We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#71

Post by thereisnospork » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 8:00 PM UTC

the_gastropod wrote: post #46

drblast wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes. I just had surgery that requires me to be on crutches for a few months, so I'm temporarily disabled. If you're young and able-bodied (like me pre-surgery) and want to understand what it's like to not be young and able-bodied (which you almost definitely won't be at some point) you should put your right leg in a brace, and try not to let your foot hit the ground for a day or two and try to live that way. The g…

Cars are not the only solution here. Transporting a single disabled person does not require a 100+ horsepower 2-ton vehicle.

But doing it fast, cheap, and flexibly does.

Cars cost 50 cents a mile, go anywhere at as fast as anything that doesn't fly, and require negligible physical exertion or special skills to operate. When there is adequate infrastructure that's pretty optimal.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#72

Post by isostatic » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 8:01 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #63

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Parking spaces are being turned into miniature parks, or the parking lanes eliminated entirely in what are called "traffic calming" schemes to make streets more pedestrian-friendly. What? Why? It seems like it would be better to add additional lanes (shared left turn lane + 2 bike lanes or some similar configuration) to increase overall efficiency and throughput. When you have raised sidewalks traffic speeds don't r…

What? Why? Studies show that narrower streets cause cars to drive more slowly, making neighborhoods more livable. (Less noise, among other factors.) There are other methods used that also cause cars to slow down - road humps, textured (fake cobblestone) crosswalks, pedestrian refuge islands, pedestrian bump-outs, replacing parallel parking with angled end-in parking, etc... When you have raised sidewalks traffic spee…

How about all those amazon deliveries?

I'm all for banning garaging on roads, and I don't see why private cars need to be driven in the centre of major cities at all, especially during the day. Things like the London congestion charge for all cars from say 7AM to 9PM (depending on when transit is running well) are great, although should really scale with the value of the car.

But when the supermarket drops the weekly shop off, they need somewhere to park for 10 minutes.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#73

Post by munk-a » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 8:03 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #63

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Parking spaces are being turned into miniature parks, or the parking lanes eliminated entirely in what are called "traffic calming" schemes to make streets more pedestrian-friendly. What? Why? It seems like it would be better to add additional lanes (shared left turn lane + 2 bike lanes or some similar configuration) to increase overall efficiency and throughput. When you have raised sidewalks traffic speeds don't r…

What? Why? Studies show that narrower streets cause cars to drive more slowly, making neighborhoods more livable. (Less noise, among other factors.) There are other methods used that also cause cars to slow down - road humps, textured (fake cobblestone) crosswalks, pedestrian refuge islands, pedestrian bump-outs, replacing parallel parking with angled end-in parking, etc... When you have raised sidewalks traffic spee…

Also, amusingly, it's usually the case that everyone gets where they're going faster if roads are cut down to a single lane (or 2-lane, depending on if you count oncoming traffic) because a complication in car flow brought on from complex passing interactions is highly reduced. This holds ever for the country roads with a lot of passing-legal portions.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#74

Post by njarboe » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 8:05 PM UTC

Zaskoda wrote: post #62

I'm one of those folks who would love to drop everything I have going to wander off into the desert/forest/underwater/whatever with the intention of bootstrapping a new city from scratch. The more I talk about it, I've found that there are a lot of people who would love such an adventure - if we could all just find some effort worth getting behind. It's sort of like starting a hippy commune, only with high-tech inten…

Need a kickstarter like system. Get 10,000 people to deposit $10,000 and you have got $100,000,000 to acquire a nice plot of land, set up planning and governance, and incorporate a new town. I'd be interested in seeing plans for such towns and would be interested in living in one.

Or one billionaire with similar ambitions.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#75

Post by djsumdog » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 8:05 PM UTC

johngalt wrote: post #24

This is one of those scaling vs. switching cost problems. If you have a small town, then cars are a better option than transit. In a large metropolis, transit is better. The problem is that as a city scales up, each individual step results in continually adding infrastructure for cars without ever making the active decision to switch, and redesign the entire city. When a small town grows into a medium, it makes sense…

This is simply not true at all. There were countless small towns in America that had streetcars. It scales up quite well too. Your town turns into a city? Demolish the park-n-rides and turn them into stores.

I hate this bullshit of "America is too spread out for transit." No, it is now. It's only happened in Jena, Germany is a town of $100k with 4 trams and 3 intercity rail stations. Chattanooga, TN, home of the famous song about the Chattanooga Choo Choo, has 200k people and doesn't even have an AmTrak station.

