I live in NYC. I enjoy being able to take the subway to many world-class establishments in under 45 minutes.

If/when I have children, I'm getting the fuck out of here. Many (most?) people do the same.

There are huge numbers of people here, so of course there are lots of children here. They're either super wealthy, or really not living up to my standards for quality of life. (I was not raised in a big city.)

If you see lots of children around NYC, consider the case of cars. I don't have a car in the city, and no one I know does. But there's clearly many cars all over, more than can really fit in the roads and curbs and parking garages. Having a car in NYC is a huge pain in the ass. It's not a great car experience. Same with children.

Same here. Also, the people who can afford it and have been in Manhattan their whole lives often have a car or two parked in garages. Brooklyn and Queens are still very car heavy as well.

Also, after a while, those who can afford it (or those who can't but still spend) use Uber / Lyft / Gett / Juno / etc liberally. I haven't been in the subway for at least two months because I can't stand it anymore, and it's especially disgusting in summer.

No car ownership is no way to live your whole life. I feel trapped here. No, I do not want to go through the hassle of renting every time I want to get out of town either. As far as daily commuting, underground systems always suck especially for longer trips. I like above ground commuter trains of hiqh quality, and I like cycling when there's investment in infrastructure and shower / lockup facilities everywhere. Unfortunately not the case.

> "I feel trapped here."

Precisely.

My wife was rabidly anti-car (living in the northeast) until one summer a friend went out of the country and left their car with us. The precise word she used was "free" - we were free to get groceries on the fly, we were free to go out of town. We just had an enormous number of options open up to us, as our travel overhead / travel radius improved so dramatically.

It was freeing.

I never had to argue with her after that; when we had the chance to acquire a car, we did.

> I feel trapped here.

I find this sentiment interesting because I have the complete opposite feeling that you have. In my view, NYC is light-years ahead of Atlanta (where I live) when it comes to walkability, bikeability, and public transit. I would love to live in a city like yours.

Given that Atlanta is nowhere near NYC in those regards, it's weird that I feel trapped every time I get in a car here.

I don't own a car because I feel free without a car.

This goes to show me that even though I think NYC, Portland, Minneapolis, et al. would be amazing to live in, there are many other opinions and sentiments. :-)

I feel like this comment applies to Manhattan but not greater NYC. I also live in NYC and many of my coworkers have children. They all live out in Queens, though. Areas like Forest Hills have a cute suburban feel and are car-friendly but also afford solid public transit options. Sure, it might cost more than a comparable house in the suburbs, but you can find a full house for under $1mm.

Plenty of non-rich people with children in Brooklyn too (Sunset Park at least).

> Every other method of high-density transportation is also a "human amplifier" and vastly more efficient.

It might be more efficient on average, if you measure in terms of throughput. It isn't more efficient for individual people, who care more about latency. I don't want to turn a 20-minute trip into a 60-minute trip to improve throughput.

I do look forward to fleets of efficient self-driving cars as a better option; that could meaningfully replace driving. Trains and buses alone cannot.

Driving is only faster in high density areas due to misappropriation of infrastructure.

The subway, light rail, and dedicated bus lane can be faster than cars, especially when you factor in parking. This is the case in many areas of many cities that do have appropriate infrastructure in place.

For example, I can take a dedicated bus lane into my city center in about 30 minutes, whereas driving takes at least 45 minutes during rush hour. It's faster for me to drive my bike to work than to take my car.

Furthermore, if you have mixed-zoning, you probably won't have to drive 5 miles to get what you need.

This isn't about making cars illegal, it's about reducing our dependence on them.

Yes, you can take a bus into your city center faster at rush hour. That's exactly what public transit is really good at: getting people to a common destination at a common time.

Now, how fast can you get from an arbitrary point in the city to an arbitrary point in the city at an arbitrary time of day?

I just spent a couple of weeks and paris/barcelona and I'd say you could probably do it faster by subway/walking than by car especially when you figure in the cost/annoyance of finding and paying for parking.

There's a huge "but" there though. We rode the metro over 30 times in those two cities and never waited for a train for more than 3 minutes. Both cities have trains coming every 4 minutes at all hours of the day (as far as I can tell). That is something we would have to fix in most US cities that have public transportation.

I mean, it must feel like the third world here for a European visitor who comes to DC or SF (the two cities I'm most familiar with) and tries to ride the metro. 12 minutes between rush hour trains in DC and 20 or 24 minutes between trains in DC and SF outside of rush-hour.

When you can pop into a metro that is ~5 minutes from your flat, be on the train in less than 4 minutes, and be within ~5 minutes walk of wherever you want to be...why would you own a car, pay insurance, pay for a parking spot at home, pay for gas, and then pay for parking at a location when public transit is so convenient?

Europe definitely has better public transit. And parking is a problem in an urban area (though that issue goes away with a taxi or self-driving car).

But I think you're glossing over a fair bit with your description:

> When you can pop into a metro that is ~5 minutes from your flat, be on the train in less than 4 minutes, and be within ~5 minutes walk of wherever you want to be

...assuming that where you want to be is within 5 minutes of a metro station on the same line that's near your house and boarding at that particular 4-minute interval. Most trips between two arbitrary points involve at least one line change, which then involves another around of waiting; depending on the nature of the change, it may also involve a walk between stations. That adds up.

I'd like to have a public transit infrastructure that's comparable in latency to getting into a car sitting in your own driveway, going directly to your destination, and parking in the readily available free parking at that destination. I'd love to not have all the wasted space associated with driveways, garages, and other parking infrastructure. But I don't see a path to that even with European-level public transit.

You mentioned Barcelona, so I pulled up Google Maps, and picked a couple of random points roughly 20 minutes apart (by car) within the city, one of them a major landmark / tourist attraction and the other a residential area. Here's the map: https://goo.gl/maps/VCzEJEn3q3k . 24-35 minutes by car, depending on traffic. 67 minutes by public transit, including 20 minutes of walking, one line change, and 40 minutes of transit.

Here's a second example: https://goo.gl/maps/MWGqrSMsFGp . Directions between an event center and a shopping center, both in downtown and near major transit lines. Much better case for public transit: 29 minutes by transit, with no line change. By car: 12-18 minutes depending on traffic.

At least in the longer wait to travel via transit, if you're used to the trip, you get to read or listen to music, and just watch for your stop rather than the constant vigilance of driving. But that doesn't make up for roughly 2x travel time.

You are definitely correct. I did the same thing for Paris right after posting. Times were 1.8-3x what driving would be. But, experience tells me that the extra time oftentimes tends to not be an issue, mostly because of the cognitive differences between operating a personal vehicle and passive transportation.

But if you are in a rush and you know parking will be easy then yeah, jumping in the car would be fastest.

Latency is very much a function of how your city is laid out. For my Boston commute, the bike is by far the fastest option (30min) followed by the subway (40min, ~$70 monthly pass) and finally the car (1hr+ and $250 a month to park at work). Boston is more of an Old World city than New: despite the complaints, we have a functioning transit network and it's quite dense.

Self driving cars will lead to a death spiral of congestion. Because driving is even "easier", it will become more prolific and that will greatly increase travel times because cars simply can't scale, autonomous or not. And no, autonomous cars won't be legally allowed to drive bumper-to-bumper to save space.

Having centralized mess halls serving bland, but nutritious meals (rather than individual kitchens and nice restaurants) and hot-bunk dorms with people sharing beds in shifts (rather than individual bedrooms) would also be "more efficient".

Efficiency isn't the end-all of life.