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I don't even own a car in Seattle. It's clearly not a necessity as I, my fiancé, and several of our friends are all careless and do just fine. If anything its

• kbenson 10y ago
  > It's clearly not a necessity as I, my fiancé, and several of our friends are all careless and do just fine. Please consider people living in other circumstances and with other responsibilities before making blanket statements for all based on the experience of yourself and your close social group. It's entirely possibly that you and your group do not encompass all the situations that may be found. For example, having a child makes not having a car extremely problematic. Being 30-60 minutes late to pick up you child is often unacceptable, and in many circumstances (such as childcare) may net you quite large fees if it happens often.
  • revelation 10y ago
    Yes, clearly it's a problem to not have a car when living a lifestyle designed entirely around a car. We get that, we can skip the 100 identical posts that have appeared and are yet to appear. The point is: what are you going to do about it? Because clearly city populations are growing and people are exceedingly unhappy with vastly subsidizing a shrinking minority that expects to drive door-to-door, or better yet, lives in a cheap suburb but expects city dwellers to sacrifice money and space for their daily commute. I think you will find in places that cater much less to cars people are very understanding if you miss a bus. Though likely they won't notice, because there are simply more buses and transit options around, so your delay won't be an hour. It seems getting rid of free parking, as suggested by the OP, is a good start, no?
    • closeparen 10y ago
      I expect city dwellers to recognize that their aesthetic distaste for car infrastructure doesn't come close to the very real impact on someone's life of tripling all their travel times. As long as we're humoring city dwellers being tired of things, we will never have housing construction (they've got ownership or rent control already, and they're tired of tall buildings). As long as we're humoring what they want to pay for, we'll never have decent transit (they can walk or bike, why should they pay taxes for your bus?). There are reasonable positions to be in which don't require parking downtown. Cheap housing in the center. Cheap housing near train stations and a quick ride in. Abundant parking at train stations and a quick ride in. Decouple cities from employment so that they really are luxuries and not crucial access to opportunity. Keep job growth in balance with walkable housing growth and don't allow development of suburbs. Any one of those is a great thing to strive for. Eliminating parking by itself just makes the city less livable.
      • drdeadringer 10y ago
        > As long as we're humoring what they want to pay for, we'll never have decent transit (they can walk or bike, why should they pay taxes for your bus?). Honest question: is there really "paying for transit" hate? The only "transit hate" I've seen ranges around various forms of "it sucks" e.g. "never a bus when I need one" punctuated by "5 of the same bus at the same time" and "always late". I'm happy to pay for transit, just as I am up for sidewalks and bike lanes. Also: how does one "decouple cities from employment"? And how does a surge of oasis-style job centers divorce an employee from needing a car to get there?
        • closeparen 10y ago
          A basic car is practically free compared to basic housing. It's not necessary to divorce employees from needing cars, any more than it's necessary to divorce them from needing housing. It is necessary to divorce employees from trying to drive (mostly) the same routes at the same times, because there is no solution to car transportation at scale without traffic jams. The "solutions" (congestion pricing, less parking, etc) are to reduce the scale. It is necessary to divorce employees from competing with each other for such tiny slices of the city where the commute is reasonable, because paying an extra $2000/mo just for land value is such a soul-crushing waste of effort and resources. It is necessary to aggressively migrate the fleet of cars to electrics. Rush hour traffic in small town or city is still going 60mph, and living "downtown" isn't nearly so expensive because there's less competition, and little drastically wealthier competition. (Good look competing with tech workers for nicely located apartments in SF, or bankers for nicely located apartments in Manhattan, if you aren't one). See: SF opposition to tech shuttles, Muni expansion, Caltrain extension. I guess those aren't really about cost, but there's a common thread of "I don't like the noise" and "I don't like the kind of people that transportation brings in to my quiet neighborhood" and "we shouldn't be making it more attractive for gentrifiers to live here."
          • drdeadringer 10y ago
            > "I don't like the kind of people that transportation brings in to my quiet neighborhood" I see this on NextDoor whenever VTA LiteRail improvements are discussed. Possibility of a Los Gatos [or Netflix] stop? "Criminal Homeless will invade our city". Maybe, but I won't see you complaining when you go to a 49rs game in person at the stadium and take VTA so you don't get stuck in car traffic. > It is necessary to divorce employees from trying to drive (mostly) the same routes at the same times How is this possible without massive and awesome public transit? Rush hour traffic exists because "every employer" wants "every employee" at their desk at 6-9am.
