Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cars Kill Cities

progressivetransit.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 223 posts

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#131

Post by caseyamcl »

jstalin wrote: post #35
Anechoic wrote: post #21

FYI, the author of that post address self-driving cars in his next post: http://progressivetransit.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/self-driv...

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.

I certainly don't detest the "freedom to live where you want." It's a lack of freedom that I detest. In my city (and most others), it is highly impractical or impossible to go anywhere without a car. There is no freedom I'm choosing how to transport yourself; you drive or you don't go.

My car is kind of a form of taxation in that regard; you can't get around safely without it. There are few sidewalks or bike facilities, so citizens must own a car whether they want to (or can afford to) or not.

Isn't the freedom to choose how to get around as important to you as the freedom to choose where to live?

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#132

Post by lovemenot »

was_hellbanned wrote: post #108

I walked around Tokyo marveling at the infrastructure. Fully enclosed (or perhaps 3/4 enclosed) freeways that explode out of the ground, split off to surface streets, and arch up through the sky and around corners. Well-engineered, rubberized mounting systems and the enclosure mean you only heard the faintest hint of cars rocketing by at speed. Highways branching to high-capacity, multi-lane surface streets, which fu…

Quite so. Furthermore, the preponderance of bicycle-riding and perhaps the best public transport network in the world makes Tokyo, in some ways, a role model for urban design. Outside of the big cities　in Japan though, you see the same infrastructure that characterises the US: strip malls and the like. Population density seems to be the major driver and, perhaps contentiously, willingness to subsume one's own freedoms to the common good is a secondary one.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#133

Post by anthonyb »

vacri wrote: post #120
jseliger wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(correction applied) Thanks, fixed! Because I can go wherever I want, whenever I want, with my whole family (pets included), with a trunkful of cargo, as I see fit. But at very high cost, per The High Cost of Free Parking , and at high time costs: I'm struck by the way that, when I lived in Tucson, it took seemingly 30 or 40 minutes to get anywhere. Now I live in New York City and it takes about the same, but the def…

In my own experience, if you're working outside peak commuting hours, public transport is horrible. Take a cold winter, services 20 minutes apart. One service is missed, cancelled, whatever, you're now there for 40 minutes waiting for your bus. Of course, you don't know that the service is missed, you're just waiting at a pole. And in my case, it was a connecting service, so repeat the process for the second leg of t…

Bear in mind that you're comparing mostly-decent road transport to generally-awful public transport.

Buses, for example, suck - they're always going to be a worse experience than a car (walking 10+ minutes to the stop at each end + waiting, to be stuck in exactly the same traffic).

Now if public transport had the same investment as private, it'd be a different kettle of fish. Take a look at http://carfree.com/intro_cfc.html and http://carfree.com/topology.html as an example of what might be possible with rail and sufficient political will. <5 minutes to a train stop, <30 minutes to anywhere else, <5 minutes to your final destination == max 40 minute trip in a city of 1M people.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#134

Post by jpatokal »

sien wrote: post #129
WildUtah wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I love Shoup's work, I'm not enthusiastic about Glaeser's work. In particular, I observe that Tokyo, Paris, Barcelona, and Mexico City organize people at adequate density to obtain all Glaeser's benefits without much of his beloved skyscrapers. Because of the shadows, streets, elevator columns, and infrastructure that skyscrapers need, they don't add much to urban life. A comfortable 15k/km^2 density (like Toky…

You make a good point but Tokyo should not be on your list of cities without many skyscrapers. It has the 5th most skyscrapers of any city in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_with_the_most_sk... (Sorry, added the 'not', which interestingly people worked out)

That's mostly just because Tokyo is so immense: Greater Tokyo is the world's largest city on most measures. However, the skyscrapers are concentrated in a couple of districts, and the vast majority of the city is indeed low-rise (under 10 stories or so even in the immediate city center, under 5 outside it).

Incidentally, most urban planners figure that Tokyo should be more dense instead of forcing people to endure multi-hour commutes, but strict sunlight laws make it very difficult to build tall buildings outside a few designated areas.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#135

Post by lovemenot »

chongli wrote: post #22
toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it would require a change in infrastructure. No, it is not necessary for the investment to be done upfront. You quickly ramp up cheap mass transit options (bus service segregated from regular vehicular traffic with dedicated lanes, MUCH cheaper than light rail construction) while using permitting/zoning to phase out car-friendly policies. It won't happen overnight, but its a start.

