[HN Gopher] Parking kills businesses, not bikes or buses
___________________________________________________________________
Parking kills businesses, not bikes or buses
Author : kitkat_new
Score : 215 points
Date : 2022-04-09 18:43 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newsroom.co.nz)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newsroom.co.nz)
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| >Replacing kerb-side parking with bus or bike lanes does not hurt
| local businesses, and in some cases, it can increase patronage.
| Bikes and buses don't kill businesses - parking does.
|
| Where is the evidence to support the claim that parking "kills"
| businesses -- I read the article and don't see any.
|
| What about businesses whose products are too big/heavy to carry
| on foot or even on a bus? Where are all the pedestrians carrying
| 24-can cases of beverages? 40-pound bags of dog food?
| coolspot wrote:
| The article is probably sponsored by some real eastate
| developer group who wants all those pesky parking requirements
| gone, so they can build 1k unit buildings with very few parking
| spaces allocated.
| hrrsn wrote:
| Many Aucklanders would be very happy if developers built
| thousands of units without parking.
| rtlfe wrote:
| A developer would only build a parking-free building if there
| are people in the area who want to live without cars.
| Otherwise it would be a financial disaster for them.
| thepangolino wrote:
| deepsun wrote:
| Not true. Kyiv, Ukraine keeps building skyscrapers with
| almost 0 parking in it (althoug there are dedicated parking
| buildings within about 10-15 minute walk, not as
| convenient). And everyone hates it that way. People keep
| complaining. Developers keep building.
|
| As one developer told me -- that simply financially makes
| more sense for them to build an apartment instead of
| parking. Why should they solve other people's business?
|
| At first I was outraged, but now I kinda see a long term
| benefits of that, even thought it's harder for me to own a
| car. Hopefully that'd lead to improvement of public
| transportation or invention of new ways to move.
| rtlfe wrote:
| Sounds like there's no other choice in Kyiv. In any US
| city there are hundreds of buildings with parking that
| people could choose to live in if that's what they want.
| mantas wrote:
| Not sure about Kyiv, but here in Vilnius the elephant in
| the room is parking enforcement. Illegal parking under
| no-parking signs, blocking sidestreets by leaving minimal
| space to pass, on the grass, in basketball courts,
| playgrounds... Municipality doesn't give a fuck. People
| don't buy parking spots since hey, free parking out in
| the street! And developers build little parking since
| nobody buys. But everybody still drives and surroundings
| are a mess.
| coolspot wrote:
| Same thing in Moscow, Russia. 25-story apartment
| buildings with little to no parking.
|
| People live like ants.
| beebeepka wrote:
| That could be a blessing in disguise if it leads to less
| cars.
| zzzeek wrote:
| I've lived extensively in most population densities available
| in the US. When you are in a very dense environment like
| Manhattan, people simply don't buy quantities that large from
| local stores, and the vast majority of apartments don't have
| the storage space to accommodate for the giant sized quantities
| that suburbanites buy at Costco every day. The end result is
| that living in Manhattan, Brooklyn, western Queens etc., you're
| basically walking every day down to local stores and lugging
| relatively small bags back. People in the city tend to be
| pretty trim and fit as a result.
|
| I currently live in a rural-density zoned part of the US, and
| the car is basically the only access one has to virtually
| anything. Businesses here can pretty confidently state that
| close to 100% of their customer base arrives by car.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| And then you end up in a potential lock down situation where
| you're easily corralled and starved out ala Shanghai
| cortesoft wrote:
| You save a lot of money buying those larger quantities.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Yeah, but you can't easily store it in high density areas
| where square footage is expensive. Personally, I think this
| is a significant negative for city living, and a reason why
| I prefer the suburbs.
| com2kid wrote:
| Depends. Meat, maybe.
|
| Toilet paper? Doubtful. You are paying mortgage + property
| tax on the pantry space used to store it.
|
| Not to mention gas to drive and get it. And vehicle
| insurance. And car maintenance.
|
| A bidet seat (heated water, $150 at Home Depot now days)
| has a better ROI.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > You are paying mortgage + property tax on the pantry
| space used to store it.
|
| If you have the space anyway, you're not paying any extra
| to store stuff in it. And it's expensive enough to move
| that it's not economical to do so just to have the lower
| payments from 1 fewer square foot.
|
| > Not to mention gas to drive and get it. And vehicle
| insurance. And car maintenance.
|
| If you stop at the store on the way home from somewhere
| else that you were going anyway, the additional cost of
| those things is basically zero.
| com2kid wrote:
| The alternative is living in an area where you don't have
| to drive everywhere to get things.
|
| I drive maybe 200 miles a month now. I walk down the
| street to a supermarket to get toilet paper when I run
| out.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > $150 at Home Depot
|
| Good luck with that. Even with an off-brand, you're
| looking at much closer to twice that if you want any kind
| of heated water.
| com2kid wrote:
| Home Depot actually has their own feature reduced SKUs
| from popular brands.
|
| But checking prices, they are around $250.
| pm90 wrote:
| You save a lot of money by not owning cars.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Only if you don't value your time. Either you're paying
| even more for taxis and rideshares than you would to own
| your car, or you're spending an hour on trips that would
| take 10 minutes by car.
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| I think it's actually faster to get to central London
| from me on the tube than by car, not even counting
| looking for parking. And hell, on the tube I can read,
| listen to a podcast, code, or even call family. Can't do
| most of that in a car.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| I bought four gallons of milk at my last shopping trip, this
| will last my family a week or so. I also bought five dozen
| eggs which might last two weeks. Perhaps the reason people in
| high-density areas shop in smaller quantities is partly that
| high-density areas price out families like mine who would be
| shopping every day without the ability to efficiently buy in
| larger quantities.
| zzzeek wrote:
| this is incorrect. A significant proportion of high density
| environments include people living well below the poverty
| line. In New York City, they shop at places called
| "bodegas". They often have access to public assistance like
| food stamps, but they are otherwise consuming those
| products at "high density" prices. They dont buy in large
| quantities for financial reasons but also for the "high
| density makes quantity buying largely impractical" reasons
| I mentioned above.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| doable with a cargo bike as well fwiw;
|
| I myself am doing fine with one or two backpacks a week (on
| the way home by bike). 2-3km distance to supermarket
|
| When I was living 200m away from a supermarket, I used to
| buy spontaneously when I wanted to cook something
| woah wrote:
| In the city you could just buy food as you needed it. Your
| kids could get a gallon of milk at the store in the morning
| and chug it on the way to school. Same for the eggs. You
| would just pop over to the egg man who would quickly
| prepare you a 8 egg omelette and side order of quiche.
| aks_tldr wrote:
| and how much all that will cost vs buying in bulk.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> You would just pop over to the egg man
|
| His name was Yauch.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| When you have more than a couple people in a house, this
| would mean shopping continuously. And the quantities
| you'd need for a single day would be more than you could
| carry effectively without a trunk. (I moved to where I am
| from a dense city with transit too, it makes more sense
| for me to be in a smaller city where my kids have a yard
| to play in and space to plant a garden than to live in a
| dense urban environment)
| deepsun wrote:
| Living in European town -- no one wants to buy huge quantities
| in the first place -- gotta store them somewhere and make sure
| they're not spoiled yet, why bother if there's always a shop
| downstairs that does pretty much that. Just buy what you need
| for tonight (or for a week if you're a hoarder).
| drstewart wrote:
| Exactly - the odds that a black swan event causes massive
| supply chain disruptions so you can't buy groceries is slim,
| so there's no need to worry about having emergency supplies.
| It's foolproof.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Indeed, GP's comment made me chuckle, it hasn't been long
| enough since the start of the pandemic to take "a week if
| you are a hoarder" comments seriously.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| I just use my car sharing access once every four months to
| buy non-perishables. No big deal.
| gomox wrote:
| Only in suburban America are those sizes conceivable.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yep, it is one of the many upsides of living in suburban
| America.
| indymike wrote:
| Let's be honest. Lack of parking and paid parking kills
| businesses.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| Yeah, a work/shop/live area near me instituted paid parking 5
| years ago, after 25 years of being free. It had some serious
| negative effects on business and they rolled back the paid
| hours to just weekdays and just 9-5 for the garages, but it
| still has not recovered. Many of the businesses have moved out,
| although others have moved in. Some customers just park in the
| nearest free spots, clogging up other commercial or residential
| parking, and walk.
|
| It's been 5 years and places are still closing as their leases
| expire. The place never really recovered and people are still
| complaining about it.
|
| https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/02/14/reston-town-center-...
|
| https://wjla.com/news/local/merchants-association-weekday-pa...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/nova/comments/sp6hfr/clydes_reston_...
| antattack wrote:
| Precisely, if we cannot find parking near-by we go to find
| another restaurant.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Demonstrated not to be true in Toronto, Canada:
|
| * https://medium.com/sidewalk-talk/the-latest-evidence-that-
| bi...
|
| On two separate streets (Bloor above, Queen below):
|
| * https://www.fastcompany.com/3067515/why-local-businesses-
| sho...
|
| Making it easier for cyclists and transit users has often been
| found to increase business:
|
| > _Despite longstanding popular belief, bicycle lanes can
| actually improve business. At worst, the negative impact on
| sales and employment is minimal, according to a new study.
| Researchers studied 14 corridors in 6 cities -- Portland,
| Seattle, San Francisco, Memphis, Minneapolis and Indianapolis
| -- and found such improvements had either positive or non-
| significant impacts on sales and employment. Essentially,
| adding improvements like bike lanes largely boosted business
| and employment in the retail and food service sectors._
|
| *
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200422151318.h...
|
| Meta-review:
|
| *
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01441647.2021.19...
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" Studies from across the globe have found that shop owners
| consistently overestimate the number of shoppers that arrive by
| car and vastly underestimate the number of people who arrive by
| other modes."_
|
| Perhaps the stats support this, we'll see (but I'm suspicious).
| What I am certain about is that I'll shop where there's parking
| for my vehicle--and that's how I go shopping. It would be
| difficult for me to estimate how many times I've bypassed certain
| shops/businesses because there's either no parking or the on-
| street parking is full up.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _It would be difficult for me to estimate how many times I
| 've bypassed certain shops/businesses because there's either no
| parking or the on-street parking is full up._
|
| If there's no parking available it means that it has not been
| priced properly. For optimal use of parking space, at any given
| point it should priced such that only 85% of it is being used
| (thus always allowing for new arrivals), but not cheap enough
| so that people spend an "inordinate" amount of time taking up a
| spot.
|
| See the book _The High Cost of Free Parking_ by Shoup for
| details and references:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking
|
| _Vox_ has a short video on the topic:
|
| * https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/7/19/15993936/high-cost-
| of-f...
| hilbert42 wrote:
| See my reply to _azemetre._
|
| _" It incorporates elements of Shoup's Georgist
| philosophy."_
|
| Funny that, some years back I was a member of the local
| Georgist group (I've even some old newsletters to prove the
| point--again, it's a same I can't post some front cover
| images here for you to see). Yes, I understand the argument
| well.
|
| Again, these matters are never as simple as they first
| appear. For starters, these plans rarely take into account
| the different abilities of different citizens to physically
| access shops and or their actual needs when they do (how
| often are the forced to go shopping, etc. -- say versus
| window shopping just for an outing).
|
| For example, would the elderly or infirm have privilege or
| advantage? Would you penalize or add an extra 'flag-fall' to
| the parking charges of someone who usually does online
| shopping and has all the facilities to do so--because they
| could have saved the shopping trip by shopping online? Now
| take the case of someone who cannot do online shopping (there
| are many people who cannot for many reasons)--should they be
| subject to the same parking penalty by default? And if a
| differential rate were applied to advantage them then how
| would you police it to stop abuse?
|
| Where I live none of these issues has been thought about let
| alone implemented.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| How much do you want to bet that that study was funded/done by
| people who are against cars?
|
| I find it very hubristic to think that a single study is more
| valid than years of observation from people whose livelihoods
| depend on being right.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Their livelihoods don't depend on being right. If it turns
| out parking doesn't matter for their business, and they're
| wrong to believe it does, their livelihoods will be fine.
| They have an existential risk from only one of the options,
| so their opinion will be grossly biased.
| azemetre wrote:
| What if street parking was more reflective of the actual costs
| and drastically limited the amount of time you could park? This
| could mean the likelihood of a spot being available in front a
| story very high.
|
| I forgot what city implemented this (may have been San
| Francisco) but they made street parking triple the price and
| only for 15-30 minutes. As a result businesses in front of
| street parking got more customers.
|
| I'm trying to search this on google, it may have been a paper
| put out by strong towns. I remember an episode of econ talk
| discussing it here:
|
| https://www.econtalk.org/donald-shoup-on-the-economics-of-pa...
| hilbert42 wrote:
| That's all very well but until there's decent public
| transport most people will do what I do (and those who I know
| do exactly what I do now).
|
| _" What if street parking was more reflective of the actual
| costs and drastically limited the amount of time you could
| park?"_
|
| Where I live now I'd suggest it's the opposite, as the cost
| of parking is outrageously high. What I didn't mention was
| that I'll also bypass the shops unless the available parking
| is close--almost outside the shop I'm going to--because
| walking time from where I park to the shop adds significantly
| to the expense (every moment counts)!
|
| Some years ago I was in New York and was staggered that the
| price of parking there was about one third of where I live. I
| was so impressed (and outraged) that I took a series of
| photos (around 34th & 8th) then did the same here at home for
| comparison to ensure people would actually believe me. To
| ensure my locals couldn't accuse me of fudging the photos I
| made sure the Empire State was visible in a number of the
| photos _(the difference in price was so great they otherwise
| would have through disbelief)_. Shame I can 't post them
| here.
|
| I'm the first to agree that what I do is far from ideal--
| clearly, using a 100kW-plus engine to propel me to my
| destination is inefficient but the naysayers only ever put
| one side of the story. Hiking parking prices to fit the
| need/demand is only one lopsided part of a much-needed better
| solution.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Nobody is saying that car use isn't common, just that it
| commonly overestimated.
|
| I've predominately used means of transit other than cars over
| the last decade. That means that stores that are located more
| remotely with less dense parking are less likely to get my
| business.
|
| In addition, "high parking" stores are very frequently built in
| areas where pedestrian access simply doesn't exist because of a
| lack of sidewalks, cross walks, etc.
|
| I think it makes sense to accommodate both use cases by
| promoting centralized, density preserving parking structures
| even if it requires car users to walk a little further their
| final destination.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Anyone who has visited major Asian cities already knows that
| grocery businesses and customers both prefer dense cities -
| because everything happens on an app and a delivery system.
|
| You don't even have to worry about weather or biking or bulk
| groceries because of modern technology.
|
| Suburban parking hellholes are a human aberration that needs to
| be left for the history books.
| silverpepsi wrote:
| Am I the only one bothered by articles of this nature never
| really clarifying that nothing they say has any meaning below a
| certain very specific population density and in very specific
| areas with permissive zoning allowing commerce near to housing?
|
| "Parking is, however, just a symptom of our massive car
| addiction."
|
| It's especially hard to take seriously with comments like the
| above. I don't personally have a single friend in North America
| or Europe to whom it would be a "reasonable alternative" to
| travel on highways (where it is prohibited) by bike or bus and
| invest maybe 90 minutes to simply get to the closest grocery
| store and then be able to take home maybe 1/10th of what they
| normally load into their trunk. This false alternative is always
| brought up, but the only real option that exists is reorganizing
| housing across the whole society to massively increase density
| and to mix commerce zoning with homes in a way currently unheard
| of.
| [deleted]
| ericmay wrote:
| > I don't personally have a single friend in North America or
| Europe to whom it would be a "reasonable alternative" to travel
| on highways (where it is prohibited) by bike or bus and invest
| maybe 90 minutes to simply get to the closest grocery store and
| then be able to
|
| Right. That's like calling water wet. Of course we live this
| way, we designed our cities to _make us live this way_ ...
