American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage • Hacker News Board

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#91

Post by lazyjones » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 5:48 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…

But wasn't this because first people decided they wanted to purchase larger amounts of goods per trip, so they needed a car to transport that? In Europe's old cities, people often go shopping every day even if they're single. It's annoying to me, as the infrastructure is mostly built for lugging around as much as you can carry home on your feet and even all the packaged foods come in very small sizes (2 servings). US stores, like malls, seem much more convenient for families.

What I don't understand is the number of restaurants built in a similar way, i.e. far away from residential areas and with huge parking lots. But I guess that's more family-friendly as well, especially with 2 or more kids.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#92

Post by Brakenshire » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

matthewowen wrote: post #55

mattlondon wrote: post #34

I always thought it was weird how there is so much parking in the centre of US cities. When I talk to colleagues in various US cities and they say they drive to work it just Does. Not. Compute . In central London, driving to work is essentially unheard of unless you are the Prime Minister. There is parking available in London, but the prices are fairly high - I just had a quick look on parkopedia [1] and it looks lik…

Outside of London, the majority of people in the UK drive to work. Likewise, the majority of people commuting to (eg) Manhattan don't drive to work. When someone in Houston says that they drive to work, the comparison isn't to someone working in Central London. It's to someone who lives who works in the outskirts of Birmingham. I think the US is too car dependent. But from my experience, outside of London the UK is p…

Yes, that’s true. Unfortunately in the UK there’s a lot of cross-subsidy taking revenues away from commuter and intercity train services, which are in demand, and giving it to rural services which people don’t use. Hence the commuter services are not able to grow enough to compete with cars.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#93

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

ryanSrich wrote: post #40

mattlondon wrote: post #34

I always thought it was weird how there is so much parking in the centre of US cities. When I talk to colleagues in various US cities and they say they drive to work it just Does. Not. Compute . In central London, driving to work is essentially unheard of unless you are the Prime Minister. There is parking available in London, but the prices are fairly high - I just had a quick look on parkopedia [1] and it looks lik…

A few points: 1.) A lot of employers offer some percentage of parking reimbursement. 2.) A lot of employees live 1+ hour away. The bus doesn't work in these situations. 3.) Often times the bus is extremely dirty and dangerous. Risking injury or confrontation isn't worth saving a few dollars a day on driving.

[deleted]

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#94

Post by ju-st » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

55873445216111 wrote: post #25

cozzyd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah taxis don't have sufficient capacity. You'd just double the cars on the roads. Autonomous buses on the other hand could make a dent (since the primary cost of buses in rich countries is labor).

I'm curious about this. How do you arrive at the conclusion that autonomous taxi adoption results in a doubling of the number of cars? Do you have a link?

Nobody wants to take a cab to drive from CBD to suburb at 10am. The cabs still have to drive to somewhere to park themselves until most of them are needed again at 5pm.

Cars in general are mainly used at both rush hours and are parked somewhere in between. Sharing cars won't magically change human behaviour.

Some googled "traffic by time of day" graphs: http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~cs1173/images/SATraffic3Intersection... and http://www.cmt4austin.org/Traffic_By_Time_of_Day.htm

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#95

Post by Tiktaalik » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

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 make the situation much worse.

The only thing that will take cars off the road is simply to reduce the amount of road available to them.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#96

Post by fencepost » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

If anyone in city government is smart Chicago is going to have no real choice but to go against this trend because of its utterly atrocious parking meter deal 10+ years ago - or they're going to have to take that glut of spaces and make them free parking to try to get out of the deal.

Basically the city committed to keeping a fixed number of street parking spaces for 75 years in exchange for a pittance. If spaces are closed for construction or eliminated completely, the city has to pay the private company for those spaces as if they were being used. Want bike lanes? Don't forget to account for the paying for all those eliminated parking spaces. Pedestrian only areas? See above. Ride sharing cutting into driving? Guess they'll have plenty of empty space to pick up and drop off in - unless there's a way for the parking meter company to charge for that couple of minutes in a parking space.

But it's not all bad - the city only has to put up with it until 2083.

http://www.urbanophile.com/2018/05/17/chicago-parking-meter-...

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#97

Post by chrisseaton » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

mattlondon wrote: post #34

I always thought it was weird how there is so much parking in the centre of US cities. When I talk to colleagues in various US cities and they say they drive to work it just Does. Not. Compute . In central London, driving to work is essentially unheard of unless you are the Prime Minister. There is parking available in London, but the prices are fairly high - I just had a quick look on parkopedia [1] and it looks lik…

> When I talk to colleagues in various US cities and they say they drive to work it just Does. Not. Compute. In central London, driving to work is essentially unheard of unless you are the Prime Minister.

I get this as well. I hear Americans talk about driving into town for work being hard, and they're literally talking about somewhere like San Francisco, and I think why on earth would you even think that was a reasonable thing to try to do? That's obviously a stupid idea.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#98

Post by stretchwithme » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

dsnuh wrote: post #81

stretchwithme wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it will tke longer than most of the optimists project. But it will happen. And there will continue to be people who choose to drive. I don't see a problem with that. If anything, they will be much more capable than today's average driver, as those barely capable give up and take cabs. They will certainly receive more scrutiny, as the number of cameras on the road will explode.

If those barely capable give up and take cabs, then explain my morning commute. ;) Seriously though, I don't see truly autonomous vehicles unless we acheive general artificial intelligence. I don't see that happening in my lifetime or my children's, but obviously I am not an optimist. I don't know that driving skill will correlate with desire to drive or own a car. I think getting average Americans to give up their p…

In major cities, its already more convenient not to own a car, even if your stuck using mass transit.

The area where that is the case will expand enormously once a chauffeur driven limousine is cheaper than standing-room-only mass transit.

There's no way I'd drive up to San Francisco and deal with parking when I can be driven up there and dropped off for the same money. Even twice the same money would be a good deal.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#99

Post by firstplacelast » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

zkms wrote: post #32

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…

> 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.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#100

Post by ghaff » Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

microcolonel wrote: post #58

Semirhage wrote: post #26

I’m from Italy, and until I lived in America for a while I’d never understood just how massive the US really is. I lived on two coasts, in two states that were both much larger than my entire country! People like to point to Berlin or Paris as model cities, but they’re population centers in countries that could fit inside Texas without making a splash. I’m not saying that US car culture is entirely healthy, or that i…

For some, the grass is always greener on the other side. It is stylish today to criticize every tradeoff the U.S. has made in order to credibly claim that every habitable square foot of every state is "inhabited", but a lot of it makes perfect sense. There is one piece of public transit which makes a lot of sense in the U.S.: the bus (both local and coach buses), but it is unstylish and so gets no attention. Imagine…

Amtrak is very popular on certain routes, predominantly in the Northeast Corridor. And, in fact, those routes are being upgraded. But poor people certainly don't use it. They take something like Megabus. And the money Amtrak makes in the northeast covers, though not entirely, a lot of long haul routes that aren't competitive with air.