19 ms·

This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing, but cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward. Cities get bigger

• TomMarius 8y ago
  On top of other issues, most of Europe also enjoys a 4-season year - meaning that a bike or scooter is safely and comfortably usable around half of a year, definitely not more.
  • pjc50 8y ago
    That's very subjective, quite a lot of people do that year round in a lot of European cities. Certainly it's viable in southern Europe where it rarely snows.
    • Semaphor 8y ago
      Even here in Germany many people ride their bikes all year around.
      • abrowne 8y ago
        Even here in Minneapolis many people ride their bikes all year round, with fewer riding when it is extremely cold or snowy, but coming back out when it warms up just a little.
        • mesofile 8y ago
          What’s interesting to me about Minneapolis and other northern cities where there are a lot of cyclists is that they very often have far more people riding to commute or do other practical tasks than any number of other cities with much milder climates. In the American south, where you never see snow, commuter cyclists are practically nonexistent. Obviously there is a climate challenge of a different sort, but not insurmountable ones and not all year round. Citation needed, I know. There’s a relevant article about this phenomenon out there somewhere, if I can find it I’ll post a link.
          • TomMarius 8y ago
            Heat is way worse than cold. Many people can't do harder physical activities once it's around 30 degrees Celsius and/or humid because they would pass out (me included, when it's over 28, I just drive everywhere because I can't stand it outside). The idea that someone in their full health would force me to bike onto the steep hill where I live (and 18 km away from my workplace) is extremely unsettling to me. Public transport is not an option - it takes 50 minutes that way (while just 12 min by car) and the buses and trams are constantly overcrowded, late (or don't arrive at all) - and you definitely can't transport a server (or groceries for a 5-member family) that way.
    • isostatic 8y ago
      Riding on the rare occasions there's snow on the ground in London is great. Assuming you can avoid snow in your chain (which causes it to skip the sprockets), the roads are empty - no cars, no busses, it's lovely.
  • thecopy 8y ago
    When i lived in Uppsala, Sweden i biked all year around.
    • TomMarius 8y ago
      Well, I do as well, but my mother definitely wouldn't and I wouldn't even let her. It's very dangerous even in a car.
      • bosie 8y ago
        https://www.schwalbe.com/en-GB/spike-reader/marathon-winter.html https://www.schwalbe.com/en-GB/spike-reader/marathon-winter.... That's what me and my mother are using. No issue whatsoever. The only problem are cars who can't handle the snow/ice as well as you can on a bicycle.
  • exDM69 8y ago
    I live in an European city 60 degrees northern latitude, and the bicycle season is more like 9 months out of the year. That can be extended to 10-11 months with a bit of clothing/gear and bicycling the whole year is not impossible either (but most people who do have a separate winter bike). I used to do 15+15 km bike ride to work and back almost every day for 9 months out of the year. Sadly I can't do that any more as I moved farther away from work. There might be days of bad weather where other means of transportation is more convenient, but that's the case all year around. For motorcycles/scooters the season is shorter because you can't get (affordable) insurance.
    • _Codemonkeyism 8y ago
      My wife is 11.5 months cycling in Berlin ;-)
  • ajuc 8y ago
    Biking in autumn is perfectly comfortable. You are just wearing more clothes (which you would wear anyway if you're outside). It's not like people never leave their houses in USA, right? Biking in the winter is fine too, as long as there's no snow (and the snow is usually only 1-2 months, depending on the location). And some people do drive in the winter too (but that is harder and most don't).
    • doikor 8y ago
      Actually biking in snow is fine too as long as there isn’t too much of it. The real problems are around the melting point when everything melts a little bit during the day and three freezes over the night and thus you have to bike on ice. This can be fixed by studded tires but most don’t bother. Main issue for me for biking in the winter is the cold. Not really a problem anymore as I moved to Helsinki where it rarely is cold enough to be a problem.
    • lloeki 8y ago
      > It's not like people never leave their houses Arguably many people seem to consider their car as a self-propelled living room, fully equipped with sofa and entertainment system.
  • gerardnll 8y ago
    Hahaha you’re definitely wrong. 3/4 if not all year, bike and sure, motorcycle is factible. (Spain and I’m sure the half of Europe)
    • TomMarius 8y ago
      I'm definitely not wrong, I'm just living in the other half of Europe. And that's my point - there is the other half, you can't do blanket statements like "cars should be banned". Cars need an update, but motorized 4-wheel individual transport has its place, maybe not in your city, but definitely in mine.
  • Angostura 8y ago
    I have a 30 minute cycle to work in London suburbs and cycled every day last year. There were about 4 days when it was unpleasantly cold.
  • Mediterraneo10 8y ago
    Cities in the Nordic countries have bike paths that are kept clear of snow and are used for commuting year-round. People know that there is a way to dress to be comfortable cycling even when winter comes.
  • eliseumds 8y ago
    I used to bike every month of the year in Berlin.