|
| I'm not sure what you're talking about w.r.t Europe. Even if
| you have friends that drive everywhere that just is not how
| most people live day-to-day.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > I'm not sure what you're talking about w.r.t Europe. Even
| if you have friends that drive everywhere that just is not
| how most people live day-to-day.
|
| I'm european and I've lived in several european countries.
| It's definitely how a huge percentage of the european
| population lives day to day.
|
| Not even 40% of the european population lives in cities. 30%
| is towns + suburb and 30% is
| countryside/seaside/mountain/rural.
|
| That's 60% right there where car is the de facto daily way of
| moving.
|
| And even in cities like Brussels or Paris you have those who
| do use their car on a daily basis, for _short_ trips (like
| going to drop /pick the kids at school a few kilometers
| away). Insane statistics (x% of all car trips in Brussels are
| for less than y kilometers with both x and y being very low:
| although I forgot the numbers).
|
| I guess it depends on who your friends are but around me, in
| the various place I've lived in Europe, the car is totally
| king.
| ericmay wrote:
| Ah ok. I didn't realize Europe was built like places like
| Houston, LA, and Atlanta and everybody took cars
| everywhere, they did the whole 2hr car commute to the
| office, and they didn't walk to the grocery store in their
| neighborhood and instead they all got in their big SUVs
| (which they own at least 2 of of course) to the local
| grocery store about a mile away with the huge parking lot.
| It's a small wonder that Europeans can even afford to do
| this, given how expensive gas is compared to America.
| toyg wrote:
| "Europe" is much less homogeneous, from an urban-planning
| perspective, than the US. We have medieval cities with
| narrow streets, like Barcelona or Firenze, mixed with
| '70s developments, suburban dormitories, megalopolis like
| London and Paris, and so on. So depending on who you ask,
| you will get a very different picture of their habits
| around transportation. Undoubtedly, you Americans drive
| more and longer than we do; but we still drive some, and
| have a similar issue with choosing our development models
| post-1980. But undoubtedly, ditching cars would be
| significantly easier for us than it would be for you.
| bennysomething wrote:
| Best thing about living in older European cities is they
| don't have this stupid zoning, they mixed commercial and
| housing because that's how people chose to live before
| planners got invented after ww2. Now planners are patting
| themselves on the back for recently inventing the 20 minute
| community, Which is exactly the same thing. My one major
| thing I want in life is to never ever live in a suburban
| development with zero to do except drive to places.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Urban planning is probably as old as cities. Based on my
| limited experience, European planners just focus more on
| actual planning than mere zoning.
|
| When an area is being (re)developed, the planners try to
| figure out many of the details. How should be public
| transport and parking organized? Where are the walking and
| biking routes? Where should the parks and commercial spaces
| be? And so on. Older European cities are not as much
| organically grown as planned and replanned over centuries.
| bennysomething wrote:
| You might be right, but there was an interesting thing on
| BBC radio 4 s few years ago, an British architect who
| grew up in Lebanon explained that he thought the UK
| should bin it's planners completely as all that had been
| built post ww2 when that arm of government was created,
| was monstrosities or at best only allow the equivalent of
| music's James blunt records. Not great but at least
| boring and acceptible.
| letitbeirie wrote:
| Lack of zoning is one element of the equation but having
| developed before the car is pretty crucial too. Houston, TX
| has no zoning laws to speak of but because most of its
| growth happened in the last century, it grew outwards
| instead of upwards.
| toyg wrote:
| _> before planners got invented after ww2._
|
| I mean, I don't disagree on the overall point, but one
| could do with reading up on people like Haussmann:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Eug%C3%A8ne_Haussmann
| smusamashah wrote:
| And I thought it's only software UI designers who like to
| watch the world burn.
| silverpepsi wrote:
| >Of course we live this way, we designed our cities to make
| us live this way...
|
| I feel like you're almost making a moral statement there, it
| doesn't have the nuance I think exists.
|
| 1) You have people like my parents, siblings, and friends in
| the Midwest. The idea of living somewhere where they don't
| have the practical privacy of living on a farm literally
| horrifies them. I can't convince them otherwise, I've tried.
| They view me as simply "weird". Literally no hope, but maybe
| you can convince their kids.
|
| 2) You have people like me who love the energy, convenience,
| and stimulation of high density living but still end up
| driving and having a car because the cost differential is
| just way too extreme to logically justify living where I want
| to.
|
| There's a mystery to me in it. I spent time in Bangkok and
| Shanghai and why does it seem really easy to rent a centrally
| located place in a quality tall building, as if it's just
| normal, and without a prices that seems insanely
| disproportionate to other life expenses? Yet in the US, it's
| very rare. There's not enough demand? Labor costs are too
| high? Laws like building hight limits in the US prevent it?
| I've heard there are taboos in Europe for high buildings as
| well.
|
| I think there is also an element of culturally dictated space
| demands that comes into play. You can have these nice dense
| places in Bangkok because people will see 300 SQ ft and still
| rent it. In the US people told me I was brave for trying to
| survive by myself in "only" 500 SQ ft. They could never
| "stand not even being able to breathe". You won't have an
| easy time changing people's minds about this. Personally I'm
| willing to live in 150sq ft if I'm at the heart of the fun.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > I spent time in Bangkok and Shanghai and why does it seem
| really easy to rent a centrally located place in a quality
| tall building, as if it's just normal, and without a prices
| that seems insanely disproportionate to other life
| expenses? Yet in the US, it's very rare. There's not enough
| demand? Labor costs are too high? Laws like building hight
| limits in the US prevent it?
|
| There aren't enough of them because in huge swaths of the
| country it's illegal to build anything denser than a
| single-family home. There's plenty of demand for it,
| there's just not enough supply.
|
| Doesn't even have to be high-rises, in most places it's
| illegal to build the sort of mid-rises that are everywhere
| in European cities.
|
| EDIT: Oh, and it's also usually illegal to put a business
| in a residential area, which forces things further apart
| and forces people to drive to get to anything.
| ericmay wrote:
| I live in the midwest too. The vast majority of people live
| in the suburbs or an urban area. I don't know why those who
| live on farms who already have the roads they need should
| be the primary voice we listen to, especially when _nothing
| changes_ for them. That's the thing. Nobody is changing
| their way of life.
|
| > 2) You have people like me who love the energy,
| convenience, and stimulation of high density living but
| still end up driving and having a car because the cost
| differential is just way too extreme to logically justify
| living where I want to.
|
| Right but those places are so expensive because they are so
| rare. Why are they so rare? Because we don't build them.
|
| > I think there is also an element of space demands. You
| can have these nice dense places in Bangkok because people
| will see 300 SQ ft and still rent it. In the US people told
| me I was brave for trying to survive by myself in "only"
| 500 SQ ft. They could never "stand not even being able to
| breathe".
|
| This is another end of a spectrum, one which I don't like
| either. We don't need skyscrapers. We can build with a
| great level of density and have the best of all worlds.
|
| https://i.pinimg.com/originals/37/9b/26/379b266652e0a2013c0
| c...
|
| This is in Columbus. You can have a car, you can even have
| two, you can have a garage, or park on the street. But you
| can _also_ ride your bike to work or walk. These aren't 500
| square foot homes.
|
| "Yea but all of that is so expensive" yes because we don't
| build them. There is no reason this isn't affordable except
| that we simply choose to not build like this. That's it. We
| just choose to amputate our mobility and pay outrageous
| amounts of money to have the privilege of driving. The high
| prices of these homes demonstrate that they are desired.
|
| I don't advocate for skyscrapers. They are an anti-pattern
| enabled by cheap energy and oil. The other end, the car-
| driven suburb is bad too. Ideally we'd have towns like they
| do in Europe with rural communities surrounding them. So
| your family can have their space and farm. And everyone who
| wants a town can have that too.
| karmelapple wrote:
| "Choose" is a critical word, too. We've chosen it
| partially because some laws setup over half a century ago
| have a lot of inertia, and have literally made it illegal
| to build many of the places you're describing.
|
| Even when it's not explicitly illegal, it can be stymied
| by people who were appointed who simply can't imagine
| people wanting to live near public transit and not own a
| car. Just recently in Boston, a building that was 5
| stories high, and a 5 minute walk to an excellent subway
| station, was rejected by the Zoning Board of Appeals. [1]
|
| The arguments made included that the building was too
| high, and that it lacked parking. At 5 stories high, it
| was 1 story higher than a very nearby building, and 2
| stories higher than many residences near it, which are 3
| stories.
|
| And it's a 5 minute walk to a subway. That's exactly the
| kind of place to live and not own a car. But the city
| zoning board didn't think that was an acceptable way to
| live, and they chose not to... partially because the law
| gave them the ability to choose that, because not having
| minimum amounts of parking is illegal when building a new
| place to live. It's illegal even if you live a 5 minute
| walk from a subway stop.
|
| [1] https://www.universalhub.com/2022/board-rejects-
| apartment-bu...
| josephcsible wrote:
| > _nothing changes_ for them
|
| People who don't live in cities still go to cities
| occasionally, and most anti-car proposals negatively
| impact this use case the most.
| ericmay wrote:
| Well then don't live on a farm? I mean I'm not sure what
| they're expecting. If anything there would be fewer cars
| on the road and less traffic.
|
| Maybe we should buy the land surrounding their farm and
| just place apartments and Wal-Marts and tear down the
| trees? They can live next to the city they wanted. Oh and
| that way I can go visit a farm whenever I want, easily
| and conveniently and feel like I'm on the countryside.
| Similar to a farmer getting to feel like they are part of
| the city or town. This cuts both ways.
|
| "But Eric this is already happening"
|
| Yea because we build suburbs, and have to _spread
| everything out_.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Well then don't live on a farm?
|
| People who live on farms are feeding the rest of us.
| They're kind of important.
| ericmay wrote:
| Of course they are. I love farmers. I wish I could buy
| their fresh produce directly similar to how it occurs in
| small European towns and city markets. I want local
| farmers feeding me and my family. But... those farmers
| apparently prefer that I live in a suburb and go to the
| grocery store and buy produce from somewhere else instead
| so they can have a highway and easy parking to the city
| center they don't go to.
| msrenee wrote:
| I would happily live in a 150 sq ft shed if it kept me out
| of the city and the "fun". It's not that I'm not willing to
| make do with a small space, it's that I don't want to be
| tripping over my neighborsband dealing with their noise and
| idiosyncrasies.
| verve_rat wrote:
| The biggest problem with increasing density is noise.
| Some of it can be solved with better building standards,
| but that increases cost again.
|
| And in western countries there seems to have been a
| general erosion of the kind of local level government
| authority you need to deal with the one household that is
| a chronic noise problem for the hundreds of people they
| disturb around them.
|
| These discussions tend to gloss over the fact that more
| density is going to require tackling antisocial behaviour
| head on, and local government are neither willing or able
| to do so.
| ohCh6zos wrote:
| I'm looking at spending a massive amount of money to move
| somewhere remote. I can't stand cities.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > I don't personally have a single friend in North America or
| Europe to whom it would be a "reasonable alternative" to travel
| on highways (where it is prohibited) by bike or bus and invest
| maybe 90 minutes to simply get to the closest grocery store
|
| All of your friends have to take highways to reach a grocery
| store? That's nuts! Is this some kind of international agrarian
| hermit club?
|
| Or are you saying you don't have many friends? There are more
| possible friends to be made in more populous areas. Come, join
| us!
| asdff wrote:
| IMO you have to actually look at the current makeup of zoning.
| Plenty of places have great, amazing bones, because they were
| actually laid out in an age where people did walk to the
| grocery store, or maybe they took a streetcar, and there might
| have been a rail station in the middle of town that is
| currently only used for freight today. It's not a form of
| development that is specific to only new, dense areas, it was a
| form of development that was the standard everywhere in this
| country 100 years ago, and still remains. Look at some mid or
| small sized places like Pensacola FL, Sandusky OH, Corpus
| Christi tx, and hundreds more. They are gridded like the SF
| peninsula because 100 years ago they very much looked like the
| SF peninsula did 100 years ago, with dozens of street cars or
| cable cars and people walking with groceries. There are good
| bones everywhere, now lets shake off the dust and start
| improving things like bus service, affording a lane for a bike
| along these easy to navigate grids with commercial zoned
| relatively evenly throughout.
| rtlfe wrote:
| > permissive zoning allowing commerce near to housing
|
| Generally people who want to reduce car dependence are
| advocating for this zoning alongside their advocacy for transit
| and bike lanes.
| readams wrote:
| They seem to believe that by working to actively make roads and
| parking worse, then some sort of car-free utopia will emerge.
| Of course, the actual effect is that things are just worse.
| ruuda wrote:
| It's not unheard of. I live in a Dutch city. There are five
| supermarkets within 1km from my home, a tiny one, two medium
| ones and two larger ones. Now that I'm working from home, I
| usually walk to one twice a week. When I worked at an office, I
| biked to the office and took a small detour once a week to stop
| by a supermarket. Also, they have flash delivery here where you
| can order groceries and somebody will bring them to your door
| in literally 10 minutes. Those use e-bikes. There's also
| regular grocery delivery, one company uses these tiny electric
| vans, another uses normal vans.
|
| Flash delivery is only available in the big cities but the rest
| is pretty standard.
| rogerdb wrote:
| Not seeing it mentioned in the other replies, so I'll mention
| that (at least the way I read it) "our massive car addiction"
| should be taken as a societal addiction to cars rather than
| addiction of any individual. If someone lives in a place where
| a car is the only feasible way to meet their day-to-day needs,
| it's not fair to say they're addicted to their cars; however we
| might question why they find themselves in that situation in
| the first place. Often this comes down to societal pressures
| (zoning, lack of funding for other modes of transportation,
| etc.) which are largely outside the control of individuals. The
| challenge is to change the cultural mindset from "I need a car
| today, so cars are a necessity for life" to acknowledge that
| other options can be viable if we, as a society, are willing to
| recognize and seriously consider them.
|
| > ... the only real option that exists is reorganizing housing
| across the whole society to massively increase density and to
| mix commerce zoning with homes in a way currently unheard of.
|
| Places like this already exist (ie. basically any major urban
| center), but I don't think the intent is that every place needs
| to be like that. Small steps toward better options (eg.
| allowing limited commercial redevelopment in residential-only
| areas, improving the safety/speed/accessibility of alternate
| transit options) should be the short-term goal, and we can work
| slowly towards them. But societal pressure (eg. from NIMBYs and
| zero-sum car-first people) often makes even small improvements
| glacially slow or impossible.
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| > invest maybe 90 minutes to simply get to the closest grocery
| store and then be able to take home maybe 1/10th of what they
| normally load into their trunk. This false alternative is
| always brought up
|
| I'm not 100% sure I understand what you mean here, but my
| nearest grocery store in London is 3 doors away. My second
| nearest in 3 mins walk away. My 3rd nearest, 3 mins 30 secs
| away. My nearest big supermarket is 10 mins walk away. That's
| the alternative here.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Just curious, where in Europe is the nearest grocery store 90
| min away?
