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Comment by antr | Hacker News Reader

At the expense of sounding like a complete a-hole, I suggest you travel and see how other families/people live with public transport as their only transportation option. Don't get me wrong, I think Uber/Hailo/others are a great idea. Mix that with AVs and it will be a true disruptive technology.

Enrique Peñalosa, former Mayor of Bogota said that "An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport", and imho he is completely spot on with the issue of transportation. The transportation problem in the US is a city/urban planning problem, and not one solved by building more roads and putting more cars on them.

I suggest you watch his TED presentation http://www.ted.com/talks/enrique_penalosa_why_buses_represen...

Another worth watching is that by Bill Ford, of the Ford Motor Company: https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_ford_a_future_beyond_traffic_...

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> I suggest you travel and see how other families/people live with public transport as their only transportation option.

I have actually.

And it works perfectly in huge cities, and it doesn't work in the smaller ones.

> The transportation problem in the US is city/urban planning, and not one solved by building more roads and putting more cars on them.

No, the transportation problem in the US is that it is very large, and the majority of the cities are medium/small and public transport simply doesn't work in those sized cities (just not enough demand for continuous service).

In Europe 'cities are medium/small' and public transport works. Ignoring how cities evolve, grow, develop, from a planning perspective is the US biggest problem, and the solution its biggest challenge. Bad city planning affects transportation, energy, health, efficiency, etc.

Europe is very different to SF. In Europe the term city planning is somewhat different. Most cities were built for horses and carts at best.

Berlin has a fantastic public transport system, but 70% of is less than 70 years old. Istanbul's public transport system is truly terrible, but it's a nearly 3,000 year old city that gets nearly a +/- 50 degree C temperature range over a year.

Paris has an ok metro, but in general public transport isn't that great compared to say, Berlin, London or Barcelona.

London has a ridiculously overdeveloped public transport system that will get you from a to b but it's massively oversubscribed and the roads are rammed most of the time. To be fair, London is generally oversubscribed and rammed most of the time.

Exactly, the US transport issue is primarily urban sprawl, a planning problem: http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/you-cant-set-shop-sid...

> urban sprawl, a planning problem

No, it's not a planning problem, it's a "people don't want to live there" problem.

In the US people are simply not interested in living in a high density low population city.

They want either high density, high population, or low density, low population.

They would love low density, high population, but those don't exist much, so urban sprawl is the next best thing.

Not all Americans want to live here http://www.fritzmuellerphoto.com/data/photos/545_1Muellerf_2...

But let's agree to disagree.

No, [some] Americans don't want other people to live there, but they most definitely do want to live there - that's why they keep making them.

(Obviously "Not all" - some like to live in big cities.)

I think this is one of those things that people seem to "want", but has really been dictated to them by forces outside their control and outside of their immediate impact.

- Do people really "want" to drive 10/15 minutes to pick up the milk they forgot last time they went to the store?

- Do people really "want" to spend huge amounts of money on a car, insurance, gas.

- Do people really "want" to spend huge amounts of time in traffic on their way to and from work every day?

I could go on, but I think the answer is generally "no" to all those questions. And that's leaving out all the deleterious health effects we know commuting and the suburban lifestyle can cause.

What people really want is safe places, good schools, short commutes, good shopping/food choices, outdoor spaces, etc. We've been sold a bill of goods since Levittown on the "american dream" that offers the solution to all the problems of cities by creating an entirely different (and I'd say overall significantly greater) set of problems. It's treating the symptoms instead of the disease.

I don't "want" any of those things... but I don't "want" to live in a crowded city even more. So it is a trade off.

- Do people really "want" to pay twice as much for half the living space?

- Do people really "want" to share walls on all sides and have a person above and below them?

- Do people really "want" to step out their door and have a major roadway packed with cars (or buses if we're ditching cars) right there?

I think the answer is generally "no" to all those questions, too.

When have you been in Istanbul last? They've been expanding the public transport system a lot in the last few years (new subways, metros, a train running the marmara sea). I was there just a few weeks ago and had no problem getting around.

To be fair it's been too long, about two years. I'm hoping to go back later this year though.

I disagree. Berlins transport system is nice, but it is far from perfect. Ever have been there in the winter, or try to get on a bus when you are the only one waiting on a bus station? Berlin is famous for having many problems with their transportation system, some result form bad planning and technical and financial debt, some are cultural (people are unfriendly).

The metro in Paris is way nicer to use - more reliable, cheaper, drives very often and has a far reach. Same goes for Vienna and Hamburg.

I even prefer smaller middle sized cities systems, in France and Germany, at least on the day when they are working - and if they are not completely stupid, like causing themselves to be always late by letting the bus driver control the bus ticket. But I disliked Berlin in general.

I think if I went to Germany having only been to Western Europe I'd have found people in Berlin unfriendly, but having lived in London, spent time in Budapest, Vienna, across Germany and Prague (the home of poor service) I can honestly say that yes people are unfriendly in Berlin, but less unfriendly than in some other parts of Germany and Eastern Europe.

It's not the size of the city per se. that's the problem in the US, but that very few people live and work actually in the centers of those cities. They're all dispersed out in the suburbs. Take an avg 50-80k population city in the US and draw a circle, centered in the middle of town, that encompasses say 60% of the cities population, now do the same with a European city of the same size. The circle for the European city will almost always be much smaller, meaning it's much easier to cover a significant proportion of the population with a reasonable public transportation network.

Actually the problem is that PT (there is even the word public in it) should be owned by the state and not by a company trying to make profit out of transportation.

> No, the transportation problem in the US is that it is very large, and the majority of the cities are medium/small and public transport simply doesn't work in those sized cities (just not enough demand for continuous service).

Well, it does not work in bigger cities as well except NYC, Chicago and to some extent Boston. Also, OP talks about SF, which for it's size and population can have a good public transport system.

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