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

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

#181

Post by epicureanideal » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 11:27 PM UTC

drb91 wrote: post #174

epicureanideal wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the GP said, there are people who are drunk, high, smelling of bodily fluids, etc. There are people who are rude, loud, etc. If this were stopped, then it might be better than being in a car.

It already is better than a car. It has a higher throughput and lower cost. If you value luxury, pay more for private transit. This isn’t contrary to a city that invests in public transit. SF is practically undrivable during the week rush hour because people prioritize comfort over economy. So the only knob a city has is to increase expense of driving, or to make public transit more comfortable. I don’t see any human…

High throughput and low cost are not the only metrics that commuters care about, clearly, or else they'd be riding public transit. If you offer to PAY ME a dollar to ride on BART next to a smelly, loud homeless person for an hour, versus me PAYING $10 in gas to drive to work, I'll pick the latter without hesitation.

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

#182

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

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 main issue is that the people can not live near the place they work.

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

#183

Post by Karrot_Kream » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 11:30 PM UTC

AcerbicZero wrote: post #168

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…

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...

That's not what GP is saying. GP says that public transit is transit with your neighbors. If your neighbors are smelly junkies, then something is wrong with your community. Shoving people into cars to avoid the homeless is orthogonal to solving crowding issues.

This issue only comes up in SF because of the large wealth disparity between the upper-middle class and everyone below them. Here, the upper-middle pays for the option to remove themselves from public services.

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

#184

Post by ingsoc79 » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 11:36 PM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #89

ingsoc79 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason the streetcars went away in the US was because of competition from cars, which, not coincidentally, were beginning their rise to dominance ~100 years ago. GM and Ford were in the process of killing streetcars the moment the Model T went on sale. The vast majority of American towns, with their lower density and wider streets than their European counterparts, were simply better served by the automobile than…

No, no, no. The amount of misinformation in this post is staggering. I'm assuming good faith on your part but its hard to do so. > The reason the streetcars went away in the US was because of competition from cars, which, not coincidentally, were beginning their rise to dominance ~100 years ago. GM and Ford were in the process of killing streetcars the moment the Model T went on sale. They killed it because they knew…

Mass transit is a viable solution to people only when it's more convenient than cars. When the hassle of driving and finding parking is less than the extra walk/transfers/etc of taking transit, most people will drive. If you have mobility issues or have cargo you need to haul back, you're even more likely to drive.

Here in Seattle our roads are at capacity and the city is actively working to increase density, creating a virtuous circle of improved transit availability and frequency. This is great when I need to get to the airport during rush hour - I live near the UW and can take the light rail and be guaranteed to be at there in an hour, with a bus transfer. Outside of rush hour, I ask someone to drive me there in ~25 minutes. If I lived farther away from the nearest light rail station, I'd necessarily choose to get a ride every time.

Unless your city is actively making transit a priority, or its road system is packed to the gills, the shift from cars to transit is not going to happen on its own.

article on falling US transit ridership: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/fal...

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

#185

Post by ravenstine » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 11:38 PM UTC

Is productivity actually going to be increased by reducing the number of cars on the road? If not, then I wouldn't count on ever seeing a serious effort towards making cities less car-centric. A politician may help bring in some bike lanes here and there, but their interest is almost entirely in keeping their job.

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

#186

Post by abdullahkhalids » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 11:39 PM UTC

Zarath wrote: post #152

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…

How much can you condense a city if you have no roads at all? What I mean is that walking/biking/scootering in a city with no roads is probably twice, if not more, times more efficient.

You can compress a lot, but you can't compress away all the space currently used as roads. The space is important for allowing sunlight and fresh air to enter buildings and also acts as a noise damper in a community. Not to mention, some amount of visual privacy from neighbors. There is also the problem of emergency services (ambulances, fire trucks, police etc) being able to move around quickly. Finally, you should probably have some amount of bus/train transit in the city. Good reasons for it are bad weather, night time safety, tired or sick people, people with disabilities or long-term health problems and children.

I think the best you can do is that every building is next to one one-way car lane (shared with bikes going the same way) and one bike lane (for going in the opposite direction). The road should not be asphalt but some softer, less conductive material. No street parking. If you want to own a car, you can't externalize the cost to society but build a garage for yourself. Of course, there is a maximum size on the cars that you can buy and 30 km/h speed limit on most roads. You can have mini-buses (20ish people) and subways to take people around.

I think this is already a massive improvement on car centric cities. With the right distribution of retail and housing, you can have people enjoying a really nice life.

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

#187

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 11:39 PM UTC

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #179

wrycoder wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not really. 1. You can always get wheeled carts to carry your groceries. I take transit everyday and see a lot of senior citizens doing their groceries this way. If those frail 80 year olds who need sometimes a minute to get off the bus because they are so slow are happily doing it, it shouldn't be a problem for most other people. 2. In a walkable city, your shopping habits and life change. I live in the walkable (no…

[deleted]

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

#188

Post by seanmcdirmid » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 11:40 PM UTC

ingsoc79 wrote: post #184

pm90 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no, no. The amount of misinformation in this post is staggering. I'm assuming good faith on your part but its hard to do so. > The reason the streetcars went away in the US was because of competition from cars, which, not coincidentally, were beginning their rise to dominance ~100 years ago. GM and Ford were in the process of killing streetcars the moment the Model T went on sale. They killed it because they knew…

Mass transit is a viable solution to people only when it's more convenient than cars. When the hassle of driving and finding parking is less than the extra walk/transfers/etc of taking transit, most people will drive. If you have mobility issues or have cargo you need to haul back, you're even more likely to drive. Here in Seattle our roads are at capacity and the city is actively working to increase density, creatin…

Why would you need to transfer to bus? Wouldn’t link go from UW straight through to the airport?

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

#189

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 11:40 PM UTC

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…

>> 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".

It's more like the other way around: the idea is to make public transport cheap and efficient enough that it's a reasonable alternative to driving everywhere.

>> For example I live in a very public transit friendly city, but the buses are un-ridable most of the time due to the rampant homeless issue(and all that comes with a large homeless population) while the light rail is usually better about being a semi-safe, semi-clean environment, that just happens to be so overloaded between between 7am-9am, and 3pm-6pm, that there is almost any price I'd pay to avoid it.

I live in a small town on the South coast of England, which just happens to have one of the largest populations of homeless people, nationally. It also has very good public transport, namely, buses, that are always full. I've never seen a homeless person using a bus as crashing space, or causing trouble of any sort. I can't say I ever particularly noticed homeless people on a bus. If homeless people on buses are a problem where you live, that has nothing to do with public transport in general.

Anyway, I think everyone gets the public transport they deserve. If everyone wants to go around by car, then we won't have good public transport- because why would we?

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

#190

Post by smileysteve » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 11:41 PM UTC

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…

> some variation of "make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient

We could stop by not subsidizing it in the U.S.

Corn, Oil Exploration, Oil Reserves, federal highway funding, and many state highways and local roads, and vehicle police are subsidized by income tax payers instead of tolls, fuel taxes, or vehicle registrations.