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Funny you ask: I'm moving in a few days to a remote place in
| France. Closest village, by walk, is 50 minutes away
| according to google maps. It's also all steep uphills and
| downhills, so bicycling there is _hard_ (I do have a MTB for
| fun and, darn, it 's hard to cycle there... Although the
| local policemen from the village do use bikes on non-rainy
| days).
|
| By car it's a 5 minutes drive. So 50 minutes vs 5 minutes.
| Bicycling would be 15 minutes then 15 minutes back but I'd be
| _toast_ due to the hills.
|
| Closest highway: 45 minutes drive.
|
| Closest city: 1h15 minutes.
|
| Driving my kid to school in the morning: second closest
| village, 12 km / 7 miles. By bicycle? More than 40 minutes
| just to get there. Car: 12 minutes.
|
| Of course I don't get the "vibrant" city life.
|
| But I do get shitloads of nature and a sky so clean at night
| I can not just see stars but the Milky Way too.
|
| As to where it is: I won't give the exact location but let's
| say "somewhere on the french riviera" (think Sonoma County
| vineyards meet the mediterannean sea: a little piece of
| paradise on earth with ultra-low density of population).
| [deleted]
| gomox wrote:
| I think the most plausible interpretation of that remark is
| that the OP has 0 friends in Europe.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > invest maybe 90 minutes to simply get to the closest grocery
| store
|
| But that's not how cities in Europe are laid out. The closest
| grocery store to me is 3 minutes by bike (1.19 km) and I live
| at the edge of my particular neighborhood (shops are usually
| concentrated near the center of neighborhoods). Even the city
| center (where the more specialized shops are) is only about 8
| minutes by bike (or about 15 by car due to traffic).
|
| Especially within the city a bike is always faster.
| vnorilo wrote:
| I live in a suburb in northern Europe. Mix of modest and not-
| so-modest townhouses. I sometimes choose to go to the second-
| nearest grocery store 900m away because I want to walk more
| than the 300m to the nearest one.
| readams wrote:
| I guess you just have to make multiple trips if you need to
| buy a significant amount of groceries? My grocery trips
| always involve more than I could carry by bike.
| karmelapple wrote:
| Is there any business you would frequent - a pub,
| restaurant, grocer, etc. - that's within, say, a 10 minute
| walk of where you live? I grew up in a city, yet everything
| was more than a 10 minute walk from my home.
|
| Have you visited a place where there were multiple stores
| within a 10 minute walk? Once I started living in places
| like that, my way of life changed in ways I never would
| have predicted.
|
| Walking home from work meant I walked right by a grocery
| store, and I could grab something quick. Would I always?
| Nope. Did I sometimes still do big grocery store trips?
| Sure. And would I sometimes even bring my car if I had a
| bunch of stuff? Yes, because I lived up a tall hill.
|
| The reason I mention this is that your well-established may
| simply change in unexpected ways that you never would have
| imagined.
| bluedino wrote:
| Chances are if you have an apartment in the city you buy
| far less food. Less room to store it and more options to
| eat out
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| Generally I just shop more often, my nearest grocery store
| is 3 doors down. There are two bigger ones 3 mins walk
| away, and a big one 10 mins walk away. When you're talking
| distances like that, buying more than you could carry
| doesn't make much sense. And if I did, I'd use Ocado or
| something.
| toyg wrote:
| The traditional model of grocery shopping in Europe is
| _daily_. That 's what our grandparents did - as it has been
| since the Romans invented the _urbe_ and exported the
| concept around the continent. The famous stereotype of
| French people biking with their baguette under an arm, is
| because people did buy bread every day.
|
| Then women started working more and more, and they had less
| time to shop for food, so the supermarkets happened here
| too - much later than in the US though, because of space
| and legal constraints. But there is still an attraction for
| the traditional way of life that keeps a significant amount
| of smaller and more central stores in business, keeping
| shopping more distributed: one day you buy fish, the next
| you buy meat, and everything fits in your bag.
| hedora wrote:
| The headline is demonstrably false, so clickbait.
|
| I see a space for cities/towns that were laid out before cars
| were common, and also for living out in the country.
|
| Most current development (in the US) seems to go to high
| density car-dependent developments that aren't walkable to
| anything. (They could partially solve this by making 10% of the
| development commercial, but choose not to.)
|
| I assume most of those new developments will be abandoned in my
| lifetime. There's no reason to choose such housing other than
| existing stock. They don't seem to be built to last, and don't
| provide basic amenities for young, middle aged or older people.
|
| Sadly, the people building them can cash out well before the
| value of such housing drops to zero.
| cbdumas wrote:
| > reorganizing housing across the whole society to massively
| increase density and to mix commerce zoning with homes
|
| Exactly.
| modeless wrote:
| A whole article about this without a mention of self-driving cars
| is silly. Even if you think they're still a decade away, they
| _are_ coming and they are going to change _everything_ about
| parking in cities.
| carlospwk wrote:
| What are they going to change?
| lhorie wrote:
| > In a study of Parkdale Village in Toronto, a quarter of
| business owners estimated that over half their customers drove to
| their business - in reality, just 4 percent drive.
|
| Come on, Parkdale is just behind Little Portugal and near
| Dufferin Mall, all very walkable areas, how is this a surprise?
| Repeat the study w/ Yorkdale Mall near highway 401 and those car
| numbers will shoot through the roof.
|
| The reality is that areas closer to downtown that are a hassle to
| park at will attract downtown folks and more suburban areas with
| big parking lots will attract suburban folks with cars.
|
| What's the point of cherrypicking one area and try to draw
| general conclusions about parking from that?
| a2tech wrote:
| The point is to drive their preferences and thoughts on how
| things should be home and reshape urban landscapes to fit a
| vocal minorities views on how things should be with the hopes
| that if they impose their will on the landscape it will reshape
| people into sharing their viewpoint.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Because even in city centres where most people walk, there's a
| perception among business owners that they would lose a big
| part of their customers if parking were replaced with for
| example bicycle lanes, while the truth is the opposite.
| sremani wrote:
| Cars are C++ of the transportation world, every body bitches
| about them but the entire cities and sub-divisions are planned
| and built around them.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Meanwhile in America, Old Town revivals in like every small city
| in the United States has used abundant free parking as a key
| driver to get customers into businesses.
| asdff wrote:
| Because sometimes there aren't even sidewalks from the suburban
| tract to the Old Town they are reviving, much less a safe way
| to bike let alone a bus route with any reasonable level of
| frequency. So they have to do it because There Is No
| Alternative. That's why actually having alternatives on offer
| are important.
| CommanderData wrote:
| Anecdotally certain areas in London shops with parking near or in
| front of the premises seem to survive better than shops that have
| no parking at all.
|
| I've seen certain areas in North London with no parking on very
| busy roads die within months of opening, repeat cycle of new
| shops that come and go, I can't imagine the costs to outfit some
| of these places.
|
| My thinking was the area just isn't right but less than 200
| meters down plenty of free short term parking and the area is
| bustling with businesses that have been around longer than I can
| remember.
| rtlfe wrote:
| > Anecdotally certain areas in London shops with parking near
| or in front of the premises seem to survive better than shops
| that have no parking at all.
|
| Presumably those are areas that don't have the bikes and buses
| the article talks about. You obviously can't make driving
| impossible without providing any alternatives.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > You obviously can't make driving impossible without
| providing any alternatives.
|
| This sums up my complaint about Strong Towns, Not Just Bikes,
| etc. They want to do things that will make driving impossible
| (or at least miserably difficult) now, and only maybe later
| do things that will provide alternatives for everyone.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| You can make this argument for any change that would
| improve cycling and transit though. Take street A, a street
| that right now is hostile to both; it only has car lanes,
| traffic is fast enough that it's intimidating to bike on,
| and buses get stuck in traffic. You'd like to get to street
| B: a street that people feel safe to bike on (protected
| bike lanes) and that enables transit to be fast and
| reliable (dedicated bus lanes or streetcar right-of-way).
|
| Now how do you get from A to B? At some point during that
| process, you'll have to take away space from cars. This
| might mean removing travel lanes, and it might mean
| removing on-street parking, but regardless, that is a
| necessary step to get to street B.
|
| That point is where people complain, "you're making driving
| impossible!" But _you can never get to street B if you
| never make that step_. And at the point you do, there
| generally also won 't be that many people biking or taking
| transit, because _you haven 't changed the street yet_.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > At some point during that process, you'll have to take
| away space from cars.
|
| Why couldn't you just build transit that's above or below
| the existing space for cars instead? Sure it might be
| more expensive or difficult to do, but at least it
| wouldn't be making people's lives worse the whole time.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| That is exorbitantly expensive by comparison and only
| makes financial sense when you have a large enough
| population in the area to support it.
|
| Local governments are not rolling in cash. If your town
| substantially raised your taxes to pay for that project,
| would you also complain about that?
| rtlfe wrote:
| > Why couldn't you just build transit that's above or
| below the existing space for cars instead?
|
| It's basically free to paint a lane red and declare that
| it's only for buses. Tunnels can cost billions per mile.
| josephcsible wrote:
| It's free in terms of direct monetary cost to do, sure.
| But there's a very high cost of banning cars from a lane,
| borne by everyone who used to use that lane but can't
| anymore.
| rtlfe wrote:
| Alternately: there's a high cost to not creating a
| dedicated bus lane paid by everybody who rides the bus or
| chooses not to ride the bus because it's too slow.
| dwighttk wrote:
| I just got an ebike with the intention of riding to and from
| work. So far I have chosen not to do it for the 5 work days I've
| had the bike:
|
| Weather is an issue: what do bike only people do when it is
| raining? Cold?
|
| First couple days it was still dark when I was about to head
| out... I'm hoping that goes away soon.
|
| I've misplaced my bike lock keys so I need to get a new one if I
| want to ride anywhere else.
|
| Even if roads were changed tomorrow to be 100% bike friendly, at
| least 80% of my car trips are too distant to bike without a major
| shift in my schedule. And that is with most of my long trips cut
| off since Covid.
|
| The electric motor does help with arriving super sweaty and some
| of the safety issues, but there are quite a few problems won't be
| solved by removing some parking and nicer bike lanes.
| asdff wrote:
| Not all your trips can be replaced with a bike, but if some do
| that's still a win. IMO there is a ton of low hanging fruit.
| For example, in rush hour traffic when I drive to work its
| 35-45 mins, because you are crawling at 16mph. On a bike it
| actually takes the same amount of time or less sometimes,
| because I can split lanes and come up to the front of lights vs
| having to wait through multiple cycles sometimes. Sure you are
| working but IMO the cardio is probably better for me than
| sitting for 45 mins straight. Ebikes are great too if you have
| some hills but imo even with just a road bike you can go for
| pretty far on flats without getting sweaty without having to be
| in great shape thanks to the gearing and how light the bike is.
| A ride able old schwinn road bike might only be $50 on
| craigslist too, so pretty disposeable if they get stolen often.
| You can throw your bike on renters insurance too if you werent
| aware for your ebike, maybe homeowners too.
| dwighttk wrote:
| (One thing with the bike lock is I can get a pretty nice one
| for the price of a tank of gas)
| Misdicorl wrote:
| You wear gloves and use less of the motor when it's cold. You
| bring a change of clothes when it's raining and learn to enjoy
| the rain
| dwighttk wrote:
| Gotcha... don't ride anywhere I can't change clothes when it
| is raining. And I need a rain proof backpack. And I need to
| add even more time to my transit when it is cold.
| Symbiote wrote:
| People in Denmark don't generally carry a change of clothes
| if it's raining. And I thought most backpacks were
| waterproof anyway.
|
| We use rain jackets, ponchos and/or waterproof
| overtrousers, depending how heavy the rain is. It's
| generally fairly light here, so my overtrousers don't get
| much use.
|
| Temperature is not a problem, just add or remove clothing
| according to the temperature. (Is this not obvious? I sound
| like my mum when I was 8 years old "it's cold outside, wear
| a coat!").
| asdff wrote:
| And with a car you might need to scrape off the snow from
| the windshields, and make sure your tires are in good shape
| so you don't hydroplane in rain. Everyone deals with
| weather in some way. Donning rain pants, some rubber covers
| over your shoes, and a rain jacket isn't so bad. All that
| rain gear is still going to be cheaper than even one new
| tire for a car.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| I may not have bought an expensive bike in a rainy
| location, but cold in itself is not the issue.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
| dwighttk wrote:
| 22% of all trips is considered to be a lot of trips? What
| is the break down of the other 78%?
|
| I can probably get close to 22% as long as Covid keeps my
| long distance trips suppressed. I thought when people
| were saying "I bike everywhere" they meant like 80% bike
| 20% walk or something.
| scoofy wrote:
| Raining and cold on a bike are just issues of wardrobe.
| Typically, a cycling cap, windbreaker, and gloves are perfectly
| adequate for most dry days above freezing.
|
| The most bike commuting city in the world is Copenhagen,
| Denmark. They manage the winters just fine. That said, getting
| from here-to-there is challenging for most novice bike
| commuters, and having experience friends in the transit
| alternatives community is the only way for this knowledge to be
| passed from one person to another.
|
| In effect, the fact that the dressing for weather has been
| nullified by cars for three generations has effectively
| hamstrung us all because of the loss of cultural knowledge.
| angmarsbane wrote:
| I spent two years commuting by bike and bus and by doing so I was
| much more aware of the stores within a 5 mile radius of me. I
| wanted to stop and spend my money and time BUT it wasn't worth
| missing my bus or risking my bike getting stolen so I never
| stopped. This was in Los Angeles. If buses were more reliable &
| enjoyable I would have stopped or gone back on weekends, and if I
| could trust my bike to still be there those businesses would have
| benefitted.
| asdff wrote:
| I do a lot of commuting via bus and bike in LA. You can always
| bring your bike into the doorway of the business and throw your
| ulock around the frame and rear wheel to prevent it from being
| ridden. I find if there are at least other bikes in the rack I
| feel better about leaving my bike out, and if its something
| like the front entrance or a parking lot where there is foot
| traffic I don't mind leaving the bike out on a rack while I'm
| inside and its during business hours, but I would never leave
| it out on a rack overnight.
|
| The bus is pretty annoying for getting things done, however.
| You can't exactly string together multiple errands unless shops
| are nearby, but luckily LA is dense enough where I can find
| redundant shops of a given category in every neighborhood. The
| bus was great for my commute though. No transfers, 30 mins on a
| bus that comes every 10 minutes vs the 20 min drive where I
| didn't have a parking space at work (and thus had to hunt or
| pay). It was on a route with a rapid and local bus line too, so
| really a bus came every 5 mins due to them being staggered.
| Transfers really kill a bus commute but sometimes even with the
| transferring, it remains the fastest way around. Certain parts
| of LA like the less bar heavy portions of the west side, you
| could be waiting 30 minutes at least for your ride to even be
| accepted, then it might be 15-20 mins before they slog through
| traffic to get to you. Rideshare is pretty spotty in LA outside
| of Santa monica, downtown LA, lax, weho, or hollywood, because
| the drivers rarely want to venture out beyond these areas and
| would rather stick to where the ride frequency is the highest
| due to the traffic. I do use the bus quite a bit for going home
| at the end of the night since its so cheap compared to surged
| rideshares. It seemingly runs until 4am and there are a
| surprising amount of people using it still at that time (I
| assume mostly third shift workers but a good amount of people
| who clearly are coming from the bars like me).
| TheChaplain wrote:
| Expensive and sparse parking kills businesses.
|
| I've seen a city center with hundreds of shops die out because
| businesses shut or moved to the newly built mall outside the city
| that has a huuge parking area.
|
| There is no reason to go into the city anymore, people can do all
| daily shopping and errands at the mall.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It seems like the future, at least in America where land is
| plentiful, is multi-core metropolitan cities. With smaller
| cores, not so many silly skyscrapers.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Since this discussion is mainly US-centric, and not NZ centric, I
| feel at liberty to ask this question even if it's not strictly
| about the article:
|
| I understand the argument that the U.S. is reliant on cars,
| because it is so spread out, and spread out because it is reliant
| on cars. This may be due to an alliance by automakers, marketers,
| and the government. Stipulated.
|
| But given that that it _is already the case_ , how would a plan
| to get people to ditch their cars actually work? Is there a plan
| that describes how to consolidate a sprawling population of
| hundreds of millions of people, who already own houses and
| property all over a massive country?
|
| Do the people in suburbs who drive everywhere just demolish their
| homes and move into apartments in the city? I say demolish,
| because in this scenario there are enough disincentives that
| nobody chooses to live in the suburbs anymore, like they have
| historical, so all these homes would lose their value.
