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Comment by SwetDrems | Hacker News Reader

Reducing car dependency will increase social activity. Cars are isolating socially and geographically.

Everyone should try live car-free and see how much more connected to your community you'll become.

I think in the US cars can increase your time with friends and family. Many people are lucky to live within a 60 minute drive from close friends or family, but without access to a car those trips become an epic trek. This is especially the case for people as they age, have kids, have a tight schedule, etc.

Furthermore, I'd venture to propose that this is not merely the case in the US. My family in Mexico City often use public transportation for work, but frequently drive to visit each other on weekends because that's much easier.

Pretty sure OP's comment assumed city life. In most rural and suburban USA towns, cars are the only thing that enables connection to others. If cars suddenly disappeared, half of America would effectively become hermits (not to mention starve due to lack of access to basic necessities like groceries).

Ending Car Dependence basically means move to a denser city, which you're never going to convince everyone to do.

No - car dependency isn’t a problem in rural areas, it’s a problem in metro areas. Places like Columbus, Indianapolis, Tampa Bay, San Diego, etc. are all completely 100% reliant on cars for transit.

People already live in the cities, there isn’t anything to convince them of for that. Instead we have to build transit that allows people to not rely on a car for their daily needs. Not that you can’t have one, of course. But walking, biking, and rail infrastructure need much, much more funding and then we can reduce how we handicap society with car-only transit.

What is interesting is that there are pockets of car free living even in these examples. E.g. in Columbus you have 45000 undergraduates at Ohio state, the bulk of whom live within a half hour walk of campus and all their friends from college, and might only use their car to shuttle themselves and all their roommates to the grocery store once a week.

Many of them have cars and pay for parking or if they live off campus they just park their car on the street. I would guess that 30% to 50% of those undergraduates have a car somewhere close by.

The best thing the university does is add a COTA (regional bus system) ticket as part of the tuition price to get students riding the bus locally instead of driving as they inevitably try to do.

Unfortunately, the bus service once you leave campus is comically bad so everyone just drives, catches a ride, or uses ride-sharing if you ever want to actually do anything not physically on campus. There are a lot of low-hanging fruit that the city and region refuse to take. We could run a tram from the southside all the way up to Old Worthington along the same street and you'd hit all the most dense spots in Columbus and you'd probably eliminate a lot of driving, traffic, and deaths but instead they're spending tens of millions of dollars adding new highways.

I've heard it hypothesized that one of the underlying factors in why Americans romanticize the "college years" so much is that, for most, it's the only time they've ever lived in an environment (the campus) that's not designed primarily for cars.

In the Netherlands you can bike between suburbs and rural areas. In the US that is hard, not only because of the distances, but also because there are no safe roads for bicycles in rural areas. It's highway shoulder or nothing, basically.

Doesn't stop anyone around here. Curvy rural two-lane highway, no shoulder, few passing zones, poor sight lines, and people are biking on it.

> Doesn't stop anyone around here.

Yes, it does. Go visit the Netherlands and you'll see the remarkable difference. Just because some people are biking on those roads doesn't mean you have anywhere near the bicycle trip share that the Netherlands does.

Even in the city its like this. Pick an arbitrary A-B in any city, e.g. go test brooklyn or chicago. Unless you happen to pick an A-B that is within a few mins walk of the same single rail line (no transfers), the car is always faster and by a good deal. Usually its like you can drive 25 minutes in a car or wait around for two busses that will get you there in an hour and ten minutes.

this hasn’t been my experience in manhattan/brooklyn fwiw. taking the subway is routinely faster. i can see the bus being slower but it’s usually not by much. You also need to deal with parking for a car if you’re not using a rideshare.

That's if you don't need to transfer. Brooklyn/manhattan example I'm assuming you are going into or out of the city into brooklyn. Look at the map, all the lines work for that sort of commute, and pretty clearly don't help you if you have a commute that isn't on this hub and spoke system.

Suburban USA towns are impossible to live in without cars because they're built with the assumption everyone has one. There's nothing inherent in lower-density housing that prevents it from being walkable, or from having basic amenities zoned to be closer to residential zones.

(Rural is a different matter, but they're usually left out of infrastructure in general)

> In most rural and suburban USA towns, cars are the only thing that enables connection to others.

I mean I suppose this is technically true. But as someone who was raised across a smatter of rural and sparse suburb and who now lives in/near dense urban areas - the urban areas are the ones having much more trouble feeling a sense of connection.

In all of the rural areas, everyone knew each other by first name, greeted each other, dropped by with baked goods. Were they dependent on cars? Yeah I guess. Feels like we missed the elephant in the room though

In my city (west coast), public transport is simply not safe anymore (especially as a woman) due to lack of law enforcement or deterrents from crime. In my car - I feel safe. I am taking Krav Maga classes, but man, it didn't used to be this bad.

I think the perception of risk is what is off more than anything. LA metro for example saw about 180 violent crimes on it last year. For a system that sees almost a third of a billion boarding a year, the risk of violent crime happening is so low it doesn't make sense to consider. I expect the crime rate is similarly low on other transit systems.

https://libraryarchives.metro.net/DPGTL/CrimeStatReports/202...

