13 ms·

Lot of anti-car folks on here. I'm inclined to agree we should discourage driving into city centers, but it's a tough ask when we've been driving forever and ev

Lot of anti-car folks on here. I'm inclined to agree we should discourage driving into city centers, but it's a tough ask when we've been driving forever and everyone owns cars. Telling my elderly father, who lives in the suburbs and drives everywhere, to take a train into the city to visit me is a non-starter, as another commenter pointed out. Habits are hard to break. However, I work in downtown San Francisco and live in Oakland, and I would NEVER drive my car over the bridge into the city, because of congestion. Banning cars outright seems to be a heavy-handed move and overly restrictive of individual choice, and you should just "price in the externalities" as the economists say. High tolls or expensive city driving permits for non-residents seems a better move to ease the transition as well as fund public transit options. They have to build up really, really good public transit infrastructure if they're going to make it more attractive than driving. To me the plethora of rules reads overwrought and complex, and "occasional visitors" seems ridiculous.

ip26 8y ago
What happens when your elderly father in the suburbs loses his license?
- kareemsabri 8y ago
  Not sure why he would do that, I see people much older than him still driving. But he'll stay home, I imagine. Or get rides from his family members, or younger wife.
  - Retric 8y ago
    Vision degradation with age is a common issue. Really though, public transit is vastly better from a heath, independence, financial, and safety standpoint for the elderly than driving.
    - frabbit 8y ago
      Not to mention dementia, arthritis, diabetes, decreased articulation. Old people in rural areas and suburbs without mass transit are in a very vulnerable position.
      - nn3 8y ago
        It can be also useful for social contacts. I recently rode the bus in a small american city I was visiting. The main users were teens and old people. The old people mostly knew each other and chatted pleasantly during the whole ride. Given that won't work that well in a large city, but even then it's still better to be under people than sitting alone in your car.
  - cultus 8y ago
    It sounds like your father has a good support network in case he can no longer drive, but that isn't really so common nowadays. Most elderly folks in his situation would either: A. Continue driving past the point they they are safely able to. B. Become shut-ins due to lack of transportation, accelerating physical and mental decline.
    - kareemsabri 8y ago
      I guess I don't see how banning cars in cities solves that problem for the elderly (particularly outside of cities).
      - ip26 8y ago
        Banning cars in a city or some part of a city is a step in the process of making a city where you don't need a car. Removing the traffic, exhaust, & safety risk to other users helps make biking, walking, bussing, and rail faster, safer, & more pleasant.
        closeparen 8y ago
        Traffic is irrelevant for trains. It has some effect on buses, which can be mitigated with HOV lanes. (Usually the problem there is frequency and a lack of express service). At the distances most people need to travel to reach their workplaces from affordable housing, walking and cycling are never going to be pleasant. Banning cars from a city is a straight-up transfer of quality of life from the suburban masses to the richest in the center. Drastically increasing high-rise housing supply in the center is a much more meaningful step.
        ip26 8y ago
        Drastically increasing high-rise housing supply in the center is a much more meaningful step. What are you going to do with all those extra cars? Traffic is irrelevant for trains Not for trolleys!
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
People vote against "pricing in the externalities". "Banning cars outright seems to be a heavy-handed move and overly restrictive of individual choice" Allowing cars is overly restrictive of my individual choice to cycle safely, breath clean air and have my children grow up in a world without climate change.
- kareemsabri 8y ago
  I'm afraid you don't have an individual choice to dictate the type of world your children grow up in, as far as the rest of us are concerned.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - plufz 8y ago
    Same can be said for not having the individual choice to destroy the climate for the next generation. Right?
    - kareemsabri 8y ago
      To some extent. It's a hard problem. As I mentioned originally, it's difficult to get a bunch of non-cooperating people to share things that are collectively owned (like air). People want to move themselves and their stuff around, which pollutes. I genuinely don't know the answer, but there are a lot of things that damage the environment for future generations (who, I agree, are not represented well enough in our decision making). If this is a climate change thing, there's a lot of things to do. If it's a congestion/quality of urban life thing (as I read it), it's a bit of a different discussion. Here are a few options that would restrict individual choice to reduce air pollution. - banning air travel more than 3 times per year (turns out propelling giant hunks of metal through the sky releases a lot of CO2) - insisting all new cars be electric - banning cars in cities - limiting the purchase of meat to a low amount per person per week - a limit on consumptive spending (buying newly manufactured goods) annually
Symbiote 8y ago
The healthiest old (or old-ish) people I know are the ones who use public transport the most. Two of my grandparents drove everywhere for decades, retired, still drove everywhere, then had huge trouble with their joints etc. When my grandmother lost her license (worsening eyesight), she was very isolated. My other grandparents had nice cars, but also made good use of their pensioner's discount/free transport pass. My grandma would take the train across a large English city to visit her sister or friends. She's in her late 80s, and still very mobile, although no longer independent. I prefer a ban, as it's fairer to everyone. There are externalities that are very difficult to price (pollution, accident risk), and just being rich doesn't give people extra rights to poison the air and kill/injure people. It also ensures rich people use public transport, so they have some incentive to make sure the service is good.
- sonar_un 8y ago
