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Comment by resource_waste | Hacker News Reader

People have no idea how much cars benefited the lower and created the middle class.

Instead of having an hour commute to move a few miles, you could have a half hour commute to move 30 miles.

This made land ownership possible for this group of people. Low value land that was too far from work was now usable for those same jobs.

Whenever I see propositions of removing lanes from freeways, I think how that benefits only rich people and landlords. I can afford to live near my company because I'm well-off, but I know plenty of people making 40-60k/yr that have plots of land 30-60 minutes from their jobs. They would otherwise be renting apartments 1/3 of the size of their home.

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I don't see how having a decent public transportation network is any different.

I live in a suburb of Stockholm, 15km away from the city centre but it takes me only some 35 min to get to the central station on the metro, I have the option to take a 10 min bus to the nearest rail station that connects me to a different part of the city so if I need to go there I can choose the commuter train. Not only that but I do get local trains taking me to different towns southwards, also a direct connection to the airport and other towns northwards, and a connection to the long distance rail that can take me to the other coast, or south to Malmö/Copenhagen.

My suburb only exists because the metro station was built here, around the station there's a small centre with shops for daily needs, all of that was designed prior the existence of residential buildings to support the city's expansion, around the station are the higher-density buildings with apartments while I live some 5-10 min away in a townhouse; and this suburb is considered a poorer area of the Stockholm metropolitan region, not requiring a car was a must.

> People have no idea how much cars benefited the lower and created the middle class.

Yes, and with reference to London, one of the cities discussed, cars are now literally poisoning us.

> The most economically disadvantaged are often those worst affected by air pollution, particularly because they often live in less desirable locations, such as near busy roads. But they are conversely least likely to own a car or use them as much and therefore emit the least pollution.

https://trustforlondon.org.uk/news/london-inequalities-infec...

https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/bame-and-po...

If cars are so great all around, ever think why "near busy roads" are "less desirable locations" ?

"you could have a half hour commute to move 30 miles."

Well unless half a million people try to commute along you during the same rush hour, with their commute ending in the wider centre of an old city which cannot absorb all the cars.

In Prague it is quite common to spend half an hour to cross the outer 25 miles of your journey and spend another half an hour in the traffic jam of the last 5 miles.

If it wasn't for the suburban trains and buses which alleviate the pressure, that last 5 miles would be one huge gridlock moving at the speed of a slow walk.

>This made land ownership possible for this group of people. Low value land that was too far from work was now usable for those same jobs.

The same is the case with public transport where available and where the city is built to support it. Which is what the poor people and rising middle class used -- especially as they didn't afford a car until the 1930s (and in places like New York not even then, though they still managed to turn from piss poor Italian, Jewish, Greek, Bulgarian, Irish, etc immigrants to middle class).

There is no need for a car to do that.

I've lived 40km from my office, commuting by bicycle (there was an highway and a railway available as well). I was super fit at the time. I've lived 100km from my office, taking a mix of train + bicycle. Despite being a wee bit slower than using a car, I could do something ( or sleep/nap) in the train, so that was better time spent.

Anyway you look at it, even when it is faster, using a car in an area that has decent public transport is a time that is not well spent over different modes of transportation and you don't really gain time if you think of it thorously.

You biked 50km after 8+ hours of physical labor?

That was a typo, it was actually 40km but yes, and I enjoyed it.

It was basically free 2h40 of fitness every day.

What kind of work did you do? I would personally not look forward to a 2h40m bike ride after doing physical labor all day. Impressive.

40km is more like a 1h20m-1h40m ride on a slightly above average pace (25km/h-30km/h), it shouldn't take 2h40m to ride 40km even on a very slow pace (15km/h).

40km was one way. I was doing 80km a day, so around 2h40 a day when I didn't decide to extend the ride back.

I understood that, I interpreted the comment I replied to as: "why would you bike 2h40m after a shift?", I might have misunderstood that one though.

Parent says that they had an "office" job. Where do you get " 8+ hours of physical labor" outside of the cycling?

Because the comment they were replying to said:

> People have no idea how much cars benefited the lower and created the middle class.

Many lower class and even middle class jobs involve physical labor (or even just standing all day). Then they replied, essentially, that they didn’t need cars, they could bike.

So I assumed they also had a job involving physical labor as opposed to their comment being totally out of touch. Biking is a lot more palatable when you have a cushy office job (maybe even with a shower).

If you look at reality, the people biking and walking to work the most are lower class and include physical labor. Migrants working in the fields, construction sites (at least to a pick up point)...

The lower class cannot even afford gasoline and car maintenance.

