Just out of curiosity- what are the current prices for Public Transport?
Over here it is (all prices for the metropolitan area (whole vienna), those are the new prices valid from the first of June, the first price hike in 5 years, 10% + on average):
1 hour : €1,7
unlimited travel
- between 8:00 a.m and 8:00 p.m : €4,60
- 24 hours : €5,70
- 72 hours : €13,60
- 8 days (basically 8 tickets for 24 hours each) : €27,20
- 1 week (Monday till Sunday) : €14
- 1 month : €49,50
- 1 year : €458
No rebates are included in this (for example, kids under 6 travel free, so do kids below the age of 15 on sundays and in the summer, you also get discounts for students, elderly, there are talks about making public transport free for homeless people).
Now, I read here that public transport seems to be unaffordable for the poor, so what are the prices in the us?
it's a 1.25$ to ride the bus in Omaha, .05$ to get a transfer if you need to go a really long way.
We don't have any other form of mass transit (street cars died out a long time ago, the water table is too high for a subway, and the only trains that go through are Amtrak), so technically they could push the prices if they wanted to.
It costs me $1.30 to go across town on a bus, 7$ on a cab, or about 2$ worth of gas.
Howeve, gas prices don't affect me and the people I know too much because we do the same thing since I can remember: everybody just puts in 20$ at the start of each week.
That's quite interesting - cabs are only an option here if you are staying out really late at night and don't feel like catching a nightline (regular operation stops at 0:30 in the morning and starts again at 5:00) - they just cost far too much (a distance of 5 subway stations can cost you more than 8 euros already). Out of all the people I know, only a few (four of five) have a car, one uses it regularly. They are all students, so we just get a 90 Euro ticket that is valid for the whole semester (October 1st till January 30th and March 1st till June 30th) - most other people in the subway seem to use monthly or yearly cards - the only ones buying the "smaller" tickets are visitors to the city.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
Any policy that does not take into account the wage disparity will inevitably be doomed to failure.
So rich people (irregardless of actual fuel consumption by said individuals) deserve to bear the brunt of the cost of conversion to an alternate energy source more than poor people? How so?
Because they benefit the most from a smoothly functioning society which this is intended to continue for a long term.
Also, irregardless is not a word.
Right. You know how when you go into the store to buy a lock for your bike, the store charges you a lot more if it's a nice bike than if it's a shitty bike? Same thing. Since your bike costs more, clearly it makes sense for you to pay more for the lock, even though it's the exact same thing that the other guy is using to protect his 20 year old rusty single-speed.
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I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Any policy that does not take into account the wage disparity will inevitably be doomed to failure.
So rich people (irregardless of actual fuel consumption by said individuals) deserve to bear the brunt of the cost of conversion to an alternate energy source more than poor people? How so?
Because they benefit the most from a smoothly functioning society which this is intended to continue for a long term.
Also, irregardless is not a word.
Right. You know how when you go into the store to buy a lock for your bike, the store charges you a lot more if it's a nice bike than if it's a shitty bike? Same thing. Since your bike costs more, clearly it makes sense for you to pay more for the lock, even though it's the exact same thing that the other guy is using to protect his 20 year old rusty single-speed.
It's more like when you're buying the bike in the first place, and the solid gold, diamond-encrusted one costs more than the 20-year-old rusty single-speed.
The rich benefit more from a cheaper alternative to fossil fuels than the poor? I don't see it.
Ok, so we have a $1/gallon renewable fuel alternative become available tomorrow, and you think that poor people wouldn't appreciate that lessened burden more than a rich guy whose weekly expenditure on gas was pretty much negligible to him to begin with? The conversion to an alternate energy source benefits everyone in my eyes, and asking the rich to pay more than their share just because "that's what you get for being rich" isn't the way.
This is just my way of thinking that a straight tax on gas (to an absurd level) is a bad idea. Too many variables that affect too many people in unforseen ways. If you want to advocate welfare or whatever to go after the rich guy a tax on gas is hardly effective imo, plenty of other ways to tackle that issue. Fuel alternatives should be a common goal for society in general, and if you can't find a fair way to fund it via taxing existing fuel sources (which I don't think can be done) then you need to find alternate ways of funding (gov't does it every day).
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
It's more like when you're buying the bike in the first place, and the solid gold, diamond-encrusted one costs more than the 20-year-old rusty single-speed.
