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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

#261

Post by mrcrumb1 »

apexalpha wrote: post #142

These (American) articles on urbanism and what not always make it seems much more insane than it is. I live in the Netherlands, a country usually lauded for it's bicycles and public transport and what not. And let me tell you: We still drive cars. All the time. Even in Amsterdam, our biggest city, 4/10 families still owns their personal car. In the Netherlands as a whole it's 9.5/10 or so. It's about THE MIX of optio…

I think it's worth emphasizing just how low the bar is in the US for public transportation bike infrastructure, and walkability, even in many of the big cities.

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

#262

Post by stetrain »

ecshafer wrote: post #178
stetrain wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sort of the model that Brightline (Fortress Investment) is using. They are spending money on the train service in hopes of increasing the values of their real estate investments.

Its a smart investment strategy. If you can offer someone a walkable little neighborhood where they can live, walk to a a gym, grocery store, and a couple bars or restaurants, AND also walk to a train that can take them to work and a few more areas. That is an attractive offer. Even if the person still has a car, people seem to enjoy not driving everywhere.

Yes. I actually think this should apply to publicly run systems as well.

It seems like in the US we often lament that government run systems run at a loss instead of a profit, but also tend to hamstring them from doing things (like building shopping, dining, offices, housing on top of transit stations) that a private enterprise would do to make its investment profitable.

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

#263

Post by goblin89 »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #256
goblin89 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find cities in Taiwan frustrating to navigate without personal transport, at least a bicycle. Having lived in Kaohsiung for a bit, I observed that very few people use public transport unless they go to/from intercity rail or airport. Buses in particular are unreliable (mostly used by older people), and MRT alone is obviously not enough for the sparse city.

> I find cities in Taiwan frustrating to navigate without personal transport, at least a bicycle. Complete opposite experience; we found it actually enjoyable to navigate without personal transport. Some days, we walked > 10 miles; goes perfectly with stuffing your face with street food. To be fair, we were there as tourists and only for 12 days, but in any of the major metros, we did not feel like our experience wou…

As tourists, it is likely you didn’t have to get places on schedule. In regular life it becomes a bottleneck.

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

#264

Post by mantas »

scotty79 wrote: post #208
mantas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fellow (ex-)soviet from up north... Soviet way of building sucked. You guys had it a tad easier, but in USSR-proper the standardisation sucked big time. It's damn fantastic now that building a custom private house in a legal way is doable, even without being a party elite. And soviet style of building wouldn't have happened without totalitarian control. People aggregating and community is ripped away by interweb…

> And soviet style of building wouldn't have happened without totalitarian control. Todays new developments are done in roughly the soviet style. Blocks of flats. With minor adjustments like parking (also underground), lifts that go to ground level for accesibility and border fences to increase the sense of security, top level huge flats with huge terraces for the rich, thicker walls for acustic and thermal comfort.…

It's nowhere near soviet era planning. Soviet era planning was factory-made identical blocks of blocks of flats. Typically with apartment blocks surrounding kindergarten, school and a supermarket with a cafeteria. 3 minutes city if you will.

Which works nicely if people have no choice and no needs beyond what is available in the block. And as long as whole city is just a repetition of identical blocks with identical facilities - it sorta does work.

Modern development here throws away all of that. Custom buildings with highly customised apartments. Multiple identical buildings is rare, let alone identical copy-pasta neighbourhoods. From high-raises to low-raises to townhouses to detached houses.

On top of that, many soviet planning ideas were based on idea that you work in same place your whole life and possibly get an apartment close to your workplace. That assumption does not work anymore (for better or worse). And let's not talk about running small businesses targeting niche demographics.

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

#265

Post by gorbachev »

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. Even if you don't like driving.

I quit a job of mine in the New York metro area, largely because I had to drive there. It was hell. Every time it rained the commute would be twice as long. One wonderful evening coming back home the usually 50 minute drive took 3 hours.

Additionally the stress of having to deal with bumper to bumper traffic and the assholes and distracted drivers on the road was slowly killing me.

I swore after that job to never drive to work again. At least on a bus/train I can usually read a book, twiddle with a laptop or something else that keeps me entertained/relaxed.

