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.
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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.
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”.
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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…
And also a realistic distance between cars. You think cars in London leave 10m gaps? More like 1m 🤣
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.
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
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.
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.
Now try adding up all the square footage parking spaces take.
For example, consider that adding a parking space to a 400 sq.ft. studio apartment — or adding two spaces to a 800 sq.ft. two-bedroom — effectively increases the total square footage by a whopping 50%. And since concrete parking decks are more expensive to build than habitable area of dwelling units, that likely represents a greater than 50% increase in costs.
And yet people unironically defend minimum parking requirements while simultaneously removed about housing costs.
Wait, 10 meters between cars ?? In traffic ?
Not unreasonable for slow-ish city traffic. Should be more for highway speeds, sure, but he compares it to the tube and overlays the distance on London.
Sounds like it would be fun to be a tube train. At least for a little while.
You’re making a good point. However, isn’t apples to apples comparison.
Trains are better but not by the way you visualize it.
Overlay London with roads wide enough to carry as much capacity as the tube lines underneath (and somewhere to put those cars) and see if there’s any space left?
houston?
I was going to make a joke, but that’s awful. It’s absurd. It’s like when you’re struggling in Cities Skylines and order the biggest possible highway to attend some small junction, no matter what gets destroyed in the process. Where do those 14 lanes of highway go when they reach the city centre? Is there a kilometer-deep parking garage, or a literal black hole?