That said the risk of crazy people ruining your day for no reason is not low. Ultimately the problem isn’t transit (rather it’s part of the solution), the problem is that the US social fabric is messed up.

Its the same risk you face walking on the sidewalk or going in a grocery store though where you are also liable to find these crazy people.

I strongly recommend finding a gym for Brazilian jiu jitsu, judo, muay thai, boxing, etc. They're constantly being testing and evolved through MMA fights, and they'll get you some full-contact, full-intensity sparring experience.

How does this compare to Krav Maga classes?

Kind of like comparing SWAT CQB technique to Gun Kata [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U02E2sjwlLM&pp=ygUIZ3VuIGthd...

One's real, and it's used in real violence every day, and one's not.

Basically, just look up what UFC fighters train - that's what actually works.

I am not sure I want to travel on the bus with a scared man trained in multiple martial arts. All the stats say that criminality is pretty low, I am safe on the bus, but fearful scared trained dide sounds like someone who will make it less safe for all of us.

You have no idea what you're talking about, but I'm glad you feel safe on the bus. Criminality stats are low, so the chances of being assaulted on our light rail or buses is indeed low, but it only takes one incident to lead to loss of life or injury. I'm not a "scared man", I'm trying to prepare myself for unhinged situations, which we've been witnessing at an increased rate after 2020, when our city/county reduced police and law enforcement presence.

Here's an article about the massive rise in homicides in our county since 2019 [1]. Maybe the numbers are "low" to you, but it's 1000x higher than in countries such as Japan. I won't go further into the reasons why due to risk of being downvoted by people unwilling to accept the new reality of west coast urban life.

[1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/seattl...

I couldn't find historic chart for Seattle but most cities are having a similar spike in crime so I'm using NYC. The rise in crime from pandemic is from historically low numbers. The jump is big but the absolute numbers are still low.

NYC had the same murder count in 2019 as 1948. 2022 was same as 2012. The peak in 1990 was 5 times as much as last year.

Again, here is a case of rationalists misinterpreting risks based on data.

You are the one misrepresenting risks. In addition to what other person said, majority of homicides is among people who know each there - people killing their own partners, families, friends, business associates and partners in crime.

Please don't post in the flamewar style (e.g. low-information / high-indignation comments or putdowns). We're trying for something else here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The calmest people I know are black belts who can pretzelfy 99% of people. You should try meeting some.

I encourage you to check the stats, driving is one of the most dangerous things people routinely do, and nearly always far more dangerous than taking public transit.

Here's a case of rationalists misinterpreting risks based on data. Driving is a risk I accept. Being mugged or assaulted by someone on fentanyl with limited police or law enforcement on public transport is a risk that I cannot account for.

> Driving is a risk I accept. Being mugged or assaulted by someone on fentanyl with limited police or law enforcement on public transport is a risk that I cannot account for.

Why the difference? Maybe you feel like you're more in control of what happens when you're driving? But realistically however safely you personally drive, you'd still be at risk of being driven into by someone else (and there's a parallel breakdown of the rule of law where uninsured, unlicensed drivers are everywhere nowadays) and there's not much you can do.

You can't compare getting raped to getting in a car crash. This line of argument is ridiculous.

Right. I don't understand their thinking process here.

I would rather get raped than die. Most people would.

Edit: Actually, now that I think about it, what cases are you talking about where people get full on raped on public transit? That seems vanishingly rare, if at all extent.

I'm lucky enough to have moved, but my last home was 4 miles from the closest store, 3.8 miles from the closest sidewalk. The closest bus stop was at the aforementioned store. These numbers weren't even that big for the area where I was living. If I didn't have a car I'd spend too much time coming and going from the places I'd need to be to engage with my community.

I'd say "everyone should try living somewhere they don't need a car", but that's not feasible for everybody.

It's only not feasible because that's how the infrastructure and town planning in many urban areas has been done, and has somewhat succeeded because the degree to which you'll be dependent on a car to get everywhere isn't a super high priority for most when first choosing somewhere to live. The challenge is convincing governments and home buyers that the pros of less car-dependent cities massively outweigh the cons (which are mostly around accepting being closer to your neighbours and having less yard space/more stairs, plus governments having to focus on more than a single mode of transport when building roads etc).

My social circle activities involves hiking, camping, hunting, fishing. Reducing car dependency won't work for everyone. Mostly works in cities.

It depends on the activities. I’m less active in the local outdoors group than I was but basically everyone has a car, even if they live in the city which I don’t, because it gets very old seeking out carpools for specific trips all the time.

It was the same - I just used public transport instead of the car to meet up with my friends. I never knew nor hung out with my neighbours, cars or no cars.

>Reducing car dependency will increase social activity

My social life (and sense of community) took off when I graduated from college, where I was largely living car-free, and started driving 45 minutes to my full-time job each day. How do you explain that?

Living in a car-dependent community, and choosing to go car-free, sounds like adding another layer of social isolation to me.

I would suspect most people are far more social in college than after, probably your circumstance is individual.

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