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

#266

Post by piva00 »

pxtail wrote: post #253
apexalpha wrote: post #142

These (American) articles on urbanism and what not always make it seems much more insane than it is. I live in the Netherlands, a country usually lauded for it's bicycles and public transport and what not. And let me tell you: We still drive cars. All the time. Even in Amsterdam, our biggest city, 4/10 families still owns their personal car. In the Netherlands as a whole it's 9.5/10 or so. It's about THE MIX of optio…

> These (American) articles on urbanism and what not always make it seems much more insane than it is. Wholeheartedly agree, and what is also funny that usually it is described from POV of citizen living in: tier one city center with mild weather whole year round and relatively flat topography/terrain - and at the same time it's written in a way that suggest that it's THE SOLUTION absolutely applicable everywhere els…

The solution applicable almost everywhere with some dozens of thousands of population is multimodal. Public transportation supported by infrastructure for cycling and cars relegated to their place in a multimodal system: inconvenient for shorter/regular trips, accessible for when it's needed.

Stockholm doesn't have mild weather all year long, it's not flat, and still people will use public transportation or a bike. Oslo is definitely not flat, definitely not mild year round and even there people take public transportation, bike, etc.

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

#267

Post by throwawa14223 »

nick_ wrote: post #210
gadders wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mad that you can't see that strapping two kids and 8 bags of shopping into a cargo bike and cycling 10 minutes is far worse than doing the same errand by car.

Worse how? Worse because we're all used to ignoring the negative externalities of driving everywhere? Worse because our kids are used to acting however they want in the back seat of a car? Worse because we built these horribly isolating daily transport systems where people tint their car windows so we can't even see each other and then yell at each other's driving abilities? The point is that of course it's true that…

> isolating daily transport systems where people tint their car windows so we can't even see each other.

You bring up a lot of good points, but why is this a bad thing?

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

#268

Post by markus_zhang »

throwbadubadu wrote: post #46
ctxc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that your "objectively better in every way" is subjective. If it were objectively better in every way, I'd give my car up obviously. But there's the _small_ matter of major inconvenience with places inaccessible by public transport, erratic public transport, bad last-mile solutions with private transportation waiting to fleece us for all we're worth, leaving me questioning my life choices when the last…

> But there's the _small_ matter of major inconvenience with places inaccessible by public transport, erratic public transport, bad last-mile solutions with private transportation waiting to fleece us for all we're worth, Where do you live? I see places becoming inaccessible by car due to missing parking places and traffic jams and just love to take a bike / scooter / public transport (which could be much better even…

I think it depends on, as you suggested, the location one lives. I think it is safe to say that if one has a family and live in the North America, there are few places, if there is any, that you can live a comfortable life without cars.

I live in a city with advanced public transit system (of course, comparing to other NA apparently, not other continents). Theoretically, I can go around without much driving. But there are always moments that driving a car helps a lot. One example is going to Costco. A second example is to lay one's feet 50+ kms away from home. A third one is to go to a clinic whenever I would like.

Cars enable flexibility. I think it's pretty hard to convince people to drop it, UNLESS the culture completely changes. Culture change would bring economical and political changes as well -- but that's a multi-decade process. This is why, may I say, that a car free policy is practically impossible for most, if not every NA city.

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

#269

Post by tzs »

oaiey wrote: post #231
bombcar wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2/3s sounds like a lot but it would be better to count how many households have no car. And the US is covered with cities that can be lived in car-free; but the tradeoffs are too great for most people. (By definition any rural town that’s about a square mile or two is walkable.) Cars are so cheap and so good that most everyone grabs one when they can.

2/3 is very realistic even for households. It is just prohibitive time wise (it takes more times in most cities to go by car than by train) and parking wise (densities is high, parking is on the street, searching a parking slot up to an hour, ...). You do not want to own a car.

Greater Paris has a 60-65% car ownership rate among households [1].

[1] https://www.ceicdata.com/en/france/motor-vehicle-ownership-p...

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

#270

Post by dividefuel »

gizmo wrote: post #225
gadders wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your plan is for people to have a longer commute to work, work 8 hours at the job, have a longer commute home, and then have to trudge to a shop in the evening most nights of the week (in all weathers)? Sounds idyllic. Food shopping every night can replace going to the gym or playing with your kids. And if you're elderly and would rather drive - tough luck. >>If you lived in a world where accessing the shop was ea…

How is driving to a costco, parking on a giant parking lot, walking through a massive store, loading up a cart, walking the the cart to your car/truck, unloading everything, returning the cart, and then driving home at all efficient? People do giant shopping trips exactly because the whole process is so cumbersome. The US has the longest commutes of any country in the world because of urban sprawl and zoning. Car-fre…

Door-to-door, a Costco trip usually takes me about 90 minutes. I go to Costco probably once every two weeks.

Just a data point. I'd love to hear how often urbanites go to the grocery store and how long each trip typically takes.

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