Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

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So, I think the problem is that the culture is unsustainable [1] [2]. Look at new vehicle prices [3]. Look at the operating cost of a vehicle [4]. For many, currently, this cost is at least if not more than $1000/month (car note, insurance, fuel, etc) and very roughly, ~60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Vehicle repos [5] and auto loan delinquencies [6] are hitting historical highs. America built a structurally deficient urban planning model. In Iowa, for example, they are allowing roads to go back to gravel because they lack the resources to maintain the status quo of road infra [7]. Also, consider rural america continues to wither and clear out [8]. This is all important ground truth to have to mitigate the negative aspects as you say, versus throwing good money after bad.

Maybe we could encourage folks to migrate to college towns from the exurbs with subsidies and job guarantees, versus them staying in place while where they exist today rapidly declines. They would then continue to support the town as residents through their social security or pension income they would spend locally through retirement until death. New urban builds take decades while retrofits and reconfigurations take much less time, effort, and fiat. "Skate to where the puck is going to be."

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/7/22/what-strong-to...

[2] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/9/20/the-suburbs-ar...

[3] https://www.financialsamurai.com/average-new-car-price/

[4] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/total-co...

[5] https://www.pymnts.com/transportation/2025/car-repos-hit-lev...

[6] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-06/late-car-... | https://archive.today/dfCjJ

[7] https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/03/11/who-will-be-left-...

[8] https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/rural-america-lost-popula... (draw your attention to "Figure 2. Population Change In Nonmetropolitan Counties, 2010 To 2020")

(think in systems)

To bring it down to a real and concrete case, we can do so much better than each family ferrying their children to school/activites, then driving everywhere in single-occupant cars. That's a world where children and senior citizens have greatly reduced independence and community.

How would it look like if there were reduced day-to-day car dependency? Maybe something like this: a "walking schoolbus" where senior citizens and schoolchildren connect with one another as they get exercise on the way to school. Who wouldn't want that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeYBL5u97c8

I really like the Barcelona Superblocks model [1] for existing urban environments, but subsidizing families to relocate closer to schools is also an option imho. You have to find the intersection of what is politically palatable and the resources available; the next 100 years is going to see structural demographic decline, declining working cohort participation, less growth and productivity, continuing rapid fertility rate decline, declining household sizes, etc so creativity and flexibility will be required (imho). I am also a fan of what Culdesac [2] is doing, and is a pattern to be scaled.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” got us cars, and I think the new question is "How do we deliver locality and mobility for quality lives without cars, when possible?" Cars are not going away, but we should not build for them specifically as if they were the default option, as this cost burdens the future with potentially unnecessary and expensive personal mobility and infrastructure obligations. Even today, they are unaffordable for a substantial population of people, based on the evidence in my comment above.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=barcelona+superblocks

[2] https://culdesac.com/

> subsidizing families to relocate closer to schools

Without changing the US' urban model to actually allow more homes, all that will do is keep the status quo and make everything more expensive.

The US has a housing shortage [1] (~3M-8M units) that will persist long into the future due to a shortage of tradespeople [2], artificial land scarcity due to new builders constraining supply [3], etc. Upzoning and YIMBY are important components in increasing housing supply and affordability, but relocating folks closer to critical social systems (schools for families with school age children, hospitals and care facilities for seniors) versus expecting everyone to have a car or expecting school bus service when that transportation system is already reaching failure [4] [5] is also of some measurable value (imho). Remember, fertility rate is rapidly declining in almost every state [6] [7], so there should be fewer children in each subsequent educational cohort and families requiring locality near schools should trend downward over time (demographics are tricky and can change, so lots of assumptions relying on current trends as of this comment).

A potential solution is for cities and communities to issue bonds, purchase housing near schools when the economics are favorable (ie try to avoid overpaying), and hold it as public affordable housing for families (perhaps in concert with upzoning; buy adjacent parcels, demo, and rebuild as more dense multi family). Political will is the wildcard.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42277358 (citations)

[2] https://www.haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/Howard_Wang... (pages 22-23, 27 specifically)

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VryFaFsKhVE

[4] https://www.epi.org/blog/the-school-bus-driver-shortage-rema...

[5] https://www.ncsl.org/state-legislatures-news/details/states-...

[6] https://usafacts.org/articles/how-have-us-fertility-and-birt...

[7] https://usafacts.org/articles/what-will-americas-population-...

> The US has a housing shortage [1] (~3M-8M units)

It doesn't. It really, really doesn't. The per-capita housing units are close to the historical highs. And per-household stats are _even_ _better_: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=15tRv

What the US has is the density-despair spiral going. It's creating denser and denser pits of despair in the urban centers via economic forces.

After all, what use is housing in Iowa if you _have_ to live in New York? Because there are no jobs for you in Iowa. And housing in New York will NEVER be cheap.

Per capita housing numbers in a country with as much empty land as the US are useless and deceptive.

No, they are not. It indicates that the problem is not the lack of housing.

Additional citations:

Construction Capacity: America's Diminishing Housing Pipeline - https://www.governance.fyi/p/construction-capacity-americas-...

Housing Supply and Housing Affordability - https://www.nber.org/papers/w33694 ("The decline in housing affordability over recent decades has promoted an enhanced interest in housing supply. This chapter presents descriptive evidence about the evolution of us housing prices, quantities, and regulations since 1980, indicating that supply constraints appear to be increasingly binding. We then provide an overview of the various approaches used to model construction and land development for homogeneous and heterogeneous housing in static and dynamic contexts to understand housing supply. Our treatment incorporates empirical implementation and policy implications throughout. Finally, we provide an overview of quantitative evidence on the consequences of relaxing various types of supply constraints.")

