scas wrote:People will travel by foot, bicycle, and if they're lucky, train...
Beery wrote:scas wrote:People will travel by foot, bicycle, and if they're lucky, train...
I hope so. But what I see is a future in which people drive cars until every scrap of fossil fuel is extracted, making the planet literally a toxic wasteland, because we just can't help ourselves. I fear I will never see bicycles as the primary form of personal transport and I fear that my daughter's children will be lucky if they can breathe without a respirator.
By the way, I don't count the bicycle as an inferior mode of transport compared to a train. I'd much rather travel by bike than by train.
The road system was origninally tarred for bicycles not cars.Lore wrote:Beery wrote:Bicycles in a post apocalyptic world are highly impractical for any distances. They require flat, smooth and well maintained surfaces on which to operate efficiently. Expect high maintenance in trying to cut paths through ruff terrain.
Many motorists also assume that roads were built for them. In fact, cars are the johnny-come-latelies of highways.
The hard, flat road surfaces we take for granted are relatively new. Asphalt surfaces weren't widespread until the 1930s. So, are motorists to thank for this smoothness?
No. The improvement of roads was first lobbied for – and paid for – by cycling organisations.
In the UK and the US, cyclists lobbied for better road surfaces for a full 30 years before motoring organisations did the same. Cyclists were ahead of their time.
[/quote]Cyclists' organisations, such as Cyclists' Touring Club in the UK and League of American Wheelmen (LAW) in the US, lobbied county surveyors and politicians to build better roads. The US Good Roads movement, set up by LAW, was highly influential. LAW once had the then US president turn up at its annual general meeting.
The CTC individual in charge of the UK version of the Good Roads movement, William Rees Jeffreys, organised asphalt trials before cars became common. He took the reins of the Roads Improvement Association (RIA) in 1890, while working for the CTC.
dorlomin wrote:Tar is cheap.
vision-master wrote:You ppl need to light up a big spliff and mello out.
Hawkcreek wrote:Me, I'm an optimist -- I think a lot of our problems will go away when we lose about 6 and a half billion people. All you have to do is be a better survivor than about 90 percent of the people you see around you.
Of course this is assuming we don't make the globe completely uninhabitable in the next 20 or 30 years.
The Practician wrote:What about when shit doesn't fall apart to the point that some sort of workable road infrastructure, maintained to a level adequate for bicycles and heavily reduced motor vehicle traffic, is an impossiblity? I don't totally discount the possibility of an armageddon scenario in my lifetime, as the the fact of nuclear weapons in the hands of desperate and resource hungry societies is not something any sane person can just shrug off. However, that's not exactly the future I'm pushing for. If energy waste can be given up with a semblance of decorum we can probably still have roads of sorts for quite some time, even if it's not 4 million miles worth.
Ferretlover wrote:I was talking about oil on other planets the other day. Afterwards, I thought about what a pointless discussion it really was. Even if we could find another earth-type planet, by the time anyone got around to develop the processes and equipment necessary to get to that planet, it would be way too late: all the earth's resources would be long gone!
... sigh...
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