Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

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> People in this thread almost make it sound like people don't want SUVs, its a decision being forced on them by others.

> A lot of people I've talked to about car buying decisions like buying these SUV/crossover things.

Classic.

City-dwelling non-car owners projecting their understanding of the world onto the rest of the country. (Or in the case of Europeans, onto Americans.)

American suburbia and rural life is car-centric, and that's not going to change. People are not going to want to move to densify or live in the city because that's what "everyone should want". They enjoy their private cabins, their tall all-wheel drive vehicles, not shared transit and subway.

If you try to force these people to move to cities through taxation or a lack of support for their infrastructure, they'll vote out your political candidates.

There are a lot of people from SF and NYC here. As is the case with /r/fuckcars and their advocating for bikes and "strong cities", these are not the views shared by the rest of the country. If they were, you'd see policies changing overnight.

It seemed like they were talking about large vs. small vehicles - not have vs. don't have a vehicle at all. And that's a lot different. The US could pass legislation making large vehicles more expensive and fuel efficient vehicles less expensive, but if I understand the situation correctly, it's the opposite. Which seems pretty stupid considering climate change.

As I understand it, they tightened emission regulations for cars and trucks. Which I consider to be a good thing. Problem is, the truck regulations were far more lax, and SUVs over a certain size were considered trucks. It was immediately more economical to make trucks and SUVs which didn't require as much R&D to meet the emission targets.

And so here we are, at a point where most car models have been canceled by the big auto builders while their SUV offerings have exploded.

Those big auto manufacturers didn't cancel small cars because they couldn't R&D the emissions requirements. Sure, those higher emissions requirements did drive up some of the cost to come closer to the SUVs, but the small cars were practically universally still cheaper than SUVs.

The big automakers stopped making small cars because people largely stopped buying them.

You're getting downvotes probably because your comment comes across as combative, but I do largely agree with your main points. I think a lot of people here aren't in touch with a lot of suburban people.

I've watched the local town halls in my area filled with people raging about apartment complexes or even owner-occupied townhouses getting built. Voting out the city hall members who approved those developments. The hate for even zero lot line houses as being "too crowded". People questioning why I'd ever even think about taking the light rail into town instead of just driving. Voting against expanding transit access because "the wrong people" would be coming into their town, arguing that having busses run every 10 minutes instead of 20-30 minutes would lead to higher crime rates and make it less safe.

There's tons of Americans who furiously don't want the density. Who don't want transit. Who push to have their lifted trucks with offroad wheels to drop their kids off at daycare and make a 20mi commute to an office job and wouldn't have it any other way. Lots of people here act like these people just don't exist or aren't a significant percentage of the population, but remember, Trump carried 46% of the popular vote. The percentage of these kinds of people is absolutely not a small number.

People act like these zoning laws just appeared on their own. They're made by local governments, some of the easiest people to replace in the end. The zoning laws reflect the popular priorities of the people living there. If the majority of people really wanted dense housing, they'd be voting to change their zoning laws to allow it. But, from what I've seen, a lot of those candidates don't tend to stay in office very long.

I'm reminded of a recent proposed development near me. A developer bought up the remains of an old farm and a cleaned up meat packing plant lot (torn down, cleaned up, empty field at the time). The developer wanted to build a few zero lot line SFHs and a few 3-4 unit townhouses, and then finally a small little commercial spot for potentially like a doughnut shop or cafe or bodega kind of thing. The close neighborhoods instantly fought against it bringing up loads of arguments about increased traffic (the location actually had a couple useful bus lines serving it...needs more frequency) and building too close to the creek (despite the most vocal neighborhood having structures just as close!). The development company tried to make a number of concessions, increasing some of the lot sizes of the SFHs, eliminating some of the construction closer to the creek and instead having a linear park/dog park there, redoing the entry and exit points of the development to adjust traffic patterns, etc. The NIMBYs would never accept any proposal. Eventually the developer gave up as city hall wouldn't risk approving something that so many virulently hated.

In the end, that property was acquired by a different group. Since the property was already zoned industrial, it was quick and easy to get the permits for their tilt wall warehouses to be built. Now instead of reducing the high housing demand and adding a small corner commercial space on a popular bus route, we're going to have loads of semis driving through this overall pretty highly residential/office area. I wonder which was worse for those neighborhood's property values.

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