Hacker News Reader

Comment by em500 | Hacker News Reader

> Now with kids, I understand why "Americans love their cars" - it switched form a derogatory statement to one of understanding. There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios.

This seems very different from the large anti-car movement in the Netherlands in the 1970s (which eventually led to massive investments in bike infrastructure and car restrictions in the cities).

There was significant parent involvement, touting the memorable slogan "Stop de Kindermoord" ("Stop the Child Murder").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_transport_in_the_Netherla...

View on HN

There's a youtube channel named @NotJustBikes which mostly talks about how bike-friendly the Netherlands are and compares it to the USA. It's worth watching a couple of those videos.

And, unlike the grandparent-comment’s assertions, that channel references his family and kids in most videos (in that he and his partner moved to Amsterdam so his children could have the freedom to navigate safely without having to be driven around).

My mother lives in suburban Massachusetts. She always said that she never imagined how it was possible for me to live with two small kids without a car in Berlin.

She came to visit for one month. After the first week she was already comfortably going around with the Ubahn to pick up the kids at school. I have 4 supermarkets less than 150m away from me, so we would walk to do groceries every other day. I spend ~80€/month with taxi rides (for the occasional trip to meet someone in a less convenient place), which is less than what she pays in car insurance alone, not even counting the cost of gas.

At the end of the trip, she got it. Having a car is not a necessity. It should be seen (and taxed) as a luxury.

> Having a car is not a necessity. It should be seen (and taxed) as a luxury

It is unfortunately a necessity in many parts of America where public transportation is lacking or nonexistent.

And making it a "luxury" just further stratifies our society into different, non-interacting economic classes. When things start becoming "privileges", you get a privileged class who cares less and less about the quality of life of those in lesser classes, shaping society to benefit their lifestyles at the expense of others.

As someone who grew up in abject poverty in a very rural area and was homeless and on completely on my own by 16, I have already seen how this plays out. The trajectory of my life was majorly affected by a lack of a car or adequate public transportation. I have since had to make choices about where I live in order to minimize car use in order to align with my own philosophy around transportation, but it comes at great cost in America when such walkable cities are so desirable that cost of living shoots through the roof due to demand. And conversely, poorer areas often lack walkability or sufficient and accessible public transportation.

Berlin does not have the same problems as America, a sprawling empire in decline.

> When things start becoming "privileges", you get a privileged class who cares less and less about the quality of life of those in lesser classes, shaping society to benefit their lifestyles at the expense of others.

I'll never forget one of my last lectures from my high-school History class teacher. She said "People talk about societies in terms of two classes: the kings and the plebs, the haves and have-nots, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. I hope you managed to learn that throughout all of history, what we have is actually three different forces - priests or monks in Ancient times, or the merchants during the Renaissance, land owners in the US - and that it's this third class that is crucial in determining the course of History. Every time they aligned with the elites there was no change in the status quo, and every time a revolution happened was because they in the middle shifted their support to the other side."

I'm saying this for one simple reason: the way to fix this problem is not by pretending that car ownership isn't a luxury, but by de-stigmatizing public transport. I can bet you that if political forces shifted and started putting pressure against car-ownership, you would quickly see a swing from the middle class in support for better public transit, mixed-use zoning, YIMBY-ism, etc.

"A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation"

> de-stigmatizing public transport

I don't avoid it because of "stigma" but lived experience where it takes 2x as long to get anywhere and I'm far more likely to get assaulted by some rando while minding my own business or having to deal with someone else's bodily fluids or public intoxication.

But I loved public transport back in places and times where I felt safer.

Are you campaigning with your city council to favor more/better public transit options? Are you discussing with your neighbors about changing zoning laws so that small business and shops can be located closer to you?

> Are you campaigning with your city council to favor more/better public transit options?

Why would I do this? It's just not possible for public transit to provide equal quality of service to a private vehicle unless I lived in one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, which I do not (though I do live in a major metropolitan area).

On top of that, my area has spent tens of billions to expand the subway system, to little effect and with many, many delays and cost increases that indicate that the local government is not capable of successfully managing a large scale infrastructure project.

> Are you discussing with your neighbors about changing zoning laws so that small business and shops can be located closer to you?

I already live in a pretty walkable area and things are already trending towards making things even more walkable, so no I'm not because it's not needed.

I feel like you just skipped over half of the problem keeping people from using the public transport that does exist.

No, I did not. I understand that right now you might prefer to use car because you can not rely on public transit and you don't feel safe.

My question is the sense of "are you doing anything to change this reality, or are you just going to accept that now that you have a car you see no point in advocating better public transit for your community?"

> you don't feel safe.

I cited lived experience, not feelings, and it's hard to see how expanding transport more is going to fix that when they don't care for what we have now.

> it's hard to see how expanding transport more is going to fix that when they don't care for what we have now.

Improvements in public transport could be made simply by having more frequent buses on a route, for example. Or longer hours of operation. Or (in the cities that have them) getting streetcars to be properly isolated from the cars. Sometimes it can be as simple as having the bus stops properly illuminated so that people feel more safe waiting for the bus at night.

Any of these improvements can make a big difference in ridership numbers, and any increase in public transit adoption is better for everyone. More people using public transport means less cars on the road and less traffic for those who still depend on a car.

To go back to the original point: I'm hoping you realize that what I'm trying to do is that we are exactly part of the pendulum that my History teacher was talking about. If you wish to live in a less car-centric society and if you wish that more people had access to fair, safe and affordable public transit, then it's up to people like you to push for this change.

You're arguing with people talking about how things are currently by talking about how things could be or should be and how people should change how things are.