You're right, I keep forgetting that it costs more to send a kWh of energy to a rich person than it does to a poor person.
Fact is, this whole "X has more to lose, and thus it's obvious that they should pay more" bullshit is retarded. It is exactly, precisely, in every way like the bike lock example. You're saying that rich people should pay more for something than poor people simply because they have more to lose if that something doesn't exist. That's fucking asinine. I can understand an argument that the wealthy should pay more for goods because they have more money to burn and it's simply the most efficient and feasible way to handle the divvying up of the bill. That's cool, I'm all about practicality. But your argument is all kinds of dumb, and I've never bought into it. Just cut the semantics and say "from each according to his ability."
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I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
The rich benefit more from a cheaper alternative to fossil fuels than the poor? I don't see it.
Ok, so we have $1/gallon renewable fuel alternative become available tomorrow, and you think that poor people wouldn't appreciate that lessened burden more than a rich guy whose weekly expenditure on gas was pretty much negligible to him to begin with? The conversion to an alternate energy source benefits everyone in my eyes, and asking the rich to pay more than their share just because "that's what you get for being rich" isn't the way.
You forget that the corollary to "fuck rural folks" is "fuck the rich".
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
The rich benefit more from a cheaper alternative to fossil fuels than the poor? I don't see it.
Ok, so we have $1/gallon renewable fuel alternative become available tomorrow, and you think that poor people wouldn't appreciate that lessened burden more than a rich guy whose weekly expenditure on gas was pretty much negligible to him to begin with? The conversion to an alternate energy source benefits everyone in my eyes, and asking the rich to pay more than their share just because "that's what you get for being rich" isn't the way.
You forget that the corollary to "fuck rural folks" is "fuck the rich".
No, because the idea with "from each according to his ability" is that rich people don't suffer as much from taxes as poor people; and often this is true even when they are taxed higher proportions of their money. Come on--it's not like the rich people will be moved into standardized shacks and their assets seized effective immediately.
The rich benefit more from a cheaper alternative to fossil fuels than the poor? I don't see it.
Ok, so we have $1/gallon renewable fuel alternative become available tomorrow, and you think that poor people wouldn't appreciate that lessened burden more than a rich guy whose weekly expenditure on gas was pretty much negligible to him to begin with? The conversion to an alternate energy source benefits everyone in my eyes, and asking the rich to pay more than their share just because "that's what you get for being rich" isn't the way.
You forget that the corollary to "fuck rural folks" is "fuck the rich".
It's more like when you're buying the bike in the first place, and the solid gold, diamond-encrusted one costs more than the 20-year-old rusty single-speed.
I'm not sure that a solid gold bike would be very practical.
That squiggly oval thing in the middle is the train, pretty much everything else is busses.
I wish they would add skytrain routes to the black lines I skillfully mspainted onto there. It took me an hour and a half to get to Capilano College when I went there and the drive was 10 minutes from my house. You'd have seriously reduced traffic along Marine Drive through West/North Van, it would link up to the Horsehoe Bay Ferry terminal, and you could get to the airport all via Skytrain with the new RAV line. Plus it would connect to UBC instead of having to take the express bus, which isn't bad but its not as nice as a skytrain for time and convenience.
Thinking ahead they could have added a skytrain track onto the Lions Gate Bridge (sidestepping the whole 3 lane-retardedness of said bridge), and linked it up with my hypothetical North Shore track, and connected it to a Maglev train that would go straight to Whistler in like 15 minutes! It would have been possible under the guise of 2010 Olympics funding, and that would open up the whole area up there, Squamish etc, and would have drastically reduced the need for a project with as much scope and funding as the new Sea to Sky highway currently being paved over what used to be some pretty pristine greenspace.
Sorry for the very city specific post .
Edit: Whoops I didn't even include my edited picture, here we go:
My BBcode skills leave people dead in the streets.
I wish they would add skytrain routes to the black lines I skillfully mspainted onto there. It took me an hour and a half to get to Capilano College when I went there and the drive was 10 minutes from my house. You'd have seriously reduced traffic along Marine Drive through West/North Van, it would link up to the Horsehoe Bay Ferry terminal, and you could get to the airport all via Skytrain with the new RAV line. Plus it would connect to UBC instead of having to take the express bus, which isn't bad but its not as nice as a skytrain for time and convenience.
