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

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

#161

Post by jpernst »

oftenwrong wrote: post #97
jpernst wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I live in Boston, Massachusetts. Unfortunately, it is an expensive place to live (probably because actually walkable areas like this are so rare in the US), and I may not stay much longer with the rate of rental increases. If you do live in an area that is more car friendly than anything, a van might be the better option: https://nicolagriffith.com/2018/05/26/new-car-an-accessible-...

Thanks for the tip on the area. Not surprising that it would be seeing climbing costs; that's all too common these days. Increasing cost is a pretty significant problem all around. I'm in the Seattle area, and the skyrocketing housing costs thanks in large part to Amazon's insatiable growth have pushed me out of the city into a much less accessible area.

My logistical disability is a visual impairment, so while I'm able to walk, there's relatively little to walk to in the area other than suburban sprawl. Unfortunately, operating any kind of motor vehicle is right out, and while it would be legal for me to bike around, I'm not confident that it would be safe given my poor vision, particularly in any kind of traffic.

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

#162

Post by wrycoder »

coldtea wrote: post #90
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…

> If you have a small town, then cars are a better option than transit. In a large metropolis, transit is better. Were did that came from? In a small town, you can get by fine with walking, bikes and so on -- like tons of Europeans do in tons of small (and even larger) towns, including towns where cars are totally forbidden and others were (because the town was built in medieval times and its buildings still stand ju…

I live in a New Hampshire city of about 10,000. I'm about three miles out of town, too far to walk regularly. You should try biking downtown in January in the snow, slush, and wind! I don't see anyone biking with shopping bags, even in the summer. We bike for recreation. We've made our choices.

There used to be a railroad that came up from Boston and deadheaded here. It went out of business, was revived, and failed again. There isn't even a scheduled bus through town.

The nearest Lyft is 45 minutes away right now. Meanwhile, my car works great. It's convenient, clean, fast, private, and fairly inexpensive. It hauls my goods, my kids, and my pets. I only need to drive it a few thousand miles a year, so gasoline costs aren't much of a consideration.

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

#163

Post by vilmosi »

wrycoder wrote: post #162
coldtea wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have a small town, then cars are a better option than transit. In a large metropolis, transit is better. Were did that came from? In a small town, you can get by fine with walking, bikes and so on -- like tons of Europeans do in tons of small (and even larger) towns, including towns where cars are totally forbidden and others were (because the town was built in medieval times and its buildings still stand ju…

I live in a New Hampshire city of about 10,000. I'm about three miles out of town, too far to walk regularly. You should try biking downtown in January in the snow, slush, and wind! I don't see anyone biking with shopping bags, even in the summer. We bike for recreation. We've made our choices. There used to be a railroad that came up from Boston and deadheaded here. It went out of business, was revived, and failed a…

>>> I don't see anyone biking with shopping bags, even in the summer.

See, this is where cultures clash. You don't expect people with shopping bags in bike friendly European cities either. Why? Because they don't buy groceries for a week at a time.

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

#164

Post by black_puppydog »

scythe wrote: post #154
coldtea wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, most people (US) would not prefer to live in such a town. Citation needed. Most people in the US were never given the chance to live in such a town (all other things being equal, like them being able to afford to live there). And there's also the cultural conditioning. Besides, there are rich areas in the US too, with little to no cars and lotsa walking and jogging, and people go live there just fine, payi…

>Citation needed. There is no need for a citation for such a claim. It is well within the boundaries of my personal experience. I live in America, I have known lots of people, and I've become familiar with what they want. >And there's also the cultural conditioning. People should only be conditioned to live the ways you want them to, of course. It's only "cultural conditioning" when you don't like it.

And citations are only needed when something is in contradiction to your experience? :)

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

#165

Post by yardie »

Someone1234 wrote: post #19
jschwartzi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the article is that what is being done in places like San Francisco is what looking more broadly looks like. It's not ableist to allow people who'd prefer not to drive to bike or walk instead, and it's also not ableist to build our cities to allow these different modes of transport in addition to cars. Framing it like it's ableist ignores the near century of subsidies and prioitization of the automobile…

You're taking away a mode of transport some disabled people depend upon, you have to take their needs into account while doing so. Simply adding ramps and slapping ADA stickers onto everything isn't an actual answer, just a convenient way to simplify the problem. If you go from heavily vehicled areas to large pedestrian areas where vehicles are banned, you've gone from one extreme to the other. In both cases disabled…

I fail to see how making a place pedestrian friendly is one extreme. Are you saying the disabled are only able to move around by car? This will bother some of my disabled friends who have to rely on unreliable buses, too narrow sidewalks, and other city failures.

Also, a mobility scooter is a perfectly acceptable form of transportation in pedestrian areas.

