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Comment by leesec | Hacker News Reader

Ah yes, only the rich should be able to drive!

This is actually not such a bad idea. If only the rich can drive then only the rich can commute. The city itself then becomes a haven for the middle class.

Ever lived any where that's not a major city in the US?

It is common here in Michigan to drive 20 miles to work.

That's irrelevant in a discussion about banning cars from inner cities.

Average across the US is 16 miles, so it would essentially be asking people to pay an extra $700/month or so. Kinda like an instant 25% pay cut. Definitely would suck, but I bet a lot of people would make it work, and it would reduce congestion pretty dramatically.

It would also be political suicide, but this whole subtopic is a theoretical discussion anyway.

To be clear, you believe that in this hypothetical only the rich would be able to afford to drive but the jobs and their employees would remain 20 miles from each other.

I live in a mid-sized city in Michigan (Grand Rapids). Housing in the inner city is relatively expensive (3x+ the cost of the housing 20 miles out). Congestion is not really a thing ... maybe for 1/2 an hour right at 5PM and for 1/2 an hour in the morning. Parking is solved by having cheap lots at the fringes of the city center and providing a shuttle in (parking in the city center is only for higher income folks). Affordable point-to-point transit enables lower income folks to have nice houses and work jobs in the city, all while still having enough time left over for cooking & hanging out with family.

For instance, a nice 3br 1500 sqft house can be had outside of the city for under 100k (which works out to < $1k/month for principal, tax, insurance). A nice 3br 1500 sqft condo rents in the city for nearly 3k/month.

Yeah, my point to that guy was that getting rid of cars was ridiculous because so many people have to travel a long way for lots of things in places that sprawl.

I've also lived in GR for around 4 years. I think there is no congestion there because the city is still quite small. Downtown is a very small area and the population is tiny compared to the sprawl.

> Affordable point-to-point transit enables lower income folks to have nice houses and work jobs in the city, all while still having enough time left over for cooking & hanging out with family.

And you do that on the backs of those who live in denser communities.

How so? Seems like they should be able to move to a smaller city and live in an area that doesn't have capacity roadway capacity problems as well...

re: driving a long ways in Michigan - absolutely! I’ve lived in many states where I drove plenty to get to work or school.

Why have suburban areas, and cities in some places, been built with this kind of sprawl? Partially because there was no significant downside not to spread out.

I’m curious if people actively enjoy driving 20 to 30 minutes, and what kind of policy or other changes or incentives could be introduced (governmental or otherwise) to encourage people to bunch together more so driving would be much less necessary in places like you mention in Michigan.

How many people actually manage sub-20 minute commutes using any method? Short of finding an apartment a couple blocks from where you work, that's tough. And then if you move jobs, you have to move apartments too, which is a pretty big hassle.

> If only the rich can drive then only the rich can commute. The city itself then becomes a haven for the middle class.

Real life shows us the opposite. The more expensive it gets to drive, the more the working class has to live farther away from the city.

Effectively, every dollar you take from people via commuting penalties, comes out of their housing budget. And since urban housing only ever gets more expensive, working class people just get pushed further and further away.

That's already the system in place, at least in the U.S.. Being properly insured isn't cheap. That you then have additional cost because 50% of the driving population isn't properly insured is an extra sting.

This is exacerbated by health care costs; state minimums coverages haven't followed increased costs; realistically, if more than 2 people get injured in any given automobile accident, 50% of drivers face bankruptcy.

Roads are finite so you need some way to ration them.

I suppose you could say current rationing is first come, first serve? That seems to lead to congestion so it seems to me we could do better.

You're right, I'm not sure a regressive tax is the best way. Is it worse than the current system though? What would be a better system?

That is the net effect, yes. Although honestly, $1/mile isn't that unfeasible for many people. Many people pay close to that already, so it wouldn't be like making 10x as expensive or something.

Must be nice living in that SV bubble.

How about we make it income-tested, and charge everyone who supports that idea, say, $10/mile and up? Even if you want to go on a road trip in a rental. Or get your kid to a hospital. At least that would be fair to people who actually work for a living, need to get places, and can't afford to live near transit because it has all been bid up through the stratosphere by techbros who can afford hiring ubers, muncheries, wags to do all the tedious jobs for them while they nonchalantly drive their electric scooters through what once used to be livable cities populated by different groups of people and complain about those uncouth nasty people who dared to drive their rusty beaters 50 miles to clean and cook and do all that menial work them for polluting "their" air.

SV meaning Silicon Valley? Unless that bubble is a couple thousand miles across, then no, I'm not living in that bubble.

In your hypothetical world, I would support splitting everyone by ideology so that the people willing to pay for nice things go to one city and the people who want to mooch go to the other. Let them each go their own way. We'd all be happier.

Doesn't really matter all that much if it is SV proper, or Silicon Alley, or Silicon Prairie, or any of the other areas where well-paid tech workers can afford to live without cars, look down on those who can't, and propose what comes across as an extremely blatant "I got mine, so screw you".

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