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Comment by adflux | Hacker News Reader

Spoken as someone who hasn't ever driven a person to a hospital, or had to travel to work by car, or had to be driven to school by a school bus etc etc etc

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I've had to do all of those things, and still agree that towns and cities being designed with cars as the default mode of transport is insane

I'm just curious if you grew up in a very large city and haven't been to other countries? Because public transport as a primary form of transportation simply isn't feasible in many places. And I was responding to the statement about cars being the worst invention of the 21st century...

It isn't feasible because it wasn't designed as main way of transportation.

A great many European countries have proven it is practical. In fact in some cities it’s more beneficial not to drive (London and Amsterdam to give two examples of wildly different cities yet both favour public transport)

Cycling is way quicker in Berlin for all sub 7km journeys

Yes, being suburban Londoners in early 2020 we were checking the car would start periodically and contemplating getting rid of it. But then Covid struck, and us being high risk, public transport suddenly looked really unattractive. We haven't used it since. It is such a shame. We still use the car sparingly and one day hopefully have that conversation about scrapping it again.

It isn't feasible because it was designed around the idea that everyone would have cars.

Again, the cars are the reason it was made to be infeasible. Cars damaged our cities.

That's a reasonable point, but doesn't particularly address the issue.

The point was "the car is the most harmful invention of the 20th century".

Public transport is feasible in smaller cities and towns too. Freiburg im Breisgau is a great example. 230,000 people, pedestrianised centre, 5 tram lines, very low car usage. When I lived there, everyone I knew either walked, cycled or used the tram.

It's fine, the main problem is that 90% (imaginary data) of the cars in cities are not used.

If all "normal" people used car sharing services or taxis, then a lot of roads could have 1 more lane (where parking normally occurs), which would increase the throughput of the streets.

All the peak hour traffic circling around their destination struggling to find a parking spot would also disappear.

This would reduce the overall traffic noticeably, and everyone would get to their destination quicker and with less stress.

The problem with this is that so many people obbsess over vehicle ownership, that probably banning car ownership (with reasonable exceptions like modified cars for accomodating disabilities, oldtimers, cars with baby seats installed, etc..) in cities would be required to make this happen.

Speaking from an experience living in a big city, where I owned a car, but transitioned to using car sharing, even for long trips around the country.

> the main problem is that 90% (imaginary data) of the cars in cities are not used

Reality is even worse than your imagination.

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=cars+are+parked+*+of+t...

One problem is that there's a long tail of car use cases that are served terribly by things like car-sharing. For example if you rent a car for a few hours of driving, two weeks of parking at some trailhead or remote resort and then driving back it's inevitably priced for the wear and tear that would happen if you spent the entire two weeks doing nothing but sleeping and driving. Rentals that aren't dead-set on the pattern "a few days of driving between arrival and departure" exist, but they have terrible discoverability and that implies that prices fell arbitrary ("is this close to the price I would get in a market with full visibility or are they just taking advantage of nonstandard needs?")

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's still plenty of room for innovation in the non-owned car market.

I think people underestimate the price of owning a car vs. renting one. I can rent a VW Golf in Berlin for <350 EUR per week, 1000km included. The ADAC (car owners association) puts the monthly price tag for owning such a car at > 500 EUR per month. (assuming you buy it new, own it for 5 years and drive 15000km/year) https://www.adac.de/_mmm/pdf/autokostenuebersicht_47085.pdf

That means I can rent that car for ~5 month and still come out ahead.

There must be a typo somewhere in your comment, I don't understand how 350/week for 5 months is better than 500/month.

I guess what GP meant is that you can rent only whenever you need it, as opposed to 500/month for _every_ month you own?

I actually meant “rent the car for X month”, but I made some mistakes here. First, I took the exact numbers for the calculation, but rounded them generously in favor of owning the car in the post. Second I made some sort of mistake, doing the math, so I’m still slightly off. The correct math:

The smallest golf on the list is 579 EUR/Month, that’s 6.948 EUR per year. Renting a Golf at starcar costs 1436 EUR for the month of August. That’s 4.84, just shy of 5.

"last mile" problems are real -- and frequently rather more than 1.6 Km.

This response comes across as really churlish. I would absolutely drive to work in one of these if I could, particularly if other people were in vehicles of similar size that didn't pollute the air. These are clearly personal vehicles, so the school bus is a completely different use case, driving a person to a hospital, if urgent, can be done with an ambulance or a taxi if non-urgent etc etc etc

I would argue that the car has provided incredible utility to humanity, and that calling it the worst invention of the century would be doing it a massive disservice.

Your comment came across very differently if that's what you were trying to say.

For real, I'm all for alternative modes of transportation, but some people seem to really do think that their groceries and the stuff they buy on a pedestrianized high-street appear there by magic.

Well, that's why I specified for "passenger" use.

Of course it makes sense for groceries to be transported in a truck.

The way this works in many places with pedestrianised centres, is that it is open for goods traffic from 05:00 - 07:30 for example. Or, there will be some loading bays for goods vehicles to park nearby, with cycle wagons to take the goods the last 100 metres or so to the actual storefront.

It's all about reducing the impact of motor vehicles. They do have benefits, nobody is arguing that all motor vehicles should cease to exist. But we should limit the pollution, noise, danger, space used up.

Oh I know. But the carrot works better than the stick in this case.

> nobody is arguing that all motor vehicles should cease to exist. But we should limit the pollution, noise, danger, space used up.

There is some antagonism, especially unhelpful antagonism. Because what works for a city-center dweller might not work for a rural area inhabitant.

Reminds me of the activists that pushed for nuclear power plants to close. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

> Because what works for a city-center dweller might not work for a rural area inhabitant

Well, I don't think that anybody is proposing that we pedestrianise someone's farm, because we're also pedestrianising town centres. I'm not sure I understand the comparison here, really.

> I'm not sure I understand the comparison here, really.

Look up what motivated the (initial) Gillets Jaunes protests in France

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