  • Freak_NL 8y ago
    Please send a note to the Dutch (and the Germans, the Danish, the French, the Belgians, …) to tell them to stop riding their bicycles in the midst of winter. In the past five years there was one day when I couldn't cycle to work due to black ice covering most of the roads, and even that resolved itself in the afternoon. Snow just means you need a bit more dexterity than usual. As for comfort; proper clothing means you are pretty much comfortable most of the time.
    • lloeki 8y ago
      > black ice ... snow The ultimate irony of the point attempted to be made is that people don't drive when ice or snow cover on the road (or suck at it, take undue risks, fail to, and ram into curbs/cars/people).
      • rimliu 8y ago
        What? People drive on the ice and snow all the time, what are you talking about? Not all countries have mild climate, you know.
        • CydeWeys 8y ago
          Many people don't though (look at how attendance rates plummet at schools and businesses on heavy snow days), and of those who do drive anyway, the accident rate is highly elevated.
          • 8xde0wcNwpslOw 8y ago
            I cannot relate to what you write at all. In all my years in school, I did not witness a single day of attendance drop due to weather (the only weather-related exception was for the early years of elementary school, when you could choose not to go outside during breaks if the temperature was low enough, but that was rarely the case here near the coast). What's more, in bad weather people (who have the option to choose between public transportation and their own vehicles) tend to choose cars more often because public transit has a habit of becoming increasingly unreliable, especially due to winter conditions, even though such conditions can be reasonably expected for 6 months a year.
  • elvecinodeabajo 8y ago
    Here's a fact: Pontevedra and the area surrounding is famous in Spain for really rainy winters and springs. Pontevedra city is facing directly to the sea.
  • 8xde0wcNwpslOw 8y ago
    Around here (this site I mean), the majority opinion doesn't find any problem at all with sleet and snow and cycling. The odd thing about this is how the biking paths around here (a city 60N) still remain relatively empty for a long time in the winter. It almost confuses me, but not really :-)
    • TomMarius 8y ago
      > Around here (this site I mean), the majority opinion doesn't find any problem at all with sleet and snow and cycling. I know. I expected to get this kind of responses. It shows how little empathy this site has for other (older, overworked, with 3 kids, pregnant, ...) people that are just a little different than they are.
      • deadbunny 8y ago
        Yet those people in other countries manage fine.
        • TomMarius 8y ago
          The people that don't just aren't typical HN users. There is a very limited subset of people biking during the other half of the year and that's what I'm talking about - the world isn't only composed of young healthy people that don't carry anything and/or anyone and don't drive long distances and don't live in a hilly region and don't have to wear suit/dress to work (or have showers at work). Saying "countries" is funny. It's varying wildly within a country, even a small one. E.g. my home city of Hradec Králové is built on a completely flat area with mild weather, so of course everyone bikes almost the whole year, but Prague is built on a series of steep hills and enjoys rougher weather, so while you see people biking here, most people don't.
  • hesk 8y ago
    Unless there's ice on the road, I ride my bike year-round in Berlin.
    • ginko 8y ago
      If there's ice on the road people in Norway just switch to studded tires.
      • maaaats 8y ago
        Yeah, I did that last winter here in Oslo. Goes a bit slower than slicks during summer, but definitely doable.
  • dathinab 8y ago
    That really depends on the level of comfort you want to have when riding a bike. A lot of people do still use a bike in winter (through I can't recommend it), through even if you don't do so, using it for 5/8 of a year is quite doable.
    • Fricken 8y ago
      I ride all year round in edmonton, I don't understand what the superstitions are against riding in winter. It's like walking, just a bit windier and you can't put your hands in your pockets. I'll take -20c over rain any day. The only thing I don't like doing in cold weather is being still. So long as I'm moving I'm fine.
      • dm33tri 8y ago
        You can't ride on ice and snow unless you have fancy bike and tires. You will sweat unless you only drive plane roads. Wind and snow make it much harder to ride. Most people will just give up on riding in winter the first time they try it.
        • Fricken 8y ago
          I've commuting year round for close to two decades, you don't need a fancy bike. You don't need fancy tires. For 90% of my winter commuting I'm on wet or dry pavement, in the coldest major city in North America. Four years ago the city began promoting winter commuting, along with a commitment to keep the bike paths clear, and the number of winter bicycle commuters has doubled annually. Enough of them are overweight middle aged ladies, the last type of person you'd suspect to be a hardcore winter commuter, but that's because it isn't actually hardcore. The barriers are psychological, there's a very easy learning curve to overcome, and it comes quite naturally if you just maintain a cycling through the fall. It's also a cure for seasonal affective disorder/cabin fever. I ride a fixed gear In winter, with the same tires I use in summer. A lot of people are on mountain bikes. Some people are on fatbikes, but that's overkill for basic commuting.
    • justjash 8y ago
  • simias 8y ago
    I ride a motorcycle year long in Paris, it's definitely not comfortable during the harshest winter days but with proper gear it's definitely doable. Spring and Autumn is fine, you just need waterproof gear for rainy days. At lower speeds and with exercise keeping you warm riding a bicycle is probably even less of an issue. Sure, on rainy or super cold days it's not like it's as comfortable as a car but you'd have to pay me to drive a car around Paris or any big european city at rush hour.