Thinking ahead they could have added a skytrain track onto the Lions Gate Bridge (sidestepping the whole 3 lane-retardedness of said bridge), and linked it up with my hypothetical North Shore track, and connected it to a Maglev train that would go straight to Whistler in like 15 minutes! It would have been possible under the guise of 2010 Olympics funding, and that would open up the whole area up there, Squamish etc, and would have drastically reduced the need for a project with as much scope and funding as the new Sea to Sky highway currently being paved over what used to be some pretty pristine greenspace.
Sorry for the very city specific post .
They're doing a lot at the moment, aren't they? I thought I saw Skytrain construction at the airport when I was there (Feb), and I thought they were constructing a line that goes out to UBC too. The skytrain's a good system - pretty reliable, fast, not too expensive.
I wish they would add skytrain routes to the black lines I skillfully mspainted onto there. It took me an hour and a half to get to Capilano College when I went there and the drive was 10 minutes from my house. You'd have seriously reduced traffic along Marine Drive through West/North Van, it would link up to the Horsehoe Bay Ferry terminal, and you could get to the airport all via Skytrain with the new RAV line. Plus it would connect to UBC instead of having to take the express bus, which isn't bad but its not as nice as a skytrain for time and convenience.
Thinking ahead they could have added a skytrain track onto the Lions Gate Bridge (sidestepping the whole 3 lane-retardedness of said bridge), and linked it up with my hypothetical North Shore track, and connected it to a Maglev train that would go straight to Whistler in like 15 minutes! It would have been possible under the guise of 2010 Olympics funding, and that would open up the whole area up there, Squamish etc, and would have drastically reduced the need for a project with as much scope and funding as the new Sea to Sky highway currently being paved over what used to be some pretty pristine greenspace.
Sorry for the very city specific post .
They're doing a lot at the moment, aren't they? I thought I saw Skytrain construction at the airport when I was there (Feb), and I thought they were constructing a line that goes out to UBC too. The skytrain's a good system - pretty reliable, fast, not too expensive.
Well they're adding the Canada line which goes from downtown to the airport, but that's all I've heard. You might wanna glance back at my post to for my edited picture since without it, it probably didn't make as much sense . I figured adding something onto Broadway all the way to UBC, and then something on the North Shore in West/North Van, would go a long way to finishing off an otherwise pretty nice system.
I think this argument ignores the fact that the stick is always less effective then the carrot in the long run. Any tax on fuel like this is going to become a political bargaining chip in every single election. It won't last, it won't even be introduced because if there's one thing everyone will hate on it's seeing that number at the petrol station go up, regardless of what sort of rebates are included to offset it.
People are also going to be pissed about that quality of life hit - and let's ignore Goum because he's wrong and there is one. It drastically effects my quality of life to have to wake up 2 hours earlier in the morning to get their on time (which is what I'd have to do), because it affects my leisure time in the evening and/or how fatigued I'll feel overall. That alone is worth a significant amount of money to me, and everyone else. The one truth of the labor market seems to be that beyond some point it takes some type of exponential increase in pay to get people to work longer hours - and increasing commute times has the same net effect.
My opinion of public transport in the cities is that generally it's a retarded idea. Public transport blows in it's current form - it's not public transport, it's mass transport - it only works by moving large amounts of people in quantity and that isn't what I want nor what we should be moving for. What's needed is genuine investment in pilot schemes to find a public transport system that is virtually indistinguishable to private transport - leave when you want, whenever you want etc.
I would also contend that public transport in other countries is never as good as it seems, because the only time you ever experience it is when you're their as a tourist rather then actually living there (or it's Tokyo and you can imagine how the volume of their train system would convert to a road system).
Just out of curiosity- what are the current prices for Public Transport?
Over here it is (all prices for the metropolitan area (whole vienna), those are the new prices valid from the first of June, the first price hike in 5 years, 10% + on average):
1 hour : €1,7
unlimited travel
- between 8:00 a.m and 8:00 p.m : €4,60
- 24 hours : €5,70
- 72 hours : €13,60
- 8 days (basically 8 tickets for 24 hours each) : €27,20
- 1 week (Monday till Sunday) : €14
- 1 month : €49,50
- 1 year : €458
No rebates are included in this (for example, kids under 6 travel free, so do kids below the age of 15 on sundays and in the summer, you also get discounts for students, elderly, there are talks about making public transport free for homeless people).