  I've you've ever spent significant time in Europe, or more specifically, the Netherlands, you will see people of advanced age have no problem getting around on bikes and public transport. In fact, I can't help but smile every time I see someone who is clearly in their 80s/90s biking down the Amsterdam streets in fantastic health. I feel that if people are used to moving around their lives, they can continue to do so even in old age, like taking stairs every day on a 4th story walk-up with bags of groceries and goods. Anecdotally, I feel the rise of the automobile coincided with the fall of general health and mobility of senior citizens.
  - Brakenshire 8y ago
    There’s a false impression there, though, because the people you see around on the streets are by definition those that are capable of getting around. Even fit young people sometimes break bones or injure ligaments in a way which makes getting around difficult. If you damage your ACL and need to get into work, how can it be done? You need a system which has at least a rational level of support for people who are elderly, infirm, or otherwise physically disabled.
    - jdavis703 8y ago
fauigerzigerk 8y ago
Individual choice seems an odd thing to bring up in favour of cars. Clearly, this is all about balancing conflicting individual choices by making collective choices.
- kareemsabri 8y ago
  Clearly? How do you "balance individual choices" by making ONE collective choice? How do you balance individual choices by banning cars? Balancing individual choices would be the permitting and taxation system I described initially, to price in the costs one individual's choices have on the others. I don't see how it's odd. It's the biggest problem with solving climate change - how much do you restrict everyone, and how do you properly balance the conflicting individual choices with people's ability to live their lives? Collective choices aren't really a thing. We approximate it with democracy, but obviously not everyone gets what they want (see Trump being in office).
  - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
    What I find odd is that individual choice is frequently invoked when arguing in favor of unrestricted car use, whereas the restrictions imposed on everyone else in order to facilitate car use (or by car use itself) are rarely seen as restrictions on individual choice. But that's in fact what they are.
    - kareemsabri 8y ago
      I certainly wouldn't argue for unrestricted car use. Also, almost 90% of Americans own cars, so I'm not sure who "everyone else" is, but what restrictions do you mean?
      - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
        Here in London 54% of households own cars and the number is constantly declining. But "everyone else" doesn't necessarily exclude car owners. Car owners are also residents who need to breathe, sleep, play and walk. Owning a car isn't the same as using it all the time. And using a car occasionally doesn't mean you have to own it. The restrictions are pretty obvious if you open your eyes, ears and nose. Large parts of our cities have become effectively and legally unusable for anything other than driving. And that's not just because of polution levels that kill tens of thousands in the UK alone, it's also because of government enforced bans on using that space between buildings called roads for anything else. If my choice were to do so much as walk on a road or use a bicycle on a motorway, I would be penalised and forcibly removed. Large swaths of the city are dedicated exclusively to road traffic in spite of a desperate lack of land for home building. These government enforced rules and restrictions are what I call collective choice.
jcranmer 8y ago
Go ahead and ask NYC if you can build a single-family detached home across the street from Central Park. It's against the zoning regulations, even if you bought the land to do that. Do people call that regulation anti-house? No. People accept the fact that a city like NYC is so starved for space, and SFDH is a massive waste of space. But turn around and do anything to take into account that SOVs are the most space-inefficient form of transit, and you are immediately labelled anti-car. Congestion charges or adding tolls? Anti-car. Parking restrictions? Anti-car (especially because people complain there's not enough parking spaces as is). Charge residents for parking permits? Anti-car. Add bus or HOV lanes? Anti-car. Spend a dime on improving public transit? Anti-car (why are you wasting money on public transit no one uses instead of the congested highways). Yes, banning cars outright is one of the most extreme options. But the sheer sense of entitlement among drivers means that all the other options that have been suggested have been resisted with as much force. The only acceptable compromise is to cater specifically to their whims, and maybe in tandem help public transit at the same time. Of course, if there's any budget overrun on such a joint project, all of the transit improvements are the first things to get axed.
- Evidlo 8y ago
  SOV - single occupancy vehicle HOV - high occupancy vehicle
- kareemsabri 8y ago
  I'm anti-car, for the record. I don't drive in cities, and I think the costs of congestion, parking, noise, and pollution should be borne by those who do. Edit: I did, in fact, say "anti-car".
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    I never used the phrase "anti-car" Somebody posting under your username did: Lot of anti-car folks on here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18155579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18155579
    - 8y ago
slx26 8y ago
>> we've been driving forever I bet this will be something interesting to read about on future history books...
- dguaraglia 8y ago
  "We" is also such a small fraction of humanity. The only country I know where cities were built around cars is the US. I don't think most Americans - who grew up driving since age 16 - realize just how weird that is for most foreigners. I was surprised the first time I tried to walk into a strip mall and I had to walk 200 meters to find a pedestrian path. It was also weird walking around places like San Jose and Sacramento where you don't see people walking on the streets.
closeparen 8y ago
The BART Transbay Tube and all the trains that traverse it during peak hours are fully saturated. Capacity can't expand until CBTC signaling ships in the 2030s. The Temporary Transbay Terminal bus bays are also fully saturated, and the buses that service them have little headroom. Saleforce Transit Center was supposed to pave the way for more Transbay bus capacity, but 10 years of construction bought us only a few weeks of service before structural failure. In short: public transit alternatives to the Bay Bridge are already too popular. Shifting SF<->Oakland car trips to public transport is physically impossible in the short and medium terms. BART does not have space to accomodate the 270,000 daily Bay Bridge drivers, and there's a 0% chance of making that space in the next decade.