  • lagadu 8y ago
    Your post is how I can tell you've never been to Copenhagen during the winter. Bicycles are used year-round no matter the weather. There's a saying here that roughly translates to "there's no bad weather, only improper clothing".
• Keyframe 8y ago
  One of the culture shocks from Europe to US (California) was that there are places where you can't do shit without a car. Like, no place place to walk along the street to get from point A to B.
  • hannasanarion 8y ago
    It's because of the geography. Southern California and Arizona especially were impossible to live in until after Air Conditioning became cheap and widespread in the 1950s. At that time, modernism in architecture and city planning was at its peak: build it big, build it simple, and build it for cars.
    • village-idiot 8y ago
      The good news is that droughts will forcefully solve this problem in places like Arizona and SoCal. The bad news is that droughts are coming.
      • bryanlarsen 8y ago
        Desalinization is expensive compared to pumping water out of the ground, but it's dirt cheap compared to ubiquitous air conditioning and/or depopulating cities. The coming droughts will affect agriculture, but not the cities.
    • dfee 8y ago
      This thread is filled with strange ideas. I live in San Diego. I know people who don’t have air conditioning, and they’re fine. The weather is mild unless you get 15-20 miles off the coast, and then it’s still not that bad 90% of the time. Where did you get this idea?
      • danans 8y ago
        A lot of the post WWII building in Southern California was in areas 15-20 miles inland where A/C helped, i.e parts of OC and the inland empire. Much of the this was spurred by the aerospace and oil industries. Even in LA itself, the urban heat island effect is enough that many homes have A/C.
• dmos62 8y ago
  Seconded, Ghent in belgium is also pretty cool car-wise. It has so-called pedestrian-centric planning. For example, the city centre may not be entered with a car, only by foot, bicycle or public transport. It's great. I enjoyed Musk's Boring Company's presentation, where they talk about some problems with transportation today and present some solutions, with emphasis on transportation within city borders [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwX9G38vdCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwX9G38vdCE
  • montenegrohugo 8y ago
    Yeah, underground transportation is definitely one solution that can help solve the transportation problem. The Boring Company seems to be more US focused, so maybe it can help with the "bigger" challenges that the US is facing in de-caring their cities.
    • close04 8y ago
      This isn't necessarily a transportation problem. The question is "what kind of transportation?". A full (electric) bus is vastly more efficient than 20-50 SUVs carrying nothing more than their driver regardless if you do it on the surface or underground. And you don't need tunnels or even most of today's infrastructure if most surface traffic is public transportation. Musk's idea basically focuses on moving cars underground if I understood correctly. It should focus on moving most of the public transport underground and simply "decommissioning" some of the road infrastructure from the surface. A large network of tunnels many levels deep would fix congestion in any city, no matter how large it grew (just keep adding levels). That's not the solution if still you plan on having every person and their car move around. Maintaining the infrastructure for cars on the surface is already expensive and inefficient. Suddenly we can do it better or cheaper by multiplying it underground? You won't get rid of any of today's problems except one: drivers will be able to move from one side of a city and create a traffic jam on the other in no time. Tunnels are great if you plan on connecting a few hubs spread around a city. From there you can use the most efficient surface transportation available. A bike, a bus, a tram, even on foot. One lesson that most city planners learned in time is that the more infrastructure you build for cars, the more cars you'll have clogging it. The solution is o discourage the reliance on cars in cities and it worked every time it was applied.
• akudha 8y ago
  In at least one smaller city I lived in the US, there weren't even sidewalks. The town was built for cars only. Even in bigger cities like NY where there are bike lanes at least in some places, there is some level of looking down on cyclists from drivers and cab drivers. It is going to take a massive mindset change to reduce dependence on cars.
  • randcraw 8y ago
    Or $10/gallon gasoline.
• skh 8y ago
  I lived for a while in Berlin. Coming back to the U.S. the first thing I noticed were too many billboards and ugly parking lots. Each store has its own parking lot. Largely underused. No nice paths to traverse the bleak endless parking lot landscape. It’s ugly and wasteful. It’s hostile to pedestrians and discourages people from going outside to just wander. Even in relatively walkable communities like the one I live in have far fewer people out and about. An endless stream of cars going from one ugly parking lot to the another. I wish I could move to Europe permanently.
  • mantas 8y ago
    And then Berlin is rather car-friendly by Euro standards..
    • _Codemonkeyism 8y ago
      Berlin is the most car friendly city in Germany, both east and west (and the united city) spent a lot of money on car friendly streets - and still is. It's funny that the German political party SPD which is responsible for most of this now wants to rebrand itself as bicycle friendly. But the largest sausage producer in Germany is now also the largesg vegan 'meat' producer. And soon pigs will fly.
      • shackenberg 8y ago
        This hyperbole is obviously wrong or do you have any facts to show it? I don't know anyone enjoying taking the car in Berlin and one is often faster with public transport or the bike in the city center. > rebrand itself as bicycle friendly Shocking! Political parties changing course to adapt to change in popular opinion.
