Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality • Hacker News Board

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#371

Post by rpedela » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 9:29 AM UTC

useerup wrote: post #366

rpedela wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is public health care in US. Medicare for old people, Medicaid for poor people, and anyone without insurance can go to the ER. It may not be great, but it does exist.

> There is public health care in US. Medicare for old people, Medicaid for poor people, and anyone without insurance can go to the ER. It may not be great, but it does exist. There is some public healthcare but no universal healthcare. ER is not healthcare. You do not get treatment for chronic diseases, cancer etc. ER only treats you for the life or health threatening consequences of not getting treatment.

For cancer, yes. For chronic diseases that can treated with a pill like heart disease and diabetes, they will prescribe the pills. People should use the word universal if that is what they mean.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#372

Post by briandear » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 9:30 AM UTC

flexie wrote: post #340

sqren wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the people who say you need a car if you have kids - this is how we do it in Copenhagen: https://live.staticflickr.com/3662/3465284112_5aab494014_b.j... A transporter bike can carry 2-3 kids easily. It's the most convenient, cheap and healthy option. As soon as the kids are old enough they get their own bike. Of course, it's convenient to have access to a car a couple of times a month. But definitely not on a dail…

Not sure why people are down voting you, but I think this time it may not be the general HN negativity, but simply because they think you are attempting a bad joke. This is exactly how many parents in Copenhagen drive their kids around. I would say that around half of all young parents in Copenhagen get a transporter bike like this one. We were leaving Copenhagen for America shortly after our youngest was born but ot…

We have transporters in the US, they are called cars. And they have air conditioning. The entire world doesn’t have to be just like the Netherlands. Try riding one of those transporter bikes in the Colorado mountains in winter or in south Florida in the summer.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#373

Post by ThomPete » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 9:30 AM UTC

I am unconvinced about this claim.

Sure there are a lot of movements towards getting cars out of the city, but very little is done to compensate for how to get resources in and out so it will naturally have limits.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#374

Post by isostatic » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 9:34 AM UTC

davesmith1983 wrote: post #155

Theodores wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note for others not familiar, if you go Hammersmith Tube Station to Shepherd's Bush Tube Station overland by bicycle then it takes five minutes, depending on traffic lights. That is actual five minutes, as in three hundred seconds. Clearly both areas are larger than their respective train stations but the stations are representative. To actually get a tube or other train between the two is not entirely direct, you wo…

Most people are coming from outside of London and what you find is that it is usually quicker to drive in and just sit in the traffic than mess about doing park and rides and then travelling in.

It was far quicker to walk a mile to Twyford station, get the train to Ealing, and the tube to White City (or fast train to Paddington and tube to Shepherds Bush now) than to drive.

It was a long time ago, and I don't work in Shepherds Bush any more, but the trip today would be

  0835 - leave home
  0856 - get slow train to London
  0935 - arrive Ealing 
  0950 - arrive White City
  0955 - arrive at office

Or

  0840 - leave home
  0900 - get fast train to London
  0932 - arrive Paddington
  0950 - arrive White City
  0955 - arrive at office

Driving was

  0800 - leave home
  0900 - arrive Hammersmith flyover turnoff
  0950 - arrive car park
  0955 - arrive at office

It was the hammersmith roundabout that was the real killer.

The reason I drove in for 10AM (once a week) was because I was on 12-14 hour shifts, and driving home after 10pm was about 50 minutes. Very few people working office hours would drive into London, especially Central London, and parking at stations across the south east is often full by 9AM.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#375

Post by ikornaselur » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 9:37 AM UTC

ensiferum wrote: post #323

yomly wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure we live in the same city? The Central line during summer is so hot it wouldn't be legal to transport cattle on it. The Northern line regularly has packed platforms going north in the morning. The Metropolitan has been undergoing "modernisation" for over a decade... EDIT trains also frequently run late OR early They break under the slightest deviation in nature - rain, snow, heat and leaves on the track a…

In Munich the SBahn is what you described. Not being on time/trains cancelled is the norm . When it snows in Norway the SBahn here breaks down.

Lived temporarily in Seoul and Osaka last year for three months, then moved to Berlin.

