250 Miles

the snail
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Re: 250 Miles

Post by the snail »

Oldjohnw wrote:
You might have a suggestion as to how, with an injured back and no public transport (or a four hour three bus plus walk) I get to a hospital appointment.

Typical edge-case argument. Most people are not injured/disabled, and it's really not that difficult to see how those who are could be accommodated.
Oldjohnw
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Re: 250 Miles

Post by Oldjohnw »

the snail wrote:
Oldjohnw wrote:
You might have a suggestion as to how, with an injured back and no public transport (or a four hour three bus plus walk) I get to a hospital appointment.

Typical edge-case argument. Most people are not injured/disabled, and it's really not that difficult to see how those who are could be accommodated.


Useful suggestion for this afternoon. Thanks.
John
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mjr
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Re: 250 Miles

Post by mjr »

Oldjohnw wrote:
the snail wrote:
Oldjohnw wrote:
You might have a suggestion as to how, with an injured back and no public transport (or a four hour three bus plus walk) I get to a hospital appointment.

Typical edge-case argument. Most people are not injured/disabled, and it's really not that difficult to see how those who are could be accommodated.


Useful suggestion for this afternoon. Thanks.

It won't happen today, or even overnight, but Car-free Cugelland will have more public transport than England now, with key attractors like hospitals high among priorities.
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
All the above is CC-By-SA and no other implied copyright license to Cycle magazine.
niggle
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Re: 250 Miles

Post by niggle »

In Niggletopia the driving of motor vehicles by humans will be banned and the taxi and bus services will be replaced by driverless taxi-bus units, driven by AI that always drives with courtesy and safety around all other road users, always signalling and giving way where it should, using electric or hydrogen power generated entirely from renewable sources, having intelligent route planning and real time communication with all other driverless vehicles so that interactions on the road are safe, seamless and efficient, plus whenever two or more are heading in the same direction they will join magnetically to form buses for greater efficiency. Humans will be released from the stress of vehicle driving and negotiating traffic and will be able to relax and enjoy or utilise the journey in whatever way they prefer.

The cost per mile will be significantly cheaper than private car use, and opportunities for vehicle sharing will be highlighted to users when booking, with the cost per mile being reduced by dividing it equally between the users. The vehicles will be constantly available and used efficiently so that pick ups and drop offs are coordinated to reduce the amount of travelling between them to a minimum.

The keeping of privately owned vehicles on the highway will also be banned, thus greatly freeing up the streets for more efficient travel by the driverless vehicles and more space for humans to engage in active travel options alike. Driverless taxi-bus units will be kept in storage parks when not in use, underground or on unused brownfield sites, where automated maintenance and safety checks will be carried out, but the over all numbers of vehicles required will be greatly reduced in any case.

Some people may chose to own and use their own driverless tax-bus units, but these will have to be fully integrated with the system of other driverless vehicles and will have to meet the same efficiency standards as the other taxi-bus units.

The driverless taxi-bus system will only ever be available where the route cannot be completed by more efficient means, e.g. rail networks, and longer personal journeys will be bookable and purchased in one go, from starting point to destination using e.g. taxi-rail-taxi. Motorways and trunk roads will be re-purposed as fast or high speed electrified rail networks and domestic flying will also be banned.

All other vehicles, e.g. local delivery goods wagons, will be replaced by driverless vehicles powered by renewables on the road, or by rail freight according to feasibility and best efficiency. Emergency vehicles will also be driverless, highly efficient and the interconnected system will prioritise their movement through the other vehicles to reduce response times to the minimum possible.
Oldjohnw
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Re: 250 Miles

Post by Oldjohnw »

What a dystopian nightmare! State controlled movement. Big brother if ever there was. Individual freedom and agency removed.
John
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Cugel
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Re: 250 Miles

Post by Cugel »

Oldjohnw wrote:What a dystopian nightmare! State controlled movement. Big brother if ever there was. Individual freedom and agency removed.


"Individual freedom and agency" .... the prime cause of so many ills, harms, degradations and even extinctions, when awarded to we humans. I suppose anarchy might work - for the robber barons at least. For details, see large swathes of Yankland.