        • archi42 8y ago
          To add to this: I wouldn't call it "most car friendly city in Germany", either - but driving there isn't "hell on earth" either: I felt it's neither better nor worse than e.g. Kaiserslautern or the 10k inhabitants "city" I went to school - the traffic is just on a different scale due to the city being huge (compared to most other German cities). (Disclaimer: I'm a relaxed driver; my experience might not hold for those who enter the full-rage mode when starting the engine)
• fudgy73 8y ago
  totally agree, but a question for you and others - what's the point | what's going to happen | why is so much $$ being put into autonomous vehicles?
  • montenegrohugo 8y ago
    In relation to the transportation-problem being discussed, autonomous vehicles are much better than normal privately owned cars because (in theory) they do not need any parking, at least not in premium inner city ground. They can just drive away and park somewhere where they aren't disturbing anyone, and come back when needed. Alternatively, if they are part of a car sharing service, the % of time the car is not being used and is therefore a wasted resource is going down. A normal car is only being used for what, 5-10% of the day? the rest of the time it is a completely wasted resource. If a car is not owned by an individual but by a group of consumers, a much smaller amount of cars is needed to satisfy transportation needs for the entire group. Of course, even though they have these two advantages, they will still pollute(if not electric, and even so because they must transport more mass than say a scooter, and the electricity still needs to be generated at an external power plant) and create noise pollution and they also need to use traffic lanes and road-infrastructure.
    • claydavisss 8y ago
      100% wrong....autonomous vehicles will result in vastly more cars on urban roads, idling or driving around in circles waiting to do profitable work...it will shortly become an epidemic requiring congestion legislation think about it....if you set up an autonomous ride sharing service, your path to profitability lies in having cars closer to prospective riders. so it makes total sense to put as many cars on the road as possible....it's not like there is a person driving who must be compensated or fed
      • Fricken 8y ago
        There isn't really much political will to mitigate car dependency and curb sprawl, but if hypothetically there were, it would still take half a century of concerted effort to reshape our cities into something a little less dystopian, and in that meantime autonomous vehicles would be very effective for shuttling people between their homes and major transportation hubs, because busses on feeder routes just don't work very well out in the burbs.
• agumonkey 8y ago
  I also think there's a cultural relativism (pardon the anecdotal neologism~) factor. 100 years ago, moving people with a loaded trunk 100miles an hour was heaven. It became an obvious axiom of modern life that "further faster" was always good. To an extent I even think high speed internet is related to that (you can be everywhere without even moving). But I realized that going fast you forget what's near, and you forget what time can feel. Walking around you discover places you didn't know, you spend time in the forest, on a hill. You're not rushing to go from A to B. Maybe "time density" will have a come back.
  • adrianN 8y ago
    Maybe you only don't feel rushed while walking because you only walk when you have time?
    • agumonkey 8y ago
      It goes both ways, people do less things when they can't and their lifestyle / social structures goes accordingly. Say villages with things nearby/local. Another point, I stopped looking for parking spots where I go. I park 1-2 miles before and walk the rest. It actually saves time.
      • ghaff 8y ago
        A lot of the time these discussions seem to take place in a foreign language where you recognize the words but they just don't make sense. Personally, it's hard for me to imagine not having a car, much less not having a driver's license, because so many things I do are utterly dependent on driving even if I both worked and lived in a city (neither of which is the case). I need a car to transport my boating equipment. I just booked a getaway that is utterly dependent on a rental car when I get there. I've had jobs that I would not have been able to do were I not able to drive to job sites, etc. But you basically adapt to what you can do if you don't have a car. You do more stuff around the city and less out in the woods. Maybe you don't take vacations that require driving. Etc. For my part, there are places that require high-clearance 4WD and knowing how to use it. I just don't do those things.
• koolba 8y ago
  In cities sure, but there’s plenty of us who do not want to live in cities. Heck, I don’t even want to live within eye sight of neighbors, stores, or really anything else except some pristine woods. That’s not possible without a car.
  • _Codemonkeyism 8y ago
    Amen.
  • adrianN 8y ago
    There won't be many pristine woods left if everybody lives like you though.
    • twoodfin 8y ago
      I think you’re underestimating the total acreage of “pristine” wilderness in the United States. Any realistic demand for a lifestyle like koolba‘s would find ample supply.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      • iainmerrick 8y ago
        I’m not so sure. How much land would you need to be completely isolated, no other houses in sight? A square mile? More if you live high on a hill (which many people would like to do). Wikipedia says the area of the USA is only 3,794,100 square miles, so there aren’t very many square-mile patches to hand out compared to the size of the population.
        • ghaff 8y ago
          Pristine woods is probably a bit of a high bar but you can get plenty of separation from neighbors with a lot less land, especially if some of the land is shared conservation space such as near where I live. A square mile is 640 acres which is a lot of land. Between myself and a couple neighbors we're on about 75 acres much of which is orchard, a Christmas tree farm, and adjacent woodland. We can see each other but we're pretty separated.
