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I want this so bad. My hatred for the automobile grows every day. The cost, the noise, the time wasted in traffic, the pollution, the ridiculous space wasted on

• dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >I want this so bad. My hatred for the automobile grows every day. >We are slaves to the automobile in so many ways. >Sucks that I had to live in the time period with them. Focusing your hatred on inanimate man-made objects does not address the root of the problem (and is probably not healthy). You wouldn't blame crowbars for break-ins (I mean you might, but I hope you don't). The way forward is to develop superior alternatives (in the same way that the car succeeded the horse) not to increase cost. Increasing cost is zero sum at best. Developing better solutions is a net gain. Also, there's only so much pedestrianization you can do. Unless you turn LA (for example) into Manhatten density wise it is always going to be fundamentally pedestrian unfriendly because most of it was designed around cars. Cities that were designed when people walked everywhere and goods were transported in animal drawn carts are going to be more walk-able. Some amount of individual and private (they are different things) transit will always be necessary (assuming quality of life is to stay the same or increase).
  • recursive 8y ago
    I think I appreciate what you're saying but I don't think the analogy works exactly. How much crowbar marketing do you see in a day?
    • coding123 8y ago
      Crowbars don't need marketing if it's the go-to tool for break ins. The analogy works because it would be like charging $8k for crowbars or having a crowbar property tax that is insanely expensive per year as a way to combat break ins. That doesn't work because people will find a way to break in without crowbars. People will find ways to buy gas at far less than a $1 a mile if you simply raised gas prices (i.e buy teslas). While a tesla would solve the (well let's say offset) the pollution problem, it would do nothing for the space, traffic, noise, safety, etc..
      • afiori 8y ago
        wait, that is not the point... crowbars have legitimate uses (the fact that they look like they are designed to feel scary and dangerous does not change that). Should there exist special crowbar licences? > People will find ways to buy gas at far less than a $1 a mile if you simply raised gas prices (i.e buy teslas) gilets jaunes disagree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_movement
        • coding123 8y ago
          I am agreeing with you, lol - it's an analogy that simply raising gas prices to fix the problem is like simply raising the price or taxing the crowbar to solve break-ins - it does not work. Yes I definitely think the yellow vests would similarly be upset as well - again it's not solving the issue.
  • afiori 8y ago
    English is not my mother tongue, but I think you are focusing too much on words: My hatred for the automobile grows every day -> My hatred for how pervasive automobile are in cities and for how they damage city planning grows every day. There, now GP hates a trend in society. For the second part: this is essentially choosing how free you want markets to be (and how much of society you want to be a market). In my opinion better alternatives would be more walkable cities and better public transports, which are helped by zone-based auto ban. Regarding raising the price of gasoline I agree that it would be a terrible choice, it would impact the least the cities and the most industrial transports and rural areas (the only sectors were car/trucks are truly needed)
    • afiori 8y ago
      Just for clarification here is a nice ted talk about cities and walkability https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cL5Nud8d7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cL5Nud8d7w
• umvi 8y ago
  How do you propose getting around quickly in car-free city centers? Electric scooter services? I was in NYC the other day, and it was like 1 am and we were several blocks northwest of Times' Square, it was freezing and raining and public transportation was on late night service which would have required 20+ minutes of waiting around shivering for a bus, or a long-ish walk to the nearest subway station and another longish walk to the hotel. Instead we got a Lyft to pick us up in 3 minutes and were curbside at our hotel in no time. I'm just trying to imagine what my (and my pregnant wife's) options would have been with a car-free version of NYC
  • themagician 8y ago
    Walking. That’s how you get around quickly. It’s quicker to walk in downtown SF than take a car for a good portion of the day. Also maybe you don’t need to get around so quickly. That’s kind of my point about how much damage the car has done to society.
    • kodablah 8y ago
      > Walking. That’s how you get around quickly. You either have a limited definition of "quickly" or a limited definition of "around". > Also maybe you don’t need to get around so quickly. Or maybe you do. > That’s kind of my point about how much damage the car has done to society. There have been positives as well.
      • apendleton 8y ago
        While I think the comment you were responding to was being somewhat snarky, urban design specifically to accommodate walkability is a thing. Cities that are high-density and mixed-use allow for many of the things people need to do on a daily basis to be close to where they already are, which makes "around" smaller for most purposes and consequently makes "quickly" more achievable on foot. Cities that have lots of parking lots place the actual stuff people want to visit farther apart, or who entirely separate offices from retail from food from residential, require vehicles.
    • 8y ago
• leesec 8y ago
  Lol yeah, incredibly unfortunate you have much more access to fast and often luxurious personalized transit than anytime in history. Also you really want gas to be a dollar a mile and make all of your things expensive? This whole comment is ridiculous to me.
  • themagician 8y ago
    Yeah, I think it is unfortunate. I think it’s unfortunate how it’s shaped our lives. I don’t want fast and luxurious personalized travel. I want to be able to walk somewhere nearby and enjoy it.
