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Geometry hates cars
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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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.
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.
If the cars are moving at over 5m/s then there will be for minimum safe followong distance.
If they are moving under that, you don't have a transport system that is more capable than a brisk walk.
5 m/s is 18kph or ~11mph.
40kph safe stopping distance is 26 meters dry, 30 meters wet. I can't even find data below 40 kph, but 10m would be reaction time alone (no bake time)
The average speed in London is 8 mph overall, taking traffic into account.
Average speed yes, but I doubt anyone is doing 8mph.
It's likely they drive closer to 20 mph (needing a larger safe distance) then stop at lights (needing no safe distance, but probably 3-5m if you have the driving school of thought to be able to have an exit at all times). Then there is all the space occupied by the intersections themselves. These would further space out cars, bringing the average length of X cars higher.
These are all guesses based on my local knowledge, I have been to London in close to a decade, and I did not drive there.
Generally guidance for "safe" following distance is to be able to stop before you hit a car that is also stopping with the assumption that the car ahead is stopping at the same rate. So 2 seconds of headway between cars (roughly reaction time alone). Obviously this does not give enough time if the car ahead has a head on collision or similar (but the third car will collide at lower speed and the fourth might stop).
Most traffic is a little closer together than this (hence the prevalence of pile ups), but there is also uneven speed and gaps at traffic lights and similar
You’re making good points and all but I keep reading your username as SchrodingerShat
It's a superposition
True. The usual traffic congestion has 2 - 3 meters.
Sure, but only because they aren’t moving. It should be about the distance traveled in a couple seconds. Less then that and you get a lot of wrecks, so brand new problems.
have you seen the trains at rush hour? they are usually filled with 200% capacity.
Are the tube trains always so dirty? I visited last year and that was my impression. Not the dirtiest I've seen but, yeah.
Not meaning to criticise or anything, where I'm from we barely have functional buses, nevermind having a metro.
It definitely depends on the country you're visiting. The tube trains (and stations) in Paris are generally pretty gross but when I was in Copenhagen recently I was surprised by how clean everything was over there.
Oh, I know. Meant the London tube. It was definitely cleaner than New York and Washington, Paris too. But, idk, I guess I expected it to be cleaner.
National Rail was amazing, otoh. Loved the countryside. Seats were a bit cramped.
The UK is falling apart because of 13 years of Tory rule delivering us austerity, Brexit, corruption and mismanagement. Things are starting to look worn down from underinvestment.
That was my guess. Shame, really. Most people I met were lovely, and the cities themselves seemed nice enough to walk around (London less so, too big and spread apart for that). Hope amounts to nothing, but I goddamn hope y'all kick them tories out sooner rather than later. Recent headlines from the UK kinda worry me.
The dirty/worn out trains are old, but also ate getting replaced... The circle, district and metropolitan lines have fairly nice trains and the trains on the victoria and jubilee are just fine... The bakerloo having 50 year old worn out trains is a problem well over 13 years old, and the fact that their replacements were organised under tory leadership is directly at odds with what you're saying but I take it you'll give all the credit to the Labour PM when the new trains do arrive?
I'm not in favour of the tories or austerity any more than the next guy, but misrepresentation like this is just gonna make it worse as nobody takes note when they do anything actually good, so they go elsewhere to win votes
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
No it is fair. Metros are actually completely filled many times per day. Cars almost never are.
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".
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
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.
If it was paired with a second data point that was honest then obviously not, but when it provides two metrics and both are exaggerated to embellish the claim then it clearly isn't trying to be even handed.
Are you kidding me? Two full car lengths each side is unheard of even on an Autobahn in heavy traffic. This is by far the most disingenuous claim - it alone literally approximately quadruples the distance the cars require. Heavy traffic in city streets should approximate something like 1m each side (half a car length total). Obviously a fully loaded train is orders of magnitude better either way, but an honest comparison wouldn't overstate the length required for the cars by a multiple of 4.
During rush hour, there won't be 10 meters distance between each car. That's not a realistic scenario either.
I was under the impression that the tube is consistently pretty damn close to maximum capacity at peak times. Is that wrong?
Furthermore, 10 meters is a little high given it would be tight traffic
No because on a busy time of the day it's not hard to reach maximum capacity or close to maximum capacity on a train. But if those individuals decided to drive they would not use their cars to maximum capacity. Or you can look at it the other way around. If people driving right now (therefore the average use) started to use the train, they would not use the train up to its average use. They would use it to its maximum capacity.
That's not an honest comparison. A full tube train is very common. A road of cars all being full is not. That's simply ridiculous.
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.
haha yeah with a 10meter gap between cars....
Eh I'm not so sure I agree with that. Competent subway systems in rush hour tend to be completely full whereas cars in rush hour typically only have a single person inside. So I do believe it's an apples-to-apples comparison in the ways that actually matter.
And also a realistic distance between cars. You think cars in London leave 10m gaps? More like 1m 🤣
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.
Totally agree. It's still almost 2 miles of cars, but that isn't nearly as impactful as saying 7.2 miles
Yeah. I hate these bullshit comparisons.
That train number seems to include standees at AW2 (functionally rush hour)… vs the average car.
He includes enough braking distance between cars for a relative high speed, but none for another other train.
The cars don’t all need to go the same route, the train does.
“The most painful argument is a bad one for something you believe in.”
At rush hour, you will see full trains and streets full of cars with only one person in each. Cars don't fill up when it gets busy, but trains do.
There's breaking distance for 20mph traffic, and trains actually do run at 90 second intervals.
You can change trains if the one you're on doesn't match your route, or combine it with other modes. But that isn't what this comparison is about, it's about the space they take up.
This is extremely stupid because, to be an accurate model of the effect of congestion on rail travel, people would have to get out of their car, perform a magic trick to disappear it, and then hop into a stranger's car every time they entered a congested area.
Given that nobody has ever done this, we can see that your comment is just bizarre mental gymnastics.
I agree with your point and really want to upvote it, but to be honest the way you put it was kind of rude. I'll hold my upvote for now.
This point is raised by a bad faith idiot as a "gotchya" every time the topic comes up. Rudeness is already far more tolerance than they deserve.