That can be a great topic on its own, but it's not the same topic others are discussing.

And unless I missed it, you didn't say "let's switch the topic", you just went off in your own direction.

Of course they did.

I've never met an online public transit advocate who didn't come off as a zealot, lecturing the uninformed masses about the obvious benefits that will come from joining them while dismissing any criticism or skepticism as ignorance.

And I have never meet an American that was not fat.

Then you haven't met many Americans.

Unfortunately, I encounter many, many, many more public transit zealots online (and in person, though much less frequently) than I need to hear parrot the same talking points from fuckcars and NotJustBikes about the joys of living in an efficiency apartment and using a cargo bike to get my kids to and from their 3 different schools in the snow or blistering heat while ranting about vague "externalities" without ever providing actual numbers.

How much do you weigth?

Having a <house> is not a necessity. It should be taxed as a luxury.

Having a <hot shower> is not a necessity. It should be taxed as a luxury.

... Well this line of reasoning isn't very good.

Whether a car is a luxury or not, really depends on where you live.

European cities started on a scale designed around the limitations of human walking. Even before they built out mass transit systems, living without a car was doable. Adding mass transit is icing on the cake. If you live in such an environment, it is easy to make the case that cars are a luxury. That's because other people's daily experience is that it is a luxury. As your mother discovered when she visited you.

Most American cities are built on a scale designed around human driving. Even where they built out mass transit systems, between scale and density they can't work as well as European ones. (Fun fact. Across the USA, busses are on average so underutilized that we'd save gas by making everyone drive instead.) Underinvestment in mass transit is icing on the cake.

This was your mother's daily experience in suburban Massachusetts. And even though she sees how you can live without a car, it's pretty safe to bet that she doesn't think that she can live where she does without a car.

Which means that, in America, saying that cars are luxuries is a poor argument. It directly contradicts everyone's personal experience. Yes, this is fixable. But fixing it literally requires tearing cities down, then rebuilding them on a scale where walking makes sense as a major mode of transportation. We can't even manage the political will to build enough housing to keep people off the streets. Any lifestyle change requiring this level of rebuilding is a nonstarter. No matter how many lectures we get from Europeans.

> Most American cities are built on a scale designed around human driving.

That's absolutely not true. It only became true in the post-war when there was a push for suburban sprawl, lobbied by GM and all the auto industry [0]

> it's pretty safe to bet that she doesn't think that she can live where she does without a car.

"Where there is a will, there is a way", right? The discussion is not even if she can go by without a car, but whether she would want it.

> We can't even manage the political will to build enough housing to keep people off the streets.

Ok, but then don't go around trying to rationalize your bad choices and poor capacity for civic organization. [1]

Don't go around saying "I lived in NYC and I thought I could live without a car, but after I had kids I realized they are not so bad", and please don't go around saying "it can't be done".

Amsterdam and Rotterdam were once also car-centric cities which managed to turn themselves around in less than a generation. There is no inherit limitation in the US that forbids this change to happen. There is no amount of American Exceptionalism that can prevent people from clamoring change. Maybe it won't be done in the US, because people are lazy and not willing to sacrifice their own convenience for some communal benefit, but it's super annoying to always get in these discussions when people try to hide their preferences on external circumstances. North American cities are they way they are by choice.

[0]: How The Auto Industry Carjacked The American Dream (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOttvpjJvAo)

[1]: The Dumbest Excuse for Bad Cities (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ)

You guys are talking past each other.

One of you is pointing out that cars are a necessity for some in the current reality. The other is pointing out that we could change that reality like other places have.

You are both right.

I am very against the continuation of car primacy in urban design, but I live in a place where that is the current reality, so for all practical reasons I need at least one car in my household. I advocate for the changes so that isn't true and see that it is possible to live otherwise, but it isn't reality right now, so I own a car. Me owning a car isn't to "rationalize [my] bad choices and poor capacity for civic organization." I do it because the housing that I can afford, in the country that I live in is in an area where that is necessary. In the meantime I advocate for better transit and other options, but I am not omnipotent, and even those with tremendous amounts of power cannot make these changes happen quickly given the 75+ years of infrastructure and urban design.

You are tremendously mean-spirited and un-empathetic in proclaiming that those that don't agree with you are 'lazy' and 'not willing to sacrifice their own convenience for some communal benefit'.

Try understanding where people are coming from. Many believe as strongly as you do, and can provide just as many backing youtube videos, that cars are an unalloyed good. If you come at them this aggressively telling them that the places they live are just plain wrong, you will not convince them of anything.

As an aside, the Dutch aren't nearly as car free as you are presenting. They are in the top 25% for per capita car ownership worldwide, and have higher rates of car ownership rates than Denmark, Sweden, Greece and Croatia which isn't even all of the countries in Europe with lower rates of car ownership. Hell, they have more than double the rate of car ownership of Saudi Arabia, a country that subsidizes fuel prices to encourage car use.

I agree.

But I'm also pointing to the fact that this is easier to change in some places than others. It doesn't just take will to change. It takes more will in some places than others. Because you have to fight against the layout and built up infrastructure of the area.

Conversely, the other person is pointing to how friendly Amsterdam is to not having a car. The fact that lots of people there have cars doesn't take away from the fact that it is easy to live there and not have a car. Just like the number of TVs in America don't take away from the fact that it is easy to live in America and not own a TV. (Case in point. I live in America, and haven't owned a TV in 20 years.)

> You guys are talking past each other.

Agreed.

> but it isn't reality right now, so I own a car.

