[cyberax]

> This is too misleading to be unintentional.

It's not misleading. On average, buses in the US carry around 15 people. A car carries around 1.5, so the raw multiplier is just 10.

But wait, there's more!

ALL buses have an incredibly polluting component that is fundamental to their functionality: the driver. You need around 3 drivers to cover the useful service time (from 5am to midnight). And drivers are POLLUTING AS HELL.

> I don't know if you're comparing buses to small/medium EVs 1:1

Yes, I do. Here ya go: https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint

> Transit doesn't force people into housing.

It does, via market forces.

> It creates new housing options that previously were not tenable.

No. It _destroys_ affordable housing to pack people into smaller and smaller footprints. Tokyo is a _great_ example of that.

> In proportion to human-miles, or is this a 1:1 comparison?

In proportion to passenger-miles. Road wear scales approximately as the 4-th power of the axle weight, and under-loaded buses still have to haul around their massive bulks even if there's just one passenger inside.

Honestly, it's amazing how bad public transit turns out to be when you actually start looking at its negative sides.

[jrockway]

Let's be honest, it's far from factual that dense housing is problematic in any way. It's just your opinion, and you're mad about it because you stand to lose the most in a world where you have to pay cash for your externalities. The sewer and water system to your house is subsidized. Snow removal from your cul-de-sac is subsidized. Most people couldn't afford the suburbs if someone else wasn't paying for those things (usually future generations).

Many people enjoy living in a dense environment, as evidenced by how much they'll pay to do so. It's objectively better for the Earth, and pretty enjoyable for the people that choose that path.

[cyberax]

> Let's be honest, it's far from factual that dense housing is problematic in any way

Densificatoin causes enshittification spiral. Each successive generation lives in worse conditions. This is an inherent property of densification.

> The sewer and water system to your house is subsidized.

It isn't. I'm paying for it from my taxes (that's why in Seattle my water is more costly than in the middle of a freaking desert).

> Snow removal from your cul-de-sac is subsidized.

It isn't. I'm responsible for keeping it clean, and I was once fined when I failed to do that.

> Many people enjoy living in a dense environment

The vast majority of people want to live in single family houses (90% or so - https://www.redfin.com/news/millennial-homebuyers-prefer-sin... ). They simply can't afford that. And of course, the psychological defense mechanism is: "I never wanted it anyway".

[EatingWithForks]

> Densificatoin causes enshittification spiral. Each successive generation lives in worse conditions. This is an inherent property of densification.

Could you uh, explain this a bit more? This doesn't seem to correspond with the desirability of dense cities atm. All of the most desirable places to live seem to either be dense or easily commutable to somewhere dense.

[cyberax]

Dense cities create a self-reinforcing vicious cycle. It's more efficient for employers to create office-style jobs in the Downtown, because they can more easily attract talent.

In turn, people want to live close enough to their jobs. So this drives up the price of housing in and around the Downtown. In turn, this incentivizes developers to build new buildings as high as economical, and to make units as small as feasible.

Thus the new construction in Downtowns tends to be smaller than the existing one ( https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/seattle-sma... ). This drives up the price of existing larger apartments even more, making them unavailable for younger people. So if you don't work in tech, you'll have to make do with a small apartment.

But no worries, by the next generation your small apartment will look positively spacious!

[mastersummoner]

For the record, there are lots of people who love living in extremely dense urban situations. There are benefits to being exposed to so many different people living different lives, it's one of the things that cuts down on the bias of icky being exposed to an extremely homogenous group with homogenous opinions.

Obviously urban centers can be improved on, and many people living in them wish they had more personal space. But there are advantages too.

[op00to]

> Densificatoin causes enshittification spiral.

This is not a real thing. Please refer to factual, verifiable phenomena and not imaginings.

[mdorazio]

> It's not misleading.

It's very misleading because you're starting from the supposition of EVs rather than the actual mix of personal cars. If you choose EVs for the cars, why not choose ZEV buses that are starting to enter the market as well?

> And drivers are POLLUTING AS HELL.

What? I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say here.

> No. It _destroys_ affordable housing to pack people into smaller and smaller footprints. Tokyo is a _great_ example of that.

It doesn't destroy affordable housing, though, it shifts it to other areas while increasing density near stations. You need to show why that's a bad thing. Most urban planners and economists would say that increased density is a good thing and that Tokyo is an excellent example of a city done right.

You seem to have a personal bone to pick with high-density cities that's just not shared by most other people.

[cyberax]

> It's very misleading because you're starting from the supposition of EVs rather than the actual mix of personal cars.

If we're talking about planning, then we should look at least 10 years ahead. By that time, most of new vehicles are going to be EVs.

Mind you, the subway construction around here is planned 20 _years_ in advance. All the current proposed projects are going to be finished some time in 2040-s.

> If you choose EVs for the cars, why not choose ZEV buses that are starting to enter the market as well?

ZEV buses still retain the most polluting part of regular buses: the driver.

> What? I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say here.

One average US citizen produces around 20 tons of CO2 per year. A bus needs 3 of them working full-time. This completely dwarfs the emissions due to fuel use.

> It doesn't destroy affordable housing, though, it shifts it to other areas while increasing density near stations.

Bullshit. New density does NOT create ANY affordable housing. Never has, never will. And dense housing near stations is certainly not cheap.

Heck, here's an article from urbanists that admits that: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/4/26/upzoning-might...

> Most urban planners and economists would say that increased density is a good thing and that Tokyo is an excellent example of a city done right.

