Enrique Peñalosa, former Mayor of Bogota said that "An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport", and imho he is completely spot on with the issue of transportation. The transportation problem in the US is a city/urban planning problem, and not one solved by building more roads and putting more cars on them.

I suggest you watch his TED presentation http://www.ted.com/talks/enrique_penalosa_why_buses_represen...

Another worth watching is that by Bill Ford, of the Ford Motor Company: https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_ford_a_future_beyond_traffic_...

I have actually.

And it works perfectly in huge cities, and it doesn't work in the smaller ones.

> The transportation problem in the US is city/urban planning, and not one solved by building more roads and putting more cars on them.

No, the transportation problem in the US is that it is very large, and the majority of the cities are medium/small and public transport simply doesn't work in those sized cities (just not enough demand for continuous service).

Berlin has a fantastic public transport system, but 70% of is less than 70 years old. Istanbul's public transport system is truly terrible, but it's a nearly 3,000 year old city that gets nearly a +/- 50 degree C temperature range over a year.

Paris has an ok metro, but in general public transport isn't that great compared to say, Berlin, London or Barcelona.

London has a ridiculously overdeveloped public transport system that will get you from a to b but it's massively oversubscribed and the roads are rammed most of the time. To be fair, London is generally oversubscribed and rammed most of the time.

The metro in Paris is way nicer to use - more reliable, cheaper, drives very often and has a far reach. Same goes for Vienna and Hamburg.

I even prefer smaller middle sized cities systems, in France and Germany, at least on the day when they are working - and if they are not completely stupid, like causing themselves to be always late by letting the bus driver control the bus ticket. But I disliked Berlin in general.

No, it's not a planning problem, it's a "people don't want to live there" problem.

In the US people are simply not interested in living in a high density low population city.

They want either high density, high population, or low density, low population.

They would love low density, high population, but those don't exist much, so urban sprawl is the next best thing.

But let's agree to disagree.

(Obviously "Not all" - some like to live in big cities.)

- Do people really "want" to drive 10/15 minutes to pick up the milk they forgot last time they went to the store?

- Do people really "want" to spend huge amounts of money on a car, insurance, gas.

- Do people really "want" to spend huge amounts of time in traffic on their way to and from work every day?

I could go on, but I think the answer is generally "no" to all those questions. And that's leaving out all the deleterious health effects we know commuting and the suburban lifestyle can cause.

What people really want is safe places, good schools, short commutes, good shopping/food choices, outdoor spaces, etc. We've been sold a bill of goods since Levittown on the "american dream" that offers the solution to all the problems of cities by creating an entirely different (and I'd say overall significantly greater) set of problems. It's treating the symptoms instead of the disease.

- Do people really "want" to pay twice as much for half the living space?

- Do people really "want" to share walls on all sides and have a person above and below them?

- Do people really "want" to step out their door and have a major roadway packed with cars (or buses if we're ditching cars) right there?

I think the answer is generally "no" to all those questions, too.

Well, it does not work in bigger cities as well except NYC, Chicago and to some extent Boston. Also, OP talks about SF, which for it's size and population can have a good public transport system.

I see here in Germany every day people (of every age), which can do their shopping with public transport. I've done it also in the past. Currently, my car is waiting in the garage 6 out of 7 day a week. I just use it sometimes, because its there. I can't use my car downtown anyway, because finding a parking spot is like playing a lottery and is expansive. It is more easy and cheaper to use public transport, or my bike, or my legs.

The only reason you are arguing this way is: you love your car. I've done that my self in the past. But I changed, and you can it too.

I live in Vienna, Austria where elderly and families with many children use public transport and carry whatever they need to carry. Bus and tram stations are not miles away, they are 150m away, and came at 3-10minutes intervals In the metros you can even carry large items easily, like bikes, for free.

Also in Europe we have supermarkets at every block, we don't have to do our groceries miles away.

But I didn't comment whether San Francisco is like this or not, I commented on the idea that this places can't possible exist.

Which was not an idea anyone (except maybe you) had.

Only in the largest cities. And it's the same in the US.

But now look at the medium sized cities in Europe.

> Vienna, Austria

By the standards of the US Vienna is incredibly dense. There are only about 15 US cites that have similar population density.

Plus it's huge - over a million people. In NY the public transport is also that good. But there are only 10 cities that large in the US.

Second, you are wrong. Medium cities are just like the big cities except without the metro system. Trams and busses are just as good and effective, and the metro is not needed (I hope the reason why not is obvious). Also, here in Austria at least, the trains are really good, really fast, and really, really frequent, and you can just take the metro to the big city center with the same ticket (something you can't do with cars, because cars are not allowed in the center).

