Freeway hate thread?
>>945659
The best thing I ever did when I lived in Los Angeles was sell my car.
I remember biking past my coworkers stuck in traffic in the morning. Freeway traffic in LA was a nightmare. The only time I ever drove was when I had to run errands for work with the company car.
>>945661
Nice, what kind of commute did you have?
Amount of miles?
>>945661
>Yay, I can get to a place I don't want to be faster than the other people who don't want to be there!
>>945666
>implying wasting your remaining time standing still, restricted by a seatbelt in a metal cage is somehow making the day any better
>>945661
Motorcycles are the best in LA, you can still cover serious distance quickly, and with lane-splitting, you basically ignore traffic.
>>945663
About 10 miles each way going from Silverlake into West Hollywood. It was mostly flat unless I took a different route to get there or back. It was a nice ride. Plus anywhere I'd have to go after work and sometimes during work depending on errands. I miss living there if only for being able to get by without a car.
>>945817
Yeah, every time I got close to picking up a motorcycle I ended up buying a new bike instead. I really wanted one though and I should have bought my co-worker's rebel 250 when he was selling it.
>>945666
>666
Hey Satan, I worked at a post production music house/music studio. Pretty much everyone there actually loved their job. It was like a second home to all of us.
I was also in charge of incoming and outgoing media so there were times I'd get a phone call at 1:00 in the morning and I'd have to jump on my bike and ride into the studio to start some downloads or upload some files to the FTP for either us to have in the morning or for our clients to have in the morning.
Riding down sunset without much traffic in the dead of the night was a blast.
>>946229
Glendale reporting in... As much as I want to start cycling to school, I unfortunately can't do it. As you might know cars are status symbol here and I would be made fun of and will lose my friends if I ever bike to school...
For anyone wondering how we get most traffic on highways, it's actually really simple. Traffic streams work best when all the vehicles move at the same speed (so in a fantasy world basically). It only takes a single vehicle to slow down that causes slight delays with the vehicles behind it. This chain can affect vehicles miles behind it AKA traffic jam is born. This is why the jam appears to clear out of nowhere - when you hit the area it clears, enough people in front of you have not slowed down enough to cause more delays.
>>946546
I know, it's called a phantom traffic jam. OP here btw.
>Freeway refit thread?
>>946563
That's actually a good way to reduce car use. Have the motorists stuck in traffic watch the train go past and want to ride it.
>>946500
I didn't care, my car breaking down was the greatest gift I was given in LA. I actually think it started more conversations and I worked in a very car-centric business and people seemed to think it was cool that I biked. Most people were worried about my safety but they couldn't believe I was actually biking everywhere. They would never give up their cars but they never seemed to fault me for it. Plus I made a lot of friends with like-minded people who commuted by bike instead.
>>945711
my day is at its best when I'm in my cage with my ac blasting, my music pumping, and my lady friend sucking. Stay mad
>>947779
>my lady friend sucking
you mean your hand jerking while you stare at the schoolbus
coral reefs soon
>>945659
When I was 19 I did shrooms and looked out on rush hour traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway in West Philadelphia
I had a deep sense of dread and horror looking at it.
Little did I know I'd one day have to commute on the thing.
Freeways are a nightmare. I hate city yuppies but I will never be able to live somewhere that I have to drive on one of these daily. Never again.
Where did we do so wrong? The automobile has ruined the first world.
