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Comment by abeppu | Hacker News Reader

The main definition set in the article seems to be neighborhoods in "which almost all residents’ needs can be met within 15 minutes of their homes on foot, by bike, or on public transit." The maps in the center of the article ignore biking and only show walking and transit, but the difference is pretty big. If you work from home, or live near work, what parts of the city are more than a 15-min bike ride from "needs"? In a city that we pretend is 7 miles a side, 15 min of biking can take you to a very different neighborhood.

I'm also super skeptical of the transit maps ... b/c even if a route is going where you need it to go, the 15 min should also include waiting times. In some cases, 15 min takes you 0.0 miles on muni buses.

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Transit in modern cities like Paris, Tokyo, or Moscow is very rapid and frequent. Don’t be deceived by old fashioned places like SF.

A lot of people can’t bike (I am forbidden from biking for another six months, for instance, due to an injury). Plus biking in SF isn’t the same as biking in Manhattan.

I guess, you've claimed that "SF should reinvent itself along these lines" in response to an article that specifically includes biking as part of its 15-min definition. I've suggested that in SF we probably largely already meet that definition, relying heavily on the "or" in "on foot, by bike, or on public transit". It sounds like you're now discounting a whole mode of transit that was repeatedly discussed in the article, on the basis of not being universally accessible.

I would hasten to point out that not everyone walks or can take all public transit (BART elevators frequently being broken is an issue for wheelchair users, for example).

> Plus biking in SF isn’t the same as biking in Manhattan.

It's true SF has more hills. But why should Manhattan be the baseline? Wrt getting to necessities within 15m, I still think almost all of the city qualifies. We don't mostly put our grocery stores on hilltops, for example.

I'll refine my point: even though SF does have a bunch neighborhoods which are set up to be residential, the city's small footprint means that without trying all that hard, people end up being close in absolute distances to the necessities of life anyway.

I do think it's worth pointing out that Tokyo and Moscow each have literally >10x the population of SF. It's kind of an apples-and-oranges comparison; of _course_ they have more rapid public transit.

Rapid and frequent transit is a matter of planning, investment and demand. You don’t need to have a particularly large population to sustain it.

Madrid for example is a city of about 3 million in a metro area of 6 million. Trains come every few minutes throughout the day.

> I would hasten to point out that not everyone walks or can take all public transit (BART elevators frequently being broken is an issue for wheelchair users, for example).

That is a BART problem, not a “public transit is inaccessible” problem.

In Paris (and other European cities too I guess), wait time for the metro is 2-5min between 2 trains during the day (depending on how busy the line is, and whether you’re at peak hours).

At very low usage hours (at night, or early morning), it can get longer, but it hardly ever gets to 15min

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