American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage • Hacker News Board

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#251

Post by stretchwithme » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 9:37 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #165

stretchwithme wrote: post #10

Once automated vehicles take over (eventually), most people will switch to taxis. Taking taxis everywhere will be cheaper than owning your own vehicle. So the need to park will be greatly reduced. Eventually, mass transit will fail and underground subways will be repurposed for AVs. Parking will be built underground for off peak storage of vehicles, allowing the repurposing of surface parking spots. Maybe agricultura…

>Taking taxis everywhere will be cheaper than owning your own vehicle. People say this but it's very unclear it will be the case. Especially outside of places where the environment (salted roads for example) take a toll, most of the cost of owning a car is ultimately distance, not time. A lot of factors could make pay-per-use fleet cars a bit cheaper or more expensive than owner but it's not clear that the economic d…

The distance traveled will be a bigger part of the cost of robotic travel. That's what happens when you are sharing the capital cost with many other users.

And that is a big part of why AVs will be cheaper. Paying 1/10 of $500 a month is better than paying $500.

The cost will also depend on how big a vehicle you need. For many people going to work, they only need room for one person and a little space for cargo. Paying for 1/4 of a vehicle is cheaper than paying for a whole vehicle.

So even the variable cost of your transportation will go down.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#252

Post by ryanwaggoner » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

UncleEntity wrote: post #143

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guarantee you there's a real grocery store within a few blocks. Pretty good chance that's not true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert "In 2010, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that 23.5% of Americans live in a food desert, meaning that they live more than one mile from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas, and more than 10 miles from a supermarket in rural areas."

> Pretty good chance that's not true Or a 23.5% chance that's not true...

In response to a “guarantee”, that’s a lot.

“I guarantee this plane won’t crash” = 23.5% chance of dying?

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#253

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 9:47 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #243

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people talk about diversity, the diversity they want is typically cultural, but race and culture are strongly correlated. There aren't a lot of ethnic Africans who are culturally Japanese or ethnic Europeans who are culturally African American. Which means there aren't a lot of people of any race who are culturally Japanese in Africa or culturally African American in Europe.

Trust me, if it's culture you're interested in, Europe has more established cultural differences between white peoples from completely different language groups within small European countries than between African Americans and non-African Americans, and we didn't even have to impose Jim Crow laws to achieve this.

> Trust me, if it's culture you're interested in, Europe has more established cultural differences between white peoples from completely different language groups within small European countries than between African Americans and non-African Americans, and we didn't even have to impose Jim Crow laws to achieve this.

The category "white people in America" has that level of cultural diversity inside of it. It includes millions of first generation immigrants from all of those places. Plus millions of people descended from those cultures who over the past centuries have developed them into something uniquely American, melding them in a thousand cities with the cultures of all the other immigrant populations that have come here since then.

And we can't pretend that no country in Europe has ever sinned. Or any country anywhere for that matter.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#254

Post by ghaff » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 9:56 PM UTC

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #48

smallnamespace wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just an example of 'path dependency', i.e. 'history matters'. It's not baffling if you consider that sparse, car-driven infrastructure makes a lot of sense in a country with low population density, and population density has tripled in the US since 1930 [1]. At that time, Germany's population density was about 6x the US's. However, changing transportation infrastructure is a chicken and egg problem. People ge…

Exactly. Furthermore, the US is a comparatively young country. A lot of cities with great public transport either already existed before cars were around, or had the necessary population density to support mass transit. I recently came back from a visit to London, and did not once need a car (I did take an Uber because I wanted to see what it was like to drive from the left side!). It was fantastic being able to take…

>I recently came back from a visit to London, and did not once need a car

I'm not sure this is a great test. (Though, yes, London does have a great transit system even though I've also taken cabs from time to time for various reasons.)

When I visit American cities and don't travel outside them, I very rarely rent a car and don't necessarily take cabs/Lyfts all that much other than getting from the airport. I'm usually staying/doing business in/eating in a relatively central location that often exists in cities that are otherwise fairly spread out.

