This is a good point. The leisurely stroll is practically nonexistent in my city. I'm in a more rural setting, but there is still a well-defined city hub. It just feels awkward walking down the sidewalk when people are zooming by at 35mph+.
The result is sidewalk cut offs, which is inconvenient to me as a biker. There are frequently plants starting to take over because no one cares to use the walks.
Makes sense that people gradually prefer to spend their free time with Netflix, video games, or in a gym.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/duanes-depressed_larry-mcmurtr...
Or of course, Bradbury.
Nowadays, with a car, I don't mind driving for 10 minutes somewhere - it's actually often enjoyable, whereas walking for ten minutes out of necessity feels like an annoyance and a burden. I don't mind walking when I want to, like on hikes, but I certainly don't miss it being a necessity. There is a fast food place about 1.5 miles from me, which many consider walking distance, but I always take the car there and use the drive-thru even though the way there is very walkable.
The place I'm at right now is a nice compromise of usability for pedestrians and motorists, but I personally plan to someday live in a more rural area and maybe have a small farm, and I'm not bothered at all by the fact that such a place is essentially car-only.
Another major benefit was by the time I got home, the stress of the day was long gone. When I used to drive, the 45 minute journey of being mostly stuck in traffic meant I was more wound up when arrived home than when I left work
Oh please. Call spade a spade - you are talking about Manhattan, Dumbo or Williamsburg, Harlem and newly gentrified, serviced by subway places with white cafes and bars and restaurants loved by the lily white people working in tech or in finance. The thing is... it is a very small part of NYC. People in Queens take a car to get to a subway because it takes thirty to fourty minutes to get to it otherwise and after that it takes another hour and half to get to the place of work, but hey, who cares about Cinthia Lopez that cleans the desks on clowns working at Google that want to bike to work from their $6k/mo apartments.
You are not talking about Queens or Bronx or Bed-Stuy; you are not talking about Crown Heights or Inwood, or Washington Heights or Staten Island (it is also NYC even though people really like forgetting it).
[Peter Keating discussing whether or not he and his wife should build a country home away from the city] "Will you like commuting?" "No, I think it will be quite an awful nuisance. But you know, everybody that's anybody commutes nowadays. I always feel like a damn proletarian when I have to admit that I live in the city."
Washington Heights and Inwood are quite walkable and most people there commute by subway, without having to drive to it. The same goes for Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy.
This is the "Vote with your wallet" at the international civic level.
It may not have been very convenient or practical in the past but it seems to be becoming an increasingly accessible option, at least for first-world people.
Move to the places whose ideals align with yours, and help them develop those, if you can't convince your current home to adopt them.
Also this whole idea is known as Exit, Voice, and Reason too.
Interesting, I know that the Netherlands has such a program, might you know any other? Thanks.
Now that I'm in the U.S. except for one street I never casually go to a store. Everything is purposeful. In the U.S. I go to the store because I need to and it's not a chance encounter. I know where I'm going and what I want to get.
Though I hate the huge, ugly parking lots and what they represent. I tend to purchase stuff online and rarely go to a store these days. I do try to go for walks frequently but that is to get outside and I don't shop when I do this.
This allows the city to "breath" a lot more and there is not so much competition for the space between cars, bikes and people.
Compare that to dense cities like London, Paris or Barcelona, and there is a lot more to fight for.
It's funny that the German political party SPD which is responsible for most of this now wants to rebrand itself as bicycle friendly. But the largest sausage producer in Germany is now also the largesg vegan 'meat' producer. And soon pigs will fly.
People realized that this approach wasn't sustainable and now more and more work is done to undo it, that's a good thing IMO. Ancient European cities simply were not built to accommodate cars, they don't fit.
Do not worry, we still go on building ring roads and bypasses around cities. Either where there were not yet any, or farther from the centre and the existing ones where there are already existing ones.
- But this time, they will be enough far away from the city, and they will make traffic jam disappear, we promise.
- Yeah, that's what you said 40 years ago about the first ones, and then urbanisation exploded around them and they quickly got swallowed by the city and its suburbs...
Bus yes, it is true that the fad of building expressways ending right inside city centres has stopped quite a long time ago.
I don't know anyone enjoying taking the car in Berlin and one is often faster with public transport or the bike in the city center.
> rebrand itself as bicycle friendly Shocking! Political parties changing course to adapt to change in popular opinion.
(Disclaimer: I'm a relaxed driver; my experience might not hold for those who enter the full-rage mode when starting the engine)
Compare this with the pedestrian infrastructure (many bad sidewalks in the East) or bicycle with no or chaotic lanes [2]. Also when houses are build or roads are maintained, car driver concerns are always prioritized above cyclists and pedestrians [3].
