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Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

Weird hunches....

How do you know what the people in cars are doing? How do you know what the people are doing?

Cars take tons of space, and traffic means that they take it up for longer, and use the space even less efficiently. Cars are an inherently space-inefficient transport mechanism. Replacing cars with bikes improves street throughput several fold, removing that traffic. Removing cars mean that the same physical street can serve the transportation needs of more people, and let them travel more quickly.

We have to start to realize that the failures of car infrastructure result in less jobs, less leisure time, less living.

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> Cars are an inherently space-inefficient transport

It is time efficient and convenient though.

> We have to start to realize that the failures of car infrastructure result in less jobs, less leisure time, less living.

How come? Having a car, I can reach tons of places in ~40km radius, without planning ahead too much, in any season. I would have to chop significant portion of my life if I were not able to drive anymore.

That only works for the select few, not for the many. In dense cities it falls apart.

Doing groceries for a family is an ordeal in a city with only public transport. Bicycles are useless for family groceries no matter having baskets and racks and there are no baskets and racks on city owned bikes. Cities with cold winters are even worse. Also terrible going to work in rainy weather or high winds. Bus routes go by their time and not yours and can add hours to your work week plus you have to be early in case they are and stand out in the elements while waiting.

But.. but... that youtuber told us that bicycles are awesome in any weather, for any purpose. See, there's a town in Finland where kids ride bicycles to school even in winter! /s

There are only certain medium size densities for which cars work. They are only convenient and time-efficient for a very small range of traffic, and only at very low density of interesting places to go. Look at how much space is devoted to parking on a satellite view of any sort of suburban shopping center, and you'll see why cars only work for low density of interesting places to go.

You seem to enjoy the number of places that you can reach in a car. But if the destinations are man-made places of interest, such as businesses, friends, shops, services, and social meeting places then cars' space inefficiency limit how many of those you can visit. Because each has to spend a massive amount of space on parking. And transport has a failure mode of creating traffic jams whenever demand for a certain route tips over a critics point, causing a phase change from free flowing traffic to a traffic jam, that can only be cleared by long periods of far lower number of cars.

With trains and bikes and walkable cities, you can achieve far far higher densities of interesting destinations, with a <40minute travel time. There is really no comparison.

> With trains and bikes and walkable cities, you can achieve far far higher densities of interesting destinations, with a <40minute travel time. There is really no comparison.

If your interests and hobbies are limited to bars, restaurants and your yoga studio then yes. I lived in a dense and walkable city, with (most likely) the best public transit in the world, and I felt like I'm trapped in slums.

YMMV, but for me a car is freedom.

Though I do like bars and restaurants, most of my interests are far more obscure, and can only be supported by large numbers of people that congregate in dense areas. For example, the types of science I do requires both high densities of people and attracting this strange subset of people to a few geographic centers.

High density does mean more bars, restaurants, and yoga but it also the prerequisite for highly specialized professions like tailors, rare book collectors, rare tea, etc. etc. etc. Bars and restaurants are the tip of the iceberg, but the rest of the iceberg is a long tail. Just as the internet allows people with rare interests to find each other and talk, high density allows these rare interests to meet in real life and develop face to face relationships.

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