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Comment by product50 | Hacker News Reader

Car free often means family free. See that there are no kids in their illustrations but 2 dogs and a bunch of young people?

People need to wake up to the reality that kids demand cars. How will school pick up and drop offs work? How will you take your kid to lessons? What about that play date you setup? What about going to school at your kids school for an early pickup 4p from office?

You can make it work without cars if you are fit, are lucky to have your office and kids' school in the city near to each other - but often "time" is a critical factor and you need the flexibility that a car offers.

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> People need to wake up to the reality that kids demand cars.

That is ludicrous. We've only had cars for a hundred years.

The fact that it's difficult is BECAUSE we built cities around cars. Schools normally have districts so that they're nearby to the kids, if your kids school is in another suburb then frankly that's your poor planning. If you set up play dates with kids two 'burbs away, again, why did you do that? Places like Japan have no issues with no or low car families, the kids take public transport, walk, or take their bikes. You can ride your bike with them or join them for the train ride if you want to make sure they're safe, but the idea that kids need to be transported around in cars is ludicrous.

> but often "time" is a critical factor and you need the flexibility that a car offers.

Public transport and biking is often faster than cars in denser car centric cities, and good public transport is on time so you can plan accordingly. Not all cities have good public transport, I get that, but that's the problem we need to solve. We've already tried cars, it's not working.

The issue isn't that we need cars, it's that we need a better city built around moving people without cars. You're looking at the problem in the wrong direction.

People in America live in such a bubble and just think that anything that doesn't work in America can't possibly work at all. A common post on HN goes along the lines "trains are shit and could never be seriously used. I took a train once and it was dirty and slow"

Yeah but if I can't carry sixteen kids in the car whilst towing my 60ft yacht 2000 miles without refuelling then what you are proposing is useless.

No it is not like that. I know you want to fit things to your narrative but honestly what we are asking here is to completely redesign cities from ground up and it is not going to happen anytime soon. Europe works since it has a huge history to it when cars weren't there and thus a lot of roads/lanes were built accordingly. To suggest US should do the same seems improbable to me. We should build for the future vs. the past. So the question I will ask what is next after cars? My mind goes into ideas such as aerial transport vs. walking/biking.

Also, I would be very curious how many folks commenting here have kids vs. single men/women who ride their bikes and hate that they have to share the road with cars.

> No it is not like that.

Oh, yes it is. I see comments on the internet like, "bike friendly? But what about kids??" as if kids explode if they get too close to a bike, all the damn time.

Somewhere in the commenter's mind, they're aware that there are bike friendly places where people have kids, like the Netherlands, and it works just fine. But they don't want to admit it, so they pretend they don't know. If you point it out to them, they'll find whatever the most obvious surface differences are between that place and where they live and insist this makes it impossible to draw any lessons.

I have a kid and we live car-free in Munich. We use walking, biking (including an electric cargo bike), buses, and trains. Works great. I don't dispute that sometimes it would be nice to have a car for the convenience, for things like going to Ikea or ski trips, but overall it's worth it for us to avoid the hassle and expense of car ownership.

On the other hand, I accept that when we move back to the states, unless we're in NYC we'll probably need a car. Oh well.

The problem with this line of argument often is that you are transposing solutions that work elsewhere piecemeal vs. looking at things holistically. For example, public schools in cities such as SF could be quite far away from people's homes. And public transport in SF sucks. Likely very few people in Munich travel to suburbs for work (since many companies in the bay area are headquartered far away from SF) and there are parents who have no option but to make that travel happen.

As such, this line of reasoning that if it works in Netherlands will work here seems vacuous. You need to consider the realities on the ground vs. making one off statements.

”to completely redesign cities from ground up and it is not going to happen anytime soon”

So, better start now. The longer you wait, the longer it will take.

”We should build for the future vs. the past.”

A future where we have to significantly decrease energy use in order to limit global warming?

”who ride their bikes and hate that they have to share the road with cars.”

Who says cyclists have to share the road with cars? Any decent infrastructure has separated cycling lanes wherever cars go over 20 miles per hour.

Kids in particular, have a lot to gain. A bicycle has thrice the speed of walking, so riding a bicycle makes a kid’s neighborhood about ten times as big (when comparing road system built for cars with one built for people, the difference is even greater)

And with it, their parents have a lot to gain, as kids riding their bike to school/friends/sports means parent do not have to drive them there.

It's more of a design problem in american cities than anything else. It's hard to get public transport working well in cities - as a result less people use them - as a result they are slow - as a result they are dirty and not well taken care of.

I grew up in a European city and never once took a car to school. I walked to primary school, junior high and high school. Then I took public transport to university.

I know most cities and neighborhoods aren't set up for that in the US, but if it can be done in Europe it can be done elsewhere.

Walking to primary school at 5yrs old is not going to happen. I don't know which primary school you were in but sending your kid alone to school at that age seems improbable.

"Walking" doesn't imply "alone". When I was too young to walk alone to school, I walked to school with my parent.

Why not? Excepting the differently abled, most 5yos are perfectly capable to walk to a bus stop or less than a mile, I sure was. The streets are safer than ever in history despite the fear-mongering you see.

If america has a problem, it is 'protecting' its youth from the 'big bad world' rather than helping them to explore it.

There are homeless people on the streets injecting drugs into them. And to send your 5yr old into that path will likely result in challenges.

And stop with your America has this problem and Europe doesn't. Each country has its pros and cons. And people make choices accordingly.

I’m pretty frustrated by the thinking behind this entire comment, but I’ll address only one point

> People need to wake up to the reality that kids demand cars.

Public transport may take more time than driving, but the time spent with kids can be considered quality time, and the overall stress of the parents is likely to be lower.

edit: but good catch about the marketing fail that is not showing any families with kids

Stress is definitely higher with public transport. THe challenge is that time is the constraint. Parents need to drop off their kids and be in their office by a certain time and do the reverse in the evenings. If you are proposing public transport as the solution, then that eats time thereby creating stress as everyone worries to reach their destinations quickly.

You can be frustrated by the comment but please try to grow empathy for parents. Raising kids takes a lot out of you. You are juggling n number of things and time becomes a major constraint. So unless everything (home, school, office) is nearby within walking distance, the number of viable solutions beyond cars go dwindle down significantly.

You can do all of these things just fine on a bicycle or with public transit.

School drop off and pick up is even easier because you sail right past the massive traffic jam at the school from everyone trying to do this in their personal cars.

I would even go so far as to say that this whole "kids demand cars" mindset is a part of the problem.

When I was in school we had government funded school minibuses and taxis that seemed to solve this problem just fine for far-away younger kids.

Older kids had to take the bus, bike or walk, which worked just fine too.

Ever heard of school buses?

Do you know there are no school buses for most elementary public schools in SF? Do some research before blurting out things.

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