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Comment by woodruffw | Hacker News Reader

We in the US do an absolutely horrific job of recognizing and compensating for the externalities of our automotive culture. The criminalization of jaywalking is one major aspect, but also consider:

1. The construction of highways through poor (read: minority) urban areas, causing mass respiratory disease and premature deaths[1].

2. Allocation of free public space (car parking) to drivers, effectively subsidizing (disproportionately suburban) commuters at the expense of residents.

3. A general culture of entitlement to the road among motorists, resulting in tens of thousands of pedestrian and cyclist injuries a year with virtually no legal (beyond costly civil) recourse.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/nyregion/29asthma.html

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Don't forget..

4. Auto makers conspired to kill or cripple mass transit.

http://www.brooklynrail.net/NationalCityLinesConspiracy.html

There were quite a few other factors that led to the decline of streetcars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

One of the biggest is that people actually like living in suburbs, and they could afford to do so after WWII.

The promise of the suburbs is a detached house, with some private outdoor space like a back yard, in a quiet area: essentially what the rich had always preferred and been able to afford. That lifestyle became broadly available to the middle classes after WWII. It's hard to blame people for wanting that.

People still like living in suburbs. They still like owning cars. They still vote against new transit projects for a lot of reasons, but the biggest reason is that they don't want to pay taxes to support a system they would not use themselves.

So I just don't buy the idea that the National City Lines conspiracy caused our current automotive culture. I think we would have ended up with the same car culture anyway, because huge numbers of people wanted to live in the suburbs.

They could afford to move to suburbs because the federal government subsidized the hell out of it at the expense of people living in cities.

Oh man, am I glad to be European. Walk to the bar, cycle to work, take the tram if it rains. American cities built for cars are just so sad.

I can do that in my American city too.

Oh! Which one? I can only think of NYC but that’s really inhospitable to cyclists too. :/

Seattle.

I have 3 major grocery stores (Safeway, QFC, Target) within 15 minutes walking from me. And at least 20 bars and restaurants within the same distance. Public transportation to downtown takes about 35 minutes, which isn't great, but it's okay. Uber works well if you need to be faster.

Ballard is pretty isolated, constrained by the Ballard Bridge or going over to Fremont to get to Downtown. Bike access is poor, either risking death on the sidewalks of the Ballard Bridge, taking the lane on the bridge or doing a large detour to Fremont.

Wedgewood, Fremont, Queen Anne & Freelard all successfully resisted the mass redevelopment that Ballard has seen, compared to 15 years ago Ballard looks completely different while the aforementioned neighborhoods have not seen that same level of mass demolition.

Not too surprising you guessed it was Ballard.

Depending on where you live and where you're going, crossing the locks is a great way to bike downtown. Also sometimes the Fremont bridge route is going to be shorter. I hate riding my bike over the Ballard bridge, but I'm not sure I'd call riding on it "risking death".

Bike access within Ballard is pretty great since the hills are a bit more manageable than in other parts of the city.

All that aside, it's pretty easy to live in Seattle and not have a car, being able to walk to groceries, bars, restaurants, parks, etc.

The Locks aren't great because cyclists must dismount for the entire length of the federal facility. This is a nuisance for platform pedals and conventional shoes and obnoxious for clipless pedals and cleated shoes.

I would highly encourage avoiding the Ballard Bridge. IMO it's very dangerous.

Walkability in Ballard is pretty good. We're within 15 minutes walking distance of QFC and the bar/restaurant area south of Market. That said, I prefer to drive to the grocery store so I can go infrequently and buy more at once.

I'm also in Ballard and tend to agree about it being isolated. Also, there are a lot of Ballard drivers that hate cyclists — that first/last mile to access the Burke is by far the most dangerous. I get some anti-cyclist vitriol, honking, or aggressive passing almost every time I ride. And I am fast enough to keep up with the speed of traffic! Some drivers just see bikes and think "I should be in front."

