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Has the Love Affair With Driving Gotten Stuck in Traffic? (washingtonpost.com)
America's love affair with the automobile and those dreams of roaring off on open highways are on the wane as the nation grapples with too much stop-and-go traffic and too many hours spent behind the steering wheel. From a report: Those findings are contained in a report to be released Thursday by Arity, a technology research spinoff created two years ago by Allstate Insurance. Arity underscored the growing disillusionment by using an illustration: Americans, on average, spend more time in their cars -- mostly driving to and from work -- than they receive in vacation time. Arity researchers said most people average 321 hours in the car each year and get 120 hours of vacation [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; an alternative source was not immediately available.]. "To me, that really crystallizes the issue," said Lisa Jillson, who leads Arity's research and design department. "I get a certain amount of vacation time, and I spend almost three times that in my car just getting back and forth to a job."
Her research showed a notable difference between millennials and baby boomers. Unhappiness with driving becomes more pronounced, with 59 percent of millennials saying they'd "rather spend time doing more productive tasks than driving," while only 45 percent of baby boomers make that same statement.
Her research showed a notable difference between millennials and baby boomers. Unhappiness with driving becomes more pronounced, with 59 percent of millennials saying they'd "rather spend time doing more productive tasks than driving," while only 45 percent of baby boomers make that same statement.
Either pick your employer to be near your home or buy a home with prospective employers nearby. Commuting is for people who didn't think ahead, and they pay a price and even may die because of it. Think ahead or die on the road.
I've been over driving for years. I commute about an hour each way, wasting 2 hours of my life each day, or 2/16 of my woke life. I'm actively trying to move to a place where I don't have to waste hours sitting in a car every day.
I don't respond to AC's.
It doesn't help that there's now a stop light or roundabout at nearly every intersection that gets more than 20 cars a day. For example, the city I live in put a stop light IN THE MIDDLE OF A STEEP HILL because there's a small factory on the, otherwise completely empty, side street. So even though there's only cross traffic for about an hour each day, the light continues all day. I'm just waiting for this winter when someone goes sliding through the light and T-bones someone. I hope both parties sue the city.
But commuting sucks. It just becomes a routine you have to do like brushing your teeth and taking out the garbage. Heavy traffic of course just makes it worse. Sadly, as good as public transport can be for a lot of reasons, it's not much fun either and in many cases won't save you any time.
I now live 10 minutes walk to the office and it still kind of sucks when it's very cold and/or rainy. On those days I can just stay in and work from home though :D
It takes about 15 minutes to work (I have to drop off the kid) and 10 minutes home, so about 25 minutes per day * days per week * 50 weeks ~ 105hours. So not quite.
On the plus side my car is nearly 50 years old, stick shift, and fun as heck to drive. So the drive can be by the seat of your pants which can be pretty enjoyable. There is about a three mile stretch where the road curves back and forth several times that most people don't like to take. That stretch alone is a joy to take at 10-15 mph above the speed limit. On the way home there is about a 1 1/2 mile street that is straight as an arrow with no lights or stop signs and very little traffic, ie pure fun to rake the shifter through.
Of course YMMV.
Sadly, as good as public transport can be for a lot of reasons, it's not much fun either and in many cases won't save you any time.
I can't do anything else while I'm driving. I can do all sorts of stuff (work, relax, etc.) while on public transit.
I don't respond to AC's.
I didn't have one in high school. By the time I did it was an expensive nuisance and constant source of stress mostly used to get me to work.
That said if I had one in high school (along with the increase in social standing that comes with one) my opinion would probably be very different.
Meanwhile I drive home against traffic each day and it's terrifying to me how bad things are. Traffic will be backed up several miles on surface streets. Freeways are at least a half mile. Meanwhile all those cars are spewing toxins and we're wasting gas and getting into wars we can't afford to feed our hungry engines.
Why do we live like this?
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we spent a few hundred on a sensor that only trips if a car pulls up. Your city's being cheap. The sensors work and work well. They're not even that expensive.
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Remember Germans get three more weeks PAID vacations than you Americans because theyre a better, smarter people than you.
USA is for suckers.
