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People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

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Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#131

Post by Ekaros »

exe34 wrote: post #66
scarygliders wrote: post #55

I don't hate the idea of living in car-free cities. It's cities I hate the idea of living in. Which is why I choose not to live in cities. And is why I need a car. Fuck cities, I hate 'em.

You don't need a car, you want a car. Plenty of people live without cars. Even outside cities.

There is plenty of things we do not need. Like phones, computers, tvs, books, more than bare variety of food and drinks. More than couple of cubic meters of living space. Choosing what clothes or footwear to wear... All things we could do without...

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#132

Post by piva00 »

bko wrote: post #84
CharlieDigital wrote: post #8

I was back in Taiwan last year after an extended absence. It's pretty amazing how easy it is to get around with a combination of the mass rapid transit (MRT) system and high speed rail (HSR). When I was last there, you still needed to take a bus or taxi from TPE to the city center. Now right from TPE airport, you can be in either Taipei city center in 30 minutes (MRT) or on the other end of the island in short order…

Do you have any children? I can't imagine car free city is good when you have two or more young children. For one, groceries are a problem as you likely need to stock more food to cook. Sure you can go to the store every other day but that takes a lot of time and is more expensive. Plus you are on a lot tighter schedule. Most people with kids race home to pick up children and don't want to stop by the store and schle…

> Do you have any children? I can't imagine car free city is good when you have two or more young children. For one, groceries are a problem as you likely need to stock more food to cook. Sure you can go to the store every other day but that takes a lot of time and is more expensive. Plus you are on a lot tighter schedule. Most people with kids race home to pick up children and don't want to stop by the store and schlep back groceries.

Millions of people with children in larger European cities live without requiring a car to buy groceries, bring their kids to activities, etc. Also when kids are old enough the transportation infrastructure is available for them to be independent and go do their things by themselves.

I can't imagine how you cannot imagine that this already happens, in many places, and it's not an issue at all.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#133

Post by alkonaut »

lucumo wrote: post #49
vladms wrote: post #14

I would have expected the article to give some clear pool/metric/statistics about "people hate the idea ... ". There are indeed loud people and big interest groups that oppose car free cities, but I am not sure about "people" in general. Sure, you need means of transport and to be able to live, and you can't change things over night, but if you would ask people "would you prefer to have a supermarket 5 minutes away o…

> but if you would ask people "would you prefer to have a supermarket 5 minutes away or one 20 kilometers away" I doubt anybody would say "no I want only things far to be forced to use a car". For most people it's not about the supermarket. Those are a dime a dozen and all the same. It's easy to provide those in sufficient amounts everywhere. Now try it with jobs. Not any job, but your job. Is it possible to have you…

> Between the trade-off bad job, no time, and car/public transport, the car quickly becomes the best solution

If you beat public transport by using a car then there just isn't enough public transit or the city isn't dense enough (likely the former, due to the latter). If you live 3km from your job in London or NYC then at least during rush hour it's likely to be faster to use public transport than a car.

> Life becomes too busy to spend the extra 30 minutes commuting per day that public transport would cost.

This is again based on the premise that public transport costs time, rather than saves time or doesn't matter time wise.

People who work in really dense cities but live far outside it so they need to drive from home are already likely to not drive all the way into the city center but rather drive to the edge of the city center, park there more cheaply, and take a train the last 10% of the way. The key is that that traffic in the city center is slower than public transport, including the wait times and walking required. Within some distance from the city center of a city that is dense enough and has enough public transport, this holds true. And it's in this area that private car traffic make little sense at all. But that doesn't mean people can't have cars. Or that suburban people won't drive. You might still want to drive somewhere on the weekend. Or you might need to drive to even reach the public transport.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#134

Post by ghaff »

smeej wrote: post #85
ghaff wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One disadvantage is that many people do travel outside the city to go to an office in the suburbs, to visit friends, and to do weekend activities. I think everyone I know in Boston/Cambridge (which has relatively decent--really!--public transit) who isn't a very recent college grad owns a car.

I went to school in Boston/Cambridge, without a car, and was absolutely flabbergasted how much more convenient the city was with one when I graduated. It was like I hadn't known what I was missing. Places I thought of as "far apart" were really only a 15-minute drive from each other. Getting to the airport really stood out. I thought of it as a two-hour trip, because I had to walk to a bus, then transfer to a train,…

I did as well. The reality was that we leaned on the people who did have cars all the time. To play Thursday night hockey, to buy booze, to get to Chinatown for dinner faster... And, yes, given I was usually carrying luggage I took a taxi to the airport--which is admittedly not a common trip for the random consumer on a personal trip.