I really don't mind the short jaunt to the Fremont bridge, but it does add some extra travel time. Never ride on the Ballard bridge; it just doesn't have anywhere for bikes to be. The sidewalks are too narrow and unprotected from traffic, and the primary traffic lanes are going 40+ mph. That whole thing needs to be replaced for the 21st century, although there may be some resistance as it's a nationally registered "historic place."

Totally doable in San Francisco, Santa Monica, and Downtown Los Angeles, just to name three I know well enough in California to know that about them.

I’m only familiar with San Francisco, but every time I’m there I see that most people use Uber and Lyft instead of the bus.

Buses are under-utilized, but walking and various forms of wheeled transportation (motorized longboards, those one wheel things, bikes, scooters, etc) are popular.

San Francisco is only about 7 miles wide. You can walk from one side of the city to the other in about 2 hours. When I lived there, I walked almost everywhere. The only times I did otherwise was when it was a really long walk (over 45 minutes), or I needed to be somewhere fast. The bus will not get you anywhere fast, it's only about twice as fast as walking. I think that's why a lot of people use Lyft. The buses are actually quite nice inside imo, they're just slow. Plus the stigma that only poor people ride the bus.

You're lucky if you are able to live and work in SM or DTLA. Majority of people do not.

What is bad about NYC in particular? I’ve rented bikes in lots of European and US cities and have been thousands of miles in NYC and haven’t found it that much more dangerous than somewhere like Paris or London, except for certain large Avenues.

Chicago, San Francisco. Even la has a decent bus system.

You cannot compare San Francisco with Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, etc. SF is so unsafe that most people avoid public transportation and use Uber instead.

I don’t think unsafe is my main issue, with saying SF is comparable. Having lived in SF, Stockholm, London and worked for years in Amsterdam, SF just doesn’t have the density of public transport.

Let’s us Stockholm as an example: 100 metro stations and 170+ suburban rail stations, 60 light rail stops, on 2.3 million people in 6,519.3 km2 (2,517.1 sq mi).

San Francisco (Nine county, Bay Area), 33 metro stations, plus 87 additional metro stops about 200 station (ACE, Amtrak, BART, Caltrain, SMART, and VTA), on 7.75 million people, In 6,966 sq mi (18,040 km2).

The station density is nearly 2.5 times higher and on less than half the population.

Data from Wikipedia.

LA has a decent bus system? Are you serious? Have you ever lived in LA, and lived in a european city?

LA has no unified bus system. It has multiple ones and its super confusing. Each bus makes a stop nearly every minute, making every ride impossibly long. Lack of bus lanes make for shitty traffic stuck trips as well.

Yeah, LA is probably the worst (large) city in the US when it comes to public transport.

> Each bus makes a stop nearly every minute, making every ride impossibly long.

It's the same in London. That's why for longer rides you take the tube. Buses are for shorter rider or from getting from/to tube station.

Yes this works if you have bus as a part of a public transport system. Not when it's a haphazard here and there single solution

Also nice that corporations don't run my government mainly for their own benefit.

Some Japanese cities seem to be pretty good for that too. Apparently even very young children can safely take the bus, train or bike to school by themselves.

Except, the difference is mostly a stereotype that isn't held up by the data. In France, 70% of commuters travel by car and only 3% by cycling.[1]

That's less car-centric than America for sure. But Americans have a misguided notion that all Europeans live in quaint pedestrian-friendly town centers that look like Prague or Copenhagen. Mostly because we tend to spend our European tourism in the dense centers of the capital cities.

[1] https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/increase-paris-cyc...

People still commute by car in Europe because it's often much faster than public transport, but generally Europeans were more successful in preventing sprawl wastelands where you can't survive without a car.

In the US there are many places where the next supermarket is twenty minutes by car away and literally impossible to reach on a bike without getting run over. In contrast, even in the smallest town I've lived in, with just 20k residents, there where three supermarkets and two specialty stores in walking distance.