Now you're talking! ;)
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
I've lived close to and far from work over the years. Most recently I moved from a 15 minute in town commute to a 45 minute commute. I'm finding that the 45 minute commute is pretty productive. I think about work and home things, it lets me wind down and get ideas. I'll either make a spoken note or just remember what I want to do to make improvements to whatever I'm doing be it home or work related. I almost never have any music, pod cast, or books on tape going as a quiet commute is my desire. The short commute went from busy at work to busy at home with no downtime or quiet time. Perhaps taking 30 minutes or an hour at home after work to just chill would replace the commute but it's hard to make the time where commuting is unavoidable.
When I go on vacation, I ride my motorcycle and within a couple of days, all my work cares have fallen away behind me. It's the positive aspect of heading out on vacation.
And I suspect I'm a boomer of some sort, tail end at least (61 years old).
[John]
Shit better not happen!
"Love affair" is just car company marketing. People buy cars because they are useful transportation tools and other options like buses or trains are unvailable, take longer or are too expensive (to build at taxpayers expense).
Even in a congested area during rush hours cars often remain the fastest and cheapest transportation option. If electric cars become widespread, then they will also be the most environmentally friendly transportation option for travel outside of the densely populated urban core. If autonomous cars become widespread then cars will become a much safer transportation option than they are today.
Usually train, subway and bus transit options are the answer in those congested areas. Still for a sizable portion of any population transit will never be a viable, affordable or desirable option. And that shouldn't be driving transit advocates to distraction.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is where autonomous cars will help. When you can get work done as part of your commute it becomes less of a hassle. This is why rich people have drivers, so they can be conducting business and the driver has no incentive to get worked up about traffic as it's their job and they get paid no matter what traffic is doing.
While is may be practical for some people to pick up a cheap rental near work to live and work in during the week, it's not a practical solution for people who have families. And it requires that the time you save can be put towards real actual additional paid work to make it financially worth it.
Public transit exacerbates the problem by extending the time wasted commuting while providing no ability to get work done even though someone else is driving.
The problem of the commute can be solved two ways: make it shorter or make it more productive.
Business class Waymo with Wifi and enough room to comfortably sit with a laptop. That would be useful. Unless you tend to get motion sickness.
Telsa is working on making the commute shorter. Which is probably the most practical solution for most people. The question is whether it will either be affordable or take enough richer people off the road to make the freeways not terrible for the rest.
Work Safe Porn
on their hands? I mean, worst case their kids are grown up and the work. A lot are just plain retired. Of course they don't mind spending time in a car the way a Millennial working two jobs and taking care of the kids does.
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One can get used to not driving. I stopped driving 2 years ago and started cycling to work. I listen to audiobooks on the way and have both lost weight, improved health and consumed about 700 hours of books.
Still have the car, as I need to drive to my parents every now and then, but I really hate driving now. On the plus side, my car, which used to require expensive service every few months (thats Range Rover for you) can somehow magically survive an entire year without a mechanical failure :-)
The problem is city design as well as the concept of a work day is 9 to 5.
We cluster so much similar types of work in a concentrated location and dictate that it all starts and ends at the same hour.
Convince your employer to start an hour later or earlier and you will see a major difference.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
...for me the commute would probably be more enjoyable if I owned a brand new Dodge Challenger Hellcat vs. my current 250,000+ mile POS Chevy S10 pickup......, but unfortunately I will never be able to afford a Hellcat, so I am stuck with the POS and currently loathing my commute.
... because I'm not. I've been commuting by bicycle for the last 20 years. It's like being on vacation while getting to work -- the best part of my day! It's a bit over 20 miles (33 km) each way so I'm on the bike for about two hours/day. What's great is that I get two hours of workout in per day for essentially one hour of time (it takes 30 minutes to drive each way). The thing most motorist don't understand is riding a bike is often faster than driving. On surface streets, it's almost always faster to ride a bike during commute hours. On average, cars go about 13 mph (21 kph) in cities, which is a very easy speed to ride a bike. Yeah, I live in California, but I've commuted year 'round in Michigan too, so there...
It was 1.5 hours from my house to the shop in Calle Ocho. Through the worst of miami. 2nd gear crawling most of the time.