I don’t think many US parents would accept their child independently walking or bicycling to school, even over short distances. The Stranger Danger mainstream media has them absolutely terrified that their kid is going to be kidnapped as soon as they leave their front doors.

The real danger is them getting hit by a car driven by another parent dropping off their kid at school. It's a difficult equilibrium to break out of.

Just to consider this on a small scale where, it would actually need to be implemented, one neighborhood at a time, I live in a medium-sized town where the school district has chosen to reject free land that developers attempted to donate to the district for the construction of schools, in favor of just assigning the families who move into these new-build homes to the schools in the other part of town where schools have ample capacity due to the large 4+ bedroom single-family homes mostly being owned and occupied by empty-nest Boomers.

We live somewhere in between the "new builds" part of town and the area that has a bunch of schools, so the walk from our neighborhood to our assigned (and closest) middle school is only 2.5 miles, a 55 minute walk with 155 ft elevation change. This walk takes you across a road with a 60MPH speed limit, basically an expressway. The elementary school is a bit closer, only a 40 minutes, 2 mile walk, but same expressway.

Oh, and they don't even offer a school bus of any kind. I suppose the gen-x parents killed that idea off 25 years ago because they were so worried their kids would be out of direct supervision even walking to a bus stop, so each child is chaufferred door to door, rain or shine, until 16 when they receive their own cars.

I agree with you that all this is absurd. Kids are capable of walking to school and shouldn't have to leave a medium-sized neighborhood to do so. But significant demolition of neighborhoods and construction of schools, local grocery markets, etc. is the only prescription for our ills that would provide anything resembling an alternative to cars for the residents of the tract homes that make up a significant part of our car-dependent suburbs.

This is why I think whoever upthread is arguing that people aren't exactly being reasonable expecting the America we inherited from the 20th century to stop stalling and transform itself into 1,000 Amsterdams. Even though the places that share that awesome non-car infra are highly sought-after.

> I agree with you that all this is absurd.

It's not. It's the right design idea. But it's just missing one factor that will make it far superior to ANY other urban model: self-driving vehicles.

Imagine children being able to just get a self-driving taxi and ride to school by themselves. Or to other locations. All while having plenty of space at home, a yard to play, etc.

I'm not so convinced that I'd prefer to live isolated and "just" get a robotaxi for every excursion anyone wants to do. I'd rather my kids walked about a quarter mile to school with several neighbors. Exercise and being outside are good!

Even assuming we turned smarter and built clean nuclear plants everywhere, just all the paving of roads, tires etc. takes a lot of resources.

> I'm not so convinced that I'd prefer to live isolated and "just" get a robotaxi for every excursion anyone wants to do. I'd rather my kids walked about a quarter mile to school with several neighbors. Exercise and being outside are good!

I believe that robotaxis will enable totally new behaviors. For example, if you don't live immediately near a park, you won't often go there. It's just too tiresome to use public transit to visit a park just for a short walk/run/play. And personal cars are not available for children.

With robocars, you'll be able to text your friend: "hi, meet you at the park corner in 10", jump into a car, and arrive there. This will have zero friction, so it's far more likely to become a habitual behavior.

> Even assuming we turned smarter and built clean nuclear plants everywhere, just all the paving of roads, tires etc. takes a lot of resources.

Ha. One line of Manhattan subway now costs as much as 1500 miles of modern 6-lane freeway. Urban construction is EXPENSIVE.

I live in Vienna and people take public transport to nature all the time.

Define "all the time" and "people".

I understand from your question you struggle to comprehend that this is possible. I assure you it really is. People who have money take the train. People who own cars take the train. The modal split for Vienna generally is about 25% by car. I would guess more than 50% for public transport for journeys to nearby nature. The trains in Austria are excellent: safe, clean and very punctual. If you get in a train to nature you will be surrounded by people with overpriced hiking gear.

>In Iowa, for example, they are allowing roads to go back to gravel because they lack the resources to maintain the status quo of road infra [7].

A gravel road to a dying town doesn’t seem like a failure mode to me.

They don’t build train lines to dying towns in Europe either.

In my comment, I am using it as signal wrt infra cost affordability. I agree it is not a bad solution as population declines continue where it occurs, versus having no road. Look at infrastructure cost projections to understand if it is within the light cone of economic affordability. If it can't be paid for with a combination of taxes and debt, it isn't possible.

No one is forced to buy a car at the median price.

You can buy these cars new under $25K.

Toyota Corolla LE ($23,460), Hyundai Elantra SE ($23,025), Kia K4 LX ($21,990), Nissan Sentra S ($21,590), Mazda3 2.5 S ($24,150), Subaru Impreza Base ($23,495).

I make decent money and I would never spend more than $25K on a car. Of course you can also get used cars with low mileage.

As far as people in rural areas. They deserve every negative thing that they keep voting for.

These sources are garbage. This paycheck to paycheck thing is just nonsense. This is just a gish gallop.

I am open to other sources of these metrics, please feel free to provide them.

Here's one: 3 months emergency savings is the median position https://www.federalreserve.gov/consumerscommunities/sheddata...

There's a good summary on Matt Yglesias's blog of Matt Darling (economist at Niskanen Center and Twitter debunker of this paycheck to paycheck myth) on the subject: https://www.slowboring.com/i/149683266/the-median-financial-...

Thank you! I will reference these in the future on this topic.

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