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Comment by qwertygnu | Hacker News Reader

I love my personal car bubble as much or more than most people (though maybe not as much as you), but at some point we have to get over ourselves. We're all so spoiled. Why the hell do we deserve to all have our own giant speed machines careening through cities where people (including us drivers!) are trying to live? It doesn't make any sense and it's a shame that we've let it go so far, especially in the US.

It should be discouraged (financially, logistically, socially) to drive in dense urban places. Obviously, in order to achieve that, these urban places need to have alternative means of transportation.

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> it's a shame that we've let it go so far,

It's hopeless to expect that things don't end up in this state. A decentralized system will naturally tend to a state of equilibrium balancing between desirability and pain, e.g. people will keep moving to a "nice" area until commutes or prices become unbearable.

I think the only way to end up with an utopia-like metropolis is to run it with a benevolent dictator government SimCity-like, which would probably involve restricted entry leading to very expensive real estate; therefore a lottery or similar admission system into low-cost housing would be needed to balance the needed support population. In other words probably unconstitutional in a dozen different ways and never going to happen.

That "state of equilibrium" is only unavoidable if there are infinite sources and sinks of people. That's a workable approximation if you're only studying one part of a much larger system, in isolation, but when considering the entire world, it falls down. If we have enough nice areas for everyone to live in them, that model stops being applicable.

And, well, a lot of people _can't_ have their own speed bubble.

Most of us, for quite a bit of our lives - when we're under 18 for a start, and over 75ish it isn't really a good idea (yes, I know, no viable alternatives for a lot of people right now, but it's still a bad idea). Whenever we've had a drink. There's a dozen or more medical conditions which can snatch your right to drive away with the stroke of a doctor's pen, and that's before we consider all the common meds which come with a don't drive advisory warning.

And then there's all the other times where it'd sure be nice not to have to. When we're tired, or stressed, or sick, or weather conditions make things dicey. Or when I just wanted to read that book, magazine, blog article, or watch that movie. Or we've got to be someplace with the kids but they actually need our undivided attention.

The point is, even if you drive and like driving, it's just basically civilised to have other affordable options. Even if they're a bit slower or come with other compromises, they should, y'know, exist. And sometimes allowing them to exist comes at a price of making driving your own speed-bubble at the times when you can and want to a little less convenient or more expensive.

Do you have kids? I don't think so (correct me if I'm wrong). Car is absolutely essential for driving around small kids no matter the urban density.

I'm more dependent on my car(s) when I got the first newborn than I ever was.

> Do you have kids? I don't think so (correct me if I'm wrong). Car is absolutely essential for driving around small kids no matter the urban density.

I hear this all the time yet right now am traveling in Amsterdam and see many parents trucking their kids around in bicycles without issue. Actually I remember seeing this in SF as well, and in Taiwan and Japan I see incredibly young children riding public transit on their own.

Most of these bike moms/dads still have a car at home.

As long as those cars are at home in the garage instead of on the road that's fine. The point is having fewer cars on the road, not fewer cars in general. Riding around on a bicycle and having a car for exceptional circumstances and a once a year road trip is healthier and safer than driving that car around every single day.

That also depends on weather around the year in a given country. Here in Poland travelling on a bike ranges from uncomfortable to impossible for 1/3 of the year.

It must be much worse than the weather in Norway and Finland, then. Or perhaps just an infrastructure problem? I imagine if they didn't clear the roads then driving could get pretty challenging too.

In Amsterdam I guarantee you they don’t.

Source: grew up there.

How do you know? I know many parents who move their kids around in bikes (many of those live in cities with less than 200k people) who specifically opted not own cars.

I particular I know that many schools in Germany have car free zones around them due to the problems that car drop offs cause (there is nothing worse as a rushed parent in an SUV dropping their kids off at school. The number of near misses I have seen and experienced makes we want to globally forbid cars within 2 km of a school).

That is definitely not true in many parts of Japan.

We lived in Sydney until our oldest child was three, and never owned a car. Your statement is reasonable: for driving around small kids, car is essential. We instead took ferries, buses, trains and so on. From the hospital we took a taxi (or the modern equivalent), by the way.

I have a 4 year old and an 18 month old, and I don't own a car (nor does my partner).

We rent a car ~10-20 times a year, but that's usually for vacations or trips out of the city to visit family. Regular weekly family life we use buses, the underground (metro), trains, or sometimes taxis.

We are considering eventually getting a car, but we've managed for 4 years with children to not need one and it's not been an issue.

(I live in London, United Kingdom)

Sure, it works in your context, you live in a city with 9 million people and you sometimes rent a car - fine. I live in a city 100x smaller. I literally don't know a person that doesn't own a car, or at least has access to a car.

The context actually get far more granular than it. I lived without a car for 25 years of my life, buses and trains were enough. But all it takes to require a car is having a home 3-4 km from the city center bus stops (which probably covers >50% of population). Unless someone likes walking 1h one way in -10 deg in winter to get to work each day.

It sounds like your city is about the same size as the city featured in this article, which has a population of 83,000.

This is a problem with city design, not city size.

That's exactly what "making cities work for people instead of cars" is all about.

A city 100x smaller is a city with 90k population. That's half of the population of the Upper West Side. And the UWS has an area of only 5 square kilometers. Unless you specifically choose to, you are not going to walk 3-4 km.