Then I got a better job, closer to home. I actually get to enjoy my car now. I floor the first 3 gears then lazy-shift up the last 3. Nice, flowing traffic -- fast, mind you, but easy.
There's those who love to drive, and those who hate driving and hate cars. Guess who there's more of. Yeah. This is why cars are maybe 5% of the cars out there, and the rest are lumbering land-cows called "SUVs" and "Crossovers."
And of those 5%, maybe 1% of those are sports car. What the hell happened? What's with all the land cows?
Leave the driving to those who love cars. The rest of you, for all that is holy, get your self-driving podmobiles already!
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
My dad is past retirement age but still commutes to work in Toronto every working day; His commute is just under 3 hours one way every day. I've told him many times that if I had to do that I would just blow my head off and call it a life, but not using those exact words.
America has written it's laws like everyone is born with a SUV strapped to their ass.
If you make our transportation systems safer for pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, and scooterists, it will cut down traffic, and reduce our dependence on oil.
Scooters, motorcycles, and mopeds help reduce traffic in other countries.
(Some scooters get 92MPG, many motorcycles get 64MPG.)
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
The average American drives 13,476 miles each year. If they're spending 321 hours in their car each year, that works out to an average speed of 42 MPH. That's hardly bogged down by traffic, especially if you factor in time spent on local streets. I average about 20-25 MPH on local roads (after accounting for red lights). So if you figure half my commute time is on local streets, half on the highway, then I'm averaging 61.5 MPH on the highway.
The "problem" isn't traffic. It's suburbanization and high housing prices at workplace locations, forcing people to live much further from their workplace than in the past. Public transportation is great for countering excessive traffic, but less effective at countering long commute distances (the bus or train is stuck between having few stops so less time is wasted waiting, and maintaining frequent stops so you don't have to walk far when you get to your destination car-less).
It's also worth pointing out that the average (mean) for open-ended quantities (like time spent in a car per year - capped at 8760 hours) is skewed towards the high end by the few extreme persons. If 9 people in a room make $50k/yr, and the 10th person makes $5 million/yr, the average income for everyone in the room is $545k/yr. So the median number of hours spent in the car will be lower (probably a lot lower) than 321 hours.
When I was in high school I couldn't wait to drive, even in the bigger cities like Chicago. Maybe too a lot of high schools don't provide drivers ed anymore. So people never bother to pay for private lessons? Myself, I have always lived in rural towns, heck my current town has one traffic light. We are miles from a town with a WalMart or other big retailers, so that lifestyle is something that requires a vehicle and yet its also less expensive then a big city to operate it. I still like my independence so for myself a vehicle is not a option, maybe I would think differently in a large city where mostly I could by without it.
Driving is the means, not the end. The love affair was not with the automobile, but with getting out and exploring new places.
You do know there's a whole generation in between Boomers and Millennials right? A lot of Boomers are retired now, so if this research is being done on commuters, the people you are calling "Baby Boomers" are probably Generation X.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
"Our study shows average_vacation_time average_commute_time".
How is this significant? Does anyone commuting think like this? I just view commuting as part of a typical work day.
It should come to no ones surprise that my vacation_days my_work_days.
Who really enjoys driving to and from work?
ugh, Why does a LESS_THAN symbol disappear?
"Our study shows average_vacation_time IS_LESS_THAN average_commute_time".
How is this significant? Does anyone commuting think like this? I just view commuting as part of a typical work day.
It should come to no ones surprise that my vacation_days IS_LESS_THAN my_work_days.
120 hours of PTO (can't really call it vacation, since what used to be 5 sick/personal days are now lumped into it, so really about 80 hours of vacation). Plus 80 holidays.
Yes, my life sucks....
Stay away. We've got too many idiots from SoCal invading and building McMansions already.
Okay, yeah, we're in cars. You know what we're also doing? Getting utility out of those cars by being able to live further away from dense cities while commuting into them for our high-paying jobs.
People wouldn't sit in traffic unless they had to? No shit. People also tend to work in sweatshops because they're _better paying than every other job_ in their town.
