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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

EV's are an improvement compared to "the same but with petrol" but the thing is, but we are squandering an opportunity to have cities where people can bike and walk places (the reason they can't is the cars) and other issues are coming to light, namely the heavier weights and faster acceleration making them even more dangerous for people using bikes and walking than fossil fuel cars.

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yes please. i have these conversations with people here in LA and they look at me like i'm an alien. but LA is really the perfect city for dense, multi-modal, mixed-use neighborhoods because of the perfect weather (esp. low humidity) and relatively flat terrain.

all we need to do is convert street parking into bike lanes, and build a few parking structures in the oldest neighborhoods that were built before onsite parking was common (this mitigates the biggest legitimate objection for getting rid of street parking).

LA has a lot of low hanging fruit with the classic "two parking lane four car lanes and a center turning lane" arterial that is laid out about every half mile in the cardinal directions across the entire county. Just nix the turning lane and two car lanes, and turn the existing bus lines that run along those arterials into BRT and LA would become a model for the western world of how to run low cost transit.

It will never happen of course, because the city council and most wings of local government are openly corrupt with regular FBI indictments.

yah, that's exactly the kind of change i advocate as well. it's low cost and high bang for buck. LA instead spends millions of dollars doing studies and community outreach and anything else before they actually implement these kinds of changes. and when they do, it's small, isolated and disconnected, and low utility as a result.

And forever handicapped. The expo line takes about 15 minutes to go from Expo park to 7th street metro center two miles away. The last good piece of transit LA built has been the red line and that was over 25 years ago.

right, they should have put it underground right before USC/expo park.

Bike, walk or use lightweight electric vehicles (e-bikes, 3wheelers, mobility scooters) which need a small fraction of the power, fraction of the resources to produce, are safer, smaller (thus higher throughout on city roads) and quieter.

The problem with electric cars is that they are still cars.

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