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Comment by systemtest | Hacker News Reader

> No, you can also start by imposing restrictions on cars.

Getting people into public transit by making car ownership worse is how you get unhappy people. That is just unproductive and destructive. Make public transit better, that is how you get people out of cars and happy.

> The people that live in the city center probably already use public transit

No they don't. The 74% of The Netherlands lives in a city yet 66% of people commute to work by car. That goes to show that even for people living in cities, going to work by car is still the preferred method. I'm one of them, in the example I gave above it was three times faster to go to work by car.

> because they actually live there, and they will vote them out

That is elitist "fuck you I got mine" mentality. Rich people in city centers able to afford expensive houses will make it harder for poor people in the affordable neighbouring cities to move around and get to work.

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Part of making public transit better is making the car experience worse, necessarily. Because you need to take up time, and space, for PT. Unless you put all your trains underground, and build bike lines in an alternative (but parallel) universe. If you want an equal playing field, meaning both are given equal consideration, then naturally the car experience will be worse.

The inverse is also true. The public transport experience is bad now because the car experience is optimized.

> Make public transit better, that is how you get people out of cars and happy.

This is fantasy, you cannot snap your fingers and make this happen, nor are the people in charge incompetent. Never has a city "simply" made PT better at a pace that allowed for significant car reduction without making car users unhappy. Again, car users will always complain, unless the PT takes them less time to commute, which is physically impossible to accommodate for all car users.

> That is elitist "fuck you I got mine" mentality.

No, car users have the "fuck you I got mine" mentality: they have a short commute because they are rich enough to pay for car space in the city, and want a perpetual right to this.

> Rich people in city centers able to afford expensive houses will make it harder for poor people in the affordable neighbouring cities to move around and get to work.

Rich people live in the outskirts in big houses, but want to able to steamroll with their car right into the city center, regardless of the impact to people living in the center and along the way to it.

I can assure you that in The Netherlands, the rich people live in the cities. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, The Hague. You need to earn in the top 5% if you want to buy a place there. The people commuting into the city by car provide the services for the people living there. Police officers, healthcare workers, sanitation workers, teachers. Those people don't live in the city and with their work schedules often can only go by car.

You're confusing the ultra rich that live in penthouses in the financial district, with the rich that commute from the suburbs or wealthy periphery into the center.

> Police officers, healthcare workers, sanitation workers, teachers. Those people don't live in the city and with their work schedules often can only go by car.

They absolutely can go by PT, or relocate, as it has been proven by all the cities that successfully have restricted cars.

We cannot increase density in cities anymore, cars are not the solution because they simply don't scale and are not actually accessible to poor people.

Do you even live in The Netherlands, making such bizarre statements?

The top 5% earners are not the ultra rich. To even afford a 50 square meter apartment somewhat near the center of Amsterdam you need to be at least an engineer, lawyer or doctor earning six figures. Those people do not live in suburbs, that is where the people earning modal income live.

Is this some sort of American way of thinking you are projecting onto my country?

And where should those essential workers relocate to? They already live as close to the city as their lending/renting capabilities allow them. And no they can't all use public transit otherwise they likely would be using it already.

And yes we can increase density. Amsterdam only has 3700 people/km2. The metropole only has 900 people/km2.

I'm a European enjoyer of car restrictions.

You have a distorted view of what "modal income" is. If you can afford to live in the suburbs and drive one car (per worker) into the city, then you are rich. The poor live in the periphery and walk, use PT, or carpool. Then, the ultra-rich can afford to live in penthouses in the financial district and will always weasel a way in to be able to drive (or get driven) in a SUV, they are irrelevant to the discussion.

You are relatively rich and want to have your way with your car and driving, and are using the poor as a bad excuse.

What do you think will happen, that the system will collapse? Trains and buses spilling with people, no essential workers, police and healthcare unavailable, chaos, anarchy?

No! Everything goes on normally in cities that have restricted car traffic. Because restrictions are gradual. If a job offer in the city center becomes less competitive (considering time and money), then it will attract different workers from better locations. And same for housing.

> And yes we can increase density. Amsterdam only has 3700 people/km2. The metropole only has 900 people/km2.

Sure, if you want to make everything worse, you can keep dialing it up until it's too late. See any other major city in the world. There's an upper limit of what is acceptable, there not really a limit in decentralizing.

You don't need to buy a place to live in the cities. In Amsterdam, 70 percent of the places are for rent and over 2/3 of those are in the social sector (almost 50% of the total), meaning that there is a cap on the rent.

Can you provide a single study where people living in cities that reduced car dependency were "unhappy"?

Every single survey I've seen across Netherlands, Slovenia, Switzerland and Germany showed big support AFTER the changes were made (but a lot of hand wringing like yours BEFORE they were made).

The people that are usually unhappy are the ones that want to drag their SUVs in front of people living in city apartments and leave them there.

Who did they survey? The rich people living in the center of Amsterdam that can afford to not own a car? Or the poor people living in Purmerend that now have a worse commute than before?

Of course the people living in Amsterdam will answer the survey positively. It's not those people that are impacted. It's the poor person working at IKEA that now has an extra 30 minutes of commute because they imposed parking restrictions near their job. The rich Amsterdam city center person shopping at IKEA can take the metro because they can afford to live such a lifestyle.

I've listed several countries in Europe which are taking those steps. And they listed people who live there, yes.

Let's be real: you are not the poor person, you just want to ride your car for whatever reasons.

Poor people will chose a job that is nearer, rents and salaries adjust to job opportunities - it's a good thing to decentralize, we cannot keep concentrating more jobs and dwellers around already problematic zones.

Let's be real: you've never been poor. I have. When you're poor you don't "choose a job that's nearer". You get whatever you can take. If that's 2 hours commute each way, so be it. You need to eat and pay rent (at least in the US where there's not much in the way of welfare). The rich and poor alike drive, but the rich can live close to work and the poor often can't. The very poor take the bus if it's available and just eat the extra time commuting, which in my city is usually 3x the time driving. The bus is also a safety issue, my friends have been robbed waiting for the bus and after getting off the bus, driving is safer in this regard.

Don't be absurd. If the poor person somehow could find no jobs closer than a 2 hour commute away, they should buy a second home closer to the job. This isn't rocket science.

Yes I have been poor, probably more than you, and I have chosen any job that's near to survive. Before starting my career in IT, I once had my car wrecked and consequently lost my job. I had to take another job nearby and commute by bicycle. If you talk about poor people benefiting from car centric cities, then you are delusional either about what "poor" really means, or about the reality of relying on a car when you're poor.

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