I think it practice it often means for example taking less desirable jobs because a better one is now too far away in terms of commute time, visiting their friends and family less often etc.
I already wish I could have back all the hours I've wasted sitting behind the wheel, and I'm not that old yet...
The view of driving is going to be very different from the perspective of people who never had to do it, whenever that generation is born. Clean, automated cars are going to make our era look like Victorians living with coal fires in their homes.
Never imagined I would care about climbing the corporate ladder until I realized it could mean cutting mass transit out of my life and living close enough to walk. The rent is at least $1000 more, but $300 less in fares will help, and not being on mass transit is priceless.
E.g. we chose where to live because of the schooling and it's close to family. But I work from home so it doesn't matter that it's a suburb. However if I ever got an office job I could be met with a daily total commute of 90 minutes. Should I sacrifice family and schooling so I can be closer to the job centers? Why is doing so any less unacceptable than a 90 minute commute?
according to who? my commute is a combination of bus and walking and takes about an hour each way, but i actually kinda prefer it to when i lived close in the city. living in the city is not pleasant for me anymore, i can live somewhere i actually like, have time to myself on the bus to read/listen to music/whatever, and also get in several miles of walking every day.
I once lived in Seattle and worked on the other side of Puget Sound. My daily round trip commute involved two ferry rides, each of which ranged from 30 minutes to an hour, depending on which of three ports on the non-Seattle side I decided to use.
I'd use that time to relax in my car, listening to music and reading. Or I'd get out of the car and go up on deck and enjoy the view. Or go in and buy a copy of the New York Times or Wall Street Journal from the vending machine and read it over breakfast from the cafeteria.
That commute was in a way a little daily mini-vacation.
I find such environments miserable, and certainly not amenable to relaxing or focusing on anything. It's stressful enough to find something to stare at and keep from falling over.
you factor in things like, your spouses commute, do you like your child's schools, and more. throw in benefits, position, and seniority, and moves may suddenly incur expenses not seen on the onset.
my job has changed locations so that my commute is now six more miles that what it used to be but I would be loathe to change jobs because my commute is still "me" time and not stressing me
> I don't think of favorite roles like 'This was my favorite thing to do, and that isn’t.' I just wish they hadn't cancelled Shit My Dad Says because I could bicycle to work.
https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/11/10/17/150212/wil...
Look at how much it costs to live in SF, London, Paris, etc. Applauding these methods is questionable, it certainly doesn't help people trying to find work and puts up a barrier to entry to access these desirable jobs. Its massively gentries those areas which makes sure the only kinds of people able to get those jobs are the already well-off.
I find it ironic that HN'ers complain about SF and other big city pricing, but also encourage 'lock in' strategies like over-use of bike lanes, elimination of parking lots, and anti-car policies that only make real estate more expensive.
Areas that were on the verge of becoming urban wastelands 15 years ago are now upscale.
They won't ever admit it but city planners are trying to use economic forces to reverse the white flight of the 60s and 70s by pushing poorer, darker people out into the suburbs and attracting a more affluent, whiter demographic into the city. They're billing these things as quality of life enhancements but all they're doing is making traffic less tolerable.
This city has half the population it did 60 years ago and the commute is as terrible as ever.
I also think there's something wonderful about having streets and enough traffic capacity to allow people access to every part of the city and region. We shouldn't be building silos of rich areas that are foot or bike traffic only. Its just a big 'keep out' sign especially in my town where bike lane usage is low and 6 months out of the year unusable due to the cold.
Lets stop with the generalizations. There are shitty bikers the same way there are shitty drivers, the difference is shitty drivers get ticketed while shitty bikers function with impunity.
Plenty of cyclists get tickets, even if they're fully compliant with law, because some police are so ignorant of what the laws are.
I'm not sure what do you mean. Do you imply that poor people cannot afford to walk or cycle, only to go by car?
Where I live this is pretty much the opposite, but I'm pretty sure even where you live a not so well off guy can also park the car, get out and walk into a street reserved for walking. If those bikers are so well off, they probably won't steal the car.
Most of your crap commute is caused by too many drivers on the freeway and arterial roads, where you spend most of your stop-and-go time.
The bigger problem is you insist on an absurdly large amount of living space (which is what causes all the sprawl and traffic) If you compromise on this, then in most US cities you can get a reasonable commute at a reasonable price
It's hard not to scream at the people telling me I should go back to a many-roommates situation, or lose even more than 10 hours a week commuting.
The average car travel time to work in the US is 25 minutes [0], by the way.
[0] https://project.wnyc.org/commute-times-us/embed.html#5.00/42...
600 square feet is enough for about TEN rooms of size 6x10 each. Think about that.
Maybe it's arranged very poorly. Typical arrangements make it easy to waste lots of room. Also, if you grew up with lots of space and have never lived smaller, maybe it takes a while to get used to how to arrange things more efficiently?
Source: I live in 330 square feet, and have for many years (though I lived in 300sqft before that, and it was too small -- mainly because of the layout, which was square, which minimized perimeter; railroad layout feels much more spacious)
Unless there have been big chances since 2013, about 60% as many people drive to work in London as take public transport [1] [2]. That's pretty significant.
According to that BBC story, as of 2013 1/3 of London workers relied on a car or van to get to work in London. 1/5 took the underground. Then came bus and train, then walking, then cycling.
According to one of the graphs in the report itself, which breaks down the categories more, about 28% of London workers get to work by car where they are the driver of the car. It looks like all public transit combined covers about 50%. Biking and walking cover about 15% (11% to walking, 4% to biking). The remaining 5% is mostly people working at home.
[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/business-25175752
[2] http://www.racfoundation.org/assets/rac_foundation/content/d...
This in turn makes workers' pool smaller, which increases salaries, and encourages employers to move to the better connected areas.
And so on.
In that now expensive part of the city that most people can't move to. And reduces them everywhere else.
> encourages employers to move to the better connected areas
Moving the transit there at the same time.
There's something to say about creating infrastructure at the surrounds of the cities. It seems to have worked very well in the last decades. There's also something to say about forcing (by government power) a change in purpose for the center of cities. But simply cutting the movement of people does not look like a net gain most of the time.