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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

I agree, but "people" should mean all people, not just the able bodied.

Cities keep on inexplicably designing these cool pedestrian only areas for the able bodied and young. There are people who can only travel limited distances, so if you set the beach front back half a mile, you've now cut it off from many older and disabled people.

What I am saying is: For the physically young and able, vehicle-less areas as great, for the elderly and or disabled, vehicles are an absolute lifeline to be able to gain access to things.

For a specific example, where I grew up the shops were pedestrianized (think outdoor mall), my mom had a stroke and struggles to walk, but can drive. The distance from a car door to a shop is a good ten minutes, so she simply doesn't go there. She goes to out-of-town supermarkets with disabled bays right near the entrance.

If the utopia this article wants comes to pass you have to design it with disabled access in mind. "Walk ten+ minutes" is a non-starter.

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Making cities walkable is not ableist, or at least doesn't have to be. In Copenhagen you see motorized wheelchairs using the bike lanes, here in the Bay Area I see motorized wheelchairs forced to operate in dangerous roads because the sidewalks are too narrow or damaged for their scooters.

Further not everyone with a disability can't walk or bike. What about legally blind people? Auto-centric infrastructure is terrible for anyone who is legally barred from driving.

Lastly, every able bodied young person (and that's the majority of the population) that you get out of a car means that road infrastructure get's better for those who genuinely need to use it.

I don't think the person you're replying to is saying that you should build exclusively for one class of people. You need to look more broadly when you design cities.

The point of the article is that what is being done in places like San Francisco is what looking more broadly looks like. It's not ableist to allow people who'd prefer not to drive to bike or walk instead, and it's also not ableist to build our cities to allow these different modes of transport in addition to cars. Framing it like it's ableist ignores the near century of subsidies and prioitization of the automobile in the US.

The fact is that us able-bodied people need spaces that we can enjoy too. We need to find a way to inhabit the same space without inhibiting each other.

You're taking away a mode of transport some disabled people depend upon, you have to take their needs into account while doing so. Simply adding ramps and slapping ADA stickers onto everything isn't an actual answer, just a convenient way to simplify the problem.

If you go from heavily vehicled areas to large pedestrian areas where vehicles are banned, you've gone from one extreme to the other. In both cases disabled people are left behind.

> The fact is that us able-bodied people need spaces that we can enjoy too.

I thought that was everywhere, including nature.

I agree.

The thing I'm concerned about is that reintroducing cars into these areas is a trickle opening onto a floodgate in terms of causing us to backslide into car-centrism. And by your argument ADA compliance becomes a good excuse to erase all the pedestrian- and cyclist-only areas and replace them with "good old" city streets again. It effectively becomes an argument for people who want car-centric infrastructure only to disguise their desire and hide behind the disabled to accomplish their goals.

What I'm wondering is if there's a way to accommodate without using cars? In a market we could provide some scooters or other motorized transport that's more compatible with the market's layout.

I fail to see how making a place pedestrian friendly is one extreme. Are you saying the disabled are only able to move around by car? This will bother some of my disabled friends who have to rely on unreliable buses, too narrow sidewalks, and other city failures.

Also, a mobility scooter is a perfectly acceptable form of transportation in pedestrian areas.

>It's not ableist to allow people who'd prefer not to drive to bike or walk instead, and it's also not ableist to build our cities to allow these different modes of transport in addition to cars.

Well it doesn't have to be but it certainly can be. Like that GP comment up there ^^^ said, making walkable spaces that require foot travel can certainly be ableist to those who can't do that.

I mean I could rephrase your comment in a way to say "it's not ableist to allow people who'd like to use the stairs to use the stairs and it's not ableist to build our cities to allow stairs" - except if what I mean by that is that I want the city to build places where stairs are the only option then yes, it is ableist. And if what I mean by "walkable" is that I want the city to build areas where walking is the only option then it's the same deal.

>Framing it like it's ableist ignores the near century of subsidies and prioitization of the automobile in the US.

No it doesn't. Those subsidies have nothing to do with what is being discussed. It's a completely separate issue.

>The fact is that us able-bodied people need spaces that we can enjoy too.

...

Lol, just reread what you said.

>We need to find a way to inhabit the same space without inhibiting each other.

By which you mean you would rather the able-bodied not be inhibited by having to accommodate the non-able-bodied?

> The point of the article is that what is being done in places like San Francisco […]

Got it. For other places, step 1 is to build a dome over the city to establish San Francisco climate.

