Hacker News Reader

Comment by cyberax | Hacker News Reader

Why would you need buses?

Mass transit is a capacity multiplier. If 35 people are headed in the same direction compare that with the infrastructure needed to handle 35 cars. Road capacity, parking capacity, car dealerships, gas stations, repair shops, insurance, car loans.

Believe it or not, in some cities that have near grid-lock rush-hour traffic - there's between 50-100%+ as many people traveling by bus as by car.

If all of those people switch to cars, you end up with it taking an hour to travel 1 mile by car.

It's almost as if they have busses for a reason.

First, these cities should be fixed by removing the traffic magnets. It's far past the point where we used the old obsolete ideology of trying to supply as much traffic capacity as possible.

But anyway, your statement is actually not true anywhere in the US except NYC. Even in Chicago, removing ALL the local transit and switching to 6-seater minivans will eliminate all the traffic issues.

6-seater self-driving municipal minivans would be fantastic, too. (I would still call that a "bus", but I don't care what we call it.)

Car traffic magnets like highways inside urban cores? Or people traffic magnets like office buildings, colleges, sports stadiums, performing arts venues, shopping malls?

Office buildings. Everything else is just noise.

Large stadium arenas are a special case, but they don't create sustained traffic, and their usage periods typically do not overlap with the regular rush hour.

> First, these cities should be fixed by removing the traffic magnets.

If you remove the jobs and housing, traffic does get a lot better. But it's not much of a city without jobs and housing.

Indeed. And people live better lives, with better job accessibility and variety. Once you remove dense office cores.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com