In Cugel Land there will not so much be a Big Brother as a lack of certain opportunities. These lacks will squash the opportunities for "individually free agents" to go about enjoying their freedoms at the expense of a great lack of freedom for various others. For example, none of that Clarksonesque car driving and fetishism at the expense of the freedom to walk or cycle - either literally, because of permanent car-bite to the legs, or figuratively because no one in her right mind would risk walking on the pavement right next to Bill the Yob and his mates having another race in their claptraps. Also, the city dwellers will not be dying so soon of smog. Or having to go to hospital all the time for a lung-fix.

But if all this is a bit confusing - the calculus of freedoms, duties and so forth - I invite you to begin your enlightenment via the arrangement of a taxonomy of "individual freedoms and agencies" into a schema in which the costs and benefits to the various agencies interacting, one with another or altogether, are calculated. If you put it all in a spreadsheet containing weightings to the freedoms and duties, along with the associated harms and benefits, it will be possible to quickly look up those values for various human doings, such as, "Going on a holiday in the car from Pitlochry to Lyons via a ferry". Or, "Driving to the hospital very fast through several towns and villages because it's an emergency".

Who knows what such a cost-benefit calculator will reveal? Well, we can be sure it will reveal that car habits have a very large set of costs and not really that many benefits. Without the calculator, though, the several months of pleasurable driving before you run over little Sally playing inadvisably on the pavement along your route, as you make a phone call, will blinker you to the vast harm-costs of tomorrow with the the small pleasure-benefits of yesterday, today, tomorrow, the next day and ...FIN!

As to the hospital - well, vote for those who will bring back the local ones; or move nearer to one if you need it every other day.

****
And here's another perspective on the matter....

Like all fields that are created and governed by evolutionary processes, the cultural field of human behaviours, habits and procedures presents a range of niches within the cultural environment which tend to provide & encourage, or limit & discourage, various possibilities. Moreover, if a behavioural niche that is currently filled by a particular behaviour (such as transporting oneself in a car) is extant, it can prevent the evolution of alternatives within that niche (travelling).

But the corollary is that if that behaviour niche is emptied of the current occupant (travel by car, in this example) this provides the opportunity for alternatives to evolve. Often the evolutionary pace is high, as the environment demonstrates this behaviour-niche very clearly when the previous occupant (car travel, in this example) goes away. Everyone knows it is there.

What would fill the travel-gap, were the cars to be made extinct? It might be bikes, buses, AI electric taxis or something completely different. (I favour trolley buses myself, as they are nice things from my yoof).

But it might be that the cultural niche (lots of travel by humans, all over the place) gradually closes as the humans realise they don't really want to travel all over the place. After all, "here" might now be a lot nicer than "there" if "here" is now car-free. :-)

Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
niggle
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Re: 250 Miles

Post by niggle »

Oldjohnw wrote:What a dystopian nightmare! State controlled movement. Big brother if ever there was. Individual freedom and agency removed.

Nobody's movement would be controlled by the state and what freedom and agency exactly is removed, when you can still go where you want, when you want? The only 'freedom' lost is of being able to travel in ways that put others' health and safety at risk and damage the environment.
niggle
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Re: 250 Miles

Post by niggle »

Cugel wrote:What would fill the travel-gap, were the cars to be made extinct? It might be bikes, buses, AI electric taxis or something completely different. (I favour trolley buses myself, as they are nice things from my yoof).

But it might be that the cultural niche (lots of travel by humans, all over the place) gradually closes as the humans realise they don't really want to travel all over the place. After all, "here" might now be a lot nicer than "there" if "here" is now car-free. :-)

Cugel

I can imagine decisions being made re which transportation systems to install on a local basis, e.g. inner cities may well opt for trams, trolley buses, underground or overhead rail, etc., according to what suits their topography and the needs of their travellers, whilst the suburbs and countryside may go more the way of the AI taxi and ground level rail.

I would not expect humans to stop wanting to travel occasionally for pleasure and discovery any time soon, but a lot of other travel such as for business, commuting and even shopping can and likely will be reduced IMO by modern communications and changes in the manner, hours and location of work.
Vorpal
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Re: 250 Miles

Post by Vorpal »

mjr wrote:
Oldjohnw wrote:
the snail wrote:Typical edge-case argument. Most people are not injured/disabled, and it's really not that difficult to see how those who are could be accommodated.


Useful suggestion for this afternoon. Thanks.

It won't happen today, or even overnight, but Car-free Cugelland will have more public transport than England now, with key attractors like hospitals high among priorities.