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

#166

Post by peterwwillis »

btingle wrote: post #158
peterwwillis wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The homeless will continue to do whatever they can get away with, and those of us with higher incomes will grumble a bit and pay the taxes. The only solution I've seen that has a chance to change this is to come down hard on poor public transit behavior, perhaps by putting actual people on the buses with the specific job of cracking down on the drunk/high/piss soaked/etc types, in an effort to improve the quality o…

What do I look like, mother Theresa? It's not my job to solve the city's homelessness problem. Do you mean to say that politicians/public officials/etc should be dealing with the problem?

No, I'm saying citizens should solve the problem. And I know it's not your job. It's nobody's job. That's why nothing has been done.

I mean, the stupidest thing about this is this isn't that hard a problem to solve. Homeless people are just regular people with a problem and no resources to fix it. You provide them resources and help and they are no longer homeless and no longer a nuisance. Instead, people see them like pests, as if rats invaded the buses and need to be exterminated.

Typically the government would be the best way to provide funding and access to the resources and help, but they suck at execution, and they always get screwed in funding. If citizens would see that funding for helping homeless people would improve their commute & community, they might invest more, which would both solve their immediate problem, as well as the homeless' problems. A citizen led organization could do this with a combination of private funding and grants (as many today are), but first they have to convince selfish privileged assholes to reach out and help. Good luck there, as it seems privileged people just don't want to help, even though it would actually be helping themselves.

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

#167

Post by bunderbunder »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #145
AcerbicZero wrote: post #130

It seems this discussion comes up fairly often, and the solution is almost always some variation of "make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient, to force people to use public transit". On the surface that kind of makes sense, using a large stick to strongly encourage change, but I think at its core it misses a huge portion of the problem, which is that bad public transit is 10x worse than just sitting in a bi…

There is still the time loss. Private vehicles usually save time and have maximum schedule flexibility. Bicycles a scooters could help with the last mile, if they can be managed well. Of course everyone has different thresholds. But I'd guess most people work hard to earn enough for their own time saving luxuries, even if the external costs will hurt their children later in life.

This seems to me like one of those issues that has way too many variables to make a reasonable guess at how things will really compare in the counterfactual situation.

If you've got a city that really is dense enough to be pedestrian-friendly, I think it's likely to be the case that the time situation is shifted considerably. Not only will it take less time to walk and bike places, but you probably find that the kinds of places you might want to walk or bike to end up being located closer to where you live and work. At the same time, driving becomes less convenient due to congestion.

Whereas, in car-centric cities, it often ends up being the case that businesses float out to the periphery of town.

My own pet theory, which seems to hold in every place I've lived or visited, but hasn't been backed up by any any rigorous data gathering, is that, no matter where you live, everything you might need to get to (e.g., the supermarket) ends up being 10-20 minutes away using the dominant mode of transportation in that city, regardless of what that mode is.

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

#168

Post by AcerbicZero »

peterwwillis wrote: post #155
AcerbicZero wrote: post #130

It seems this discussion comes up fairly often, and the solution is almost always some variation of "make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient, to force people to use public transit". On the surface that kind of makes sense, using a large stick to strongly encourage change, but I think at its core it misses a huge portion of the problem, which is that bad public transit is 10x worse than just sitting in a bi…

> The homeless will continue to do whatever they can get away with, and those of us with higher incomes will grumble a bit and pay the taxes. The only solution I've seen that has a chance to change this is to come down hard on poor public transit behavior, perhaps by putting actual people on the buses with the specific job of cracking down on the drunk/high/piss soaked/etc types, in an effort to improve the quality o…

This seems disingenuous at best. Why are you commenting on HN when you could be out helping these homeless anyway? Is your time, happiness, etc, really worth more than their lives?

https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

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

#169

Post by vilmosi »

jimmaswell wrote: post #84
spraak wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Rendering a webpage does not require an 800+ watt 50-pound computer setup. A balanced diet does not require flavor. Clothes do not require coloring. We can't just throw out having nice things because they aren't "required."

>>> We can't just throw out having nice things because they aren't "required."

I wouldn't assume driving for 30 min in traffic is "nicer" than a 30min train ride.

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

#170

Post by kasey_junk »

wrycoder wrote: post #150
paulryanrogers wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is still the time loss. Private vehicles usually save time and have maximum schedule flexibility. Bicycles a scooters could help with the last mile, if they can be managed well. Of course everyone has different thresholds. But I'd guess most people work hard to earn enough for their own time saving luxuries, even if the external costs will hurt their children later in life.

In addition, if you are doing shopping which involves any significant volume of goods or groceries, carrying it on public transit is a real problem. The tendency is to buy small amounts frequently at higher prices. If there are two or more in a small car, it's also usually less expensive. If the parking problem were forthrightly addressed, this, along with the increasing use of efficient Uber/Lyft/taxi, would greatly…

The argument about buying “small amounts at higher prices” is really interesting to me.

I recently downsized places for a much more walkable environment. Keeping less stuff in my house is a feature. One I was worried was going to cost me.

But my budget has largely not changed. Any increase in costs associated with bulk buying are at least offset by lowered transport costs. It’s really hard to exactly account though.

My instinct is that it is much more efficient for stores to warehouse things & me do JIT buying. I’d love to see research on it.

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