• atonse 8y ago
  I can see the appeal of congestion fees now that seamless tolls are so easy to collect (using RFID, License Plate Readers, etc). But apart from that, just needlessly taxing gasoline everywhere seems silly when you're trying to just reduce congestion in cities.
  • ip26 8y ago
    If anything taxing gasoline favors city trips, vs highway trips.
    • vonmoltke 8y ago
      How's that? Vehicles use more fuel beer unit distance in city trips than highway trips.
      • ip26 8y ago
        Sure, but the neighboring city might be eighty miles away while a drive across town might be five miles.
  • themagician 8y ago
    Not to reduce congestion. To reduce car usage so that they are only used in emergencies or situations where walking is not possible.
  • karmelapple 8y ago
    Would people who are advocates of a “pay for what you use” system be fine with being taxed by miles driven? Have a yearly inspection of your car for both safety concerns as a variety of states do, and also record the odometer at that point. Tax miles driven, and also multiply that a lot for vehicles that directly contribute to more maintenance on the roads, like semi trucks. It will increase costs for shipping by truck, but would it also better reflect the true costs of what it costs to ship by truck, drive on highways, etc?
    • atonse 8y ago
• rootusrootus 8y ago
  I could get on board with $1/mile. I bet it would really ease up congestion on the roads and my commute would be more pleasant.
  • leesec 8y ago
    Ah yes, only the rich should be able to drive!
    • rootusrootus 8y ago
      That is the net effect, yes. Although honestly, $1/mile isn't that unfeasible for many people. Many people pay close to that already, so it wouldn't be like making 10x as expensive or something.
      • Fins 8y ago
        Must be nice living in that SV bubble. How about we make it income-tested, and charge everyone who supports that idea, say, $10/mile and up? Even if you want to go on a road trip in a rental. Or get your kid to a hospital. At least that would be fair to people who actually work for a living, need to get places, and can't afford to live near transit because it has all been bid up through the stratosphere by techbros who can afford hiring ubers, muncheries, wags to do all the tedious jobs for them while they nonchalantly drive their electric scooters through what once used to be livable cities populated by different groups of people and complain about those uncouth nasty people who dared to drive their rusty beaters 50 miles to clean and cook and do all that menial work them for polluting "their" air.
        • rootusrootus 8y ago
          SV meaning Silicon Valley? Unless that bubble is a couple thousand miles across, then no, I'm not living in that bubble. In your hypothetical world, I would support splitting everyone by ideology so that the people willing to pay for nice things go to one city and the people who want to mooch go to the other. Let them each go their own way. We'd all be happier.
• briankelly 8y ago
  Agreed, even from the costs we can easily calculate it's obviously a massive drag on our economy, let alone the negative (in my opinion) effects on our culture. I think future generations will look on this America like we look at Easter Island now - a sort of inexplicable squandering of wealth and resources.
  • danjayh 8y ago
    I think that if you do the same calculation to find the benefits (access to a greater variety of goods and services, access to a broader selection of employment, stable childhood environment due to not having to frequently move for work, etc.), the cost might not be as high. However, I have not seen any paper that attempted to account for this, so I cannot be sure.
    • briankelly 8y ago
      You're right, there is this other side to the coin. I'm also not aware of research studying these high order effects. I wonder if you could apply the approach from the book Growing Artificial Societies, which is basically generative modeling of social organization, but I don't think that approach has a lot of academic support.
    • pertymcpert 8y ago
      How do you think people in dense European cities do it? Hint, life is way better there.
• karmelapple 8y ago
  I don’t know if research exists for this, but I wonder how much of the influence of people moving from rural or suburban areas in the USA to urban areas in the USA contributes to additional cars in US cities. I grew up in a suburban area, and even though I live in a dense city now, having a car still seems mandatory to me somewhere deep in my brain, even though I know I could now get by with the occasional zipcar. Suburban areas typically require a car since public transportation is nonexistent, and growing up in an environment for 20 years sure can condition someone’s preferences. I wonder how many people truly like driving? And where’s the line lie between “I am willing to drive” and “I am willing to not drive” ?
  • themagician 8y ago
    It’s a huge factor contributing to income inequality as well. In a car free city you’d have to have affordable housing because otherwise you’d have no service people, since they wouldn’t be able to commute.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • danjayh 8y ago
      Ironically, drives to eliminate cars typically disproportionately negatively impact poor people. Wealthy people value their time over money, and so tend to retain their cars even when faced with higher costs. Poorer people will give up their cars to save money in exchange for spending hundreds of additional hours per year walking and commuting on public transit. In an ideal world, yes, they'd move closer to their jobs. In the real world, they'll commute, have to make multiple transfers between different modes of transportation, and lose precious hours from their days. This is particularly of a great impact to lower-income folks since they can't claim back those hours by hiring out things like cooking, cleaning, and maintenance. Affordable, efficient point-to-point transportation is of great benefit to this class.
      • afiori 8y ago
        This is the reason why a cultural transformation is needed, cars are a local maxima for mass transportation, but there are much better and viable options
• zaroth 8y ago
  I assume you don’t have children?
  • adrianN 8y ago
    People in the Netherlands for example manage just fine with cargo bikes and public transport.
