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Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality

economist.com

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

#401

Post by ddalex »

wozniacki wrote: post #325
oefrha wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Middle and high school do matter, but I don’t think primary/elementary/grade school — whatever you call it — makes much of a difference. I attended the average neighborhood primary school back in my day, and went on to the most competitive middle school, high school, and university.

Are you really implying a school in Croydon, a large town in south London is going to be functionally and qualitatively equivalent to say a school in Golders Green, an area in the London Borough of Barnet? [1][2] Equivalent in all the areas one might measure the attractiveness and potential of a school? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croydon [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golders_Green edit:typo

I live in London, and I don't get your point. There are OFSTED Outstanding-rated schools both in Croydon and Golders Green.

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

#402

Post by fluffything »

vladojsem wrote: post #369
ckris wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say most cities unfortunately. European cities are quite walkable and not as sprawling as American ones. But it is still pretty easy to end up were only cars can go not that far from the city center, or where there is only the occasional bus. Asia is really the leader in public transport now. I think the article is slightly misleading. Currently in Europe things like bike infrastructure and public transpor…

I live in Europe (in Prague right now) and I never needed to own a car here. I would say it depends on the city in Europe. However, if you occasionally happen to be outside of the city center where only cars go you would call Uber. I am fine with that when 90% of my daily transport is covered by public transport.

I live in Germany, and use the bike, e-scooter/bikes/... and public transport for everything.

I have owned a car before, and I did not use those other transportation methods any less. We don't own a car anymore because it does not make economic sense for us.

When we need to travel by car inside the city, we just use Uber (~30 EUR/month is what we currently pay). When we need a car for a couple of hours to pick up stuff, we use one of the car sharing vendors. We can get "the right car" for whatever we need for ~4 hours with gas for less than ~20 EUR (~once every two months). When we want to travel around with a car, we just rent a high end one for the weekend for ~300 EUR. We do that once every two months, although in the summer a bit more often. This means we end up paying ~3000-3500 EUR/year in rentals/uber.

If we were to own a high end car, we would at least have to pay 30.000 EUR/year for a used one with 100k kms. On top, we need to pay insurance (~500-600EUR/year), parking (~150EUR/month where we live), maintenance (~200/year), handle some other burdens (wheel changes, etc.), and if for whatever reason we need a different car (to pick up something big), we still need to rent that. That puts the costs of owning a car at 2300-2400EUR/year + unforeseen maintenance + gas + rentals + (30.000 EUR - reselling value) / (years until re-selling).

Where we live, unless one uses the car at least every weekend, it makes no sense owning one. At one weekend usage per month, you can just rent, and are more flexible.

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

#403

Post by mseidl »

H8crilA wrote: post #183
JDiculous wrote: post #123

Spent the last 6 months in Seoul and the surrounding cities in Korea. Never needed a car. You can literally do everything without a car, everything is a short walk. I truly believe it makes a huge positive impact on happiness when you can just walk anywhere instead of having to drive. Also you'll notice that in Korea/Japan there are way more small businesses and things to do (eg. karaoke, cafes, etc) because people o…

It's the case not just in Korea and Japan but in most cities outside of America. It's one of American peculiarities, like checks or no public health care. China has a fantastic subway system in most big cities, for example. I once took a subway ride from the Shenzhen airport to the Hong Kong border, crossed the border, switched to another subway and arrived in downtown Hong Kong. That's around 65km (40 miles) by publ…

How long did that take?

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

#404

Post by agent008t »

tarsinge wrote: post #330
wozniacki wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This and a dozen very closely related and tangential things concerning safety, sanitation, hygiene & propriety of people using public transportation is the reason people like me would never opt for it. Unless standards in those aspects of public transit were raised to such a high degree that they were no longer a threat or annoyance, a car would be exponentially more preferable. I think people on HN seem to underesti…

Keep in mind this is specific to the US, in Paris you have a lot of suits going to the office using the public transportation (me included), though it depends on the line and the hour of the day.

Is it not more out of necessity though? Would those people not prefer to drive if that was a viable option? In Paris specifically, the public transportation is fairly unpleasant - a lot of homeless people, antisocial behavior, bad odours, etc. Not sure how it is during rush hour, but probably uncomfortably packed too, so the ideal that Americans seem to have of sitting in a pleasant train reading a book or doing some work doesn't quite apply.