Most oil executives say that oil is great and that the large trucks are good!

Tokyo is a great example of young people forced to live in "microapartments" while just a couple of hours away, beautiful old houses sit empty.

> You seem to have a personal bone to pick with high-density cities that's just not shared by most other people.

Most other people haven't heard ANY opposing opinion in their lives. And neither have they researched it themselves. Thus, I routinely hear utterly risible nonsense like "we need more density to allow affordable housing" going unopposed.

[rfrec0n]

> One average US citizen produces around 20 tons of CO2 per year. A bus needs 3 of them working full-time. This completely dwarfs the emissions due to fuel use.

Are you trying to say that these people wouldn't already exist without the bus? So everytime we commission a new bus, 3 fully grown licensed drivers appear in a flash of smoke from the storage compartment of the bus?

[cyberax]

> Are you trying to say that these people wouldn't already exist without the bus?

No. They would be doing other productive things. But right now, they have to spend their productive power on driving buses.

This is simply a huge waste of human potential.

[matchbok]

Are you a troll account? Or a joke? Can’t tell. Either way the sanctimonious rants devoid of facts are entertaining.

[cyberax]

Have you seen the bike bros? Now _that's_ sanctimonous.

[nayuki]

And individual people driving themselves is not a waste of human potential?

[cyberax]

Nope. Because cars _save_ _time_.

Car commutes are shorter than transit commutes in well-designed cities.

But even otherwise, you don't need a dedicated full-time driver.

[mastersummoner]

Why not plan ~ten years ahead and expect these buses to be self driving then?

[cyberax]

Do a mental experiment. Suppose that you have technology that can make buses drive themselves.

First, you want to solve the problem of long bus intervals. It's still not economic to just buy more buses because they require a lot of power to run and do tons of road damage.

But you can make buses smaller! And by making them smaller, you can run them faster without incurring a lot of useless overhead.

Heck, you can just idle, dare I say _park_, these unused small buses when there is no demand. And since it's so easy to manage the fleet this way, you can make personalized buses for every passenger.

Hmm... It really reminds me of something...

[nimbleplum40]

Do you have citations for those numbers? They don’t match what I’ve heard in the past so I’m curious to learn more.

Also, everything about density in relation to quality of life is pretty subjective. Luckily, we have cities for both! You’re free to live in Houston while those of us that prefer dense urban environments can live in New York and take transit.

[cyberax]

> Do you have citations for those numbers?

Road wear scales as 4-th power of axle weight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

The average loads: https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/mobility/perso...

The CO2 impact by transport mode: https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint

Nothing I'm saying is controversial. Heck, even urbanists admit that, they just try to avoid talking about it.

> Also, everything about density in relation to quality of life is pretty subjective. Luckily, we have cities for both!

My problem is with people that try to remake wonderful cities like Seattle into Manhattan-style hellscapes. And this is a result of market forces, that need to be counteracted via political regulation.

I'd love to live in Houston, but I just can't tolerate its weather. I tried.

[nimbleplum40]

Thanks for the links, I’ll read through them when I get a chance.

And feel free to argue about keeping Seattle the way it is. I have no interest in changing Seattle. Just leave my Manhattan out of it :)

[rafram]

If the extraordinarily boring, centerless, sprawling city that is Seattle is your idea of wonderful, you can have it! Young people are moving to NYC over Seattle because that’s the sort of city environment they want to live in.

[acdha]

> On average, buses in the US carry around 15 people. A car carries around 1.5, so the raw multiplier is just 10.

Buses in the US are largely avoided due to the last century spent prioritizing suburban car commuting over everything else. What you should be looking at are the averages on bus routes where the buses run regularly and aren’t blocked by solo drivers. That means that the floor for a bus is 10:1 but it can easily rise to 50-70:1 with cheap policy changes (e.g. put a $500 camera on the bus to ticket drivers and suddenly headways improve by 50%). In contrast, the large EVs people are actually buying will never become more efficient over the lifetime of the vehicle.

[cyberax]

> What you should be looking at are the averages on bus routes where the buses run regularly and aren’t blocked by solo drivers

Le sigh. If you want more bus passengers in each bus, you either need to run buses with longer intervals (making them completely useless) or you need to pack people together. Packing people together densely enough to make buses work inevitably requires living in small apartments.

The US in the last century decided to focus on comfortable human-oriented housing, and not on building Soviet-style human anthills.

> In contrast, the large EVs people are actually buying will never become more efficient over the lifetime of the vehicle.

Large EVs have lifecycle CO2 footprint of about 70g/km. Buses are ~100g/km, and EV buses (trolleys) are 60 g/km.

Moving to mid-sized EVs, such as Tesla Model 3/Y, cuts that to about 35 g/km (it depends on the US state). This is definitely something that we should encourage. The US addiction to huge barn-sized SUVs is unhealthy.

[kalleboo]

> Le sigh. If you want more bus passengers in each bus, you either need to run buses with longer intervals (making them completely useless) or you need to pack people together. Packing people together densely enough to make buses work inevitably requires living in small apartments

This is not my experience. Living in a village of around 2000 pop in Sweden with pretty much only single-family houses with gardens. The whole village was within 15 minutes walk or bike within one of 3 bus stops to a bus service that went into the city every 20 minutes during the day, with double-length buses during peak hours. The buses had a very healthy occupancy rate.

You just have to make sure to design towns around the transit instead of around cars. US suburbs are really hard to retrofit transit into, with designs that actively subvert it