Comment by zdragnar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zdragnar | Hacker News Reader

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A fairly basic economic principle is that demand is infinite. It's a derived concept from the fact that demand is driven by desire- both need and want. The less personal sacrifice required to get something, the more people will want it.

It's far from an axiomatic truth, but it's a good enough approximation to point out that "Business drivers will continue to drive the greed of people" is an absurd bogeyman here. If it wasn't, everyone would be living in shoebox apartments, would never travel outside their neighborhood in their mega city, and our diets would consist of the least possible energy intensive foods possible- probably a soylent style powder that is shelf stable and doesn't require a great deal of refrigeration or preserving.

We don't live like that because people don't really see how taking a 5 minute car ride round trip to the grocery store instead of a 40 minute bus ride round trip is worse for the environment, and we keep living in our individual houses because we don't like apartments, and so on and so forth. Properly insulating those buildings requires polymers for things like weather sheathing, plus insulation for electrical cabling, and so forth. All of these little inefficiencies and uses for polymers add up to the simple truth: we're not going to hit CO2 reduction goals on the basis of individual action, and we're not going to stop using plastics.

I lived in the Netherlands for a bit, where I used to do a bike ride to the grocery shop.

Now I live in a more car-centric place where the only practical way to do grocery shopping is by car (unless I am to walk back to my house looking like a pack mule). I am not brave enough to ride a bike on the road.

If I were to choose, I vastly prefer the bike (not even for environmental concerns, it was just more pleasant). But things just aren't built that way.

> unless I am to walk back to my house looking like a pack mule

Granny carts of various sizes and shapes are available. Super useful when one does not want to use a car.

You mentioned that you don't ride a bike, but for those who do, trailers are also available, as are cargo bikes.

A lot was lost when we started to design our neighborhoods around the assumption that everybody gets around by car.

It's generally easier to envision a small amount of changes at once. But for something like walkable or bike or public centric transportation, multiple things need to change before it makes sense.

Ie with a car, you go to grocery store once a week. You buy lots of things.

If you live close to a store in the city, you can just pick up something while coming home, or even when you're cooking you can just run to the store in 2 minutes to get something on-demand.

But you can't gradually go from one to the other so easily. You can't go with car to the local small store. There's nowhere to park etc. You can't go to the big box store in the middle of cooking because it takes an hour for the round trip.

So if you have person doing A, they see B as impractical "where would I park?". Or person B would say A is impractical because "I'd have to know cooking a week in advance". Both arguments are correct, you can't go from A to B or B to A by just changing one thing. You need a whole new big picture.

You can still do a mix sometimes, ie a person can do both, but not in the same situations.

They said they are within walking distance, so I suggested wheels to avoid "walking like a mule".

Walking distance covers a large range. There is a big difference from a place you are walking by anyway, and a place you can walk to but normally don't. I can walk to my local grocery store - it is only about half an hour: about as far as a normal person would walk to work. There is nothing else along that trip that I would go to regularly which means that grocery shopping by walking would cost me an extra hour of my life every trip - in turn meaning I'm going to buy as much as I can. Anybody with a family will be buying more than they can realistically get in a cart (assuming any hills or rough terrain)

A suburban grocery store is rarely much closer - even though there is typically houses behind them, there is a fence in between so you can't get there from those houses.

If the grocery store was on my way home from work that would be different: I can stop in to grab just enough for today's meal (and breakfast tomorrow). However on the way needs to be fairly strict. A suburban grocery store has the doors too far away from anyplace somebody would walk to be considered on the way - the additional to my trip is going to be annoying enough that I'm going to be getting more stuff when I do make that trip in turn meaning I won't use it.

The above assumes a pure walking trip. I used to take the bus to work. The bus stopped at a transfer point in front of a grocery store, the bus only ran every half an hour so I never got off for my shopping: it didn't work for a 5 minutes get what I need for today trip as the bus would be gone (5 minutes assumes I know exactly where the one thing I need is and that the line to checkout isn't long). I'd either have to waste 20 minutes, or I'd get so much stuff it can't fit on the bus - also there is risk of a long line making me miss the next bus.

What can I say, I have lived my whole life without a car, and it's just not a big deal. My two nearest supermarkets are temporarily closed, so for the past few months I've had to walk 25 minutes each way to the supermarket. A granny cart allows me to do the family grocery shopping with just three trips a week.

