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Improving life in cities is a matter of fixing existing problems, like poor public transport and pollution from combustion engines and heating. Building a "feel

Improving life in cities is a matter of fixing existing problems, like poor public transport and pollution from combustion engines and heating. Building a "feel good" fantasy around the hatred of cars isn't going to improve anything, it'll just replace the current best choice for individual transport with something inferior, as well as destroy the economy (which depends on roads for logistics and public services).

benj111 8y ago
I don't think its a hatred of cars. Its just cars are so entrenched in western cultures that its easy to overlook all the problems. All those things you cited are all exacerbated by the car. Electric cars will solve the pollution issue, but they are still cars, with all the issues they bring.
- lazyjones 8y ago
  > I don't think its a hatred of cars. Its just cars are so entrenched in western cultures that its easy to overlook all the problems. They are entrenched for a reason: because they are extremely useful. Without cars and the individual transport methods they superseded, many of our cities wouldn't even exist. What this and many other articles do, is to decide first what the problem should be and then build a case around it to show it in a bad light. That's not how you improve life in cities, it's just how you get rid of cars and with them all the benefits you've overlooked. Proof: you can get all the benefits of cars without the drawbacks by putting all the infrastructure for cars underground and using EV. None of these "visionaries" consider that, because they hate cars.
  - benj111 8y ago
    I don't think there are any cities that wouldn't exist without cars, the shape of cities would change yes, but that is one of the problems of cars. Cars are useful yes, doesn't mean we shouldn't question them. Just like we should question trains, bikes etc. Re putting cars underground. Yes you could, are you going to support the taxes to pay for it? "What this and many other articles do, is to decide first what the problem should be and then build a case around it to show it in a bad light." Why don't you decide on the merits of the argument rather than perceived motivation?
- LoSboccacc 8y ago
  those utopia still haven't solve some basic problems: if one looks for work accessible to his housing without cars and relying only to transit, he'll be disadvantaged on the marked compared to one with a car that can choose his working environment freely. "but one can just relocate near the new job!" - yes, if you are a single income family, otherwise the partner has to change job too (and even then changing school to children mid year isn't optimal) and the dual applies: want to grow your family? you cannot switch home freely, you're limited to pick those on some transit to both the couple existing jobs.
  - benj111 8y ago
    I didn't mention utopia. I did say "Its just cars are so entrenched in western cultures that its easy to overlook all the problems" Eg in a society dominated by cars, there are going to be people without cars that can't easily get to work. You didn't have that problem pre car, and no one complains about not being able to get to work easily because they don't have a helicopter. Cars create sprawl, and create a situation where you need a car.
    - lazyjones 8y ago
      > in a society dominated by cars, there are going to be people without cars that can't easily get to work. You didn't have that problem pre car, "pre car" people would walk or ride horses/bicycles for hours to work. You can still do that now, or go faster by bus. > Cars create sprawl, Growing cities create sprawl. Necessary infrastructure for large cities (yes, you need fire trucks, garbage trucks, buses) as well as parking space for convenient door-to-door transport slightly increases it.
      - benj111 8y ago
        You'll find that commuting time has stayed fairly stable, we just travel further now. Poor policies and the car create sprawl, not growth. Visit a city that developed pre car, no sprawl. New York was designed with massively wide streets, space for all the things you cite and didn't suffer from sprawl. "parking space for convenient door-to-door transport slightly increases it." Slightly? I can't think of any shop with dedicated parking where the shop is bigger than the car park. Then think of all the houses with a driveway that you pass on the way to work. Each drive is an extra 8ft of frontage, that's an extra 8ft road to be built, and that you need to drive back and forth every day, and that's just the ones you can see.
- Kaiyou 8y ago
  Even with all their problems, they are still the best and often only solution. They move on your schedule, they stop on your schedule, they make it easy to move more stuff than you can otherwise carry from your house to wherever you want to move it. And their cheaper than public transport, too.
  - benj111 8y ago
    Agreed. You can make other options less bad in this regard though. And do things to reduce the problems. You assertion on public transport costs is heavily dependent on unstated assumptions though.
nerdponx 8y ago
Why in the world is this being downvoted? Lack of good public transit alternatives to car ownership is a serious problem in many cities.
helen___keller 8y ago
> Building a "feel good" fantasy around the hatred of cars isn't going to improve anything The alternative is the status quo of the past half century where we pay lip service to city livability then expand our automobile-dependent suburban sprawl outward while adding one bus line that runs once an hour until it's cut for low ridership Defeating the status quo always takes a motivated group, and hatred of cars is a good motivator as any. Cars shouldn't be outright banned, but they should be the most expensive and inconvenient option for commuters (which implies building transit infrastructure)
- lazyjones 8y ago
  > The alternative is the status quo of the past half century There are many alternatives. You can even go live in car-free areas right now and have been able to do so for decades, e.g. the island Hydra in Greece. > Defeating the status quo always takes a motivated group, and hatred of cars is a good motivator as any. I happen to like the status quo and don't want a loud minority to "defeat" it based on their hatred.
  - ahoy 8y ago
    Ah, "you could move to Greece." Practical suggestion for improving the life of the average Atlanta resident!
    - lazyjones 8y ago
      More practical than changing Atlanta to some imaginary car-free utopia. But perhaps the advantages of living in a car-free city aren't that great after all?
      - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        Or the pros/cons don't stack up to a net difference that is big enough to be worth relocating over.
        8y ago
Mister_Snuggles 8y ago
I wish my city was capable of fixing problems, instead they have a knack for making things worse. Right now I take a bus to a transit centre, then another bus to work. This works well for me. There is a new LRT (Light Rail Transit) line under construction with a station in walking distance from my house. The LRT line will go to downtown, but not to my work. So I will take a train downtown, then a bus or another train to work. This all sounds good, except for three problems: 1. Based on information from the City, the train will actually be slower than the express buses that it is replacing. It also doesn't go to the same places which means that some trips that can be done by one bus will require transfers. I expect that with the slower train and worse transfers, it will take about 15 minutes longer to get to work. 2. The city is revamping all the bus routes to fit in with the new train line. Unfortunately the revamp is scheduled to go in "mid-2020" whereas the train is scheduled to start operating in "December 2020". Everything they've shown about the new bus schedule shows no routes from my transit centre to downtown and they haven't said that they will keep the current routes until the train is operating. 3. The city has a very poor track record when it comes to LRT projects. The last line they built was supposed to open in spring 2014, but didn't open until September 2015 and even then was operating in a degraded capacity. Problems with the signalling system are so bad that the city is STILL trying to get it working today. The latest news out of the new LRT project is that they are delayed - nobody is saying by how long but one city Councillor is estimating that they are at least a year behind. If the new bus routes go in and they don't maintain service between my area and downtown, it's quite likely that I will need to start driving again. I don't want to do this, but I'm not going to spend two hours for a trip that was previously 45 minutes either.
- hycaria 8y ago
  What about moving ?
  - Mister_Snuggles 8y ago
    Moving requires a significant amount of effort, time, and money. It's not something I would do lightly. Once the new LRT line is up and running I'll adapt to the differences. Yes, it will be worse than what's currently here, but adapting to it won't present nearly the same hardship that moving would. It's the unknown time between the bus routes changing and the LRT line opening that I'm most concerned about. If this is just a three-month gap, I can deal with driving for that period. If, like other LRT projects, this three-month gap turns into a year and a half then I'll have to think about other options. Hopefully the city will do a phased implementation where they implement the new bus routes but keep the express routes that are being replaced by the LRT until the LRT is ready. This seems like the obvious solution, but for some reason the city is keeping quiet on what they're doing for that interim period.
impostir 8y ago
I do not hate cars; what I hate is the fact that America is built around the car, not a person. For significant portions of the American population, you must have access to car to survive. That is the problem that I hate, not the simple existence of a car

