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

American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

usa.streetsblog.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 310 posts

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#281

Post by TheCoelacanth »

stale2002 wrote: post #84
Derived wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's that expensive because of the population density and government meddling. There's no need for that in the US...are you saying we should artificially charge the pants off of everyone driving to work just to force them to use public transport? Why? I like my car. I like driving my car. I don't want to ride a train, or a bus. If I can work to the office, I will. I'll drive everywhere else.

It is because of government meddling that the US doesn't have high density living. Yes, please please please let's get the government OUT of the housing market, and let's get rid of those building height limits that disallow anything above 6 stories, even though rent is in the thousands of dollars for a studio. You should be allowed to drive your car and live in whatever low density place you want. Can you offer the…

Don't forget getting rid of parking minimums that add so much to the cost of construction that it adds hundreds of dollars to the monthly rent of an apartment in a typical urban area.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#282

Post by TheCoelacanth »

dsnuh wrote: post #183
stretchwithme wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy to explain your commute. We don't have cheap automated cabs yet. People can't chose an option that they don't have.

My point is that I don't think many people would take that option even if it were available. I know I wouldn't, unless the costs to own and operate a private car went up drastically, and even then, I see it as more of an augmentation than a replacement, i.e. maybe I own a single car instead of two, and use cabs for most trips. There are some realities I think get overlooked. For example, I have a family of six, plus…

A family of six or more is quite unusual. 62% of households are two people or less, 78% are three or less and 91% are four are less. Your use case does not need to get solved for there to be a huge reduction in the number of privately owned cars.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#283

Post by TheCoelacanth »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #95
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…

lmao The cost and availability of parking is one of the primary deterrants to car ownership and driving. If that is removed, then due to induced demand, the price commuting by car will substantially decrease. Following induced demand again this means the amount of traffic on the road will substantially increase, which will be a nightmare for cities. Autonomous cars will not solve anything and will in all likelihoods…

One thing that will take cars off the road is to provide better alternatives modes of transportation.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#284

Post by Tiktaalik »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #283
Tiktaalik wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lmao The cost and availability of parking is one of the primary deterrants to car ownership and driving. If that is removed, then due to induced demand, the price commuting by car will substantially decrease. Following induced demand again this means the amount of traffic on the road will substantially increase, which will be a nightmare for cities. Autonomous cars will not solve anything and will in all likelihoods…

One thing that will take cars off the road is to provide better alternatives modes of transportation.

Nope again due to induced demand. As people abandon their cars for public transit options, less traffic incentivizes people to choose to drive.

Traffic will always fill to occupy the available space available.

This is why LA and Houston have built incredibly wide highways and have never solved their traffic issues.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#285

Post by rdlecler1 »

wozniacki wrote: post #244
ende wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right behind France and it’s Parisian suburbs, no monsieur?

Absolutely. Segregation is probably a more chronic problem there than it is or was ever here. But Saint-Denis is not a rich neighborhood. It's what the French call a "banlieue." Literally translated, the word means "suburb," but it has come to be associated with the depressed, mostly immigrant neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city where unemployment is high and opportunity scarce. "If you look at the situation o…

I saw a study a couple years back remarking on how job applicants without french last names would have far fewer call backs.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#286

Post by xapata »

DINKDINK wrote: post #276
xapata wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure ergodic is what you're looking for here. Ergodic is like a gas particle in a box. Over time, it'll have been at every position in the box. Non-ergodic is like a house of cards. Eventually, it'll collapse and stay down.

Let there be a gas particle in a box. Now cut the box in half and if the gas particle can exist in all remaining space in the box, the box has had an ergodic transformation. Non ergodic: Let there be a car on a major highway in a city. Now cut the roads on the highway in half (say for construction). Congestion results and consequently the cars never again move as fast as before. (equivalent to your house of cards) de…

Ah, yes, traffic is non-ergodic. I thought you were suggesting the opposite.

BTW, it looks like you've got a syntax error in your Python example.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#287

Post by blitmap »

rdiddly wrote: post #250
wozniacki wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had not considered that planning cities like this was meant to be community-hostile, but I can easily see how this is meant to breed a dependence on corporate solutions. Could you elaborate on this? I guess the angle I don't see answered is why would you need 'corporate solutions' say home surveillance solutions, private security solutions and other security & theft deterrence apparatus and solutions if you didn't…

Theft and other crimes seem to increase the more you remove or disrupt community. In other words, it's not about hostile communities, but the absence of community. In the absence of community, the default is hostility. Or, community is the establishment of non-hostility. Almost by definition. Community is people with common interests in a common location doing favors for each other and looking out for each other. Whe…

Exactly as this fine person illustrated. :-)

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#288

Post by CalRobert »

UncleEntity wrote: post #266
stefan_ wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're enraged because other people park on the same public land you and your neighbors do? Do you own it? I'm sure if you want to pay market rate for that land you can get your very own parking spot.

Enraged? no... Observant? perhaps... I believe this is what people like to call "the tragedy of the commons." There's only like two other neighborhoods in all of Phoenix where there's a residents only parking restriction codified into law so apparently the bureaucrats also think maybe there's an overgrazing problem. > I'm sure if you want to pay market rate for that land you can get your very own parking spot. Or I c…

I think myself and the flagged comment (which was pretty reasonable, really) were trying to point out the oddity in thinking it's a problem that you can't use taxpayer land (so funds) for your private car storage. You can buy land where you can put your car, or if there's a shortage an entropreneur can do so and start a lot, but it's not a "problem" that nonresidents are parking there unless you feel a special right to what is a public asset.

If there's a shortage of places for people to sleep we don't demand free houses (well, the US doesn't) but once your car has nowhere to sleep that's somehow the taxpayer's problem?

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#289

Post by adrianN »

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…

"America is big enough for cities to spread out" is a terrible meme. It's not like cities in other countries are right next to each other and if you lowered the density by a factor of two or three there would be war between the cities over who gets to own that new parking lot.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#290

Post by adrianN »

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.

I've walked a couple hundred kilometers in San Francisco and I saw significantly less than when I did the same in Tokyo. I wouldn't call SF walkable at all.
Post reply on HN