Very small towns and don't need public transport because it takes 10 minute to cross them by foot.

This notion that you need a car to move around town or buy groceries is an american concept and seems preposterous to us, europeans. Cars have their uses, obviously, but these are not their primary use here.

My comment wasn't. These rants about getting rid of cars are evergreen, and they always ignore the same issues.

NY for example is exactly like your comment - you can do just fine there without a car. But there are only about 10-15 cities like that in the US.

> Medium cities are just like the big cities except without the metro system. Trams and busses are just as good and effective

Only if the population density is high. Otherwise there is not enough demand for constant service.

> Very small towns and don't need public transport because it takes 10 minute to cross them by foot.

Have you ever been in the US? It can take 20 minutes by car to cross a small city because they are very spread out.

The whole reason to live in a small city is so you get a lot of land. No one is interested in living in a small village type city which is small (in population) but you only get small piece of land - cities like that are dying constantly in the US because people don't want to live there.

Young children? They can use PT. It's a normal thing to do in my city (Austria). What about grocery shop? I mean, surely you have groceries around you so you can just ... walk there? go there by bike?

People who can not think of a no-car life just have never enjoyed good public transport.

Or if you have a reasonably large family and prefer to grocery shop once a week or so ... of course you could walk there and back five times instead of one ride and waste some time.

Or what if the place with the best prices and the best choice is too far to walk, maybe even too far to bike comfortably? Tends to happen in some places.

But of course public transport can't serve everybody's needs. But it can servve most people's needs, and if most people used it, it would be much better.

If your remaining need the car was commonly groceries, it's easy to imagine effective solutions for that. (Deliveries, cheap neigbourhood car rental or co-owning, bike trailer, uber, etc).

Lovely word there "far". And what about the 4 year old who lives not "far"? Is he going to walk to school by himself?

And what about when it's not school? Or are young kids expected to never go anywhere?

> and minibus service that will pick up and drop off the elderly from doorstep.

Yah, I've seen those in a few cities, and you have to wait hours for your ride.

> But it can servve most people's needs

Only in extremely large cities (where you have enough people for constant 24/7 service), in smaller cities there is just not enough demand so you run fewer buses and it no longer works for most people.

> Deliveries

That only works if you know what you want, but not if you are comparing prices, looking for specials, what's fresh etc.

> cheap neigbourhood car rental or co-owning

You mean like the car service the author is ranting about?

> bike trailer

And there you go, you too can't seem to imagine the entire world is not like you.

Someone with a large family is going to take some of them with them when they go shopping. So you expect to have 4 kids under 6, plus a car load of groceries, on a bike trailer?

My dad was too lazy to drive me anywhere so he bought me some bus tickets and a bike. Problem solved.

My work gives me a (hybrid) car. Almost (~95%) every day I let it home and take the train to get to work.

But I have three kids and my wife is pregnant, so there's no way she could do almost anything without having a car.

Building our cities such that you believe you need a car was the original sin. Everything else follows from that "logically".

https://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/...

I'd say that was exactly who he was picturing...as people who use Uber & Lyft.

I think the point he is making isn't that cities can get rid of cars. It's that the majority of people who use these new services can _probably_ just use public transport.

I come from a large family and we never bought more groceries than we could carry. How large does a family need to be in order to be unable to carry its own groceries?

Quite a few rely on the bus as it's easier and safer than driving. Quite a few of them make an issue of it at local council elections.

I've also noticed here in Edinburgh that parents are relaxed about letting even fairly young children (under 10) travel the bus by themselves.

Every example you give is just laziness.

Many many people in this world use public transport who are elderly, have kids, do the shopping.

Why can't the elderly walk to the bus? Have their legs fell off?

Perhaps people with certain disabilities might have issues that public transport can't solve, but they are not a large part of the population.

"Laziness" is a term we use to describe situations where people are unwilling to put in the amount of work necessary to accomplish something that we could do if we were in their situation. The problem with that is that you really have to understand their situation properly first. If you're not a parent then describing someone who drives instead of taking the bus when they're out with their kids as "lazy" is just a show of ignorance. Even if you are a parent, you still don't really know what their kids are like.

Many people do use public transport, and that's great, but I'd hazard a guess that it's largely because they don't have an alternative option rather than because they think it's the best choice. Wrangling kids on buses is really, really hard work. Plus, if you have more than one, it's usually a lot more expensive than driving.

It's not "lazy" to use the most appropriate form of transport.

Please tone down a bit? They sure may have problem in walking maybe a mile or so to reach their destination. Buses aren't dropping them right in front of home.