We should live near work. We should be able to get there in 15 minutes. Families shouldn't need a car for both parents and each teenager
> The product of the transportation industry is the habitual passenger. He has been boosted out of the world in which people still move on their own, and he has lost the sense that he stands at the center of his world. The habitual passenger is conscious of the exasperating time scarcity that results from daily recourse to the cars, trains, buses, subways, and elevators that force him to cover an average of twenty miles each day, frequently criss-crossing his path within a radius of less than five miles. He has been lifted off his feet. No matter if he goes by subway or jet plane, he feels slower and poorer than someone else and resents the shortcuts taken by the privileged few who can escape the frustrations of traffic. If he is cramped by the timetable of his commuter train, he dreams of a car. If he drives, exhausted by the rush hour, he envies the speed capitalist who drives against the traffic. The habitual passenger is caught at the wrong end of growing inequality, time scarcity, and personal impotence, but he can see no way out of this bind except to demand more of the same: more traffic by transport. He stands in wait for technical changes in the design of vehicles, roads, and schedules; or else he expects a revolution to produce mass rapid transport under public control. In neither case does he calculate the price of being hauled into a better future. He forgets that he is the one who will pay the bill, either in fares or in taxes. He overlooks the hidden costs of replacing private cars with equally rapid public transport.
>>947862
>
> The habitual passenger cannot grasp the folly of traffic based overwhelmingly on transport. His inherited perceptions of space and time and of personal pace have been industrially deformed. He has lost the power to conceive of himself outside the passenger role. To "gather" for him means to be brought together by vehicles. He takes freedom of movement to be the same as one's claim on propulsion. He has lost faith in the political power of the feet and of the tongue. As a result, what he wants is not more liberty as a citizen but better service as a client. He does not insist on his freedom to move and to speak to people but on his claim to be shipped and to be informed by media. He wants a better product rather than freedom from servitude to it. It is vital that he come to see that the acceleration he demands is self-defeating, and that it must result in a further decline of equity, leisure, and autonomy.
http://ranprieur.com/readings/illichcars.html
Bump1
>>945659
For what purpose? Tons of people coming from and going to the same place every day. Put parking lot at either end, put commuter rail in, ???
>coming home from multi day trip
>going to be passing through a major city as return route
>try to time it so I get there around 3 or 4 pm to beat the rush hour
>lol no
>3:30 pm
>10-15 miles north of city, suburbs and stripmalls
>suddenly wall of traffic
>bumper to bumper
>grind through
>does not relent
>get to freeway north of city
>bumper to bumper continues
>want to kill myself
>these people do this every day and think, "yeah, this is fine," and never do anything to change it
>homicidal thoughts
>around 4:30 now, in city proper, gps takes me through ghetto which is also bumper to bumper
>realize that isn't the ghetto, that's just how this city looks
>around 5, finally make it to freeway south of city
>think I'm good now because have never seen traffic here
>lolnope still traffic
>get off ramp, think surely nightmare is over
>has never in history been traffic here
>nope, bumper to bumper continues
>crawling slower than I could bike
>by the way, no rest stops and no food or drink since 7 AM
>get home around 6:30 PM
>>950241
For exactly that reason: because freeways are a terrible way to move large numbers of people around simultaneously.
>>945661
>>946500
I bike commute to CSU:LB. Its hard to find parking at school and they make you pay $100's for it. It never rains here. Why not bike?
So comfy when the traffic is backed up leading to the 405 and you can see the dread in the drivers faces.
>>947864
Illich/5
REEEEEE FUCKING FREEWAYS! GET OUT OF MY WORLD
I don't know how this point is so contentious or widely ignored, but it's a fact that every time you fuel your cage you're putting money in the pockets of arabs.
The arabs happen to live at the religious center of islam and are ultra-orthodox proponents of sharia. They use their bottomless pit of oil money to fund mosques and indoctrinate youths to the militant spread of sharia.
Deal with it.
>>947860
I truly believe that the automobile is the albatross around the neck of humanity, and will ultimately lead to the downfall of humanity. Besides the destruction of amenity, the car has turned our fellow man and cities into nothing but an obstacle to rage at.
Oil may soon deplete and cause an economic crash of unprecedented magnitude. Oil has caused the spread of fundamentalist islam. Oil is directly and indirectly the cause of much cancer, through exhaust and additives. Oil has been the driver of some terrifying geopolitics which may yet see us all burn.
Oil has turned the bulk of the first world into entitled lazy bigmouths, maybe we deserve it.
