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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

Most Americans have to drive on a highway to get to work.

As long as they aren't highway-legal, they are a non-starter

I'm having trouble finding US-wide data for average commute distance, but Appendix B here https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Srvy_Jo... breaks it down by metro area. It seems like most people in most places commute 8 miles or less, which matches my intuition. At those distances a 35mph scooter will generally get you where you're going at least as fast as a car, unless you've got a straight shot on the freeway and there's little to no traffic.

How does it do in the snow?

Not bad, actually.

http://ridetowork.org/files/baroninwinter/index.html

ACS survey (2012-2016) by the census puts mean commute at 26 minutes, industry-specific averages ranging from 21 minutes for military to 33 minutes for miners.

[0] https://www.census.gov/search-results.html?q=commute&page=1&...

It doesn't matter if your commute is as short as 2 miles - when one of those miles is a freeway. In a few urban areas, you can take side streets to avoid the freeway, but in much of the country, this is not an option.

For me, for example, avoiding the freeway adds 17 miles to my commute - turning it from a 10 mile one, into a 27 mile one, adding over 100 intersections to it (Compared to the 12 intersections that my regular commute has).

I'm going to have to pass on that.

For cities like Austin, a lot of businesses are on "frontage roads", like my company. So while its not a question of highway legal, these are roads with 55+ MPH speed limits and I suspect going 35 MPH will disrupt traffic enough to be dangerous.

Yep. In Atlanta pretty much every business is on a 35-45 mph road and people do not take kindly to you driving the speed limit, let alone 10mph below it. But that shouldn't even be an issue -- real, street legal mopeds have existed for years and can actually go at reasonable speeds. Not sure why anyone would buy one that's capped at such a low speed instead.

As long as Americans insist on living a ridiculous distance from where they work, no solution will ever work.

This is a function of US business management eschewing remote work by and large, and even further, insisting on locating most work opportunities in more prestigious, more expensive areas of metro geographies (which are already more expensive per unit area than suburban, exurban, or rural areas), than choices by employees to live "a ridiculous distance" from those opportunities. Take away the massive subsidies to the FIRE sectors, drop real estate closer to 10% of after-tax income to compensate for the US' inefficient health care system (then as we wring out those inefficiencies, rebalance the allocations back towards 20-25% of after-tax income to housing), and employees will flock towards city centers.

I've read all the calls for Americans to give up their ginormous houses and lots, etc. That is tone deaf to the dynamics of the business of residential development markets in the US, again excessively skewed by FIRE sector subsidies, with runaway municipal development fees and processes and bank financing herd trends adding unhelpful vectors. Before John and Jane Doe even pull up to the highway exit leading to the housing development, their limited choices were already baked in for them by other, far more monied and powerful actors.

Incentives matter.

I'd move closer to the jobs if they weren't so far away from affordable housing :( I loved it when I lived .7 miles away from work.

The value equation would tip a lot more if Americans paid a fair price for automobiles. Everything, from oil, to roads, to the cars themselves, are stupidly subsidized.

(1) Drastic increases in gas and car taxes would be highly regressive, and disproportionately affect the poor.

(2) Housing prices are rising in large part due to foreign investment / money sheltering. I doubt that you could plausibly increase gas and car taxes high enough offset this, and it would be outright dystopian if you did.

It really seems like we should be able to directly tax the foreign investment in order to improve public transit... I don't have any good ideas on this however.

Of course that would just make both houses and cars unaffordable.

I think that was the point...

I live close to work. It's 4 miles by bike. But living close to work is great until...

1. You have a 2 income household

2. Throw kids and their schools into the mix

3. One or both members of the household change jobs

All of those things happen to most families.

Now it becomes a complete toss-up, and you have to be extremely lucky if both or even one of you can work close to home, school, etc. My spouse and I are in that category, so I know it's possible, but I also know we're lucky.

Things might change if there was enough of a safety net, that it wasn't vital to cling to full time employment at all costs.

Well there is a solution in some far away (mystical?) countries, which is called public (omg communist !!1!) transportation.

I also live a longish way from work (30 km) but I've got like 12 trains an hour doing this in 20 - 25 mins.

[Thats like 2.12e2 furlongs in 1.45e-2 fortnites for you non metrics.]

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