American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage • Hacker News Board

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#221

Post by runarberg » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 8:29 PM UTC

wool_gather wrote: post #130

runarberg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take the Sound Transit 550. It is the main (only direct?) busline between downtown Seattle and Bellevue. During rush hour it comes at an interval of 10 - 15 min. The bus it self is a double wagon (with an accordion connection), it fits maybe (beware I'm pulling this figure from thin air) 50 people. It is always crowded with people standing back to front. During these 10 - 15 minutes one can only imagine how many peop…

50 is too low for an articulated bus. Including standing room, but not at sardine levels, you should at least be getting close to 90.

Regardless, 50 - 90 people every 10 - 15 minutes. I’m sure this number is dwarfed by the number of people that travel the same route over the same bridges in less time, more comfortably in their private cars.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#222

Post by jgroszko » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 8:29 PM UTC

christiangenco wrote: post #49

erikpukinskis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how we have had such economic growth. We use our own population as a testbed where we disintermediate all of our own cultural support systems so that everything must be hired out. Food, transport, entertainment, self concept, family, all of it has been reformed in the U.S. over the last 100 years to replace community labor with commercial relations. This means we get first dibs on these new industries (Softwa…

This is the first time I've heard the phrase "Guiltlessness As A Service" - from a google search I think it may be your own term? Regardless, I like it. I think you're using it to describe businesses that do things like sell carbon credits or do humanitarian work?

Well Deserved is a (parody) marketplace for privilege https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoK4_dQbfuU

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#223

Post by dang » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 8:30 PM UTC

firstplacelast wrote: post #99

zkms wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't open it up to public review and leave it completely in the hands of more-or-less capable technocrats. Is that a price you're willing to pay? Given that in US, "public review" for any kind of infrastructure (regardless if it's an apartment building, a cell base station, a railway, a power plant) means soliciting input from the most meddlesome moralistic NIMBY normies who have as little respect for other people…

This is absolutely correct. NIMBYism has adversely affected more Americans than Russia. Since it follows that NIMBYs are more anti-American than Russia, we MUST put sanctions on their ability to affect their fellow Americans.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#224

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 8:31 PM UTC

ghettoimp wrote: post #180

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they also are a cop out to not solve the real problem. If you give tuition money to a few poor kids via a non profit, you don’t solve the college debt and education accessibility problem, but it makes people who did it feel better.

Is it not... something? One could always not give tuition money to a few poor kids. That fails to solve anything too. I really dislike the knee-jerk, blanket dismissal of people who are trying to do small but good things. "If nothing we do matters then the only thing that matters is what we do." - Joss Whedon

> Is it not... something?

Basically, it isn't. The theory that everyone should do a little bit is based on the idea that if 1000 people each solve 0.1% of the problem then we solve 100% of the problem. Which in general isn't a bad idea.

The problem comes when somebody tries to sell it with bad math. Because then you have a hundred million people each solving one trillionth of the problem, which accomplishes effectively nothing. And worse than nothing, because then you have a hundred million people each thinking they've done their part and no further action is required, even though no one has made the slightest dent in the actual problem.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#225

Post by jdietrich » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 8:32 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #107

wild_preference wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think so. American cities just aren’t dense enough to please compact-city lovers looking for a walkable experience like Prague. Even where I live in Guadalajara is better than every city I’ve lived in the States because of all the tiny shops near me. In the States I may have a 7/11 near me which doesn’t even carry coffee grounds or fruit/veg. It’s kind if a sad place to live.

Significant sections of a number of US cities are quite walkable: New York, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, parts of Denver, Chicago. As well as smaller cities like Boulder. It's certainly true that newer US cities tend to be more spread out but if city walkability is a priority for you, examples exist.

This is what I saw when I randomly dropped the yellow man into the middle of Boulder, CO: https://goo.gl/maps/A9oKpnFQLpR2

Boulder has a city population of about 100,000 and a metro region population of about 300,000. Here are some random Street View locations from European towns and cities of a roughly similar size.

Reading, England: https://goo.gl/maps/yQaTTaWQJav

Bonn, Germany: https://goo.gl/maps/Pu9Ro28F4UH2

Caen, France: https://goo.gl/maps/ppgL2J8nsAJ2

Vicenza, Italy: https://goo.gl/maps/rMtCBEqC7vr

Click around a bit, explore the neighbourhood, get a sense for the place. Get the picture?