[1] https://rad-spannerei.de/2015/07/14/berliner-fahrradstaffel-...
[2] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/mediacenter/fotostrecken/berlin/...
[3] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/images/schild-soeren-dumpf/22966...
Inside cities that is. One must remember that a lot of the people that move around in a city every day don't live in the city. And for many of them a car is a requirement anyway. For me the car is a sunk cost - I have it for the rare times I need it (I don't need it to go into the city), but buying/maintaining/insuring it is mostly a fixed cost, meaning that the marginal cost of each mile driven is very very small. I wouldn't mind if my city was made car free tomorrow - but I still wouldn't drive any less.
I didn't move because I'm white, I moved because I wanted peace and quiet. Most of the people I know who live around me moved away from the city for the same reason. Amazingly, non white people feel this way too...
Part of the reason the trend is called "white flight" is that for a long time and in many places non-white people were prevented by bank, municipal, real estate office and HOA policy from purchasing houses or even getting mortgages in the suburbs.
Calling it white flight isn't always an accusation of racism against the people who were fleeing, more against the people who openly prevented people of color from leaving as well.
The phrase "white flight" refers to a 1970s phenomenon where white people repeatedly moved from one suburb to another (often in circular patterns) in order to avoid POC after desegregation and civil rights legislation made suburbs accessible to POC for the first time. This was exacerbated by real estate agents engaging in a race-baiting, unscrupulous practice called "block busting".
>"The phrase "white flight" refers to a 1970s phenomenon ..."
No, the 1970s may have seen a recirculation of the original phrase but it is commonly understood that "white flight" refers to phenomenon around the war years.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight
[2] https://priceonomics.com/the-great-migration-the-african-ame...
Your generic suburbs have their own problems – massively artificial, claustrophobic rows and rows of almost identical houses, with zero character and nowhere to go without a car.
> Amazingly, non white people feel this way too...
On this note, almost the entire Asian population of the Dallas area lives in the suburbs, and those who can afford it are starting to move to the exurbs. Only people without the means to leave are staying in the city because the city sucks.
Something simple like setting up a toll to use city streets to reduce congestion is completely off the table. We end up highly taxing corporate zoned housing to try to kinda indirectly tax the work place of the suburbanites that are making a mess of our city, but it's only a partial fix and it's distortionary.
Meanwhile, people that actually live in Toronto pay way more in income tax than people that live outside of it, and our taxes are indexed to inflation, unlike the petrol taxes. Add in the three way split of the left vote and the FPTP system and we end up with a vindictive moron in charge of the province fucking up representation by changing our riding map in the middle of a city election.
Cars have ruined so many things. The amount of times a car has honked at me for not putting my own life in danger because I need 5 seconds to get to a safer place to pull over with my bike is crazy. I'm not "taking a lane" I'm just keeping myself from getting doored.
Imagine if cars had never been invented and we could have stuck with trains for everything? Way more green space. Way healthier population. Way more 4 or 6 story buildings. Way more parks. Way less time wasted behind the wheel. Fewer deaths. No road rage.
And what would we have to give up?
3000 sqft suburban houses and their shitty pools that get used 5 times a year. Instead of watching TV at night alone at home people could walk over to their friends place or go out to a cute restaurant or well groomed park.
I don't necessarily think suburbia is the culprit for traffic though. It probably is in North America where suburbs often means "not even public transport available to the city". They were planned for and built for cars! My suburb was not. People lived here before cars too.
I use public transport for most of my needs (including commuting) and drive very few miles per year - but I use my car many times for short distances, mostly things like picking up kids from daycare etc.
Also, speaking of daycare, that's another thing I really think is essentially stupid. Imagine two different situations.
First situation: Normal family sends 2 kids to daycare. About $50k here in Toronto. Cool. The daycare workers pay their taxes, the family pays theirs after claiming a $6k tax credit. At the end of the day the government gets around $30–40k more in income tax.
Second situation: Family A has two kids and so does Family B. They take turns watching each others kids, reducing each family's working hours by 25%. Assuming both parents earn the same base income in both families, but that only one of them wants to raise kids all day, the government loses about $11k in tax revenue per family, or $22k total.
The only thing that stops this practice from being widespread is that most employers want full-time workers.
In my case (Sweden) the daycare subsidy is much more significant, 2 kids is $3700 (Canadian) so the incentive to work full time is absolutely massive in comparison.
As a city parent, every morning I walk with my kid to the daycare and have to cross traffic mostly from suburbanites whose kids are A-OK while they put my kid at risk on their way to work. Thank you for taking public transit!
