Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

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> When I think of "suppressed" demand, I think of economically useful demand that needs to exist.

It's really not for you to decide what is a "useful" trip for people. That leads nowhere good. I mean, how far will you take idea that you decide what's "worth it" for people to do?

> This has been debunked and rebuked to death.

Your premise is not supported by your argument, the opposite in fact. If people want to take a trip, but don't because it's too slow, that is indeed the definition of "suppressed".

> demand is not for cars, it's for fast transportation

Those are currently synonyms. After you have created a new world you can redefine things, but in arguments like these you have to use the current meaning of things.

In every place that I've used public transportation, which is not just in the US, public transport takes twice as long as a car. I even went online to Google Maps and picked random addresses in London - supposedly the public transport capital of the Western World, and the law holds: Cars are twice as fast.

> Cars are twice as fast.

With our current infrastructure, yes, but that's because of how we chose to design things. If we built 10 residential towers within a 7 minute walk of a rapid transit station, and run trains every 3 minutes at peak times, you bet your bottom dollar transit will destroy a car commute for every resident of those towers. I'm thinking of places like say, Daly City and Colma BART, for instance, whose locations would be great car commutes at 2AM, but 5-6 stops on a train beat rush hour car traffic every day -- IF the first and last mile doesn't ruin it!

Now, I'm 100% not saying "everyone ought to be forced to live in high-rises over a train station" -- but I would absolutely bet you that if such residences were built with a variety of human needs in mind (for instance, plenty of them with 3-4 bedrooms for larger families instead of the usual urban mix of 1-2 bedroom units), people who presently drive an hour each way to work "downtown" would be tripping over themselves to buy them because they'd get to work faster and get to browse Insta en route as well.

Instead though, for the most part, such things basically don't exist. For instance, the sites I'm describing in the Bay Area are surrounded by large tracts of SFH. (Or in the case of Colma, 1/4 that, 1/4 car-centric malls, and 1/2 cemeteries. Genius location for a transit station, guys.)

Anyway sorry for being long-winded, just all I'm saying is cars are twice as fast because we dedicate enormously more space and subsidies to them, and we don't make much effort to design any part of our cities or suburbs in a way that any other type of transit could really work. It's a conscious choice we have made, and a dumb one.

It's not just the US though, this is the case everywhere in the world!

> If we built 10 residential towers within a 7 minute walk of a rapid transit station, and run trains every 3 minutes at peak times, you bet your bottom dollar transit will destroy a car commute for every resident of those towers.

If you added a parking lot lage enough for all residents of the tower to have a car (otherwise it's not a fair comparision), then I would take that bet: The car will still be twice as fast (don't forget to include walking time).

Trains are slow because they have to start and stop constantly, you have to walk to them, you have to get on and off. None of that applies to a car: it's point-to-point.

> IF the first and last mile doesn't ruin it!

And it always does...... no one has solved that.

> Trains are slow because they have to start and stop constantly, you have to walk to them, you have to get on and off. None of that applies to a car: it's point-to-point.

It does though? In a dense city cars have to constantly stop-and-start thanks to treaffic and pedestrian crossings - there's no gurantee of parking space at the other end - if there is, there's a good chance it's not next to your destination.

I live in Zone 3 London, about 5 miles from my workplace. Point-to-point (so not counting finding a parking space), both driving and the train take about 45 minutes. Cycling takes a bit less time, since cars get stuck in traffic and bikes don't.

> Trains are slow because they have to start and stop constantly, you have to walk to them, you have to get on and off. None of that applies to a car: it's point-to-point.

Wait, are you claiming that cars don't stop at any point in their journey?

Like this isn't even taking into account your distance metric (L0 vs L1 norms) being less efficient than a train has the potential to be, or the 5 minutes it took me to get out of my parking garage before I'd even see a street vs the 1 minute it would take me in the elevator

> car will be twice as fast,

What? I just pointed out that at the time most people need to drive we have traffic. I assure you, in San Francisco, I’d win the race even with a little walk on both ends.

> don’t forget walking time

Are you implying that downtown offices have ample space for every worker to park next to their desk? Or advocating a Texas-like downtown with a huge parking lot or garage on every urban block. Parking in an urban core is prohibitively expensive for most, since it uses a ton of very expensive real estate.

> trains are slow because…

This is a strange take. Trains are fast because they stop exactly 6 times between Daly City and Montgomery. Cars are slow because they have to go about 5MPH through a massive part of San Francisco every day between 7:30-9:30AM and 3-7PM. (Forgive me if I’m off by an hour for that particular commute, I left a few years ago).

Cars are much faster at 2AM though, or in rural Nebraska.

My point was, someone who lived in a sane development in those places does not need a personal car. That would be a large enough population to support a grocery right there. The city itself is a quick ride away, so you can do non-bulky shopping easily via the train. And for weekend trips or IKEA runs or whatever, imagining a car rental office onsite is easy, and again, MUCH cheaper than the cost of ownership, including paying the cost of storage, via having a more expensive residence - since it takes up so much more square footage per unit to provide parking for each resident. (Also don’t forget things like paying for window repair after every car burglary!)

By the way. I live in the suburbs and drive a car basically 100% of my trips. I’m not disputing that they’re the only option for how most of our country is planned. Just that we chose this and we could have chosen otherwise. And in theory, undeveloped areas could be built differently.

>With our current infrastructure, yes, but that's because of how we chose to design things. If we built 10 residential towers within a 7 minute walk of a rapid transit station, and run trains every 3 minutes at peak times, you bet your bottom dollar transit will destroy a car commute for every resident of those towers.

For certain trips like residential cluster A to residential cluster B. Add in a realistic scenario like commuting to work from your residential tower to a warehouse job in a low density light industrial zone and cars will be faster every time. I live in a place with supposedly world class public transportation and it still makes very little sense to take public transportation outside a few scenarios. Most realistic trips you're looking at 2-3 times the travel time you would have by car, even during rush hour.

That isn't world class transit.

> in a low density light industrial zone

In a city with excellent public transport, you get a segregation effect - jobs that don't require (many) vehicles (office work, much of consumer retail, certain kinds of light industry) build up in areas with public transport links. Then industries that do require vehicle access (warehousing, heavy industry, builder's merchants, trade buisnesses) build up in areas without public transport links, since they're cheaper than those with access.

At an individual level driving to your office or training to a warehouse might still work or be necessary, but at a population-level it happens less than you'd think.

There are multiple car factories in several different German cities directly connected to rail rapid transit. Many types of trips can be supported by public transit with the right investments.

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