    • zaroth 8y ago
      I wasn’t responding to a comment about the Netherlands.
    • dbdjfjrjvebd 8y ago
      Holland is flat and the winters are mild. Try getting a cargo bike up a 200 climb in minus temperatures. It is not something I do every day.
      • pi-rat 8y ago
        Electric bikes are getting more and more popular here in Norway (and we got hills and cold weather). Studded tires and an electric motor doing most of the work helps.
        • dbdjfjrjvebd 8y ago
          I know no one commuting on an electric bike...
          • mvanbaak 8y ago
            a LOT of people in eg. Amsterdam use them daily. And I see more and more of those every morning and afternoon when I cycle to/from work.
          • dorian-graph 8y ago
            I know a couple who do in Oslo, and I’ve seen others.
• rootusrootus 8y ago
  Cities existed before cars, and had horses crapping all over the place.
  • hannasanarion 8y ago
    Dunno about you, but I've never seen electric bicycle poop.
    • rootusrootus 8y ago
      A world with only bicycles sounds like just another variation of hell, not an improvement.
• benj111 8y ago
  Hatred... is a strong word. I agree the balance is completely out of whack, but hatred? Are there really no redeeming qualities? Ps you've advocated taxing petrol, but EVs are now a thing. Pay per mile road pricing?
  • themagician 8y ago
    I don’t find many real redeeming qualities. Cars allow me to get stuff. That’s about it. I hate having one now. Even when I lived in the city I hated that they were still there. I’ve spent some time in Belgium’s city center which has few to to cars, and small beach towns with few to no cars. It’s amazing. You spend a few days in an area with no cars and think to yourself, “Wow. Wow. It doesn’t have to be like that. What are we even doing?” To me the car is just a phony sense of freedom and control. It drives the modern economic engine. But at great cost.
    • benj111 8y ago
      "It drives the modern economic engine" Yeah kind of what I was thinking. I suppose if you could reliably separate car a business tool from car as personal transport. I fear you'd just get everyone setting up as 'builders' and 'delivery drivers' though. I also think that outside of dense city centres you'd run into competition and economy of scale issues. If you're only now within range of one shop for x, prices are likely to increase in short order. And that shop will have less shoppers.
      • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        >If you're only now within range of one shop for x, prices are likely to increase in short order. And that shop will have less shoppers. This is one issue that the (usually upper middle class or better) car-free advocates completely ignore that really ticks me off. I don't want people who don't have much money to have to choose between spending that money somewhere local but overpriced and taking a bus across town to go somewhere that actually gives them a good value. I grew up somewhere that is almost an island and when there's little competition (everyone has to choose between the same few local options) all the businesses turn into rent-seeking scumbags. I remember when we used to leave that dump to visit relatives we'd always do our shopping on the way back because the non-local supermarkets were cheaper. When I go visit my parents I still ask if they want me to bring anything from Walmart.
• 8ytecoder 8y ago
  Market st is already a no-go for private cars for many blocks. As much as I hate the scooters that go around in the sidewalks and then park haphazardly blocking the path for disabled people, they did reduce the traffic around Bart stations quite a bit. If it's easy to use the alternative, people do take it. There are a few who'd never leave their precious cars but most others care about the commute and not necessarily the mode. Every metro region in the country must be a unified under a single transportation agency. They should have enough power to force major changes. If transportation is designed at one level above a single city (esp in a metro area), there could be a lot of efficiencies that can be derived. E.g, coordination between bus and the subway system to pick up passengers within a few minutes of disembarking from the train. Expanded subway coverage for arterial routes at least. Mini buses instead of big ones for feeder routes - with increased frequency. This is not uncommon outside the US btw. Next up is zoning changes. Local groceries must be encouraged. There should be space kept aside every few blocks and it shouldn't be just a liquor shop - there should be explicit guarantees on providing basic amenities and produce. Small scale restaurants must be allowed in all areas. This reduces the need to go too far for regular shopping. Then, increase gas tax - don't tie it to gas price. Calculate based on the needs of costs of highway maintenance and public transportation needs. Use that to provide subsidies for public transport.
  • danjayh 8y ago
    Why should public transit be paid for by automobiles? Let the users of each service pay for what they consume. Cars pay for roads, maintenance, highway patrol, etc. Public transit users pay for rail, buses, dedicated lanes, etc. Forcing automobile users to pay for public transit obscures the true societal cost of implementing public transit just as much as using tax revenues outside of gas/license taxes for roads obscures the true cost of driving private cars.
    • so33 8y ago
      >Why should public transit be paid for by automobiles? Let the users of each service pay for what they consume. Why should anyone pay for anything they don't use? I understand this is a fairly common position to take in general, but this situation is not unique to public transit. Regardless, true cost of driving private cars is already obscured beyond just for road construction and maintenance. Free or subsidized municipal on-street parking, below market rates, is one big example.
