Cars Kill Cities • Hacker News Board

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#81

Post by genwin » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:36 PM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #48

astrodust wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars are usually much faster, provide much better shelter from the weather... If only there was such a thing as a car that you could call on-demand, make use of when you wanted it, and then got rid of it when you were done. Even better, what about one that comes with a driver? A crazy idea, I know. If you live in the right neighborhood, a car is a nuisance. I can go somewhere and just walk right in. I don't have to…

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.

The indirect auto costs are paid by everyone (and pollution is attributable to the bus riders as well), so it gives an incentive to own a cheap reliable car that isn't depreciating much. If I take my kid to someplace 1 mile away it's $3.75 and 15 minutes by bus, or ~$0.80 and 5 minutes by car. I do prefer to walk if it's only a mile.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#82

Post by sliverstorm » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:38 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #68

sliverstorm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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…

Only if we map 1 car to 1 person

Please read my parent. He said:

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)

That's what I was replying to.

Some older European cities from pre-car eras are built like that, and it's wonderful.

And a fair number of pre-automobile European cities are built with tiny streets. Hence, part of why micro-cars are so popular in Europe.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#83

Post by DannyBee » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:38 PM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #58

jstalin wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That betrays the basic attitude of these anti-car folks. It's not the cars, but the freedom to live where you want that they detest.

People can live where they want, but I'm critical of having to subsidize the excessive amount of infrastructure necessary for the lifestyle choice of unnecessarily travelling very large distances. For me it's even worse because I live in a region where the terrain requires a lot of bridges.

"but I'm critical of having to subsidize the excessive amount of infrastructure necessary for the lifestyle choice of unnecessarily travelling very large distances"

Why choose this choice as the the line in the sand?

Are you also critical of having to subsidize the excessive amount of infrastructure necessary for the lifestyle choice of living in a strictly large than necessary place, for example?

Because you subsidize that to a large degree too.

Everyone who has a larger dining room because they have made the lifestyle choice of wanting to host dinner parties. Or large kitchens. Large bedrooms. Large yards. You name it.

It's all strictly unnecessary, and all lifestyle choice. Among other subsidies, all of it takes up valuable space that could be given to the public, or something else done with it. It requires more infrastructure - greater water supplies, greater sanitation requirements, power supplies, gas supplies, what have you.

Yet we subsidize this just the same as you are paying for roads, you are just paying for it in different places.

In truth, we subsidize a large number of lifestyle choices that impact infrastructure (having kids, riding bikes, heck, even buying groceries, you name it).

From what I can tell, it just seems some people are upset that they subsidies don't always match whatever their particular ideology of how cities should be built is.

Just remember there really is no "better" or "worse", when it comes to lifestyle choices, just different (you may impose moral judgements on lifestyle choices depending on ideology and viewpoint of purpose of society, but the truly vast majority of these moral judgements are not universally shared)

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#84

Post by dllthomas » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:39 PM UTC

msandford wrote: post #52

dllthomas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not be unreasonable if the overhead to rent is high. It's coming down, though I have no idea what ranges are "too high" or where things currently stand relative to that.

It's not even the monetary cost of renting, it's the time cost. If I have a pickup truck the time cost for me to buy something off of CL is driving there, inspecting it and then buying it. Done. If I have to rent a pickup to transport it back then I've got two choices. I can either rent the vehicle prior to looking at the item or after I decide to buy it for sure. If I always-rent then I'll kill at least 2hrs per CL…

"It's not even the monetary cost of renting, it's the time cost."

Absolutely. I'd definitely meant for that to be a part of "overhead" but it probably is worth calling out explicitly.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#85

Post by phaer » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:39 PM UTC

ars_technician wrote: post #67

phaer wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

As I wrote, I am open to keep delivery cars. Freight bicycles are also a good possibility for a lot's of stuff, but that's not my main point. My main point would be that cars do suck as a mean of transporting people as soon as you do calculate with external costs to the environment, health and quality of live for people living in the inner city.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#86

Post by VLM » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:40 PM UTC

tedsanders wrote: post #66

sliverstorm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

There are some interesting value engineering issues where car parts are designed to fall apart more or less simultaneously at a certain point under normal commuter operating conditions, whereas aircraft are designed to last "forever" more or less.

Its going to be a very strange maintenance challenge. I suspect one will never be totaled by having the heater core rot out after 16 years, like my last car.

You could probably find a car value engineered for long distance taxi/commercial type service. I imagine it would be somewhat different than a normal car, internally, although I don't know enough automotive engineering to tell exactly how.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#87

Post by WildUtah » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:41 PM UTC

zalew wrote: post #50

jseliger wrote: post #34

If you're interested in this topic, Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking and Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City are both worth reading. The former explains how "free" parking isn't really free and how it distorts a lot of behavior, and the latter is about what cities are good for and how to build healthy cities in general. Personally, I wonder why people would want to own a car if they can avoid it: htt…

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

Try the lead essay from Cato Unbound and see what you think. [0] There are a few more good short Shoup pieces linked at the bottom of that page.

I have some personal experience here. I have done training and volunteered as a community organizer and worked with my city council and planning department. I have organized neighborhood groups involved in planning. I have studied urban planning and urban form. Nothing helped me to understand American cities and why they work the way they do more than Dr. Shoup's work in the 1990s that is collected in The High Cost Of Free Parking.

Some of it is gritty and technical econometric research, but a lot of it is creative and insightful. It's not a single narrative, but a fun book to dip into in various places from time to time if you care about how cities work and how urban life can be made better for people.

This short 1997 paper introduced me to Dr. Shoup's work (I read it in 1998) and was like a shining blaze of insight for many readers like me when it first appeared. [1] One key insight is that free parking required by law costs the USA about three times as much as all the money drivers spend on cars and gas plus public subsidies for roads and highways. When you read it, you start to see that parking policy drives urban form much more than zoning or free markets or highway and transit construction or public preferences or anything else at all. A lot of the book is like that.

[0]http://www.cato-unbound.org/issues/april-2011/there-aint-no-...

[1 pdf] http://www.uctc.net/papers/351.pdf

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#88

Post by dllthomas » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:41 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #53

jowiar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxis are a reasonable "turking" of this concept.

True; although one major problem is that for n taxis, you have to pay for n cars and n human salaries, and human salaries end up being the biggest proportion in the final price. How much will the cost be reduced when we don't have to pay for human drivers anymore? Will we see 50$ a month (2013 dollars) plans for 50 hours of "chauffeuring"? (a quick google search shows that the average american spends ~40h driving a y…

In some areas, rent to medallion holders might end up being the biggest proportion in the final price...

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#89

Post by was_hellbanned » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:42 PM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #28

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 usually much faster, provide much better shelter from the weather... If only there was such a thing as a car that you could call on-demand, make use of when you wanted it, and then got rid of it when you were done. Even better, what about one that comes with a driver? A crazy idea, I know. If you live in the right neighborhood, a car is a nuisance. I can go somewhere and just walk right in. I don't have to…

I'm an avid cyclist and motorcyclist. I've gone skydiving and SCUBA diving. Yet some of the most frightening moments in my life have been in the back of San Francisco taxis.

The sooner robots replace taxi drivers, the better. And the taxis will probably still feel gross inside.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#90

Post by rayiner » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 10:42 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…

> - 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.

Streets in downtown Philadelphia are effectively one lane in each direction (one lane is parking) and there is plenty of sky. You just need to manage the setback requirements. This is one of the densest neighborhoods in Philadelphia (~60k people per square mile): https://maps.google.com/maps?q=rittenhouse+square&hl=en&ll=3....