Cars Kill Cities • Hacker News Board

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#61

Post by phaer » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:20 PM UTC

gress wrote: post #7

The post is right, and even more so for developing world cities that emerged before cars were around. However the post is also naive. Cars are usually much faster, provide much better shelter from the weather, and are much less tiring than trying to lug bags from one place to another on buses or other public transport. They also place far fewer constraints on when you can travel. Of course it's possible to structure…

Cars are convenient for an individual, but that is because you do out-source most of the negative aspects of them to the society around you. Just image how green, quiet and open streets (the space between buildings) could be without cars or with cars which deliver goods only, especially in bigger cities. The air would be a lot better too, roads need a lot of maintenance, cars need a lot of fuel, create a lot of pollution etc

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#62

Post by tdees40 » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:21 PM UTC

dublinben wrote: post #32

tdees40 wrote: post #6

This is easy enough to fix from a policy standpoint: (1) make free parking a taxable benefit for companies (2) tax the hell out of gas/car registration, or at the very least tax it enough to pay for infrastructure (3) no mandated parking minimums in new construction in cities (4) get rid of publicly paid for parking But of course this requires transit alternatives and popular support, which does not exist in places l…

I think a better alternative for 2 would be congestion pricing for downtown areas. An across the board registration hike would be regressive, and disproportionately affect the rural poor.

Ah yes, even better. But that couldn't even fly in NYC, arguably the place with the least car friendly political environment in the US.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#63

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:21 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #55

zalew wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The High Cost of Free Parking convince me that 800 pages is worth it (reviews so far haven't).

They're not worth it. You should spend the time that it would take you to read this book doing some high yield activity instead, like trading stocks or growth hacking your startup. Anything less than that just isn't worth the trouble.

[deleted]

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#64

Post by ars_technician » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:22 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #55

zalew wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The High Cost of Free Parking convince me that 800 pages is worth it (reviews so far haven't).

They're not worth it. You should spend the time that it would take you to read this book doing some high yield activity instead, like trading stocks or growth hacking your startup. Anything less than that just isn't worth the trouble.

Your sarcasm implies that he doesn't want to put effort into reading what appears to be a bad book because it doesn't have a return, which is a crappy assumption.

People have a limited amount of time, and there are far more good books than any one person could read, let alone bad books.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#65

Post by justinsb » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:22 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #47

justinsb wrote: post #23

If self-driving cars become a reality, it is interesting to think of what happens to all this space & infrastructure. If the model is that we don't own cars, but rather share them like taxis, then there is no need for parking: the car will just drop you and go to its next trip. If the model is that we own our self-driving cars, it may be that they can be parked at much greater distances (10+ miles) from where we spen…

- Self-driving cars will still need to park at off-peak times. Unless they just keep driving in circles. - Having your car park 10 miles away from you after every trip adds some forty miles of travel per commute. That's forty miles of fuel and forty miles of maintenance, every day. - I'm also not thrilled about the prospect of already-dense cities shrinking streets to one lane. We call them concrete jungles now - can…

Definitely valid points! Personally, I hope that we end up with a shared-ownership model, and that the cars do park 10+ miles away if they are idle, but that this is amortized across a large number of commutes. I also hope that we use the liberated space for sidewalks and green spaces, not for more buildings. Small changes though (whether we own or share our cars, planning policies on urban parking & freed up lanes) will have a huge effect...

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#66

Post by tedsanders » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:22 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #56

nilkn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The following page estimates the true cost of car ownership at approximately $1.38/mile: http://commutesolutions.org/external/calc.html That's still quite a bit cheaper than taxi fares or the minimum $2.75 that Uber charges. Assuming that you spend $20k on purchasing the car, you'd make up for the cost of the car in just under 15,000 miles driven compared to taking Uber at the quoted rate.

Yeah, I don't really understand why people figure that self-driving cars/taxis/Uber/ZipCar would ever be cheaper per mile. They pay to operate their vehicles same as you do, except they also need to have some profit on top.

High fixed costs and economies of scale.

Cars are high fixed cost capital goods. A taxi will be driven far more over the course of its lifetime than a personal car, so the fixed cost per mile is much lower.

Also, economies of scale make purchases and maintenance and repair cheaper.

These are two reasons to believe taxis should be cheaper than personal ownership.

Finally, let me point to airplanes. It makes far more sense to rent an airplane than buy one because almost no one travels enough to justify the purchase. Cars are analogous.