• tubbs 8y ago
  > I wish the cost of gasoline was high enough to internalize all the costs and change behavior. Like really high. A dollar a mile. We are slaves to the automobile in so many ways. I get that you're speaking in anger and ignorance instead of reason, but this happening any time soon would spell so more problems than it would cause. Have you ever traveled outside of a population dense location? The automobile will go by the wayside in its own time, just like the horse and buggy, but we're slaves to the automobile because (outside of population-dense areas) the automobile is an incredibly valuable tool. I expect big cities to follow Oslo's direction, and while the time passes, cars will become more efficient and quieter.
  • gotocake 8y ago
    If you’re not living in the Bay Area, this is not a conversation this comes up very much. People tend to love their cars, and the freedom it gives them, and frankly that doesn’t seem to be changing outside of some cities which were built in medieval times and suit walking better. A lot of “every thinking person believes X” topics you find here simply don’t exist on any significant scale outside of this bubble. My point being, for armchair futurists who predict the death of the automobile, it tends to be a serious passion. Arguing with these people tends to be fruitless, because more than anything they want to preach. I try to avoid it myself, because right or wrong, desirable or undesirable, there is way too much money to be made selling cars for the business model to fall, short of being confronted with a superior replacement (a la cars vs. horses). There are more productive uses of limited lifespans than... this.
    • pertymcpert 8y ago
      Uh, this comes up quite a bit in Europe too. You say the Bay Area is a bubble and yet you seem trapped in it all the same.
      • blattimwind 8y ago
        The split is fairly similar though. "All cars aught banned"-type of folks only live in larger cities.
• ip26 8y ago
  I want it too. Unfortunately we are many decades away in the USA, at minimum. I used to be more optimistic, but I took a trip to southern Europe, with the narrows streets, busses, subways, trains, tiny cars, and everything. It was great, traveled thousands of miles and never got in a car- but it was a dash of cold water on how big the gap is. Fundamental things like the width of our roads & land used for parking practically double the size of towns, making walking and biking far less competitive right out the gate.
• danjayh 8y ago
  I'm amazed that so many people who consider themselves inclusive in their thoughts don't realize how exclusionary anti-automobile policies are. As someone who suffers from mild arthritis, the trip to the back of a Wal-Mart can be painful for me, and a walk or bike ride across a city block absolutely foreboding. On the bad days, even standing in line at a checkout for an extended period of time can send my knees and hips into a painful state (and the thought of riding across town standing on a scooter, frankly, horrifies me). Cars and the point-to-point transit that they offer are a GODSEND for me and many other people who are somewhat mobility restricted, but not so bad that we need wheelchairs or crutches. They enable me to live a very normal life that would be impossible in a heavily pedestrian optimized environment. The fact that you don't even consider some of the alternatives as viable - automated shared cars, electric cars, strong hybrids ... all of which solve the problems you identified (wasted space on parking, pollution, etc.) leads me to believe that you actually just hate cars, and not any of the (solvable) problems that are caused by their current embodiment. Consider that everyone's circumstances are not the same as yours. Have some compassion for your fellow humans. EDIT: To those who are saying that we'll still allow those with disabilities to have cars: many states require that you be able to walk less then 200 feet to get a disabled plate. On most days, I can walk at least 500 ... so by almost all standards, I do not qualify. However, walking 5-600 feet doesn't get you far enough to survive without a car. If the world were to go this route, we would have to reconsider what constitutes 'disabled'. Another thought that surfaces is that with my 36-37" inseam (I wear 36" pants because that's as big as they sell, but they're really still too short), I do not fit in most public transit, and most cars. Thankfully, because cars are privately owned, I can pick from the 2 or 3 models that I actually fit in. A public transit world is a world that marginalizes peoples who are in the last 5-10% in terms of height/weight.
  • adrianN 8y ago
    I'd be completely okay with cars for disabled people, deliveries, and people who have to transport a lot of stuff like tools for their job. But >90% of all cars on the road are driven by able-bodied people with nothing but themselves to transport.
    • 8y ago
• _zskd 8y ago
  I agree with this so much. I am sick and tired of subsidizing drivers. I am done with the irresponsible and unsustainable policy of ignoring costs associated with road maintenance in the United States. I am done with building roads through lower-class neighborhoods and damaging their property values. End welfare for drivers. Make the drivers pay their own way.
  • rayiner 8y ago
    I strongly agree. Also let's end welfare for upper middle class commuters by ending subsidies for rail transit. Here in D.C., taxpayers subsidize Metro commuters, who are typically white collar and make more than the average taxpayer in DC/MD/VA. Why would you expect anything else, given the stratospheric price of housing near Metro stations? Low-income people take the bus. That's what we should subsidize.
    • mamurphy 8y ago
      Life and government isn't this simple. Subsidizing metro draws in high-income earners and thus builds the economy and increases tax revenues. The stratospheric price of housing near Metro stations increases real estate tax revenues as well.
      • inferiorhuman 8y ago
        The increased cost of housing near transit also reflects that various costs associate with sprawl no longer have to be funded (e.g commute time, roads).