I agree that it's a good amount of perspective that we get less vacation than we drive to work in terms of hours to convoy how long we really spend getting to our jobs and not getting paid for it. But that's... basically it. It's just a "huh... that's interesting." trivia point like "We drink X gallons of soda every year."
Yeah, we should probably drink less soda. And it would be NICE if we didn't have to drive as far. It'd also be NICE if we weren't filling our lungs with pollution (from those same cars!) that causes asthma and allergies and learning disorders in our children. Except this last point actually means something. People are literally dying from our car's gas engines. And that's way more important than, "Oh no, I have to sit in a car and listen to music or podcasts in traffic while I go to my job that pays 10x more than 99% of the country"
My first computer science job paid $25,000 a year. After three years I made $32,000. I was responsible for data migrations for entire companies involving C#, SQL, and mobile applications. 32. fucking. grand. before taxes.
If I moved to Seattle, I'd be making >100,000 a year easily for the same job. I have friends there and they assured me of this--trying to get me to move and join their companies.
You think I wouldn't mind sitting in a car for an hour a day to Joe Rogan podcasts while I make literally FOUR TIMES as much money? (Or more.)
Now, why haven't I done that? Well, I got proper fucked by genetics and I'm currently staying near family because a strong support system has more UTILITY to me than a high pay check at the moment. But that's the key. People sit in traffic (and work) in large cities because the highest paying jobs (and ability to jump from one job to another instead of "the one big company in my town") are worth the minor inconvenience of sitting in a car. Even if you hate sitting in a car, if you treated your time in the car as a "billable hour" that you weren't getting paid for, you're still making far more money than 90% of the country and more money per hour sitting in your car in traffic than semi-truck drivers are making doing it for a living.
In otherwords, nothing to see here, move along.
I've always loved a good cross-country drive, and I still do. But to drive to work every day? No thanks. I get to work from home, so I don't have to deal with rush-hour local traffic (Redmond/Seattle) thank $DEITY - If I had to commute to the office every day, I'd have to kill somebody.
...59 percent of millennials saying they'd "rather spend time doing more productive tasks than driving
Like posting crap no one cares about on Facebook ?
(come on, "millenals" and "doing more productive tasks" literally opened the door for that...)
As a white collar tech worker, I can often opt to work from home. A lot of people at our office do a majority of the time even though its mandated no more than 2 days a week. It is often a ghost town in our office now and I wonder why we even really need it anymore. They could cut our office space to 1/3 what it is now, and do a hot desking situation instead. A lot of such companies could do this, even some call centers and this would cut down on the need for so many cars on the road.
When I do go into the office, I usually don't get in until 10 now because I have morning meetings with India that we take care of in the morning from home. Then we come in, if we feel we need to. At the end of the day, I take advantage of the company exercise room or the nearby park if it is nice weather to get a walk in for about 30-45 minutes, watching the traffic stream by as I do. A few others have caught on and do this now as well. By the time I get finished, traffic is down to a trickle and the drive home is quick and unstressful.
I love driving, and I consider it a hobby as well as essential transportation. I grew up in a big city but I no longer live in one, so there are no traffic jams here, ever. the system functions as intended and driving is a pleasure. I have a car, a truck and a travel trailer. I use the car when I'm not hauling things - 34 MPG and fast. The diesel truck gets used when hauling or towing.
There is a rather large disconnect between the city experience and the country experience. Here it's a central part of life, where in the City maybe it has gotten to the point where a lot of people would rather do without or use ride sharing services.
My only wish is that one group does not push their agenda on another group. Public transportation is not useful for people who actually do physical things for living, build physical things, sell things, haul things. The time scale is not conducive to business either. I can spend all day on public transit to get one task done, or spend two hours to get five tasks done in a car. The former makes no sense in a world where the latter is available.
I spent a good amount of time in Japan, and there public transit made much more sense. I never rent a car, always use the rail system. The population density and size of the country lends itself to it much better than the distribution and size of the US. Europe is larger but still better distributed for it. But I don't like it when people want to get rid of cars for the sake of getting rid of cars. It does not make sense universally.
By some drunk and/or dumb person way more stressful. Plus I have to worry about my car breaking down and the price of gas.
