Advanced city is not where the poor have cars, but the rich use public transport | Hacker News Reader

Advanced city is not where the poor have cars, but the rich use public transport

kottke.org

82 pointsFabHK38 comments

This from the article:

The original quote (from 2012) is from another former mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa, and it reads:

Una ciudad avanzada no es en la que los pobres pueden moverse en carro, sino una en la que incluso los ricos utilizan el transporte público.

That roughly translates in English to:

An advanced city is not one where the poor can get around by car, but one where even the rich use public transportation.

I think the mayor is referring to a city being safe enough so that even the rich can public transportation. In many parts of Colombia public transportation was too dangerous for the rich as they killed and/or kidnapped. The rich used to travel in armored vehicles with protection in Colombia.

In both the US and Europe, public transport is, for the most part, very safe, but there’s still an attitude that many people have that only poor people use it. This is more of the issue that prevents people from using it (and also a reason they don’t want to build it in the first place), as social perception is a very strong motivator.

When a country is at the point where issues like kidnapping and murder are a widespread problem, now you’re talking about a complete failure of the law and government, and at that point public transportation is relatively low on the priority list.

What a thought provoking point. Advanced cities are good enough that the people who could pay for more are still happy with the same.

And where "more" isn't necessarily better.

It's super frustrating that Google Maps doesn't include the time it takes to walk to your car, the time it takes to drive out of the parking lot, the time it takes to find a parking spot and the time it takes to walk from your parking spot to your destination -- or the time it takes to wait for an Uber. [edit] It just assumes there's a car out front of your house, idling, that you can drop directly off in front of your destination and forget about.

On the other hand, with public transit directions, it takes into account not just how long it takes to walk to and from your destination, but in places without fixed schedules for certain routes, assumes you'll miss one and have to wait for the next one. A good example is getting from Brooklyn to JFK with the A and AirTrain via Howard Beach Station. It just adds 15 extra minutes, making transit look much worse than an Uber - where in reality, it's usually a good 10 minutes faster.

In a lot of cases, biking or taking public transit are simply better choices - faster, cheaper, more convenient. That's not how they're often presented, however.

I live in downtown SF, and I now exclusively take transit, scooters or my e-bike. It's just better.

I went back to edit my comment before I saw yours about "more" potentially not being better so I completely agree. I'm in Palo Alto and very happy getting around on my bike or the caltrain (or renting a car for the one-offs).

People in the US live in suburbs that are several towns worth of distance away from the city. In many cases, the train lines don't exist on those places.

This culture of suburbia needs to change.

Not really. Maybe we can live the way we want to and not pollute and use Zoom meetings. We don’t all have to live packed into cities.

Living in cities is significantly more efficient - environmentally, economically and on energy consumption and water consumption. We could all live out in the middle of nowhere, at the expense of the environment, but only if we significantly reduced our population at the same time.

I remain unconvinced that living outside of a city has a larger than normal share of environmental externalities.

Interesting, I did some digging based on your reply. Seems like it's an open question. I'll do some more reading!

It's not the one or or the other. I live far more remote than a typical American suburb. Yet my neighbor's sell cheese, milk and other stuff all around in simple fridges with a little qr code for payment. For everything else I can just order online and get it delivered asap.

I don't care that it takes me a hour or so to the nearest city by public transport. What I care is the infrastructure given there where I live.

This kind of advanced city is so expensive that the middle class has to use public transportation, even when they wish to ride a car. That's not about the rich. Really rich people do not use public transportation, they can afford a car with a driver, or a helicopter even in the most expensive cities. Taxis exist all over Europe, even though middle class often uses the public transportation.

So I would rephrase this quote as An advanced city is the one where public transportation is clean, safe, time-reliable and abundant (covers most of the city/metropolis).

I feel the article is talking about the top 10 percent in the city not the top 0.01% who can afford a helicopter.

And these people would use the subway if it would get them from point A to point B faster than a car.

Exactly. Talking about the top 0.01% is a distraction, because whatever they're doing won't move the needle a bit on transportation (unless they're blocking a highway construction or something).

Don't think of billionaires. Think of your average Google engineer.

Faster and more comfortably. Back when trains were only for the rich (just after private cabins) they looked like high end restaurants. This gradually went away but I imagine a great breakfast to be a much more appealing activity than driving in rush hour. Decent seats, tables/desks and fast internet (without a portal page) so that one can plant down the laptop and get to work would also be more interesting than driving.

This. The business lines here in Switzerland even sometimes have a Starbucks on board. And are comfortable and classy as fuck for only like 20 or 30% more cost than the cheap seats. I've had colleagues who would actually write down the travel time as work hours.