Since we all need some exercise anyway, the days I go grocery shopping are days I don't need to explicitly choose to do some light cardio, because it's taken care of by the grocery shopping and any other errands.

But if this sounds too simple and we want to complicate things, then sure, we can complicate things and imagine scenarios in which it's impossible to do it. I am just saying for many people around the world, grocery shopping is something we do with a granny cart, and we don't need to be "loaded like mules".

You're right, I was kind of inspired by the comments and my comment doesn't fit completely.

It's just interesting to think how we end up in these situations and then society is what it is and individuals have limited power to change it on their own. (That said of course individuals also do have power and sometimes blaming society is just an excuse).

> taking a 5 minute car ride round trip to the grocery store instead of a 40 minute bus ride round trip is worse for the environment,

1.) I walk to a shop cause that is the easiest way to get there.

2.) If the difference bwtween a car and bus trip is 5 vs 40 min, the bus system majorely sux.

Basically, you described situation where people settled at bad uncomfortable setup and consider it "good enough" for tradition reasons.

If it's a sparse area then bus service is either going to suck or cost a lot of money.

For most suburbs there is enough density that good bus service such that you would get rid of a car and that would save money after paying for the bus service. However to get there means spending a large pile of money for a few years while people who have cars slowly figure out they don't need them all anymore.

Most people in the suburbs live in some form of family situation where the household has more than one car. I'm asking them to get rid of one of those cars to pay for the bus service, not all of them which stops most of their objection since very few of them do two different trips at once where they would both need a car (the whole family is going to the farm for Christmas in one car).

> I'm asking them to get rid of one of those cars

As said many posts above, nobody is going to voluntarily reduce their standard of living. You will have to force them. How you do that will be one of the biggest political conversations of this century and not at all easy or simple.

I strongly disagree.

First of all I'm saying this will not reduce anyone's standard of living. Give them a great transit system and they will use it until they realize the cars are mostly sitting around. Further I gave them an out: you keep one car (truck?) for the times when they are better.

Now I will agree that some people will not give up their cars. However I think the majority will if you just give them a better option, and this is the first win that we need to chase in most of the US. More importantly you have to do things this way. Start with forcing people and they will discover you reduced their standard of living and they respond by voting you out and undoing everything making transit worse. Start with making the system better and you can then win when people don't care since it mostly doesn't affect their life anyway.

Manhattan is one of the rare exceptions in the US where transit is good enough that you can apply a stick to the last hold outs driving when they could take transit - enough people already take transit that they won't care what you do to cars, and many of the remaining drivers really need a car (they are delivering something that can't go on transit) and they find paying for lower congestion makes their life better. Manhattan has a lot they need to do to make transit better there too, but at least they are good enough.

Of course I understand this, but I live in a 10 million population city built centuries/millenia before the motor car and I ride a bicycle pretty much everywhere.

Public transport requires density to be cost effective. You can't have a "great transit system" everywhere in a large country. Not here in small and dense England, and not in Germany or Japan either from what I've seen.

Most people - even in the US live in enough density to have a great transit system. Suburbs still have plenty of people living in them for the most part. It is expensive, but there are enough people to make it possible at less cost than a second car per family.

The vast majority of land in almost all countries is rural where there isn't enough density. However most people do not live in those areas.

> It is expensive, but there are enough people to make it possible at less cost than a second car per family.

The whole point of this thread since my comment has been "will people do it" not "is it possible". We've had decades of notice and yet the very Democratic suburbs near me still have done nothing but put in a handful of bike paths and patted themselves on the back.

Of course it is possible to do things differently, but very many choose not to do so. This is all in justification of my original point- that "corporate greed" in the parent post is a bogeymen when we can see the same decision process is made by many kinds of people.

Democrats in the suburbs mostly see transit as for other people or the poor. Even in the big cities where transit is useful they see transit as a way to shovel money to their political friends and not a useful thing in itself. Thus their decisions that leave transit stuck.

The Republicans are at least honest about not caring about transit...

Yes, this is the reality that many people live in and have chosen not to change, despite two decades of being told that CO2 emissions represent an existential crisis. All but one of the suburbs near me are very pro-Democratic party, and they put in a few bike lanes while patting themselves on the back about a job well done.

This isn't corporate greed, this is people not believing their individual actions contribute anything meaningful to the larger issue- my original point.

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