brotundspiele

Normally I know that, but I guess I was just two tired while typing 😂

So 66% are driving.

No, 66% having a drivers license, doesn't mean 66% drive. And even those who usually do, can't drive all the time. There are a lot of reasons why you might be unable to drive, even if you have a license: Being drunk, being sick/injured, being to old to safely drive, being to tired to safely drive, being to broke to afford the gas...

And even of those who do drive, a large percentage might not drive because they want to, but because they are forced to drive due to a lack of walking, cycling and public transportation infrastructure.

This isn't Europe where everything is within walking distance of you, and it's infeasible to do such a thing here in America.

It doesn't matter how big your country is. Nobody in their right mind drives from New York to San Francisco on a daily basis, not even from New York to Philadelphia.

The vast majority of commutes are from your home to the local school, the local supermarket or the local workplace within the same town. A distance that could easily be traveled by bike if there was any bike infrastructure even in today's US cities. Granted, the distance you have to travel to get to these places is usually bigger in the US, than in Europe, but that's only because you don't have mixed neighbourhoods. And you don't have mixed neighbourhoods because every little convenience store needs to be surrounded by 200 acres of parking because you can only get there by car.

Sure, a bike can use the same roads cars are using. Have fun with that.

Btw. a train track can be used by cargo trains, passenger trains, trains carrying cars, trains carrying bikes, etc. If you build decent bike lanes, they can even be used by ambulances to skip traffic.

That's definitely one of the worst crossings on one of the worst roads in town. This road has been built in the 1960's when people were fully committed to the "autogerechte Stadt" (car-righteous city). Even with the current budget and a green (and more importantly cycling) senator for traffic and mobility transition you can't fix 70 years of missdevelopment in 5 years. But we are working on it.

3km to the west, the street now looks like this. On the Reeperbahn, 1.5km to the west they also converted 2 of the four car lanes into bicylce lanes, which also will be made permanent now.

In the other direction, the (more or less) parallel Mönckebergstraße is already closed for cars (except busses and taxis), and the even more parallel Steinstraße is due for a full reconstruction this year, after which it will also be closed for personal cars.

It's getting better slowly but steadily. The biggest problem I see, is that there are often segments with great bicycle infrastructure that end abruptly without any useful transition from and to the old, shitty infrastructure. For example, this is the road leading towards the new bike lane on the Reeperbahn (see above). There is not even a shitty bike path there, you have to either illegally use the pavement, or the 4th lane of the 5 lane monstrosity you see in 5714s photo.

Spending twice as much money on walking and cycling infrastructure as on car infrastructure isn't too bad, especially when you consider that roads for cars cost 20x more per km than roads for bikes. Hamburg for sure isn't a paradise for cyclists, and they still build a fair share of stupid infrastructure, but it's already gotten a lot better than 10 or 20 years ago.

It's further divided into

• T15 Foreign object in the outer eye
• T16 ... in the ear
• T17 ... in the respiratory tract
• T18 ... in the digestive tract
• T19 ... in the urogenital tract

so it's the whole package.

In Germany in comparison the chances to die in any traffic accident (car or no car) is 1 in 351. So year. Pretty much safer.

TIL There's a category in the German death statistics named "Resulting from the insertion of a foreign object into a natural body opening." And I'm only mildly disturbed. That killed 775 People in 2023 btw.

If the average bus is 8 years old, that means that buses are replaced approximately after 16 years. According to this source, the average bus in New Zealand is more like 16 years old, so they're actually running for 32 years 😱

For a reasonably sized transport association it will be outright impossible to electrify an entire fleet at once:

1. Where do you get all the buses? For Hamburg alone, you'd need to buy 2600 new vehicles, which would be half of all buses sold in all of Germany in a year.
2. Where do you park those 2600 new vehicles until you've sold the old ones? For some transition period you'd have twice the number of vehicles while at the same time...
3. You'd need to overhaul all your bus depots at once, which adds to the parking problems. In Hamburg we have more than a dozen bus depots, where do you find all the construction workers to upgrade them all at the same time? Where do you get all the architects, planners etc?
4. You'd need to get a lot of electricity to your depots in a short period of time. Your local power company might be able to build a new substation for one depot a year, but 10? Probably not.
5. Where do you educate hundreds of mechanics on the new technology? And who's maintaining your buses while all your mechanics are at the training?

You don't need too much infrastructure to start transitioning: You can add charging infrastructure to on one or two terminal stops, upgrade one bus depot, educate 10% of your mechanics and start by upgrading all the lines going to these terminal stop. In the next year you upgrade the next terminals, the next depot and train another 10% of your mechanics. After a decade you're fully electric without a big hassle.

English is such a weird language. 💋 EDIT: According to Meriam-Webster and OED both spellings are allowed (at least in US-English)

Busses are replaced regularly anyway. An average bus in Germany for example is 8 years old, so 6-7% of all busses are replaced every year. Just buy electric busses when replacing the old ones instead of throwing out perfectly new combustion engine models. That's also more environmentally friendly, as a large part of its lifecycle pollution happens during the construction of a vehicle.

The other question is obviously highly dependent on the city (size, density, geology etc.) and the type of transit you're building (underground vs overground, separate rails vs. tram on streets etc). As a current example Hamburg is building a new subway line that'll go through the entire city (25km, 24 Stations, almost completely underground) is estimated to cost 15 billion €. So, depending on how mucch your city needs it could be anywhere between 10 and 100bn for a subway net. However, the national accounting will benefit 1.28€ for every 1.00€ that's spent, due to savings in travel times, fuel, cost for accidents and road maintenance, freed up real estate in the city etc. according to the calculations.

You know, you can haul stuff with a sedan too, do you? A VW Passat for example can pull up to 2.2 tons, that's even enough for almost all caravans. Even my tiny Ford Fiesta could pull up to a ton, easily enough to haul a bike or two.