• gaius 8y ago
  privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society For people with a very limited lifestyle restricted to a few city blocks perhaps this is true. But the majority of people do not live that way and have use cases for cars that you have not considered in your analysis. change always requires some sacrifice, By other people, funnily enough
  • adrianN 8y ago
    I don't have a car but my life is not restricted to a few city blocks. I either ride a bike or take public transport (or both!) to get where I want to go.
  • maaaats 8y ago
    The point would be to get rid of the reasons people need cars. By rethinking urban planning, infrastructure, public transportation etc.
    • xienze 8y ago
      Yes, just wave a wand and instantly transform thousands of existing low-density cities and suburban neighborhoods into little European villages. I’m convinced, cars will be useless in short order.
      • adrianN 8y ago
        I don't think anybody honestly suggests to get rid of cars in short order. As you noted changing cities is a multi-decade operation. So it's best to start sooner rather than later.
    • alkonaut 8y ago
      Is that urban planning or suburban planning? Are we talking about better planned (more walkable) inner cities, or are we talkingt about a long term shift in what people wants, such as people not wanting a private back yard? Because outside of cities, as long as people have detatched homes on reasonably sized lots, getting around requires a car. There will simply not be the density needed for efficient public transportation. While I might agree that the idea of large suburbs with detatched homes is probably not very sustainable, I don't see how they aren't here to stay (together with the cars required to live in them)
• yodsanklai 8y ago
  > This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing, but cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward. It's not limited to the US. Even in Europe (at least in France where I live), we have a lot of protests whenever there are measures against cars. A few days ago, there was a no-car day in Paris, you could see people on social medias extremely angry.
  • Sharlin 8y ago
    Cars are the ultimate tragedy of the commons. People want to use cars but at the same time don’t want the negative externalities caused by everyone else using cars too – congestion, noise, pollution, road surface erosion. Because that selfish individualistic viewpoint gets us nowhere, a coordinated approach is needed.
    • janlaureys 8y ago
      Nobody drives a car in New York. Too much traffic.
      • yodsanklai 8y ago
        You have also a good public transportation system in New York. There are many big cities with much worse traffic than NYC but there are simply no alternatives to cars.
        • tjr225 8y ago
          I believe the poster was making a joke :P
          • astura 8y ago
            It's a paraphrasing a joke from Futurama[1]. That joke itself being a play on a classic "Yogi-isms." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra#%22Yogi-isms%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra#%22Yogi-isms%22 >On why he no longer went to Rigazzi's, a St. Louis restaurant: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." [1] https://theinfosphere.org/Transcript:The_Lesser_of_Two_Evils https://theinfosphere.org/Transcript:The_Lesser_of_Two_Evils
• claydavisss 8y ago
  > I want to finish this comment with a call to engage in democracy. Make your opinion heard, loudly, go to the voting polls, participate in your local council, actually engage in politics in the Bay Area, they tend to vote for more and better roads (but tend not to get them)
• alkonaut 8y ago
  > cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward Inside cities that is. One must remember that a lot of the people that move around in a city every day don't live in the city. And for many of them a car is a requirement anyway. For me the car is a sunk cost - I have it for the rare times I need it (I don't need it to go into the city), but buying/maintaining/insuring it is mostly a fixed cost, meaning that the marginal cost of each mile driven is very very small. I wouldn't mind if my city was made car free tomorrow - but I still wouldn't drive any less.
  • meguest 8y ago
    This is normal for people who work in London and live in the commuter belt around it. Most of these people have a car but walk to the station, or drive to the station, and then take a train into London. Once in London these people then take the tube, buses, bikes or walk to get around. The car still gets used outside work to get groceries, pick up kids from schools and of course at the weekends.
    • the_clarence 8y ago
      Same things for most cities in France
  • Sharlin 8y ago
    Many suburbanites, however, have the entitled attitude that cities should accommodate their car trips to dense areas at the expense of people actually living there. Often their mindset is that cities are strictly where people go instead of where people live. In the US this mentality is exarcebated by the white flight and the decay of inner cities, but does also exist in Europe.
    • deelowe 8y ago
      As one of these so called "white flight" people, I can't describe how much such statements frustrate me. I didn't move from the city because I'm a racist or don't want to be around people of color. I don't want to be around people period. Living in the city stresses me out. The constant noise, the issues with drunk people randomly knocking on my door at 2am, the couple of times I woke up to people fighting in the parking lot, the sirens, the random music festival 3 blocks over that I didn't know about, the fact I had 2 motorcycles stolen in 5 years, my kids not having a convenient place to play outside and more led to me leaving the city. I didn't move because I'm white, I moved because I wanted peace and quiet. Most of the people I know who live around me moved away from the city for the same reason. Amazingly, non white people feel this way too...
• jayess 8y ago
  My medium-sized city made its main retail street pedestrian-only in the 80s. It quickly died and nearly all stores went out of business. The road was re-opened to traffic and now the area is booming. One size doesn't fit all. What is your personal preference may not be others' prefereces. Making a blanket statement like cars "are not effective in today's society" is profoundly off base.