This is for France as a whole, not Paris. Ofc the figures will be majority car when you take a whole country into account instead of a city/metro area.

France != Paris. Considering only the cities, there is a massive difference between the majority of European cities I’ve visited and all US cities I’ve visited — the worst in Europe is about the equal of the best in America (e.g. Bay Area, NYC), to the extent that the only time I’ve owned a car was a 2-week period when my ex moved out of the country and wanted me to sell hers on her behalf.

My worst pedestrian experience was Salt Lake City, where the footpaths stopped suddenly and without apparent reason in the middle of the residential area I was staying in. I had to backtrack and guess a lot.

Sure, the sudden absence of footpaths can happen in Europe too (I’ve seen it in Λάρνακα, Luxembourg, and Hochstadt, though never to the same extent), but for the most part even tiny villages in Europe have better public transport and pedestrian access than the various American cities I’ve visited.

Prague is not pedestrian-friendly at all. You probably meant "Vienna or Copenhagen". :-)

I love my kansas city sprawl. It's not for everyone, but it certainty isn't sad in my eyes, or that of my friends.

But it is pretty sad for the rest of the world. In Latin-America our oldest cities are European-style cities, totally walkable. The new developments (say last 50-60) are mostly American-style suburban hell.

I think you are missing my point.

Beauty is in the eye if the beholder

Did you grow up with suburban car culture? How do you know your frame of reference isn't biased?

Did you grow up without it? Are you biased as a result of that? Bias is practically impossible to eliminate here.

(You could try to find people who moved from one place to another, and ideally limit it to those whose reason for moving had nothing to do with their preferences... and poll them. I don't know how possible that is. It likely also makes a difference at what age they moved.)

I grew up in a car-centric country with fairly poor public transport, and have since moved to London. Here it’s genuinely faster to take public transport to most places than it is to drive.

I occasionally wish I had a car (say for a weekend getaway) but it’s rare enough that I’m happy to live with rentals for those occasions.

Great that you like it. Your health, and the world's, however, does not. Shame about that.

If your implication is that suburbia is a blite on mine and the globe's health....

[C I T A T I O N N E E D E D]

I enjoy an hours walk with the dog daily, solid lifting program, about 20 miles a week of cardio, and a vegan diet.

Doctor thinks I'm the picture of health.

I think it’s pretty clear what the responder intended, but sure. Here’s a citation:

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...

No it really isn't clear what the responder intended, and the contextless data point about vehicle emissions says nothing about the implications of a suburban style city on the health of the planet.

I don't understand how you can be so oblivious, but maybe you really just don't get it. Let me spell it out for you: Suburbia means that every trip out of the house will require a car.

This is a not a living style that we can afford for everyone. Great that you enjoy it, but enabling it for everyone is simply unsustainable.

Right now you are offloading it's cost externalities elsewhere:

Cost on Your Health: More driving = less walking = decreased life-expectancy. More driving = more air polution = decreased life-expectancy

Cost on the planet: More driving = more greenhouse gases = global warming.

If you want to learn more: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/812199726/why-sprawl-could-be... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reducing-street-s...

You make many terrible lifestyle assumptions and its insulting to me to call me 'oblivious' and frankly, it is unnecessary and below this forum.

More driving does not exclude a healthy walking routine.

More driving != equal more net green house gases. Yes the ICE generates greenhouse gases, but check out the carbon footprint of a battery supply chain for an EV sometime, or that of the MTA, MBTA, logistical supply chain of supplying the ENTIRE nyc 5 boroughs.

Bottom line, I'm willing to engage a deepdive discussion with critical eyes, not endure a superficial antisuburbia smear campaign while being namecalled.

We are not talking about your lifestyle. We are discussing effect of urban sprawl on the population and on the world. I was just so surprised that somebody on this forum could be able to miss the point so entirely, and be so ready to fight for whats clearly an indefensible position.