Now, I read here that public transport seems to be unaffordable for the poor, so what are the prices in the us?
in ottawa:
$1.90 if you have tickets, 3.00 in cash. That will last you for 90 minutes (enough time to go across the city).
Day pass is like $7
Monthly pass is $71.25
Our bus system rocks too. The rapid buses come by every 5 minutes during the weekdays, 15 on weekends. Those will take you pretty much anywhere in the city. Plus they use bus only roads for much of the travel so it's super fast.
Most others buses run every 15 or less during peak hours, 30 during offtime.
I like our bus system.
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took out her barrettes and her hair spilled out like rootbeer
My opinion of public transport in the cities is that generally it's a retarded idea. Public transport blows in it's current form - it's not public transport, it's mass transport - it only works by moving large amounts of people in quantity and that isn't what I want nor what we should be moving for. What's needed is genuine investment in pilot schemes to find a public transport system that is virtually indistinguishable to private transport - leave when you want, whenever you want etc.
My opinion of public transport in the cities is that generally it's a retarded idea. Public transport blows in it's current form - it's not public transport, it's mass transport - it only works by moving large amounts of people in quantity and that isn't what I want nor what we should be moving for. What's needed is genuine investment in pilot schemes to find a public transport system that is virtually indistinguishable to private transport - leave when you want, whenever you want etc.
And what exactly would the advantage of that be?
This thread is actually about running out of oil, like it or not. No one would be here talking about this if our transportation system didn't consume a fairly significant quantity of oil in the form of petrol. At least, this is my concern with the matter.
My assumption is that many of the assumptions people are making about this topic has to do with their breadth of experiences in what constitutes living situations and commutes.
Seriously, there are huge commuter communities in rural areas; living in the rural region an hour or half an hour from a city is how a LOT of people live, despite the costs. Whole TOWNS exist that are basically there so the rural suburb doesn't have to go to the big city for groceries because your ice cream will melt on the way home.
Human lives are not run like economically-wise companies. People have a huge range of values, and they will sacrifice a lesser value for a greater value, whatever their values may be.
If you think that people automatically value money before other considerations, maybe you should see the crap people throw money away on. Like, say, mansions and large yards and pets and kids and swimming pools and video games and big screen TVs.
For the most part, none of those things increases your money, and will damned well decrease your money.
Cost-effectiveness isn't the main goal of that many lives, and you really can't depend on it for change.
A business is another matter. They'll usually just leave the area for greener pastures, if they're able.
Money makes things possible, but if you're losing money to one thing, but you like that thing, you can sacrifice in OTHER areas to compensate, rather than be forced to give up on that thing.
If we hit the gas tax now, we develop technologies now that can help eliminate global warming. A lack of oil isn't the only problem we're staring in the face right now.
Or we could plop down THERMAL DEPOLYMERIZATION plants outside every major metropolitan area and bathe in Texas Light Sweet Crude while vastly reducing the eminently real and tangible issues of world poverty and war and ignore a nebulous doomsday scenario that's been overblown into ZOMG THE END IS NIGH.
One of these solutions fucks my wallet, and the other one doesn't. I think I'll go without the fucking.
The first thing I do when I have real spare money is I'm finding myself a bio-diesel sports car.
You're like a mid-life crisis about 20 years early.
It actually started when I was 16, but I don't really -like- cars so much as I like surviving the road without an SUV.
But seriously, when they start rolling out the biodiesel or butanol porsches, it'll be a whole lot easier to get people to go green than via threats if they don't move to a condo a short walk from their work place.
People tend to replace cars at a rapid pace, much moreso than houses (hell, people may change jobs more often than houses these days), once they've gotten to a certain economic point (20-somethings obviously tend to be more mobile housing-wise).
And, frankly, a good number of the current green cars look goddamn idiotic, and the only status symbol you can get from them is "hippie."
The Prius looks the way it does for the co-efficient of drag. If you notice all the new "fuel efficient small cars", they're all starting to look similar - it's because that shape is conducive to a low co-efficient of drag.
The Prius looks the way it does for the co-efficient of drag. If you notice all the new "fuel efficient small cars", they're all starting to look similar - it's because that shape is conducive to a low co-efficient of drag.
Yes.
And when they find a way to make that look sextacular, it'll be a big draw.
But as it stands, people buy wasteful, badly-designed cars for the sex appeal.
Concessions need to be made to get the transition going.