> The distance from a car door to a shop is a good ten minutes, so she simply doesn't go there. She goes to out-of-town supermarkets with disabled bays right near the entrance.

...which is rather ironic, considering "ten-minute walk from parking lot to shop entrance" is an almost unique American suburban problem: we need huge parking lots because everybody's driving.

Construct a city so that 95% of the people take public transportation, and you can keep parking space for the rest 5% who really need it, and they will be practically at the front door when they get off.

Short of things like taxis and ubers and so on, is there any form of public transportation that is so dense, when it comes to stopping locations?

Sorry I wasn't clear: I meant "at the front door" for those 5% who have to drive. The rest can walk. It's good for health, and usually still faster than being stuck in the sea of single occupancy vehicles! :)

I feel like this only makes sense if you build cities of any size, even when they have 50 people, as if they are ultra-dense. The reality is that public transit takes a certain size city before it reaches critical mass and becomes superior to individual transit. Even where I live (Portland, Oregon) which is considered to have decent public transit, I would have to walk a lot and plan on 2-3 times as long if I wanted to stick with public transit. The density just isn't there yet.

It isn't lack of density, that is a symptom. We don't allows stores, jobs and houses to be within walking distance of each other. As a result you have to drive everywhere. As a result you have to have a car. As a result we need space for lots of cars, as a result things are spread out.

If you had stores and jobs within walking distance of your house you would not need a car. As a result you wouldn't find a car worth having. As a result you wouldn't need all the space dedicated to the car. Also as a result you would take public transportation.

It also hurts that our focus on not allowing change means that even when someone is willing to spend their own money to tear down a smaller house/apartment to replace it with something larger we won't allow it. Thus areas that "want" to grow denser cannot do that. The only option is to grow outwards. That means people need to be farther out, which implies more time in a car, which implies more roads and parking spaces, which in turn means less density is possible.

Note that the above is simplistic. I ignored many other factors. It is a complex problem and no one change can solve it.

Most sidewalks are accessible to mobility aids; like walkers, scooters, canes, wheelchairs and so forth. _All_ can be designed to be accessible to such.

Moreover, the choice isn't between only pedestrians or only cars; there exists combinations of the two that are more favourable to pedestrians but allow access by vehicle for those that need it.

> Most sidewalks are accessible to mobility aids; like walkers, scooters, canes, wheelchairs and so forth.

If people cannot traverse the distance required, it doesn't really help.

For example someone with bad osteoporosis, and who doesn't have a $10K+ wheelchair and a $75K minivan to carry it, won't really gain much by theoretical ADA sidewalks if the distance is too far.

Claiming stuff is "disabled accessible" without really considering the people we're talking about is just a lie society tell itself to feel less guilty.

Then maybe these pedestrianized areas should have small fleets of scooters that people who need them can use, like large grocery stores tend to have.

Maybe the solution is to share those wheelchairs. Not everyone needs one all the time.

You’re right: such city designs should be accompanied by good universal healthcare and accessible public transportation, like most other wealthy countries, so that neither of these would be an issue.

> someone with bad osteoporosis, and who doesn't have a $10K+ wheelchair and a $75K minivan to carry it, won't really gain much by theoretical ADA sidewalks if the distance is too far

One solution to this is this person should move closer.

Closer to what if doctors, shopping and other places are spread over miles?

> what if doctors, shopping and other places are spread over miles?

The article imagines "building cities for people, not for cars." That implies re-imagining the suburban model of doctors, shops, et cetera being spread across miles. My Manhattan city block, for example, features an allergist, several restaurants, a grocery store, a book store, a daycare, a coffee shop and--in all likelihood--half a dozen other things I have yet to notice.

I'm Canadian, so might I suggest that part of the solution is ensuring that mobility aids are available as a matter of public expense, rather than private. It works OK for us, most of the time.

Wheelchairs and scooters can be funded by the Government, generally in a means-tested manner, and we have something called "Handydart", though where I live _all_ transit is wheelchair accessible.

> For example someone with bad osteoporosis, and who doesn't have a $10K+ wheelchair and a $75K minivan to carry it, won't really gain much by theoretical ADA sidewalks if the distance is too far.

You can't exactly escape the cost issue. The alternative you present is that this person has a car, which is quite expensive itself, and presumably someone to drive them given the bad osteoporosis.

Regardless of the design of your hypothetical city, such people may just need family help or public assistance to get to where they want to go.