ip26 8y ago

What happens when your elderly father in the suburbs loses his license?

kareemsabri 8y ago
Not sure why he would do that, I see people much older than him still driving. But he'll stay home, I imagine. Or get rides from his family members, or younger wife.
- Retric 8y ago
  Vision degradation with age is a common issue. Really though, public transit is vastly better from a heath, independence, financial, and safety standpoint for the elderly than driving.
  - frabbit 8y ago
    Not to mention dementia, arthritis, diabetes, decreased articulation. Old people in rural areas and suburbs without mass transit are in a very vulnerable position.
    - nn3 8y ago
      It can be also useful for social contacts. I recently rode the bus in a small american city I was visiting. The main users were teens and old people. The old people mostly knew each other and chatted pleasantly during the whole ride. Given that won't work that well in a large city, but even then it's still better to be under people than sitting alone in your car.
- cultus 8y ago
  It sounds like your father has a good support network in case he can no longer drive, but that isn't really so common nowadays. Most elderly folks in his situation would either: A. Continue driving past the point they they are safely able to. B. Become shut-ins due to lack of transportation, accelerating physical and mental decline.
  - kareemsabri 8y ago
    I guess I don't see how banning cars in cities solves that problem for the elderly (particularly outside of cities).
    - ip26 8y ago
      Banning cars in a city or some part of a city is a step in the process of making a city where you don't need a car. Removing the traffic, exhaust, & safety risk to other users helps make biking, walking, bussing, and rail faster, safer, & more pleasant.
      - closeparen 8y ago
        Traffic is irrelevant for trains. It has some effect on buses, which can be mitigated with HOV lanes. (Usually the problem there is frequency and a lack of express service). At the distances most people need to travel to reach their workplaces from affordable housing, walking and cycling are never going to be pleasant. Banning cars from a city is a straight-up transfer of quality of life from the suburban masses to the richest in the center. Drastically increasing high-rise housing supply in the center is a much more meaningful step.
        ip26 8y ago
        Drastically increasing high-rise housing supply in the center is a much more meaningful step. What are you going to do with all those extra cars? Traffic is irrelevant for trains Not for trolleys!