|
| Maybe we still have those suburbs, but we imagine a mass transit
| infrastructure that replaces cars. That could work, but we don't
| have it, and it seems hand-wavey to me. Does anybody (not in this
| thread, just anywhere) _actually_ have a detailed plan for how it
| would work? And the answer isn 't "yeah: Europe!" because, as
| stipulated, the U.S. is currently laid out radically differently,
| in a way that just wanting it to be like Europe won't solve.
|
| I'm not arguing that cars are great, I'm just trying to figure
| out to what extent this is based on wishful thinking / science
| fiction, versus whether there's a serious plan behind it.
| belval wrote:
| It's a process that will take 50-100 years+. Like it or not
| there is no real incentive for people to stop living like they
| currently do. All you can do is tax fuel/carbon and stop adding
| car lanes to make people converge closer to the city.
|
| In practice though, this is where remote work can help. Most
| traffic in a city isn't people going shopping. It's people
| going to work. If we push for remote work as an alternative,
| and improve the quality of transit, the situation will improve.
| balozi wrote:
| What are the chances that millions of business operators across
| the world and over the course of decades are completely wrong
| about how traffic, including parking, affect their businesses? We
| could choose to believe that business interests are not public
| interests so to hell with what businesses want, but lets not
| harbor the lie that the businesses are mistaken in their
| experience.
| carlospwk wrote:
| Same as doctors not thinking washing their hands was useful
| until somewhere around the mid 1800s.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| As a midwestern suburbanite, these threads remind me that urban
| dwellers spend a lot of time thinking about me and the way I
| live, while I never think about them at all.
|
| This is probably dangerous.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| To be fair, a good portion of these urban dwellers are in one
| of like three cities in the US, and are _vastly_ outnumbered by
| suburbanites. Or they 're in Europe, which makes them pretty
| much irrelevant to US politics.
|
| I guess I don't blame them for thinking about it a lot, since
| in a particular niche circumstance it is probably disruptive
| and worth worrying about. But for those of us living in
| suburban cities, it's really not something on the radar.
| asdff wrote:
| The only urban dwellers who are spending time thinking about
| the midwestern suburbs are the ones who grew up in the
| midwestern suburbs and transplanted themselves to somewhere
| urban and saw a different way of life.
| jimmytidey wrote:
| I have a theory: small shop owners are disproportionately likely
| to be car drivers, and when they say parking is essential for
| their customers, what they are really worried about is measures
| that will make it less convenient to drive them selves.
| randyrand wrote:
| Most definitely. A friend owns a restaurant and their van is
| the lifeblood of getting food to the store.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I think the bias come from a pretty obvious fact: people who
| drive do 100% of the whining about parking and traffic. People
| who walk to the shop just come in looking happy and well-adjusted
| and ready to spend money. So the only thing the shopkeeper ever
| hears about transportation is how bad traffic and parking are.
| asdff wrote:
| Its also from who the business owners perceive as their
| customers. They probably associate car ownership with higher
| income levels and would prefer to make their business as
| accommodating for that customer as possible vs someone who
| takes the bus and is perhaps perceived as having less
| disposable income to spend at the business. Sometimes
| businesses reserve their parking for the most high income
| customers e.g. when they make it valet with a high price vs
| first come first serve.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Off topic, but I have never seen the "kerb" spelling before.
| robocat wrote:
| New Zealand English tends to be closer to UK English, with it's
| own quirks. However, it is trending towards US English due to
| media influence.
|
| Asking low quality questions is poor form. Generalisation about
| questions: You usually improve the conversation if you do some
| work: for example google your questions, and post your answer
| if you think it is interesting to others.
| https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=kerb+or+curb
| tomkat0789 wrote:
| I'm reading this while vacationing in Barcelona. We're staying in
| the city's Gothic Quarter, which has this labyrinth of narrow
| medieval streets. This evening we realized that the whole week of
| our visit we never got into a car, not even a cab.
|
| I can see the reason why people walking around spend more than
| people in cars. Today while returning from a tourist site a
| little early, we remembered there was an ice cream store we
| wanted to try, which turned out to be close to our subway
| station. On the last part of our walk back, we randomly noticed a
| unique indoor mall and walked around it just to pass the time
| (Malda Galeria? Turned out it has lots of board games, anime
| merch, and other "nerd" stuff!). I had made a purchase the day
| before on a similarly casual browse, so I resisted!
|
| Comparing this to a trip to Houston a month ago: we were on
| highways the whole time. Even if we did see something interesting
| (unlikely while flying through Houston's confusing highways),
| there's no way we'd stop navigation on Google maps, find an off
| ramp, make a left turn through busy traffic, then search for a
| parking spot... just to casually browse for stuff. How are you
| supposed to catch the notice of passerbys if you're a little shop
| keep? The fun stuff we did required planning, paying for parking,
| traffic, etc.
|
| Another YouTube channel that might convince you cars are horrible
| for cities: CityNerd is some sort of urban planning professional
| and has great videos about induced demand and a particularly good
| one about how expensive paying for a car is when you consider the
| full accounting (it's something like $10k a year).
|
| Bothering my local politicians about bike infrastructure has been
| on my to do list for months. I need to get to it!
| udkl wrote:
| > there's no way we'd stop navigation on Google maps, find an
| off ramp, make a left turn through busy traffic, then search
| for a parking spot... just to casually browse for stuff
|
| That's probably why the concept of malls is popular in the US.
| Get to a single shopping destination and walk around the
| complex for variety.
| asdff wrote:
| It's like, you hollow out your town making it as efficient as
| possible to leave rather than spend any amount of time. So
| then you have to build this artificial downtown where you
| actually can have that interaction space, because you
| destroyed your original interaction spaces. Only the more
| insidious problem with this is how malls suddenly control the
| entrants. Notice how most malls are filled with major chains
| who can actually afford the rent on these sprawling retail
| spaces rather than small owner-operated businesses like what
| used to make up these interaction spaces around the main
| street or square in these small towns. Plus you can't exactly
| add a shop to this mall. It's one giant hulking thing.
| Whereas back in the day, if you lived near the town and
| wanted to open a shop, you might have built one yourself in
| the setback in front of your house.
| melenaboija wrote:
| I don't think a lot of research and articles are needed, visiting
| any European city (or small town) is enough.
| readams wrote:
| I have visited European cities and doing anything requires huge
| time investments and careful planning.
| melenaboija wrote:
| Your huge time investments and careful planning (which I
| guess you mean planning more than: I have to go to my yard
| take my car and drive from X to Y and that objectively is
| harder than walking or taking public transportations) can be
| beneficial for the environment and local businesses.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| Having lived in several European cities: You'll learn it by
| heart in about three months tops. If course it's trickier for
| a tourist.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I was trying to figure out how I'd get to, around, and back
| from Hungerford, UK without renting a car, and concluded I'd be
| doing a fair amount of walking and a lot of waiting for the
| train. And a not insignificant amount of buying expensive
| rideshare transportation.
|
| I think if I lived there I'd definitely own a car.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| I'd just like to add some context:
|
| People seem to be talking about this much more now because of the
| prominent placement of the r/fuckcars subreddit's parking lot on
| the r/place canvas.
|
| If the whole fuck-cars premise or really anything about not
| owning a car, replacing car lanes with bike lane etc, sounds
| really radical/non-sensical to you, please spend some time on the
| Not Just Bikes YT channel, read a bit of r/fuckcars or r/lowcars
| and try to approach this with an open mind.
|
| I come from a rural European area, so some of the stuff these
| people say sounded a bit extreme to me, but you have to realize
| that some US/Canadian cities are absolute hellscapes compared to
| what we imagine a "city" to look like.
| zdragnar wrote:
| And then go to cities that implemented lightrail and bike lanes
| and got rid of some car parking to do it. Talk to the business
| owners there. None of them have recovered to anything like the
| preconstruction levels of business... And those are the ones
| who survived the long closure of the road to put it in.
|
| At least, that's the takeaway from the metro nearest me. At
| least they got a couple of shiny new luxury apartment buildings
| out of it. Maybe the hope is to gentrify all of the poorer
| businesses out to be replaced with hipster shops that won't
| complain.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| The article establishes that business owners are not the most
| reliable source on the impact affecting themselves.
|
| Got any actual data?
| zdragnar wrote:
| I drove through the area I'm thinking of a few weeks back.
| Maybe 40% of the businesses that were there before are
| gone, but much has happened in the past few years.
|
| I know of 5 that definitely closed because of it, at least
| 8 more that were torn down (including a grocery store and a
| Walmart) to put up a field for a soccer team right on the
| line (which may or may not have been built without the
| light rail going in). 3 more that I can think of didn't
| make it to COVID, but they were probably struggling
| beforehand and might not have survived anyway.
|
| YMMV.
| mdoms wrote:
| I think you're vastly overestimating the cultural impact of
| reddit on the general public. This is a huge talking point in
| New Zealand right now and I promise you it has nothing to do
| with /r/fuckcars which even I, a Reddit user, had never heard
| of.
| drstewart wrote:
| >so some of the stuff these people say sounded a bit extreme to
| me
|
| Excuse me? If the whole fuck-cars premise or really anything
| about not owning a car, replacing car lanes with bike lane etc,
| sounds really radical/non-sensical to you, please spend some
| time on the Not Just Bikes YT channel, read a bit of r/fuckcars
| or r/lowcars and try to approach this with an open mind.
| scoofy wrote:
| I'll second this advice.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes
|
| I'm a longtime mod in the /r/bicycling subreddit and have been
| a transit-alternatives advocate for years in 3 major cities,
| I'm a member of the lefty SF bike coalition, and am also a fan
| of strongtowns that leans toward the right side of the
| spectrum. This shouldn't be a left or right issue. I'd be happy
| to answer any questions about this topic.
|
| We a former football quarterback _was killed_ today because of
| dangerous pedestrian infrastructure. We lose 100 people in
| America per day due to, trivial fixable, dangerous automobile
| infrastructure. It 's a death toll we happily ignore, because
| it's better to just not think about it.
|
| https://www.strongtowns.org/
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/04/09/dwayne-hask...
| steelframe wrote:
| > I'm a longtime mod in the /r/bicycling subreddit
|
| I was a Reddit mod for a while, but after I reflected on the
| fact that Reddit pulls in nearly $200MM in yearly revenue
| thanks part to my unpaid labor where I primarily deleted
| Youtube video spam posts and idiotic flame wars in comment
| threads, I decided to spend my time and energy elsewhere. The
| next logical step was to stop contributing anything at all of
| value to Reddit. So every once in a while I'll visit a few
| subreddits to see if anything new or interesting happens
| (i.e., sort by Top for the last month).
|
| Unfortunately for r/bicycling I find the content to pretty
| much just be, "Hey everyone check out this picture of my
| bicycle!" If it's the goal of the sub to advocate for cycling
| infrastructure, I question how the top posts from just this
| past month accomplish that.
|
| * Check out this picture of my bike in the Ukraine!
|
| * Check out another picture of my bike in the Ukraine!
|
| * Truck driver slows down and stays behind cyclist going
| through a rather long tunnel with no shoulder to keep said
| cyclist from what seems like certain death otherwise
|
| * Cyclists near bike storage in the Netherlands lining up to
| leave the station
|
| * Cyclist climbing a steep hill
|
| * Cyclist forcing protesting trucks in DC to go slow
|
| * Check out this picture of my bike! (And I'm depressed!)
|
| * Check out this picture of my bike!
|
| * Silly stationary bike that actually moves
|
| * Check out this picture of my bike!
|
| * Cyclist holding up a line of traffic on a remote mountain
| road
|
| * Cyclists riding gravel
|
| * Check out this picture of my bike I got for cheap!
|
| * Check out this picture of my bike!
|
| * Calvin and Hobbes comic about bike/car drama
|
| * Video of flying down a remote mountain road
|
| * Picture of a mostly-empty bike storage room
|
| * 50-ish mile bike ride map
|
| * Video of a cyclist riding around for 60 miles
|
| * Tesla crashed into a shop with a sign against bike lanes
|
| * Check out this picture of my bike! And I rode 100 miles
|
| Anyway, you get the idea. r/bicycling could be so much more,
| but for some reason few visitors there seems to care much
| about anything except people posting pictures of their bikes,
| and for a lot of what gets upvoted, I just don't see why it's
| really even all that novel or interesting.
|
| I don't know how to fix that, or whether it's even really
| worth trying to fix. Like I said, I'm a jaded former mod on
| Reddit who just doesn't see much anything virtuous coming out
| of that platform.
| asdff wrote:
| It's not a bike problem or a reddit problem but a people
| problem. Forums were the same way if not worse because
| people had so much rep tied to their username. It's the
| same thing with all my different interests, it's like you
| can take out all the topic-specific language from the
| flamewars to the constant posts suggesting you buy x brand
| that the community has ordained as the best product there
| is for y use, and the forums would be perfectly
| interchangeable whether people are arguing/showing off
| about bicycles or skis or ham radios. The hobbiest internet
| self validates a lot of gear acquisition syndrome too. It's
| uncanny how similar they all feel no matter the topic at
| hand.
| scoofy wrote:
| -\\_(tsu)_/- I'm generally fine with it. I don't see
| Reddit as a vehicle to serve my interests, and I
| generally only passively moderate. Automod does most of
| the work.
|
| People like sharing pics of their bikes and I think
| that's fun, even if I mostly don't care.
| tomger wrote:
| Sadly WaPo article doesn't mention that the quarterback was
| killed by a truck.
|
| https://archive.ph/2022.04.09-161113/https://www.washingtonp.
| ..
|
| The article does link to a local newspaper that mentions the
| cause of death. https://wsvn.com/news/local/broward/dump-
| truck-fatally-strik...