This means that you at least consider a possibility of living without a car. You at least understand that there is nothing about the US making it impossible to work towards car independence. I have no reason to argue with you or people who share this sentiment.

I do get upset at the people who think that this situation is static and that it can not be changed, ever. But I get more upset at the people who complain at the North American reality only when they are directly suffering from it, and act like when the systemic problem doesn't exist anymore just because they manage to "solve the issue" for themselves.

> As an aside, the Dutch aren't nearly as car free as you are presenting.

They have high rates of car ownership, but they are not car dependent. Even the people who have to drive for work use cars only for longer distance trips, and walk/bike/use public transport for shorter ones. In Greece, much like in the US, people assume that you have to have a car to do anything.

> As an aside, the Dutch aren't nearly as car free as you are presenting. They are in the top 25% for per capita car ownership worldwide, and have higher rates of car ownership rates than Denmark, Sweden, Greece and Croatia which isn't even all of the countries in Europe with lower rates of car ownership. Hell, they have more than double the rate of car ownership of Saudi Arabia, a country that subsidizes fuel prices to encourage car use.

Wrong usage of statistics. The rate of car ownership is not the metric to look at, but rather the % of trips taken by car vs bike.

The Dutch have a lot of cars because they are rich.

The ugly truth (for public transit zealots like the parent poster) is that there is no amount of investment that can make a person with the ability to afford a car willingly choose public transit, unless they live and work in a place with extremely high population density.

They keep ranting about how cars are a luxury, and they are right, but basically want to change human nature to suit their preferences IMO.

I’m wealthy and live in the Netherlands. I find cars kind of annoying. I bike and take the train for 99% of trips, and use occasional hourly car rental otherwise.

Running costs of a car sure buy a lot of rentals or even taxi rides if you do the math. I noticed that a long ago.

Good for you. You're in the minority, both in your own country and globally.

Indeed, I would love for more people to be able to enjoy this flexibility!

Dutch person with a car here: Like many people, I own one because they can be very useful to transport heavy stuff, and there are several low density areas where it's a pain to get by train, like visiting family in nearby Belgium. But for most of my trips biking or public transport is just quicker. I drive maybe twice a month.

That's a bit too far in the other direction.

I know plenty of people who choose transit even though they own a car.

My in-laws live in Rotterdam, and cycle and transit for most day to day stuff. But they also own and use a car, when appropriate (they do have big box stores and suburbs in - gasp - bike crazy Rotterdam).

People will use transit if it is pleasant, fast, and affordable. When I lived in Vancouver, you would be nuts to commute by car if there was a train line near you. It was cheaper and faster to take transit, especially during the working hours.

But as you stated, most people who can afford a car do end up with one, even if it isn't their primary mode of transit.

> That's a bit too far in the other direction.

I don't think so, but partially because the person I responded to is off the charts in the anti-car direction.

> I know plenty of people who choose transit even though they own a car.

Most people choose what makes sense for them, myself included. I drive most of the time, but have no problem taking public transit when it makes sense.

> People will use transit if it is pleasant, fast, and affordable. When I lived in Vancouver, you would be nuts to commute by car if there was a train line near you. It was cheaper and faster to take transit, especially during the working hours.

The issue is that there are very few places where it's cheaper and faster to take public transit.

The solutions most transit advocates come up with involve kneecapping car usage so public transit can compete or insisting people live at density levels most find unacceptable, neither of which are practically feasible.

> there is no amount of investment that can make a person with the ability to afford a car willingly choose public transit

But also:

> Most people choose what makes sense for them, myself included. I drive most of the time, but have no problem taking public transit when it makes sense.

I apologize for taking your word as literal. The first quote is what I was really responding to.

There is a middle ground, it just sounded like you didn't know it existed.

There is a major difference between Western Europe and the US: The former has a population density of 184 people per sq km, whereas in the continental US it's 43 per sq km. Moreover, the major cities in the US have more distance between them.

The result is that even if you increase the density in some US city, the people in the surrounding areas will still need cars, and then will come to the city in their cars because it's the only city within reasonable distance of them.

The subset of the US where that isn't the case is basically the New York Metro Area.

If you draw a 250 mile radius around Rotterdam, it contains Paris, London, Frankfurt and the entire countries of Belgium and Luxembourg. If you draw a 250 mile radius around Portland, Oregon, the only major city is Seattle some 175 miles away and mostly it contains a lot of trees. And then even though they're the sort of people who like mass transit and build it, the large majority of people there still don't use it.

> There is a major difference between Western Europe and the US: The former has a population density of 184 people per sq km, whereas in the continental US it's 43 per sq km.

Wrong, the population density of a country is irrelevant. People aren't uniformly distributed over an entire country's area. A low density usually means a country is big and has a lot of nearly deserted areas, which is true of the US.

> Moreover, the major cities in the US have more distance between them.

Yet another simple average that has no bearing on anything relevant. NYC is far away from San Francisco? No shit.

> The result is that even if you increase the density in some US city, the people in the surrounding areas will still need cars, and then will come to the city in their cars because it's the only city within reasonable distance of them.

Yeah, that's literally the same everywhere else in the world. Therefore, the argument is moot.

> The subset of the US where that isn't the case is basically the New York Metro Area.

Obviously untrue.

> If you draw a 250 mile radius around Rotterdam, it contains Paris, London, Frankfurt and the entire countries of Belgium and Luxembourg. If you draw a 250 mile radius around Portland, Oregon, the only major city is Seattle some 175 miles away and mostly it contains a lot of trees.