No thank you. As much as I like my home town, I don't want to pay a fortune (that could buy a castle or another absurdly large property elsewhere) for a crappy house or condo in the densest part of Toronto and never enjoy personal peace and quiet again. Not everyone wants to live in miserable close quarters paying exorbitant rent for the freedom to walk to convenient overpriced services.
A home and a yard allows those who need it to live with a measure of dignity. It's pants and you're trying to argue that everyone would be fine with shorts.
Ironically I live in NYC right now which is even worse in most of those respects, but at least the pay/COL ratio is better. Public transportation is better too. In the end if I buy a home it isn't going to be in either city.
A lot of freedom to travel.
Many of the cities in the US that are dense enough to be reasonable walkable/bikable are also incredibly expensive in those areas.
The car still gets used outside work to get groceries, pick up kids from schools and of course at the weekends.
That's the thing, often in the US I felt very boxed into a place, simply because I couldn't just do a Cartman and 'go home' (or someplace else).
Reminder: originally one (Roman) mile was a measure of thousand paces, while a Dutch, Russian and such miles were related to an hour of marching. (later rescaled in feet)
That said, it's not the US vs. everywhere else. For example, the UK has lots of charming little villages where you can walk to the pub and a few stores. Once you get out of the village though, some public footpaths notwithstanding, you're mostly talking very narrow roads with no shoulders, much less sidewalks, and no real way to walk off the road.
This is almost exactly the situation described by Bill Bryson in I'm a Stranger Here Myself. I believe he wanted to visit the shops across the street while his wife was at a mall and there was effectively no way to get there without a car.
Where did you get this idea?
Much of the this was spurred by the aerospace and oil industries.
Even in LA itself, the urban heat island effect is enough that many homes have A/C.
The coming droughts will affect agriculture, but not the cities.
Don't assume that every place is like the place you know. Visit the US, particularly the Midwest, and you'll come to understand why privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are the only solution to this particular transportation problem. The major cities are too dispersed with countless small population centers between them for any kind other kind of transportation to provide a feasible solution. It's not a matter of "engaging in democracy."
I say this as a local who has gotten into countless arguments with friends and family on the subject. I probably believed it as well a few lifetimes ago before I moved to NYC for 13 years and have since been completely converted.
It would require an enormous investment in public transportation and real bike lanes - I mean protected bike lanes like they're doing in NYC, not two faded white arrows in the rightmost lane - and then a generational shift where we convince the younger generations that car-ownership is overrated, wasteful, and terrible for the local economy.
But Americans care too much about comfort and convenience to do that. SUVs rule here.
You would then want to drive as far as you can, park, and take the alternative in.
It's made for people that don't live walking distance from a train/bus line, but also don't want to deal with the traffic/cost/overall hassle of going by car end-to-end.
There are 80 Park‑n‑Rides throughout the my metro area.
From Wikipedia: "There was a dense system of inter-city railways in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but after the decline of passenger railroad in North America in the 1960s, the inter-city lines decreased greatly and today the system is far less dense."
Wisconsin used to have inter-city rail servicing most/all of its population centers and even many of the smaller towns: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3701p.rr006200/?r=0.514,0.298,...
Yes, today cars are the default, but that took a long time. Things will continue to change and it's hard to predict exactly how.
I enjoyed Musk's Boring Company's presentation, where they talk about some problems with transportation today and present some solutions, with emphasis on transportation within city borders [0].
Musk's idea basically focuses on moving cars underground if I understood correctly. It should focus on moving most of the public transport underground and simply "decommissioning" some of the road infrastructure from the surface.
A large network of tunnels many levels deep would fix congestion in any city,
no matter how large it grew (just keep adding levels).
Tunnels are great if you plan on connecting a few hubs spread around a city. From there you can use the most efficient surface transportation available. A bike, a bus, a tram, even on foot.
One lesson that most city planners learned in time is that the more infrastructure you build for cars, the more cars you'll have clogging it. The solution is o discourage the reliance on cars in cities and it worked every time it was applied.
That's not quite true: by completely splitting car traffic and pedestrian traffic on different levels, you can create a city which is much denser and easier to walk because you don't need large car streets, and at the bottom you don't need pedestrian affordances alongside car traffic. Plus by banning car traffic far away you disincensise car traffic within the city: it's usually easier to walk, bike or take public transport than go to the bottom, get into your car, drive, park over there and go back up.
Louvain la Neuve works on that model, the city is built on a huge concrete slab and entirely pedestrian, with car traffic and parkings underslab.
I will point out the fact that according to Wikipedia Louvain la Neuve has ~30.000 inhabitants and ~30 square Km (12.5 sq mi). It is also 2Km on the longest side. How do you see this applied to New York or London, cities that need it the most?