benj111 8y ago

I don't think its a hatred of cars. Its just cars are so entrenched in western cultures that its easy to overlook all the problems. All those things you cited are all exacerbated by the car. Electric cars will solve the pollution issue, but they are still cars, with all the issues they bring.

lazyjones 8y ago
> I don't think its a hatred of cars. Its just cars are so entrenched in western cultures that its easy to overlook all the problems. They are entrenched for a reason: because they are extremely useful. Without cars and the individual transport methods they superseded, many of our cities wouldn't even exist. What this and many other articles do, is to decide first what the problem should be and then build a case around it to show it in a bad light. That's not how you improve life in cities, it's just how you get rid of cars and with them all the benefits you've overlooked. Proof: you can get all the benefits of cars without the drawbacks by putting all the infrastructure for cars underground and using EV. None of these "visionaries" consider that, because they hate cars.
- benj111 8y ago
  I don't think there are any cities that wouldn't exist without cars, the shape of cities would change yes, but that is one of the problems of cars. Cars are useful yes, doesn't mean we shouldn't question them. Just like we should question trains, bikes etc. Re putting cars underground. Yes you could, are you going to support the taxes to pay for it? "What this and many other articles do, is to decide first what the problem should be and then build a case around it to show it in a bad light." Why don't you decide on the merits of the argument rather than perceived motivation?
LoSboccacc 8y ago
those utopia still haven't solve some basic problems: if one looks for work accessible to his housing without cars and relying only to transit, he'll be disadvantaged on the marked compared to one with a car that can choose his working environment freely. "but one can just relocate near the new job!" - yes, if you are a single income family, otherwise the partner has to change job too (and even then changing school to children mid year isn't optimal) and the dual applies: want to grow your family? you cannot switch home freely, you're limited to pick those on some transit to both the couple existing jobs.
- benj111 8y ago
  I didn't mention utopia. I did say "Its just cars are so entrenched in western cultures that its easy to overlook all the problems" Eg in a society dominated by cars, there are going to be people without cars that can't easily get to work. You didn't have that problem pre car, and no one complains about not being able to get to work easily because they don't have a helicopter. Cars create sprawl, and create a situation where you need a car.
  - lazyjones 8y ago
    > in a society dominated by cars, there are going to be people without cars that can't easily get to work. You didn't have that problem pre car, "pre car" people would walk or ride horses/bicycles for hours to work. You can still do that now, or go faster by bus. > Cars create sprawl, Growing cities create sprawl. Necessary infrastructure for large cities (yes, you need fire trucks, garbage trucks, buses) as well as parking space for convenient door-to-door transport slightly increases it.
    - benj111 8y ago
      You'll find that commuting time has stayed fairly stable, we just travel further now. Poor policies and the car create sprawl, not growth. Visit a city that developed pre car, no sprawl. New York was designed with massively wide streets, space for all the things you cite and didn't suffer from sprawl. "parking space for convenient door-to-door transport slightly increases it." Slightly? I can't think of any shop with dedicated parking where the shop is bigger than the car park. Then think of all the houses with a driveway that you pass on the way to work. Each drive is an extra 8ft of frontage, that's an extra 8ft road to be built, and that you need to drive back and forth every day, and that's just the ones you can see.
Kaiyou 8y ago
Even with all their problems, they are still the best and often only solution. They move on your schedule, they stop on your schedule, they make it easy to move more stuff than you can otherwise carry from your house to wherever you want to move it. And their cheaper than public transport, too.
- benj111 8y ago
  Agreed. You can make other options less bad in this regard though. And do things to reduce the problems. You assertion on public transport costs is heavily dependent on unstated assumptions though.