I may be mistaken, but I think hybrid cars are a joke. While they are fuel-efficient, they take far more resources to manufacture.
It's like those electric hand-dryers in public bathrooms that say "enviro-friendly". Okay, they aren't cutting trees to make paper towels, but where is the electricity coming from? Probably from fossil fuels.
I may be mistaken, but I think hybrid cars are a joke. While they are fuel-efficient, they take far more resources to manufacture.
It's like those electric hand-dryers in public bathrooms that say "enviro-friendly". Okay, they aren't cutting trees to make paper towels, but where is the electricity coming from? Probably from fossil fuels.
The problem with that reasoning is that it is generally much better to use energy connected to the grid (and hopefully near generation) than it is locally with an internal combustion engine. Gasoline is a pretty poor energy source in and of itself, it is just energy dense so it is useful for portability.
Human lives are not run like economically-wise companies. People have a huge range of values, and they will sacrifice a lesser value for a greater value, whatever their values may be.
If you think that people automatically value money before other considerations, maybe you should see the crap people throw money away on. Like, say, mansions and large yards and pets and kids and swimming pools and video games and big screen TVs.
Those things are covered by economics. Money's pointless without something to spend it on; you need something to get your jollies from.
Those things are covered by economics. Money's pointless without something to spend it on; you need something to get your jollies from.
Oh I know that real economics considers psychological aspects. But there was a lot of "People will be happy to live in a tiny box so long as it means they have more money" earlier.
I would think the very existance of mansions would make this bleedingly obviously wrong, but eh.
People like money, but people like money because it can get them what they want. What they want doesn't change, even if it becomes expensive, they just have to get fewer things that they want to get what they want most, or simply be perpetually unhappy.
Those things are covered by economics. Money's pointless without something to spend it on; you need something to get your jollies from.
Oh I know that real economics considers psychological aspects. But there was a lot of "People will be happy to live in a tiny box so long as it means they have more money" earlier.
I would think the very existance of mansions would make this bleedingly obviously wrong, but eh.
People like money, but people like money because it can get them what they want. What they want doesn't change, even if it becomes expensive, they just have to get fewer things that they want to get what they want most, or simply be perpetually unhappy.
Again, you really should rethink the value you're applying to living in a 'tiny box'. I can assure you that there are inner-city apartments in London or Tokyo worth far more than a suburban 'mansion' in the States. When cities have a dense, wealthy population, they become more attractive as living spaces than any private acreage or ten-bedroom colossus.
In many cases, people will be happy to live in a tiny box even if it means much less money.
Those things are covered by economics. Money's pointless without something to spend it on; you need something to get your jollies from.
We know that. The problem is it was being asserted that money unequivocably will make you happier despite people pointing out that if people can't get what they want (house in the suburbs) then well no it won't. The assumption breaks down when you artificially limit the spending.
Which supports my point: People will pay out the ass for what they want in life.
I concur. Carrot and stick don't work. We need legislation. We need it yesterday. And it better go all the way.
Eh? Legislation is either carrot or stick; that's what it is.
If you're talking about tax legislation, sure.
If you're talking about jail time legislation, people tend to not refer to that as 'the stick', since unless you're a sociopath, compliance is not optional.
edit:
And just for the record, I'm perfectly aware that such legislation will occur only when people in Brussels/Washington take a boat to work.
Which supports my point: People will pay out the ass for what they want in life.
I concur. Carrot and stick don't work. We need legislation. We need it yesterday. And it better go all the way.
Eh? Legislation is either carrot or stick; that's what it is.
If you're talking about tax legislation, sure.
If you're talking about jail time legislation, people tend to not refer to that as 'the stick', since unless you're a sociopath, compliance is not optional.
I'd say "you'll go to jail if you do" is pretty much the stick..
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That's quite interesting - cabs are only an option here if you are staying out really late at night and don't feel like catching a nightline (regular operation stops at 0:30 in the morning and starts again at 5:00) - they just cost far too much (a distance of 5 subway stations can cost you more than 8 euros already). Out of all the people I know, only a few (four of five) have a car, one uses it regularly. They are all students, so we just get a 90 Euro ticket that is valid for the whole semester (October 1st till January 30th and March 1st till June 30th) - most other people in the subway seem to use monthly or yearly cards - the only ones buying the "smaller" tickets are visitors to the city.