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you're in pretty good shape. Not saying you shouldn't be mad about how crap life is. Just saying the rest of us should be way, way more angry.
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ugh, Why does a LESS_THAN symbol disappear?
Because it is the start of an HTML tag, and /. allows them in comments to a degree. Typically, you overcome this with the use of an HTML entity by typing out the HTML Entity Name. So typing ">" will result in the site displaying a <
The cost of owning and driving a car has become so great that people want out of the loop. It will get worse. When i started driving in 1958 a driver's license cost two dollars at Sear5s, was a piece of cardboard with no pics on it at all. Now when i get a new license it costs $75 but is good for six years. That means the employees needed to issue permits are six times cheaper than in the past. The US has a very subtle inflation that is changing many things in our lives. We could buy a new car for $1,000 and now the typical total cost of buying a new car is about $42,000. And gasoline can be such a curse that people avoid moving to rural areas. Gasoline in the city or suburbs is normally used in small quantities but in rural areas one has little choice other than buying a huge amount of gasoline. In short our system is failing. Look at the coal industry. One machine can easily replace 1,000 coal miners so the labor cost for call has dropped due to so few miners being employed yet what the end user pays for that coal makes using it more like throwing gold coins out the window. Americans have created a system in which we can no longer afford ourselves.
I know that the prevailing sentiment here is traffic, commuting, and why you need to commute and how bad it all is. I commuted at least 25 miles one way my entire working life, and I enjoyed it. Being in my car, alone, driving, was the most pleasant and least stressful part of the day. I could listen to the radio--if I wanted to--or I could keep it off. There was no one else making extra noise, no constant pestering for attention, no distractions except other traffic, which was more or less an auto-pilot kind of thing. Further, no sitting next to others on the bus, no timetables, no waiting, no crowding. Public transportation? Good Lord, spare me, please!
I've always enjoyed running through the gears, turning sharp corners, merging into traffic. I don't care what state I'm in as long as I'm in the state of transportation. I just love driving and have since I was 16. Over 50 years later I still love it. Now that I'm retired I miss it. Any excuse for a road trip and I'm in!
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Some scooters get 92MPG
That'd be pretty mediocre! My 125cc Honda gets >120 MPG. It won't cut it for freeway driving, but it'll get up to 45-50mph without too much struggling.
When our family relocated because I took an I.T. position in Maryland, we were stuck renting a run-down 1970's townhouse for the first couple of years, as we got our bearings. The school district it was in was rated very highly, so with 3 kids, that was a prime concern.
As we started getting serious about searching for a house, we quickly found that almost anything out here with 3 bedrooms or more, suitable for our 5 person (6 with grandma, who lives with us most of the year now) family was WAY outside our price range unless we moved over an hour from the metro area.
We finally compromised on buying a 105 year old home that had a separate 2 car garage and a partially finished basement, plus the bonus of a nice view near the top of a hill. It's in a small town near the river, and has a rail line running through it with a commuter train you can take to and from where I work. The school district? Not as good as where we stayed initially, but this district was still rated ok when we got here. I think it's gotten worse since then, but thankfully - our kids are reaching their teens and will be out of it soon.
My workplace recently relocated me, along with a subset of our group, to a new office that's about 20 minutes closer to my house than my old office. But it ALSO meant there's no way to take the train there anymore, without doing a bus transfer. Too much headache so now I just deal with the drive.
All in all, the driving around sucks -- but I don't regret our decisions either. I've been able to argue for my employer letting me work from home more often, these days, so that makes it a lot less painful. Compromising on the biggest investment you'll probably ever make (your house) doesn't seem wise to me, just to play a game of trying to be close to work. Not when work is full of highly mobile employees and they have multiple offices all over the country, and have already done 2 mergers and eliminated one new business they tried to start up in one city.
How do I stop this dumb cunt from changing my font to the eye-bleeding Courier? Fuck her HTML wizardry!
... changes your view on this.
Rural American a car / truck is mandatory as walking 15 miles to the store to get a pair of pants during snow or 100+ degree days simply isnt feasible walking / biking.