  • oftenwrong 8y ago
    There is an "activation energy" to walkability. If you drop pedestrian-only development into a car-dependent area, nobody is going to visit. Personal preference is largely a reflection of the status quo, and in the US the status quo heavily sculpted by federal policy that has favoured car-oriented development for 60+ years.
    • briandear 8y ago
      The weather has a lot to do with it. Most people advocating this car-free stuff never lived in New Orleans, Houston, or Miami from June until October. The last thing I want to do is walk to a grocery store and carry home food for a family in the 95 degree heat and 95% humidity.
      • randcraw 8y ago
        That also applies to those living in cold climes. Nobody wants to walk through five inches of slush or in a blizzard.
  • keeganjw 8y ago
    Interestingly enough, my medium-sized city made its main retail street pedestrian-only in the 80s and it is booming. There's no way they'd ever allow cars on it again. People love it. Our downtown is fairly dense and has three universities nearby. They built two parking garages next to it to give people a place to park and they seems to operate close to capacity most of the time. So it has these things going for it.
  • 7952 8y ago
• pcmonk 8y ago
  How do you do this with kids? Suppose you're taking three kids to an event or a climbing gym or whatever and it's further than walking distance. Can biking be made safe enough, or if it's further, is it reasonable for them to bring them on the metro? What if it's three kids ages 5 and under? This is an honest question. I live in a city with public transport now and I much prefer it for myself, but when I think of how I was brought up it's hard to imagine that working without a car.
  • S4M 8y ago
    I have two kids (now 8 and 4 years old). I don't own a car. We never had any issue bringing them with us in public transport (bus, metro or train). We live in Barcelona.
    • TheTrotters 8y ago
      I live in Poland and similar experiences have often surprised my friends in US. „How do you go to the gym, buy groceries and get to school/work without a car?” Well there are six stores (from very small to a supermarket) within five minutes of walking from my apartment. There’s a gym 500 meters away and another 1 km away. Cinema is 10 minutes by metro. A huge park and a forest are also about 10 minutes away each. Density is convenient!
  • noelwelsh 8y ago
    I took my kids around in a bike trailer for the first seven or so years of their life. I didn't do this exclusively---we had a car and often used it, but the majority of places I wanted to get to I could reach by bike and bike journeys were 100% to 5% depending on the location. Now they are old enough to ride their own bikes. This was in the fairly bike unfriendly city of Birmingham, UK. (Birmingham bought into car culture in 1960s and is slowly recovering.) Better to look at cities that are better adopters of bikes, such as Copenhagen. There just about everyone is on or in a bike, including many children. They love their cargo bikes over there. See https://triobike.com/ https://triobike.com/ and http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/bicycle-culture/copenhageners-love-their-bikes http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/bicycle-culture/copenhagen...
  • 8y ago
• brightball 8y ago
  I don't think cars are going anywhere for a while, but I'm very interested to see all of the alternative fuel options that show up eventually (CNG, Hydrogen and Electric so far). I currently drive a Volt...and it's wonderful. Chevy is really missing out on a lot of potential free press by not putting a bigger emphasis on it. I went from spending over $400 / month on gas to about $20 / month. You get the ability to cut such a huge amount of gas usage without the need for any additional infrastructure to support them like pure-electrics that are out there. My guess is that when clean energy is used to produce fuel cells, a lot of the conversations around the negative impact of cars in general will dry up.
  • tudelo 8y ago
    How the hell did you spend 400 a month on gas?!?!?!
    • brightball 8y ago
      Driving a 1999 Ford Expedition that got about 12 mpg
    • CapricornNoble 8y ago
      I've done that before, when the Yen:Dollar exchange rate was brutal, I think in 2012, Japanese premium fuel was pushing $7.50-$8/gallon. In 1990's sedans with turbocharged engines, city driving, and a heavy foot.....yeah you're getting <20mpg and spending $3-400 per month too.....totally worth it. Japanese sports sedans are awesome.
• _pmf_ 8y ago
  > This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing This might be shocking to you, but I'd like to get to work in 15 minutes instead of in 45 minutes while suffering the bodily odeurs of a hundred co-travelers, overlaid with the subtle smell of my wagon having been used as a urinal for a decade, thank you very much.
  • lagadu 8y ago
    This is pretty funny because in most situations public transport is a significantly faster means of getting to work than cars are over here.
    • rootusrootus 8y ago
      Just goes to show that context matters. If everybody in this entire discussion understood that, there would be a lot fewer comments.
• dionidium 8y ago
  > But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society. They pretty clearly weren't effective in the old cities, either, at least in the U.S., since we had to more or less raze them and move everybody to the suburbs to make cars work.