Yay, cherry picking! In any case, now explain why despite sufficient density existing in a lot of places in the US there's 0 investment into mass transit there either? It's almost like density is not relevant at all when it comes to the US, weird.

> And then even though they're the sort of people who like mass transit and build it, the large majority of people there still don't use it.

Uhuh, "the sort of people". Let me make one thing clear. There is no place in the US that has any sort of a half workable mass transit solution, with maaaybe NYC as the sole exception as something that can maaaaybe aspire to be half as good as your average European city. So if you're telling me Portland, Oregon built mass transit, then your idea of mass transit is very different from what that actually means.

You seem rather less informed on the topic than you think.

To start, as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_city will verify, the switch in the USA to car-centric cities began in the 1920s. By the 1930s, about half of American households had cars. And American cities were being reshaped by this. After the war, the automobile industry did conspire to remove public transit to improve profits. However this was on top of a giant car-centric housing boom, and already wide existing infrastructure changes. Which all contributed.

The American experience stands in stark contrast to Europe. In pre-war Europe, cars were only a luxury item for the rich. Germany's early success came in part because it was more mechanized than the rest of Europe. But even so, about 80% of all of Nazi German logistics was by horse. They were absolutely unprepared for what happened after the USA converted car manufacture over to tanks and airplanes. With the result that the USA quickly outproduced the rest of the planet combined. (Though, to correct a common American misconception, the most important military use of American equipment was by Soviet soldiers.)

After WW 2, Europe's manufacturing increased rapidly. And yes, cities did become more "car centric". Including Amsterdam. But even "car centric" Amsterdam was nowhere comparable to the average US city. By the time the 70s rolled around, car ownership was still well behind the USA. Yes, new construction was planned for cars, but there was a lot less of that than in the USA. And the core of various cities, including Amsterdam, was still built to the old scale.

The scale that the core of a city is built at, matters. Even in the USA it matters. The USA has many cities that were highly populated before cars. Particularly Manhattan. By and large, they remain walkable today.

But cities that were constructed almost entirely after cars, such as Los Angeles, are car-centric to an extent that simply never has existed anywhere in Europe. No, not even in the bad old days of "car centric" Amsterdam.

And so, I stand by my point. I'm someone who has visited multiple countries, and has lived in a variety of cities. I've lived both with and without a car for various stretches of my life.

Take any city in the world that is an example of a good place for living by mass transit and bicycling. At no point in its history was it anywhere near as car centric as the average US city. And that is true whether you compare to how car centric the US city is today, or to how car centric it was back when the other city had more cars.

So lay off on "car centric Amsterdam". It's an argument based on comparing apples and oranges. It was never even remotely comparable to the average US city.

I think we are talking about pretty much about the same phenomenon, but you are using the difference is the scale as a justification for its effects. I don't get why.

> And American cities were being reshaped by this.

It's one thing to have cities building infrastructure in their existing areas to make room for cars. It's another to have suburban sprawl of the post-war, where cities would grow exclusively by spreading to the outskirt and building single-zoning areas.

> The USA has many cities that were highly populated before cars. Particularly Manhattan.

And there were also many big, developed cities which had their downtowns destroyed in favor of highways. Manhattan being an island protected it from this fate, but lots of cities in the Midwest or Texas had walkable areas.

I see this attitude from far too many people who push for better cities. It’s not that it’s wrong, it’s that it doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter how correct you are, and how good your reasoning is - being smug, self-righteous, and insulting does not convince people.

I badly want better urban design in the US, focused on walking, biking, and public transit - but we have to understand and deal with the fact that good people are raised in a very different environment, and that it truly is quite difficult in a great many places that people live to simply change your lifestyle to one without a car. You have to meet people where they are. Show them a better way, and be understanding when they resist and say it won’t work, because they have only known a different way.

I have seen many people who are receptive to these ideas, but have been so put off by the insulting attitude of many notable proponents (like NotJustBikes) that they are wary of engaging with it.

You are justified in your anger at the situation. I get angry all the time at the risk, pollution, expense, and lack of amenities that I must bear due to the car-centric design of America. Still, that does not make hostility an effective strategy. We will make change by showing a better way, not by denigrating and insulting.

I agree that the tone of arguments of many proponents is not helpful. That obscures the fact there are relatively easy things that can be copied from the Netherlands to make a city more walkable that are not expensive. Chiefly: start making a division between "streets" and "roads", where one is just for destination traffic with shops and houses, and the other is a through way to get from one neighborhood to another with as few traffic lights as possible.

People love to get rid of traffic along their house so it's easy to get buy-in from the public to convert their area to a neighborhood without through traffic, even when that means they have to navigate a few blocks to get in and out of their neighborhood. This results in more traffic pressure in the surrounding area, but that's not as bad as you think because you can remove a lot of traffic lights if there are fewer roads in and out of a neighborhood. Slowly build up to more and more of these areas.

If the only cars in a neighborhood street are from people who live there then traffic intensity is low enough that no bike lanes are needed there and kids can play in the street. Finally, if all that works, you can start stringing neighborhoods together with dedicated bike lanes, away from streets with cars. Bike lanes that are not part of a road are surprisingly cheap because road wear scales with the third power of vehicle weight so those rarely need resurfacing.

Whether having a car is necessary or not depends on where you live. Here in Northern Europe we literally can't reach my or my partner's parents with public transport, because they happen to live in the countryside. For us having a car is not a luxury, it's a necessity if our kids ever want to see their grandparents.

So yeah, making car ownership generally expensive is a bad idea, and would only make Europe's already expensive housing market worse. There are more fair and effective ways to make city centres car-free, and suburb-dwellers to pay their fair share for infrastructure.