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

#405

Post by dagw »

piotr1212 wrote: post #319
konart wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't thing this is what codebolt was talking about. If you can one kid - there is no problem really. Walk him or her to school in the morning, ask grandmother to bring them back etc. When you have more than one - it is entrily possible they will end up going to different schools and after the school one of them had to go to the music shool and the other one to his hockey team or something etc etc. You simply can't…

> yeah, now imaging you have two of them going to two different schools, each 40 minutes walking distance from home, different directions and your office in somewhere else too. I grew up in a small village (+-70k) in the Netherlands, we had 4 schools within 15 min walking distance and I think twice as many with 15 min cycling distance (all kids go to school by bike here). Why would you send your kids to schools 40 mi…

Why would you send your kids to schools 40 minutes walking distance from home?

Some times you don't have a choice. Happened to a friend of mine here in Sweden. Their first kid got into the school closest to home. When it was the second kids turn that school was 'full' and they got sent to a school 10 km in the exact opposite direction.

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

#406

Post by DanBC »

wozniacki wrote: post #325
oefrha wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Middle and high school do matter, but I don’t think primary/elementary/grade school — whatever you call it — makes much of a difference. I attended the average neighborhood primary school back in my day, and went on to the most competitive middle school, high school, and university.

Are you really implying a school in Croydon, a large town in south London is going to be functionally and qualitatively equivalent to say a school in Golders Green, an area in the London Borough of Barnet? [1][2] Equivalent in all the areas one might measure the attractiveness and potential of a school? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croydon [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golders_Green edit:typo

You've linked to the wrong wikipedia article, and used the word "town", which leads me to think you don't understand London much.

Is there any reason you linked to wikipedia articles about a part of London with a large Jewish population vs a part of London with a large ethnic minority population?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Borough_of_Croydon

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

#407

Post by vladojsem »

goodcanadian wrote: post #390
vladojsem wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. In the case of LA metro area, it is just too spread city = badly designed. If you imagine even fast public transport, to get from one side of LA to the other side, it would still require a lot of stops in the low population density areas. Let's say every stop would cost you 5 minutes which means that even a car could be faster than public transport.

There is no way every stop costs you 5 minutes, more like 1 minute. I am not a fan of buses because they are in the same traffic as cars plus they have to stop as you say. There are some mitigations like dedicated bus lanes that can swing the speed equation back in favour of buses. What you really want, however, is feeder buses taking people to the train, and it is easy to design a rail system that beats cars for spe…

1 minute with the vehicle slowing down and speeding up again? If it is bus it goes to the bus stop, other cars have to allow it to go back to the main road.

Edit: 5 minutes would be way too much if I think about it again - you are right.

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

#408

Post by toyg »

Signez wrote: post #384
briandear wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checks? France loves checks and use them more than Americans. No public health care? That isn’t true either. Medicaid and Medicare are public health care. Another legitimate peculiarity of Americans is the vastly higher disposable income compared to most other countries. Even with all of the “free” stuff, the French have lower wages and far less disposable income than Americans.

> Checks? France loves checks and use them more than Americans. I am afraid your data is outdated: it is now used for less than 15% of payments, mainly by old people or for C2C payments. I am in my late twenties and have emitted only 3 checks from my account, in my entire life.

I had to use them years ago to pay some club for the kids (UK), and every time I was sweating - where do i write the amount? Where the name? Is it readable? Did I mark the end correctly?... Thank $deity banks phased them out.

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

#409

Post by puranjay »

mseidl wrote: post #403
H8crilA wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the case not just in Korea and Japan but in most cities outside of America. It's one of American peculiarities, like checks or no public health care. China has a fantastic subway system in most big cities, for example. I once took a subway ride from the Shenzhen airport to the Hong Kong border, crossed the border, switched to another subway and arrived in downtown Hong Kong. That's around 65km (40 miles) by publ…

How long did that take?

Dunno about China, but you can go from one end of the city to the other in Delhi - a distance of nearly 40km by car - in under 1 hour by metro.

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

#410

Post by patrickaljord »

useerup wrote: post #362
briandear wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checks? France loves checks and use them more than Americans. No public health care? That isn’t true either. Medicaid and Medicare are public health care. Another legitimate peculiarity of Americans is the vastly higher disposable income compared to most other countries. Even with all of the “free” stuff, the French have lower wages and far less disposable income than Americans.

> No public health care? That isn’t true either. Medicaid and Medicare are public health care. I think you know that "public healthcare" was referring to universal healthcare in this context. US is the only western democracy without universal healthcare.

Switzerland and the Netherlands healthcare is private though people are obligated to get a plan. Works great and cheaper than here in France which is horribly expensive for anyone with a decent wage.
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