And why is it better to still spend billions moving infrastructure underground instead of shrinking what's already available to the point where pedestrians get the vast majority of space and the infrastructure only serves the needs of public services?
> banning car traffic far away you disincensise car traffic within the city
I don't know what "far away" means but in reality drivers still go out of their way to drive the car. Think about this: they are willing to spend hours in traffic jams. You think an elevator ride to level -4 will discourage them?
P.S. I'm using info from BC [0] and their vision on this looks a lot like "let have the same traffic as today but on many levels of tunnels". Only the company drilling the tunnels walks away happy. You just pay a crapload of money to hide some of the issues of urban traffic.
Louvain La Neuve (in french-speaking belgium) has an interesting take on this: the entire city is on a concrete slab, topside is entirely pedestrian, and underslab hosts car streets and parkings.
Downside is that the bar is pricey and touristy, and most of the beers seem to be commercial. We were in this bar in Bruges last winter, it has 300 kinds of beer and all from small breweries. If a brewery is acquired by a big company, they don't serve it anymore. They also have almost no tourists there, which is refreshing for Bruges. I'll try and find what it's called.
Edit: The Bruges bar is called Le Trappiste [3]. Apparently, it's well advertised in touristic literature. They even have a website.
[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.056575,3.7252618,3a,75y,55.7... [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.056575,3.7252618,3a,28.6y,20... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.056575,3.7252618,3a,51.1y,22... [3] https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g188671-d42950...
You're really looking at this from a very narrow mindset. It isn't going into the city that a lot of Americans really want and need cars, it's heading out of the city.
This may be shocking to people with a European upbringing, but when you have a vast country with lots of open space and beautiful nature, it's super awesome and amazingly freeing to just go wherever you want to on a whim. Wake up Saturday morning - let's head up to that state park with the cool water falls and hike around for the day. 10 minutes later you're on the road and an hour or two later you're surrounded by nature. Real nature too, not some small 10 acre park somewhere.
There's real freedom in being able to go where you want, when you want. It's not just a "convenience" thing.
Doesn't sound so outlandish to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
If you want to see the endgame for cars as a primary means of transportation check out San Francisco.
We tried to go to Tahoe one weekend and gave up after waiting in line to get on the bay bridge for 2 hours and moving only 2 blocks.
Another time it literally took 10 hours to return from a ski trip and it’s supposed to be a 3 hour drive.
We don’t go anywhere in California now. If we want to ski, we fly out of state.
The problem is cars don’t scale.
But I realized that going fast you forget what's near, and you forget what time can feel. Walking around you discover places you didn't know, you spend time in the forest, on a hill. You're not rushing to go from A to B. Maybe "time density" will have a come back.
Another point, I stopped looking for parking spots where I go. I park 1-2 miles before and walk the rest. It actually saves time.
Personally, it's hard for me to imagine not having a car, much less not having a driver's license, because so many things I do are utterly dependent on driving even if I both worked and lived in a city (neither of which is the case). I need a car to transport my boating equipment. I just booked a getaway that is utterly dependent on a rental car when I get there. I've had jobs that I would not have been able to do were I not able to drive to job sites, etc.
But you basically adapt to what you can do if you don't have a car. You do more stuff around the city and less out in the woods. Maybe you don't take vacations that require driving. Etc. For my part, there are places that require high-clearance 4WD and knowing how to use it. I just don't do those things.
Not without a driver's license you won't... ;-)
Edit: quick google search says some companies might refuse you, but you should be able to pay $15 or so extra per day to get full liability and comprehensive coverage if you have no insurance of your own already. And check your credit card because some of them have limited built-in coverage you can leverage.
But I do like being able to get away for weekends, go to national parks and wilderness areas on vacation, etc. (And I like living in at least the semi-country which wouldn't be possible without a car.)
However, knowing lots of urban folks, having to rent a car (when everyone else is also wanting to rent a car) for weekends can be a PITA, especially if said car requires special racks and the like for sport equipment.
Of course, when traveling by air for vacation, renting a car is perfectly normal which is what I do.
I still can't believe how much I can pack into a canoe, probably as much as I can into a pick-up truck. Running down a lake or river, with a canoe, is even a smoother ride than a car on a regular road.
The first passenger trains were actually designed to move people from the city to the countryside. Once they achieved regular service people figured they can commute into the city, and started to live in the country.
Now I’m back in Europe and I feel free when I’m moving around a city. I might take public transportation one way and walk back to my apartment. I can get a call from my friend in the afternoon and go out for some whisky without having to drive back to my apartment and taking a cab.