> For us having a car is not a luxury, it's a necessity if our kids ever want to see their grandparents.

This is absolutely no reason to justify owning a car.

People can still rent a car, people can still do car pools, people can still can have intercity buses.

Intercity buses would be nice, and perhaps a car pool among few friends could work. Renting a car however remains very impractical for any longer trip.

Still, I'm not sure what is so bad about owning a car in a small or medium-sized city like mine. Average age of a car in my country is almost 14 years, and rising. Very few people are buying new cars, and keeping the old ones around, using infrastructure already built isn't so bad. The population is barely growing and will soon fall, further reducing need for new car-centric infrastructure. I drive less than 8k kilometers a year.

It’s mind-boggling how quickly the “rent or buy” switches toward buying, especially if you’re willing to compare “rent car” with “buy a cheap used car.”

And once you have it …

People who say "just rent a car" don't do that.

I just rented a car for a holiday. It was much more expensive then the cost of keeping my own car on the road, and took a whole lot of time to book including avoiding a number of ways any minor damage would cost thousands more.

I used gocar extensively when I lived in Ireland..

That’s great for where you live, but why did you end with such intolerance for people who live in the suburbs? They don’t have four supermarkets in less than 150 meters. There are places where cars actually are a necessity.

Seems like empathy should work both ways?

> why did you end with such intolerance for people who live in the suburbs?

My hostility is towards people who claim to prefer to live in the suburbs, but do not want to pay for the privilege.

Show me people that say "Yeah, I won't mind having higher property taxes, extra fees to keep my many cars in the garage and have to pay full price for the extended infrastructure (sewer, roads, water, electricity lines, etc) just so that I don't have to live among those poor city-dwellers" and I'll be totally fine with their choices.

Some of those don't make that much sense...

Property tax eh? kind of depends on cost of the things that are paid for by property tax. Sometimes that'll be higher in urban and sometimes higher in rural.

I don't know why I should pay extra fees to keep my many cars on my property... that's why I have my property. I don't mind license fees, and I grumble but don't mind that they're higher for my PHEV even though I don't drive it much or plug it in. If I was parking on public right of way, it might make sense to charge me per car, but my cars don't use shared resources when they sit at home, and I can only drive one at a time.

Where can I live where I don't have to pay full price for extended infrastructure? That'd be great. Where I am, I have to pay my own way for my well and septic; if I wanted municipal of either, I'd have to pay for the build out to get it to my house, just like I did for muni fiber. The owners before me that had electricity hooked up must have paid the utility to extend it, and enhancements would be at my cost.

Is your lifestyle subsidized too? How do you know?

I suspect that even people with strong opinions have little understanding about infrastructure costs and who is subsidizing what. I’m unwilling to take this on faith - it seems like there need to be financial deep dives.

[flagged]

I live in the suburbs of NYC. All of NYC's drinking water is stored in our backyards. So much so that the NYPD patrols this area, 90 miles outside their geography.

The math has certainly not been done. There are no cities without suburbs. For food and water.

You're living in Berlin, the city that is subsidized to the sum of 3.8bn Euros by the much more rural southern states. And yet somehow _they_ are the ones who don't want to pay their share?

Berlin does things to people.

Berlin is essentially a micro-/city-state within Germany. It doesn't have any rural area, but it is surrounded by Brandenburg which has large rural areas. "[M]uch more rural southern states" - Do you mean Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg? Those are some of the richest states in Germany due to their enormous manufacturing industry. AFAIK: The provincial capital cities of Munich and Stuttgart both have decent public transport.

Way to miss the point, or are you trying to strawman the discussion?

The argument is intra-municipalities, not intra-country. The argument is that people that live in the suburbs of a city end up costing more and paying less than the city-center counterparts. The richer people in the city do not pay proportionally to the cost they incur in the city's expenses, but when push comes to shove it's the poor people who are left with poor infrastructure, unmaintained roads, etc.

(As for the discussion regarding Berlin getting subsidies from the south: I can not argue there, but I am pretty sure that what I am paying in taxes is vastly more than what I am getting in benefits and public services. Just like I am pretty sure that the 1000€/month I am sending to TK is to cover the cost of others. There isn't much more than I am supposed to do, is there?)

Most places in the US the zoning restrictions are part of the problem. You can't build a small grocery to serve a neighborhood when its zoned residential.

Places that grew before cars, were built with walking distance separations. It wasn't possible to profit as a grocery by building miles away from the people.

The issue is that we don't tax externalities properly in the US. We heavily subsidize car usage and then make people pay to use the subway. The incentives encourage behavior that is bad on a global scale even if it makes sense for each individual.

I'm not here to defend the incredible subsidies for car-based travel, but public transit globally also gets lots of subsidies. Outside of a few of the highest density cities in the world (Seoul, Hongkong, Osaka, Tokyo), almost no public transit has more than 100% "fare box recovery" (no public subsidies required). Even in those cases, normally the national government pays for (or subsidizes) the initial build.

This seems like an odd example. Aren’t many forms of public transportation partially funded and subsidized via taxes? It doesn’t make them bad, but they aren’t self-sufficient either.

In my area (Washington DC), fares pay about 10% of the budget for the subway each year.

Why should those subsidies be expanded, yet any subsidies for cars (which certainly exist, but drivers pay for more than 10% of their vehicle costs) should be eliminated?

The “cars get subsidized” arguments almost always fail to take into account that the entire capital and maintenance cost of the vehicle is borne by the driver.

You have to do some pretty creative accounting to get it as subsidized as public transit (which isn’t to say PT shouldn’t be subsidized, mind you).

