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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

> not the primary means of moving around a city

Are private cars the primary means of getting around any city today?

I would have thought it was already totally impossible to 'get around' a city like San Francisco, London or New York by car. Where on earth would you park securely at each stop? I can't imagine ever even attempting to drive into a major city. Maybe if I had a very specific plan of getting to a particular hotel that I knew had a car park with spaces that had enough headroom for my car, etc. But driving into a city to just 'get around' without a plan? Surely that's suicide?

I don't think any of the vehicles in a city are private cars - aren't they almost all taxis and commercial vehicles making deliveries?

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> Are private cars the primary means of getting around any city today?

There are a lot more cities (and a lot more total people in them) like Dallas, Houston, Baltimore, Detroit, Phoenix, St Louis, Pittsburgh, Miami, Los Angeles, San Diego, Columbus, etc where cars are the primary means of getting around.

It is San Francisco, London, and New York that are the outliers.

>It is San Francisco, London, and New York that are the outliers.

You should have limited that list to the US, in Europe many other capitals and big cities have extensive public transportation networks that are used as primary means of transport in the city by a wide range of the population, in a wide range of journeys.

Of 112 cities and towns in the UK, only 15 of them have less people commuting to work by car than the sum of walking, cycling, and public transport. That's only 14% of towns and cities.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U9f-g8ETvljw-YAZbFpW...

In the UK 6M people drive to work each day, 1M of them live within 20 minute walking distance of work, and 3.5M live within 20 minute bike ride of work.

However to blame them for making a transport choice over another transport choice is to not recognise that Local Authorities and National Governments have direct responsibility for ensuring there is real perceived safe choices.

There is no point berating people for choosing to drive to work, when the bus service takes you to the central bus hub and you have to buy two tickets to get to work. Unless your local authority provides end to end protected cycle networks why would you get on a bike?

Are those people really driving to work /in/ a city? Or are they driving to work around the suburbs of a city?

I mean 26% of people drive to work in London? Their definition of London can't be what I think it is then. I would have thought almost literally nobody is driving themselves to work in central London. Offices in London don't have car parks do they?

London most likely means Greater London. Lots of people drive if they live and work in the suburbs. Trains only really go in the direction of central London, so it can make sense if you're just commuting from one suburb to another.

I guess my definition of city might be tighter than everyone else's then. When people said about driving to get around a city I was thinking 'nobody who has to go to Harrods and then the British Museum will be driving themselves between those two places'.

Agreed, but London, as far as I could work out was pretty much anything within the M25. Not ideal.

> Are private cars the primary means of getting around any city today?

Guess it depends how you define city. I like in a town that is on the top-100 list of "most densely populated cities in the US" and I'm right next to #1, #2, and #3 most densely populated. (Manhattan and others aren't on this list, but "NYC" is).

My city, yeah people definitely use private cars to get around. There are cars literally parked on both sides of EVERY street!

> Are private cars the primary means of getting around any city today?

Lol come visit Detroit sometime. Make sure you drive or rent a car, though; you'll need it to navigate our eight-lane roads and ridiculous highways.

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