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Comment by fountainofage | Hacker News Reader

I realize this is a tired trope, but I firmly believe it:

If California got rid of prop 13 and allowed by-right zoning, market forces absolutely would build what we want.

Agree completely. Houston doesn’t have zoning. Houston also doesn’t have a housing affordability crisis. Houston also doesn’t have high developer fees or low income housing mandates. Houston also has a lot of parking. Weird. A city doing almost the exact opposite of what many “housing advocates” prescribe and they don’t have a housing problem.

Houston is also not squeezed at all geographically except for to the south-east by the Gulf. San Francisco on the other hand is constrained on 3 sides by water. Expanding across the Bay is possible but expensive because you have to provide bridges for all the people to get back into jobs in the city otherwise it's not SF housing it's just Oakland housing.

Houston is squeezed in geographically by flood plains and marshes - which developers merrily ignored and developed on. When a hurricane hit, surprise of all surprises, a bunch of houses in these areas were flooded. Thankfully a lack of regulations managed to not solve any traffic or density issues while all also making the city more vulnerable to disasters.

They /should/ have been squeezed, but flood plains and marshes aren't hard barriers to building like water (though you can do reclamation but that's also pretty expensive). They're places you shouldn't (or should be very careful about about) build in but they're not places you can't build in period.

Houston has parking minimums and other car-favored building regulations.

Houston is also the most egregious case of rampant urban sprawl on the planet.

You can't compare Texas with literally acres of open space surrounding their cities to real states with actual population densities. Texas literally brags about how big they are and how much land they have. Come talk to me when Texas has less than 20% of it's population as cows unlike the 40% it's at now.

Houston doesn't have official zoning. It does have land use regulations, including off-street parking mandates, which act like de facto zoning.

https://marketurbanism.com/2016/09/19/how-houston-regulates-...

> Here’s the doozy: Houston mandates off-street parking for just about every form of development. This is probably the number one regulation holding back the city’s rapid densification and a major reason that car-dependence remains the norm. By requiring developers to build either parking deserts and garages, this policy encourages developers to bypass exciting infill and downtown opportunities in favor of developing in the suburbs where land is cheap.

Market forces build things like Uber. Are we actually going to get public transit this way? I really doubt it.

No. Regulations have completely prevented anyone from ever building more public transit. One company, all they did was try to get a few more buses on the road, and they were shut down very swiftly.

Almost certainly that's completely unrelated to zoning and prop 13. I'm not saying all regulation is good but you can't just deregulate randomly and hope for a good outcome.

I mean...there already are private shuttles and buses throughout LA. Tour buses are a tourist staple and I can't imagine there's much regulation there. I can only assume the particular bus you're talking about broke some law that I most likely don't mind is in place.

Google's employee shuttles/buses are a decent example too.

yes. Imagine public shuttles using uber based technology. So the shuttles come pick you up and drop you off at your destination.

They can do transfers to other shuttles or other public transit on fixed routes to optimize the routes.

The govt would never come up with rideshare type algorithms.

https://crosscut.com/2019/08/seattles-microtransit-experimen...

Maybe just an exception to the rule, but still worth pointing out.

And none of that needs a change in regulations. That could all happen now save for those exact market forces. Haven't you just described Uber pool which already exists? Assuming our prayers will be answered by just deregulating things is silly.

Yeah because the single largest logistics system in the world knows nothing about transportation. You free market only people really are blind to reality. The US government is the single best move of people and goods on the planet. We literally run our military on logistics. Show me any real private industry that runs their transportation as efficiently as a government one with the limited resources and requirements for service that public does. You know how the private market makes money? They cut out the poor people and inefficient routes which public industry can't do because their mission is to actual serve the community instead of shareholders.

Who needs ride sharing if you have good public transport?

You go the far distance to a hub which has lots of parking space and switch to subway, tram, bus or foot traffic, or bikes, or the hip electric scooter. And disadvantaged or disabled people get better accessibility. Pity it is hard to retrofit into misdesigned cities.

See EU and how Uber is not making millions here. And taxis are relatively expensive.

Also check South Korea and how relatively cheap normal unsubsidized taxis essentially prevented Uber from getting a foothold...

It does not compete with owned cars at all.

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