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • apendleton 8y ago
      Both rail and bus are heavily subsidized -- buses come nowhere close to paying for either their operating or capital expenses with fare revenue. It is probably true that if you broke down the WMATA budget and looked at the degree of subsidy per passenger mile on rail vs. bus, you'd get a higher number for rail than bus, but it's tricky to do an apples-to-apples comparison because the rail figure will include the cost of the stations, tunnels, and track, whereas the bus figure won't include the cost of the roads, but the government pays for the roads too, just not as a line item within the transit agency. The reason to subsidize rail is that if you didn't, many people wouldn't take the train, they would drive or take the bus, and we don't have the road capacity for that. Rail is an exceptionally efficient means of moving lots of people with not very much space, and drivers and bus riders benefit from those people having been moved off of the roads in the form of reduced traffic.
• rayiner 8y ago
  The externalized costs of automobiles almost certainly are not a dollar a mile. The estimate is $3.80 per gallon: https://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/08/true-cost-emissions-factored-gasoline-cost-3-80-gallon-pump-price-new-research-finds https://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/08/true-cost-emissions-fac.... For a typical small SUV getting 30 mpg these days, it's $0.13 per mile.
  • adrianN 8y ago
    What's the current cost of sucking a gallon of gasoline's worth of CO2 out of the atmosphere?
    • thereisnospork 8y ago
      Couple of bucks. A gallon of gas emits 20-lbs of CO2, or ~1% of a tonne. Cost to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is roughly a few hundred $/tonne to about 70$/tonne depending on who's doing the estimating.
  • apendleton 8y ago
    That's the cost of the emissions. What about the inefficient use of road space that comes from having highways full of single-occupant vehicles at rush hour, the larger roads required by said inefficiencies per given unit throughput as compared to buses or rail, and the opportunity costs of the land for the bigger roads or the money to build them?
• dahfizz 8y ago
  The problem is that this anti-car sentiment only works in dense urban areas. Many millions of Americans are a 20+ minute drive from work with absolutely zero options for public transportation. > Cities existed without cars Yeah, and if you ever had to leave the city, it was a multi-day dangerous journey by horse-back to get anywhere. Again, there is an argument to reduce cars in big, dense cities. But making driving cost $1/mile would cause irreprable harm to the lower-middle and lower class who have to drive many miles to thier minimum wage job.
  • munk-a 8y ago
    I am fully in the hate-cars bandwagon and I don't drive myself, but I have no objection to any sorts of park-n-ride style solutions. Cars are very time-efficient for long journies and they aren't terribly fuel-inefficient for those long journies considering how much infrastructure investment would be needed to establish good rail service, but within a city cars are silly. I've always wanted to establish high tolls on entering dense urban areas, you can leave all the roads as-is but introduce a high tax on driving that last mile and supply free busing to compensate, some rich dudes will still drive everywhere but after a few years of high tolls you could probably ban cars outright with good public support.
    • njarboe 8y ago
      If all limited access roads were toll roads that kept traffic stoppage to a minimum (trying for zero) by active pricing, the world would be such a better place in many ways. People could plan much better for how long a trip would take, people would have much shorter travel times, investors would have some idea of the revenue potential of roads so they could decide to build more of them. The key would be to have the toll be quite low generally and make most of its money when there is high demand. In many countries the tolls are set to maximize revenue and this usually done by having a very high toll and almost empty roads. What would better for most people would be almost free roads (trucks always pay something as they are what wears out roads) and charge when the road is getting close to slowing down. Also: Maybe it is a good idea to let your highly productive people (rich dudes) be able to get around cities quickly. They will be even more productive that way.
• coding123 8y ago
  While I think it's easy to get on board mentally picturing a landscape without cars in most cities - what are we saying, that only young people that can walk or ride bikes are allowed? Would this future of yours have any consideration for the accessibility challenged or elderly people?
  • iknowstuff 8y ago
    I think accessible public transit (as in, floor flush with the sidewalk), especially trams, and personal electric vehicles like scooters or wheelchairs, have solved that issue in Europe.
• iRobbery 8y ago
  "Cities existed before without cars" Without engine powered vehicles yes, though man power and horse powered (with the loads of poop that come from the animals) were there though.. (unrelated note, personally, imho, i dislike horses more then cars)
  • hk__2 8y ago
    > Without engine powered vehicles yes, though man power and horse powered (with the loads of poop that come from the animals) were there though That’s not true. The electrical subway predates the personal car by a couple decades. Paris, France, and its suburb had 108 (electric) tramway lines in 1900. Autobuses were all over the place when the first “modern” cars first appeared in the city.
• maxxxxx 8y ago
  Agreed. LA took any love I had for cars out of me. Now I just want to live somewhere quiet where I can walk to places.
  • kkhire 8y ago
    do what I do: live in a walkable part of LA. I live in weho and left my car at my parent's house.
    • maxxxxx 8y ago
      There is still the getting to work problem especially if your partner works in a different area.
