Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

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>If you have a small town, then cars are a better option than transit. In a large metropolis, transit is better.

Were did that came from? In a small town, you can get by fine with walking, bikes and so on -- like tons of Europeans do in tons of small (and even larger) towns, including towns where cars are totally forbidden and others were (because the town was built in medieval times and its buildings still stand just fine) they are impractical in large areas of a town.

And besides costly transit infrastructure like subways (which you probably have in mind), buses and trams are totally find for small towns as well.

In (most of) Europe you don't have to be a heroin addict or homeless person to ride the bus. Nobody has a problem riding the bus.

>When a small town grows into a medium, it makes sense to add car infrastructure rather than rebuild everything.

Again, what? Who said there's any need to "rebuild everything"? You can keep the "historic center" (as it's usually referred to), that is, the original small part of town, and build around it, all the while improving and extending transit infrastructure.

No reason to extend the city around car infrastructure -- like the horrible sprawls one sees in Texas for example.

In fact the US has a nice example of a "city" (speaking of the main area of Manhattan up and slightly beyond the Central Park) that has great density, and if there was the will, could be equipped with a great modern subway (not the way NYC subway is now), and lots of quality buses (modern, air-con, well maintained, not meant for the piss poor), a trolley line, and so on.

The area could be expanded from ~ 1 million people, to say 5 times the size, and with all those plus Uber/Taxi options, bikes and electric scooters, nobody would even care for driving their car there.

I live in a New Hampshire city of about 10,000. I'm about three miles out of town, too far to walk regularly. You should try biking downtown in January in the snow, slush, and wind! I don't see anyone biking with shopping bags, even in the summer. We bike for recreation. We've made our choices.

There used to be a railroad that came up from Boston and deadheaded here. It went out of business, was revived, and failed again. There isn't even a scheduled bus through town.

The nearest Lyft is 45 minutes away right now. Meanwhile, my car works great. It's convenient, clean, fast, private, and fairly inexpensive. It hauls my goods, my kids, and my pets. I only need to drive it a few thousand miles a year, so gasoline costs aren't much of a consideration.

>>> I don't see anyone biking with shopping bags, even in the summer.

See, this is where cultures clash. You don't expect people with shopping bags in bike friendly European cities either. Why? Because they don't buy groceries for a week at a time.

>I live in a New Hampshire city of about 10,000. I'm about three miles out of town, too far to walk regularly.

We (parents and us) used to live about 4 miles out of my hometown. One can always bike or use the regular public transport (bus e.g.).

But if you live 6 miles outside a city you can also drive there. What we were discussing was about not building the city itself around car traffic -- not not connecting it to the rest of the area / country.

>I don't see anyone biking with shopping bags, even in the summer. We bike for recreation. We've made our choices.

Well, that's a choice.

US towns stopped building as a dense collection of buildings at the end of the 19th century. Modern "towns" are a dozen or so old buildings from that era surrounded by dozens of square miles of urban sprawl mcmansion housing.

Fundamentally the US simply has a density problem at all grades of construction. Its just more apparent in cities where the overconsumption of land per capita impacts more people.

The US also has a ton of land. I stayed with family in a British suburb once, and everything was still neatly squished in together, even single-family houses, compared to the expansive yards of American suburbs. Kids could walk to school and everything.

The fact that kids walking to school is surprising really highlights the difference. Growing up in the UK, people who got driven to school were the odd ones (depending somewhat on the area).

There’s nothing more American than a big yellow school bus belching black diesel smoke.

When I was in middle school, we were picked up by bus, any time my parents had to go to school, we drove -- walking was never an option (which I assumed at the time was because it was too far to walk).

I recently looked it up on a map, and school was 0.7 miles from home -- a 15 minute walk. The worst part of the walk was that it crossed a 4 lane road, but it had a traffic light.... there were no sidewalks in our neighborhood, but that didn't stop us from walking to the bus stop.

Ironically, our neighborhood bus stop was 2 blocks from home in the opposite direction of the school, so I walked 0.3 miles away from school to take the bus... so in reality, the bus "saved" 10 minutes of walking time, though I spent more time than that waiting for the bus.

Now that I'm older and wiser (?) I seek out bike friendly commutes (through housing and job choices) and commute 15 miles by bike even though I have transit and car options. And I'll take a longer commute route to stay away from schools, seems that kids still aren't walking to school much, and my community has decided not to offer regular bus transportation so parents drive their kids, and it's like a car war-zone near the school

Having a lot of land doesn't change the fact that no matter how much land you have, there is still a place everyone wants to be. You could have a million new houses built in Idaho and it wouldn't make a dent of difference to the LA housing market.

The US real estate market is built like it can go infinitely wide, but the real world demand and price structures show the reality that density matters.

There was definitely a hard way to learn that lesson.

> In a small town, you can get by fine with walking, bikes and so on

In a small town, most of the population served by the amenities in that town don't actually live within city limits. The people in town may be fine with walking or biking, but providing non-car transportation options to rural people isn't as easy. Most people who live on farms would find it difficult to get by without a car.

>>>If you have a small town, then cars are a better option than transit. [...]

>W[h]ere did that came from? In a small town, you can get by fine with walking, bikes and so on

This isn't really the point. Sure, you can build a small town which prioritizes walking over cars. There are even examples in the US, such as Helen, Georgia. However, most people (US) would not prefer to live in such a town. In Europe, those towns are already in place, and people already live there.

>However, most people (US) would not prefer to live in such a town.

Citation needed. Most people in the US were never given the chance to live in such a town (all other things being equal, like them being able to afford to live there).

And there's also the cultural conditioning.

Besides, there are rich areas in the US too, with little to no cars and lotsa walking and jogging, and people go live there just fine, paying millions for a house there too.

I know plenty who'd kill to live in Manhattan (and not drive, like bona fide Manhattanites) but can't afford to precisely because too many want to live there and since it's an island not much further expansion is possible.

Well, either that or you're the one who's been culturally conditioned. You're posting on HN after all. :) I would personally prefer to live someplace like Manhattan than amongst suburban sprawl, but I'm in the minority of basically everyone I've known all my life (which is also anecdotal of course).

The relative prices of urban vs suburban housing pretty definitively shows that more people want to live in urban settings than can currently be accommodated. The free market clearly wants more urban housing but is prevented from supplying it by government intervention.

>Citation needed.

There is no need for a citation for such a claim. It is well within the boundaries of my personal experience. I live in America, I have known lots of people, and I've become familiar with what they want.

>And there's also the cultural conditioning.

People should only be conditioned to live the ways you want them to, of course. It's only "cultural conditioning" when you don't like it.

And citations are only needed when something is in contradiction to your experience? :)

>People should only be conditioned to live the ways you want them to, of course. It's only "cultural conditioning" when you don't like it.

Or you know, conditioning can go either way, and a society should decide what's better (including for the environment) and push for one or the other.

Suburban sprawl, wastelands designed around traffic, obese citizens who seldom walk anywhere, no urban center for communities to meat, and unfriendly crime ridden cities don't seem to work that well...

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