The battle for the suburbs is mostly lost, you need a car if you live there.

What the discussion should instead highlight is that with just moderate increases in population density you can escape the need for a car and it ends up being better for everyone. That mostly only applies to new development.

Heck, even if you just made cars second class in new suburbs you could see cheaper housing with equivalent land. Put in a shared parking garage for a suburb instead of putting a garage on everyone's home and all the sudden the amount of sqft needed just to get cars in and out gets massively reduced meaning more room for more homes and an easier argument to make for bus service.

Where do you see a lack of empathy?

Because people in suburbs are subsidized at the cost of and prioritized over everybody else.

How do you know? Seems like cities have expensive infrastructure too?

No, suburbs cost more per capita than people living in the inner city, generate less tax revenue and end up becoming a net negative to municipalities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

The whole series of videos from Strong Towns are good, you should take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_SXXTBypIg

I’m not going to watch YouTube videos (I’m a text guy) but the Strong Towns blog is pretty good. I don’t think they’re the last word on this, because they’re often making general observations, and financial problems are often local.

For example, I know Oakland, CA has severe financial issues (looks like the school district might go bankrupt) but I wouldn’t generalize from that to all cities.

You are already grasping at straws if you refuse to see something that could quickly give you the information that challenges your preconceived notions. The video I linked to talks precisely about the study done by a consulting company showing how suburbs are net-negative to a city's budget and they do it for multiple cities across the country.

> Financial problems are local.

There might be differences in the particulars among cities, but they share a lot of common causes and one of them is that suburban sprawl is cheap to begin (acquiring and building on the land) but expensive to maintain.

Could you link to the study? It sounds interesting.

There is no formal study. It's all handwaving by urbanists with an irrational hatred for people who don't want to live like them.

The lines are so blurry between consumption of local services and taxes paid that it's almost impossible to draw any conclusions that don't start from a biased premise.

Higher and lower density areas have a symbiotic relationship, and people like the parent poster like to pretend everything will be great if they cram as many people into an area as possible and ban everything they don't like it in, while ignoring that they need to get food and clean water from somewhere, need a place to dispose of their waste, and that most of their imported goods (and almost everything must be imported because they don't have the space locally to produce much of anything) will be delivered via a road system.

I don't know if there is any published study. The video is relaying the work from https://www.urbanthree.com/services/

You seriously point people to one of the most biased and obnoxious sources for public transit info and expect people to accept his conclusions?

The first minute is nothing but conjecture and personal opinion full of misinformation, and it just continues from there.

Strong Towns is a good source, but they don't make or support most of the claims in this video because they have no basis in fact.

If the zoning laws in a place aren’t the same as the US/Canada, everything will look different. Here in Brazil I also walk 3 min. to the nearest market, public transport is quite accessible everywhere. Schools can also be nearby and walking distance — though Federal Universities have a tradition of being quite far away from the city center.

Now, if you live in a smaller town it’s a whole different story and I suppose it’s the same in Europe. I don’t see the need to own a car living in a capital in my State, but in smaller towns basically everybody has at least motorcycles.

Your choices make the car not a necessity.

I made different choices, and I am being taxed for those. But what I don't get is the hostility towards people who make this choice?

I choose to not live in a place with supermarkets within 150m. When I look outside I see the edge of my property and then I see untouched nature.

I pay for that, in land cost, and in fuel cost because I live (by choice) further away from everybody.

> I made different choices, and I am being taxed for those.

No, you aren't.

- Suburbanites are being subsidized by city-dwellers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI&t=19s

- The gas for your car is heavily subsidized.

- You don't pay for the increased costs in healthcare caused by air pollution or the amount of concrete needed to keep all those roads.

- Car owners are not taxed extra for the economic impact in social security due to the tens of thousands of people that die every year.

I could go on. There are countless other environmental and economic externalities that suburbanites are not being accounted for and they only get away with it because that's in the interests of the privileged elite.

There's more to this world than cities and suburbs. Ever visited actual countryside? Most of the the larger roads out there are necessary to deliver food and other goods to cities. When they have to exist anyway, it would seem incredibly stupid to tax private car ownership outside of cities more than necessary.

The amount of people living in the countryside compared to the rest of the population is so small that it is completely irrelevant to the discussion.

A lot of those roads could be train tracks instead, FWIW. "Most of the larger roads are necessary to deliver food to cities?" Not at all. The smaller roads leading to a hub? Absolutely. But roads have terrible throughput.

And as others have mentioned, just because something is necessary, doesn't mean we should subsidise it. Especially when rail and (contextually) river shipping exist and are often cheaper.

> The gas for your car is heavily subsidized

Maybe in US. In Europe this is not the case. On the contrary gas is heavily taxed.

I would love to see a study that explores whether those taxes cover the negative externalities compared to other forms of transit, because that seems incredibly unlikely.

I've seen several different takes on that. They vary on how they value the externalities, and which components of the transit infrastructure they consider subsidies. For example, you could consider all infrastructure subsidies, or you could claim that basic 1+1 lane roads are essential infrastructure, while everything beyond that is subsidized.

The conclusions vary, except that they generally agree that driving in dense urban areas is heavily subsidized. And if you accept the roads as essential infrastructure claim, driving in rural areas is too heavily taxed.

Gas is the worst example of a subsidy - a better example would be the mandatory parking built everywhere, which is usually free.

You don't pay for the externalities of using a car. Nobody does. That's why people are hostile towards cars.

Dead people and their friends and family certainly do.

