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Comment by pmontra | Hacker News Reader

You sell less to people living in the cities but maybe you sell more to the operators of fleets of rental cars, even self driving if that really becomes mainstream. Not enough to match the decrease of sales.

You keep selling to people living in countryside, where you don't go anywhere without a car and where fleets of cars would have to be very large to be able to cover the territory in a meaningful way. There will be less and less people living there but it could affect the kind of cars that are manufactured. By the way, a self driving car would be very useful to elderly people living in their house far away from the nearest town.

In any case, less cars.

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People in cities decided they wanted less car-centric infrastructure.

People in cities demanded EVs, yet didn't show up to keep buying them.

People in cities apparently know best what car companies should build, yet they don't buy the cars.

Car companies build for suburbanites.

Suburbanites buy cars.

> People in cities demanded EVs, yet didn't show up to keep buying them.

That's only natural, because two kinds of people want EVs in cities (with some overlap). The first kind wants less noise, less pollution and fewer gas stations inside the city - they want other people to buy EVs, but don't want a car themselves. The second wants to own an EV because it's green and efficient.

> The second wants to own an EV because it's green and efficient

For suburbanites with off-street parking, overnight charging and few road-trips or long distance commutes, an EV is these days simply more convenient to operate, and has cheaper total cost of ownership.

For many people, the case for an EV is simply pragmatic - better convenience and cost.

> Car companies build for suburbanites.

And for $100, where are the majority of consumers often located

Little of what you said is based on fact, only grievance.

Very few cities in the us are actively anti car, and the ones that are, are dense enough that vehicle emissions are a local problem for them.

We’re not demanding evs for ourselves, we’re demanding gas cars stop gassing our homes. You want to drive a v8 dually? Great, go nuts! Keep it out of SF!

> only grievance

They're ripping up lanes of traffic in my city and replacing them with bike lanes that nobody uses.

The busy intersection next to my home used to take all of 15 seconds to turn at, now I get stuck for five to six minutes at a time because they now forbid right turns on red and stuck left turners in front of right turners.

Meanwhile, nobody is using the bike lanes.

The bike lanes are gender and age inequitable, favor low-commercial activity, and hamper productive economic activities. Not only that, but they're unusable in inclement and hot weather, which my city experiences frequently.

I drive a car because I'm buying things, traveling with family, and spending hundreds of dollars. People on bikes are not doing these things and are not contributing to the tax base as much as car drivers. A typical bike rider's coffee and book reading activities do not match a trip to Target and a local restaurant with family in terms of economic impact.

Now multiply that times every car rider who is being delayed and disrupted. All of this spending is now being delayed or even prevented.

We're going to feel really silly when we need more lanes for all the autonomous vehicles that will come online in the next 15 years. Autonomous vehicles - transportation, logistics, last mile delivery, ordering robotics services, etc. - are going to be a billion times more important than bikes.

Just go to a park or get a gym membership if you want to exercise. Or, better yet, take your bike with you on your car and drive to the countryside trails.

I think it takes time for demand to build. Certainly cities like London have seen huge growth in bike use. In my own home town(which is by no means flat) I'm seeing lots of cargo bikes, especially around tge school run.

To your point on bike owners not contributing to the economy. They probably have a similar income, and are paying similar taxes. They are still buying groceries. But where they choose to spend their money is different. It's all still economic activity though.

> People on bikes are not doing these things and are not contributing to the tax base as much as car drivers

If you live in car dependent suburbia, sure. And it sounds like you do.

And again, little of what you said is based on fact, only grievance.

As someone who enjoys riding their own bike, but uses their car for needs that cannot be met by bikes, I don't think this is just grievance. You can be sour about reality.

SF in particular can be a pain in the butt. There are scearios where public transit works, and many where it doesn't. Biking there from anywhere else is not viable. I need to drive into it in cases when transit doesn't work, and the city is hostile to me trying to spend money. Great for some of its own residents, not for all of them, definitely not for visitors.

... What do you want them to do, demolish buildings to widen the roads? Like, there are limits.

> Great for some of its own residents, not for all of them, definitely not for visitors.

Cities primarily exist for the convenience of the people who live and work in them, not for people visiting them.

No turn on red is a pedestrian safety issue. Many intersections don’t have adequate visibility, and right on red is very frequently dicey. So I’m glad that my city (Seattle) is banning it.

That’s different for small-town low-traffic areas.

On bike lanes, it takes up such a tiny amount of space relative to cars. The real problem is that they are not put in with much thought, not made very safe and are ultimately not very attractive.

But in cities with a higher level of decent bike lanes (Seattle), you’ll absolutely get many people using them. But it also depends on the culture. Reality is that Seattle is geographically constrained, and I’m sorry, there is no room for more car lanes essentially anywhere in the city without destroying property.

So finding smarter, more efficient, cost-effective ways to use that space (like bikes and public transit, which are vastly more space efficient) is a fantastic idea.

If you go all-in on car infra (eg everywhere in the USA, including places like Seattle), you still get congested roads. Cars just use space so poorly that a small increase in number of cars when the streets are full will have massive compounding effect on how long it takes anyone to get anywhere.

