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Comment by curioussavage | Hacker News Reader

Not in the suburbs...

cheap automated taxis are a way more realistic idea for reducing traffic. Not just for last mile either. Switching transportation in the middle of a trip even once wastes a ton of time and adds hassle.

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> Switching transportation in the middle of a trip even once wastes a ton of time and adds hassle.

Does it? When driving into Boston, I’ve found it almost always better to park in a big garage on the edge of town and ride a bus/subway in, rather than spend ~20 minutes looking for parking near my destination (or paying for one of the massively more expensive in-town garages.)

It varies a lot. In my experience - it takes a lot of time to switch because the parking lots aren't always directly next to boarding on the train. Getting in and out of those lots can be a nightmare if it's a busy time too. (This is why you'll see people running to get to their car as soon as the train starts deboarding - they want to avoid the traffic in the lot!) So, naturally, you need to add a buffer in for parking, getting to the station, making sure you paid for a ticket, etc. This is an automatic show up early. And then the damn train is NEVER on time except when you show up late to the lot... then it's so on time that you miss it and have to wait 30 minutes or an hour for the next train.

You might spend 20 minutes looking for parking but that usually indicates unfamiliarity with parking in the area. That happens maybe the first or second time visiting a place. After that - you know what has high to low availability and you'll go to streets that optimize for availability + distance.

I really think switching is terrible and it's why I don't do it. I live in the bay area and avoid taking public transit here because it's horribly behind time except at the starting destinations and the infrequency of trains coming by is why I don't ride almost ever anymore.

> Not in the suburbs...

Which, as a reminder for urbanists, really translates to "Not in the only place 90% of the nation's population is allowed to live"

Basically any city that isn't one of the biggest four or five, and even then just the core. Lots of mid-size cities, like Portland, are nearly 100% suburb.

I understand drawing that line there, but the "suburb" of a good portion (half?) of Portland is the urban, neighborly sort that isn't the post-WWII culdesac sprawl. I mean, I guess suburban sprawl is the [awful] norm in the U.S., but then there's the non-sprawl suburb stuff like Portland's walkable grid with narrow streets…

It's more like 27% rural, 43% suburb, 29% city.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/12/18/americans...

~80% of the people in the Census Bureau's "29% urban" figure are actually in a suburban neighborhood, that happens to lie within the legal boundary of a urban-designated "city".

It's like saying "Manhattan and Long Island are both in NYC, so they're basically the same".

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