You don't live in a city. You live in a suburb.

-10deg winters are certainly going to put a stop to much walking or biking, regardless of whether that's Celsius or Fahrenheit.

Not much of Europe ever gets that low though. Edinburgh occasionally overnight, but it's rarely below about -4c / 24f during commute hours. Berlin mostly the same, Stockholm's maybe the only big European capital that gets to "walking for an hour stands a serious chance of killing you" temperatures for days at a time.

London has abysmal transport situation - any time I needed to traverse through city, it was 3+ hours of buses and trains/subway mix. Of course doing the same with car would be even worse.

Imagine when people don't live in such shitholes, and spend weekends travelling ie to nature or mountains or culture or history or whatever, on non-congested roads. Heck, imagine going to nature even evenings after work, ie for rock climbing. Public transport would be 2-3x that travel time, if possible at all. Also, much more expensive compared to a single car drive, even when accounting all taxes, maintenance and purchasing costs of a car.

Thats how most of Europe lives. City center folks can keep their car-free existence, just please for god's sake don't force it down everybody else's throats like that's the only way to live.

Some people would happily lose half of paycheck to avoid such life, exactly because they spent part of their lives in city centers and know very well what lifestyle they reject, if they can and can afford it. Quadruple that for families with small kids, like my own.

> Thats how most of Europe lives.

THIS. Europe doesn't end on Paris. People visit huge metropolies and base their judgement on this, which really skews the perspective.

I don't understand how you can spend 3+ hours getting around London. I live in Bristol and when we go to visit London, it takes about 3 hours including the train all the way from Bristol to London. Getting from A to B in London is probably 30-40 minutes tops using the underground.

Really depends where you are. But not in a major city, in the UK its not.

Ask me how i know

Yet, most cars you see in the streets are single-occupancy.

A single newborn can be handled without a car (if you spend used car prices on a stroller system!) - but if you have three kids under three, or five under 7, a car greatly simplifies things - or you need to hire additional wranglers.

It's not about the good times (on a good day, moving five kids by walking/stroller is easy) - it's about the bad times, the crying, the screaming, the attempted suicides, etc.

Until you're the only adult in the car, driving along the motorway, and one of the kids in the back starts crying / gets car sick / needs the toilet when you're 15km from the next services. Granted, train toilets with a toddler aren't much fun either.

Don't need a crazy expensive stroller though. A sling when they're small and light, and once they get big and heavy, they're large enough to go in a more basic foldable stroller. The childcare products industry is honestly awful at scamming new or expecting parents into buying shit they don't need.

Singles - I agree. Even doubles, there are reasonable ones.

Find a good cheap triple or higher stroller. Then you're looking at used car prices.

And I agree - a train is nice with a family, because once you're in, you're in.

But a train is more like a plane than a car; it's the subway that's closest to short commuting trips, and they rarely have bathrooms and often subway stops don't have them, either.

(Sometimes the temptation to get an RV with a toilet is high, mind you.)

False. Cargo bikes exist and are capable of hauling kids and groceries. You can get them e-assist, so you don't have to be a dedicated cyclist.

If you need to travel more than ~2-3 miles or so to get groceries or get to school (in a populous area) that's a failure of urban planning.

Yes, there will be some people with mobility limitations who still needs cars, but that's a tiny minority of the overall population.

> Car is absolutely essential for driving around small kids no matter the urban density.

For places like london, paris, amsterdam, you can totally be car free.

So long as you have a pram with space under the seat for storing stuff, its totally not a problem to take kids out and about. The other thing thats invaluable, is that you can concentrate entirely on your kids without worrying about crashing.

Sure, but these are multi-million cities. They have amazing public transport.

The issue I see here is assuming that Europe = Paris/Rome/Amsterdam. Probably due to tourism. It makes the impression that whole EU is just amazing and no one needs a car. It can't be further from the truth.

Pretty rich that you are complaining about generalization now where you made the initial statement that the "Car is absolutely essential for driving around small kids no matter the urban density" which doesn't seem to have any limits in scope.

You made a clear assertion about the need for cars, regardless of urban density.

But it turns out that actually urban density is pretty good indicator of reasonable public transport. of _course_ there are black spots, rural england lost its trains in the 60s and busses in the 2000s.

But

The british didn't make the tube for tourism, given that they've not built anything transport wise since the 90s (except the Elizabeth line)

Paris didn't make the metro for tourists, because they are french, they're not going to spend money on dirty tourists who get in the way.

the Netherlands didn't make trams for tourists, they can cycle like the rest of us.

Simply untrue in many places. My next-door neighbour rides his bike with his daughter to school then rides to work at the nearby hospital (up a gnarly bank, too). I see many kids walking to school all year round. Kids are more than capable of making their own way to school from the age of 8-10, depending on the distance.

Driving your car is absolutely a choice in many cities, and a poor choice at that.

I mean that's a depressing existence for the kids. I walked and biked around everywhere since I was 6 or 7 years old, I'm extremely thankful I didn't have to rely on my parents being free to drive me around so I could see my friends.

Very wrong. I'm not OP but I have two teens and we raised them from birth in a city and have never owned a car. We rent rarely and only to go on trips to places inaccessible by rail. All kids activities were walking distance or subway. Probably ten times as much as you can find in a suburb too. Also kids learn to ride the subway by high school if not middle school so they can be independent like no place else.

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