I know I heard from one trucker in an interview and he said they were being very careful to keep roads open for emergency services. I think they went too far with the honking initially but they stopped that too.
I know I heard from one trucker in an interview and he said they were being very careful to keep roads open for emergency services. I think they went too far with the honking initially but they stopped that too.
Ironically, Capital Beltway traffic is already so prone to unscheduled slowdowns (and others you can practically set your watch by) that the trucker's "slowdown" protest hardly registered as an obstacle. A fact that also calls into question the "tactic" of pedestrians blocking a highway for the purpose of protesting climate change, something something...what's the specific target- petro-powered vehicles? the disinclination of commuters to use Metro, which is only a hybrid solution anyway, given that it usually still requires an auto commute?
Exactly how "effective" is blocking the freeway as a tactic to protest personal auto use, given that the drivers who receive notice about the obstacle will simply re-route off of an exit to the network of surface streets, often requiring a greater travel distance than the usual routine?
So why do it, then? To post videos on Instagram?
Any time someone wants to pursue a plan of political activism, the first thing to do is to be clear about goals, and the be clear about tangible benefits resulting from the action other than to the personal egos of the activists. Which starts by being real about it, that there are status bennies (or at least the promise of them) for the individual personal ego of the activists. Activists put themselves onstage, in the role of "hero of the people." So admit that upfront, because it's required for clarity. Because there has to be more to it than that, hmm? There had better be.
The next thing to do is to take personal ego out of the picture, and consider the benefits of a project for everyone else. Be clear about messaging. An example of an unclear idea is implicitly blaming everyone driving a car on the freeway (who doesn't own an electric vehicle.) That is not the place to start.
Have the protesters ever considered mounting a lobbying effort to have a sufficiently adequate fleet of circulating LNG or EV-powered light buses and vans offering door to door commuter service to Metro, with subscriber-based door to door service on subscriber phone request in daylight non-peak hours? Door to door dispatch service available, room for cargo like groceries and shopping, with driver assistance. Subscriber model, like $100-$200 a year, less for senior citizens. (Leave taxicabs, Uber, and Lyft for the night shift.) That idea has been around for at least 40 years, but no one could figure out how to make it work back in the 1980s, so it was forgotten about. Now we're well into the portable phone era, the LNG/EV-powered fleet era, and also the era when the benefits of lowering auto traffic per se can plainly be viewed as a worthwhile public investment. Consult with some traffic engineers and professional drivers, and figure it out. Makes a lot more sense than any damn UAV fantasy game.
I guarantee, if anyone- I don't care who- could clearly map out how a diversified public transit option using light buses and vans offering last-mile & cargo service could relieve a sizeable percentage of the auto traffic currently on the road in traffic-choked cities and suburbs, the locals would go for it whether it's Washington DC or Houston.
Even if they're already regular riders, practically any suburban commuter is disconcerted by the requirement to either drive and park or walk-wait-ride-transfer on a pre-scheduled fixed route before boarding at a metro station. And lugging something larger than a backpack or briefcase is something between difficult and impossible.
If they could get door-to-station service, or door-to-door to/from a market or mall, they'd go for it.
There's entirely too much rote formulaic emphasis in the pop media on "Americans love affair with their cars" as an explanation for the failures of public transit. There are a lot of cities where the automobile option isn't about love, it's just a flat necessity, and a hated one. And it's entirely possible to love the freedom of a personal automobile and still prefer public transit, because the "freedom" of a job commute that requires 3 hours a day harnessed to 2 tons of gadgets that you're required to drive is really dubious.
(I wonder how much traffic would benefit from an overall 20% reduction in vehicle use, or by a 30% reduction at rush hour. How many hours of life would become less tedious, for everyone involved?)
Public transit needs to be as close to door to door as possible, and it also needs to allow safe storage for cargo- because that's a big reason for people to go out. For groceries, if nothing else. But grocery shopping doesn't work very well, bus-stop to bus-stop. But that's the limit of public transit service. So the primary impediments to increasing public transit ridership are practical, not about American individualist love affairs with their cars.