How does someone in Berlin practice tuba or drums? (Serious question, no shade intended.)

In most cases the music schools have instruments, so you keep can your own at home, but I have seen plenty of teenagers carrying cellos in the ubahn.

for those of us not blessed enough to attend university for music, there are still a lot of options to practice and rehearse outside the home. speaking as a drummer, the last time i was reasonably able to play at home was growing up as a kid in a detached single family house. as an adult, i've always rented shared spaces with other musicians (in the US and in Europe).

there are a lot of facilities where you can either rent by the hour (including or excluding the instrument) or by the month (usually 100% self-furnished including some, but not all, instruments and equipment) and play as loud as you want.

most of these hourly spaces will provide a drum kit minus "breakables" (cymbals, snare drum and kick drum pedal) and a basic PA system for singers/keyboards etc. the facility is responsible for maintaining these things (YMMV; some places replaces drum heads often, other places you might end up with a broken cymbal stands or worse). often they'll also come with speaker cabinets for guitar and bass amps, and the guitarist or bassist will bring their own instrument, cables, effects pedals and often a combo amplifier or amplifier head, per requirement or personal preference. sometimes you can pay an additional fee to rent an instrument like a guitar or bass but this isn't guaranteed at all spaces and quality is usually not great.

i don't personally know much about how it works for brass players. not sure people are too excited to share those instruments that involve a lot of bodily fluids :) i imagine most horn players prefer to keep their own instruments. i know a lot of rehearsal facilities also provide storage for large instruments - you just retrieve your instrument when its time for rehearsal or for a gig, then return it to the storage facility.

the monthly option is usually called a "lockout" in US slang and a lot of times you go in on a unit with other musicians; for example, a full band will rent a room, or multiple bands; or a group of individuals who agree to keep a schedule for reserved access to the room. i've been in spaces that have up to 7 different full bands and time is precious, and others where the monthly cost was low enough that only one or two bands used the space.

Fantastic explanation, thanks.

Having a car is not a necessity... for city-dwellers.

My grandma lived in a farm, she used to go to the nearest city by bicycle almost every day.

This is not unreasonable to think it can be done again. The thing is we have made so much room for cars they have eaten all the space and are endangering everyone. But this can change.

Plenty of people who live in the suburbs of Berlin and also do not have a car - because here even the suburbs are not car-centric.

I can even tell you of a friend who works in Berlin and prefers to make a 50-minute commute by train over having a car.

I don't live in a place that has public transit or "walkability". It will never be able to afford that, the tax base isn't sufficient.

When the fuck-cars people start ranting, what they mean is that they want me and the millions like me to move to some distant gigantic city and make that even more gigantic. I do not look forward to becoming the termite people that they wish to become.

The luxury is living in a place where this is a possible lifestyle, and then thinking every one of 300 million people can live in such a place or make the place they live into such.

> they want me and the millions like me to move to some distant gigantic city and make that even more gigantic.

No, we want you simply to pay the full sticker price for all the things you are consuming and exploiting.

It's simple as that. Drop the pretense that you are actually carrying your own weight and that your lifestyle is sustainable. If you do just that and start paying for the privileges you have, we'll leave you in peace.

This is just tribalism. There are plenty of groups which could be considered a negative tax burden, but you're not focused on them.

> There are plenty of groups which could be considered a negative tax burden

Most if not all of these groups are minorities or have a clear need for the tax relief. This is not the case for wealthy suburbanites.

1. I don’t know how familiar you are with Suburban America, but it’s far from simply a place for affluent people. You do know people escape places like NYC because of the high cost of living right? What do you think an apartment in your average safe neighborhood in NYC vs. the average safe Jersey Suburb costs? And what kind of amenities do you think you get for that price? Now stretch that comparison to other suburbs of smaller cities and it’s a stark difference. Your description of the affluent suburbanite vs. the poor city dweller is reductive and untrue. Living in desirable American cities is very expensive. In actuality many people leave cities they love, because to have a similar lifestyle as they would in the cheaper suburbs would require them to be inordinately well off.

2. You can complain all you want but we live in a democracy. Your idea of “fairness” and “paying your share” would have to be voted on. And the populous would have to agree with your view of the world. Good luck with that.

3. Your view of a disjointed America where people are city folk or suburbanites is not how the country operates. People move about freely. You may live in the city and vacation “upstate” for a break. Or live in a suburb and commute into a city for work, paying city taxes, etc. It isn’t as disjointed as you presume.

In what kind of place do you live?

> that channel references his family and kids in most videos (in that he and his partner moved to Amsterdam so his children could have the freedom to navigate safely without having to be driven around).

Then they are unlikely to be unbiased - someone who uproots and moves their family due to an issue they care about is almost never going to express any regret, no matter how bad things get.

Of course it's not unbiased. It's an opinion channel about a highly politicized topic.

>>> It's worth watching a couple of those videos.

>> Then they are unlikely to be unbiased

> Of course it's not unbiased.

Then why, in the words of GP, "It's worth watching"?

That's a question for that person. I couldn't tell you why they think so. I'd guess the implication is that someone who's interested in the urban infrastructure of the Netherlands and how it compares to North America's might find it interesting.

Having said that, what a strange question. Do you only find it worthwhile to engage with unbiased content?

> Do you only find it worthwhile to engage with unbiased content?

Of course not, but there's a huge difference between:

1. Pointing someone at (for example) a church's website when you are trying to support an argument against pro-choice, and

2. Pointing someone at the relevant wikipedia page

Both are biased in some way, but one of them is so biased that it is effectively useless unless you are already on board and in agreement with the argument.