Right. You know how when you go into the store to buy a lock for your bike, the store charges you a lot more if it's a nice bike than if it's a shitty bike? Same thing. Since your bike costs more, clearly it makes sense for you to pay more for the lock, even though it's the exact same thing that the other guy is using to protect his 20 year old rusty single-speed.
90 minutes, 2 zones: $3.25
90 minutes, 3 zones: $4.50
All day, 3 zones: $8.00
Monthly, 1 zone: $69.00
Monthly, 2 zones: $95.00
Monthly, 3 zones: $130.00
That squiggly oval thing in the middle is the train, pretty much everything else is busses.
The rich benefit more from a cheaper alternative to fossil fuels than the poor? I don't see it.
Ok, so we have a $1/gallon renewable fuel alternative become available tomorrow, and you think that poor people wouldn't appreciate that lessened burden more than a rich guy whose weekly expenditure on gas was pretty much negligible to him to begin with? The conversion to an alternate energy source benefits everyone in my eyes, and asking the rich to pay more than their share just because "that's what you get for being rich" isn't the way.
This is just my way of thinking that a straight tax on gas (to an absurd level) is a bad idea. Too many variables that affect too many people in unforseen ways. If you want to advocate welfare or whatever to go after the rich guy a tax on gas is hardly effective imo, plenty of other ways to tackle that issue. Fuel alternatives should be a common goal for society in general, and if you can't find a fair way to fund it via taxing existing fuel sources (which I don't think can be done) then you need to find alternate ways of funding (gov't does it every day).
You're right, I keep forgetting that it costs more to send a kWh of energy to a rich person than it does to a poor person.
Fact is, this whole "X has more to lose, and thus it's obvious that they should pay more" bullshit is retarded. It is exactly, precisely, in every way like the bike lock example. You're saying that rich people should pay more for something than poor people simply because they have more to lose if that something doesn't exist. That's fucking asinine. I can understand an argument that the wealthy should pay more for goods because they have more money to burn and it's simply the most efficient and feasible way to handle the divvying up of the bill. That's cool, I'm all about practicality. But your argument is all kinds of dumb, and I've never bought into it. Just cut the semantics and say "from each according to his ability."
You forget that the corollary to "fuck rural folks" is "fuck the rich".
No, because the idea with "from each according to his ability" is that rich people don't suffer as much from taxes as poor people; and often this is true even when they are taxed higher proportions of their money. Come on--it's not like the rich people will be moved into standardized shacks and their assets seized effective immediately.
More 'extort the rich'.
If you do have the mass transit card I think it is $1.70.
I can't really remember though, because my office gets me a pass every month as one of the benefits.
I'm not sure that a solid gold bike would be very practical.
They're doing a lot at the moment, aren't they? I thought I saw Skytrain construction at the airport when I was there (Feb), and I thought they were constructing a line that goes out to UBC too. The skytrain's a good system - pretty reliable, fast, not too expensive.
Well they're adding the Canada line which goes from downtown to the airport, but that's all I've heard. You might wanna glance back at my post to for my edited picture since without it, it probably didn't make as much sense
People are also going to be pissed about that quality of life hit - and let's ignore Goum because he's wrong and there is one. It drastically effects my quality of life to have to wake up 2 hours earlier in the morning to get their on time (which is what I'd have to do), because it affects my leisure time in the evening and/or how fatigued I'll feel overall. That alone is worth a significant amount of money to me, and everyone else. The one truth of the labor market seems to be that beyond some point it takes some type of exponential increase in pay to get people to work longer hours - and increasing commute times has the same net effect.
My opinion of public transport in the cities is that generally it's a retarded idea. Public transport blows in it's current form - it's not public transport, it's mass transport - it only works by moving large amounts of people in quantity and that isn't what I want nor what we should be moving for. What's needed is genuine investment in pilot schemes to find a public transport system that is virtually indistinguishable to private transport - leave when you want, whenever you want etc.
I would also contend that public transport in other countries is never as good as it seems, because the only time you ever experience it is when you're their as a tourist rather then actually living there (or it's Tokyo and you can imagine how the volume of their train system would convert to a road system).
in ottawa:
$1.90 if you have tickets, 3.00 in cash. That will last you for 90 minutes (enough time to go across the city).
Day pass is like $7
Monthly pass is $71.25
Our bus system rocks too. The rapid buses come by every 5 minutes during the weekdays, 15 on weekends. Those will take you pretty much anywhere in the city. Plus they use bus only roads for much of the travel so it's super fast.