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| They apparently edited the article at some point to mention
| the truck in the lede:
|
| > Dwayne Haskins, an NFL quarterback drafted by Washington
| and on the roster of the Pittsburgh Steelers, died Saturday
| morning after being struck by a truck in South Florida. He
| was 24.
| kkfx wrote:
| I generally that those "against car ownership" are just PR and
| PR-convinced guys, really, that's not intended as an insult but
| as an (hopefully) open minded consideration:
|
| - those who work and live in a "small" area, witch means in
| bike/foot range for anything do consume far less, yes, but to
| sustain those sober lifestyle many others run on km and km on
| gasoline trucks & other transports means;
|
| - European style cities (where from I came from, switched to a
| mountain area few years ago) are a nightmare in the modern
| world because being dense means being unable to evolve. There
| is no room to change because there is no space to move and when
| something exceptional but not so exceptional happen is a
| disaster;
|
| - most tend to think living in apartments, very concentrate is
| efficient, like a big factory tend to be more efficient than
| various little and spread, that's false actually. Environmental
| costs of tall buildings is FAR superior to many equivalent
| (even bigger) single-family homes, those buildings demand
| structure and infrastructure that single home do not need at
| all and not only: as dense cities they can't evolve. So we can
| build a "A-class state-of-art" building today, in 100+ years it
| will be the same building, probably in a dangerous shape, very
| inefficient and can't be rebuilt.
|
| We need a certain density because transportation costs and
| social life, idea sharing etc demand a bit of aggregation but
| we all know pushing aggregation is a vary bad move. Actually
| the dominant idea is "small and smart cities" but even these
| can't really scale because _today_ we can build them (well, at
| a hyper-big cost) for today needs, tomorrow we will be still
| unable to evolve them because of density. IMVHO the sole
| scalable model is the Riviera one, where living and working
| buildings are spread together but residential parts are single-
| family home with enough room to be rebuilt on generational
| change, and factories except for those who demand a certain
| size, can be single-purpose areas so something that can be
| rebuilt at a certain point in time with enough ground around to
| do so. That 's also have another positive aspect: it stop the
| possibility to concentrate to many people in small places
| making them nightmare like many modern city-states.
|
| In the Riviera model we have schools like campus where students
| can aggregate to develop ideas and social life, but again they
| are single-purpose complexes so easy to rebuilt/change as
| needed, there is a bit of travel but not too much, a bit of
| aggregation perhaps less effective than a dense city one, but
| without risk to became too dense etc.
|
| In medio stat virtus. A lesson too many forget.
| young_hopper wrote:
| I have lived in a US city with pretty decent public
| transportation without a car for several years until recently.
| The problem is just complete lack of flexibility.
|
| Want to do anything an hour out of the city - you're either
| begging for a ride or trying to fight the absurdities of
| renting a car.
|
| I now live in a cheaper area, more outside the city where it
| makes even more sense to own a vehicle, and its definitely
| worth it. All that being said, all of the shops I most
| frequently patron are walkable from my home or work.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| I feel bad for people who lives in cities without a car. It's
| sad life. You're stuck in a tiny bubble defined by a handful of
| transit stops. This is true in New York, London, and Paris all
| the same.
|
| Public transit is slow and shitty in every city in the world.
| If you compare travel time by foot to subway the subway merely
| cut it by 50%. Subways are about as fast as a moving sidewalk.
| The "better" a city's public transportation the longer the
| average commute time of workers. Spending two hours a day on
| the train isn't living. (Nor is spending two hours a day in a
| car.)
|
| I also refuse to accept that dense cities are cheaper than the
| alternative. _Everything_ in a city costs 10x and takes longer.
| London 's water pipes leak about 25% of their water. Replacing
| these pipes is effectively impossible.
|
| I'm hoping remote works kills the dense mega-city and lets
| people spread out a bit more.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Public transit is not slow and shitty in The Netherlands.
| wozniacki wrote:
| You mean on days other than those days when no trains run
| whatsoever?[1]
|
| [1] Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to
| run any trains today (ns.nl)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30901009
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| What are you talking about? I live in Stockholm, it's
| Saturday, 23:00, and I can be in the next city over, Uppsala,
| 70km away, at 0:04, using public transport.
|
| I takes 28 minutes to a random spot I just picked on the
| other end of the city, 10km away.
|
| Stockholm has 100 subway stations alone, and probably over
| 1000 bus stops. I have no idea why you should say that is "a
| handful".
|
| I can also bike everywhere, of course. Usually way faster
| than the car over medium distances.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Have you ever driven in London? Have you used public
| transport in London? Moving around is much more efficient
| using public transport. The underground + a couple of buses
| take you around everywhere faster than a car.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| You must live in the suburbs. Even in slow transit San
| Francisco, taking the bus is always faster, never mind
| Paris.that's not counting we'll never meet our climate goals
| with suburbs.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| > that's not counting we'll never meet our climate goals
| with suburbs.
|
| Nonsense. It's perfectly possible for us to achieve clean
| energy and clean transport.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| You know you can just rent a car, right? If you don't use it
| 5 days out of 7, it's much, much cheaper to rent one.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Renting a car (in the US) can cost $40/day.[a] That's how
| much gas costs me in a week or so. It's not cheaper to
| rent.
|
| [a]: Don't forget the $150-300 deposit (that takes a week
| to disappear). And also being pressured to pay for their
| $15/day insurance. Rental companies are expensive
| wardedVibe wrote:
| The cost of a car isn't just gas, you have to amortize
| the cost of the car depreciating, the maintenance,
| registration, etc. For a quick example,
| https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-
| loans/total-co... has a monthly cost of 690 using average
| (used) values and 0 dollars for gas. So you can drive 17
| days a month and still come out ahead renting. There are
| services like zipcar, or
| [hourcar](https://hourcar.org/individual/) that make
| renting significantly more convenient, though the costs
| are marginally higher if all of your trips are full day.
|
| I've done this calculation multiple times in my life, and
| because I mostly get around via bike (perks of living in
| college towns which have to invest in non-car
| infrastructure), its never been worth buying a car.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| > People seem to be talking about this much more now because of
| the prominent placement of the r/fuckcars subreddit's parking
| lot on the r/place canvas.
|
| I don't think r/place has caused this. There has been a massive
| increase in an anti-car sentiment in the last few years.
|
| Maybe the cause is people staying home more often now, so they
| care about whether their neighbourhoods are nice?
| SteveDR wrote:
| I heard of "r/fuckcars" for the first time a few days ago,
| and I've seen it mentioned ~4 times since then, and I've
| never visited r/place. From my perspective it seems like
| r/place has boosted this topic's prevalence. Kinda cool.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I think bike lanes, pedestrian access, and other transportation
| options are great - I bike where I can these days for health -
| but ultimately most people /want/ to drive everywhere if they
| can afford to, otherwise cars wouldn't have taken off in the
| first place. They had bicycles through most of the 1800s and
| people generally chose to maintain a horse if they could.
| People seem to generally want to be able to go far, with little
| effort, directly where they want, independently. In this vein I
| think the improvements in ebikes will probably help drive more
| popular will for bike lanes. But I really don't see many people
| being convinced to give up cars.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| You're neglecting the decades of government policy that built
| out infrastructure for cars specifically, and neglected other
| modes of transportation. Of course people are going to drive
| if the government is pouring billions into making driving
| fast and convenient while transit, bike infrastructure, and
| dense housing are either neglected or actively undermined.
| simulate-me wrote:
| I don't think GP neglected that. They gave the example of
| bikes vs. horses in the 19th century. People preferred
| horses because they wanted to go far with little effort.
|
| There was recently a thread on HN about why Europe had
| become so wealthy. Many opined that exploitation of other
| led to Europe's wealth, but others observed that such
| exploitation was only possible because Europe was already
| wealthy. The same applies here. Yes, the government had
| many car-promoting policies, but those policies were
| tolerated because cars were already desired and that desire
| made the car lobby popular, not the other way around.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| I mean, the bicycles they had throughout most of the
| 1800s were not at all as practical as today's. The safety
| bicycle that you'd recognize as a modern bicycle wasn't a
| thing until around the 1880s. I think the calculation
| would be different had people in the 1880s had modern
| bicycles.
| HellsMaddy wrote:
| > People seem to generally want to be able to go far, with
| little effort, directly where they want, independently
|
| This is exactly why I want to live in a bikeable, walkable
| city! I really don't consider babysitting a massive 2+ ton
| hunk of metal and plastic to be low effort or independent. On
| the contrary, it's the most draining and stressful thing I do
| on a regular basis.
|
| You mention "go far", but I don't think that's actually the
| priority for people. What they really want is to get to their
| daily destinations - the store, the park, the office, the
| mall. The distance is a consequence of the car, not the other
| way around.
|
| People will still want to go places that are beyond biking
| distance or need to do something that isn't practical on
| foot/bike, and that's fine. For most people, if they lived in
| a bikeable and walkable area, these would be a minority of
| trips. But for those minority of trips where a car makes
| sense, a car should be used. (Note: this doesn't mean they
| need to own a car.) Cars don't need to be eliminated from
| cities, just reduced and deprioritized enough to make biking
| and walking safe and appealing.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Car culture is industry-engineered, not at all natural.
|
| "go far, with little effort, directly where they want,
| independently" is bikes and public transit when the
| infrastructure is not car-centric.
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| Right, what's more independant than a bike? Cars, machines
| with thousands of moving parts that must be maintained with
| gas, oil, tires, insurance, registration, and other
| maintenance aren't in my view.
| ozim wrote:
| Not all natural is all the benefit.
|
| It is not even go far with little effort. It is go far or
| close without having to mind weather unless it is really
| windy when trees fall on the roads.
|
| When it is -15 degrees celcious or is pouring rain you
| don't care, have fun riding bicycle in such rain.
|
| So not caring about weather/elements is not natural.
|
| Most of the time I have to carry ~20kg of stuff with me,
| laptop, coat, umbrella, some food, some water. Getting
| groceries on my way back home.
|
| Carrying ~20kg or even ~30kg of stuff around all the time
| is totally unnatural. Well going 50km away from your home
| on a daily basis is not natural at all. But a lot of people
| to make ends meet need to go even 100km away on daily
| basis.
|
| Yes, going to your local shopping center with a car where
| you can walk in 10 mins and carry 5-10kg of goods is supper
| shitty and for 5-10 kg one could cycle with it. Going "all
| car culture" is bad is not the way to go, because for many
| people alternative is to "sit in one place and die" as they
| don't have shopping center available in walking distance.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| As someone who has bicycled most of my life in
| Scandinavia, neither pouring rain or -15 degrees are much
| of a problem. You are dressed for the weather and you
| soon don't even think about it. The only reason that I
| stopped bicycling in the winters for a while was because
| the car drivers tend to become "bicycle blind" when it's
| snow on the ground. I've had drivers stare right at me
| and then almost hitting me because they obviously didn't
| understand what they saw (a bicycle in the middle of the
| winter).
|
| I don't understand why you think you need to bring 20 kg
| of stuff every day. That is what I carry for a several
| day camping trip.
| teucris wrote:
| > but ultimately most people /want/ to drive everywhere if
| they can afford to, otherwise cars wouldn't have taken off in
| the first place.
|
| I don't buy it. People want cars since our infrastructure is
| optimized for it. But I seriously doubt that most people want
| cars specifically as the optimized transit solution for urban
| environments.
| a2tech wrote:
| I'm one of those people. I LOVE being able to go anywhere I
| want, when I want. I'm willing to pay for the privilege. Do
| you know what happens when you take away parking and make
| it difficult for me to bring myself (and lets be honest
| what really matters--my money) to a place? I stop going. If
| you make it difficult for me to get to where I want to go I
| read that as a rejection of ME, and I don't go places where
| I'm not wanted. My money and my car will go somewhere else.
| I'm not going to fight with people online about it, I'll
| just abandon those spaces.
| lovemenot wrote:
| Please don't take it personally. YOU are still welcome.
| YOU are not a fast-moving, noisy, smelly, ugly, large,
| heavy metal box.
|
| Other people who also self-identity as ME matter too.
| THEY will still welcome YOU. absent the brum-brum which,
| in aggregate with other brum-brums, is a massive
| annoyance to THEM.
| pandaman wrote:
| If people had been buying cars out of necessity then why
| would be there so many expensive cars on the roads? My
| commute's traffic is more than 50% SUVs and trucks, which
| cost way more than small hatchbacks and sedans.
| closeparen wrote:
| If you have the physical layout of suburban sprawl then
| obviously you will drive everywhere you can; it's designed
| not to be usable any other way.
|
| What we're asking for here are things like street and block
| systems, mixed use zones, bike lanes, buildings pulled up to
| the sidewalk instead of set back by giant surface parking
| lots, etc. When you have those things, the preferability of
| different transport modes change.
| ksala_ wrote:
| Absolutely, some people will do that. I personally know some
| that will drive 500 meters rather than walking (even in
| Europe) or that will drive instead of taking public
| transportation even when the public transportation is faster
| and cheaper.
|
| But, many do due to the lack of alternatives. Especially in
| the US/Canada, but also in Europe (especially anything built
| recently). People will drive because they don't feel safe
| cycling/walking, or because their destination is too far. Or
| they will own several cars while they could just go on with
| one.
|
| I don't think anyone is really advocating for completely
| removing cars from the street or cities. I personally don't
| own one (and this is a priority for me - I don't want one),
| but I do take rides with friends or a cab from time to time.
|
| What most advocates want (including me) is to stop
| prioritising cars in every single decision. Mixed zoning laws
| will remove lots of car trips if you can just walk to the
| shop when you need a couple of items or a coffee. Making
| streets car free (bar few exception) will make people come
| out and enjoy the street. Making people pay a fair price for
| parking will avoid subsidising a huge amount of land for
| private use. Removing parking will add lots of space on the
| streets for things that people enjoy. Better public
| transportation will favour everyone, especially poorer
| communities. And proper ciclying and walking infrastructure
| will allow more and more people to do so safely.
|
| If after that someone still want to use private cars, then be
| my guest.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| This is 500m. You would actually walk this if you had a car
| right in front of you?
|
| https://imgur.com/a/JKnghXG
|
| I'd bike it for sure but otherwise I'd definitely drive.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| Unless I'm in enough of a hurry to not be able to spend
| 15 minutes walking or I need to haul stuff, absolutely.
| pandaman wrote:
| This, again, comes to the cars popularity: laws and
| regulations "prioritize" cars because people who make them
| drive cars. The anti-car crowd to me looks as same as the
| anti-shoes types (there are people who insist on walking
| barefoot, I know a few) if[1] they started to insist that
| there is a vast conspiracy to prioritize footwear and only
| that holds off construction of heated sidewalks and
| prohibition of the "no shirt, no shoes, no service"
| signage.
|
| 1. To clarify: none of the barefoot walkers I know does
| that, they seem to be pretty content with the status quo
| and are not militant about propagating their lifestyle to
| everyone hence "if".
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| People only "want" to drive the ten minutes to the grocery
| store because that drive would be a half hour bike ride or a
| 90 minute walk. But they'd much rather the grocery store be a
| ten minute walk away.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I really don't think most people would choose to carey
| groceries for 10 minutes. I'd drive a half hour as opposed
| to carrying groceries for 10 minutes.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| I'd go by bike or use a hand cart
| b3morales wrote:
| There's a feedback cycle here. If it's long and difficult
| to get to the store, you need to buy a lot to make it
| worth the time. If it's easy and quick to get to the
| store, you don't need to buy nearly as much. Carrying a
| single small bag of groceries for 10 minutes shouldn't be
| a big deal.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| I don't want to drive everywhere, and I have chosen to live
| where I rarely have to drive. And I'm not alone.
|
| The first bicycle that looks somewhat like a modern bicycle
| was from around 1880.
|
| And many people prefer the car for the simple reason that car
| infrastructure has been prioritised.
| Scarblac wrote:
| I think many people /want/ to drive everywhere, but at the
| same time would prefer to live in the kind of place you get
| when /not everyone/ constantly drives everywhere (if they had
| some experience with such places).
|
| There's a tragedy of the commons here.
| toss1 wrote:
| Your comparison in the 1800s about horses vs bikes omits
| consideration of the condition of roads - it wasn't until
| very late that cyclists started succeeding in getting roads
| more paved. This development was also of course welcomed by
| motorists who also demanded more paving. Now both are
| competing for space on those paved roads.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > They had bicycles through most of the 1800s and people
| generally chose to maintain a horse if they could.
|
| They had something bicCle-like, which was less comfortable
| with way less bicycle compatible roads.
|
| Cobblestone and hills on a heavy bike without transmission? -
| Not good. Same with a paved bike path and either a lighter
| modern bike or even E-Bike? - Smooth riding.
|
| That said: Their are cases where a car is needed, given the
| right infrastructure that need however can be reduced, so
| that people can make the choice. Which in turn can create new
| possibilities for the young, disabled or old, which won't be
| there in a car centric place.
| rmason wrote:
| Detroit has the concept of twenty minute neighborhoods and
| they've created several. The idea is the basics of what you
| need are all within a twenty minute walk. The idea is unless
| you're doing something out of the ordinary you won't need to
| use your car. Or even own a car.
|
| They have executed pretty well with one glaring exception.
| Nearly everyone needs a weekly supermarket visit. Until fairly
| recently the city had no supermarkets for a population of
| 650,000 people. Recently a Whole Foods opened downtown as well
| as a couple of supermarkets on eight mile on the edge of the
| city.
|
| Those eight mile supermarkets were created to cash in on a
| multi-million dollar incentive offered by the state. However it
| was poorly worded, so while they're technically in the city the
| suburbs are right across the street.
|
| Many affluent highly educated people live in downtown Detroit
| and are forced to own a car so they can travel to the edge of
| the city to buy groceries.
|
| https://detroitgreenways.org/twenty-minute-neighborhoods/
| soared wrote:
| Post-car industry Detroit is such an interesting place. 20
| minute neighborhoods exist naturally in some places around
| Denver where there are occasional 1 block sections of
| grandfathered in retail zoning.
|
| But it is wild how easy it is to see Detroit's lack of
| grocery stores: https://www.google.com/maps/search/grocery+st
| ore/@42.4272993...
| FerociousTimes wrote:
| What about grocery delivery services in the city like
| Instacart?
