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Comment by imglorp | Hacker News Reader

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.

> 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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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"?

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.

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.

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. :)

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

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

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

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.

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.

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