Walking More driving means your natural walking related to commute and errands goes to 0. There is a reason american states have a huge obesity problem compared to lots of european countries.

Cars Are you seriously comparing the carbon footprints of a personal car compared to the metro?

More driving means more green house gases. This is not about what vehicle you use, it's about the fact that urban sprawl requires a vehicle for even the most basic errands. This is unsustainable.

Not to mention do realize people can live in cities where they walk to work, walk to the grocery store, walk to gym, and walk to a restaurant?

>be so ready to fight for whats clearly an indefensible position

I really fail to see this as a reasonable expectation of dialogue and exchange of ideas if you're so cemented in your views.

> Suburbia means that every trip out of the house will require a car.

That is quite a generalization. Some suburbs can be like that, with houses for miles on end and nothing else. That seems like the exception though.

Plenty of suburban neighborhoods have walkable commerce nearby. I have never lived in a city. And yet, I've never lived in a place where I couldn't walk to at least a supermarket. Currently I live in very suburban (borderline rural, really) area and nearly everything I could need is within a 15 minute walk (multiple supermarkets & pharmacies, hardware store, clothing, restaurants, movies, medical, etc.)

Its not a generalization. This is what suburb sprawl means: https://www.treehugger.com/understanding-suburban-sprawl-409...

The no.1 factor is single-use zoning. This means people live in a certain zone, and commerce happens in another zone. No amount of personal anecdotes will affect this fact.

It is a generalization to assert "Suburbia means that every trip out of the house will require a car", when it is easy to show there are counterexamples where this is not true.

One could say "There are suburban areas where every trip requires a car" and that's a true statement. The generalization is not a true statement.

I've never heard anyone self identify as "European" before, do you not feel a stronger personal identity to your own country? Or is it a "in the context of HN and the US affect"?

It's quite a common thing. I would identify as a European too. UK is about to leave the EU, but UK is still in the European continent. Some of my fellow countrymen are not so sure, but for me, I feel more European than not.

On the internet I often identify myself as "European".

The reason is usually because americans seem to assume that everyone is an american, so it is to clarify that I have a non-american perspective.

Ah yeah, it's just in this context. While I'd never introduce myself by saying "hi, I'm from Europe", I feel that there are more similarities than differences between EU countries in terms of public transport, healthcare, mass shootings, education, etc. compared to the US, and I feel very privileged to be born on the right side of the Atlantic. :)

> The promise of the suburbs is a detached house, with some private outdoor space like a back yard, in a quiet area: essentially what the rich had always preferred and been able to afford.

You can do that and still have density. Things were built like that pre-WW2; see street view of this Toronto, Canada neighbourhood:

* https://www.google.com/maps/place/150+Westminster+Ave,+Toron...

Those houses (actually land) are very expensive now, but that's because urban living is now cool again. Up until the late-1990s they were quite affordable because all the Cool Kids wanted to live in the suburbs: downtown was mostly for immigrants post-WW2.

There's a bus line to the west of there (Parkside), a streetcar line to the east (Roncesvalles), and both of those connect to a subway line (Bloor). And one doesn't have to give up their car: it simply becomes optional for day-to-day stuff instead of being a necessity.

There's no reason why post-War suburbs couldn't have been built this way. The above neighbourhood was a suburb of Toronto and folks commuted via streetcar "to the city".

For slightly smaller sized homes, but still with backyards and laneway garages, see the next street over:

* https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+O...

Post WWII bylaws mandated super wide streets and wide separation between houses, ostensibly for fire protection. I spent Grade 6 through 13 (Ontario prolonged the torture) in a new build Toronto suburb. Virtually no transit to speak of and the nearest bus stop a twenty minute walk away, followed by nearly an hour to get downtown. Cycling was faster - still is,even with decades of transit improvements.

After high school I moved to the inner city and stayed clear of the suburbs.

