Hacker News Reader

Comment by kolanos | Hacker News Reader

It is considerably easier for a country that would be equivalent to one of the smallest U.S. states to abandon their dependence on cars than it is a country 237 times larger. Furthermore, the further west you go in theU.S. the more spread out things get until you reach the west coast. To the east of where I live there is a highway that is 287 miles long and is almost devoid of any services whatsoever, no civilization to speak of, not even a gas station. You can Google it, it is known as the "Loneliest Road in America". Not sure how less dependence on cars handles situations like that. Guess my overall point is until you drive across the U.S., it is difficult to fully understand the scale of the problem, let alone the solution.

View on HN

> It is considerably easier for a country that would be equivalent to one of the smallest U.S. states to abandon their dependence on cars than it is a country 237 times larger.

I'm not sure it is. Have you visited the Netherlands? You don't walk or ride a push bike between cities there, any more than you do in the USA. Bicycles are the predominant form of transport because of how they design their suburbs. A car in suburban Holland isn't going to move any faster than a bicycle, and there nowhere to park. This is a deliberate design choice.

The population density of Utrecht (a major city in the Netherlands) is 1000 people / sq km. The population density of Annapolis (the capital of Marylands) is over 2000 people / sq km. If density is the reason Marylands should be less car centric than Holland.

> To the east of where I live there is a highway that is 287 miles long and is almost devoid of any services whatsoever, no civilization to speak of, not even a gas station. You can Google it, it is known as the "Loneliest Road in America".

Doesn't the word "lonely" give you a hint on why this is irrelevant? You aren't going to ride a push bike to pick up fuel for your tractor in the Netherlands either.

It's the USA's sprawling suburbs that weld you to your car's, not your cities or your rural expanses. It's true that's hard to change now. But there is no reason it had to be that way. Your suburbs could have been as compact as those in the Netherlands. The Netherlands made a conscious choice not to do it that way (they built free ways, decided they didn't like them, and turned them into canals [0]). I'm not sure how the USA arrived at their current arrangement but it wasn't because you "had to".

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/14/utrecht-restor...

> Doesn't the word "lonely" give you a hint on why this is irrelevant? You aren't going to ride a push bike to pick up fuel for your tractor in the Netherlands either.

The relevance isn't that it is lonely, the relevance is that it is not unique west of the Mississippi. But I welcome you to point me to a country the size of the United States that has solved this problem. I think you'll find they come in two varieties, either they're as spread out as the United States or the entire population is almost entirely against a coast/border wit much of the rest of the country remaining mostly empty.

> It's the USA's sprawling suburbs that weld you to your car's, not your cities or your rural expanses. It's true that's hard to change now. But there is no reason it had to be that way. Your suburbs could have been as compact as those in the Netherlands. The Netherlands made a conscious choice not to do it that way (they built free ways, decided they didn't like them, and turned them into canals ). I'm not sure how the USA arrived at their current arrangement but it wasn't because you "had to".

Western expansion in the United States was a deadly affair prior to railroads and highways. The Netherlands was largely already a developed country when they did all of what you describe. Much of the United States today lives and dies by what little transportation options they have. There is a reason there are over 3,000 ghost towns scattered across the United States west of the Mississippi and it is not because of the sprawling suburbs. When you have one major highway in or out, city planning kind of takes a backseat.

> But I welcome you to point me to a country the size of the United States that has solved this problem.

Russia, China, India. Almost everywhere because to pull the US pattern of suburbia off you needed two things: to build the suburbs in the era of the car, and be rich enough to afford the cars. The USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand met those two criteria. Almost no one else did.

The size of the place had nothing to do with it. New Zealand isn't that big. As I said the Netherlands for a while decided to emulate what USA pattern. They had the money, and they started to build the freeways to enable the expansion. They decided against it. Whatever caused them to do that, it wasn't size. It was probably because the preferred the denser style of living.

Most people do, because it and easier and cheaper lifestyle. Maintaining all the larger house block, the long travel times, the increased freight - it all takes effort and money. Perversely, you get more exercise in these denser cities because you walk / cycle everywhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com