• crowdpleaser 8y ago
  As a recent transplant to the bay area, I'm surprised so few people ride motorcycles - I know that it's not tenable for parents and people with medical conditions, but there are so many people here who could. I cut my commute time in half, I got a lightly used motorcycle + gear for less than the price of a used Prius, I get mileage that's comparable to an economy car and performance that rivals that of a performance car. Heck, I even took it to Los Angeles and back over the New Year's and I was surprised at how comfortable I was for the entire trip despite doing ~90 mph in 45 degree weather. In particular, my back would be uncomfortable if I had spent 6 hours in the car, but 6 hours on the bike was great. It's just so cool that a machine that works so well in congested cities can also work so well on the open road. It's not like driving a large sedan or SUV - where the open road is a joy but city driving is terrible. If we could just get 25% of people out of cars and into motorcycles, we could reduce congestion dramatically - https://newatlas.com/motorcycles-reduce-congestion/21420/ https://newatlas.com/motorcycles-reduce-congestion/21420/
  • coding123 8y ago
    When I lived there a buddy on my pool team (when the billiards/pool scene was active and places weren't closing) was a motorcyclist. He lost half his face driving to Santa Cruz because an asshole was going 90 on the 17.
  • nkantar 8y ago
    I ride in LA and agree with you 100%. The whole city has become so much more accessible thanks to lane filtering and splitting since I started that it's hard to imagine giving it up.
  • johngalt 8y ago
    Riding a motorcycle amongst CA drivers is taking on a significant injury risk. The efficiency gains of a motorcycle vs economy car aren't that significant and the emissions are worse.
    • stouset 8y ago
      > Riding a motorcycle amongst CA drivers is taking on a significant injury risk. More than in anywhere else? Citation needed. I ran the numbers for myself. Statistically, the amount of time I save per day by riding a motorcycle in San Francisco heavily outpaces the number of average life-minutes lost due to the risks of riding a motorcycle.
• henriquemaia 8y ago
  Reading your opinion (and not passing any judgment on it), I recalled this excellent sketch on BBC's Big Train comedy show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UjOJy_54DM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UjOJy_54DM
• bytematic 8y ago
  One of Madison Wi main streets is no-car and it's amazing, a great boon to the cities business in that area.
• smsm42 8y ago
  > Cities existed before without cars Nope, their cars were called "horses and carts" (or donkeys, oxen, llamas, camels, etc.). And they were used not because people were idiots, but because walking and carrying stuff on your back has limits, and those limits have been reached by the economy thousands of years ago. And if you think modern cars are dirty, think about what comes out of a horse and where it goes when the horse feels like it. And how much would it cost to own one and maintain it in a working order. Of course, back then most people that weren't rich wouldn't hop the city back and forth because something interesting is happening on the other side, and would buy everything they need at local store or make it themselves. I'm sure homemade wooden shoes are almost as good as Nike. We just have to drop our living standards to medieval times, and we'd be fine with horses and donkeys. Or we can go further back and get rid of them too. Clean pre-industrial living like people lived 10 thousand years ago. I'm sure it was excellent then.
• clairity 8y ago
  as a multimodal traveler, i generally agree with most of the changes that oslo implemented, but let's not make cars villians. fast personal, point-to-point, at-hand, energy-dense transporation is great! and so is having grass and trees with kids and dogs playing. but there's no need to pit them against each other. so besides leaving some low capacity, slow roads above ground, let's put a few high capacity, fast roads underground (we could call them lowways!) along with a bunch of underground parking. sure, it's expensive but in a wealthy high density area like market street, we can afford it. and yes, price in the externalities and use the money to build/maintain. best of all worlds! (better solutions probably exist, so let's find 'em) ps - dockless electric bikes in SF totally beat driving, ride hailing, or public transit for me.
  • sampo 8y ago
    > and so is having grass and trees with kids and dogs playing. but there's no need to pit them against each other. If urban cores were allowed to be built high and dense, to accommodate all those people who prefer to live in dense urban areas, then the grass and trees and backyards of the suburbs would also fit closer to the urban core. Shorter distances even from the suburbs to the core.
  • baddox 8y ago
    > fast personal, point-to-point, at-hand, energy-dense transporation is great! and so is having grass and trees with kids and dogs playing. but there's no need to pit them against each other. Of course. The problem is externalities. If the people enjoying their energy-dense personal transportation aren't incurring the full costs of that transportation, then 1) there will be probably way more of it than there would be in a market with costs internalized and 2) the people who don't use it have a good reason to be upset.
    • deleted 8y ago
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  • BrianHenryIE 8y ago
    > but let's not make cars villians. "Over half of all vehicle trips are between 1 and 10 miles." [1] ~35,000 people die on American roads each year. [2] Let's call a spade a spade. Cars are the villains. The over-reliance on your fast, personal, point-to-point convenience is killing too many people. [1] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/pl08021/fig4_5.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/pl08021/fig4... [2] https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
• dazc 8y ago
  'I wish the cost of gasoline was high enough .... Like really high.' My dad asked recently: 'I don't know how most people can afford to run cars?' I said: 'I'll let you into a secret, they can't.' You'll be surprised how high that cost has to be in order to force a lot of people out of their cars.