If you look at reality, the people going to work the most are lower class.

Very few workplaces are made up of a majority of upper class people.

With respect to bike riders, there's a lycra clad group who are largely all middle to upper class, they simply don't make up a majority. But they are visible.

> With respect to bike riders, there's a lycra clad group who are largely all middle to upper class, they simply don't make up a majority. But they are visible.

These are only a fraction of people using bikes.

50 miles distance from workplace means around 80km. Both ways, 5 days a week that is around 800km which is pretty much the range of my car. I have to spend around 80€ to fill up the tank. No way lower class people can afford spending 80€/week 300€/month on gasoline only to go to work. That is not counting maintenance, insurance, yearly inspection. This is pure luxury. Even I with a decent income would not commute daily by car as it is just throwing money out of the window.

> That is not counting maintenance, insurance, yearly inspection.

In the US, they’re just not doing that. The state of some cars you see on the road is atrocious.

They might also be driving without insurance and just hoping they won’t get pulled over.

As for gas, they’re likely carpooling and sharing gas costs.

That heavily depends on where you’re looking, at least in the US.

> The lower class cannot even afford gasoline and car maintenance.

Carpools. It’s why at a job site you might see only 3 cars even though there’s 10-15 guys working there. They’re either arriving together or getting dropped off/picked up by friends or family.

Never in my life have I seen a bike parked at a construction site.

In my working class rural area, if you see a man on a bike, and he's not dressed like Lance Armstrong, it means he lost his license to a DUI.

> Instead of having an hour commute to move a few miles, you could have a half hour commute to move 30 miles.

Traveling faster than what the human body is capable of on its own feels like time travel to me. Horse, buggy, car, whatever... like stepping into or activating a warp bubble where your consciousness arrives at a place faster than humanly possible. Similarly, having access to information or experience (different manners of vehicles) is potentially a huge advantage or major pitfall. (Perhaps why some ancient maps indicate, "here be dragons!")

Inversely, moving slow when others are traveling fast allows you to witness where those paths lead without having to go down proverbial rabbit holes.

> a half hour commute to move 30 miles.

This is one of those things that works up to a point, and then scaling goes in reverse once everybody starts doing it. You can't maintain 60mph commute. In London the average speed is more like 10mph. There's no way to move enough people in and out on a daily basis without everyone packing into trains.

Occasionally it gets completely out of hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_National_Highway_110_tra...

> you could have a half hour commute to move 30 miles

only by ignoring the externalities of traffic and highways. If everyone tries to do this, it doesn't work. Hence the need for public transit

You can take suburban trains in Paris to well over 50 km outside of the city center.

There are people taking the high speed train from places such as Dijon every day to go to Paris. That is a +300km commute in 1h40 that would take around 3h30 to 4h by car with no traffic jam.

It benefited business owners more than anything... wasting hours of your life in a fucking cage you probably pay a loan and interests on because without it you wouldn't even be honoured to slave your life away isn't anywhere close to "benefiting the lower class". Car is freedom, war is peace... people can't even tell how brainwashed they are by the car industry.

This is true. The rich would like to relegate the poors to public transportation to keep the roads clear and keep undesirables out of their neighborhoods.

The "that's an advantage for the rich" has an easy fix: ban all city traffic except commercial vehicles for delivery of goods, ambulances, etc.

A good public transport is a boon to the poor and even middle class. In Europe, in cities where it's available, even the rich (the top 10%-5%, not the top 0.01%) routinely take it.

We do need to do something about the "holiday conundrum", for lack of a better name. That it, there are times during the year, most notably around Christmas, where suddenly everyone in the city gets time off and wants to travel to visit their family out in the middle of nowhere - and that also includes the operators of public and commercial transportation networks. You have a sudden influx of commuters at the same time as transport service capacity drops to a fraction of the normal.

Not sure how to handle this short of abolishing holidays entirely

(Not necessarily a bad idea - too many things in society already run in synch where they shouldn't; see e.g. most people working 9-5, including services all those people need, so there's e.g. no good time to go to a dentist or visit a bank without taking a day off at work.)

>Not sure how to handle this short of abolishing holidays entirely

Giving people more time off around the year.

I am rich and I want to be able to take public transit to work

There's a saying to the effect that a healthy society is not one where poor people can afford cars, but one where rich people take mass transit willingly.

Yup. And a big part of it that a lot of HNers don't seem to want to hear is that to get rich people to want to take mass transit, you need to strictly enforce against anti-social behavior. Treating the subway as a shelter or being menacing or foul-smelling should get you swiftly ejected.

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