From my observations, walkable neighbourhoods can be great for disabled people. I live in a very walkable neighbourhood where there are many homes, businesses, schools, and more in walking distance, as well as bus lines and a subway station. Everything within 10 minutes at a normal pace. There is a home for people in wheelchairs (not sure of the correct term) down the street from me, and the people that live there are always out and about. Same with a man in a wheelchair that lives one street over. Same with the slow, tiny, 90-something-year-old lady that lives across the street from me. Same with the blind man who lives down the street. None of these people have to drive, and I believe none of them even own cars, but they are able to get around with little issue because they have the option to just jaunt down the sidewalk 10 minutes for most things, or use accessible transit connections for longer trips.

As a disabled person who's spent his entire life dependent on others for transportation basically anywhere, I'll confirm how badly I'd love to live in a place like that. (I understand if you don't want to say where you live, but any hints to narrow it down or other places like that you know of?)

It can't be overstated how confining it is when anything you'd like to do or see involves logistical wrangling to work out when exactly you need to be there, how long you'll be there, when you need to be picked up, etc. I've lost count of the number of times I've just decided to not bother with all that and just stay home, which makes for a pretty depressing existence after a while.

Things like uber can help, but you're still placing your trust in someone you've never met to be able to get you there, and more importantly, to be able to get you back home. Not to mention having to do an upfront value analysis to determine if the trip is worth it, and for disabled people this can be a tough call given the difficulties with employment and income in general.

I live in Boston, Massachusetts. Unfortunately, it is an expensive place to live (probably because actually walkable areas like this are so rare in the US), and I may not stay much longer with the rate of rental increases.

If you do live in an area that is more car friendly than anything, a van might be the better option: https://nicolagriffith.com/2018/05/26/new-car-an-accessible-...

Thanks for the tip on the area. Not surprising that it would be seeing climbing costs; that's all too common these days. Increasing cost is a pretty significant problem all around. I'm in the Seattle area, and the skyrocketing housing costs thanks in large part to Amazon's insatiable growth have pushed me out of the city into a much less accessible area.

My logistical disability is a visual impairment, so while I'm able to walk, there's relatively little to walk to in the area other than suburban sprawl. Unfortunately, operating any kind of motor vehicle is right out, and while it would be legal for me to bike around, I'm not confident that it would be safe given my poor vision, particularly in any kind of traffic.

Oh yes.

I just had surgery that requires me to be on crutches for a few months, so I'm temporarily disabled.

If you're young and able-bodied (like me pre-surgery) and want to understand what it's like to not be young and able-bodied (which you almost definitely won't be at some point) you should put your right leg in a brace, and try not to let your foot hit the ground for a day or two and try to live that way. The ground is lava for one leg.

"Walking distance" means about a block or two before you get sore from crutches or your arms get tired or your hands fall asleep.

Disabled access is a godsend, everywhere. And while I can't cook a meal in my own kitchen because I can't move around and hold a plate of things at the same time, I can drive to get takeout and carry the bag inside.

The world changes when you can't easily walk.

Edit: Those electric scooters at Costco aren't as fast or fun as they look.

Cars are not the only solution here. Transporting a single disabled person does not require a 100+ horsepower 2-ton vehicle.

But doing it fast, cheap, and flexibly does.

Cars cost 50 cents a mile, go anywhere at as fast as anything that doesn't fly, and require negligible physical exertion or special skills to operate. When there is adequate infrastructure that's pretty optimal.

The point is, in a walkable city, nobody needs the speed. What's the point of driving at 40mph in a 10x10mi city vs using a scooter at 15mph? You'll probably hit a stoplight after hitting 20mph, and then waste braking to stop again.

Electric mobility scooters are, per-mile, much much cheaper than cars, and cost much less to purchase.

In your example a corner to corner trip would take ~90 minutes by scooter, considering the 20 mile Manhattan distance + stoplights. A ring highway would get you there in 15-20 minutes. Even a set of properly timed lights would allow 35mph traffic to cross the width in ~20 minutes - which notably can't be (or just never are?) efficiently timed for pedestrians/scooters.

for the extra hour+ that scooter would take (given no/low traffic) there is no price where its worth it vs the ~$10 that trip costs in a car. (20 miles, irs rate of ~50c/mile)

In a walkable city you don't need to go from one end of the city to the other. 10 mi. is insanity. You should be able to go a maximum of 2 mi. and find what you're looking for. I'm in a biking-density neighborhood, and have multiple grocery stores, convenience stores, restaurants, and furniture stores within 1 mi. of me. In a walking density neighborhood, I would expect that to all be available within 0.5 mi. of me.