tonyedgecombe 8y ago

People vote against "pricing in the externalities". "Banning cars outright seems to be a heavy-handed move and overly restrictive of individual choice" Allowing cars is overly restrictive of my individual choice to cycle safely, breath clean air and have my children grow up in a world without climate change.

kareemsabri 8y ago
I'm afraid you don't have an individual choice to dictate the type of world your children grow up in, as far as the rest of us are concerned.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- plufz 8y ago
  Same can be said for not having the individual choice to destroy the climate for the next generation. Right?
  - kareemsabri 8y ago
    To some extent. It's a hard problem. As I mentioned originally, it's difficult to get a bunch of non-cooperating people to share things that are collectively owned (like air). People want to move themselves and their stuff around, which pollutes. I genuinely don't know the answer, but there are a lot of things that damage the environment for future generations (who, I agree, are not represented well enough in our decision making). If this is a climate change thing, there's a lot of things to do. If it's a congestion/quality of urban life thing (as I read it), it's a bit of a different discussion. Here are a few options that would restrict individual choice to reduce air pollution. - banning air travel more than 3 times per year (turns out propelling giant hunks of metal through the sky releases a lot of CO2) - insisting all new cars be electric - banning cars in cities - limiting the purchase of meat to a low amount per person per week - a limit on consumptive spending (buying newly manufactured goods) annually

Symbiote 8y ago

The healthiest old (or old-ish) people I know are the ones who use public transport the most. Two of my grandparents drove everywhere for decades, retired, still drove everywhere, then had huge trouble with their joints etc. When my grandmother lost her license (worsening eyesight), she was very isolated. My other grandparents had nice cars, but also made good use of their pensioner's discount/free transport pass. My grandma would take the train across a large English city to visit her sister or friends. She's in her late 80s, and still very mobile, although no longer independent. I prefer a ban, as it's fairer to everyone. There are externalities that are very difficult to price (pollution, accident risk), and just being rich doesn't give people extra rights to poison the air and kill/injure people. It also ensures rich people use public transport, so they have some incentive to make sure the service is good.

sonar_un 8y ago
I've you've ever spent significant time in Europe, or more specifically, the Netherlands, you will see people of advanced age have no problem getting around on bikes and public transport. In fact, I can't help but smile every time I see someone who is clearly in their 80s/90s biking down the Amsterdam streets in fantastic health. I feel that if people are used to moving around their lives, they can continue to do so even in old age, like taking stairs every day on a 4th story walk-up with bags of groceries and goods. Anecdotally, I feel the rise of the automobile coincided with the fall of general health and mobility of senior citizens.
- Brakenshire 8y ago
  There’s a false impression there, though, because the people you see around on the streets are by definition those that are capable of getting around. Even fit young people sometimes break bones or injure ligaments in a way which makes getting around difficult. If you damage your ACL and need to get into work, how can it be done? You need a system which has at least a rational level of support for people who are elderly, infirm, or otherwise physically disabled.
  - jdavis703 8y ago

fauigerzigerk 8y ago

Individual choice seems an odd thing to bring up in favour of cars. Clearly, this is all about balancing conflicting individual choices by making collective choices.