I don't like the idea but perhaps the service level needs to be adjusted more accurately to the audience. The rich are getting richer while everyone else is losing purchase power. I really don't like paying 2 or 3 times what a trip by car would cost. I'd prefer a 3rd class cabin with simple seats or non at all if it means I can travel where I like cheaply. Others might prefer to do more of a business class commute, at much higher rates, in comfort, with some actual service.

It doesn't cost 2-3 times as much. Especially as business traveller you pay a flat price lower than semi-nice car would cost per year. Many 'normal' travellers use this too.

I often travel first class when I find tickets on sale. Sometimes I plan my travel around good ticket offers.

6.5 hour train ride first class for 30€ is a thing. Normal price is ~€100. Gas would be about 60€ so it is cheaper anyway as soon as you are two people.

I assume that our household is in the top 10 percent in our city. I ride the bus because it is more convenient and better for my temper. It is also less expensive, by about $75/week.

I mean it depends on what you think rich is. However the reason why rich and popular people often use the train in Switzerland are not only the views and because it is comfortable but also because it is usually by far the fastest way to get around.

I've seen our then president getting a sandwich before he jumps back on a public tram.

Quite a few streets in Istanbul are too narrow for cars. No matter how "rich" you are, you'll have to exit the car and walk like the rest of us 'plebes'

Sometimes it's just for practical reasons. A completely unsupported fact is that it now takes longer to cross London by car than it did in an ox cart. And add on a £15 charge. That's a good reason not to drive.

Love this. Most North American cities are built around cars, it'll take a lot to change this. But it won't happen by the free market alone, cities need to hire good urban planners and user experience designers to build these cities.

I'm no market fundamentalist, but there are so many things in our current codes that prevent the market from doing its job. Parking minimums for instance. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/10/11/where-we-embr...

At the very least, we should get rid of that sort of thing, and work on planning the public spaces we do have, like roads, sidewalks, bike paths and parks.

That quote is quite ironic to tell the truth. Peñalosa created a public transport system that's overcrowded and unsafe. Nobody wants to use it, but many have no other choice but to use it.

Can you expand on that? Creating a public transit system that suffers from overcrowding doesn't sound like a failure; it sounds like a good start. (Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded. - Yogi Berra)

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

It's not a failure in terms of the number of people that use it, but when the seats are full and the standing passengers are jam-packed like sardines, it's definitely nothing to brag about, and you certainly won't find the rich using it.

Peñalosa also introduced Pico y Placa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico_y_placa), a system that does not negatively impact those who can afford to own two cars, and forces the remainder of car owners to use the atrocious public transport system every other day.

Fortunately the Bogota Metro is under construction now and will be open in a few years.

Biggest social equalizer I've seen, especially in NYC/Chicago.

Or Paris, or Amsterdam.

Both huge markets for private car services. The rich taking public transport everywhere doesn’t really happen anywhere in the US.

Since intercity travel via car is cheaper than the trains, if you take whole Netherlands as a very big city, their understanding of being advanced looks quite different.

NL should adjust prices to the number of travelers. The amount of empty trains driving around (for good reasons) is mind blowing. Big cities need lots of trains, where do you park them at night, clean them or do maintenance? Far away and outside the normal schedule. Close to urban areas the trains are both big and full but the further away they get the fewer passengers. If those trips were free it would cost very little. 600 p x 2 euro vs 5 p x 30 euro. Empty trains also aren't safe and people behave like pigs.

I am skeptical of such claims despite the sophisticated vibe one may carry in their belief. It's natural for less economically prosperous jurisdictions outside North America to try over-glorifying themselves with non-quantifiable metrics like "happiness" and claims like this to "feel good". There is also a certain "petty jealousy" targeted at the US lifestyle that I sensed in Europe for example. (To be clear, I am saying this as a non-American). The truth is probably to have more availability of both.

it's not confined to less prosperous regions. Bankers in NY, London, Tokyo take public transit. In any city that is safe and dense you'll see plenty of professionals take public transport. Singapore has a car ownership rate of 10% and I wouldn't accuse them of petty jealousy.

I don't think people are jealous of a lifestyle where you have to drive an hour to the next city and spend hours of your day behind a wheel. Nobody outside of the US envies that lifestyle

In which case one could more accurately substitute "dense" for "advanced". There is an implicit assumption that dense == advanced that may or may not be true.

"Economic prosperity" is just as non-quantifiable as happiness. GDP vs HDI

It's commendable that these countries are setting meaningful goals than to simply chase empty GDP growth.

You have come far, Grasshopper.

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