Hacker News Reader

It's disheartening to read some of the replies to your comment. A large number of Americans seem so traumatized/conditioned to the suburban/car-centric setup, that they can't even envision a future with Transit.

It is doubly sad, because the political and economic dominance of the boomer era was so pronounced, that many Americans now dream of a future (suburban white picket fence house) that is derived from exactly this unsustainable past that made the 'dream' unachievable in the first place. American suburbia works if you live in a unipolar era of unprecedented wealth that's unmatched almost anywhere else in the world or in history. Well, duh. It's no different to considering Dubai's abandoned Palm Islands or World Islands a sensible infrastructure because they haven't yet bankrupted a country with practically infinite per-capita wealth. The first sign of economic troubles will decisively doom your nation. It's started for America, and other unsustainable cities will follow suit.

it is staring Americans in their face too. Every private money-conscious closed-system mini-govt ensure that transit and density are in order. People rave about the convenience of buses in college towns and Disneyland's metro system, as if either of those are unrealistic outside of those contexts.

I have said it before and will say it again. American urban infrastructure (or lack there of) is the closest thing we have to a monocausal root of all of America's problems. Obesity, loneliness, cost of living, low trust, Govt. debt etc etc.

Mostly agree.

The problem with monocausal issue is that it also touches everything.

To really address it, there is no monocausal solution.

- Taxation policy (Land Value Tax)

- Transportation policy local and federal level

- Services policy (police, social services)

- Land use policy (mixed-use, multi-fam homes and so on)

Problem is many of these institutional systems were developed or revolutionized in the exact wrong moment, in the 50/60. So that many standards and standard way of doing things have encoded the exact wrong solution.

Traffic engineering is a particular victim of this. Everything is done by a book of standards, and the standards are just totally wrong.

> Problem is many of these institutional systems were developed or revolutionized in the exact wrong moment, in the 50/60.

In addition, because of the way the policies were made and allowed select people to get rich from these policies, those people now use their money and power to further entrench these policies to keep their own power and money. The auto industry wants continued government subsidies for roads, vacant land owners want to continue property tax instead of land value tax, etc.

It's like we've dug a massive hole and some of us see a way out, but many people with the tools are still digging.

I'm as much of a transportation alternatives fan as anyone, but when I got to the "Cars vs Public Transit" I just rolled my eyes a bit. Modern ebikes cost a few thousand dollars, and are so absurdly cheaper than cars, they pay for themselves within a single year.

Average Annual Cost of Car Ownership:

$9,282: https://www.aaa.com/autorepair/articles/average-annual-cost-...

$5,264: https://www.move.org/average-cost-owning-a-car/#data

$11,756 the first year, $7517 the fifth year, $5914 the tenth year: https://www.caranddriver.com/research/a31267529/cost-of-car-...

Cost of a top-of-the line cargo bike:

$6,499.00 (Dual battery, 1,000Wh), Bosch dual-battery system (500/1000 Wh) for a range of up to 206 km (128 mi): https://www.ternbicycles.com/us/bikes/472/gsd-s10-lx

If you live within 20m of where you work, and cargo-centric ebike will suffice (or farther if you can charge it at work). You can take kids to school on one, you can go grocery shopping on one, you effectively do every single trip in a modern city.

For the few things you can't do, the occasional cost of short term car rentals are drops in a bucket.

The point I'm trying to make is this. Yes, public transit is important, yes we need to make our cities interconnected with trains. However, if we want to create a functional system for transit alternatives... we can do it literally today, by creating network of low-car/car-free streets for ebike traffic.

100% agree with the bike policy thing.

And you don't even need an e-bike in most situations.

I do find it curious that the only neighbourhoods in my own city where use of bikes for that sort of thing (grocery shopping, taking kids to school etc.) is common are typically fairly well-off ones. I'm wondering if part of the reason is that those in poorer neighbourhoods are too worried about having a bike stolen? (it would certainly worry me!). Obviously part of it is also lack of investment in decent bike-friendly infrastructure. But I suspect it may be partly cultural - esp. in areas where there's a significant number of recent immigrants who might think of bicycles as something people would only use to get around on in the poorer countries they came from.