I don’t know where I’ll live in the future but I’d be happy if I didn’t need to own a car.
> One says to me, "I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg today and see the country." But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day's wages. I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some time tomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you.
- Henry David Thoreau in Walden
That works both ways though. I feel significantly more free today owning an EV hybrid car, then I did without a car.
---
I have lost sleep worrying I would miss the only bus, or that it would be late, or that it would be full, or that it would never show, or that they could change the route without telling me, or that if the weather is bad I'll arrive soaked / freezing / dripping in sweat. Or if the other passengers are bad, I could arrived smelling bad or covered in bedbugs.
I have commuted by bus. It was a huge impact on personal freedom -- even if all conditions are ideal every trip still had to be delicately and precisely pre-planned, with exact arrival and departures, (that all stacked up, because even the shortest bus trips require one or more transfers) and they allowed travel only to specific places deemed worthy of it by other people. And of course, every trip required at least 2x to 3x longer trip times than driving.
Buses are like 70% of the stress of flying, with only 10% of the benefit.
---
A car isn't limitless freedom, it comes with plenty of responsibilities and costs of it's own. But it certainly can be a form of freedom of mobility. One that currently isn't easily reproducible in any other way.
Only being able to use a car to get around also does not seem like freedom.
Freedom is having good options - the option to use a car if that's what you have to, but also the option to bike, bus, or walk if you don't.
I've been to Houston recently - 'freedom' was about the last thing that I was feeling, as I traversed its freeway system.
If you look around the US you will see that even today, investment in suburbia far outpaces investment in "urbanism".
Trucks and SUVs are slowly cannibalizing sedan sales in the US. So not only do people like driving, the vehicles they tend to purchase are increasing in size.
If you are suggesting that society somehow prioritizes the 0.3% of young single males who want to live as pedestrians in urban cores...put it to a vote and watch what happens.
This entire thread is about optimizing cities for young single males. I can't wait until HN turns a median age of seventy...everyone will be in here screaming about a society that punishes the aged.
Elderly and disabled people are often can't safely drive due to either physical limitations (eyesight, reaction time, arthritis, seizures, limited movements, dizziness and fainting, etc., etc., etc.) or practical limitations (a car that accommodates a driver in a wheelchair with hand controls is a specialty item that costs $90,000+, I'm not making that number up, there was an article about it on HN a bit ago). Even if and individual has a ride it can be difficult to transport a motorized scooter in a standard sedan or compact car: going to the park with the grandkids is out without a folding wheelchair, which, depending on the individual's limitations, can make that person dependent on someone else to push them around.
Whereas electric scooters and wheelchairs can navigate easily and independently in pedestrian friendly zones when designed with accommodation in mind. And accommodation is now the law.
Also women and married people don't exactly, by definition, prefer driving over walking, dunno where you're getting that from. In fact, women drive less than men on average.
The idea that cars are unsustainable is ridiculous. Just because they may not fit into sonmeone’s desire for increased government control of mobility doesn’t make them unsustainable.
Every generation seems to think their generation will be the last, unless we “do” something. They were likely debating horse carts in England a thousand years ago with equal fervor.
Yeah, money. In the US, new transportation projects are generally financed with federal help, while maintenance is left to the local government. This essentially creates a Ponzi scheme, where cities are going bankrupt due to depreciation on infrastructure, and not even realizing it. https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/
In my opinion, roads are essentially underpriced. They're expensive to maintain and given out for free. (Similar arguments apply for parking, expressed humorously here: http://cityobservatory.org/parking-where-we-embrace-socialis...) This bothers me, as someone who doesn't own a car but lives with worse air quality and safety due to those who do.
Google reports the population of the US at 325.7 million, and the population of New York City at 8.54 million. So, your "0.3%" is a tenth of the population of one urban core.
I think this statement is misleading. The market has filled with SUVs that are adapted from compact and midsize sedans (e.g. Toyota RAV4, Highlander). The giant SUV market still exists, but I don't believe it's growing anything like it was in the 1990s and early 2000s. I probably see forty Rav4's for every Ford Expedition I see.
Wikipedia says the area of the USA is only 3,794,100 square miles, so there aren’t very many square-mile patches to hand out compared to the size of the population.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+%2F+population+densi...
Living in a dense urban area, taking trains, walking, and biking. Goods delivered all in close vicinity. Large building with the opportunity to be more energy efficient than your single family home.
All that, I'm convinced makes the carbon footprint of the average urbanite much lower than someone who often drives miles for errands I know this must feel contrary to the intuition to those who live very close to nature
People managed without cars for the vast majority of human existence.
One size doesn't fit all. What is your personal preference may not be others' prefereces.
