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Comment by henrikschroder | Hacker News Reader

When I visited Hawaii last year I noticed that something was different at all the hotels compared to hotels at similar locations elsewhere; Thailand, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic. In Hawaii, all hotels had huge parking garages and a large valet parking staff. Similar-sized hotels in the other locations never had parking garages, hotels with hundreds of rooms might have a tiny parking-lot somewhere, on which a few rental cars would be parked.

But in Hawaii, everyone rents a car, drives it the ten minutes from the airport to the hotel, parks it at the hotel, leaves it there for a week, then drives it back to the airport to get home.

It's a pretty funny and stark reminder of the completely different mindset and attitude towards cars that most americans have. Having a car is so deeply ingrained that the alternatives don't have a chance.

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People looked at us as though we were insane getting the bus from the Airport to our hotel - it took 15 mins, and cost about $2 each - a taxi would have been a shade quicker, but would have been $20 to $30. A few couples even came over to see if we'd made a mistake, or offering a lift in their hire-car. In the hotel we were asked a few time how on earth we could travel around the island without a hire-car.

I don't have a drivers license. Never needed one. Imagine the reactions that gets me when I go to the US.

I don't have a drivers license either, and in the US I find myself cycling a bit. Cars don't really know what to do with you there. ^_^

When I mention that I'm not cycling to work and it takes me 30 minutes to walk, even my fellow Nederlanders look at me in shock and disbelief. 30 minutes, for reference, is about the duration of a typical podcast, and is also pretty standard for downloadable audio lectures, so it's not like I lose productivity -- and even without those, it really does clear my head to spend half an hour with my own mind and no internet to distract me.

When I had a bike, I lived further away and spent 50 minutes cycling to work. The thing is, that was only maybe 5 minutes longer than my next-best option, public transport (bus-to-train-to-bus). A car would have been a tremendous, polluting investment, and I lost something like 35 kg just because I got my daily exercise in.

So yeah. If you live in an urban environment, driving works but seems lazy.

While I agree with what you've said about cars, I'd consider it just as crazy to have a 30-minute or 50-minute commute by alternative transportation as an equally long commute by car. Either way, you waste a significant portion of your life going back and forth to work.

If you have a commute longer than 5-10 minutes, and you don't work from home on the vast majority of days, consider changing either your work location or your home location. That holds regardless of your preferred mode of transport.

That is doable if you're single and live alone. When you and your preferred room mate work at different locations, it becomes impossible for both of you to live within 5-10 minutes of your workplace.

True, you spend a lot of time going back and forth, but while commuting by car requires that you focus 100% on driving (and the same goes for biking or walking), doing it by train or bus lets you do actual work if all you need is a laptop.

True enough. While you'll still have some overhead due to the walking in between, you'll probably end up with something comparable to a 5-10 minute commute. Still not ideal (due to the working conditions), but not a complete waste of time.

I take public transport for exactly this reason. I have also found being on public transport somehow makes me feel incredibly focused and productive.

I think that a 30 minute walk or bike ride is not "wasted" the same way 30 minutes driving would be. Driving can be a huge stress, especially in rush-hour commuting traffic. A walk or a bike ride is a chance to unwind.

Some people consider driving a means of unwinding the same way. Personally I'd consider all three a waste of time compared to actually being at the desired location. Couldn't you unwind more easily at home?

You probably also don't see the point in home cooking when you could eat out, or growing your own vegetables when you could just buy them in a grocery store?

God, I love driving. If I'm trying to think through a hard problem, I hop on the freeway and let my unconscious mind work through it while my conscious mind is focused on driving. It's as good for problem solving as sleeping is.

Biking, while healthy, is much more stressful for me. There's too much to watch for, too much that can go wrong too quickly, and no safety net if it does. I can't stop my mind of thinking what would happen if the rim collapsed right now, or if a squirrel ran out in front of me, or if the seat or handlebars broke... any system fails in a car you're still pretty well protected. On a bike, you're screwed. Doesn't stop me from commuting by bike, though.