Bus service does not work. People hate buses, no matter how well designed and efficient their routes are. Buses have an extreme social stigma attached to them.

Reading abut the Google Bus protesters was disappointing. Whatever one's opinion of gentrification, targeting buses seems perverse. I could not discover the protesters' point of contention. Doesn't Google (and other SV companies) already pay the city to use the infrastructure?

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#136

Post by bmj »

jseliger wrote: post #112
ctdonath wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want to own a car if you could avoid it? (correction applied) Because I can go wherever I want, whenever I want, with my whole family (pets included), with a trunkful of cargo, as I see fit. I keep a bunch of gear in my car which makes me pretty much independent. No way I'd be hauling "go camping on a moment's notice" stuff and other equipment everywhere on the bus. Nor would I have the basic equipment…

(correction applied) Thanks, fixed! Because I can go wherever I want, whenever I want, with my whole family (pets included), with a trunkful of cargo, as I see fit. But at very high cost, per The High Cost of Free Parking , and at high time costs: I'm struck by the way that, when I lived in Tucson, it took seemingly 30 or 40 minutes to get anywhere. Now I live in New York City and it takes about the same, but the def…

I'm struck by the way that, when I lived in Tucson, it took seemingly 30 or 40 minutes to get anywhere.

I'm currently staying in Tucson for a brief spell, and I am struck by the very same thing! It's kinda crazy. I certainly don't live in a completely walkable city neighborhood back east, but I can be at the office in ~25 minutes on my bike, and most errands can be done on my bike or my scooter.

As for high costs, I think it's all a trade-off, right? We're a one car family (I've never actually driven to work in 15+ years), but we travel extensively in our VW van. So, the benefits we get from owning it out-weigh the costs. That said, I've applied the same analysis to owning a car for getting to work--it's far cheaper, and more enjoyable, for me to bike (and occasionally take the bus) rather than deal with another vehicle. I suspect most car-bound commuters (or suburbanites who must drive 15-30 minutes to get anywhere) have done similar math in their head (or on paper), and decided that the benefits of location and car ownership out-weight the costs. Of course, plenty of those folks also likely complain about gas prices and traffic, too!

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#137

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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…

I lived the earlier part of my adult life with a car (15-30), and have now been car free for 8 years or so.

I live in a dense city where you have to win a lottery to buy a car. So I take a taxi most places, which is just as convenient and environmentally probably the same impact (sans the need for parking, taxis are nice in that way).

Our city also has great delivery services, which my wife takes advantage of. She ordered some stuff one morning on Taobao and they were delivered that afternoon, no quadrocopter drone necessary.

> It would be a lot easier to rely solely on public transport if you never had to carry anything.

Amen. American public transit advocates should start looking at this aspect: even if we get density to enable public transport, there are a bunch of other services that are necessary to make car-less practical (local grocery stores, deliveries, etc...)

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#138

Post by tdees40 »

dllthomas wrote: post #84
msandford wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For most hauling cases, you can rent a truck/van from Home Depot for $20/hour or so. It takes about five minutes to do. Obviously that isn't everyone's use case, but Enterprise will pick you up, or Zip Car or even cabs is a valid possibility. None of these are all that difficult.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#139

Post by seanmcdirmid »

6d0debc071 wrote: post #106

Do people actually want to live in cities, how many of them? - (and whatever for?) One narrative here goes, there are lots of cars, so it creates an unfriendly environment, so people have to live outside the city and have cars. But that narrative doesn't make sense for how the cars got there in the first place. Another narrative goes: cars enabled people to move about quickly, they enjoyed this. One manifestation of…

You could also bike there in 30 minutes and get some excercise as a bonus.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#140

Post by anthonyb »

tedsanders wrote: post #99
ars_technician wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Cars are analogous. No they aren't. Many people need a car every day. Almost nobody needs a plane every day.

I don't want to argue pointlessly, but while your conclusion may be right, I think your logic makes some leaps. Why is day the natural time scale? No one needs a plane every hour and no one needs a car every hour either. By that time scale, they are the same. Also, everyone needs a plane every year and needs a car every year too. On that time scale they are also the same. Only in a cherry-picked intermediate time sca…

You are being overly pedantic. Try s/every day/frequently/g and see how you go...
Post reply on HN