Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them • Hacker News Board

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#91

Post by gbhn » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:52 AM UTC

lgas wrote: post #60

jseliger wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people push for rail Visit Japan (or these days China) and you will understand. This reminds me of people who say, "What's the big deal about electric bikes?" Ride one and you'll know. See what Japan and China are doing WRT rail and you'll know.

Given the difficulty and expense associated with going to Japan, perhaps you could describe it to us here using words.

I visited Japan a few years ago. There are regular extremely fast trains going between large cities and smaller ones. I estimated that the passenger capacity of trains stopping at one smallish city was equivalent to like 3x the passenger capacity of a major metropolitan airport in the US. From a big hub it's probably 10x that (maybe more).

The trains run very frequently, with reasonable fares. It looked to be completely sensible and fast to live in an outlying city and take the train into a larger one for work, whereas the idea of catching a commuter flight from a smaller outlying city into a major metro area in the US (or likely anywhere) is almost completely untenable -- too expensive, too time consuming, too irregular, and too much hassle.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#92

Post by brians » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:53 AM UTC

davidw wrote: post #53

opportune wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dense suburbs are only "outlawed" because certain places, usually at the municipality level, zone the buildings that way. You know it is also "outlawed" for most European cities to build too high vertically too right? Also, it varies from city to city (and within cities). Although most of the 20-35 crowd probably would prefer a denser city, old people prefer owning homes with lawns, so they wouldn't even want to live…

You can get a place with a lawn in Europe, too; you just have to pay for it, or live further out. It's very difficult to find a place like our house in Italy in the US: we could walk to schools, grocery stories, pastry shops, our doctor, cafes, pizza place, a few barbers and a tram stop to go downtown. And that's in a suburb of a mid-size city (about 300K).

I live in a place like that in Lexington, Mass. I commute by bicycle (or wimp out and drive in bad weather) about 8 miles. Two groceries, the elementary school, three preschools, an amazing cookie shop, three pizza places, and a fantastic Chinese place are walkable. Oh, and two dentists and an eye doctor, plus your selection of churches. A bus line runs from there, every 15 minutes in rush hour, to the terminus of a subway line. Oh, and a public library.

Now, it’s not perfect: the T breaks down all the time due to criminal underinvestment, my bike commute is noticeably faster than driving through the traffic, the mass transit schedule is such that any route with multiple transfers is insane.

But I’m going to guess that the Italian and Dutch versions of this aren’t perfect either; it’s a matter of deciding which flaws to live with.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#93

Post by PhasmaFelis » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:54 AM UTC

sevensor wrote: post #77

sjg007 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be county sponsored transportation for medical appointments. Also it seems uber could work?

> There should be county sponsored transportation for medical appointments. How's your experience been with that kind of service? There's a reason lawbreaking octogenarians still ride golf carts down the sidewalk to get to the doctor's office, hoping they won't get ticketed. > Uber. I'm sorry. Did I mention my grandmother is 96? Ninety-six ?

> I'm sorry. Did I mention my grandmother is 96? Ninety-six?

HN forgets that not everyone has coastal tech money a lot.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#94

Post by brians » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:55 AM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #36

rayiner wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you don’t really get to pick. Dense European style cities are outlawed in the US. Hell, dense European style suburbs are outlawed here. My pre-zoning code suburb has lots that are less than 3,000 square feet. It’s awesome—easy to walk and you see your neighbors all the time. But it’s completely illegal to build more neighborhoods like mine. The minimum lot size now is more than five times bigger—we have legally m…

Sure, it's outlawed - in your suburb. It's not a nationwide ban, though. It's not even (I presume) statewide, or even city-wide. (It may be true that there literally are no municipalities in the US with zoning codes that allow dense neighborhoods, but I would be highly surprised.)

This is a great focusing question.

There was a study a Few years about about which cities and suburbs could be built under their current zoning laws. I remember it showing that Somerville—a dense collection of 3-decker houses near Boston—was completely impossible to build under its current laws. I don’t have the link handy, but happy googling.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#95

Post by seanmcdirmid » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:55 AM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #75

lgas wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the difficulty and expense associated with going to Japan, perhaps you could describe it to us here using words.

You pretty much can get anywhere in Japan using rail / subway alone. https://www.japan-guide.com/g17/2361_01.png Subway maps cover cities to insane details. https://bento.com/pix/subway/tokyo_subway_1700.gif

The same isn't so true for China. While they have HSR inter-city down, they don't have the same developed smaller branch lines that Japan does.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#96

Post by AmVess » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:56 AM UTC

The old and the poor are increasingly left out of public transport.

The city where I used to live removed the bus routes from the poorest parts of the city and opened up new routes to the richest part. Buses on the new routes were almost always empty...rich people own cars, you see.

The city where I currently reside simply shut down their entire bus operation instead of jerking around poor people.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#97

Post by tzakrajs » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:56 AM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #75

lgas wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the difficulty and expense associated with going to Japan, perhaps you could describe it to us here using words.

You pretty much can get anywhere in Japan using rail / subway alone. https://www.japan-guide.com/g17/2361_01.png Subway maps cover cities to insane details. https://bento.com/pix/subway/tokyo_subway_1700.gif

Also the Yamanote line (circles inside Tokyo, goes thru Shinjuku and all other major wards) stops at each stop once every ~3 minutes during the day. It is incredible.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#98

Post by _m8fo » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:57 AM UTC

chc wrote: post #27

_m8fo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, sure. In practice, they don't go any faster a car is capable of [1] [1] https://ggwash.org/view/4524/average-schedule-speed-how-does...

I don't think "how fast a car is capable of going" is the relevant comparison in speed of transport via rail vs. bus.

I used bus and car interchangeably there as per the link the top speed of the fastest rapid transit was 80 miles per hour. Even a school bus has a 70mph top speed.

Of course, I'm aware that things are much faster (literally) outside the US, but the OP was referencing the US.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#99

Post by sevensor » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 2:00 AM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #83

sevensor wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They'd rather stay in their houses with all of their stuff Or they're old and poor, have little more than a house to their name, and the alternative is indifferent care by bottom-feeding nursing homes.

What homes are those? I mean "nursing home" and "retirement home" are two different things. One houses the chronically ill, often old - at very high prices but payable by insurances/the-state and the other houses old people at merely high prices but these prices have to be paid by the residents and there's no way to make them low even cutting all your costs. And apartments and trailer parks that house seniors at a sl…

So talking specifically about the poor, I mean nursing homes. Good retirement homes have waiting lists years long and cost a pretty penny.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#100

Post by PhasmaFelis » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 2:01 AM UTC

opportune wrote: post #42

rayiner wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you don’t really get to pick. Dense European style cities are outlawed in the US. Hell, dense European style suburbs are outlawed here. My pre-zoning code suburb has lots that are less than 3,000 square feet. It’s awesome—easy to walk and you see your neighbors all the time. But it’s completely illegal to build more neighborhoods like mine. The minimum lot size now is more than five times bigger—we have legally m…

Dense suburbs are only "outlawed" because certain places, usually at the municipality level, zone the buildings that way. You know it is also "outlawed" for most European cities to build too high vertically too right? Also, it varies from city to city (and within cities). Although most of the 20-35 crowd probably would prefer a denser city, old people prefer owning homes with lawns, so they wouldn't even want to live…

> You know it is also "outlawed" for most European cities to build too high vertically too right?

What's the justification for that?