Agreed. I think commuting by bike on trails, small streets, or separated from traffic is must less stressful than biking on a busy street. Even taking a bus is a bit more stressful than driving (for me) because the buses are so infrequent. Missing a crucial bus can cause an extra 30-45 minutes of travel time.

I love driving... on open, uncongested highways at night. I can't stand driving to commute, straining my foot muscles in a maddeningly irregular pattern of pressing and releasing the brake as the cars ahead of me expand and contract at zero-to-five miles per hour.

Try commuting in a manual :) You can use the brake less by downshifting (which helps relieve congestion, people are seeing less brake lights), but talk about irregular foot movements. Need to be off the clutch to slow your car using the engine, but on it to slow your car using the brakes, off the clutch on the gas to start moving, then (clutch in) into second (clutch out) but whoa hold on, (clutch in) back into first (clutch out to slow down) and we're stopped (clutch in, brakes on, shift to neutral, clutch out).

Then we go again (clutch in, into gear, clutch out+gas), and it continues. If everyone was forced to drive a manual, we'd have less slowdowns (and less DUIs, IMO) just from the thinking and movement it requires. No one would want to stop.

Sadly, I don't know if this is true - all cars in England are manuals pretty much and we still have plenty of traffic and drink driving. Manuals are more fun though :)

True, this only works for places where people don't normally drive manual transmissions. Once the populace learns, this will no longer be effective.

I'm all for making driving more involving. If you have to use both feet and both hands to drive, it gets harder to eat a burger and apply your makeup and type on your laptop and wank all at the same time.

I doubt we (in the UK) have the same Drink Driving problem that the USA has, but I wonder if that is more to do with the distance to get to a good pub? It's often walking distance in the UK.

That said there are many nice country pubs, and I rarely see /drunks/ leaving them, though I am sure a fair few are over the limit.

Don't submit to playing the stop-and-go traffic jamming game. http://trafficwaves.org/ Even in rush hour I make a goal to press the brake as little as possible which simply means finding the average speed of the cars in front of me and going slower than it. It's a much less stressful way to drive and since I have a manual also requires less work.

I actually do my best to maintain a constant speed, though because of the large window in front of me, it often doesn't last long before someone merges in and sends me back to stop-and-go. I'm just glad I have transit options available.

A former roommate had a similar complaint. My response was "Your large window in front of you wasn't large enough." But I've also had a mile in front of me thinking the way ahead was clear only to turn a bend and brake really hard at the sight of yet another traffic jam. So it's not a perfect solution unfortunately. I want to see a startup that tracks people's phone and car GPSes (or other means of locating them since you don't need a GPS to get a cell phone's location) and offers a screen to put in the car or a tablet/phone app that shows you the locations and speeds of everyone in your vicinity it can and offers advice like "See this traffic jam 3 miles ahead? That's why you should slow down to 40 now like the new sign says you should do." (Eventually the app can control the car's speed itself.)

Transit is a good solution as well if time isn't important to you or you have a good transit system that doesn't take an hour to go a mere several miles. I've been up to BC's Vancouver a few times and I'm jealous of their skytrain.

A half hour of gentle exercise with changing scenery is better for relieving my stress than sitting in my home. YMMV, of course.

A 30 minute walk to work is great. It ensures that you get some exercise in before you get to work. If it's a nice area, you can drink some coffee, listen to a podcast and enjoy the walk. I'd much rather have 30 minute walk to work than a 10 minute drive.

I used to bike 50 minutes twice a day (13 and a half miles each way) through London - and I can honestly say I loved it every day.

Some days I'd wake up feeling tired and grumpy, but once I was on the bike I'd be fine. Some days it would start raining just before I was going to leave for home, but still once I was one the bike everything melted away.