Besides, your city is already fully designed around the MOST EXPENSIVE form of local transit, by far. You know what might help stimulate the economy? Make it easy for someone to take a bike to a restaurant. No gas or car payment (or parking, in the city), and now you might have more money to treat yourself

> That’s different for small-town low-traffic areas.

The two towns close to my home (10k and 5k people each) have 3 and 2 traffic lights. It's a different world with different problems and different solutions than the ones of the cities with 1M people one hour away. It could be a different country with different legislation.

Right turn on red is an insane idea that any sane person would heavily disagree with. Only North Americans are crazy enough to believe that a red light should mean go.

>The bike lanes are gender and age inequitable,

How? Everyone can ride a bicycle, even kids and seniors, meanwhile cars are locked behind expensive driving lessons, licenses and exams. Not to mention car ownership is inherently expensive due to fuel, maintenance and insurance requirements. E-bikes give anyone a motor assist and can carry you uphill without any problems while still being good for your health.

>and hamper productive economic activities.

Most productive economic activities just require people to show up to work. Buying something is not a productive activity by definition and nobody is suggesting that deliveries should be done on bicycles.

>I drive a car because I'm buying things, traveling with family, and spending hundreds of dollars. People on bikes are not doing these things and are not contributing to the tax base as much as car drivers.

Ok now this is turning into a parody. Do you know what's even more expensive than driving a car? Building and maintaining a road for cars. European bike lanes cost almost nothing in maintenance. Sprawl in North America is actively bankrupting cities because drivers don't bring in enough tax revenue to maintain the roads they drive on. Driving to a property tax optimized big box store at the outskirts of the city doesn't bring in as much property tax as you think it does.

> Right turn on red is an insane idea that any sane person would heavily disagree with.

Obviously not since it is so widely adopted.

Right on red is an extremely useful optimization so you don't sit waiting for nothing when it is clearly safe to turn.

If you want to optimize traffic throughput you can replace numerous intersections with roundabouts. Then everyone can go when it's "clearly safe to go", not just those who are turning right. An optimization that sacrifices the lives of cyclists and pedestrians is not acceptable.

> If you want to optimize traffic throughput you can replace numerous intersections with roundabouts.

Roundabouts are awesome, love them.

Be pragmatic, the world is not going to replace every intersection with a roundabout, as good as they are. That's where right on red comes in as a local optimization.

In any city I saw there are people crossing the road with a green light in front of cars that would have turned right on red so those cars wouldn't go anywhere until they get a green. In areas with little pedestrians, maybe it's OK. Anyway, the general rule of precedence in my country is cars yield to pedestrians and I think it's the same in all of Europe.

Just get a bike, and stop moaning.

Here in Oslo, Norway they've also been ripping up roads to make bike lanes, make streets one-way to accommodate the bike lane and so on. And yeah, initially not a lot of bikers.

But it's been a few years, and in the meantime good e-bikes are affordable for most here now, so these days there's quite a lot of bike riders all over.

Of course when the snow and ice sets in there are fewer, though a fair few carry on with studded tires and good clothing.

It took some years but there's no denying there are significantly more people riding bikes to and from work, to and from kindergarten or similar.

Build it and they will come...

However I can see my 80 yo self driving a car (I know plenty of them that still drive) but I can't see my 80 yo self riding a bicycle in winter, especially on snow. I know some 80 yo cyclist but not many of them. So there must be some balance. In cities the balance often takes into account metro, buses and trains. In the countryside it's almost only cars.

Of course it's different in the countryside but we're talking about cities, that's where these changes are taking place, and most 80 year olds shouldn't be driving cars in cities or riding bicycles in the winter. They should have heavily subsidized or free public transport available.

Yeah my 80 year old mom uses the "pink busses"[1], basically a multi-passenger taxi where she books a trip in advance and they go from A to B, but also the other's trips. So takes a bit longer but it doesn't cost more than a regular bus.

[1]: https://ruter.no/planlegg-reise/aldersvennlig-transport

> A typical bike rider's coffee and book reading activities do not match a trip to Target and a local restaurant with family in terms of economic impact.

... Most people going into cities, whether on bikes or cars or trains or buses or the largely fictitious VTOL aircraft from the article, are doing so to _work_, not to buy stuff. "Buying stuff" has been shifting away from city centers for about fifty years, initially via retail parks, then the internet.

> “Suburbanites buy cars”

True for Long Island, NY. Can’t go to to the store 0.3 miles away without driving your cage. Kids take the bus to school in even the best weather, that is if their parents don’t drive them.

Increasingly us suburbanites don’t even do that. The grocery now comes to us.

> Can’t go to to the store 0.3 miles away without driving your cage.

Is this due to a lack of footpaths? Or just a cultural thing?

Well. Some of it's mental (can't imagine walking when you have a car) and some of it is what mom who has two kids (with or without the father) is going to want to choose to walk pushing a folding cart full of groceries when they can drive in a community designed for cars. Moms will take back personal time wherever they can.

Coming from a country where almost everybody rides a bike. I would say US is the worst place to ride a bike. Also the utilization is inherently low due the city layout and weather is bad in winter in most US cities. It would be much more efficient to use the space for bike lanes for better pubic transport.

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