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| There's no intrinsic need to use a car for your weekly
| groceries, if the infrastructure is built accordingly. A lot
| of European families in big cities manage that without having
| a car.
| lovemenot wrote:
| Even framing shopping as a weekly activity is inherently
| car-biased.
|
| A family of four consumes more in a week than could
| realistically be hand-carried in a single trip by both
| parents.
|
| Better to do shorter and more frequent visits on foot or
| bicycle. Combined with delivery services which are much
| more resource efficient than private cars for this purpose.
| namibj wrote:
| Yeah, 1-2 trips a week with a cargo backpack do the
| trick, for the person carrying said backpack. Bonus:
| replaces some gym visits.
| nsgi wrote:
| That seems like a pretty big oversight? All errands within a
| 20 minute walk except for the most basic and car-dependent
| errand there is
| rmason wrote:
| In Michigan we've got a Walmart style set of stores known
| as Meijer's. After Target built a small style grocery store
| in East Lansing Meijer's created one in downtown Lansing
| near the Capitol. Neither city had a grocery downtown in
| over fifty years. Locals just accepted you had to drive out
| to the suburbs to shop.
|
| Both stores appear to have a very strong business. So why
| doesn't either company create one in downtown Detroit where
| the demand would be a multiple of that in Lansing and East
| Lansing?
| bluedino wrote:
| There is a Rivertown Meijer. Different format but still.
| belval wrote:
| Probably because there is an upper limit to how much
| grocery you can haul back to your house on foot/bus. It's
| a completely different lifestyle.
|
| Living in downtown Vancouver, I would go to the grocery
| store every 1-2 days to get food, because it was close by
| so there was no reason to "stock up". However growing up
| in the suburbs, we would go to the grocery store once a
| week to get all the food for the entire week.
|
| A large scale grocery store/costco style simply doesn't
| make much sense as the place you go shopping every 1-2
| days. So its better to put it in the suburbs and have
| people from downtown go out of the city every few weeks
| to stock up on specific items.
| bluedino wrote:
| It gets to be 0f in the winter in Detroit. That's a 20
| minute walk I'd like to avoid
| antattack wrote:
| I lived car free for couple years, until had a first kid.
| Carrying child car seat with you gets old very quickly. And, in
| winter time, biking is not only unpleasant but dangerous (or
| rather more dangerous than in summer). Even if it's only for
| 3000km a year, our lives, kids lives (and their activities) and
| business we bring would be negatively affected if we had no
| car.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| It's fundamentally an infrastructure problem. Not just bikes
| has a good video on finnish biking
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU, and the difference
| is bike paths in the us/Canada usually get treated as a
| leisure, rather than an essential service.
| hbrav wrote:
| Man, the way bike paths, and even sidewalks, get treated in
| Canada is so frustrating. The city's instructions on
| shoveling your stretch sidewalk tell you that you must not
| shovel it I to the road... and then the city snowploughs
| come by and push a load of snow onto the sidewalk that
| you've already shovelled.
|
| There were places this winter where the sidewalk was
| impassable due to several feet deep on compacted "snow
| boulders" from ploughs. I get that you need to allow car
| access, but not at the expense of pedestrians being able to
| walk anywhere.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| The mere fact that the sidewalk isn't public property
| maintained by public works says a lot about the transport
| priorities.
| pm90 wrote:
| Absolutely. Cities can be beautiful and livable and affordable
| and pollution free. Currently most US cities are not. Most
| Americans have to own cars or other vehicles just to get
| around. It doesn't have to be that way.
| ericmay wrote:
| I agree. I don't see why we have to _force ourselves_ to live
| with 2-3 car households, insane taxes to pay for the upkeep of
| roads, and dependency on oil, gas, plastic, car manufacturers,
| and all of this other stuff when we could just build better
| neighborhoods. It's mind-blowing. Americans in particular go to
| Europe "wow it's so awesome here I could totally live here!!"
| And then it's like they land back home and their mind is wiped
| clean.
|
| We don't have to not have cars either. Why not 1 car per
| household for most people and most of your day-to-day
| activities within a few miles? You could bike, ride a street
| car, walk, any number of things. You can still live in rural
| areas and have a truck. I like trucks and acreage too! Just
| stop dictating that we _have to have life this specific,
| obviously bad way_.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "and their mind is wiped clean."
|
| Or they realize that most public transit here is unreliable
| junk. It's almost never on time. This isn't a huge deal until
| you have to catch a connection/transfer and being late by 5
| minutes mens you have to wait another 30-60 minutes for the
| next one. Or that they completely shut down after something
| like 1am. Oh, and I good luck to people not losing their job
| when the system goes on strike and you can get to work for a
| few days.
|
| I would love to have great public transit. Much of these
| issues are policy or design issues. The policy issues need to
| be addressed. If only there was some accountability to the
| public...
|
| Just for a fun story, my car broke down and I had to take
| public transit for a month. It was easier for me to walk 2
| miles (no real sidewalk for most of it and busy roads) than
| to rely on the bus schedule. It took me 1.25 hours to get to
| work using two trains and a bus, when in the car it would
| take 20 minutes.
|
| So as much as we want good public transit, we can't suddenly
| start using it if it doesn't exist. People have basically
| given up on it when schedules are a joke and the whole system
| can shut down for days or weeks.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| It depends on the city, but in bigger cities it's
| frequently the traffic from cars that keeps busses from
| being on time.
|
| Separately, there's a chicken-and-egg problem. In order to
| run busses every five minutes--which is what you really
| want--you need enough bus riders to fill all those
| vehicles.
| NumberWangMan wrote:
| The easiest way to solve the problem, as I understand it,
| is to ignore the urge to cover the whole area in bus
| lines, because it's expensive and many of them won't have
| enough ridership to justify the cost. Instead, look where
| your density is highest, change zoning to let it get even
| higher, and build, like, 1 or 2 bus lines with very
| frequent service (less than about 12 minutes gap). That's
| the magic threshold where you don't need to look at a
| schedule -- if you miss one bus, a 10-12 minute wait
| won't make much difference. And that makes it an
| inflection point for ridership too -- you can get a lot
| more people with frequent service, meaning you get enough
| riders to make the whole thing worthwhile.
|
| Best is if you can get a lane dedicated entirely to
| buses, and ticket cars that drive in it. You want buses
| to be a pleasant alternative to driving -- since you
| already have a walk at the beginning and end of your
| journey which takes time, it's nice if your bus can get
| priority over car traffic.
|
| And from there, build up the areas with good bus service
| more and more, add more buses as needed due to population
| growth, lengthen lines, add new lines gradually as people
| see the success of the first ones. Incremental
| implementation is the trick.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > Best is if you can get a lane dedicated entirely to
| buses, and ticket cars that drive in it.
|
| Counterintuitively this even is useful for people who
| have to go by car. A bus has a lot higher density in
| people transported. By making it attractive for people to
| use the bus they don't take away space on the road, which
| can increase the flow of the remaining cars, even if road
| space is reduced.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I really envision a hub/spoke wheel design. Run rail as
| the spokes. Once you get far enough out, the gap between
| the lines can be managed by a circular rail line and/or a
| couple bus lines. I guess I don't really like busses.
| xigoi wrote:
| Buses are much easier to add in a city that's already
| built for cars. You just build some stations instead of
| having to dig up the whole road to add rails.
| giantg2 wrote:
| True, but that's only busses. Rail lines were (are?)
| commonly 5-15 minutes off schedule depending on the time
| of day.
|
| For people to use the system, they have to trust the
| system. Depending on the city, rail infrastructure can
| get you close enough to walk to many places. The stuff
| that crushes trust even then is the rail lines being off
| schedule and strikes. Safety can be a major concern too,
| like the woman who was raped on a SEPTA train recently
| (WTF). These should be simple asks. Maybe we just need to
| charge/tax more so they have more money (or maybe we need
| better people making the decisions with that money).
| ericmay wrote:
| If only there was a solution to this problem. If only we
| could make the public transit go from "sucking" to "not
| sucking". Guess we can't. Throw in the towel. I'm buying a
| truck and America better damn we'll go bomb someone to make
| sure gas is cheaper than milk.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That's not a helpful comment, nor is that what I'm
| saying. People can continue to go to meetings and write
| their reps. But until the number of people doing that
| gets big enough, it's not going to change (ie a
| centralized system needs a significant number of
| supporters to overcome status quo).
| Victerius wrote:
| In order to have neighborhoods where cars are not required,
| you need density. That means fewer single family homes and
| more apartments. Many Americans have underdeveloped social
| skills and don't want to be/live near other people.
|
| Fortunately, in a country of 330M people, it is impossible
| for every household to be kings of their little kingdom, as
| house prices are teaching us.
|
| And, yes, I attribute the desire of some to go out of their
| way to avoid the company of others _entirely_ on
| underdeveloped social skills. We are humans, not wild beasts,
| and we should not shun our fellow humans.
| antattack wrote:
| Many Americans have noisy and inconsiderate neighbors.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| I hated every apartment I ever lived in. Dear god, why do
| apartments allow dogs?
|
| Or music at 3am. Or anything.
|
| When I bought my first house, the first thing I noticed
| was the silence. I could finally relax.
| occz wrote:
| There's a fairly simple solution to the issue of
| excessive noise from neighbours in apartments: have rules
| for when noise can be made and when noise cannot be made,
| and enforce them with fines/eviction.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Evicting people for _not paying rent_ has become a
| political issue. There 's no way you'd ever get away with
| evicting people for not keeping their dog from barking at
| the wrong times.
| xigoi wrote:
| If you can't prevent your dog from disturbing other
| people, then maybe don't get a dog.
| rcxdude wrote:
| Also building the apartments properly. It's amazing how
| good sound insulation can be, if whoever constructs the
| apartments bothers to put it in.
| ericmay wrote:
| Yea until spring time. Then it's endless lawn mowers,
| leaf blowers, drag racing, dirt bikes, and all sorts of
| other loud noises. Can't keep the windows open because
| it's too loud.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| HOAs get a lot of hate, but they were the only recourse I
| had against neighbors who became hostile when I tried
| talking to them politely about their 24/7 barking dog in
| the adjacent lawn.
|
| It's weird how socially acceptable it is to have a pet
| noisemaker in your backyard, and how socially
| unacceptable it is to have an issue with it.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Why can't that problem be something that local
| governments fix with actual laws? Why do we need
| organizations that have most of the power of a
| government, but none of the accountability or checks and
| balances?
| ericmay wrote:
| > In order to have neighborhoods where cars are not
| required, you need density. That means fewer single family
| homes and more apartments.
|
| Yes but not in the way you're describing. Apartments would
| be part of the single family home neighborhood. Which is
| good. People who are single for example can live in the
| community and meet people. Which brings me to the next
| point:
|
| https://i.pinimg.com/originals/37/9b/26/379b266652e0a2013c0
| c...
|
| > Many Americans have underdeveloped social skills and
| don't want to be/live near other people.
|
| Right. Because we choose to live in suburbs and make it so
| we are this way. We could just, ya know, not do this? It's
| like saying well I'm not using Google because Ask Jeeves
| has conditioned me to use a crappy search engine. Well...
| just stop then?
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'd like to see some sources on the reason for having
| underdeveloped social skills. Sure, exposure to
| situations is necessary to an extent. You still have shy
| urbanites as well as kind/inviting rural people. I would
| venture a guess that much of it is culture based (eg
| southern hospitality, NYC has a reputation for being
| gruff/big personalities, etc)
| ericmay wrote:
| I don't even know that we do have "underdeveloped social
| skills" if I'm being truthful. But if we do I think "how
| we live" is probably a good starting point since so many
| people are just cooped up all day.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Speaking as someone who likes rock climbing and also road
| trips, I'm not sure what the alternative is. Even in Europe
| (especially in Europe), you need a 4-wheel drive to access
| most of the climbing areas.
|
| I live in Canada and currently just have a hybrid, but it
| does limit me in what areas I can drive to for climbing
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| If you don't go climbing daily, access to good car sharing
| will do just fine. It is probably cheaper, as you'll only
| need to shell out for a 4x4 when you actually need it.
| euro_climber123 wrote:
| I don't agree with that statement. Here is a list of top
| sport-climbing and bouldering destinations that will not
| require a 4-wheel drive (source: me and my car).
|
| - Frankenjura - Elbsandstein - Margalef - Siurana -
| Chulilla - Albarracin - Finale - Osp - Kalymnos - Leonidio
| - Ceuse - St Leger - Gorges du Tarn - Les Calanques - Buoux
| - Fontainebleau
|
| As for multi-pitch climbing: almost everything in the Alps
| is accessible with a normal car and the customary approach
| (or a cable car).
| vondur wrote:
| This isn't the case here in the US. We have thousands of
| miles of off road areas that aren't accessible to non off
| road vehicles. But I do agree that a large portion of
| people here in the US that have huge lifted vehicles
| never go off road.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I've climbed in Canada, Italy, Germany, and Greece (but
| not a ton in Italy), and it seems like Greece especially
| has many climbing areas that are hard to access without a
| 4wd. I traveled around in a rental and bottomed out so
| many times, but also had to just give up and turn around
| on several occasions.
|
| It's been a while since I climbed in Italy, but I
| remember it being pretty similar.
|
| Admittedly, the limited climbing in Germany I did had
| pretty good parking access.
|
| I suspect there are many European countries whose
| climbing access is more like Greece though.
| euro_climber123 wrote:
| No need to suspect anything. My list included the major
| climbing areas of Europes major climbing countries and
| none of them require a four-wheel drive. Even some of the
| more secluded Swiss areas (Gimmelwald, Rawyl) are easily
| accessible in a camper van. And I know that for a fact,
| because I've been there myself.
| ericmay wrote:
| Simple, we don't optimize for edge cases. I live in the
| suburbs. You know how many people around here have 4wd
| Jeeps for their commute to the office that they have
| _never_ taken "off road" a single time?
|
| The solution is someone like you who does outdoor stuff may
| shell out for a 4wd vehicle. That's OK!! You just park it
| in your neighborhood or in your garage like everyone else.
| The majority of people who don't do these activities just
| walk and bike around and probably take their hatchback to
| visit someone once in awhile or pick up a larger piece of
| furniture.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I don't even think there's anything wrong with 2-3 car
| households being the norm in suburbs. I just want single
| occupancy vehicles banned from city centers, _at least_ in
| places like Manhattan (where I live). They 're dangerous,
| they're a waste of space, and due to traffic and parking
| requirements they're usually not even an efficient mode of
| travel for their owners.
|
| If we reserved a few roads in Manhattan for busses, large
| commercial delivery vehicles, and people with disabilities,
| and left everything else for bikes, scooters, and
| pedestrians, transit would be faster and more pleasant for
| _everyone_.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > I just want single occupancy vehicles banned from city
| centers
|
| Why be so authoritarian? It's one thing to say "I think
| single occupancy vehicles are inefficient and bad, so I'm
| not going to use them", but it's another to say "I think
| single occupancy vehicles are inefficient and bad, so I'm
| going to take away everyone else's choice to use them".
| Scarblac wrote:
| Cars need roads and parking space, those take away other
| people's chance to have a quiet, safe, pleasant city
| center just as much.
|
| It's not a matter of one side being authoritarian,
| there's conflicting interests.
| kempbellt wrote:
| > right to a quiet, safe, pleasant city center
|
| Wait...these are _rights_ now?
|
| Who do I sue for not having any of these?
| Scarblac wrote:
| I didn't intend to enter _that_ discussion with that word
| choice, so I changed it.
| cowmoo728 wrote:
| Single occupancy vehicles take away my choice to bike
| safely in downtown Manhattan because most of the
| available space is dedicated to oversized cars.
