Pros of golf carts and neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs) replacing all private cars within a city:

  • Only goes as fast as a bicycle, so isn’t a viable suburban commuter vehicle, meaning you’ll probably only take it to the nearest transit station
  • Only goes as fast as a bicycle, so isn’t likely to kill people
  • Excellent visibility, so less likely to run over children
  • Much smaller and lighter, so building parking garages for park-and-rides would be a lot cheaper and less objectionable than with our current style of cars
  • Electric
  • Smaller batteries than jumbo EVs
  • Compatible with dense, transit-oriented city development
  • Could be installed with mandatory speed limiters

Cons:

  • Less profit for GM and ExxonMobil
  • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    You have proposed making company towns for mines,

    Nope, you’re the one who said that. You can’t put words in my mouth and then say why the thing you said is bad. What I said is that they should be densely populated.

    Deadwood, South Dakota is famous as a “wild west” town, but the reason that it exists because of the gold rush. And, guess what, it was densely populated. You can look up historical images, you’ll see that even if it was a “rural” location built around mining, it was densely populated because at a time when cars weren’t an option, it made sense to make a dense area.

    Second you proposed. Centrally located services for the few farmers who are allowed to live in the country.

    Again, putting words in my mouth. If you can’t make your point without doing that, I’m just going to say I won because clearly you can’t actually attack what I’m actually saying. At no point did I say anything about people being “allowed to live in the country”. I only talked about farms being the only place where you actually had to live on-site in a very low density rural area.

    This could easily put them 6 to 8 hours drive from any kind of service.

    That’s absurd. There’s nowhere in the continental US that’s a 6 to 8 hour drive from a built-up area that exists today.

    So even if they had a much higher energy use(I have never seen any information to suggest that is true.)

    “cities have the lowest annual energy use per household (85.3 million Btu) and household member (33.7 million Btu) of all four categories. Rural areas consume about 95 million Btu per household each year”

    “Why the difference? Aside from environmental factors, it’s a combination of infrastructure and behavior, Battles says. The compact construction of urban condo towers and apartment buildings helps insulate their indoor climates, while large homes common in less dense areas need more energy for heating and cooling, and have a harder time keeping air from leaking outside.”

    https://www.treehugger.com/urban-or-rural-which-is-more-energy-efficient-4863586

    The research is everywhere. Dense housing where people share walls means lower heating and/or cooling bills. Using public transit instead of a car means far lower emissions for transportation. Smaller housing means less energy to heat and cool, and fewer leaks.

    All of your proposals seem to require longer drives not shorter ones.

    Suuuuuuure…

    because the charging infrastructure is not there

    Riiight… because when talking about a theoretical future world where more people live in built-up areas, the right thing to do is to consider current charging infrastructure.

    Did I miss any of your points?

    Pretty much all of them, and deliberately it seems.

    • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      Been busy, took me a day to look into your post.

      Okay so call it what you want but a group of people all working for the same company and it being the only real source of income for the town is a company town. Don’t gild the pig. But for arguments sake lets look at your Deadwood example. Are you suggested that we should go back to small scale wildcat mining? If so that sounds even worse than company towns. I have lived in areas with the environmental legacy of that and it is still a problem. Not that this could happen due to the kind of regulatory compliance required for mining operations. The number of laws and administrative agencies that would have to change for that kind of mining to happen again is numerous. Oh and did you see the deforestation in those pictures? I think we should keep some of that regulation.

      As for the “centrally located services” you did say that in a reply to someone else. I didn’t put words in your mouth.

      They need to travel to rural areas to fix the stuff, but they don’t need to live there. Given that they’re probably servicing a big area, it makes sense for them to be centrally located, in a city for example.

      And here is the link to your post too https://sh.itjust.works/comment/9190403

      Okay so you got me a little on the drive time. I was a little optimistic on my estimate. The longest drive time between two cities I could easily find is El Paso to San Antonio which is 8 hours so if you live right in the middle of the interstate. You would have an 8 hour round trip. Still too long for milk. Now you are going to say what about the towns in-between? Don’t worry we will get to that.

      Thank you for your source on energy use I went and read the article. I think we should look at the quote you sourced in context. Here is the paragraph you pulled from and the preceding one.

      On the EIA’s Residential Energy Consumption Surveys, respondents identify whether they live in a city, town, suburb or rural area. It’s self-reported and unscientific data, but it does offer an idea of how the four demographics consume energy. Urban households are the largest group, with 47.1 million represented, and they use the most total energy, about 4 quadrillion Btu per year.

      But a different picture emerges when you look at per capita consumption rates — cities have the lowest annual energy use per household (85.3 million Btu) and household member (33.7 million Btu) of all four categories. Rural areas consume about 95 million Btu per household each year, followed by towns (102 million) and suburbs (109 million).

      As we can see the first thing said is this “self reported and unscientific” that seems like a big problem to me. Let’s work with it though. The next thing I see is that you cut the quote about annual energy uses short. Looking at the whole quote we can clearly see that rural areas are the second most efficient, with towns and suburbs being worse. This feels like you are trying to cherry pick data.

      It took me a little bit to find the source of this data, but I did. It is from 2005. Seem to me 20 year old data is maybe not the best source. Additionally it doesn’t actually address the point I made on this. This article is talking about energy use of household not of the additional infrastructure required for cities that is not required in the rural environment.

      So let’s get back to this distance between cities thing. I said "All of your proposals seem to require longer drives not shorter ones. " To which you replied “Suuuuuuure…” This seems like ad hominem, but let’s look into that. I went and looked up what a rural area was and this is no clear definition but the federal government uses populations of between 2500 and 50,000 depending on agency. Let’s split that and choose the middle number 25,000. This means that a state like Wyoming would lose all but the 4 largest cities. That seems like that could extend drive time to me. (See we got back to it) Oh as you have said you you want people to live in more built up areas. That would require people moving from less built up areas. Don’t go saying otherwise.

      Where you quote me about the charging infrastructure. Your response is completely out of context and doesn’t respond to the argument I was making. Also probably ad hominem.

      Lastly this is definitely ad hominem

      Pretty much all of them, and deliberately it seems.

      I don’t know why you have such an animosity towards people who live in the country. It seems like you should be going after suburbs if energy efficiently was your real goal.

      I look forward to your response