>>946500
You need better friends.
>>950604
even if cars didn't rely on oil, they're still a faggot ass cancer
>>945659
>Commute of 15 minutes, see one or two other cars on the way.
Thank god the immigrants pile themselves within the cities.
>>946500
If they would cast you aside just for cycling to class, in reality you wouldn't lose any friends.
>>945661
i remember having a job an hour an a half away from my hotel in LA, i would take an hour and a half to get to the site.
So then at the end of the work week, i stuck around LA to dick around in the streets (bmx bike) and ended up meandering the whole distance in an hour... couldve easily been half an hour on a roadbike with direction
>>945817
i noticed people in LA drive motorcycles like they want to die
>>952255
Why else would you be riding a donorcycle?
>>950604
If it wasn't oil then it would be some other precious commodity. Like water will be in 50 years.
>>946500
If I was back in LA I'd get something like a Kona Ute and throw an ebikekit motor on it
I had a 1.5+ hour commute (each way) from Long Beach to Anaheim that was so terrible. Then you get to Long Beach and drive around for 30+ minutes looking for a parking spot.
LA is a disaster area if you don't manage to live near your job. God forbid you change jobs to somewhere farther, because then you have to buy another $700,000 house
Thought about getting a motorcycle but I hated my job and LA in general and moved back to Philadelphia, where cycling is awesome, or you can walk to work, and 60 year old men with ponytails and necklaces are mocked instead of accepted
>>950604
Ivan Illich on Cars
excerpts from Energy and Equity
also collected in Toward a History of Needs
> Man, unaided by any tool, gets around quite efficiently. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer in ten minutes by expending 0.75 calories. Man on his feet is thermodynamically more efficient than any motorized vehicle and most animals. For his weight, he performs more work in locomotion than rats or oxen, less than horses or sturgeon. At this rate of efficiency man settled the world and made its history. At this rate peasant societies spend less than 5 per cent and nomads less than 8 per cent of their respective social time budgets outside the home or the encampment.
ranprieur.com/readings/illichcars.html
>>945659
Lol that photo is ancient, I used to drive through there every day. Thank god I moved closer to work.
The trick for LA isn't not having a car, it's not depending on your car. I have a shitbox that's cheap to insure, that I don't have to worry about because it's worthless, and there's no concern about reliability because I don't commute with it. It's the best of both worlds.
>>952343
>The trick for LA isn't not having a car, it's not depending on your car.
Also in LA and this is exactly what I do.
>>952284
Previously it was food for the beasts that pulled the carts that clogged up city roads.
>>950604
Humanity is a parasite etc. etc.
>>952524
I don't think we ever had an oat crisis.
>>950604
maybe one of these days we'll be able to harness the power of fedora tipping to meet our energy needs, and you will become a millionaire.
>>952528
I doubt it, but the formulation of animal feeds that had more nutritional balance than oats was a big deal, because it meant that you had to carry less weight in animal fuel.
![jane-jacobs-google-doodle[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/MAgCj5V.jpg "jane-jacobs-google-doodle[1].jpg")
Happy Birthday Jane Jacobs
>>952528
We had a "not enough grains to feed everyone reliably" crisis for thousands of years.
>>952528
>>952524
It was shit, actually. In the late 19th/early 20th century many scientists predicted a breakdown of urban civilization. The amount of shit produced by the horses was nearly impossible to remove. The shit resulted in disease, disgusting streets, and incredible smell. And the amount of horses on the street was only increasing. Some scientists did calculations and predicted that by 1950, the average street would be covered in half a meter of shit every day.
Then the automobile was invented, and all was well.
>>952602
you mean the bicycle was invented and all was well, and then the automobile was invented
>>952570
And the "Green Revolution" of the 70s is the only reason half of us are here today
>>952668
* 60s
I drive to a city of 370,000 for school. The highway part is the most boring, yet stress free part of my commute.
