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Comment by sinab | Hacker News Reader

What I hate about "car discourse" like this is the apparent blindness to public transportation. Trains, bikes, buses, and street cars solve almost every problem that the author complains about.

The only outstanding problem, however, is that American infrastructure has been deliberately designed solely around the car. Those who suggest alternative modes of public transportation are immediately written off as "impractical". Discourse ought to be centered around democratizing and diversifying the ways people can get around, not on how one ought to "make dumb cars".

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> The only outstanding problem, however, is that American infrastructure has been deliberately designed solely around the car.

The problem is that "infrastructure" doesn't just mean roads. It's where houses are. Where schools are. Where food is transported. It's where water and electrical service runs. It's how property is zoned. It's how police, fire, and hospitals are located. It's how municipalities design snow removal and garbage pickup. It's where shops and services are.

In many ways, fixing the infrastructure problem in the US means razing the whole continent and starting over.

where do i sign up?

> In many ways, fixing the infrastructure problem in the US means razing the whole continent and starting over.

In some places, particularly cities designed around cars (i.e. the last 100 years). Other cities just need things to be upgraded. E.g. I recently moved to Pittsburgh. It's pretty dense in terms of housing and infrastructure--not suburban with big lawns. That's partly because it's hilly. Around here the investment needs to be in fixing bridges and roads, adding some trams (they used to have them!), and maybe tunnels. Also, burying the power lines wouldn't be a bad idea.

On most days I like the idea of razing things to the ground, but probably not around here. We need to actually look to the past in some areas and add the appropriate future, as opposed to nuking and paving.

One problem with implementing all of those upgrades is that they will be unaffordable for the City, unless they take tax revenues from other areas. But those other areas have their own crumbling infrastructure, so “upgrade” is not a solution that can be applied everywhere equally.

One thing I've learned over the years is that fixing or upgrading something is an order of magnitude more time but an order of magnitude cheaper in materials/energy. This applies at many scales. Time means jobs and expertise. Upgrading doesn't scale, which is awesome. This is because fixing or upgrading stuff is essentially always a custom job. You can't outsource the maintenance of the Golden Gate bridge to China. It's gotta be done locally.

Fixing requires people to assess and evaluate the specific needs of a situation, engineer and design solutions, and then deploy them. That drives an engineering and problem-solving, educated populace full of professionals, rather than a machine that cranks out endless, throwaway garbage. America has strayed from engineering and fixing towards "scale"--but mostly scaling the last part, the deployment. It's short-term thinking. It's a pervasive baseline mindset shift that has happened because of bad accounting centered around dollar costs and not societal costs.

> Unaffordable for the City

Isn't this the city that gave a few hundred million away from it's earmarked infrastructure and maintenance budge to the police department over the past half decade?

And they’re in this predicament precisely because they built unaffordable car-first infrastructure in the first place. Saying that they can’t afford the more cost-effective option (walk, bike, tram) is just icing on the cake.

This is pretty much what the US did to itself in the first place - bulldozed half the cities in the country to make them car centric. There’s no reason you can’t do the same thing in reverse. Buildings are not actually all that permanent (especially in the US where in most of the country they appear to be made out of wood & plaster).

Very few houses in the US have plaster, unless they're over 70 years old.

There's a lot of houses that were built around the 50s

So we should redesign all streets and revitalize and redesign all public transportation systems before we can even talk about not making all cars operate like iPads (i.e. like they operated 10 years ago)?

If I complain that beef from a small oligopoly of suppliers is contaminated with E. Coli, will you recommend that we talk about turning the entire world vegan first?

edit: I do not own a car and have never had a driver's license. Your values are laudable, but are unrelated to the story.

Also people on HN do not know or turn a blind eye that millions of people drive cars in EU that has really good public transportation.

There are 292 million registered cars in the EU (2019 data).

I would absolutely love to ride a bike or say, roller skate to work, but as i live in a stroad infested car dependent mess of a town, that is sadly impractical at best and outright deadly at worst.

I share the same sentiment. Something I've realized recently is that people who complain about car-centrism (myself) often fail to identify ways to start solving these problems. To remedy this, I've been thinking of writing a set of practical posts, sort of a how-to, in which I explore ways to solve these problems. Is that something that would interest you?

I would be interested.