American urban development happens on a scale that is simply incomprehensible to most Europeans. I spent a good ten minutes clicking around Boulder, looking for the city centre; it took me that long to realise that there wasn't one, at least not in the sense that I understand.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#226

Post by sverige » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 8:32 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #69

cmurf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A family member describes to me the love affair of the automobile ~65 years ago did this. It became so ingrained in the culture, intentionally designing cities around the car so that you could drive more . Americans loved showing off cars, they loved driving them. Teenage boys' psyche used it as a way to get out of the house, away from their parents (this is city life in middle America during and post-WWII) in partic…

>Literally no experience required, no driver's education required. Your uncle can teach you how to drive. Driver's ed at least used to be pretty common,in part because it gave a discount for the (expensive) insurance covering younger drivers. I don't see anything special about the typical driver's ed instructor anyway. It's not like the typical driver's ed is some expensive defensive driving course taught by an ex ra…

> It's not like the typical driver's ed is some expensive defensive driving course taught by an ex race car driver.

This is a common misunderstanding of what is really needed in driver education to improve the average driver. The average American driver really lacks a lot of skills and a clear understanding of optimal driving behavior. Driving on public roads should be optimized for safety, but most drive as if it ought to be optimized for speed.

It would be a good improvement if all drivers were required to take a Smith system or similar defensive driving course annually in order to retain their license.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#227

Post by lotsofpulp » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 8:32 PM UTC

UncleEntity wrote: post #173

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, malls are dying, and they're almost certainly not paying enough for the value of all that empty parking. Land value tax!

Paying who enough exactly? Dying malls get liquidated and repurposed if it's economically viable otherwise they just sit there as a giant husk of "what was" because it hurts no one for them to merely exist.

It hurts society, but when the damage is spread out over tens of thousands of citizens, it can take a lot of effort to distract them from their day of work and taking care of kids to come together and decide to raise enough money to purchase the empty land and turn it into a park or something the community can use like dense living and services people want.

Just because something exists doesn't mean the market is working. Central Park doesn't exist because it was "economically viable", some things are difficult to put in monetary terms and especially when it requires voters to get together to come to a concensus.

The empty mall lot owner can probably keep re-financing the land and using it as a piggy bank since property values are on a tear in the Valley...what do they care how little value it provides to nearby and prospective residents.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#228

Post by gok » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 8:37 PM UTC

fiter wrote: post #219

gok wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative was bankruptcy. And as the market for street parking vaporizes over the next couple decades, this may end up being a great deal.

This will still be a sour deal. What a waste of urban space to just leave empty parking spots due to the fees for repurposing them.

Presumably as the market for parking goes away the owners of it will find a more profitable use for the space.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#229

Post by ghaff » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 8:38 PM UTC

cmurf wrote: post #155

ghaff wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Literally no experience required, no driver's education required. Your uncle can teach you how to drive. Driver's ed at least used to be pretty common,in part because it gave a discount for the (expensive) insurance covering younger drivers. I don't see anything special about the typical driver's ed instructor anyway. It's not like the typical driver's ed is some expensive defensive driving course taught by an ex ra…

You learn bad habits by doing things incorrectly over and and over again too. As a pilot, the rigorousness of aeronautical training compared to the complete lack of training requirement for car driving, is ridiculous to me. The point is you have to learn how to fit into a system, because it's a shared system. But somehow driving, and the daily experience of it is: fuck you, me first. And it shows. It's an adversarial…

I don't totally disagree with you but people have to work within practical realities. In this case, western countries have pretty much decided that being allowed to drive on public roads so long as you can reach the gas pedal is probably a bit too free and easy. On the other hand, requiring the sort of significant time and financial commitment required to get and maintain a pilot's license--together with medical exams, etc.--isn't realistic to require for something that many people effectively need to be able to function in society.

So you end up with the current system which is fairly similar across states and countries with somewhat greater or lesser rigor depending on the particular place.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#230

Post by ebullientocelot » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 8:39 PM UTC

Derived wrote: post #39

angarg12 wrote: post #2

I visited the US (particularly the bay area) for the first time recently, and I was baffled by the sparsity of buildings. Suburbs and shopping areas are so far away that you need a car to go anywhere, and in turn you need massive expanses to held all those vehicles, which means that stores are even more spread apart, which essentially becomes a snowball. Being used to high density housing and underground parking spac…

America has plenty of cities that are just like cities everywhere else...we're a big country, we hardly have need to pack everyone in like sardines. I live in a major city, downtown. And I'm starting to hate it. No personal space, no yard, shared (or no) garage, and I'm a car enthusiast by the way, which I'm sure is practically a dirty word around most city-dwellers now. I'm seriously considering moving out to the su…

Leaving the urban area of my city for the 'burbs was awesome, I highly recommend it.