Many states dont have enough people to subsidize public transit in medium sized cities let alone small town USA
Big city areas.... driving a car to work always ended up being stressful. Having a car to do weekend stuff was a huge benefit
I enjoy driving in rural America. Cant stand driving in cities where all you road boulders are parked in the left lane or worse where you are bumper to bumper while bicycles pass you by
ugh, Why does a LESS_THAN symbol disappear?
Because it is the start of an HTML tag, and /. allows them in comments to a degree. Typically, you overcome this with the use of an HTML entity by typing out the HTML Entity Name. So typing ">" will result in the site displaying a <
Thanks! Guess my markup is out of practice.
I have to read more carefully before pressing 'submit'
"roaring off on open highways" and "too much stop-and-go traffic" are generally talking about two different environments. I think there's a big difference in user experience between stop-and-go traffic to get to your work, and driving a country road in fall colors to a new destination.
I suspect that what the study is really measuring is a cultural change brought on by easy access to personal electronics and social media. It's a sucking thing rather than a pushing thing. When most of your needs are being met by that silicon rectangle in your hand, it's easier to decide not to take that drive to the country and experience reality.
The US is a big, big place and us humans don't actually inhabit more than a small portion of it. I ride (Harley) just for the fun of it, and I have no problems finding empty roads and interesting near-deserted places to explore all over the central and western US. I can ride for days, alone, and have a great time.
I admit I may be an edge case. I'm old enough to be in the "let's go for a drive" generation, and I live right on the edge of my area's urban growth boundary. Head south-west for four blocks and I'm in the country. But even were I right in the middle of the metro area, it wouldn't be more than an hour to get out into the open, except during rush hour of course.
I get that the problem as framed is that if you're driving for hours and hours to and from work during the week, why the heck would you want to take a drive on the weekend? My answer put succinctly is that it's a different thing. It's like, the difference between riding a stationary bike and riding a mountain bike in the woods. It's a different experience. Being bored to tears on the stationary doesn't preclude finding pleasure in a country ride.
When I worked in the city, my commute was typically 45 minutes to 1.5 hours, one way, depending on traffic. I'm well aware that there's areas where this is a lot worse. My uncle had a commute in LA of three hours each direction, which begs the question, why the hell didn't he move somewhere else?
Daughter is in her twenties, and she apparently inherited my love of driving. She has a small economical car that she takes exploring to let her mind decompress after a tough day, despite having a 40 minute to 1 hour commute each way to her job. Where she lives, there's traffic for about four blocks, and then open road. Admittedly, probably another edge case.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
My Chevy Volt is doing 175 MPG for its lifetime average. My driving is averaging about 85-90% electric. My next vehicle will very likely be a full EV. My power comes from a power portfolio that is pretty clean already and is getting cleaner, plus I opt for paying more for green power on my bill to create demand for renewable sources versus fossil fuels. I live in a climate where two wheeled vehicles don't do well several months out of the year due to snow and ice. Yes, I know there are ways for cyclists and motorcyclists to deal with snow, ice, freezing temperatures and all that -- but most people aren't going to deal with that. Scooters and motorcycles powered by gasoline also sidestep a lot of emissions laws that cars don't, and can pollute quite a bit, even though they consume less fuel. Small engines can be emissions nightmares, especially two stroke engines.
My car is no more than 5 minutes away at any given time. I can depart immediately at any time I want towards any destination. I can change my destination en-route. I can go out to lunch miles away, run errands, pick up dinner or groceries on the way home, or take home leftovers. I can leave home late and come home early if I don't feel well, go in early and stay at work late if I have to without worrying about schedules or waiting for anything to show up. My car is dry in the rain or snow, warm in the cold, air conditioned in the summer. I set the temperature to whatever I want and I pick the soundtrack. I can have private conversations in it, fart, pick my nose, change my clothes, eat a meal or take a nap in it without it being anybody else's business. I can carry just-in-case things I would otherwise leave at home rather than lug around in a bag: water, snacks, medications, deodorant, hand sanitizer, cash, lint roller, first aid kit, tool kit, backpack, grocery bags, a phone charger and battery, an umbrella, extra coat, gloves and change of clothes. I can carry infants and children without annoying others. There are hundreds of models to choose from, in many colors. They can be fun to drive fast, they can be fun to drive off-road, and soon may drive themselves if you'd like.