I know I heard from one trucker in an interview and he said they were being very careful to keep roads open for emergency services. I think they went too far with the honking initially but they stopped that too.
Ironically, Capital Beltway traffic is already so prone to unscheduled slowdowns (and others you can practically set your watch by) that the trucker's "slowdown" protest hardly registered as an obstacle. A fact that also calls into question the "tactic" of pedestrians blocking a highway for the purpose of protesting climate change, something something...what's the specific target- petro-powered vehicles? the disinclination of commuters to use Metro, which is only a hybrid solution anyway, given that it usually still requires an auto commute?
Exactly how "effective" is blocking the freeway as a tactic to protest personal auto use, given that the drivers who receive notice about the obstacle will simply re-route off of an exit to the network of surface streets, often requiring a greater travel distance than the usual routine?
So why do it, then? To post videos on Instagram?
Any time someone wants to pursue a plan of political activism, the first thing to do is to be clear about goals, and the be clear about tangible benefits resulting from the action other than to the personal egos of the activists. Which starts by being real about it, that there are status bennies (or at least the promise of them) for the individual personal ego of the activists. Activists put themselves onstage, in the role of "hero of the people." So admit that upfront, because it's required for clarity. Because there has to be more to it than that, hmm? There had better be.
The next thing to do is to take personal ego out of the picture, and consider the benefits of a project for everyone else. Be clear about messaging. An example of an unclear idea is implicitly blaming everyone driving a car on the freeway (who doesn't own an electric vehicle.) That is not the place to start.
Have the protesters ever considered mounting a lobbying effort to have a sufficiently adequate fleet of circulating LNG or EV-powered light buses and vans offering door to door commuter service to Metro, with subscriber-based door to door service on subscriber phone request in daylight non-peak hours? Door to door dispatch service available, room for cargo like groceries and shopping, with driver assistance. Subscriber model, like $100-$200 a year, less for senior citizens. (Leave taxicabs, Uber, and Lyft for the night shift.) That idea has been around for at least 40 years, but no one could figure out how to make it work back in the 1980s, so it was forgotten about. Now we're well into the portable phone era, the LNG/EV-powered fleet era, and also the era when the benefits of lowering auto traffic per se can plainly be viewed as a worthwhile public investment. Consult with some traffic engineers and professional drivers, and figure it out. Makes a lot more sense than any damn UAV fantasy game.
I guarantee, if anyone- I don't care who- could clearly map out how a diversified public transit option using light buses and vans offering last-mile & cargo service could relieve a sizeable percentage of the auto traffic currently on the road in traffic-choked cities and suburbs, the locals would go for it whether it's Washington DC or Houston.
Even if they're already regular riders, practically any suburban commuter is disconcerted by the requirement to either drive and park or walk-wait-ride-transfer on a pre-scheduled fixed route before boarding at a metro station. And lugging something larger than a backpack or briefcase is something between difficult and impossible.
If they could get door-to-station service, or door-to-door to/from a market or mall, they'd go for it.
There's entirely too much rote formulaic emphasis in the pop media on "Americans love affair with their cars" as an explanation for the failures of public transit. There are a lot of cities where the automobile option isn't about love, it's just a flat necessity, and a hated one. And it's entirely possible to love the freedom of a personal automobile and still prefer public transit, because the "freedom" of a job commute that requires 3 hours a day harnessed to 2 tons of gadgets that you're required to drive is really dubious.
(I wonder how much traffic would benefit from an overall 20% reduction in vehicle use, or by a 30% reduction at rush hour. How many hours of life would become less tedious, for everyone involved?)
Public transit needs to be as close to door to door as possible, and it also needs to allow safe storage for cargo- because that's a big reason for people to go out. For groceries, if nothing else. But grocery shopping doesn't work very well, bus-stop to bus-stop. But that's the limit of public transit service. So the primary impediments to increasing public transit ridership are practical, not about American individualist love affairs with their cars.