I've also been contemplating how to use my skill set to further decrease our dependence on car centric infrastructure, or help others engage in reducing it.

There seems to be a very large community of people in the US who are opposed to more cars. /r/fuckcars has gained a large following rather quickly. Clearly there is demand, but how do we enable people to start making change? Money and NIMBYs are hard to challenge single handedly.

I'm quite curious to see what you would have to say! If you do this, please consider commenting again here so I can find it.

I do not like to ride a bike at 0 °C. Buses are fine, waiting for the bus at 0 °C not so. But yeah, owning a car which is only used 1% of it's lifetime is pretty laughable and actually prohibitive.

What's wrong with riding a bike in 0 °C weather? When dressed for the weather riding in the cold weather can be quite enjoyable as long as the roads are clear or your bike has appropriate tires.

> When dressed for the weather riding in the cold weather can be quite enjoyable

Not my sense of comfort.

> as long as the roads are clear or your bike has appropriate tires.

I live in a country where we have snow in winter, at least casually. I think driving safety is severely affected when driving single-track? Wouldn't ride my motorcycle in winter either.

Each to their own, of course. You have a better idea of what's safe for you.

That said I live in a snowy country and ride a bike. I absolutely wouldn't ride a motorcycle. Speed is by far the largest reason. On a bike, you can see black ice before you hit it. You can run a foot along the ground for extra traction. You can get out and walk and push your vehicle. You can just jump off if shit really hits the fan.

That said, I also ride slowly when the roads are poor.

Have you ever tried it or are you just assuming you wouldn't find it comfortable?

Where I live, it's not usually safe to ride a bike because of snow clearing. We get huge snowbanks and there is no safe place to ride. I'd be riding if I could though.

We do have off-road trails that are groomed for fat bikes that are a lot of fun. It's a nice alternative to downhill skiing or snowboarding which can get pretty pricey!

You need some pretty thick gloves at 0°C.

Also, if you're traveling by bike in freezing weather, you have to be dressed for freezing weather, and you'll be stuck with that during the entire time you spend at your destination.

Nah. Just dress normally and then put warm clothes on top (gloves, hat, a good coat, possibly some overtrousers for the rain) that you can remove at your destination.

Gloves needed at 0°C are reasonable. Sure, don't take gloves that let the wind go through.

I used to bike without gloves and a hat when freezing. Because I always lose them. The hands hurt, you end up being very cold. With appropriate clothes it's night and day, biking becomes enjoyable in winter.

> Just dress normally and then put warm clothes on top (gloves, hat, a good coat, possibly some overtrousers for the rain) that you can remove at your destination.

Great. I'm going to the mall. How do I remove my clothes while I'm there?

You put them in your backpack (or around your hips for the coat?).

Yes, you need a backpack or some sort of bag. Is it a big issue? If it's not raining you don't even need the overtrousers and the coat might as well be the one you usually wear when it's cold. This coat probably has pockets big enough that you can put the gloves and the hat in them.

> When dressed for the weather riding in the cold weather can be quite enjoyable

Not as enjoyable as sitting on my heated leather seat, sipping coffee, listning to an audiobook and moving my right foot back and forth between the the accelerator and brake while my wipers and heater keep the sleet off the windshield.

Good gear can make it perfectly doable, but icy roads are no fun regardless how warm you are.

Not being hungry and getting out of the elements are the most ancient goals throughout the history of humans. I think most people would want to avoid biking in 0C.

Points like the above is pretty much why these sorts of ideas are a dead end in a place with disposable income.

If you objectively think that riding a bicycle with two sets of clothes on your back in the dead of winter is as convenient as driving, you've are either delusional or have never actually been inside of an automobile.

They're also dead ends where you already assume one car per adult. Dropping below that number is intimidating in most American settings, but changes the whole mindset.

If you objectively see convenience in spending 50k on a car, 30k on a parking spot, and 100/mo for insurance just to be able to pay other marginal costs to be able to go to a store and avoid exercise in the morning, you're either delusional or have never considered how that money could buy you better conveniences.

I've never paid anywhere close to that. Virtually no parking expenses, and I've had 3 reliable vehicles all have been around 12-15k and I've gotten 5-8 years out of them with a couple major repairs. Also the grocery store is very far away and dangerous to bike towards, and I would have to rig my bike for storage. American stores are also geared for bulk larger purchases and you save a substantial amount of money, and even if you for simple things like toilet paper or paper towels.