It's always hard to gauge why large groups of people don't do things. I think one of the main issues is just getting it into peoples minds that $6,000 is a reasonable amount to spend on a bicycle:

"But you could buy a used car for that much"

is the common refrain I hear. Yes, you could buy a cheap car for that much, and then immediately have to dump in at least $80 a tank for fuel.

The concept of using a bicycle instead of a car is just so foreign, that I think most American without active inter-cultural experience, say, living in a foreign country or at least multiple areas of the US, are not going to really understand how that would even work without having it spelled out for them line by line. Unfortunately, I fear that the people most likely to fall into a cultural homogeneity are low income, for exactly the reason that uprooting oneself is expensive.

When I go line-by-line explaining how car-free or low-car life is wildly less expensive than normal commuting, the main reply is... "Yea, that's stupid. Nobody is going to do that." I hear this in San Francisco, where anyone can trivially walk down to the wiggle and watch literally thousands of people every day commuting by bicycle.

At this point, it seems most people won't actually approach the subject rationally. People don't do it because it seems mentally ridiculous to them, and honestly, once I can get people out on a bike, they suddenly think that it's actually a really nice way to commute.

I mean isn’t it stupid to expect bike usage given the layout/organization of most of our cities?

No, obviously. If you live within 20 miles of where you work, and ebike is a perfectly sensible way to commute.

> I think one of the main issues is just getting it into peoples minds that $6,000 is a reasonable amount to spend on a bicycle

Not sure I agree, given that you can buy a perfectly serviceable 2nd hand e-bike for a good deal less, though if you want something capable of carrying kids/groceries etc., you're still looking at a considerable outlay if you have very limited savings (3k seems to be a pretty standard ask for good condition ones). Still, you can get new e-trikes with reasonable carrying capacity for well under 2k, and a lot cheaper still if you're fit enough to power it yourself :)

FWIW, I don't personally go largely car-free for any sort of financial reason - I just much prefer getting around by bike than car, and as long as there's access to a car when needed it's basically never an issue.

The math is obvious. If it's $6K vs nothing, I agree with you, but that's not what we're discussing. It's $6K vs minimum $5K/year. Asking people to ride a bike shouldn't be treated like a "craigslist purchase." Car replacements are serious pieces of machinery.

This doesn't work so well as to warrant an 'eye-roll' for a large portion of the world, where it would be ridiculous to expect people to be riding ebikes long distances, for half the year or more. In my city, people would think you were insane if you tried riding more than than a few Kms with any regularity during the winter, since it often hits -45 C (-49 f), generally with significant snow and slush on the ground. It's also not exactly trivial to make such a huge change to layouts of cities' traffic flows.

Edit: As a point of illustration that I'm not overstating the issue, my city actually has a thriving e/bike rental market for 5-6 months/year and for the other part of the year, the rentals literally disappear and you can't find a single one until part way through spring season.

Aside from the triviality that the cities with highest rates of cycle commuting all have snowy winters (Denmark, Sweden, Norway), a city where people regularly commute in -45C will really not matter if people are walk+transit or cycling. -45C is not normal.

If you're riding at any decent speed, say 20 mph (32kph), think about the additional windchill that adds: -30C becomes ~-46C, if you're blessed enough to not have existing cross or head winds.

Base -30C temp is pretty normal here during the winter (3+ weeks worth before winter even started this year). Granted, in my city at least, we would have to do a much better job clearing/sanding your proposed bike roads than we do our regular roads to maintain that speed on a bike with any sort of safety. In any case, it's a helluva lot easier/more comfortable and less risky to bundle up and trundle to the train/bus station, than to risk additional frostbite from that windchill or wipeouts due to reduced stability of bikes on ice for any significant time. Again, assuming you could convince everyone else who has money for a car to abandon their cars and convert enough roads to dedicated bikeways, and build the infrastructure to safely store a bunch of $3,000-$7,000 ebikes.

Beyond all that, ebikes don't solve a lot of problems if you have a family of any significant size. If I have to buy, maintain, and secure 5 ebikes (and get my kids good with and prepped for riding in the cold and snow), public transit or even a car start looking much, much better.

I realize that most people don't live as far north as I do, but there are many millions who do and my whole point was that it's not eye rollingly obvious that ebikes are the immediate solution for everyone.

It seems like a large stretch to call car dependency "the majority of the problem" when only one of the eight areas in the article are clearly related to car dependency. For transportation, yes absolutely car dependency is a major cost. But how would reducing car dependency significantly affect the high cost of childcare, for example?