The trains were always on time in Seoul and Osaka when I had to take them (though to be fair, not very often) but in the first week of being in Berlin, like 60% of the time the "trains are running at an irregular interval". I definitely don't trust the U/S-Bahn in Berlin, but it's still one of my most favourite public transport systems in a city I've lived in. Lived there for 2 years and never had to use a car.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#376

Post by vladojsem » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 9:37 AM UTC

I was in Antwerp this year for the first time thus I can agree with the article. It really is super easy to move around with the bike. Countries like Belgium, Holland, and Denmark are famous for that. They even have big parking lots for bicycles next to train stations. So that you can come by train, pick up your bike and continue your way. And they do so despite bad weather.

In general, in the European cities east Berlin wall, the bicycle infrastructure is not that great. Yet, there are European funds that close that gap and you can see many cycling roads in countries like Poland or Hungary.

There are also European bicycle 'highways' called Eurovelo that are being built from the European money. I think Europe is going into the right direction.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#377

Post by bambax » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 9:37 AM UTC

Surprising how the comments so far (351) seem to be debating car vs. public transport, while the original article was more about car vs. other means of personal transportation, including bikes, ebikes and scooters:

> Two wheels good, four wheels bad

Most car rides are done with just one person at the wheel (or in the case of Uber/Lyft, a driver and just one rider). The size and weight of the vehicle is the problem.

A bike weights 30% or less of the weight of the rider; a car, 300% or more. That we consider "normal" or even acceptable to move so much metal to transport us, is simply unreasonable and crazy.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#378

Post by iagovar » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 9:39 AM UTC

martin_a wrote: post #245

r00fus wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about shuttling your kids to school? I know in Japan most kids 6y+ just take themselves on public transport or walking. How is it done in other countries?

Germany: Most (all?) cities have special tickets for pupils. There are separate bus lines in the morning which pick up the pupils from the bus stops and take them directly to school. In the afternoon there are some special lines too, otherwise you just take a normal line with your pupil ticket. That's at least how it worked in my time, like 20+ years ago.

I just walked to school. I never needed to take a bus or the car except when I lived far in the countryside. I'm talking about Spain.

Anyway schools sometimes have their own bus, parents pay a private company so the bus takes the students either from their home or very close.

In the uni there was special bus lines that went around all the city to the campus.

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#379

Post by oefrha » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 9:40 AM UTC

briandear wrote: post #357

oefrha wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As have been pointed out by multiple people, kids are perfectly capable of taking public transit themselves. Kids under ten might need to be accompanied by a guardian, but there are usually two parents in a household, and some grandparents will help, too. Caretakers can be hired in certain cases. Some family “pool” their kids together too, not unlike in the U.S. where parents would take turns to drive neighbors’ kids…

So basically we change our quality of life to fit some urban ideal? My kids’ grandparents live in a different state and a different country. A child on the BART train? You have got to be kidding. With the insane people, mentally ill, the thieves and the homeless, I would’t expose my kids to having to deal with that nonsense. Cars are awesome. Being forced to share public transportation with a bunch of weirdos isn’t p…

At least tens of millions of teenage or younger students take public transit to school around the world, somehow few of them seem to fall prey to “the insane people, mentally ill, the thieves and the homeless.”

Last I checked kids don’t tend to wander outside at 2am, and places with public transit tend to have taxis too. (I would add that the last thing I want to do at 2am is to drive myself home; in fact, a couple years back I had an accident due to driving jet-lagged the day following an international flight.)

Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

#380

Post by ghaff » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 9:40 AM UTC

boohoojangles wrote: post #290

moksly wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have one, I live in our second largest city (Aarhus). I’ve lived in Aalborg and Odense as well (two other relatively large cities by Danish standards). I’m 36 and I’ve never taken a drivers license because I’ve never needed it.

I am sorry but I've noticed to be a bit different in Copenhagen. I've been living here for 3 years, and the number of cars have grown quite a lot to my perception, specially between families (maybe just because they are luxury cars and Teslas everywhere). I am 36 have one little child and feel like I am missing a bit of the country because I don't have a car, even if I have made few trips by train. Also, a lot of my…

You're hitting on a point that drives a lot of the disconnects in these sorts of discussions.

There are a lot of places where you don't need to own a car or even have a drivers license. And you constrain your activities accordingly. You may rely to some degree on friends with cars (though this tends to become less and less practical as you get older). Or you rent cars as needed if you have a license.

But you probably just tend to forgo activities that involve driving out to the country every other weekend or hauling a lot of gear around or visiting people you can't get to easily with public transit.

As a visitor, I rarely have a rental car in SF (and never if I'm solely going to be in the city) for example. But it means I am going to be pretty much staying in the city rather than taking a hike somewhere for half a day. I do know a couple that live in SF without a car but they do short-term and longer-term rentals all the time.