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Comment by DrBrock | Hacker News Reader

We appear to have very different definitions of "well-designed cities".

Cars are the least efficient form of mass transit yet devised. They take up inordinate amounts of space to move very few people. This creates unavoidable congestion problems at very realistic levels of urban density, problems which are only solvable by enabling people to use viable alternatives.

This is why the subway and buses in Manhattan move 5x and 2x more people respectively per day than cars. (https://new.mta.info/agency/new-york-city-transit/subway-bus...) (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/manhattan-drivers-face-9-fe...)

Speaking of "wasting life in buses", did you know that the average LA / Chicago / NYC driver spends 85 to 100 hours a year just sitting in traffic? Food for thought (https://inrix.com/scorecard/)

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> We appear to have very different definitions of "well-designed cities".

No comparable European city is even close to Houston in average commute time. Go on, fact check me.

> This is why the subway and buses in Manhattan move 5x and 2x more people respectively per day than cars.

Manhattan is a hellscape that needs to be de-densified (with some neighborhoods preserved as museums of human folly).

Manhattan is such a strange place to live. People are locked into something far off the normal ways of living, and they forget those other ways of life and look down on them (smaller less dense cities, suburbs, rural areas). Living in closets in high rises and moving around underground isn’t life. Having room for living, being able to get around quickly with private owned vehicles, and walking on grass instead of concrete is a better way of life. Somehow masses of people, especially younger people, have convinced themselves that an unhealthy way of life is healthy.

Manhattan/NYC also provides you with truly diverse crowd of people around, cultural events and experiences, different food and many more.

NYC in general also have plenty of different neighborhoods with very different lifestyles and vibes.

None of that crap you mentioned has anything to do with the previous post. I live in as suburban of a neighborhood as you can imagine and within 10-15 minutes could walk to a Vietnamese restaurant, 2 sushi restaurants, Thai, NY style pizza, 2 bars, several shitty Mexican restaurants, and just about every fast food chain. I’ll trade this ease of living over “vibes” any day.

Several million people disagree with you.

London average commute time is 38 minutes, quite comparable to 31 minute in Houston. I would argue you get much more spare time while using public transportation too, as well as so much needed walk time.

> London average commute time is 38 minutes, quite comparable to 31 minute in Houston.

Houston is 28 minutes. So an average Houston citizen gets 20 more minutes every day. In reality, it's even more because Houston is way better designed for daily chores: buying groceries, getting kids to chess clubs, etc.

It can work out to a whole _hour_ a day of extra time compared to London.

And they will live in FAR FAR FAR better conditions. In their own house, with plenty of space.

So yep, dense cities are a folly and need to be refactored (by demolishing).

> No comparable European city is even close to Houston in average commute time.

Even if that is true, average commute time is just a single factor. There's also health, cost, comfort, the environment, safety. Comparisons using a single metric are simply invalid.

> Go on, fact check me.

Ok.

Couldn't find any reliable data, could you cite your sources? What I have found is a few sources with wildly different data, e.g.:

- [1] puts Houston at 42 minutes, very different from your claim of 28 minutes.

- [2] claims the average time for the EU is 25 minutes.

Most of the sources I've found are based on self-reported data (surveys) so I do not put much weight on them. Do you have any sources that provide reliable data?

[1]: https://www.theworldranking.com/statistics/125/traffic-commu...

[2]: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d...

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