Given the amount of R&D that has gone into producing a modern car, they are unbelievably cheap to buy. Decades of metallurgy, mechanical engineering design, manufacturing work, finite element simulations, fluid dynamics and combustion science (and/or battery research), thermodynamics, catalyst chemistry, transmission design, suspension development, even the tires are pretty sophisticated things nowadays. For many it's the most comfortable chair and best-sounding stereo they own. You're buying the product of hundreds of billions of dollars of R&D done by tens of thousands of people over a century or so. Maybe modern computers and smartphones can compete with that but not much else as the pinnacle of human technology.
I'm all for others who hate driving taking public transport. Cars cost money to buy, refuel, maintain, register, insure. They create traffic, take up space, they make some noise and pollute the air. Are they practical in dense city areas, maybe not. Should they be electric? Yes. But even so cars are still awesome.
I used to love driving, never thought I'd ever want a self driving car. But I realize just how much productive time is wasted in the car going to and from an office that you really don't need to physically be in most of the time. Traffic where I moved to is getting worse. Once open highways are clogged, accident ridden messes. That's the other thing, so many accidents, as if every bad driver in the country moved here. So if it's not normal traffic it's hold ups because some dolt wrecked. People are simply incapable of taking care of themselves and need technology to do it for them.
Its a funny thing. Both the US and Canada once had public transportation networks that were the envy of the world but they were largely ripped out after the depression. Some cities, like Chicago, are still pretty good -- folks don't have to live in the heart of the city to have access to a bus or train to get places. Other locations not so much. Oh, the arguments were all that these services could not compete with personal cars but in many cases the numbers were rigged -- ask GM and others who helped. Problem is that the way things are built now makes very little allowance for implementing public transit of any flavor. One of the things that would have to be undone if any serious attempt were to be made to adapt to changing climate and reducing greenhouse gasses. Why this won't be a quick or cheap fix as centuries of technical development and a century or more of built environment all needs to be redone differently.
In other places there was a bit more thought given to the future. One can visit big chunks of Europe and Japan and rely on public transportation that seamlessly connects. North America has gone out of its way to make it hard... wonder why?
we spent a few hundred on a sensor that only trips if a car pulls up.
Which puts cyclists like me at a disadvantage. A lot of cities' traffic engineering departments in this country appear not to know how to calibrate their induction loops to recognize a bicycle with its wheels over the crack in the road. Sometimes it won't even recognize a bicycle and a motorcycle put together waiting on the same loop.
I can do all sorts of stuff (work, relax, etc.) while on public transit.
Provided public transit runs where and when you need. Citilink buses in Fort Wayne, Indiana, shut down for the night and have 58 days of scheduled downtime per year (source: fwcitilink.com) so that drivers can be with their families. Also provided you can carry and use a laptop for your work, as many tasks need a mouse, a large screen, or a powerful CPU or GPU.
I can eat breakfast, shave, catch up on the news and post to /. all while dri#$#![CARRIER LOST]
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Adjusted for inflation, the average cost per square-foot has barely changed.
But has the minimum size in square feet that a given city's zoning law allows a home builder to build changed? I seem to remember some cities were fighting the tiny house movement in court.
I just wrote out a huge comment and then the "prove yourself" question was undecipherable. It had an infinity symbol in it? It failed and erased my whole comment!
I would love a real estate website that allows you to put in one or more work addresses, and it shows a map of total commute times. It would have been very useful for me. I thought my favorite neighborhood was too far a commute to my office, so I didn't consider it. I later found out that there is a back-road short cut that is quite reasonable. Perhaps a upper price range, and it could show the houses with the shortest commutes, or just label all the houses you browse with your total commute times.
Millenials cannot frigging walk down the street without their nose in their phones. I've been polling in Brooklyn. It's astounding. Beautiful fall day. Phone zombies.
So sure, "something more meaningful" being "social media 7x24"
Now , get off my lawn, ya bastadahs...
