Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure I'll get some angry responses here like I did in some of my previous comments (someone implied I was poor or something because they thought that I couldn't afford 3 cars???), but I so far couldn't agree more with this article.

I voted for Biden and lean independent, so this isn't political. But this infrastructure bill is largely a jobs and pork program and isn't meaningful change. We don't need more new highways.

"In the 2010 stimulus package, my community received millions for a new road. Guess what? That gave us some short-term construction jobs, but now my community has a new overengineered, overbuilt road to maintain. Forever. This is what infrastructure is: a forever obligation."

Yep. And ya know what? Building trains isn't going to solve the problem either. Why build a train when you go from one city to another and you just have to rent a car when you get there anyway? Trains work when you have desirable places to go once you step off the train. Maybe if we're lucky those places will spring up around the train station(s).

And even if you largely disagree with the article, at least appreciate that someone is challenging the status quo in an honest, if not ideological way, who wants to make America a better, more sustainable place. I feel frustrated on a routine basis that nobody ever questions every family having all these cars, maintaining them, paying insurance, and building and maintaining new roads and highways versus like, just building differently instead of the suburbs and strip malls.

I do live in the suburbs, and it's not all bad. It's easy to get in my car and drive a mile down the road and get a coffee from McDonald's, what's not to love? And my Amazon Prime packages from some warehouse never get stolen. Hell, most days I don't need to leave near my house or talk to anybody, I can just interact with them on social media instead. (-edit- /s)

Ok, I do admit there are some nice things. Having a yard (aside from the constant mowing noises, weed killer, etc.) has some nice benefits. We did condense down to one car at least since we don't have kids.

> I do live in the suburbs, and it's not all bad. It's easy to get in my car and drive a mile down the road and get a coffee from McDonald's, what's not to love?

[U.S.] Suburbs become unpalatable once you live somewhere that actually cares about public transit and designed the city accordingly. E.g. Seoul. With mixed residential and commercial businesses, one never has to walk more than 5 minutes to get groceries, if that. Trains and busses will take you anywhere you want. Of course, you can still have a car, but it simply is obviated unless you have a specific need to move furniture, etc.

After having experienced that, I absolutely detest having to hop in my car to drive and get groceries, etc, because there is -nothing- but houses in my suburb area. It makes me rather depressed knowing what people are missing out on, what life is capable of being like. A well-run, comprehensive train and bus system like that will probably never happen in the US.

edit: I am speaking specifically about suburbs in the US. I don't think other countries design suburbs nearly as car-centric and isolated as the U.S. does.

People have such curious idea of what a suburb has to be like.

I live in a suburb in the UK. We have groceries in walking distance. I can get a train or a bus anywhere I want. This is all achievable without building a metropolis like Seoul.

I don't understand why people hear suburb and think unwalkable and no public transport. It's normal in other places.

I suppose I should clarify that I'm talking about suburbs in the US. They're not designed for humans, but for cars. And public transportation is largely a joke outside of a few cities.

Most often they're Americans where in the suburbs you can't walk to groceries even if they're in distance unless you want to walk on the highway. There's no public transport either. Like there's nothing at all. People drive a quarter mile because the environment is so hostile.

There's nothing curious about it. This article is about the United States and people are referring to suburbs in the U.S.

If you're not familiar with U.S. suburbs, their history, and how they were explicitly designed... that's fine, but it's kind of condescending to talk like those of us who are aware of U.S. suburbs have some "curious" and bizarre idea about them.

The bit they're missing is that it's not an inherent property of suburbs. The problem isn't suburbs, it's how some suburbs have been done.

It can be done in America. I've seen small, walkable towns there. In fact isn't America famous for its walkable small towns? Small-town America. You can even find them near where people think they're impossible - like the small coastal towns in the Bay Area such as Half Moon Bay. Completely walkable.

And to repeat the parent comment back to them:

> It makes me rather depressed knowing what people are missing out on, what life is capable of being like.

You can say the same about their own view of suburbs!

I think you're reading the term "suburb" too literally, as an outlying municipality of a major city. In fact, when Americans use the term "suburb", especially in this context, it means, by definition, developments with sprawling, car-centric design.

I’ve lived 30 years in extremely well run and organized cities, with great public transport and used car only every few weeks for the longer trips.

I live now in a proper suburb and drive everywhere. And I enjoy it much more.

Not everyone values same things in their life the same. YMMV.

> Not everyone values same things in their life the same. YMMV.

Completely agree. And it's a public policy problem where one lifestyle is very nearly enforced. So people are pushing back against that.

It's like if the government was doing this thing you wanted them to do and a lot of other people didn't like it, but they did it anyway, you'd be like yea cool this works. Good job government.

In this case it's keep building roads, parking lots, and suburbs because I like driving and I'll use that to solve all my problems. But you're not realizing some of the costs of all of those things. Society certainly is. National debt, time spent sitting in a car commuting because there's no other option, teenagers dying in car crashes (I think it's still the number 1 killer of teens?), drunk driving (again no options here), amount of money spent on infrastructure, oil, wars, etc.

I don't disagree with you, people value different things. However most of the US is designed in this suburb style where it's just miles and miles of houses with grocery stores and food being at least 5-15 mins away via -car-. Chicago, NY, and Boston have decent metro lines but none of our public transit comes even close to e.g. Korea or Japan in terms of efficiency, comprehensiveness, and cleanliness.

The only option for the majority of the US is to have a car. And I hate that.

edit: also regarding cars: I can't relax fully because I'm operating a vehicle in a space shared by other people, who are potentially distracted, operating potentially deadly vehicles that kill or seriously injure many Americans each year, and I can't read a book, etc, because my hands are tied up. This would be fine if I had other choices, but I realistically don't.

My wife was born and grew up in Hong Kong, an urban dream city. Between MTR, light rail, and an incredible bus system, their transportation is some of the best in the world, and it serves some very high-density housing, so it's well-suited.

A few years ago she moved to the US and we now live in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, where she loves it. She prefers it over Hong Kong in nearly every way, loves driving, loves everything about it.

It's simple not true that US suburbs become unpalatable when compared to Seoul (or Hong Kong). That may be true for you, but it is not at all true for everyone. There are tradeoffs and compromises on both extremes.

I disagree with you on the trains part.

Where do you live? There are parts of the country where trains are a must for everyday commuters, and intercity commuters. NYC, Boston, DC, etc...

Do you realize that the north-east corridor is already profitable, and it is used a lot. (NYC, D.C. and Boston part). Its profits go to subsidize other routes.

That corridor needs a high-speed portion, but there has always been political oppositions to it, and this bill doesn't do much, or hasn't specified anything.

Seems like a Obama 'shovel ready' infra plan 2.0, it didn't accomplish anything meaningful and lasting to the country. This looks the same.

I live in Columbus, Ohio. There are talks about expanding lines from here to Cleveland and Cincinnati and other locations. I love the idea of that, but it's just not a good use of money right now. There's nowhere to go once you get there. You need walkability. If you get there and have to rent a car most people would save the $100 or whatever and just drive an hour and a half or two hours.

And yea the east coast is different. Is the west coast? Idk. For most of the rest of America it's unfortunately not feasible in the current state of things. There are exceptions of course.

I disagree on the train provided the route is built on an already heavy commuter route.

Even if they need to rent a car at the other end that's still a huge net benefit to reducing the load on the route as it exists now, as well as increasing the overall system efficiency.

And putting trains on tracks is easy. You aren't building trains you're building train track routes that can be used by many trains.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com