Most others buses run every 15 or less during peak hours, 30 during offtime.
I like our bus system.
took out her barrettes and her hair spilled out like rootbeer
And what exactly would the advantage of that be?
Seriously, there are huge commuter communities in rural areas; living in the rural region an hour or half an hour from a city is how a LOT of people live, despite the costs. Whole TOWNS exist that are basically there so the rural suburb doesn't have to go to the big city for groceries because your ice cream will melt on the way home.
Human lives are not run like economically-wise companies. People have a huge range of values, and they will sacrifice a lesser value for a greater value, whatever their values may be.
If you think that people automatically value money before other considerations, maybe you should see the crap people throw money away on. Like, say, mansions and large yards and pets and kids and swimming pools and video games and big screen TVs.
For the most part, none of those things increases your money, and will damned well decrease your money.
Cost-effectiveness isn't the main goal of that many lives, and you really can't depend on it for change.
A business is another matter. They'll usually just leave the area for greener pastures, if they're able.
Money makes things possible, but if you're losing money to one thing, but you like that thing, you can sacrifice in OTHER areas to compensate, rather than be forced to give up on that thing.
Flexible budgeting isn't that rare.
One of these solutions fucks my wallet, and the other one doesn't. I think I'll go without the fucking.
It actually started when I was 16, but I don't really -like- cars so much as I like surviving the road without an SUV.
But seriously, when they start rolling out the biodiesel or butanol porsches, it'll be a whole lot easier to get people to go green than via threats if they don't move to a condo a short walk from their work place.
People tend to replace cars at a rapid pace, much moreso than houses (hell, people may change jobs more often than houses these days), once they've gotten to a certain economic point (20-somethings obviously tend to be more mobile housing-wise).
And, frankly, a good number of the current green cars look goddamn idiotic, and the only status symbol you can get from them is "hippie."
All about the marketing.
Yeah, but it would take minimal development effort to plug the same technology in to one of these bad boys:
Sometimes I wonder if they make green cars look "off" on purpose.
Kind of like how the 2000 model cars all looked like they had some sort of water retention problem.
Does this make me one of them thar homosexulikes?
Yes.
And when they find a way to make that look sextacular, it'll be a big draw.
But as it stands, people buy wasteful, badly-designed cars for the sex appeal.
Concessions need to be made to get the transition going.
It's like those electric hand-dryers in public bathrooms that say "enviro-friendly". Okay, they aren't cutting trees to make paper towels, but where is the electricity coming from? Probably from fossil fuels.
The problem with that reasoning is that it is generally much better to use energy connected to the grid (and hopefully near generation) than it is locally with an internal combustion engine. Gasoline is a pretty poor energy source in and of itself, it is just energy dense so it is useful for portability.
Those things are covered by economics. Money's pointless without something to spend it on; you need something to get your jollies from.
Oh I know that real economics considers psychological aspects. But there was a lot of "People will be happy to live in a tiny box so long as it means they have more money" earlier.
I would think the very existance of mansions would make this bleedingly obviously wrong, but eh.
People like money, but people like money because it can get them what they want. What they want doesn't change, even if it becomes expensive, they just have to get fewer things that they want to get what they want most, or simply be perpetually unhappy.
Again, you really should rethink the value you're applying to living in a 'tiny box'. I can assure you that there are inner-city apartments in London or Tokyo worth far more than a suburban 'mansion' in the States. When cities have a dense, wealthy population, they become more attractive as living spaces than any private acreage or ten-bedroom colossus.
In many cases, people will be happy to live in a tiny box even if it means much less money.
does not help with
We know that. The problem is it was being asserted that money unequivocably will make you happier despite people pointing out that if people can't get what they want (house in the suburbs) then well no it won't. The assumption breaks down when you artificially limit the spending.
I concur. Carrot and stick don't work. We need legislation. We need it yesterday. And it better go all the way.
Europe just as much as the States, and no waiting for China to make the first move.
Eh? Legislation is either carrot or stick; that's what it is.
If you're talking about tax legislation, sure.
If you're talking about jail time legislation, people tend to not refer to that as 'the stick', since unless you're a sociopath, compliance is not optional.
edit:
And just for the record, I'm perfectly aware that such legislation will occur only when people in Brussels/Washington take a boat to work.
I'd say "you'll go to jail if you do" is pretty much the stick..