• CapricornNoble 8y ago
  There ARE some great suggestions in the article, namely underground parking, roundabouts instead of stop lights, and banning street parking. Now, to YOUR points: "Mass transit": Shared and claustrophobic space with other travelers. "Biking lanes": Requires exposure to the elements. Depending on where you live this is already a non-starter if you don't want to arrive at your destination drenched in sweat. "electro-scooters": I've been on one of these in Vietnam. Doesn't carry 2 adults well and has the same weather problems as the peddle-powered version. "Elevated footpaths": I live in an urban conglomerate in Asia with ~1.1 million people. A typical day of running errands can easily rack up ~50+km of driving because of the distances between either people I know or businesses carrying niche products. There's no way in Hell I'm covering that ground on foot, in 34deg C weather with 90% humidity. The city in the article is (1) miniscule at ~85,000 people and 15-20km across at its widest and (2) possesses a pretty mild climate. All of the transportation assets you propose as "solutions" are fine....if you live in California or a similar "Mediterranean climate". Most humans don't. "But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society." Why so quick to jump to sweeping, society-altering prognostications based on conclusions which you yourself recognize as applicable to a small-scale and optimal use case? Your suggested alternative transport means all severely restrict your freedom of movement compared to a private automobile as they come with range and/or comfort compromises. They would shrink the options of citizens for long-distance ground travel as well (say goodbye to road trips). "Of course this is a very small town and these changes do not scale up as easily as one would like" Yes, and given that 22% of humanity lives in urban areas of 1 million+ [1] and 40% of humanity in cities over 100,000 [2], it might be premature to call people to political action to hasten the death of the automobile when you don't have a solution that scales well. [1]https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.URB.MCTY.TL.ZS?view=chart https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.URB.MCTY.TL.ZS?view=... <br> [2]http://www.newgeography.com/content/005933-world-urban-areas-1064-largest-cities-2018-update http://www.newgeography.com/content/005933-world-urban-areas...
  • anthk 8y ago
    Pontevedra mild climate? MediteWHAT? Please, take a map of Spain and comment again. Spain among Portugal is what you see when you cross over the Atlantic from the US. Pontevedra is in Galicia, northern Spain. Here it rains like UK, and even worse. No Sun except a very few weeks a year. Not all Spain is sunny, and not all the US is like California, Texas or Florida. You would freeze in Castille or Aragon in Winter. You would pray to see the sunlight in Asturias, Galicia or any region of the Bay of Biscay.
• pron 8y ago
  > It is a big cultural and infrastructure change over a longer timespan, but it is achievable. Yes, but there's also a geographical difference. Countries in Europe are rather small, and a long history has restricted some land use. In many areas of the US land was almost a non-issue, so people settled more sparsely, and even cities became sprawls (e.g. Houston, LA).
  • jorgemf 8y ago
    Free resources shouldn't be an excuse to use them wisely. I get your point, but it is not a good reason why we cannot do things better.
    • Nasrudith 8y ago
      Resources are optimized relative to their current values. Medieval construction was often labor intensive because it was the cheap part compared to materials. City housing got disrupted by a new technology, cars that made additional cheap real estate more available for use. Central planning can theoretically avoid some growth pitfalls "skipping to the end" but in practice it has often had limited success beyond zoning promoting the obvious - high traffic areas are good for retail and often annoyance to residents. I am no expert but it seems predictive design performs best with planning.
      • jorgemf 8y ago
        > Resources are optimized relative to their current values I see that as the problem. We have limited resources and don't care very much about the future of them. Current value vs long term value.
• adamc 8y ago
  Distances in a lot of the US (I live in Texas) are such that I don't see cars disappearing. What might happen is more short-term renting of cars. But a lot of American cities were built around the automobile, so they would need a lot of changes to function in a post-automobile world. That makes such a transition much less likely. I think it would work better in older, East Coast and mid-western cities that largely predate the automobile.
• Taylor_OD 8y ago
  I live in Chicago and I only NEED a car once or twice a year. I walk to work. I can walk to the blue or red line trains which will get me just about anywhere else I need. There are a few grocery stores on my walk home from work. There's great coffee shops and restaurants near me. I uber home when it's late and I've been drinking but that's really the only time I'm in a car. I know I've got a somewhat special situation as I chose my apartment based on it's walk ability. However I've lived in other parks of the city and I had similar a similar experience. It just took a little longer to get places sometimes. I believe eventually cars will be a shared service. Automated cars that will arrive whenever I need one. That will be the day.
• Y_Y 8y ago
  > Carse are effective in less dense regions, but in modern cities other solutions have to be found. "In Scottish geography, a Carse (the modern form of older Scots kerse) is an area of fertile, low-lying (typically alluvial) land occupying certain Scottish river valleys,[1] such as that of the River Forth." I am forced to agree.
• strictnein 8y ago
  > This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing, but cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward. You're really looking at this from a very narrow mindset. It isn't going into the city that a lot of Americans really want and need cars, it's heading out of the city. This may be shocking to people with a European upbringing, but when you have a vast country with lots of open space and beautiful nature, it's super awesome and amazingly freeing to just go wherever you want to on a whim. Wake up Saturday morning - let's head up to that state park with the cool water falls and hike around for the day. 10 minutes later you're on the road and an hour or two later you're surrounded by nature. Real nature too, not some small 10 acre park somewhere. There's real freedom in being able to go where you want, when you want. It's not just a "convenience" thing.