Making a blanket statement like cars "are not effective in today's society" is profoundly off base.
Personal preference is largely a reflection of the status quo, and in the US the status quo heavily sculpted by federal policy that has favoured car-oriented development for 60+ years.
The last thing I want to do is walk to a grocery store and carry home food for a family in the 95 degree heat and 95% humidity.
It's not limited to the US. Even in Europe (at least in France where I live), we have a lot of protests whenever there are measures against cars. A few days ago, there was a no-car day in Paris, you could see people on social medias extremely angry.
If not, then it’s not a “good” system. It’s a good system for single adults carrying their Manhattan Portage bag. Not so good for kids in strollers, carrying groceries for a family, people in wheelchairs, elderly with difficulties on stairs. It’s not a “good” system at all.
Zurich’s trams — now that is a good system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra#%22Yogi-isms%22
>On why he no longer went to Rigazzi's, a St. Louis restaurant: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."
[1] https://theinfosphere.org/Transcript:The_Lesser_of_Two_Evils
Private vehicle ownership isn’t about solving society’s transportation issue. As far as consumers are concerned, a car is one of the most significant and life changing purchases they’ll ever make. It gives them far more than just a solution to a ‘transport problem’, it provides the freedom to pretty much go anywhere and do anything at any time. If your idea is ‘convince people they don’t actually want cars’, then your idea is going to fail.
Your overall point is correct about how car-centric cities are in the USA vs Europe, but just wanted to point this out.
Based on how people talk about the EU, I thought it would be different, but it looks about the same as the US to me.
This is an honest question. I live in a city with public transport now and I much prefer it for myself, but when I think of how I was brought up it's hard to imagine that working without a car.
Better to look at cities that are better adopters of bikes, such as Copenhagen. There just about everyone is on or in a bike, including many children. They love their cargo bikes over there. See https://triobike.com/ and http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/bicycle-culture/copenhagen...
As far as sticking kids on bikes, you got many options:
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/01/oregon...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3SP1Y98KhQ
https://www.survivalistboards.com/showpost.php?p=3482606&pos...
Well there are six stores (from very small to a supermarket) within five minutes of walking from my apartment. There’s a gym 500 meters away and another 1 km away. Cinema is 10 minutes by metro. A huge park and a forest are also about 10 minutes away each. Density is convenient!
"Mass transit": Shared and claustrophobic space with other travelers. "Biking lanes": Requires exposure to the elements. Depending on where you live this is already a non-starter if you don't want to arrive at your destination drenched in sweat. "electro-scooters": I've been on one of these in Vietnam. Doesn't carry 2 adults well and has the same weather problems as the peddle-powered version. "Elevated footpaths": I live in an urban conglomerate in Asia with ~1.1 million people. A typical day of running errands can easily rack up ~50+km of driving because of the distances between either people I know or businesses carrying niche products. There's no way in Hell I'm covering that ground on foot, in 34deg C weather with 90% humidity.
The city in the article is (1) miniscule at ~85,000 people and 15-20km across at its widest and (2) possesses a pretty mild climate. All of the transportation assets you propose as "solutions" are fine....if you live in California or a similar "Mediterranean climate". Most humans don't.
"But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society."
Why so quick to jump to sweeping, society-altering prognostications based on conclusions which you yourself recognize as applicable to a small-scale and optimal use case?
Your suggested alternative transport means all severely restrict your freedom of movement compared to a private automobile as they come with range and/or comfort compromises. They would shrink the options of citizens for long-distance ground travel as well (say goodbye to road trips).
"Of course this is a very small town and these changes do not scale up as easily as one would like"
Yes, and given that 22% of humanity lives in urban areas of 1 million+ [1] and 40% of humanity in cities over 100,000 [2], it might be premature to call people to political action to hasten the death of the automobile when you don't have a solution that scales well.
[1]https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.URB.MCTY.TL.ZS?view=... <br> [2]http://www.newgeography.com/content/005933-world-urban-areas...
Pontevedra is in Galicia, northern Spain. Here it rains like UK, and even worse. No Sun except a very few weeks a year.
Not all Spain is sunny, and not all the US is like California, Texas or Florida. You would freeze in Castille or Aragon in Winter. You would pray to see the sunlight in Asturias, Galicia or any region of the Bay of Biscay.
And where I live on a tropical island in Asia has 25% more rainfall (2000mm annually), annual daily mean temp is 9deg Celsius higher (with 29deg C average highs June - September), and 25% fewer hours of sunshine.
So yeah, Pontevedra's climate may not technically be Mediterranean by Koppen classification but it sure as Hell is "mild" compared to where I live.
