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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

I sure hope that it won't take seventy years for cities to ditch the private car as the primary means of transport. The future belongs to a mixture of public transport, bicycles, electric scooters, and, once the technology matures, shared autonomous cars.

Imho the lever that needs to be pulled first is internalizing the costs of parking space. Free parking in cities must go. A parking spot should cost about as much as a small apartment. That's because it consumes about as much space as a small apartment if you put a couple of stories of housing above it. Abundant parking aggravates sprawl and makes all forms of transportation more expensive.

Tokyo is already ahead in this. There are basically no surface parking spots available in the inner city.

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It's pretty cool to watch this happen in Mexico City of all places. The public transportation is insanely subsidized. The metro system is 0.25¢ USD a ride.

There are metro buses, which are double buses on a dedicated bus only road, with dedicated stations. ~0.20¢ There are now even double-decker buses like in the UK.

Plus there is a city-wide bike share program. That now has electric bikes! Now there are tons of other bike share companies popping up. There is also electric scooters you can rent.

Plus there is a massive fleet of taxis and uber is very cheap as well. Good mix of transportation options.

Unfortunately mandatory parking minimums are written into the zoning codes of most American cities, leading to the surfeit of parking in lots of places. Undoing this will take no small amount of work.

Another argument to rework the whole zoning thing....

Another software developer refusing to work in or understand an existing working system and instead asking for "the big rewrite", which assuredly will get finished on time, with all of the features of the existing system and none of the problems.

Heavy zoning has caused housing in many areas to be far more expensive than it needs to be.

The push for change is being driven by economists and activists, not software developers.

SB-827 in CA failed but it'll be interesting to see what comes next.

https://www.vox.com/cities-and-urbanism/2018/2/23/17011154/s...

"The big rewrite" could be adopting the system of a different country that has more desirable outcomes. I only know a little about zoning, but from what I've heard Japanese zoning is rather simple and doesn't seem to produce endless sprawl.

Yup, the notion we have 2000 pound private vehicles that seat 4 but are occupied on average by 1.5, which sit idle for 22 hours of the day and take up prime real estate nearby humans due to their very function design, running on toxic fumes, is insane.

These should be automated as soon as possible, running on electricity which produces less Co2 and moves any toxic fumes outside of population centres, should near 100% occupancy, should near 0% idleness, and should see few reasons to be private, and should not take up valuable space.

This should be in reach in a few decades, I hope it won't take 7 either!

Tokyo also has no space, hence their continued reliance on mini cars. It will be much harder to convince LA to de-emphasize vehicle parking.

It's not just space: Mini (kei) cars are subsidized via much lighter taxation, which is why they're so popular in Japan.

Which they do because of limited space in their urban areas.

For what it’s worth, Japan was far from the only country to introduce miniature cars after the war to reduce resource usage. Italy, England, France and arguably Germany all introduced subcompact vehicles designed to use less precious steel. America is one of the few nations that kept making full sized sedans, largely a consequence of fighting the entire war abroad rather than at home.

What’s interesting is that Japan still uses theirs, while the other countries on that list abandoned their trend of super micros decades ago. I personally would argue that this is a consequence of Japan’s limited space, which drove government policy to effective tax vehicles in proportion to how much precious space they use.

It's a shame. I have zero use for a full-size car, and I would much prefer a two-seater with plenty of legroom plus economy and maneuverability, but you can't get them here for any reasonable price.

Also, a thought. I would argue that Kei cars aren't subsidized, it's just that Japan refuses to subsidize big cars like America does. Large cars take up more space in car parks, take up more space on the road, and do more damage to roads. It's actually quite reasonable to tax them less.

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