To give just an example that I'm very familiar with. I never rent a car any longer when I visit Raleigh but I'd never claim you could live there without a car.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#255

Post by _8j50 » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 9:59 PM UTC

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…

This is why we have more flooding too. More parking space means less ground to absorb rain water.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#256

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 10:00 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #206

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is a widely diverse country, including internally. Milwaukee is quite segregated, Sacramento isn't. There is a wide spread, depending on where you are. Overall, the US is about average diversity compared to other countries.

> Overall, the US is about average diversity compared to other countries. I don't think that's accurate. Europe is almost entirely European, Asia is almost entirely Asian, Africa is almost entirely African. Even Wisconsin at 86.5% white is less white than most European countries. And Milwaukee itself is 40% black and 17.3% Latino. The countries that come anywhere close to the US on diversity are predominantly the oth…

[deleted]

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#257

Post by xapata » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 10:01 PM UTC

serf wrote: post #179

intopieces wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The men scared away from courting by the #metoo movement are exactly the kind that should stay out of the dating pool until they are ready to respect women. Good to hear the movement is working.

>The men scared away from courting by the #metoo movement are exactly the kind that should stay out of the dating pool until they are ready to respect women. You're so wrong. There is plenty of 'collateral damage' from folks that just want to avoid litigation more-so than they desire a relationship.

No, you're so wrong.

Sorry, just had to throw it back at you to emphasize how silly it sounds.

I'm guessing you're referring to people that want to date their co-workers? Otherwise, it's hard to think of who else might worry about litigation when considering a romantic overture.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#258

Post by AtlasBarfed » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 10:01 PM UTC

Another problem begging for self-driving cars.

Have the car drop you off, then self-drive to an offsite parking, and then return when summoned.

This model would also support mobile "gear boxes" where you have activity-focused mobile storage pods of gear (think toolboxes for trade work, or a surfing/beach pod with your beach gear, or a biking/triathlon pod with all your triathlon gear), which I think will be a huge benefit once self-driving hits reality.

Rather than have storage units where you can't easily get to your stuff because of the side trip and annoyance of loading/unloading, you have modular storage that can be summoned to a spot and purpose needed.

That would reduce storage needs in urban areas as well, so you could further enhance density.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#259

Post by ghaff » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 10:01 PM UTC

UncleEntity wrote: post #141

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.

That's more of a cultural thing methinks. In the predominantly hispanic areas around Phoenix there are tons of tiny shops serving the neighborhood -- it's a thing. Where I live now there used to be a few corner markets but now that gentrification is in full swing they are all gone and are being replaced with trendy restaurant/bars with the people presumably now shopping at the major supermarkets. There were probably…

The supermarket test isn't really a very good one. If I'm standing in Chinatown in San Francisco or Boston I can easily imagine that I'm more than a mile away from the nearest supermarket. But I will in no way be lacking in non-packaged food options.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#260

Post by al2o3cr » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 10:03 PM UTC

brudgers wrote: post #38

I think parking capacity probably reduces to a local scheduling problem [1]. If it does, it reduces to a 3-sat problem and this would mean optimum parking is NP-complete. Most of the time a parking space more than 400m away is irrelevant [2] and when it comes to where a person parks relative to their home the acceptable radius is probably 100m or less...Des Moines is cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and gets st…

> It's not severely space constrained by an ocean like NYC or SF and so the economic value of conversion is not lower.

is somewhat contradicted by

> Most of the time a parking space more than 400m away is irrelevant

This is the space constraint the article focuses on: if there's enough surface parking, it pushes destinations far enough apart that you need to move your car to go from one to the other.

Re: marginal cost, there are plenty of effects that impose additional capital and/or opportunity cost on converting between parking and not-parking uses - everything from long leases for companies that operate parking (10+ years sometimes) to basic constraints like "putting up a building requires a large chunk of up-front spending". Those effects make "economic equilibrium" slow-to-impossible to reach.