Edit: When I say cars are analogous, I mean that there are analogues between the situations. Both are vehicles with high fixed cost that can be either bought or rented. The situation is comparable, though obviously not the same. All I'm saying is that it's conceivable that someday the conditions could change so that it's more sensible to rent than buy.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#67

Post by ars_technician » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:23 PM UTC

phaer wrote: post #61

gress wrote: post #7

The post is right, and even more so for developing world cities that emerged before cars were around. However the post is also naive. Cars are usually much faster, provide much better shelter from the weather, and are much less tiring than trying to lug bags from one place to another on buses or other public transport. They also place far fewer constraints on when you can travel. Of course it's possible to structure…

Cars are convenient for an individual, but that is because you do out-source most of the negative aspects of them to the society around you. Just image how green, quiet and open streets (the space between buildings) could be without cars or with cars which deliver goods only, especially in bigger cities. The air would be a lot better too, roads need a lot of maintenance, cars need a lot of fuel, create a lot of pollu…

How do you envision goods being delivered to people then?

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#68

Post by GuiA » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:23 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #47

justinsb wrote: post #23

If self-driving cars become a reality, it is interesting to think of what happens to all this space & infrastructure. If the model is that we don't own cars, but rather share them like taxis, then there is no need for parking: the car will just drop you and go to its next trip. If the model is that we own our self-driving cars, it may be that they can be parked at much greater distances (10+ miles) from where we spen…

- Self-driving cars will still need to park at off-peak times. Unless they just keep driving in circles. - Having your car park 10 miles away from you after every trip adds some forty miles of travel per commute. That's forty miles of fuel and forty miles of maintenance, every day. - I'm also not thrilled about the prospect of already-dense cities shrinking streets to one lane. We call them concrete jungles now - can…

- Self-driving cars will still need to park at off-peak times. Unless they just keep driving in circles.

"they can be parked at much greater distances (10+ miles) from where we spend time, in much denser structures than today"

- Having your car park 10 miles away from you after every trip adds some forty miles of travel per commute. That's forty miles of fuel and forty miles of maintenance, every day.

Only if we map 1 car to 1 person. Of course that'd be completely unoptimized - people wouldn't own car, but rather have a "subscription" where they can get a car dispatched at any time (à la Uber). Cars would only park 10 miles away at truly off peak hours; the rest of the time they'd go to service some other customer.

- I'm also not thrilled about the prospect of already-dense cities shrinking streets to one lane. We call them concrete jungles now- can you imagine if all the roads were only 15 feet across? Goodbye, sky.

As the previous poster said, the extra space would go to sidewalks. Outside patios, trees, grass, parks... the things we could do would be amazing. Some older European cities from pre-car eras are built like that, and it's wonderful.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#69

Post by saosebastiao » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:24 PM UTC

kjackson2012 wrote: post #26

Tiktaalik wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving cars doesn't change much. Supposing that there would exist car sharing systems such that a single car may be used throughout the day by several people, then we could cut back on parking spots, but I'm sure there will be many that own their own self driving car and share it with no one. During morning rush hour the only difference from now would be that commuters could do the crossword puzzle instead of f…

Incorrect. If you have self-driving cars, the entire flow of traffic could be much more efficient, virtually eliminating traffic jams. You could drive at the speed limit with a lot smaller distance between cars, etc, packing in a greater density of people without sacrificing speed.

This has yet to be proven. An efficiency gain does not mean the elimination of traffic jams.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#70

Post by gabemart » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:24 PM UTC

conjecTech wrote: post #25

jrs99 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's why we should make new cities with the infrastructure to support a population with zero cars allowed. And make that city an awesome place to live.

As a small business owner who sells a physical good, statements like this scare the hell out of me. You have no idea the kind of monopolization and losses of freedom implementing ideas like this would entail. Cars are democratic. They are a cheap, scaleable way of solving the problem of transportation. Kill cars, and you will destroy a lot of entrepreneurship in things that really matter. You will also be hurting tho…

Can you explain a little more? It seems on first blush that a no-cars city with good public transport and good support for walking and cycling would be much more democratic than a city where people rely on cars to get to places. Bikes are much cheaper than cars, food is much cheaper than gas. It's much cheaper to take a public transport link to a destination than to take a taxi or rent a car. It seems very counter-intuitive to say "cars are democratic" where then are lot of people who can't afford a car. They also seem much less scalable than the alternatives.

I'm lucky enough to live in a city with lots of shops in walking distance of my apartment. There's a discount supermarket 15 minutes away where I buy most of my food.

If I lived in a city where all the big supermarkets were in strip malls or commercial estates on the outskirts of the city, I'd have to buy my food at smaller convenience-style stores with much higher prices and a poorer selection of goods.