The last 10 years there are no longer rains, and the sun is here from late May to October, last year we have big wildfires in the last weekend of October, water restrictions from Sept due to the drought.
I remember when I was 10 years old rain a lot, nowadays no more than London ( I lived in London for a year).
Regards
Please, get your facts straight. This is ridiculously inaccurate
Yes, but there's also a geographical difference. Countries in Europe are rather small, and a long history has restricted some land use. In many areas of the US land was almost a non-issue, so people settled more sparsely, and even cities became sprawls (e.g. Houston, LA).
I get your point, but it is not a good reason why we cannot do things better.
Central planning can theoretically avoid some growth pitfalls "skipping to the end" but in practice it has often had limited success beyond zoning promoting the obvious - high traffic areas are good for retail and often annoyance to residents. I am no expert but it seems predictive design performs best with planning.
I see that as the problem. We have limited resources and don't care very much about the future of them. Current value vs long term value.
"In Scottish geography, a Carse (the modern form of older Scots kerse) is an area of fertile, low-lying (typically alluvial) land occupying certain Scottish river valleys,[1] such as that of the River Forth."
I am forced to agree.
But a lot of American cities were built around the automobile, so they would need a lot of changes to function in a post-automobile world. That makes such a transition much less likely. I think it would work better in older, East Coast and mid-western cities that largely predate the automobile.
I like the idea of large cities improving their public transportation systems and having parking lots on the outskirts but it doesn't make financial sense in the smaller size cities. There are lots of people like me that live in a small down and commute into a city (60k people). I'd love better public transportation but it only makes financial sense in the "downtown" areas.
https://www.bicycles.net.au/2012/09/cycling-promotion-fund-r...
I uber home when it's late and I've been drinking but that's really the only time I'm in a car.
I know I've got a somewhat special situation as I chose my apartment based on it's walk ability. However I've lived in other parks of the city and I had similar a similar experience. It just took a little longer to get places sometimes.
I believe eventually cars will be a shared service. Automated cars that will arrive whenever I need one. That will be the day.
I currently drive a Volt...and it's wonderful. Chevy is really missing out on a lot of potential free press by not putting a bigger emphasis on it. I went from spending over $400 / month on gas to about $20 / month. You get the ability to cut such a huge amount of gas usage without the need for any additional infrastructure to support them like pure-electrics that are out there.
My guess is that when clean energy is used to produce fuel cells, a lot of the conversations around the negative impact of cars in general will dry up.
Sure they do, just not in all situations. I'm all for walkable city centers, downtowns, parks and such, but I also very much love to drive my car. I'm happy to vote for more pedestrian/public-transport friendly metropolitan areas (and do), as long as there's also non-metro areas for me to live on my privately owned land and drive my privately owned car as I please.
Of course, even though they have these two advantages, they will still pollute(if not electric, and even so because they must transport more mass than say a scooter, and the electricity still needs to be generated at an external power plant) and create noise pollution and they also need to use traffic lanes and road-infrastructure.
think about it....if you set up an autonomous ride sharing service, your path to profitability lies in having cars closer to prospective riders. so it makes total sense to put as many cars on the road as possible....it's not like there is a person driving who must be compensated or fed
However it's far far easier for commercial companies to invest $billions in them than it is for governments to invest $billions in the infrastructure to make cars redundant. Look at the bitching and moaning that happens whenever a new train line is proposed.
They pretty clearly weren't effective in the old cities, either, at least in the U.S., since we had to more or less raze them and move everybody to the suburbs to make cars work.
in the Bay Area, they tend to vote for more and better roads (but tend not to get them)
For people with a very limited lifestyle restricted to a few city blocks perhaps this is true. But the majority of people do not live that way and have use cases for cars that you have not considered in your analysis.
change always requires some sacrifice,
By other people, funnily enough
Because outside of cities, as long as people have detatched homes on reasonably sized lots, getting around requires a car. There will simply not be the density needed for efficient public transportation.
While I might agree that the idea of large suburbs with detatched homes is probably not very sustainable, I don't see how they aren't here to stay (together with the cars required to live in them)
Or maybe the hub (outside the city) could have parking, so you drive there but take public transport from there on?
That's how it works. I walk 600m to my bus stop in my suburb neighborhood. So commuting from where I live is no problem. I don't need a car for that. But all the other transportation (driving kids to various sports practices, going to the forest, the lake, going to the school that isn't along a bus route with kids that can't walk very far etc) is harder. There will always be a gap between the transport I want/need and the transport that can be solved by public transport. So some kind of semi-private transport (e.g. shared autonomous cars) is probably required if the suburban lifestyle is going to be possible without cars.
You can have the on-demand voice-activated self-driving car experience right now: it’s called a taxi. Is that viable for all your use cases?