kareemsabri 8y ago
Clearly? How do you "balance individual choices" by making ONE collective choice? How do you balance individual choices by banning cars? Balancing individual choices would be the permitting and taxation system I described initially, to price in the costs one individual's choices have on the others. I don't see how it's odd. It's the biggest problem with solving climate change - how much do you restrict everyone, and how do you properly balance the conflicting individual choices with people's ability to live their lives? Collective choices aren't really a thing. We approximate it with democracy, but obviously not everyone gets what they want (see Trump being in office).
- fauigerzigerk 8y ago
  What I find odd is that individual choice is frequently invoked when arguing in favor of unrestricted car use, whereas the restrictions imposed on everyone else in order to facilitate car use (or by car use itself) are rarely seen as restrictions on individual choice. But that's in fact what they are.
  - kareemsabri 8y ago
    I certainly wouldn't argue for unrestricted car use. Also, almost 90% of Americans own cars, so I'm not sure who "everyone else" is, but what restrictions do you mean?
    - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
      Here in London 54% of households own cars and the number is constantly declining. But "everyone else" doesn't necessarily exclude car owners. Car owners are also residents who need to breathe, sleep, play and walk. Owning a car isn't the same as using it all the time. And using a car occasionally doesn't mean you have to own it. The restrictions are pretty obvious if you open your eyes, ears and nose. Large parts of our cities have become effectively and legally unusable for anything other than driving. And that's not just because of polution levels that kill tens of thousands in the UK alone, it's also because of government enforced bans on using that space between buildings called roads for anything else. If my choice were to do so much as walk on a road or use a bicycle on a motorway, I would be penalised and forcibly removed. Large swaths of the city are dedicated exclusively to road traffic in spite of a desperate lack of land for home building. These government enforced rules and restrictions are what I call collective choice.

jcranmer 8y ago

Go ahead and ask NYC if you can build a single-family detached home across the street from Central Park. It's against the zoning regulations, even if you bought the land to do that. Do people call that regulation anti-house? No. People accept the fact that a city like NYC is so starved for space, and SFDH is a massive waste of space. But turn around and do anything to take into account that SOVs are the most space-inefficient form of transit, and you are immediately labelled anti-car. Congestion charges or adding tolls? Anti-car. Parking restrictions? Anti-car (especially because people complain there's not enough parking spaces as is). Charge residents for parking permits? Anti-car. Add bus or HOV lanes? Anti-car. Spend a dime on improving public transit? Anti-car (why are you wasting money on public transit no one uses instead of the congested highways). Yes, banning cars outright is one of the most extreme options. But the sheer sense of entitlement among drivers means that all the other options that have been suggested have been resisted with as much force. The only acceptable compromise is to cater specifically to their whims, and maybe in tandem help public transit at the same time. Of course, if there's any budget overrun on such a joint project, all of the transit improvements are the first things to get axed.

Evidlo 8y ago
SOV - single occupancy vehicle HOV - high occupancy vehicle
kareemsabri 8y ago
I'm anti-car, for the record. I don't drive in cities, and I think the costs of congestion, parking, noise, and pollution should be borne by those who do. Edit: I did, in fact, say "anti-car".
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  I never used the phrase "anti-car" Somebody posting under your username did: Lot of anti-car folks on here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18155579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18155579
  - 8y ago

slx26 8y ago

>> we've been driving forever I bet this will be something interesting to read about on future history books...

dguaraglia 8y ago
"We" is also such a small fraction of humanity. The only country I know where cities were built around cars is the US. I don't think most Americans - who grew up driving since age 16 - realize just how weird that is for most foreigners. I was surprised the first time I tried to walk into a strip mall and I had to walk 200 meters to find a pedestrian path. It was also weird walking around places like San Jose and Sacramento where you don't see people walking on the streets.

closeparen 8y ago

The BART Transbay Tube and all the trains that traverse it during peak hours are fully saturated. Capacity can't expand until CBTC signaling ships in the 2030s. The Temporary Transbay Terminal bus bays are also fully saturated, and the buses that service them have little headroom. Saleforce Transit Center was supposed to pave the way for more Transbay bus capacity, but 10 years of construction bought us only a few weeks of service before structural failure. In short: public transit alternatives to the Bay Bridge are already too popular. Shifting SF<->Oakland car trips to public transport is physically impossible in the short and medium terms. BART does not have space to accomodate the 270,000 daily Bay Bridge drivers, and there's a 0% chance of making that space in the next decade.