Today I'm in a walkable century old dense neighborhood in a small regional center, but have to drive to get groceries. The car can stay parked for a week.

Other than commuting, and grocery shopping, my car also stays parked. My wife and I only looked at small urban areas to live (we both lived urban when we met). I have telecommuted through COVID, and in the last year, I have only put 3500 miles on my car (now fourteen years old), and that includes three months of commuting before we went 100% on-line.

They could only afford to do so because the government subsidized it, at the behest of car companies. id check out strong towns research on how suburbs are unsustainable

The first suburb was Long Island. Mass transit was prohibited. Commuters had no choice but to drive. They hated it. They still hate it.

The Power Broker, Robert Caro

Government killed public transit by mandating that bus and rail had to be separate entities. As rail travel plummeted bus routes were trying to increase rail traffic with bus routes serving rail stations.

> 2. Allocation of free public space (car parking) to drivers, effectively subsidizing (disproportionately suburban) commuters at the expense of residents.

The times I've commuted into a city, I had to pay for parking, usually in a private lot. I suspect it's like this in most big cities, and in smaller cities where people still commute, parking is probably private lots owned by the employer, not street parking. Picture a standard office park.

In places with free street parking (or public lots), I suspect the population is sparse enough that the added land cost for parting isn't a big deal, most people have cars, and most people support having parking.

> In places with free street parking (or public lots), I suspect the population is sparse enough that the added land cost for parting isn't a big deal, most people have cars, and most people support having parking.

This is not true in Manhattan, which (to my knowledge) is the most densely populated borough in the most densely populated city in the US. Almost all street parking in Manhattan is free, with small carve-outs for meters on high-traffic blocks.

The city also has a semi-official policy of allowing commercial traffic to ignore parking laws[1]. In practice, that means trucks parked on sidewalks, with pedestrians exposed to car traffic on the streets.

[1]: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2018/08/20/delivery-companies-pr...

Of course they support it, because it doesn't effect their wallets. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a cost to it:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking

Manhattan has all day free on-street parking in some places. More opens up after 6PM. Then everything is free on Sundays.

> parking is probably private lots owned by the employer, not street parking. Picture a standard office park.

But this is still subsidized because regulations mandate that buildings have lots of parking. These regulations are typically quite extreme with requirements intended to support the 99.999% demand case (think peak hour of black friday) conditional on a parking price of $0. Most developments build the minimum amount of parking they can by law suggesting this isn't a free market outcome.

So if you want to have business you have to provide tons of parking and make up for it with higher prices for your goods and services. This subsidizes vehicle driving over other modes a transport. Especially so because giant parking lots make it harder to reach the store front by foot.

Google Donald Shoup for more context.

Car free cities are super obtainable but seem like a total impossibility. We will never trade safety, health and solitude for convenience.

> safety, health and solitude

Funny, those are 3 of the main reasons I live way out in the nearly-rural suburbs instead of in downtown San Francisco.

It seems like some of us have made that trade, just not in the direction you're hoping for.

>Funny, those are 3 of the main reasons I live way out in the nearly-rural suburbs instead of in downtown San Francisco.

And this is precisely the problem: automotive culture presently represents a massive subsidy to rural and suburban areas at the expensive of urban dwellers.

I can't possibly blame people for making that trade. But the observation is that it's sweetened by externalities that ex-urban areas don't have to bear.

I don't think car-free cities are easily obtainable. I can't think of one that currently exists.

Even cities with world-class mass transit, e.g. Tokyo and London, are full of cars, and taxis are still a better option for some trips -- even though there are also surface trains, subways, and buses to choose from.

In those places, step 1 has already been solved: convince the population that mass transit is desirable and should be well funded. London even charges congestion fees for cars. But they still can't achieve car-free cities.