> Having said that, what a strange question.

It's only a strange question to the people who are already ideologically aligned in that direction.

>Both are biased in some way, but one of them is so biased that it is effectively useless unless you are already on board and in agreement with the argument.

And? If you do agree with the argument you will find the church's website useful. Honestly, what are you whining about? If you're not interested in watching a channel about how cars ruined cities then don't watch it. Not every recommendation any random person makes will appeal to you.

That aside, I don't agree with the statement. Someone pro-choice may very well find the church website interesting. Reading what the other side says is important, if nothing else so you're not caught on the back foot in an argument, but more importantly because you may one day realize you were wrong all along.

>It's only a strange question to the people who are already ideologically aligned in that direction.

No, it's a strange question regardless of who hears it. You already conceded that you don't only engage with unbiased content, so if anything that makes it even stranger. It's like you don't understand why people recommend things to each other.

GP here, my parent comment mentioned "This seems very different from the large anti-car movement in the Netherlands in the 1970s".

The videos show mostly the result of that movement. If one thinks that traffic in the US is ok and has no idea about how it is in the Netherlands, those videos show what's different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg&t=424s

? All opinions are biased by definition, that doesn’t mean they’re not worth listening to - especially when they’re well thought-out, well presented, and supported by data, which is the case here.

The US doesn't even try to restrict machine gun ownership by civilians even after mass murder of six year olds so I'm doubtful a campaign about child safety will motivate them.

I have no knowledge of what this Dutch effort was beyond the info in your link, but nothing suggests that the public outcry was go actually ban vehicles or disincentivize ownership and use with tactics such as with higher fees, reduced parking availability, which is what U.S. urban road safety advocates I see pushing for.

Alongside increased bike infrastructure funding, the Dutch effort certainly did involve disincentivizing car use by higher fees (both parking and ownership), reducing parking availability (and also non-parking car accessibility), and slowing down car speeds (speed bumps, cameras, narrowing roads, calming road design, reducing city speed limits to 19mph), and generally reducing car allocated space. It's typically done during scheduled road maintenance, where separated bike lakes are installed, often by converting the street parking space or turning a two way street into a one way (for cars) street or even banning car access.

See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARjrpb_FOcs (skip to about 5:00 or 8:00 so get a sense of some of the redesign).

I mean Amsterdam is kinda renown exactly for reducing parking availability, slow speed limits and generally human-first city planning nowadays.

Wasn't always like that either. In the 90s it was cars-first just like the OP likes nowadays.

It's definitely true that having only bicycle infrastructure doesn't really work for families though. It's a different story if you've got a cargo bike and public transport... But it's understandable that that's not even entering his mind considering the culture of the USA.

Agreed, I only know of a handfull families that manage with no nearby public transport using bicycle only. It is possible, I managed doing 50km for couple of months with a cargo bike and small kids, you adapt. I do not recommend that to anyone unless you really want to, it is just too cheap to own a couple of cars.

> it is just too cheap to own a couple of cars.

It's only cheap because they are heavily subsidized. And then we go back to a discussion about policy. If you remove all the subsidies or make car-owners pay for the externalities, things would quickly turn in favor for higher density, public transit, and AFAIK no game has put this into their game economics.

The forthcoming Car Park Capital[0] looks like an interesting reflection of your sentiment (but it's about planning cities to make them more car centric).

[0] https://www.microprose.com/games/car-park-capital/

TIL Microprose exists once again.

There's nothing cheap about car ownership.

My cars are pretty cheap to own and maintain, but then again I don't have car payments like the vast majority of people seem to.

The ongoing cost is minimal and my life would be significantly worse without the ability to drive places.

You are looking at the cost in your pocket, not the aggregate.

Add the cost of the gas needed to power all these cars, plus the cost of the land allocated solely for parking, plus the costs of the roads, plus the costs in healthcare associated with air pollution, plus the environmental cost of all the concrete and steel need to build and maintain the roads, etc.

It's not just "car ownership", it's "car-centric infrastructure" that is expensive.

Even with no cars, we'd still need roads. The majority of the wear on them isn't from passenger vehicles.

Because car-based roads are so fucking noisy, we throw a ton of green space and front yards to mitigate it. Not to mention "sidewalks" are unnecessary when you can just walk in the centre of the street.

The size of a traditional road is about 6 metres wide or less (that's measured from the front wall of the building on one side, to the front wall of the building on the opposite side). In comparison, the same wall-to-wall measure of a car-centric suburban street comes out to, IIRC, 20-30 metres. That's 3-5x the cost in just land alone, let alone maintenance.

And yes, we will need some roads - about 20% or so, as arterial roads. But right now we're closer to 100%, and most of the throughput of arterial roads is tied up in one-occupant passenger vehicles rather than actually necessary cargo/tradie vehicles.

> Even with no cars, we'd still need roads.

But you'd need less of them.

> The majority of the wear on them isn't from passenger vehicles.

Correct, but irrelevant. The I-93 around Boston does not have 4-6 lanes each way because they have lots of trucks during rush hour.

The public outcry was to ban cars - literally. They blocked streets, and did what they needed to to block drivers and vehicles. It's long enough ago that maybe the abrasiveness and confrontational nature of it is forgotten now - lots of big changes start out that way, but if successful the success almost drives the way the history is remembered more postively.

See https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/amsterdam-chil...

It looks to me like it was 100% a "think of the children" moment that often gets ridiculed. I can see the same inflection point in my country around the same time, when street and road design shifted to car orientated and car priority - Amsterdam being one of the notable exceptions but with a well documented fight.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com