    • kbenson 10y ago
      My comment was about making proclamations about what is easy or not for the majority based on the experiences of a minority. I'm not making any claims that cars are a requirement, just that when deciding policy that affects many people in the area, considering all those people and finding solutions for problems you might create for those people should be important. I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make from that. > I think you will find in places that cater much less to cars people are very understanding if you miss a bus. I think you'll find daycares, which are businesses which employ people that they pay, are less inclined to keep one or two people on staff and extra thirty minutes for you because you're running late than you think they are. Most daycares I know of have it clearly outlined in the terms and conditions you sign, if you are more than 15 minutes or so late, they'll charge you anywhere from $10-$20.
      • jacobolus 10y ago
        A car-centric society is “good” for 20–60 year-old non-disabled people who can afford to pay for them, very young children who need to be carried around, or anyone who can afford to hire someone to drive for them, in a place with low to medium population density (e.g. rural towns, suburbs). They’re especially convenient for people who need to carry around large amounts of gear, or go to isolated places. They’re terrible for school-age children, the disabled, the drunk, the elderly, the poor; terrible for commuting solo to-and-from work in rush-hour traffic (causes huge anxiety for commuters vs. other types of commute); and terrible anywhere with high enough density that air pollution and traffic get concentrated. Additionally they are a hugely inefficient use of a society’s capital and energy/carbon budget vs. other modes of transportation, tend to lead to municipal planning which is hugely inefficient and environmentally destructive, and crowd out other modes of transportation leading to horribly slow and indirect bus routes, etc. Finally, they are tremendously dangerous, one of the leading causes of death among young healthy people.
        • dsfyu404ed 10y ago
          >They’re terrible for ...the elderly On what grounds?
    • Spooky23 10y ago
      Citation? Where are the urban populations growing? In reality, you have a meager recovery of urban populations that have been in a tailspin since 1960. Capital is cheaper than ever, and the bargains to be had in the urban core are bringing in the cool kids and pushing out the poor folk. That growth is almost entirely at the expense of people less able and less vocal. As a weirdo who has lived in the city since before it was cool, I'll always bet against the cool kids colonizing the cities. Once they have kids who have to go to school, they leave.
  • deleted 10y ago
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  • curun1r 10y ago
    That being unacceptable is based on conditions where owning a car is subsidized by free parking. Remove those subsidies and there would now be a market for more flexible childcare. Your argument amounts to a tautology. A car is necessary under current driving conditions is not the same thing as a car being necessary under any driving conditions. There are many places around the world where most people don't own cars. They still manage to figure out how to raise children, often while being substantially poorer than we are in the states. I'm confident that if we create the right environment that discourages car ownership, we'll figure it out here too.
    • kbenson 10y ago
      > Your argument amounts to a tautology. Only when you make up some argument for me... > A car is necessary under current driving conditions is not the same thing as a car being necessary under any driving conditions. That wasn't my argument at all. I was simple stating that when making an argument using personal experience as the basis for what is and isn't "necessary" is likely to leave out a lot of people with valid concerns. My example wasn't to push an agenda for or against cards, but to show how some people may come to an entirely different conclusion about what is and isn't necessary, currently.
    • lovemenot 10y ago
      Quite so. My wife and I have raised three children into their teens without ever having owned a car. This was not problematic, precisely because we live in Tokyo, a city mentioned in the article as having enlightened policies on parking and public transport.
      • candiodari 10y ago
        So everyone can do this ? What is your average expenses per month, you know, basic stuff. Apartment (rent/mortgage), transport, non-restaurant food, etc. And how does that compare to average income around you ? This is the argument everyone in SF makes. "Just move into the city. Use an (electrical) bike. Yes there's the homeless but you learn to steer around them quickly". And then you look at the rent, and the average income. Needless to say, this is not a reasonable suggestion.
  • tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    Yes, because clearly having children was impossible until we developed the motor car.
• dba7dba 10y ago
  I gather you don't have kids then? With young kids in family you will almost certainly need cars.
  • nsxwolf 10y ago
    We need to convince people to stop having kids, too. Then we can have our public transportation utopia.
    • 35bge57dtjku 10y ago
      We need to convince people to stop wanting to go anywhere, then we can save on the costs of that, too.
  • yellow_postit 10y ago
    People living with children in London tend to do just fine as long as we are trading anectdotes.