This is an interesting observation but I'd argue there certainly cities where cycling is a norm (Amsterdam, Copenhagen) and cities that are increasingly turning to 2 wheels as a way to solve density (Paris, Berlin, Oslo). I think the UK, like the US, suffers from the idea of cars being a status symbol. I've no idea how this works in Tokyo for example, would be good to know their approach to cycling as an alternative, but pedestrianisation of areas and city centres are what we should certainly strive for.

Nobody drives in those cities; there is too much traffic.

Somebody has to be driving, otherwise the traffic would just be a bunch of empty cars.

But I agree the majority of locals don’t drive.

The person you're responding to was paraphrasing a famous comedic observation. To quote Yogi Berra: "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."

Venice and Siena come to mind

Anecdotally last time I was in central London I counted the vehicles going past parliament. About 1 in 10 was an unmarked car, the rest were commercial vehicles or taxis

I don’t know for London, I wouldn’t describe Tokyo as full of cars.

There are major axes to accross the city with constant traffic and most bigger blocks are accessible by car (even just for deliveries). But there are pretty large areas with no car entry, and small residential parts are often shared car/bike/pedestrian zones were cars are not privileged.

I also think the goal shouldn’t be car-free, but to have clear separation of the “liveable” space with shops, parks, administrations, schools etc., and the “transportation” space with the trains, cars, cans and trucks. Speaking of Tokyo it often layers the two, with lower level streets/buses/truck roads and upper level walkable space. Seems to be the best compromise, albeit more expensive to build.

That layering takes place only in the densest urban core, primarily around significant train junctions. In the rest of the sprawl, there's no separation, some parts of residental greater Tokyo (particularly those still using pre-war streets) don't even have sidewalks.

Tokyo's residential neighbourhoods without pavements are great - it makes the whole road a shared space rather than one that belongs exclusively to cars.

A lack of sidewalks combined with narrow streets forces drivers to slow down and pay attention, which is ideal if you want to see fewer injuries and deaths caused by vehicle traffic on a stretch of road.

> Even cities with world-class mass transit, e.g. Tokyo and London, are full of cars

I've found Tokyo had surprisingly few cars for a massive city with high population density. Also, virtually no street parking, which makes the cityscape much nicer, and many side-alleys that are largely car-free.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car-free_places

That's mostly islands, here are a few cities: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/car-free-cities-of-the-w...

I'm trying to find the city in Brazil (I think is is) where they recently went car-free.

We don't have to trade convenience. We have to trade houses for apartments. Cars are largely what make having a house in the middle of nowhere largely possible.

> 1. The construction of highways through poor (read: minority) urban areas, causing mass respiratory disease and premature deaths[1].

Isn't this kind of leap? I've lived plenty of expensive places (e.g. downtown San Diego, Boston, Los Angeles) that had free/highways close to expensive property. What is leading you to believe highway construction targets the poor areas, other than those real estate markets are already depressed (which is possibly why poor people live there)?

The role of highways and red-lining of federal house building loans in segregating and suppressing black communities is well documented. (You can argue about intention, but the effect is pretty apparent) [1]

Remember this happened in the 40s and 50s. Plenty has changed since then, including the gentrification of poor areas near highways. But that doesn’t change the history of the US highway system.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/role-of...

> Isn't this kind of leap?

No. Here are two specific examples:

1. The Cross Bronx Expressway, which basically created the South Bronx[1]. "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro is one of HN's most frequently recommended books, and covers this subject (as well as other racially-motivated planning projects by Robert Moses) extensively.

2. I-65 and I-165 in Mobile, AL cut directly through the historic "Africatown" neighborhood[2]. Residents regularly complain about both automotive and nearby industrial pollution, encouraged by ease of access by the highway[3].

Most of these effects are more visible on the East Coast rather than the West Coast, since the East's older and denser cities had fewer "paths of least resistance" when building the Interstate Highway System during the midcentury. But it wouldn't particularly surprise me if the areas that are now expensive in the cities that you mentioned were originally cleared for highways under "slum clearance" or similar laws.