I never claimed riding a bicycle was as convenient as driving, only that riding in 0C weather is quite comfortable. It many ways I prefer it to riding when it's really hot out!

I'd recommend anyone give it a try if there is a safe way to get to work. Especially in 0C, because it's just not that cold and you don't really need bulky layers. You can get away with just a winter coat or a warm fleece and windbreaker. I dress a little lighter than when I go downhill skiing or snowboarding.

I am still wearing a winter jacket and sometimes an extra layer when I am driving to work in the winter, so there's really no difference from that perspective.

Agree not safe to ride bikes...

Public transportation is awful.

My car is clean, arrives and departs on my schedule, can go nearly everywhere, and is available at my doorstep. I don't have to deal with homeless people, sick people, poop, mystery fluids, or animals. And it can take me either down the street, or hundreds of miles away.

The automobile solves my problem, public transportation doesn't.

I live on London where we have "good" public transport.

Yes a bus or the tube "solves" these problems of not having a crap UI, but they also introduce so many more and worse problems that don't make up for it. Expensive, inconvenient, dirty, late and/or slow, uncomfortable. And at least a car with crap Aircon controls actually has Aircon at all!

What!? I have friends that live in Switzerland and value having a car. Wait until people realize that Europe has millions of cars. It’s not to downplay PT, which is awesome as well but this is just a delusion.

If anything, this is a distraction from real UX issues with cars. Classic switcheroo - “Lets not focus on improving cars because public transportation”. Infuriating, as if car UI/UX wasn’t infuriating enough!

Fellow European here, these threads almost universally originate from people that were born and raised in upper middle class US suburbia; there seems to be this odd narrative with that crowd that Europeans all actually prefer the inconvenience of mass transit or dealing with weather/snow/whatever because reasons.

Meanwhile in reality, diesel runs the equivalent of 8-9 dollars a gal, cars are heavily regulated (mandatory inspections, required snow tires, much more stringent licensing) and medieval city planning didn't really take parking into account...

I wish America had more bikeable cities and better public transport too, but I don't see what that has to do with the linked article. I would also really like a dumbcar.

Most people in America want to live in low-traffic suburbs, where public transport absolutely is impractical. The first step to get most people to stop having cars is to convince people that they're wrong for not wanting to raise a family in the inner city.

> Most people in America want to live in low-traffic suburbs

Most people in America also don't know of alternatives because they've been taken away. We don't have to make people want to live in the inner city. We have to show them that driving isn't the only solution to transportation problems.

If you could have a small market in a neighborhood that provides basic necessities, we could probably eliminate a lot of vehicular traffic. But zoning and parking minimums don't allow for that.

This is a very urban-centric point of view though. A large portion of the US doesn't live in cities. In more rural and many suburban areas biking/trains simply aren't viable.

Trains, bikes, buses, and street cars only solve urban problems.

And I know urban environments are overall better for the environment, but they're not better for people's psyche. They're crime ridden. Theyre smog ridden. Theyre awful environments to live in during a pandemic.

People were moving into cities until a pandemic struck and riots became commonplace. Then they started to leave with the speed in which they arrived.

I think they can also solve quite a few suburban problems. There are many examples of other countries whose suburbs are connected via public transit. And many trips can be done via bike instead of car.

Yes, but American suburbs aren't like other countries' suburbs. British suburbs, for example, are much denser and usually very walkable.

There are a few American suburbs that are well-walkable and still support automobile transport. They're just not engineered to _only_ support automotive transport. We've had them, then destroyed them.

> They're crime ridden. Theyre smog ridden. ... riots became commonplace

Where do you live?

I don't know about which city or urban environment, but my downtown area (largest city in our state), isn't crime ridden, has no smog, sure there's likely more pollution, but with the layout of our highways and the location of traffic, that's all further from houses and offices than led to believe.

The 'riots' you're thinking of took place in a rather racially segregated and historically significant part of my city that isn't downtown... Urban environments have existed for centuries, even millennia. Ancient cities were dense and had many a people within their walls.

Agreed, the best way to fix our problems with cars is to invest in public transportation and shifting car users to use bikes/e-bikes.

Must consoom

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