I completely agree that there would be a lot of benefits if the US focused on making urban areas more walkable and less car-dependent, but I feel it's often presented as though it would solve every problem that the US has.

> But how would reducing car dependency significantly affect the high cost of childcare, for example

1. Driving children to schools and other activities is a huge cost in time and money. If children could walk and bike, it would be much cheaper. I walked to school (even back home for launch) and then took the bicycle to soccer practice.

2. Children can spend time alone much earlier and travel alone much earlier. My parents were comfortable with me being alone at home for launch and after school, risk of car accidents was vanishingly small.

3. Mother helping each other out in a walkable neighborhood is trivial. My mother worked, I would simply walk home with a friend and would it at his house. And then later when my parents were home from work I would walk home. No big deal.

4. Having distributed housing policy with lots of option leads to cheaper apartments being available next to richer neighborhoods, means that its easier for low paid child care workers to live closer (walking distance) from the people who have children to take care off.

5. Having mixed use zoning allows for buildings that have child care facilty closer to actual housing in general.

> but I feel it's often presented as though it would solve every problem that the US has

I doesn't solve every problem, but it impacts most problems positively.

Also if you're not spending your time, money, and energy on gas, a car payment, insurance, registration, smog, or stressful traffic, you have time, money, and energy for other things. Let alone the huge costs to society incurred by the myriad ways the car-based hellscape destroys lives, limbs, and property.

On top of that, iirc even if you never have an accident or use a car, living next to a busy road has also been correlated with lower life expectancy regardless of socio-economic indicators.

I have a couple of small stores nearby and I don't use them at all for groceries because the selection is limited and the prices are high. I drive the 1.5 miles to the larger local store.

Those stores could have different variety if more people relied on them, but they simply don't have the space to compete with the larger store. One gets by selling alcohol and convenience items, the other is really a meat counter.

This is a pipe dream. US cities will never be able to accommodate public transportation as a viable alternative to car ownership. Take a drive around Europe and take a drive around the US and it becomes very obvious, very quickly, why that’s the case. You can’t go back and relayout every American town and city. Just not gonna happen. Sorry. Find something else to pour your energy into.

Not to mention that many/most Americans don’t want to live in your utopia. I’ve lived in walkable, lively parts of cities. Now I live in a stand-alone house and drive everywhere and I much prefer it.

> You can’t go back and relayout every American town and city.

You don't actually need to do this! Its a fantasy that you somehow need to re-design your city to make improvements.

In fact, by simply removing some harmful regulation you can already do 100x better. Removing the function based zoning. Allow mixed use as default. Removing lots of the other regulation such as minimum lot size, offsets and so on.

US city were not designed for cars, and mostly they are simple grids, and that's totally fine.

Changes in pricing for things like water, move to block pricing and increase price depending on how much infrastructure is required.

The tax system should move from property based to land based.

Cars need to be slowed down, lanes need to be made thinner, and add a protected bike lane. This is actually a case where US insane wide streets come in handy, space for bike-lanes is already there.

> Not to mention that many/most Americans don’t want to live in your utopia. I’ve lived in walkable, lively parts of cities. Now I live in a stand-alone house and drive everywhere and I much prefer it.

Even rural and small towns or even villages can be walkable.

And your taxes are likely not covering the infrastructure required for you live-style, you are subsidized by the poorer parts of the city you live in.

Also evidence shows, that areas such as I suggest are getting a huge amount of demand and are really expensive. So I think evidence is clear that there is a huge amount for such development.

And evidence also shows that where they happen they actually make sense for cities in terms of taxation.

This playlist compiles a lot of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_SXXTBypIg&list=PLJp5q-R0lZ...

> Find something else to pour your energy into.

I'm not 'pouring my energy into it'. I'm simply commenting on an article. That seems to miss the forest because of the trees.

> You can’t go back and relayout every American town and city.

We did it before when we ripped out all the street cars and replaced them with stroads.

I would have agreed with you... up until the pandemic. If we didn't live in a car dependent country, way more people I know would have died. You -could- make the argument that we'd probably be healthier and thus, wouldn't be as severe of a risk but that's neither here nor there.

I barely leave the house. And when I do, I've mostly always taken as much precautions as I could. I get curbside pickup for all of my groceries. I can't drink the water locally, so I'm dependent on bottled water.