| josephcsible wrote:
| What do you mean by "dedicated to"? Are there streets in
| downtown Manhattan where cars are allowed but bikes
| aren't?
| philipprk wrote:
| You're also (in some cases) allowed to swim in the same
| rivers as alligators do. Yet that's not a good idea since
| the alligators make swimming there pretty dangerous. Same
| goes for riding a bicycle on roads full of reckless car
| drivers.
| solveit wrote:
| It's funny how banning single occupancy vehicles is out
| of the question for being overly authoritarian (you're
| downvoted on HN, but I bet you'll win most actual votes
| in actual American cities), but designing a city center
| with no roads so _no_ vehicles can use them isn 't
| usually considered authoritarian. People have weird
| intuitions about rights and commons.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Because a car is much more dangerous than a bike and
| regulated much looser than a bus or a truck. There's a
| high likelihood on an auto heavy street that as a cyclist
| I gravely hurt myself or lose my life while the driver
| only had to pay a fine and or higher insurance. I'd
| gladly support an alternative where any accident with a
| cyclist or a pedestrian results in immediate license
| seizure, but that's even more politically dead in the
| water than closing a street off from cars in the US. Cars
| in the US are very lightly regulated heavy machinery.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > I'd gladly support an alternative where any accident
| with a cyclist or a pedestrian results in immediate
| license seizure
|
| If I'm going the speed limit, and a pedestrian on the
| sidewalk 6 inches away from me (because someone decided
| that narrow lanes are better) decides to step in front of
| me, not at a crosswalk, avoiding an accident would
| require me to have a negative reaction time. Are you
| saying I'd deserve to have my license seized in that
| case?
| ericmay wrote:
| > I don't even think there's anything wrong with 2-3 car
| households being the norm in suburbs.
|
| I don't either. I think the suburbs themselves are what is
| wrong. Having 2-3 cars is just the adaptation for a moronic
| building style.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| And I'm sitting here in my European suburb and
| considering if we could get rid of our single car. When I
| still had to go to the office I always bicycled or took
| the bus. There's a grocery store and pharmacy within 5
| minutes walk, but we order most groceries online anyway.
| The kids daycare is 200 meters away, and when they begin
| school it will be a 10 minutes walk. The car is useful
| when we go on holidays the whole family or when I need to
| buy some lumber.
|
| From where I live now it's hard to fathom why any family
| would need two, or even three cars. Those suburbs that
| made that a necessity must be considering utter failures.
| hunter-gatherer wrote:
| Most of my experience woth "europe" is Finland as I have
| lived there a couple years and married a Finn, so I don't
| dare say "european vs american suburbs" but I do dare say
| that what constitutes as a "suburb" in Finland is much
| different than what you can find in the US. Here, we have
| suburbs that just seemingly go forever, with nothing but
| houses. Usually when there is a suburb in the US, it is
| zoned such that it is only homes, and nothing else. It is
| the worst (imo)
| lost_soul wrote:
| In American suburbs it's typical for there to be nothing
| but houses within a 3 to 5 mile area. Any supplies or
| groceries must be transported a significant distance in a
| pedestrian hostile environment.
| tpm wrote:
| That would be hell for me. I have never lived more than
| 1km from a grocery store, even in our village 20 years
| ago. Most time, including now, about 100-200m.
| mountainboy wrote:
| I blame government zoning laws. These prevent
| entrepreneurs from opening restaurants and markets near
| to where people live.
|
| In a truly entrepreneurial society, anyone can operate a
| small business open to the public right out of their
| house. Not so in the US states/counties I've ever been
| to.
| ericmay wrote:
| I wish that were the simple fix, but Houston exists. No
| zoning laws (I think/read) that would prevent better
| urban planning.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Zoning laws came to be because of the classic "tragedy of
| the commons" - enough people were too greedy and built
| polluting, noisy or traffic-intensive businesses right
| adjacent to people's homes.
|
| Letting "the market" do whatever it wants will only lead
| to one thing, and that is greedy people scalp up the
| cheapest land they can find (usually, in quarters where
| poor people live) and build extremely polluting stuff
| there. Zoning laws exist to guarantee even the poorest of
| the poor at least a _basic_ standard of protection -
| although I _do_ admit that there exist a lot of cases
| where zoning laws are abused to protect the interest of
| the elites primarily.
|
| Fun fact: Back in early Roman times and for a long time
| until the 18th century, that also had a public health
| aspect - burial sites, slaughterhouses and similar
| businesses were banned from the inner city and, if there
| was a river, placed on the downstream end so that the
| risk of pollution was reduced.
| bombcar wrote:
| > Americans in particular go to Europe "wow it's so awesome
| here I could totally live here!!" And then it's like they
| land back home and their mind is wiped clean.
|
| The "tourist" vs "working" views of a city to the side, I
| think the big solution isn't revamping existing cities at
| first, it'll be creating pockets of new development with
| different goals.
|
| And there's lots of weird things that affect American suburbs
| - minimum road width is often tied to service vehicles
| (specifically fire and garbage trucks); these could be
| overcome with some thought.
|
| I've often wondered if a "carmpromise" city could be built -
| let's assume a ten minute walk is half a mile. Imagine a
| strip of city a mile wide where cars are effectively banned.
| Parking garages at the edges provide car access for those who
| have them, and the rest is entirely built around
| walking/biking. Perhaps a tram line runs through the middle.
| Then those who want cars (basically everyone) can move in
| without fear, and if some? most? eventually realize they're
| not using them they can save money by eliminating them.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > minimum road width is often tied to service vehicles
| (specifically fire and garbage trucks); these could be
| overcome with some thought.
|
| We have fire and garbage trucks in Europe too and we manage
| to build small scale streets in the suburbs and rural areas
| without compromising on emergency services. The key
| difference is we plan these streets for the expected amount
| of traffic which will be a couple cars per hour at the top
| and have regular intersections with other streets where,
| should there be the rare case that a vehicle comes up
| towards you, there is enough place to act as a bypass.
| Americans seem to plan all streets as if they would be used
| at capacity 24/7.
| bombcar wrote:
| The main thing seems to be requirements to turn around -
| a normal street here is wide enough to park five fire
| trucks side by side. It's way too wide for what we need.
|
| To be fair the streets date from before the invention of
| the car, so maybe it's something else.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| "If you don't agree with my position, spend some time listening
| to my side's propaganda." Not Just Bikes and StrongTowns is not
| where one should go to educate themselves, because those
| sources are highly, highly biased.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| I dread the idea of moving back to .ca from .nl for exactly
| this reason. Hellscape is right.
| danbmil99 wrote:
| I've lived half of my adult life in Manhattan and the other half
| in Silicon Valley in a suburban environment.
|
| It's nonsensical to assume that a place like Silicon Valley could
| ever give up their cars and the parking necessary to go to stores
| restaurants etcetera. It simply cannot happen.
|
| In New York, all of my friends lived in apartments within a
| quarter-mile of the subway system. If I was living on the upper
| west side and wanted to meet my friends in the village, a 35 to
| 40 minute train ride was by far the easiest way to get there. No
| one owned a car (many of us didn't even have licenses).
|
| Before Uber and Lyft, we took taxis if it was the middle of the
| night or freezing snow; otherwise we took the subway.
|
| In Silicon Valley towns, people live a mile or more from the city
| center. There is absolutely no practical way to get to shops and
| restaurants other than to take your car and park near the center
| of town. Once in a while on a whim if the weather is nice, I
| suppose a family a bit nearer than average to downtown might bike
| together to brunch on a weekend. But if you need to get a quart
| of milk to make coffee, or get some food for dinner, you use a
| car. There's no other option.
|
| The future I see plausible would include low carbon impact cars,
| small electric vehicles, self- driving, like an army of Lyft and
| Uber at very low cost.
|
| I think that's the best future we can hope for without a radical
| restructuring of Suburbia, which is simply not in the cards.
| kijiki wrote:
| My wife and I live in Mountain View, which is arguably the
| heart of the valley. I had to buy a trickle charger for our
| car's battery, so we wouldn't have to jump it around once a
| month whenever we went to drive somewhere.
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| Cities and towns can update their zoning to encourage denser
| town centres that make walking and cycling viable. That doesn't
| amount to a radical restructuring of life and increasing
| dependency on cars, EV or not, is not a way out of the problem
| of spread out, lifeless towns.
|
| Suburbs are antithetical to good communities and the faster we
| can develop away from them, the better.
| locallost wrote:
| This is pretty obvious at least for some cases. Of course it
| depends a lot on the structure of the street / city. I haven't
| been much in the US, but I can imagine it's not affected by some
| issues as much as other places. It comes down to space, and how
| you use it. I spent a couple months living in a busy street of a
| European city. The amount of parking space took easily 2-3x that
| of the sidewalk which was only maybe 2 meters wide. It was a busy
| street for pedestrians also and it was pure hell even walking
| there, but especially just stopping to see a shop window. You
| would automatically become an obstacle for all the other
| pedestrians, so almost nobody would ever do it. You can imagine
| that this is terrible for business - cutting down on the parking
| space would give space to pedestrians and they would have an
| easier time checking out shops and spending money there.
| robocat wrote:
| That is an awfully biased article.
|
| > "A study in Berlin . . . more than 51 percent of customers
| lived within that walkable distance."
|
| So what? Even in Berlin, businesses care about the 49% of car
| travellers. Plus, a study in Berlin not that relevant to
| Auckland: Berlin has a population of 3.6M (area 892 km2 with 1.2M
| passenger cars and a metro system), Auckland 1.6M (area 1,086 km2
| with 0.74 passenger vehicles per capita and no metro system). New
| Zealand has a population of 5M.
|
| Personally I know lack of parking affects me. I live in the
| suburbs of Christchurch where a car is necessary. I rarely go
| shopping in town, because our city council has been making the
| city centre more difficult to access (expensive parking,
| congestion due to slow zones and newer slower traffic signals,
| removal of street-side parking). I love pedestrian zones, but
| there needs to be a way to get to them.
| munchler wrote:
| It's not even logically consistent with itself. The article
| starts by saying that we have a "massive car addiction", then
| talks about a village where only 4% of business customers
| arrive by car. If true, this leaves totally unaddressed the
| question of where all the car addicts are actually driving to,
| and what to do about it.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Indeed, the city near me, that I used to live in, has a CBD
| that is dying a slow long death. The council keeps doing
| initiatives to try to prop it up, but at the same time keeps
| making it less and less car friendly, while the public
| transport continues to suck.
|
| Meanwhile the large outdoor mall on the city outskirts is
| thriving, because of the easy parking.
|
| It doesn't need to be much, decent size parking building with
| an arterial access actually in the CBD would work. Let people
| drive to the CBD and wonder around when they get there.
| matsemann wrote:
| Making it harder to access by car is a feature. You're not
| boycotting the city centre because you find it hard to park, it
| was actually them throwing you out. The people living there
| decided it's not worth it to cater to the few individuals
| demanding to drive everywhere to the detriment of others.
|
| Rather safe, living and cozy streets for the inhabitants, than
| easy access for the suburbians.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Decades of evidence indicates how bad stroads, parking and car
| culture in general are for society.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Most HN users, especially American users, don't know that EU
| has 292 million cars. 780 cars/1000 capita. USA is not much
| different: 816 cars/1000 capita.
|
| I live in Bay Area and people here think that EU is a utopia
| where cars do not exist and everyone just walks. They have a
| cartoonish caricature of EU in their minds.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Yes, but Bay Area and Europe are different scale :)
|
| While I was still living in the Bay Area, once I thought I
| could walk from the car dealership to the rental car company,
| because on google maps it looked quite close... big mistake.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I live in Oakland. You'll find Oakland to be more walkable
| than the rest of the bay area (although you'll get robbed
| by the end of your walk, but that's not the point here). A
| rather strange concoction of terrible local politics, great
| food, crime through the roof, homelessness everywhere,
| distorted views of the rest of the world and even the rest
| of the bay area, very smart people working on great ideas,
| very smart people on ideological crusade, deep history of
| multiculturalism and great beer.
|
| Oh, and potholes. I feel like it is a secret plot by the
| city to punish car owners.
| user_7832 wrote:
| 780 cars/capita is pretty high lol... Is it supposed to be
| per 1000?
|
| Btw it does depend where you live but in the Netherlands you
| can get by without a car mostly fine if you live in a city.
| The biggest issue is transporting larger goods (basically any
| IKEA trip), but it's certainly possible (eg by renting).
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Lol corrected. Yes, 1000 people. I just googled for it, but
| having travelled extensively in Europe, I wanted to comment
| on what people of Bay Area really think about Europe. It is
| very...VERY distorted.
| bombcar wrote:
| The main difference I've noticed is that I have met people
| from various walks of life in Europe who literally couldn't
| drive (no license) and got around fine.
|
| Only in New York have I met someone like that here; even
| those who majority took public transit had cars or at least
| a license.
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| I'm in my late 20s, live in London, and that describes
| most people I know. It's not worth owning a car here, so
| people just don't end up taking their test. Even if I
| wanted to take it, I wouldn't get a car so would get
| rusty real quick.
| rtlfe wrote:
| This data is old, but shows that despite similar numbers of
| vehicles people in other countries drive many fewer miles.
| https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar4.htm
| rootusrootus wrote:
| America is twice as big as Europe by area, so driving more
| miles on average doesn't seem surprising.
| rtlfe wrote:
| The size of the country is irrelevant. The vast majority
| of personal car trips are within a metropolitan area.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Most Americans have a bike in the garage, but that certainly
| doesn't make us the Netherlands.
|
| I would be curious to see what the usage patterns are. A
| quick google shows that the average mileage for Europeans is
| around 7k, while the average American drives 12k. So it would
| seem that Europeans drive about 60% less despite the same
| access to vehicles...
