9 ms·

> entitlement to drive and park cars everywhere Most places in the US at least are not very livable without a car. You majorly hurt commerce and people's quali

> entitlement to drive and park cars everywhere Most places in the US at least are not very livable without a car. You majorly hurt commerce and people's quality of life by removing vehicles without completely changing the layout of cities to make them work with other options. Not that we shouldn't pursue those sorts of changes but that thinking of it as "entitlement" is shallow and not constructive. The entire system was engineered around the car. To remove the car you have to reengineer the system.

subpixel 9y ago
> Most places in the US at least are not very livable without a car. Let me rephrase that for you: In most place in the US public transport is woefully under-funded, under-utilized, and overly stigmatized (as a thing only poor 'others' would use). That is changing, slowly, as places that basically gave up on public transport are discovering that less and less people in their cities want to own a car.
- RightMillennial 9y ago
  A better phrasing would be that in most places in the U.S. public transport simply does not exist. Not everyone lives in the heart of the city where it may be an option.
- Lionsion 9y ago
  US cities also tend to be more spread out, which also reduces the appeal of public transit. Contrast this to a Chinese city of the same size, which due to the fact that literally everyone lives in small apartments, is much more compact and easier to serve via public transport.
  - CalRobert 9y ago
    "US cities also tend to be more spread out, which also reduces the appeal of public transit." Also could be US cities have no transit, requiring space-intensive auto infrastructure, so they're more spread out.
    - smallnamespace 9y ago
      History is path-dependent. At some point in our nation's history (namely right after WW2), it was decided that cars, suburbia, and the Interstate highway system was the way forward, and not dense, closely packed cities + public transport + more railways. Note that we might not think about this now, but cities before WW2 were often disease-ridden, filthy places. The antibiotic revolution did not really come into full swing until after the war. There were reasons people made those choices back then, and some of them we have forgotten since the problems they faced were mitigated. We're now revisiting whether that choice has outlived its usefulness, but if something took 50 years to build, you can bet replacing it will take just as long. China never had the luxury of making that choice during its development; it was either public transit or nothing.
      - CalRobert 9y ago
        We agree on all those points. All I was saying is that people say "cities are spread out so transit won't work" when often the very _reason_ cities are spread out is that they lacked transit, so huge amounts of land were given over to auto infrastructure. It's worth considering that it's self-reinforcing and the causality isn't one-way. Look at a big box store, for instance - most of the land is parking, not the store itself. A freeway interchange can take as much land as en entire neighborhood. Meanwhile you can have tens of thousands of people in a city centre all within walking distance of one another. But you can't do that if you pave over most of the land. Also, it's illegal in most of the US to build infrastructure that isn't suited to an auto-first lifestyle, mostly through parking minimums but also Level-of-service considerations that force large, wide streets. In California, SB827 just died a sad death. It would have allowed buildings up to 5 stories near high-frequency transit stops. Now those people who would have lived in those buildings will have to live farther from transit, so they'll drive. They'll need parking too, so we'll need to use land that would have gone to homes/businesses/etc for their parking. Also gas stations, more road capacity, etc. The homes they end up living in will be harder to reasonably serve with transit, because of course they're farther apart. Yet old neighborhoods near cities built _before_ those rules are often very expensive, suggesting that more people would like to live in them than are able to. The first thing that comes to mind is the nicer areas of Berkeley, or South Park, San Diego, for instance. It's funny you note railways though because they were largely the original enablers of sprawl (though I have no problem with railway-served suburbs! the problem is largely that we got rid of the rail service).
- pdonis 9y ago
  > In most place in the US public transport is woefully under-funded, under-utilized, and overly stigmatized You misspelled "in most places in the US public transport cannot meet people's needs". Yes, it can in inner cities, but most of the US is not inner cities.
  - chillwaves 9y ago
    > According to new numbers just released from the U.S. Census Bureau, 80.7 percent of the U.S. population lived in urban areas as of the 2010 Census https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/03/us-urban-population-what-does-urban-really-mean/1589/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/03/us-urban-population-w... I assume that number has only gone up since 2010.
    - closeparen 9y ago
      The Census Bureau’s “urban” is “not rural.” Most people live in metro areas, but in suburban and exurban parts of those metro areas without the density to make public transit good enough to rely on.
    - pdonis 9y ago
      > 80.7 percent of the U.S. population lived in urban areas as of the 2010 Census "Urban areas" includes where I live, which is not dense enough for public transportation to work well. Reading the article you cited, it looks like about half of the population labeled "urban" by the Census Bureau lives in areas that are like mine (or even less dense).
      - chillwaves 9y ago
        > which is not dense enough for public transportation to work well You lose me here. I live in a major metro area and public transportation works fine, even out into the suburbs where it is not as dense, but the public transit spokes out to the major hubs and people drive to those transit stations and park for the day. Public transportation works for the vast majority of the country.
  - 9y ago
hrktb 9y ago
you don’t have to remove the car. But to change things, the first step would be to reframe the car centered infra as legacy, an historic situation that you want to work on. I interpret GP’s “entitlement” bit as the thinking that cars should be at the center of cities. Good or bad, I think the majority of people are still currently in that mentality.
floatrock 9y ago
> You majorly hurt commerce and people's quality of life by removing vehicles without completely changing the layout of cities to make them work with other options. In related news, SB-827, Weiner's bill to increase housing density near public transportation, died in committee today: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/17/major-california-housing-bill-dies-in-first-committee-hearing/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/17/major-california-hous...
burlesona 9y ago
Cities got that way by fiat, not by choice, and the government engineered the system with no small amount of help from the industrial lobbies that would be best served by having a car-dependent population. I would love for us to re-engineer the system. The first step is removing the entitlement.
BrainInAJar 9y ago
> Most places in the US at least are not very livable without a car absent subsidies, this would not be the case

subpixel 9y ago

> Most places in the US at least are not very livable without a car. Let me rephrase that for you: In most place in the US public transport is woefully under-funded, under-utilized, and overly stigmatized (as a thing only poor 'others' would use). That is changing, slowly, as places that basically gave up on public transport are discovering that less and less people in their cities want to own a car.

