Why aren't we all driving boats?

I’m down with that. I have a sweet kayak that I can get going pretty fast.

Right, traffic without brakes.

Bad idea.

Water evaporates, and requires constant replenishing. You’ve obviously never owned a swimming pool. It requires daily maintenance. Water turns into sewage without constant work.

The water in this area doesn’t flow in the directions most folks want to go. And most boat motors don’t come with catalytic converters or other antismog devices.

Have you ever been to Venice? We all think of it as this picturesque romantic ideal. My brother & sister were there last year and said it was one of the nastiest places they’d ever been.

I can’t parallel park my car, I can’t imagine trying to park a boat.

I agree with @MrItty :: Venice is fucking foul when you wonder off the beaten path. Think of stagnant water with pools of oil on it and lots of garbage. Venice just felt and smelt wrong.

We already have a world-wide water shortage, and now you want to use more?

Well, interesting idea. Not even remotely workable.

The earliest public works projects in this country (and huge public works projects in many countries, including China about two thousand years ago) have been canal-building.

It’s not to say that canals don’t have their place: for bulk movement of cargo nothing is cheaper than water transport, but canals are hugely expensive, too, with locks requiring constant attendance and maintenance.

I don’t see canals being a solution to “individual” transit, but there might be a case for them – some day and some way – for “mass transit”.

Why not mopeds instead of cars? Boats?

No silly, what we need is rubber roads and concrete tires.

Bicycles are the answer.

@Ltryptophan Do you realize how many chemicals boats put directly into our water supply? I think bikes are the answer. ;)

Bikes might be the answer in urban and southern areas. They would only work about 7 months out of the year here in the urban area. For me drive to the city is already 2 hours each way.

If I had to haul a truck full of groceries and supplies, a bike wouldn’t work.

@Bike people
Keep in mind that your effective range and timeliness on a bike is drastically reduced from conventional motor transport – say, a little better than what you can do on foot. And as @WestRiverrat points out, shopping on a bike is out of the question for most things. I did that once. No car, grocery shopping was done on bicycles, with groceries stuffed into backpacks. O’er hill and o’er dale, and if it happened to be ground-freezing January outside, well, you suck it up or go on foot – because that backpack is only going to hold a couple days’ worth of groceries. And if there’s snow on the ground, you can fuhggeddaboutit.

Venice, while grody, isn’t that bad. You don’t want to swim in the canals, but the waste problem’s no worse than in any other big city.

What do you mean why? Because this isn’t fucking Water World, that’s why.

I’d love to drive my boat through the streets!
A friend of mine takes his to the golf course every week and I have taken mine to restaurants and to visit friends at their homes.
I love the idea of doing that :)

Despite the scepticism canals are more viable in the long term than what we have now. You should visit Alleppey in the south of India where transportation is mostly water based.

You should visit my house in summer. The mosquitoes are enough to carry you away. If the streets were canals I’d be worried about the spread of viruses

“Why aren’t we all driving boats?”

Because good Jellies don’t make waves.

What would the crosswalks look like? And tsunamis would be a form of capital improvements?

When Global Warming gets going, many more people will be driving boats:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterworld