would that be fair and representative, or picking and choosing a time to suit what I'm trying to say?
Even if we do pick and choose in favour of cars, the train is still probably more space efficient even with only around 30-50 people on board so why put yourself in a position where you can be rightfully called out as misrepresentating the data?
For the last part, have you been to London? Outside of 7:30-9:30 and 16:30-20:00 you're pretty much guaranteed a seat anywhere on the network - when you consider that 27% of the capacity of a piccadilly line train is seating, I would call a train that's 10-25% full near empty in the same way that a car with 1 person in would be near empty... And if you look at the streets of London during the day, it's all taxis and vans, generally the taxis are a mix of families and people alone, leaning towards families as it makes more sense financially to get one the more of you there are, and the vans generally have groups of people who are using them for work
Completely honest! All cars are at least 4.5m, especially in the city where hatchbacks like the golf (4.2m) reign supreme. And what driver doesn't love driving in bumper to bumper traffic, named for the more than two full car lengths between them and both the car in front and behind.
Not to say that the point they are dishonestly trying to make is invalid, but this is definitely playing with assumed numbers to exaggerate the point.
ah yes, the 0.3 meters difference in car length makes this completely "dishonest". Throw the whole thing out because they used 4.5 instead of 4.2.
I don't even get your point about car following distance. A line of totally immobile cars bumper to bumper is illustrative of nothing. Using the ideal scenario for car storage is hardly "more honest". I have no idea what is motivating all this weird nitpicking.
A bicycle is so much more efficient than a car!
3 people one a bike in 2m vs 3km for cars, 1 person per car, with a 1km gap between every car !
Fuck cars, but he's pushing it too much in one direction to try and make a point.
Agreed its not very honest. Transportation is about getting places, not filling roads. Average speed of the tubetrain is more than double that of cars, even without dumping all of these extra people onto the roads. After accounting for that, you would need to quadruple the length so that it can match the passenger miles.
No, it's very honest.
When you increase the number of passengers on a train(e.g. rush hour), the volume doesn't increase. The size of the train stays fixed up until it hits capacity.
When you increase the number of passengers on a road, they tend to still have around 1 car/person. Encouraging people to carpool just doesn't really happen. So an "at capacity" road still has most cars with just the driver. This is one of the main reasons cars are so inefficient, people are lugging around capacity for 5 people and tons of cargo, but it never gets used even when the roads are "at capacity".
have you seen the trains at rush hour? they are usually filled with 200% capacity.
Have you seen their rated capacity?
They're like lifts which say they'll fit 20 people in yet even as cramped as they can get it's at most maybe 80% of that number
Wait, 10 meters between cars ?? In traffic ?
Not unreasonable for slow-ish city traffic. Should be more for highway speeds, sure, but he compares it to the tube and overlays the distance on London.
Now try adding up all the square footage parking spaces take.
For example, consider that adding a parking space to a 400 sq.ft. studio apartment — or adding two spaces to a 800 sq.ft. two-bedroom — effectively increases the total square footage by a whopping 50%. And since concrete parking decks are more expensive to build than habitable area of dwelling units, that likely represents a greater than 50% increase in costs.
And yet people unironically defend minimum parking requirements while simultaneously removed about housing costs.