Edit: This is anecdotal, but I figured I'd mention it anyways: I grew up in Manhattan, and virtually everybody I grew up with has (or had) asthma. Some of that is to be expected from other pollution sources (in particular, NYC used to burn very dirty heating oil), but I also went to public schools that were directly alongside major state and interstate highways.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_Bronx_Expressway#Urban_d...

[2]: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/19/733996699/alabamas-africatown...

[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/26/africatown-s...

Here in Seattle they bulldozed parks and diverse neighborhoods (parts of the International District, First Hill, Capitol Hill, Eastlake) where primarily queer and non-white people lived to build I-5.

Portland's I-205 has much the same story, my father lived through that terrible process where many of his friends had their homes razed to build yet another freeway.

Virginia intentionally ran I-64 through Richmond's oldest historic black district, Jackson Ward, splitting it in two and effectively destroying it.

Big example here in Denver, cut off historically black/hispanic neighborhood straight down the middle. Plus added a big leaking chemical refinery, dog food plant etc. The smells and pollution and asthma have had generational health effects.

Links to read below. #2 specifically has moving images/graphics.

They're currently expanding... to be fair they will add a small amount of benefits to 'bridge the gap' like a small park over a new small lowered section (but i think like only a couple blocks wide).

But it's still an expansion and the construction is bringing even more problems & nuisance.

Plus mostly young, mostly white expensive new construction apartment buildings have been creeping north and displacing a lot of historically black low income families. I think infilling and repurposing some of the old warehouse type space is good but the inequity is undeniable.

https://www.hcn.org/issues/47.22/in-denvers-latino-neighborh... https://denverite.com/2016/10/08/air-quality-legacy-issue-el... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/denver-interstate-70-e... https://www.denverpost.com/2019/06/30/asthma-elyria-swansea-...

Los Angeles has several examples, which I personally attribute to red-lining in the 1930s that led to current transportation policy and infrastructure choices.

-Boyle Heights was a predominately Latino community in east LA, which had the East LA interchange built right through it (I-10/I-5).

-Communities along what is currently I-105 were opposed to the construction since the 1970s for the typical NIMBY reasons, and these communities were predominately Black.

And the reverse:

-CA-2 was supposed to route from Silver Lake to Santa Monica via Beverly Hills, but community opposition prevented the freeway from being built and is why there's large parts of LA (mid-city/Melrose) that are far away from a freeway.

-I-710 was intended to connect Long Beach to Pasadena, but the city of South Pasadena protested heavily in preventing the freeway from being built and closing the gap. This litigation occurred up until the late-2010s when the CA State Assembly and Governor Newsom ended the 710 project once and for all.

Here in Raleigh, NC, Wade Ave was paved through Oberlin Village:

https://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/article237167884.html

Many other examples:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/role-of...

https://www.dispatch.com/in-depth/lifestyle/2020/12/03/black...

https://catalyst.independent.org/2020/04/02/how-the-u-s-gove...

https://www.facingsouth.org/2020/06/bitter-history-behind-hi...

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/top-infrastructure-officia...

https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/urban-renewals-shamefu...

etc

New Haven’s https://downtowncrossingnewhaven.com/history/

It's that joke about how real estate developments are named things like "Shady Grove" after whatever they destroyed to build it, but taken one step further.

Cut down the trees and name the neighborhood after them, then cut down Oak Street and name a highway after it.

"Wade" Ave... as in Wade Hampton III?

> The road is named after Stacy Wilson Wade. He was the North Carolina Secretary of State from 1933 to 1936. He was also a member of the Board of Trustees for North Carolina State University.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Avenue

Fun tidbit: there's a house along the road that is not what it appears to be:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QobxnFYhMos

> The construction of highways through poor (read: minority) urban areas, causing mass respiratory disease and premature deaths[1].