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Color me surprised. USA is vast.
| beebeepka wrote:
| whiteboardr wrote:
| You mean urban societies?
|
| Where do your groceries come from and how should these people
| taking care of ensuring you get to eat get around?
| vmception wrote:
| urban societies built within the 20th century are very
| different than urban societies built before then
|
| they both have roads, the only difference is that the 20th
| century ones were built around car culture. car culture is
| not talking about people delivering food for the residents.
| user_7832 wrote:
| I don't exactly get your point. Stroads are generally more
| common in residential areas to the best of my limited
| knowledge. The bulk of commerical transport likely occurs on
| much larger roads and highways where trucks mainly ply. Short
| of last mile transport there isn't much overlap.
| quantumwannabe wrote:
| "Stroads" are in commercial areas by definition. A typical
| neighborhood designed after the car became popular does not
| have any multi lane roads inside of it. It will have them
| around it, but people who live in the neighborhood will not
| be directly on the arterial roads. The larger road used for
| commercial transport in low density areas is either a
| "stroad" or highway.
|
| Please take five minutes to look on Google Maps before
| commenting about neighborhood design in a country 5000
| miles away.
| tifik wrote:
| Long distance logistics (should) use roads. Not streets.
| Urban societies should develop around streets, not roads.
| rtlfe wrote:
| > Where do your groceries come from and how should these
| people taking care of ensuring you get to eat get around?
|
| What are you trying to say? You obviously don't need freeways
| and 6 lane roads running through city centers to deliver
| supplies to stores and restaurants.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Obviously, the whole anti-car movement, sentiment, whatever
| we call it, is mostly centered around urban societies. You
| don't see many stroads, parking lots the size of an European
| town and multi-hour traffic jams full of single-occupant SUVs
| among the wheat fields in the middle of nowhere.
|
| It would be great if even rural communities didn't need
| expensive, polluting cars to be able to live their lives, but
| AFAIK they're not a priority now. Cities are where it's all
| falling apart.
| sandwichinvest wrote:
| My groceries come from farms, which I assume transport their
| food in individual SUVs.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Where do your groceries come from and how should these
| people taking care of ensuring you get to eat get around?_
|
| Obviously before cars were invented it was impossible for
| people in rural areas to bring food to people in urban areas,
| so all the people in urban areas starved to death. /s
|
| Humans managed to feed urban areas for millennia before the
| internal combustion engine was invented. I'm sure if city
| design was changed such that people could walk, cycle, and
| take public transit to work and to shops, various ways of
| getting goods (including food) into urban areas will be
| thought of.
|
| And putting emphasis on urban layouts where people can get
| (say) 90% of their day-to-day needs satisfied without relying
| on automobiles does not preclude cars being available for the
| remaining 10%. Such layouts simply turn cars from being a
| _need_ -to-have to a _nice_ -to-have item in one's life.
|
| We're talking about changing the _emphasis_ of urban design.
| Most "bans" on automobiles focus on person transportation
| vehicles, and not eliminated commercial delivery. It may in
| fact be _easier_ for deliveries since all the single-
| passenger cars will be reduced, thus potentially lowering
| general traffic volumes.
|
| See the _Not Just Bikes_ channel for various videos by a
| Canadian who grew up in a car-centric suburb to people-
| centric Amsterdam:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes/videos
| epistasis wrote:
| If there's a stroad, it's a suburban society, not an urban
| society.
|
| Urban societies have existed for millennia, and before cars,
| people weren't all riding around on horses to accomplish
| their daily life. Personal transport was the exception, not
| the rule.
|
| People in the US think that stroads and roads and cars are
| the only way to live, because we have outlawed other forms of
| living. Our lack of low-car city designs isn't because people
| don't want them, or because they aren't conducive to modern
| life, they simply don't exist because they have been banned
| from the marketplace.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Yeah we used to live that way. Most people didn't like it
| and bought a car when their personal economic circumstances
| allowed for it.
|
| If people really wanted to live packed together like a hive
| of insects, we would not have suburbs and small towns.
| People live in high density situations because they have
| (or perceive that they have) no other choice.
| asdff wrote:
| Must be why those cramped penthouses in manhattan are so
| cheap, right? Who would want to live like an insect after
| all? Can't be any benefits to that, nope.
| gravypod wrote:
| It can be both. We can have scarcity of access to a
| resource (entertainment, dining, culture, etc) which
| makes another resource (housing) much more expensive.
| There can be a relation to what people want access to and
| where people need to live.
|
| Places like NY have extremely high densities of cultural
| resources and extremely low densities of housing. This
| doesn't mean people _like_ the housing, it just means
| people like the cultural aspects.
|
| This begs a big question: why do we pack all of our
| cultural institutions into a small area? Is it more cost
| effective? I would have a hard time buying that due to
| how many restaurants, businesses, etc close in Manhattan
| for not being able to catch up with rent. I think it's a
| cyclical issue we see in other areas. Why is Shenzhen the
| "only" place that manufactures electronics? It is likely
| a network effect causing this. Factory A can sell to B,
| C, and D which can all sell a similar fan out. The same
| likely happens with cultural institutions. Starting a
| restaurant supply company? Well, you'll look for the
| place with the most restaurants. Starting a restaurant?
| Look for the place with the most supply companies. Want
| to find a place to live? Look for the place that has the
| best optimization of {Rent, Entertainment, Food,
| Employment}. For me and many others: this is NYC
| (actually NJ with a commute to the city).
|
| A bigger follow up question: Does it need to be this way?
| I don't think it does. Living in Manhattan/Brooklyn/etc
| is way more expensive than living in the suburbs of NJ
| even factoring in double taxes and commute. I currently
| pay $1,500/month in rent for a 1br 1bath. A friend who
| lives in Brooklyn (with a 15-20 min shorter commute) pays
| about $3,500/month and _needs_ to pay $300 /month in an
| MTA card while also spending way more on groceries and
| cost of living stuff than I do.
|
| _If_ you owned your residence in a suburb even with
| taxes my guess is it becomes much more financially
| beneficial even if you need a car. If we got a little
| smarter and built trains, street cars, buses, subways,
| etc in suburban areas with sprawl we may not even need
| cars for most Americans.
|
| If we have separate single-family dwellings than the
| damage fires and poor maintenance can cause are limited
| (blast radius). We can, as a society, gradually "roll-
| forward" new standards in electrical codes / eco friendly
| by renovating homes as people move.
|
| The only reason we don't have a single family home to
| give to everyone who wants one is because we haven't
| built them. Once everything is said and done though the
| cost of building an apartment complex in NYC is not much
| cheaper once you factor in the huge fees for doing any
| sort of construction in NYC.
|
| I personally think that if we, as a country, decided to
| build walkable small towns that were interconnected by
| fast moving and reliable public transit and forced
| businesses who could work remotely to do so many people
| would much rather live there than in the city.
| txru wrote:
| An inner city road doesn't need to be 4 lanes wide if it's
| primarily carrying small box trucks to local stores.
|
| And I think it's pretty apparent that quite a lot of
| restaurant employees rely on public transit, or feed a
| substantial portion of their income to one car, whose
| breakdown causes loss of employment. Forcing people to need
| cars from arbitrary point to point is a regressive tax.
| asdff wrote:
| People who are perplexed about why a business would not want a
| bike lane need to take a look at the history books. It was
| business owners who were pushing for streetcar lines to be paved
| over into stroads like Geary blvd in San Fransisco. They see
| their clientele as one traveling by private car over one reliant
| on public transportation, and probably feel they don't even want
| to be associated with public transportation and the image of who
| typically rides it.
|
| You see the same tired dog whistle arguments come up today. "Who
| is going to even use it?" the residents of Beverly hills might
| say to the purple line subway extension under their city limits,
| whose arteries carry some of the highest levels of bus traffic in
| the country. I think the subtext is clear who they don't want to
| be building infrastructure for when you look at the demographics
| of who is and isn't currently using public transit in a place
| like Beverly Hills.
| tomohawk wrote:
| If the advocates are so positive about it, then they shouldn't
| mind putting money in escrow to be paid out to any business that
| are negatively impacted by this.
|
| Do any of these advocates have an ownership stake in any
| properties or businesses in the affected area?
| [deleted]
| rtlfe wrote:
| This has been shown in studies over and over, but seemingly most
| businesses thinks their situation is somehow special and actively
| lobby against their best interest. Even 5th Ave in Manhattan, one
| of the busiest pedestrian areas in the US has had street
| improvements indefinitely delayed because businesses are fighting
| to defend the vehicle lanes.
|
| https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/04/08/city-dot-still-mum-on...
| sacrosancty wrote:
| It depends on the location. Here's a business owner whose
| situation really is special:
|
| https://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/300528260/roa...
|
| But even so, the business owners losing business shouldn't
| matter at all for such decisions. Business only exist to serve
| their customers. If customers don't want or need them, then
| they should disappear. The real concern is whether customers do
| still want shops there but are unable to access them because of
| lack of parking.
| ry167 wrote:
| That article is about Shannon, a town of 1500 people on a
| state highway. There is a detour in place causing it to be
| entirely skipped by most drivers.
|
| It bears no resemblance car usage in cities at all.
| belorn wrote:
| > A study in Berlin found that shop owners believed only about 12
| percent of customers lived within 1km of a shopping street when
| more than 51 percent of customers lived within that walkable
| distance.
|
| This seem to imply that shops don't benefit much from parking
| when majority of customers lives within 1km of the store, and if
| that's the definition of local businesses then I don't see much
| problem eliminating parking. Local businesses catering to local
| customers. Non-local businesses, ie businesses where the majority
| of customers isn't with that 1km, should not be located next to
| shopping streets, which might require a new definition of
| shopping streets which centralize all kind of shopping to a
| specific street.
|
| This seem to somewhat match a trend that I have noticed here in
| Sweden. Stores catering to a larger audience seem to have started
| to move away from expensive city cores in the last couple of
| decades, with specific shopping street decreasing in importance
| as a result.
| asdff wrote:
| It really depends on the context of the building imo. If you
| have a grocery store with like a few spaces that are always
| full, vs one with a bunch of spaces, someone who is planning a
| big grocery load will probably opt to drive their car for two
| minutes to the big lot one vs walk 10 mins to the one without
| parking and walk back with a gallon of milk and all their
| groceries for their family of 4 for a week.
|
| What you find in other countries that are denser is that people
| not only buy less things per trip and take more trips, but they
| are also cooking fewer meals at home than Americans and tend to
| eat out more for their meals. I think two things need to happen
| for that behavior to happen with Americans: shorter commutes so
| you actually have time to run to the grocery store more often
| than once a week, and more buying power from wages so you can
| actually regularly afford food you didn't personally prepare.
| Until those things happen, most americans will continue doing
| their errands once a week when they finally have time, and
| saving money making things at home vs ordering more prepared
| food and having a therefore smaller need for so many groceries
| in the first place.
| rtlfe wrote:
| 1km is a good distance for walking, but you can expand it quite
| a bit if you have good bike infrastructure and transit. You can
| bike 5km in 20 minutes at a pretty leisurely pace, which I
| would gladly do for a good restaurant or specialty store.
| carlospwk wrote:
| A question for all those in favour of street parking: If parking
| right in front of the store is so vital for business, why don't
| they do it in shopping malls? Why do you have to park your car
| somewhere else and then walk to the stores?
|
| I've never even gotten an answer, just silence.
| nelsondev wrote:
| Shopping malls often have attached parking garages?
| carlospwk wrote:
| Why?
| shukantpal wrote:
| Probably because customers aren't going to malls for a
| short trip and taking 5-10 mins extra to park isn't a big
| deal compared to them going to a small shop for 5 mins and
| getting out of there.
| carlospwk wrote:
| I don't know why you've come to that conclusion? I do the
| exact opposite. I got to malls to buy something specific,
| but there's no reason to spend anymore time there than
| necessary. City centres are the opposite.
| asdff wrote:
| In denser areas they do, but honestly most new development
| malls are looking like that now a days with huge garages and
| an effort to maximize the developable land. I think Easton in
| Columbus, OH is a fair example of one of these newer malls
| with garages, and outside of a big city too way out in the
| exurbs not too far from cornfields. There are some lots but
| as the area has been infilling they've been adding garages.
| asdff wrote:
| I don't know what bizzaro world those people live in where they
| will actually find a parking spot in the front of their
| destination. A given block has what like 10 spaces for cars? In
| a city with thousands of road users your odds of finding a
| parking spot that's truly convenient to the destination are
| going to be so low. I bet most everyone currently parking on
| the street is parking in some compromised somewhat inconvenient
| spot. That's why I find the strongest voices of people keeping
| the street parking are usually the abusers: that neighbor who
| has some hardly functional car they roll out three feet to take
| up two spots while they are away with the other car, and roll
| back when they get home, or that mechanics shop that parks
| customer vehicles out there at 4am when the spots are actually
| available and holds them in perpetuity or to use them for their
| own employees convenience.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > A given block has what like 10 spaces for cars?
|
| I suppose it depends on the particular city block size, but
| we use angled parking and certainly get a lot more than 10
| cars in a given block.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Where I live, small shops often have 5 or 15 minute parking
| time limits directly outside so there's usually a space
| available when I want one, despite the rest of the street
| being full.
|
| Sounds like your city needs to write and enforce its parking
| rules better.
| asdff wrote:
| There are loading zones and such but still, how many spaces
| are going to be like this? What are the odds you roll up
| and there is a car there already taking advantage of that
| spot? Now what, you sit on your hands for 14 and a half
| minutes? Street parking is never a guarantee, and banking
| on it usually ends in frustration. Getting that convenient
| spot in the right place right at the right time when you
| happen to be there circling to park is always a stroke of
| luck if your area is somewhat busy.
| carlospwk wrote:
| 5 to 15 minutes? What if you want to have lunch?
| gravypod wrote:
| I am assuming these spots are for takeout so you can
| quickly go in and buy something.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Malls are dying off. Maybe that's why.
|
| We managed to save our local mall before it completely died,
| and now it thrives. They turned it mostly inside out, there's
| still halls inside but all of the popular stores now face
| outward so you can park right in front of them.
| user_7832 wrote:
| While thks article is quite interesting, I think it's worth
| pointing out the vast differences in non-car accessibility
| between countries, probably due to zoning laws. Large and low-
| density population places would require reliable modes of long
| distance transport (be it cars or buses or metro etc). From what
| I've heard North America practically requires car ownership
| outside medium sized cities. Here in the Netherlands you can
| mostly get anywhere in the country with a bike and a train (OV)
| card. Back home in India not too many people have cars so buses,
| trains and taxis and autorickshaws (aka TukTuks) substitute them.
| Not criticizing the point of the article, but I think a bit more
| nuance is needed when comparing Germany with Canada with New
| Zealand.
|
| Also, I'd highly recommend checking out Not Just Bikes on
| YouTube, and perhaps the more "radical" r/fuckcars on reddit.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Here in Switzerland it often takes 2x as much time to get
| anywhere if you take public transportation outside of big
| cities, compared to the car. Is it the same in the Netherlands?
| Also public transportation here is quite expensive.
| user_7832 wrote:
| I can't comment on small towns, but I live in a medium-ish
| size place of around 100k people though it really depends how
| far you're going. If you're going just a few (<10) km then
| cars would be a bit faster.
|
| On Google maps I see that it takes 9 minutes to a store 6km
| away by car. It takes 36 minutes by public transport, however
| it takes only 20 minutes by bike (almost everyone has a bike
| here). However a lot of roads are bike-only or similar (esp
| in parts of the city centre), which (imo) makes it super
| frustrating to drive.
|
| On longer distances yes cars do get much faster. Amsterdam to
| Rotterdam by car is 52 mins (74km), vs 1hr18min by train,
| however this was station to station. Once you add the time to
| go from the station to your destination it's often longer.
|
| Edit - re:costs, it _feels_ moderately expensive to me as an
| Indian. It 's EUR5.4 from Rotterdam to Den Haag (Hague)
| station, which is 21km by road (20 min by road, 30 min by
| train). You get 20-30% off passes for monthly use I believe,
| though that's only useful if you use it a lot.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| Though, if you go by train, you can use the time more
| productively than by going by car (at least until
| autonomous cars). I have come to know a professor working
| using her notebook in the train while biking to the train
| station with the bike, and to the university, too.
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| > it often takes 2x as much time to get anywhere if you take
| public transportation outside of big cities
|
| This is almost always going to be true, regardless of the
| country. Living in the countryside is always going to mean
| inefficiencies in terms of transportation. I couldn't say how
| you'd solve this, just increasing buses and trains is just
| too cost ineffective given how sparsely populated most of
| these areas are.
|
| I do align with the whole anti-car crowd when it comes to
| cities though. We should encourage and enable people to use
| literally anything other than a car for city movement.
| Anecdotal but I know plenty of people that'll take their car
| for all kinds of stupid small trips that could've been at
| most a 10 minute bicycle ride.
|
| Getting to sit in your car and pressing a little pedal sure
| is comfortable, and I feel like it's impossible to get people
| out of the mindset that using another mode of transportation
| is better for them, as well as everyone around them. All
| these little trips such as getting groceries once a week,
| driving across town to go see a friend, etc., really do
| accumulate to be a problem and you end up with cars littering
| streets left and right. And then we're not even talking about
| health yet.
|
| In a city at least, the benefits of car ownership for the
| individual, take far too big a toll on a the livability of a
| city as a whole.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| My dream would be that I could take my car to an edge
| location of a big city with a modern parking structure,
| where I can of course charge my electric car, and then
| switch without hassle over to some fast Metro that is going
| every few minutes.
|
| I have never understood the idea of people who live in the
| city taking the car within the same big city to do stuff.
| That just makes no sense in most cases.
| asdff wrote:
| It's more useful to think of it as a sliding scale vs all or
| nothing. You are right that there just isn't the infrastructure
| in a lot of places. But we could start small, we could add a
| bus route, or a bike lane. Maybe that leads to people taking
| the bike for that errand instead of solely the car, and that's
| a good thing even if its not 100% car free.
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