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Comment by togaen | Hacker News Reader

Urban sprawl is caused by bad city planning, not the inability to fly your car. If you add flying cars without fixing the planning, the city will just spread out even more, and you’ll end up with the same commute times. Exactly the same thing happened when automobiles became widespread.

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That's the thing--personal aerial vehicles eliminate urban sprawl because destinations can be reached vertically with landing docks on a building's roof or side. It's easier to add a new layer of aerial streets than fix bad city planning, which LA has been trying to fruitlessly do for years.

This would also free up more roads for trucks hauling container shipments. It's frustrating and dangerous to have to constantly change lanes because some tractor trailer cut in front you on the road.

> This would also free up more roads for trucks hauling container shipments. It's frustrating and dangerous to have to constantly change lanes because some tractor trailer cut in front you on the road.

Maybe we need a rush hour slowpoke tax. Something like this: If a vehicle can't do 0-60 in 12.5 seconds or less (which in practice, all passenger cars can but no semis can), then it owes a special tax of $100 per hour that it's on the road between 6am-10am or 3pm-7pm on weekdays.

If there's suddenly way more places to live that are the same commute distance from the city, isn't that a big win?

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