  • fergie 8y ago
    There are several European countries with a lower population density than the US, and places like Norway and Finland are _much_ more sparsely populated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
    • JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      That's not terribly significant. An average density for an entire nation says nothing about the spaces between population centers. There are national parks in the US that are bigger than entire European nations. Destinations that are more remote from American cities, than all of Europe.
  • collyw 8y ago
    Do you honestly think we can't do that in Europe?
    • drstewart 8y ago
      Do you honestly think there are no walkable cities in the US or whatever outlandish claims are being made by Europeans in this thread?
• crikli 8y ago
  "But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society." Don't assume that every place is like the place you know. Visit the US, particularly the Midwest, and you'll come to understand why privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are the only solution to this particular transportation problem. The major cities are too dispersed with countless small population centers between them for any kind other kind of transportation to provide a feasible solution. It's not a matter of "engaging in democracy."
  • revx 8y ago
    It seems that the city in this article strikes a great balance - parking on the periphery for people who commute in, but the city center is car-free. The same could work for the US midwest. You drive to the edge of Chicago and then take an (improved) subway in, for example.
    • vanderZwan 8y ago
      Groningen, The Netherlands, has an almost identical approach. It doesn't hurt that the centre of the city is extremely compact.
    • sas2000 8y ago
      You basically cited the only midwest city this would work in.
      • sbjustin 8y ago
        Not sure why this appears to be down voted. It's pretty true. There are 1000s of cities/towns in the midwest that having a car/truck makes more sense.
    • enobrev 8y ago
      I agree with this wholeheartedly, but also know it would be an incredibly difficult uphill battle, culturally, to make such a thing work. Chicago residents not only love their cars but also seem to feel absolutely entitled to the idea that the roads are _only_ for cars. I say this as a local who has gotten into countless arguments with friends and family on the subject. I probably believed it as well a few lifetimes ago before I moved to NYC for 13 years and have since been completely converted. It would require an enormous investment in public transportation and real bike lanes - I mean protected bike lanes like they're doing in NYC, not two faded white arrows in the rightmost lane - and then a generational shift where we convince the younger generations that car-ownership is overrated, wasteful, and terrible for the local economy.
• _hardwaregeek 8y ago
  A lot of the traditional American lifestyle doesn't make much sense anymore. A large house with a lawn is incredibly wasteful, in terms of heating, water consumption and emissions. I can't even imagine the amount of water wasted to grow a rectangle of grass, regardless of temperature, aridity and general climate. Like it or not, the future for efficient living is cities.
• ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  This may be shocking to people with a European upbringing, but western Europeans own more cars per capita than Americans: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/its-official-western-europeans-have-more-cars-per-person-than-americans/261108/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/it... Your overall point is correct about how car-centric cities are in the USA vs Europe, but just wanted to point this out.
  • refurb 8y ago
    For all this talk of how the US is so car-centric, every European city I've visited is absolutely packed with cars and the parking is worse than SF. Based on how people talk about the EU, I thought it would be different, but it looks about the same as the US to me.
• xae342 8y ago
  Here’s a picture comparing the amount of space required for cars: https://www.bicycles.net.au/2012/09/cycling-promotion-fund-reminds-aussies-cycling-advantage/ https://www.bicycles.net.au/2012/09/cycling-promotion-fund-r...
• sbjustin 8y ago
  The biggest problem with your argument is that you're talking about "cities" only and ignoring the rest of the country. Cities make up 3.5% of the US land: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-33.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-33.... I like the idea of large cities improving their public transportation systems and having parking lots on the outskirts but it doesn't make financial sense in the smaller size cities. There are lots of people like me that live in a small down and commute into a city (60k people). I'd love better public transportation but it only makes financial sense in the "downtown" areas.
• kyleblarson 8y ago
  "But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society." I live in a remote mountain town in the North Cascades mountains and am approximately 80 miles from the closest stoplight. Obviously we rely on cars and trucks. It is wonderful place, and an additional benefit is that sanctimonious city dwellers who make comments like this are nowhere to be found.
  • bllguo 8y ago
    Why are you so hostile? It is eminently clear in OP's comment that we are talking about transportation in cities. Even if it wasn't, you could give OP the benefit of the doubt.
• AmericanChopper 8y ago
  >But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem Private vehicle ownership isn’t about solving society’s transportation issue. As far as consumers are concerned, a car is one of the most significant and life changing purchases they’ll ever make. It gives them far more than just a solution to a ‘transport problem’, it provides the freedom to pretty much go anywhere and do anything at any time. If your idea is ‘convince people they don’t actually want cars’, then your idea is going to fail.
• stronglikedan 8y ago
  > cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward. Sure they do, just not in all situations. I'm all for walkable city centers, downtowns, parks and such, but I also very much love to drive my car. I'm happy to vote for more pedestrian/public-transport friendly metropolitan areas (and do), as long as there's also non-metro areas for me to live on my privately owned land and drive my privately owned car as I please.