I totally agree everyone is different, and living closer to work would have been nicer. But by living far away I was able to: afford a house not a flat, afford a car for when I wanted to take journeys that actually cost more by train in the UK, live near huge green open spaces - all the while working for the UKs biggest media organisation and getting all the benefits of that and of living in London.

I ate listening to music on a commute, so it was 50 minutes of silence, 50 minutes of either planning my day or shaking off my day. When I'd get home I'd be totally chilled no matter how my day had been, and I'd get to work with a full plan of my day - or if I wasn't busy I'd just let my mind wander onto a million what ifs.

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I currently can't cycle and I really miss it - zoning out on the tube isn't the same, working out isn't the same, and it's hard to force yourself to cycled 25 miles a day if you aren't aiming to get anywhere.

But I can totally see how you could get the same from a car journey, or from just being at home earlier.

For me I have to work where I work now (central London), and I love living where I live.

Man I need to get back on my bike!

Firstly, I agree: working within a few minutes of your home is the greatest luxury money can buy.

That said, my two favorite activities while on a train: 1. Read. 2. Sleep. I really miss sleeping on the train in the mornings (my current commute is too short for a quick nap). I always felt so refreshed afterwards.

Neither of these is really feasible when commuting by car; having them available to you makes a world of difference between cars and trains or busses.

When my commute was Too Long (~50 minutes), I would even occasionally program on the train. That's harder to do, though, because you need a seat, and if you commute during vaguely normal hours (7-11am, 6-10pm) a seat on the subway is a rare commodity.

I had a friend come to visit a few months ago. He came over from Finland (Helsinki) with his fiancee to my mid-size Midwestern city. He says he had explained it to her previously but I guess she didn't understand that there is really no public transport here. She doesn't have a drivers license because she's never needed one.

While my friend and I were out and about, he got a call from her asking where the train station was. The only train here is Amtrak...

As an American, I've been explicitly called childish by several people for not desiring a driver's license. Because you only grow up when you have a car. -_-

> But in Hawaii, everyone rents a car, drives it the ten minutes from the airport to the hotel, parks it at the hotel, leaves it there for a week, then drives it back to the airport to get home.

When I was in Hawaii I took shuttles but my friends rented a car. One day I hitched a ride with them to a trailhead and we took a tropical hike that ended up being the absolute high point of the trip for me. It was remote and I'm pretty sure no public transportation went there.

You can easily rent a car for 1-2 days on a week long vacation, you just don't end up parking it at the hotel.

When my wife and I went to Oahu for out honeymoon, we thought it was absolutely insane that anyone would rent a car while visiting the place. They have a free bus system that shuttles you around the down town area, and there are loads of tours that can get you to the regular hots spots that everyone wants to visit.

This is okay if you're a tourist traveling between popular tourist spots. As a local, taking the bus 10 miles from home to work would take me at least an hour and half to two hours, verus 40 minutes in a car.

Or 30 minutes on a bike (once you're fit)

The first time I visited Hawaii, I think I might have gotten away with not renting a car. However, the more I visit, the more I find myself driving places. Visiting relatives while I am there also requires a car.

If you want to travel outside of Waikiki (which doesn't really count as Hawaii IMHO) and a few popular tourist destinations I think you're going to want to rent a car. Of course I'm not saying that the majority of tourists should rent a car. Additionally the bus has restrictions on how much luggage you can carry, typically you can only bring a mid-size suitcase each (it has to fit on or under your seat).

True for Oahu, but certainly not Maui or Kauai.

Or the Big island.

I was going to say the same thing: if you want to do something interesting, like go to Haleakala or O'heo on Maui or various volcanic excursions on the Big island, you'll get nowhere without a car. Granted, that's probably a minority (thankfully) of the people...

Driving the road to Hana was one of the coolest things I've ever done.

Cars have ruined where I grew up in Dallas, though — so much sprawl. I live in Austin, which is sort of fighting it, but establishing the infrastructure after the fact is so difficult.

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