Public transport is the single largest factor in reducing poverty in any town or city. Car ownership should never be required of any American. It should always be a luxury item.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#76

Post by djsumdog » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 8:07 PM UTC

lgregg wrote: post #66

johngalt wrote: post #24

This is one of those scaling vs. switching cost problems. If you have a small town, then cars are a better option than transit. In a large metropolis, transit is better. The problem is that as a city scales up, each individual step results in continually adding infrastructure for cars without ever making the active decision to switch, and redesign the entire city. When a small town grows into a medium, it makes sense…

I think a lot of the headaches could be avoided by zoning in ways that allow for density improvements to occur. We can't just build every new city as a planned green city too (i.e. Masdar City). I think it would be beneficial if there was some kind of standard at a state level for not just building codes but zone codes. It would also be nice if there was some kind of zoning and code for underground, so lower levels c…

American cities don't like to mix commercial and residential zoning. If you had a mix, you'd see more places with grocery stores you could walk to, like in London or Chicago.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#77

Post by LgWoodenBadger » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 8:11 PM UTC

oftenwrong wrote: post #59

paulddraper wrote: post #49

> Websites like Zillow and Apartments.com offer calculations for commute length and walkability to everyday destinations like grocery stores If I'm walking to the store, do I (a) try to carry 20+ grocery bags home for my family of five or (b) make a grocery trip twice a week? I don't love either of those. And that's only groceries, not shopping in general. My wife got a 50lb bag of fertilizer from Tractor Supply yest…

To give you an idea: I have a 3 grocers within walking distance, and I will usually just go buy what I need for whatever I am going to make the same day. One bag is usually fine. I have never purchased that much fertilizer, but I have purchased a 50lb bag of sand at the hardware store on the corner. It is so close, I would be surprised if my walk home was not shorter than your wife's walk back to her car. Living in t…

Well, how many people can physically live as close to those things as you do without having a 1-hardware-store-per-100-feet or 3-grocers-per-square-mile density?

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#78

Post by dleslie » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 8:15 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #7

dleslie wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most sidewalks are accessible to mobility aids; like walkers, scooters, canes, wheelchairs and so forth. _All_ can be designed to be accessible to such. Moreover, the choice isn't between only pedestrians or only cars; there exists combinations of the two that are more favourable to pedestrians but allow access by vehicle for those that need it.

> Most sidewalks are accessible to mobility aids; like walkers, scooters, canes, wheelchairs and so forth. If people cannot traverse the distance required, it doesn't really help. For example someone with bad osteoporosis, and who doesn't have a $10K+ wheelchair and a $75K minivan to carry it, won't really gain much by theoretical ADA sidewalks if the distance is too far. Claiming stuff is "disabled accessible" witho…

I'm Canadian, so might I suggest that part of the solution is ensuring that mobility aids are available as a matter of public expense, rather than private. It works OK for us, most of the time.

Wheelchairs and scooters can be funded by the Government, generally in a means-tested manner, and we have something called "Handydart", though where I live _all_ transit is wheelchair accessible.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#79

Post by walshemj » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 8:20 PM UTC

brockers wrote: post #26

dbatten wrote: post #15

Rather than trying to force some particular vision of "the good life" on people, what if we tried to price transportation and other things appropriately? For example, get rid of the gas tax. Toll all state and federally funded roads. Scale the toll according to the amount of wear and tear the vehicle causes for the road. Price something in to account for emissions. Make sure the tolls are high enough to pay for the r…

Thank you. I always getting a little angry at these "We should..." posts that are posted by a modern philosophe who has some idealized way of seeing the world and is more than happy to limit other peoples choices to maximize that vision.

I tend to agree with you they tend to be academic architecture students who design "machines for living" which they think the "working class" will enjoy living in.

Narrator voice they don't.

Its what in away lead to Grenfell tower

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#80

Post by jpernst » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 8:20 PM UTC

oftenwrong wrote: post #51

Someone1234 wrote: post #3

I agree, but "people" should mean all people, not just the able bodied. Cities keep on inexplicably designing these cool pedestrian only areas for the able bodied and young. There are people who can only travel limited distances, so if you set the beach front back half a mile, you've now cut it off from many older and disabled people. What I am saying is: For the physically young and able, vehicle-less areas as great…

From my observations, walkable neighbourhoods can be great for disabled people. I live in a very walkable neighbourhood where there are many homes, businesses, schools, and more in walking distance, as well as bus lines and a subway station. Everything within 10 minutes at a normal pace. There is a home for people in wheelchairs (not sure of the correct term) down the street from me, and the people that live there ar…

As a disabled person who's spent his entire life dependent on others for transportation basically anywhere, I'll confirm how badly I'd love to live in a place like that. (I understand if you don't want to say where you live, but any hints to narrow it down or other places like that you know of?)

It can't be overstated how confining it is when anything you'd like to do or see involves logistical wrangling to work out when exactly you need to be there, how long you'll be there, when you need to be picked up, etc. I've lost count of the number of times I've just decided to not bother with all that and just stay home, which makes for a pretty depressing existence after a while.

Things like uber can help, but you're still placing your trust in someone you've never met to be able to get you there, and more importantly, to be able to get you back home. Not to mention having to do an upfront value analysis to determine if the trip is worth it, and for disabled people this can be a tough call given the difficulties with employment and income in general.