• Fins 8y ago
  Small enough pedestrian zones and improved public transit are something cities (especially US cities), the hatred and proposals are exactly what you'd expect to hear from an overpaid young professional with no responsibilities, commute by an electric scooter, food catered at the office and delivered to home by some Munchery. Sure! You might be paid well enough that you won't notice that everything becomes more expensive, and if someone who actually works for a living goes broke because in the real world (as opposed to one where pink unicorns pull wonder-busses from any point A to any point B) they now have to pay $100 a day just to get to work and back home. Let them eat cake? And sure, yes, cities existed before cars. And people lived in caves with no running water, too. Or, maybe more pertinently, people lived just fine (oftentimes better) without a good chunk of "disruption" and "innovation" that comes out of SF/SV. Should we ban them as well? Or maybe tax every Twitter and AirBnB... say a Billion a year to partially cover all the negative externalities? Actually, the last one might be a good idea. /s
• webv 8y ago
  Portland, OR is halfway there already via mis-management. Nearly every parking space in the downtown core is a construction zone, 7am-7pm delivery zone, 15m quickstop, carshare, taxi zone, police/govmint only, etc. (see also: condo bunkers w/ no parking garages b/c everyone who moves to Portland will ride a bike, right?) We have a pilot program for scooter share, multiple car-share options, lots of bike-share stations, light rail stations, even a flippin trolly! So they could easily start with a tight area around Pioneer Square and make it ped/scoot/bike-only then expand it out little by little as the businesses discover it's actually a good thing. But instead we have "vision zero" which is a pretty good description for our city leadership.
• PHGamer 8y ago
  I dont. cars are freedom, especially in the wide spaces of the United States. Sure its crappy commuting for 1-2 hours in traffic in the city but thats because you guys all work in one place and live in another. Public transportation can be shut down but a jeep can go anywhere.
  • kaybe 8y ago
    In Moscow I've seen people use their off-road vehicles to do just that - drive next to the road so as to not be in traffic. I've been told it's illegal, but they still do it.
  • almost_usual 8y ago
    Pretty much this. Limiting cars in metro areas can make sense but it makes zero sense in the rest of the country. If it does happen it will turn into another contentious rural vs urban subject similar to gun rights.
• tom-_- 8y ago
  Hello fellow SF resident. Sounds like you have much experience walking our fair streets. Do you enjoy the strolls across our fecal matter smeared pavement, littered with heroine needles and adorned by snoozing outdoor denizens, who have been known to physically assault pedestrians from time to time?
  • asavadatti 8y ago
    Your argument is disingenuous. Homelessness is a different issue and should be dealt with separately.
    • tom-_- 8y ago
      I never argued that they should be resolved together and there's nothing disingenuous about it. Health and safety are genuine concerns for pedestrians and my point was to illustrate that they are obstacles besides cars to a city's walkability.
  • almost_usual 8y ago
    You live in a city, San Francisco is safe compared to most cities.
  • themagician 8y ago
    Don’t have those problems where I live. Those are mostly isolated SOMA/Mission/Haight problems.
• refurb 8y ago
  Spoken like someone who has the funds to live in some of the most expensive areas of the US, pick and choose their employer, doesn't mind spending money on quick, convenient transportations like Uber or Lyft and can afford to shop a high-end grocery stores. For the average person in the US, who can't live in large cities due to cost, is lucky to have the job that is 25 miles away from home, and has to shop at the Walmart (10 miles in the other direction from home) cars provide a ton of value - in fact, they probably couldn't do without them.
  • TulliusCicero 8y ago
    Your post amounts to: "In an environment designed around cars, people have to drive!" I mean, yeah. There's a reason people in, say, Germany do not really have this problem, and it's because cities and towns there aren't built around the assumption that everyone must have a car.
    • refurb 8y ago
      Last time I was in Europe there were a shit ton of cars too. Sure, maybe the number of car-less people is higher, but it’s far from the car-less Utopia the OP was imagining.
• porpoisely 8y ago
  Manhattan is also perfect for this. You can walk anywhere and it's great exercise and if you need to get anywhere far, the subway is usually 2 or 3 blocks away at most. I could never figure out how so many taxis could exist in such a walkable environment until my coworker took a taxi to go 3 blocks. People love to be lazy, especially when the company is footing the bill. I still don't get why we don't have a light rail system to complement the subway system.
• DoreenMichele 8y ago
  I want this so bad. My hatred for the automobile grows every day. If you really want to see more people walk, then do more walking yourself as a form of basic transit. I've lived without a car for more than a decade. Everywhere I go, people start walking more. As more people start walking, crime goes down. (See Jane Jacobs: "Eyes on the street" is the key to urban safety. This means pedestrians on the street.) Air pollution goes down. Plant life greens up. Locals start having less financial stress. I have had the passing fancy of starting a "Pedestrian Ambassador" program or something. But, eh, I have enough half-baked projects going nowhere that don't pay squat. My life gets better when locals walk more. If you want to see more people walking, be the change you wish to see. And watch it go viral.
  • dingaling 8y ago
    Counterpoint: I've never had a car in five decades. I live in the same town where I grew up. Car use has increased massively and our road into the countryside has recently been 'upgraded' to arterial status, though with no change of infrastructure. Fighting Car Culture takes more than a few people walking.
