These threads always turn into fights between car vs. non-car people. But the answer should just be more of everything. More bike lanes, car lanes, buses, trains, parking, etc. Close a street or two off to car traffic, maybe just on weekends initially, to create a nice walkable downtown area. People always seem to talk about these things like it's one size fits all, when needs vary massively from one city to another.…
Where do you put the "more car lanes"?
Houston is almost entirely lanes and parking, they're still congested. At which point do you have enough car lanes?
The rest of the lanes sure; a fully used bike lane like Boulevard de Sébastopol is worth 8 lanes of car traffic. That helps. But more car lanes?
From an efficiency point of view public transportation makes a lot of sense. From a quality of life point of view, I have never been comfortable being crammed into a sardine can with that many other people. I've done it. I've never enjoyed it. I do look forward to travelling to the Netherlands one day and I will enthusiastically use public transit there just as a personal experiment to see if my experience differs en…
> From a quality of life point of view, I have never been comfortable being crammed into a sardine can with that many other people. Then, you've experienced poor public transit systems. A good one doesn't make you so packed in because there's enough trains for people to have comfortable amounts of space. Anyway, it's moot - if your city has lots of people, the only feasible way to move them around is public transit.…
I wouldn't qualify Tokyo's public transit system as poor. In fact, the only one that might rival it in Europe would be the one in Moscow.
I have a 4 year old and an 18 month old, and I don't own a car (nor does my partner). We rent a car ~10-20 times a year, but that's usually for vacations or trips out of the city to visit family. Regular weekly family life we use buses, the underground (metro), trains, or sometimes taxis. We are considering eventually getting a car, but we've managed for 4 years with children to not need one and it's not been an issu…
Sure, it works in your context, you live in a city with 9 million people and you sometimes rent a car - fine. I live in a city 100x smaller. I literally don't know a person that doesn't own a car, or at least has access to a car. The context actually get far more granular than it. I lived without a car for 25 years of my life, buses and trains were enough. But all it takes to require a car is having a home 3-4 km fro…
It sounds like your city is about the same size as the city featured in this article, which has a population of 83,000.
These threads always turn into fights between car vs. non-car people. But the answer should just be more of everything. More bike lanes, car lanes, buses, trains, parking, etc. Close a street or two off to car traffic, maybe just on weekends initially, to create a nice walkable downtown area. People always seem to talk about these things like it's one size fits all, when needs vary massively from one city to another.…
I would say more of everything but NOT all in the same place.
> Most of the time aspect comes from excessive regulations and approvals Well... given you're comparing to China... regulations and approvals have a point. China just openly sharts on nature, the environment and the rights of its citizens - the Party and its interests always come first. > I visit China sometimes and it's seriously just wild seeing a town suddenly have a metro system go from not existing to being full…
okay, can't we have a middle ground then? On one side, nothing happens because of corruption, regulation, partisan interests etc. On the other end, there is authoritarian regime that can get things done at insane speed but at the cost of the environment and its people. Is it that hard to build stuff for the greater good of the public but respect mother nature and workers' rights at the same time?
Yes it is hard. What makes it hard is the analisys of the problem is wrong and so we don't know how to fix it. Some of the problems were hinted at above, but the response of why we do it that way was also hinted at and should give anyone wanting to fix the problem pause. There are many other problems that are at fault too that were not hinted at. Some of them I know (but I'd need a book to write out), but there are hints of more things that I'm not aware of. I also have reason to suspect some of what I "know" is actually wrong, but I don't know what and cannot know until someone tries it thus showing why it is wrong.
I think the thing that really struck a chord with me about car-centric development, as someone who lives in a city with fairly poor public transport (by certain standards, it would actually be quite good if it were in the US) and where driving is the norm for getting around - Prioritising cars actually makes things worse for drivers. We spend many tens of billions of dollars a year on roads in my state and traffic in…
Car oriented people seriously underestimate how many people that can be transported in a subway train and how much highway space it would take to transport the same number of people in cars. One subway line can transport more people than even the widest existing highway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_dif... (edit: spelling)
Once you get used to it, you get more solitude in public transit. Plan your route so you get access to a seat, settle in with a book or music. The other people melt away. Whereas driving a car involves constant interaction with other drivers which in many places (including rural areas, not to single out pickup drivers but there is a pattern) can be quite fraught.
> Once you get used to it, you get more solitude in public transit. That is physically impossible. Again, it's a "me problem", I'm not trying to say that the world needs to accommodate my unique personality, but if other people are within speaking distance of me with no partition, they cannot "melt away." When I was younger, discovering my mysophonia and autism, my mother would used to say things to me like "just tun…
Government policy should not be formed on the basis of "me" problems. (Not merely yours, but generally.)
Safety is the much bigger challenge for public transit in the US right now. Since the pandemic, most cities have really eased off of any enforcement of rules or laws in public spaces. Driving in rush hour traffic sucks, but it beats getting randomly stabbed in the neck by some psycho who didn’t even pay his fare.
That safety is illusionary. Cars are dangerous, more dangerous than subways. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-07-19/new-yo...
I suspect many view intentional harm as being far more traumatic than accidental harm. This is less the case if the person actually dies, although it may still be the case for their families.
Once you get used to it, you get more solitude in public transit. Plan your route so you get access to a seat, settle in with a book or music. The other people melt away. Whereas driving a car involves constant interaction with other drivers which in many places (including rural areas, not to single out pickup drivers but there is a pattern) can be quite fraught.
> Plan your route so you get access to a seat What do you mean specifically? Most of people working regular jobs don't really get to choose the time for their transit. They generally want to get to work as late as possible and get out of work as early as possible. Which means more people, because everyone wants this. Fun fact, when I was at high school, some students going home by bus would go backwards the bus path…
In Beijing I would often take the long way around on a subway loop line so I could get a seat. The subway is just always crowded, and you could be standing for an hour if you don’t plan your route right. Most of the time I would just plan my day around a very early taxi ride to get to work and then return before the awful rush hour they had, but that was 10 years ago and I’m afraid it wouldn’t be an option anymore (I left Beijing in 2016), so smashing into the subway would be necessary, if you do some clever route adjustments you plan your trip through big transfer points where lots of people get off, guaranteeing yourself a seat (worked on my last trip there in April).
Safety is the much bigger challenge for public transit in the US right now. Since the pandemic, most cities have really eased off of any enforcement of rules or laws in public spaces. Driving in rush hour traffic sucks, but it beats getting randomly stabbed in the neck by some psycho who didn’t even pay his fare.
> Driving in rush hour traffic sucks, but it beats getting randomly stabbed in the neck by some psycho who didn’t even pay his fare. This concern never even occurred to me. Are you not far more likely to die in a car crash?
> Are you not far more likely to die in a car crash?
Indeed they are. GP has done an extremely poor job of risk assessment.