I know a couple who live in SF without a car, as much as a statement as anything else. And I see them making a lot of use of Uber, Zipcar, conventional rentals, and weekend visitors who have a car.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#135

Post by CharlieDigital »

safety1st wrote: post #125
CharlieDigital wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But this is a huge reorganization of people's lives and existing property development that there's going to be a lot of pushback against and it's not all going to be nimbyism If anything, I feel like Taiwan's model should prove that you can do it anywhere precisely because it was already so dense and built up on top of being in an area with very high seismic activity. It's not like they could find a lot of room to…

I can't speak to the history of Taipei specifically, I did visit for a month (loved it) and I currently live in the center of a different Asian megalopolis. I can say a lot of these places became what they are by bulldozing a lot of medium-density shophouses and destroying a lot of local businesses and tightly knit communities that most people including myself would consider really charming places to live. They repla…

It feels like it needs to have the right mix of transit to make it work.

Wife and I both agreed that we preferred Kaohsiung to Taipei if we were to live in Taiwan. With the HSR, it would be about the equivalent of my commute from Princeton to NYC.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#137

Post by gigatexal »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #8

I was back in Taiwan last year after an extended absence. It's pretty amazing how easy it is to get around with a combination of the mass rapid transit (MRT) system and high speed rail (HSR). When I was last there, you still needed to take a bus or taxi from TPE to the city center. Now right from TPE airport, you can be in either Taipei city center in 30 minutes (MRT) or on the other end of the island in short order…

> Indeed, it is jarring when we returned to the US.

No place is a panacea. Berlin surely has its issues. But Europe and Berlin in particular is very nice for this expat from the US. I love that I pay basically nothing out of pocket over what’s taken from my taxes for healthcare. The trains are basically ubiquitous and at least near me just refreshed with new cars. We walk basically everywhere and take transit also. I’m far healthier than when I was stateside driving everywhere. The food has far less harmful things in it. Etc etc.

My cousin who lives in Japan says similar things about Japan. He’ll never go back to Canada where he’s from. The feeling is similar to me and the US though I’ll be bringing my family home to the US eventually because I miss home and the potential for stupid high salaries and what that might do for my retirement fund. But yeah. Europe for the win for the time being.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#138

Post by messe »

nytesky wrote: post #88
lucumo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if you would ask people "would you prefer to have a supermarket 5 minutes away or one 20 kilometers away" I doubt anybody would say "no I want only things far to be forced to use a car". For most people it's not about the supermarket. Those are a dime a dozen and all the same. It's easy to provide those in sufficient amounts everywhere. Now try it with jobs. Not any job, but your job. Is it possible to have you…

We lived car free life in our 20s before kids. Groceries were a total PITA, maybe if you order a lot of delivery it’s fine, but we cook every meal and needed at least a granny cart at least once a week. And small grocers nearby had terrible vegetables; there is a lot of variance in supermarket quality. Maybe in NYC they have it figured out, but the trade off is everything cost crazy money. I commuted by bus for this…

Just for contrast. I'm living a car free life in my mid-late 20s at the moment in Denmark, and I rarely ever order delivery.

Supermarkets are close enough (I actually live above one, but were that not there, there are still three others within a five minute walk), that I rarely do a "weekly" shop and just buy my groceries when needed, most of which are of decent to high quality.

It's not really much of an inconvenience to keep a relatively well stocked kitchen without a car here. I'm really struggling to understand how a "granny cart" worth of groceries once a week is a chore? That's a couple of bags worth at most.

Buses could be a bit more frequent here, but they're still good enough that I don't have a hard cut off for when I have to leave the office. I lose maybe 7-8 hours a week on my commute, which is time I'd spend reading anyway.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#139

Post by yardie »

nothercastle wrote: post #44
pjerem wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true. 2/3 of Parisians don’t even own a car and Paris is a very average city when it comes safety. Density is also pretty low for one of the biggest European cities. And it’s just a known example, there are a lot of cities way smaller than Paris where it’s easy to live car free.

The French work week is 7 hours so they get an extra hour to fuck around with public transportation a day. So that might help quite a bit. Still I’d be curious how upper middle class folks with kids survive without cars. Maybe that 33% covers the affluent folks with kids tho.

35 hour work week is for government employees. Obviously, there are a lot of them but there are still more nongovernmental employees who don't have the benefit of a government job or unions that work a typical 35-45hr/week.

> Still I’d be curious how upper middle class folks with kids survive without cars.

All my middle class friends the kids walk. Everywhere. There are public restrooms everywhere. There are buses, parks, libraries, supermarkets, stores everywhere.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#140

Post by nrb »

NinjaSaves wrote: post #93

My biggest point on car free cities is that it is supported fervently by the people who would gain massive amounts of power over others if nobody had a car. If you're dependent on public transport, it can be taken away from you as leverage.

As leverage for what? If everyone is using the public transport, wouldn’t “taking it away”, if that were even possible, be a massive self-own for the local and state economy? Also, what about countries using this method with overwhelming success?
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