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Cars Kill Cities

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Re: Cars Kill Cities

#161

Post by TulliusCicero »

sliverstorm wrote: post #38
tdees40 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The odd thing to me about cars is that people pick the most unusual use cases and then buy their cars off of that. So my dad likes to haul plywood once in a while, so he bought a pick-up. But 99.99% of the time he could use a subcompact. Likewise everyone knows people who have two kids and buy a van/SUV because they want an extra seat or two. You can always rent a car if you get into these sorts of situations, and it…

Is it really that odd? We do the exact same thing with computers. How often, exactly, are we max'ing all 16GB of RAM and pegging all eight cores of our workstations? Couldn't we "just" rent time on EC2 when we need more? Yes, it's a pain in the butt to farm out most types of compute to EC2. Yes, it can quickly get expensive. Yes, you can save money buying a $40 Sempron. All these arguments and obstacles can be applie…

1. Buying extra RAM or a faster CPU is almost always super cheap compared to buying a bigger car (consider both initial price and reduction in fuel efficiency).

2. Farming computing out to EC2 is nothing like renting a car.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#162

Post by ekianjo »

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…

Even in Japan if you only rely on Public Transportation (and you probably have heard its one of the best out there, worldwide), there are a number of situation where it just does not work. For example: you want to come back later than 11h30 pm ? Bad luck, most of the metro/train lines have stopped.

Or, there's usually always a way to get from point A to B with public transport, but unless you go to major stations or hubs you need to change several times, take an additional bus and walk an additional x minutes. It's very tiring and inefficient, and costly as well, because public transports aren't subsidized here as much as in Europe for example.

And of course, if you ever want to carry something large and heavy with you, welcome to hell, with a number of stations with no elevators and just stairs, and lack of space in trains to even put your stuff.

It's fairly obvious there are excellent use cases for having a car. Or at least renting one when you need it.

ANd that's not even considering : confort, risk of viral transmission (did you take this in account when considering the cost on society ?) and freedom aspects.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#163

Post by x0054 »

Cars kill density, but they don't kill cities. I live in San Diego, a very car friendly city. I can get to almost any store, restaurant, or shop in 15 minutes or less. The key is medium density city with lot's of freeways. High density is not all that it's cracked up to be.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#164

Post by andrewliebchen »

For a forum that spends a lot of time talking about disruption with members who I'm sure pride themselves on their rationality, there is a surprising amount of "damn the torpedoes" defense of the status quo here.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#165

Post by sibartlett »

lsc wrote: post #153
dllthomas wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Freedom", too, for that matter.

meh, 'freedom' has never had a good, solid meaning. Kings have been using that word for centuries. Slavery, until fairly recently has meant 'owning another human' - I mean, hell, I'll buy the use of slavery to mean 'having a choice between doing what another human wants and dying' My problem here is expanding it to mean 'having to pay a small fee or suffer discomfort'

Some words have multiple definitions. Here's one of the definitions of the word "slave"... someone entirely dominated by some influence or person; "a slave to fashion"; "a slave to cocaine"; "his mother was his abject slave"

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#167

Post by quatrevingts »

booyaa00 wrote: post #110
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…

Lots of people don't want to live in a city. For me, living in a city is a horrible existence. So living in the unspoilt countryside a car is pretty useful to get around. A car is freedom. Do you really want to be completely dependent and beholden to some public transport system?

The unspoilt countryside can certainly be pleasant, at least for the few that are well-off retired, or don't need access to an urban center to make a decent living, and don't mind driving an hour to do anything.

Start putting McMansions and Applebees in the countryside, and it becomes spoiled rather quickly.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#168

Post by ars_technician »

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…

The time scale in fact can go the other direction and still favor cars. It's about cost per use.

If you drive every day like many Americans, it's cheaper to own a car than to use a cab. The number of people that fly enough to need their own plane is effectively zero.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#169

Post by ars_technician »

GuiA wrote: post #77
ars_technician wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At least one person who is not the author seems to have liked this book, so I challenge the assumption that it "appears to be a bad book". And... it's a book, dude. You can check it out from the library or buy it used for ten bucks and stop reading it if you don't like it; that's not going to ruin your life. If you have enough time to reply to my dumb comments on HN, you must certainly have the time to start reading…

>At least one person who is not the author seems to have liked this book, so I challenge the assumption that it "appears to be a bad book".

Do you know why user reviews exist?

>If you have enough time to reply to my dumb comments on HN, you must certainly have the time to start reading the book for 30 minutes and decide if it's worth continuing or not :)

That would be valid if it were me considering reading the book and if it took me 30 minutes to reply to the comment.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#170

Post by kator »

I lived most of my life in Los Angeles, having a car was a right of passage. I moved three years ago to New York City and I sold my car (finally) last year. It's amazing how liberating it is, no insurance, parking, gas, maintenance. These things eat into your life and you really don't see it until it's gone.. I'd be glad to never own another car, but if I move again to a place that doesn't support it I guess I'll buy another chunk of metal and watch the quarters fly out the tail pipe..
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