Perhaps for some of the use cases there could be better utilization (meaning cheaper) taxi, e.g. a taxi picking up my kids for school could also pick up a few more.
Eliminate the driver and taxis become way cheaper (probably cheaper than owning a car). That means people like alkonaut here will be far more interested in just not owning their own car that sits idle except when they are personally driving it. Which reduces the amount of space we are spending on car storage.
Why do you think they will be cheaper? Get ready for surge pricing being the norm. If you don’t have a vehicle of your own, you’ll have no choice but to pay. That’s why investors are willing to pour untold billions into this, they expect a massive payoff.
I'm sure that investors will extract a nice sum of money, but it's their ability to outcompete taxis on price that will allow them to do that. Or to put it another way they don't need to extract $30,000/car/year^1 and competition means they won't be able to.
^1 what ddg tells me the average US taxi driver salary is.
It is not good to need a car and having to use it every day for several hours.
In the past five years there was one day when I couldn't cycle to work due to black ice covering most of the roads, and even that resolved itself in the afternoon. Snow just means you need a bit more dexterity than usual.
As for comfort; proper clothing means you are pretty much comfortable most of the time.
The ultimate irony of the point attempted to be made is that people don't drive when ice or snow cover on the road (or suck at it, take undue risks, fail to, and ram into curbs/cars/people).
What's more, in bad weather people (who have the option to choose between public transportation and their own vehicles) tend to choose cars more often because public transit has a habit of becoming increasingly unreliable, especially due to winter conditions, even though such conditions can be reasonably expected for 6 months a year.
I used to do 15+15 km bike ride to work and back almost every day for 9 months out of the year. Sadly I can't do that any more as I moved farther away from work.
There might be days of bad weather where other means of transportation is more convenient, but that's the case all year around.
For motorcycles/scooters the season is shorter because you can't get (affordable) insurance.
Citation needed, I know. There’s a relevant article about this phenomenon out there somewhere, if I can find it I’ll post a link.
I ride a fixed gear In winter, with the same tires I use in summer. A lot of people are on mountain bikes. Some people are on fatbikes, but that's overkill for basic commuting.
Sure, on rainy or super cold days it's not like it's as comfortable as a car but you'd have to pay me to drive a car around Paris or any big european city at rush hour.
The odd thing about this is how the biking paths around here (a city 60N) still remain relatively empty for a long time in the winter. It almost confuses me, but not really :-)
I know. I expected to get this kind of responses. It shows how little empathy this site has for other (older, overworked, with 3 kids, pregnant, ...) people that are just a little different than they are.
Saying "countries" is funny. It's varying wildly within a country, even a small one. E.g. my home city of Hradec Králové is built on a completely flat area with mild weather, so of course everyone bikes almost the whole year, but Prague is built on a series of steep hills and enjoys rougher weather, so while you see people biking here, most people don't.
Biking in the winter is fine too, as long as there's no snow (and the snow is usually only 1-2 months, depending on the location).
And some people do drive in the winter too (but that is harder and most don't).
Arguably many people seem to consider their car as a self-propelled living room, fully equipped with sofa and entertainment system.
This might be shocking to you, but I'd like to get to work in 15 minutes instead of in 45 minutes while suffering the bodily odeurs of a hundred co-travelers, overlaid with the subtle smell of my wagon having been used as a urinal for a decade, thank you very much.
Cities get bigger and denser, and wasting a big % of land on parking spaces, roads, intersections and accepting a horrible air quality (that reduces citizen life spans and health quality) and noise pollution just does not make any sense anymore. Carse are effective in less dense regions, but in modern cities other solutions have to be found. Mass transit, biking lanes, electro-scooters, (elevated)-footpaths are the way to go. Maybe even electric ridesharing.
But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society.
I know european cities are much more pedestrian friendly & that US cities in general are more oriented towards the car lifestyle, but as said previously, this needs to change. It is a big cultural and infrastructure change over a longer timespan, but it is achievable.
Of course change always requires some sacrifice, and I imagine the car-drivers in above mentioned article must have been plenty pissed at the beginning. But they paved over the streets, made the inner city pedestrian only, and now they are better for it. Of course this is a very small town and these changes do not scale up as easily as one would like, and much more complex projects will have to be designed for bigger cities. But it is doable (see initiatives in e.g. Madrid, Munich & most of the netherlands) and "only" requires some long-term commitment. But we all know how good politicians are at that (what's global warming??).
I want to finish this comment with a call to engage in democracy. Make your opinion heard, loudly, go to the voting polls, participate in your local council, actually engage in politics. Because if you do not, no significant change will be made any time soon.