"Her research showed a notable difference between millennials and baby boomers" - there's a generation you skipped there, but don't worry not giving a shit is our defining feature.
Not only do I enjoy driving, I PREFER to drive a stick shift. My personal car is a Mustang for the weekends. I requested my employer provided car to be a stick shift as well. Living out here in flyover country, (small-medium city 200k), a 10 minute commute to work would be a lifetime. Lots of great country to drive in here. From time to time, I have to go to Tulsa, Dallas, Chicago, Detroit but I don't fly...I drive. As long as the cruise control & spotify work, doesn't bother me one bit.
"Failed to make the roads safe for non-motorists"... I guess, when they were making roads for motor vehicles - like the Interstate Highway System - they should have taken into account pedestrians. Because nothing says "Transport people and goods throughout the United States quickly and efficiently!" like getting your 18-wheeler stuck behind somebody strolling down I-5 at 1 mph.
"Sharing the road" is a reasonable concept in low-speed areas, like residential neighborhoods. But all the food you eat, all the goods you buy - it needs to travel fast. So we build highways. And those highways need to allow cars and trucks to move fast. Slow people need to get out of the way, or they will get hurt.
Captcha: mashed. How very accurate.
I live in a major city. I work in the suburbs. I take the 2 hour driving time directly out of my workday, so I only work 6 hours a day. My employer decided they want to run their op where office space is cheaper rather than where the talent lives. That's on them.
The monospace font is like shouting, please don't do it just to be different.
The state is mother, the state is father. The state will drive for you, to where the state knows you must go. Freedom is slavery. Yada yada yada.
driving my car used to be fun, it no longer is. besides the ever increasing traffic jams which means you're not really driving anyway, but just sitting in a car waiting, there are increased police presence making sure you're following the traffic rules, which also have become more complex/unclear and sometimes impossible to follow (not really the rules, but rather situations; contradicting signs etc) and fines have increased to ridiculous levels. clearly, there is no fun to be had anymore.
i try to go to work by bike as much as possible, and still google maps reports that i've been in traffic for 42 hours last month! that is almost 2 days lost for nothing.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I finally sold my car and moved to a city which has great public transportation. No more oil changes. No more trips to the gas station. No more pricey repairs from lying repairmen. No more haggling with lying car dealers. I still like to read about car technology and I love the designs of futuristic cars. But overall, because driving and owning a car suck so badly, I f***ing hate having a car. Good riddance.
I have 240h of vacation per year plus a 33% bonus over the salary so I'm cool.
many motorcycles get 64MPG
As a motorcyclist, I have to say that's only true for very small motorcycles ridden very slowly.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It does not go where I want when I want. Public transportation is nice if you want to be livestock moving where you're told you should want to go.
The dream of driving, the idyllic scenario, is driving a soft-top down a bendy road in some really scenic area of the world. It's summer and the roads have only light traffic, so you are free to enjoy the scenery and the road.
So much of driving isn't that though. You are battling traffic to get to work. Construction means there are choke points or diversions. It's winter and the roads are slippery, and first thing in the morning it's dark. You have to plug in the block heater just to ensure the car will start and often, you have to dig the car out of a snowdrift.
Guess which you do more of? Guess which I love and which I could frankly do without?
I remember back in the day when I turned 18, went to DMV to get a license. then shortly after got my first car. $300 junker, yeah! now I get to go cruisin'. These days I can easily see why millennials would not pursue such, why? to go cruising in a traffic jam?
Here in SF bay area not much option, public transportation ok in some areas, bad in many others. Problem is the mindset of everybody in this country (rail transportation, and ***real*** bike lanes unimaginable) but wait maybe the millennials will detour from baby boomer thinking. I have read a lot of congestion caused by additional cars such as Uber and Lyft as I see these as "constant commuters" as usually the car is parked at home or at work but only on the road during between. Uber cars are on the road constantly.
I real stink I have are car commercials that show how fun it is to drive with wide open roads or city roads with no other cars (yeah, need the world become like "I am Legend" or "the Omega Man"). Cmon' how many people really like to drive, I say very few percent. Rest of us smucks just use it to get from point A to B.
mfwright@batnet.com