RightMillennial 9y ago
A better phrasing would be that in most places in the U.S. public transport simply does not exist. Not everyone lives in the heart of the city where it may be an option.
Lionsion 9y ago
US cities also tend to be more spread out, which also reduces the appeal of public transit. Contrast this to a Chinese city of the same size, which due to the fact that literally everyone lives in small apartments, is much more compact and easier to serve via public transport.
- CalRobert 9y ago
  "US cities also tend to be more spread out, which also reduces the appeal of public transit." Also could be US cities have no transit, requiring space-intensive auto infrastructure, so they're more spread out.
  - smallnamespace 9y ago
    History is path-dependent. At some point in our nation's history (namely right after WW2), it was decided that cars, suburbia, and the Interstate highway system was the way forward, and not dense, closely packed cities + public transport + more railways. Note that we might not think about this now, but cities before WW2 were often disease-ridden, filthy places. The antibiotic revolution did not really come into full swing until after the war. There were reasons people made those choices back then, and some of them we have forgotten since the problems they faced were mitigated. We're now revisiting whether that choice has outlived its usefulness, but if something took 50 years to build, you can bet replacing it will take just as long. China never had the luxury of making that choice during its development; it was either public transit or nothing.
    - CalRobert 9y ago
      We agree on all those points. All I was saying is that people say "cities are spread out so transit won't work" when often the very _reason_ cities are spread out is that they lacked transit, so huge amounts of land were given over to auto infrastructure. It's worth considering that it's self-reinforcing and the causality isn't one-way. Look at a big box store, for instance - most of the land is parking, not the store itself. A freeway interchange can take as much land as en entire neighborhood. Meanwhile you can have tens of thousands of people in a city centre all within walking distance of one another. But you can't do that if you pave over most of the land. Also, it's illegal in most of the US to build infrastructure that isn't suited to an auto-first lifestyle, mostly through parking minimums but also Level-of-service considerations that force large, wide streets. In California, SB827 just died a sad death. It would have allowed buildings up to 5 stories near high-frequency transit stops. Now those people who would have lived in those buildings will have to live farther from transit, so they'll drive. They'll need parking too, so we'll need to use land that would have gone to homes/businesses/etc for their parking. Also gas stations, more road capacity, etc. The homes they end up living in will be harder to reasonably serve with transit, because of course they're farther apart. Yet old neighborhoods near cities built _before_ those rules are often very expensive, suggesting that more people would like to live in them than are able to. The first thing that comes to mind is the nicer areas of Berkeley, or South Park, San Diego, for instance. It's funny you note railways though because they were largely the original enablers of sprawl (though I have no problem with railway-served suburbs! the problem is largely that we got rid of the rail service).
pdonis 9y ago
> In most place in the US public transport is woefully under-funded, under-utilized, and overly stigmatized You misspelled "in most places in the US public transport cannot meet people's needs". Yes, it can in inner cities, but most of the US is not inner cities.
- chillwaves 9y ago
  > According to new numbers just released from the U.S. Census Bureau, 80.7 percent of the U.S. population lived in urban areas as of the 2010 Census https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/03/us-urban-population-what-does-urban-really-mean/1589/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/03/us-urban-population-w... I assume that number has only gone up since 2010.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    The Census Bureau’s “urban” is “not rural.” Most people live in metro areas, but in suburban and exurban parts of those metro areas without the density to make public transit good enough to rely on.
  - pdonis 9y ago
    > 80.7 percent of the U.S. population lived in urban areas as of the 2010 Census "Urban areas" includes where I live, which is not dense enough for public transportation to work well. Reading the article you cited, it looks like about half of the population labeled "urban" by the Census Bureau lives in areas that are like mine (or even less dense).
    - chillwaves 9y ago
      > which is not dense enough for public transportation to work well You lose me here. I live in a major metro area and public transportation works fine, even out into the suburbs where it is not as dense, but the public transit spokes out to the major hubs and people drive to those transit stations and park for the day. Public transportation works for the vast majority of the country.
- 9y ago

hrktb 9y ago

you don’t have to remove the car. But to change things, the first step would be to reframe the car centered infra as legacy, an historic situation that you want to work on. I interpret GP’s “entitlement” bit as the thinking that cars should be at the center of cities. Good or bad, I think the majority of people are still currently in that mentality.

floatrock 9y ago

> You majorly hurt commerce and people's quality of life by removing vehicles without completely changing the layout of cities to make them work with other options. In related news, SB-827, Weiner's bill to increase housing density near public transportation, died in committee today: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/17/major-california-housing-bill-dies-in-first-committee-hearing/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/17/major-california-hous...

burlesona 9y ago

Cities got that way by fiat, not by choice, and the government engineered the system with no small amount of help from the industrial lobbies that would be best served by having a car-dependent population. I would love for us to re-engineer the system. The first step is removing the entitlement.

BrainInAJar 9y ago

> Most places in the US at least are not very livable without a car absent subsidies, this would not be the case