This has nearly nothing to do with automotive culture and everything to do with the system of governance in the US. In local politics in the US, your level of representation is roughly equal in proportion to your property tax bill every year. If you're renting, or otherwise in a situation where you don't directly pay (significant) property tax, your voice doesn't matter.

The rest is pretty much true, but would be worth noting that the only options for the US are for every city to have extensive sprawling underground metros interlinked by high-speed rail, or to have most people own a car and have highways everywhere. Any middle ground or half measure is untenable in our current society without causing direct, real, dire consequences to the very people you're trying to champion.

The Democracy Voucher program in Seattle has leveled the field quite a bit by enabling candidates that can connect with voters to field a viable, funded campaign: https://www.seattle.gov/democracyvoucher/program-data

We have a much larger field of candidates running due to this program.

Um, the biggest one POLUTION! Including lead poisoning of a couple generations due to leaded gas.

Disastrous foreign Mid East policies to secure oil.

There is a credible theory that the use of leaded fuel was responsible for the spike in violent crime that occurred in the same period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis

1) I will be curious to see if the BEV revolution happens there will be a huge statistical change in cancer rates in the US.

3) as a cyclist who transitions from commuting by bike in the summer to car in the winter, it is astonishing how my psychology is impacted by driving in the two modes. I am so much more impatient and angry from driving.

There is just a nasty psychological feedback cycle of the obvious pure potential of the automobile as a time savings device and the visceral feeling of losing that when encountering any traffic or obstacle.

At least I get the cycling part to enlighten my perspective. Most americans are car-encased permanently and oblivious.

Not sure where you live but I am pretty far north. I'm in a similar situation but in the winter I ride the bus. My psychology changes just based on the lack of light. Driving is definitely super stressful but combine that with short, dark days and less exercise and it just compounds.

Sadly the tires them self seems to be a big problem. I wonder how big share of air polution they are responsible of.

Estimates seem to be <10%, and I believe even that was by mass, so much less penetrating.

It is an issue, and I don't want lots of cars even if electric, but if you are weighing them as having similar air pollution, it's probably fearmongering, or fantasyland where cars don't have deteriorating emission control.

Tires ,but also brake pads. That's why we need to have ceramic brake discs and pads for all cars being mandatory soon.

EV solve only a small fraction of the problems.

Regarding your third point, I've nothing but distain for bikers in my community. They put up signs to be treated like cars (since there generally are very poor shoulders in this area) but then will plow through stop signs and will not signal turns or anything. Nearly ran one over in a fire truck because they just ran right through the stop sign.

It’s been seen [0] that having a slightly different subset of traffic rules for cyclists (while maintaining that they are indeed a vehicle with rights to the public roadways) is safer for all parties. ————————————————-

[0] https://sdotblog.seattle.gov/2020/09/30/washington-states-ne...

> We in the US do an absolutely horrific job of recognizing and compensating for the externalities of our automotive culture.

One of the ways we recognize the externalities of our automotive culture is by making jaywalking illegal.

> One of the ways we recognize the externalities of our automotive culture is by making jaywalking illegal.

You mean the law in one municipality that hasn't taken effect yet, and that took months of LEO-adjacent protests?

We're slowly getting better, to be sure. But I don't think anybody should be content with the rate of progress.

I think you mis-read GPs post...

I'm the GP of this particular thread, so hopefully not :-)

I think they were referring to nineplay's post, which was the GP of the post that replied to you. It gets pretty confusing, I guess pointers are hard even in natural language.

nineplay's post seemed to me to suggest that they believe that jaywalking being illegal is in itself a way to deal with the externalities of the car culture - it seems they are happy with jaywalking being illegal. I would guess that is why they also got the down votes.

Your reply seems to be written as if you thought nineplay was praising people making jaywalking not illegal, which I believe is the wrong reading of their post.

Ah, I can see that reading now. Thanks for the clarification.

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