• etrautmann 8y ago
  Most of Valencia! why are there cars anywhere except crossing valencia from 25th - 16th st? It seems like a natural location for a pedestrian mall with shops and natural area
• asciimov 8y ago
  I live in Texas. My family lives 300 miles away, in Texas, and my last grandparent lives a further 200 miles in the same direction (also in Texas). The two lane highways I take are the only way I would be able to see my family. Passenger trains and airplanes don't go to those places. A bus could get me there, after taking a grand tour of some of the other metro areas in the state. For those of us out here, traveling the two lane blacktop in a gas powered vehicle is the only way we can live or survive.
  • ecshafer 8y ago
    But this is ignoring the fact that the only reason that population structure exists is because of auto dependence. Train lines worked before, they would work again, if people lived more reasonably close to each other so last mile wasn't such an issue.
    • ndnxhs 8y ago
      This sums up most of the issues raised in this thread. Its not expected that everyone walk 40km to the shopping centre. Its expected that you don't go to a shopping centre that's 40km away and instead live close to what is important and shop locally.
      • Fins 8y ago
        And how do you propose to relocate all of these people to live in that urban paradise of yours, where they walk to anything and everything? Are you even going to ask them if they want to? Not everybody wants to live in a big city and values the same conveniences as you do.
        • adrianN 8y ago
          In the same way you relocated them out of cities when cars became common. Slowly and over an extended period of time.
          • 8y ago
• truthwhisperer 8y ago
  Totally agree. I suggest that we exchange each car for one homeless person or one truck for one homeless person with hiv. Inclusive all the All way.
• duchenne 8y ago
  > Cities existed before without cars and I suspect they will exist again after they leave. Sucks that I had to live in the time period with them. I find it interesting that many people don't realize that city with cars have exisited for a very long time. Romans did not pave roads all over Europe just to make it more comfortable for pedestrians. The only difference is that back then, cars where horse-powered. As a result, they were more smelly, poluting, and noisy than now. Also, many farmers, artisans, shop-owner did have cars to transport goods. But, the traffic became really dense only when the population became really dense during the 19th century. The first traffic light was in London in 1868. I have read 19th century articles complaining about traffic jams and bad driver behavior in Paris.
  • dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Romans did not pave roads all over Europe just to make it more comfortable for pedestrians. No, they did it because paving makes roads comparatively weather proof and it sucks to try to maintain a continent spanning empire by military force if rain cuts your lines of movement and supply, not for comfort.
    • duchenne 8y ago
      Yes, but it did also facilitate transport of military equipements and commercial goods using wagons. Sorry, my "just" was not intended to be ironic. Roads were also important for pedestrians.
  • kiliantics 8y ago
    A horse-drawn chariot is nowhere near as noisy and air-polluting as a 4-lane highway or a gridlocked inner city intersection with horns blowing
    • blattimwind 8y ago
      One horse-drawn chariot definitely makes more noise than one car, even when the car goes faster.
• toss1 8y ago
  I came here to say that largely excluding cars from city centers, along with a lot of other walkability/pro-socialization/human-scale-architecture changes is probably critical to reviving vibrant cities as they used to exist. Probably even better because there wouldn't be the problem of all the horse-poop. I genuinely think that this is the key to a new golden age of cities. So, on largely removing cars from cities, I'm with you. But seeing this top post about totally banning cars is absurd, even at the $1/mile proposal, and I'm all for radical steps to reduce climate change. You may have a zero mile telecommute, but most people have to move to where they work. Outside of the cities, a bike isn't even practical. I have a 25mi commute to my office, my spouse 35mi in the opposite direction. I even looked into a motorcycle for it's better mileage and smaller carbon footprint, but rejected it for too dangerous (& I've won championships in DH ski racing and sportscar racing). And I'm not even that rural -- others have longer daily commutes. Unless you've got another system that can transport this scale of people to this scale of locations, your proposal just sounds like an out-of-touch elitest. The key point here is both the last mile problem, and the centralized maintenance problem. Look at the massive commuter transport systems of Boston and NY areas. They are a rolling disaster, almost terminally unreliable, and yet most of the riders still need cars to get to the train station. The build-out to get everyone withing a mile walk of a train station would be insane, even if eminent domain weren't an issue.
• deleted 8y ago
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• skookumchuck 8y ago
  A step in that direction is to block off the city streets during business hours, turning them into walking malls. I've seen some european cities to this. It works well. It's not perfect, though. Some of these will let government vehicles on them, and they do often enough to make it a nuisance, like those annoying electric carts in the airport.
• mymythisisthis 8y ago
  My parents are shocked I don't own a car. I have to remind them that when they bought their first car everything was cheap (cars, insurance, gas), parking was plentiful, and there wasn't much congestion. They still don't get it. Also compare the cars made in the 1950s and 60s to today. The Citreon, the Mini, the VW Beattle, Fiat. They were lucky to get 50hp and up to highway speed. Todays cars are like personal jets. Everyone is rolling around in their own personal jet.