Norway has a system called Helsebuss (health bus), which is organised to take people for treatment and hospital appointments. Even though public transport is good, it's organised around usual destinations, and going to a specialist hospital in the next county by train and bus might take twice as long as driving. So Helsebuss goes instead. It takes a little longer than driving, but it's free. There both planned routes with a timetable, and trips organised for a patient or group.
“In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.”
― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
Psamathe
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Re: 250 Miles

Post by Psamathe »

Vorpal wrote:
mjr wrote:
Oldjohnw wrote:
Useful suggestion for this afternoon. Thanks.

It won't happen today, or even overnight, but Car-free Cugelland will have more public transport than England now, with key attractors like hospitals high among priorities.

Norway has a system called Helsebuss (health bus), which is organised to take people for treatment and hospital appointments. Even though public transport is good, it's organised around usual destinations, and going to a specialist hospital in the next county by train and bus might take twice as long as driving. So Helsebuss goes instead. It takes a little longer than driving, but it's free. There both planned routes with a timetable, and trips organised for a patient or group.

In France there are a dedicated system of taxis. I never used any but my understanding (and those living in France or with more knowledge - do correct my misunderstandings) is that you can get a prescription for a taxi as part of your treatment (prescription being relevant as it's then refunded through e.g. CPAM). They were white and as I lived very rurally, I noticed quite a few (as I guess people living rurally would be more likely to need one).

I can't comment on how well the system works as I had no experience of using it.

Ian
Psamathe
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Re: 250 Miles

Post by Psamathe »

Re: Cars vs Bikes
Whilst car use raises a load of issues like pollution, climate change, etc., the aspect of cars OR (not AND) bicycles on roads seems a bit of a weird issue as does not have to be a "get rid of the cars so we can cycle". Netherlands seems to manage to cater for both motor vehicles and bicycles. What seems to be the issue is investment in cycle facilities ... which brings us back to the 250 miles spread across the entire UK (and where Norfolk most needs its 5.2 miles).

(Interesting how a thread on government investment is cycling can so quickly and easily be diverted by a misunderstanding of rate vs number).

Ian
mattheus
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Re: 250 Miles

Post by mattheus »

Psamathe wrote:
Vorpal wrote:
mjr wrote:It won't happen today, or even overnight, but Car-free Cugelland will have more public transport than England now, with key attractors like hospitals high among priorities.

Norway has a system called Helsebuss (health bus), which is organised to take people for treatment and hospital appointments. Even though public transport is good, it's organised around usual destinations, and going to a specialist hospital in the next county by train and bus might take twice as long as driving. So Helsebuss goes instead. It takes a little longer than driving, but it's free. There both planned routes with a timetable, and trips organised for a patient or group.

In France there are a dedicated system of taxis. I never used any but my understanding (and those living in France or with more knowledge - do correct my misunderstandings) is that you can get a prescription for a taxi as part of your treatment (prescription being relevant as it's then refunded through e.g. CPAM). They were white and as I lived very rurally, I noticed quite a few (as I guess people living rurally would be more likely to need one).


It sounds so simple once you see it written down!
Vorpal
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Re: 250 Miles

Post by Vorpal »

Psamathe wrote:
Vorpal wrote:Norway has a system called Helsebuss (health bus), which is organised to take people for treatment and hospital appointments. Even though public transport is good, it's organised around usual destinations, and going to a specialist hospital in the next county by train and bus might take twice as long as driving. So Helsebuss goes instead. It takes a little longer than driving, but it's free. There both planned routes with a timetable, and trips organised for a patient or group.

In France there are a dedicated system of taxis. I never used any but my understanding (and those living in France or with more knowledge - do correct my misunderstandings) is that you can get a prescription for a taxi as part of your treatment (prescription being relevant as it's then refunded through e.g. CPAM). They were white and as I lived very rurally, I noticed quite a few (as I guess people living rurally would be more likely to need one).

I can't comment on how well the system works as I had no experience of using it.

Ian

I haven't used Helsebuss, either, but I know people who have and seem happy with the service. They take it from the local hospital to one in Oslo.

I don't think that any prescription or special need is required. You just contact the local officae that arranges travel, and they either give you a timetable for an appropriate bus, or arrange other transport. I've seen the buses that go on a regular route.
“In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.”
― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
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