All of this would have been a disaster if I had to cram myself on public transit to go places (definitely would have caught COVID then) or lug a fucking case of water to my house 4 times a week.

> way more people I know would have died.

Ähh no idea what you are talking about. There is no evidence that less car depended places have higher death rates. You can't just throw out something like that without explanation.

How many people have been saved because they had a neighbor who was one apartment below and was able to help very quickly.

I would argue to opposite of what you suggest is true. More dense less car depended places have a far easier and cheaper time getting medical care to people.

Getting medical care to some far flung subburbs is part of the issue.

> I barely leave the house. And when I do, I've mostly always taken as much precautions as I could.

Why? What crazy situation is this? Most people in most places in the world are not afraid to leave the place where they live. And that was even true for most poor cities. Locals are usually not afraid to walk to the store down the street in their neighborhood.

> I can't drink the water locally, so I'm dependent on bottled water.

That again is a problem of infrastructure. Infrastructure problems are very hard to solve in far flung suburbs and are very expensive because the amount of piping goes up per person.

So I agree, that's a very bad situation, but the solution to that is infrastructure, and not car dependency.

> All of this would have been a disaster if I had to cram myself on public transit to go places

First of all, there is this thing called walking. Also a think called, a bike.

Also talking about public transport in terms of 'cram' is funny, because often you have more space in public transit then in a car and you can work or watch movies.

You seem to have a US perspective of public transit being some dingy lower class thing.

> definitely would have caught COVID then

Funny I never had COVID and I live in Switzerland, the most public transport orient place in the world maybe.

> or lug a fucking case of water to my house 4 times a week.

I actually do that with Cola Light an it isn't that big a deal.

If you want to do really big one time deliveries for some bulk items every week, that's fine. Or you can can also get a small wood cart or some kind of wheeled transport device and carry a week plus worth of water.

> because going to a store is not a car trip, you can do it every day, or every other day. You don't need a insanely large fridge and freezers that Americans seem to have.

I don't want to go to the store that often. Going to the store twice takes way longer than going once and buying twice as much stuff, even if you don't count driving time.

> You can also take advantage of temporary price reductions.

I can do that now, by buying a bunch of food when it's on sale, then loading it all into my car and putting it in my fridge and freezer that have room for all of it. In your world, I couldn't do that.

> I don't want to go to the store that often.

Then don't, its not forced on anybody.

What you are missing is that you think of going to the store as a trip in off itself. If you like in a walkable community, going to store is just something you do on the side.

I might bring some of my recycling to the center, go to a friends place to hang out then on my way home I quickly go to the store and pick up a few thing that I am missing.

Or simply on my way home from work.

Or sometimes I just go because its a nice couple minutes walk in the fresh hair and I can get some fresh bread.

> I can do that now, by buying a bunch of food when it's on sale, then loading it all into my car and putting it in my fridge and freezer that have room for all of it. In your world, I couldn't do that.

You realize that you just said that you need a car and a large fridge and freezer to save money right? I have neither of those and pretty sure that saves money.

Often those lower priced things are not huge bulk products that you can buy at lower price in unlimited quantity. What I am talking about is that usually there is a box with lots of stuff that is close to expiry date that you can pick up for cheap.

> Then don't, its not forced on anybody.

If I weren't allowed to have a car anymore, then it would be forced on me, since I wouldn't be able to buy more than I can carry in one trip anymore.

Who is proposing the forceful removal of cars? It's about having options.

So first of all, go look at the Netherlands. The idea that you can't buy in bulk without a car is nonsense.

Even when I was child we had a little cart for the bicycle (or just pulling) that you could put a gigantic amount of food into.

Second, unless you live literally right in a city center where I would advocate outright banning cars, nobody is forcing you. And even then, if you need to move, there is likely some special thing you can get to be allow for that to happen.

What I want is for drivers to pay for the actual cost of space, and infrastructure (and pollution and sound and traffic) that they are causing. So if you are rich, then yeah, have a car, do your big box score shopping run and go buy 50kg of rice and store it in your underground bunker or whatever.

However, as a society, building a society where 20% have a car, rather then 80% is clearly a good thing, from virtually angle level you look at it. And even those people that have a car, maybe go from 4 trips a day to 0.5 trips a day.