Nobody needs to do much of anything, but people want to. 10 miles is 130th st to downtown Manhattan, a distance people most certainly either want or need to travel regularly. Even in the most culture/store/apartment dense corner of the country.

Now I'm all for effective public transit and dense neighborhoods, but walking and/or biking are simply worse for a lot of use cases.

I'm not familiar with Manhattan, are you describing the phenomenon of building dense commuter urban-areas and far-flung residential areas? Because that is not part of being a walkable neighborhood.

But what stops public transit from being the solution here? In fact, over a 10 mi. radius, public transit scales much better than single-occupancy vehicles, and even fully loaded sedans. Go to Tokyo and folks take trains all day. If you're taking about low-to-medium density areas (which isn't a city) then yes, cars are the most effective.

Car infrastructure is anything but cheap. Our suburbs are going broke, in a large part, because maintaining roads, bridges, parking lots, and solving drainage problems caused by these things is very expensive. Add to these the external costs of pollution and car crashes, and it gets even more absurd.

Most electric wheelchairs have 10+ mile ranges,can be fully recharged for pennies, require even less physical exertion and special skills than cars. And they don't put other residents at serious risk.

I was on crutches for a few months a number of years back when I broke my foot. Fortunately, I was able to switch to mostly working from home. But it was still really eye opening. I cut out most of my travel, didn't really go into the city at all, got home grocery delivery, etc.

I did find I was able to cook so long as I kept things simple and didn't do anything that would have required moving heavy pots around. Decent takeout options are pretty limited around where I live so I felt I had to just cope with cooking the best I could.

A lot of big-box retail chains (like Walmart) have mobility scooters to help folks like your mother. Mandating that open, pedestrian friendly spaces have some of these available should be pretty easy.

There are also disabilities that are exacerbated by driving rather than aiding. Legally blind folks can walk but have a much harder time driving.

If you can get the able-bodied out of their cars, then there's more room for those that really need a car. I only take my car when it's not practical to walk or ride my bicycle. And probably 80% of the time I'm in my car, I could easily be on my bicycle but there's no safe way to get where I'm going.

It's also a myth that disability automatically equals driving. I have a friend with impaired vision who can't drive but can ride a bicycle. I would like for him to be able to do that as safely as possible.

But when you are really old or disabled you can't drive either and then you are totally screwed. And your electric wheelchair is not usable in a typical US town.

On the other hand, not depending on cars helps a lot of disabled people. Busses and subways are generally made taking into account wheelchair use, plus visually impaired people can use transit systems where the stops are called out.

Accesibility is important, but for decades, urban centers were sacrificed to benefit suburban, car-dependent sprawl. Even now, much urban development is burdened by mandated parking requirements. But where space is at a premium and traffic congestion is already a nightmare, why encourage more cars? Private cars don't have to be the only option (here in Boston, the MBTA has services for the disables, and apparently Uber and Lyft are making a little progress in this area).

From the_gastropod below:

> Cars are not the only solution here. Transporting a single disabled person does not require a 100+ horsepower 2-ton vehicle.

Rendering a webpage does not require an 800+ watt 50-pound computer setup. A balanced diet does not require flavor. Clothes do not require coloring.

We can't just throw out having nice things because they aren't "required."

Your first analogy (50lb computer) is nonsense because that's exactly the point I'm saying: computers that fit on your pocket and are just a few grams can easily render a webpage. Who thinks that a 50lb computer is nice unless it's sophisticated hardware that can't be condensed? Cars are nice yes but there are plenty of other smaller and more nimble transportation devices. So weren't not throwing away nice things here.

The desktop computer will likely be a lot more responsive, let you do a lot more, have a higher resolution and screen size, let you have more tabs running at once, etc. Using nothing but a smartphone for all my home computer usage would be a major setback.

> Using nothing but a smartphone for all my home computer usage would be a major setback.

But that's not the analogy here. This is for the "last mile". Perhaps a more appropriate analogy is using a lightweight laptop (rather than a phone)

>>> We can't just throw out having nice things because they aren't "required."

I wouldn't assume driving for 30 min in traffic is "nicer" than a 30min train ride.

sidewalks are usually wheelchair accessible...

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