nerdponx 8y ago

Why in the world is this being downvoted? Lack of good public transit alternatives to car ownership is a serious problem in many cities.

helen___keller 8y ago

> Building a "feel good" fantasy around the hatred of cars isn't going to improve anything The alternative is the status quo of the past half century where we pay lip service to city livability then expand our automobile-dependent suburban sprawl outward while adding one bus line that runs once an hour until it's cut for low ridership Defeating the status quo always takes a motivated group, and hatred of cars is a good motivator as any. Cars shouldn't be outright banned, but they should be the most expensive and inconvenient option for commuters (which implies building transit infrastructure)

lazyjones 8y ago
> The alternative is the status quo of the past half century There are many alternatives. You can even go live in car-free areas right now and have been able to do so for decades, e.g. the island Hydra in Greece. > Defeating the status quo always takes a motivated group, and hatred of cars is a good motivator as any. I happen to like the status quo and don't want a loud minority to "defeat" it based on their hatred.
- ahoy 8y ago
  Ah, "you could move to Greece." Practical suggestion for improving the life of the average Atlanta resident!
  - lazyjones 8y ago
    More practical than changing Atlanta to some imaginary car-free utopia. But perhaps the advantages of living in a car-free city aren't that great after all?
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      Or the pros/cons don't stack up to a net difference that is big enough to be worth relocating over.
      - 8y ago

Mister_Snuggles 8y ago

I wish my city was capable of fixing problems, instead they have a knack for making things worse. Right now I take a bus to a transit centre, then another bus to work. This works well for me. There is a new LRT (Light Rail Transit) line under construction with a station in walking distance from my house. The LRT line will go to downtown, but not to my work. So I will take a train downtown, then a bus or another train to work. This all sounds good, except for three problems: 1. Based on information from the City, the train will actually be slower than the express buses that it is replacing. It also doesn't go to the same places which means that some trips that can be done by one bus will require transfers. I expect that with the slower train and worse transfers, it will take about 15 minutes longer to get to work. 2. The city is revamping all the bus routes to fit in with the new train line. Unfortunately the revamp is scheduled to go in "mid-2020" whereas the train is scheduled to start operating in "December 2020". Everything they've shown about the new bus schedule shows no routes from my transit centre to downtown and they haven't said that they will keep the current routes until the train is operating. 3. The city has a very poor track record when it comes to LRT projects. The last line they built was supposed to open in spring 2014, but didn't open until September 2015 and even then was operating in a degraded capacity. Problems with the signalling system are so bad that the city is STILL trying to get it working today. The latest news out of the new LRT project is that they are delayed - nobody is saying by how long but one city Councillor is estimating that they are at least a year behind. If the new bus routes go in and they don't maintain service between my area and downtown, it's quite likely that I will need to start driving again. I don't want to do this, but I'm not going to spend two hours for a trip that was previously 45 minutes either.

hycaria 8y ago
What about moving ?
- Mister_Snuggles 8y ago
  Moving requires a significant amount of effort, time, and money. It's not something I would do lightly. Once the new LRT line is up and running I'll adapt to the differences. Yes, it will be worse than what's currently here, but adapting to it won't present nearly the same hardship that moving would. It's the unknown time between the bus routes changing and the LRT line opening that I'm most concerned about. If this is just a three-month gap, I can deal with driving for that period. If, like other LRT projects, this three-month gap turns into a year and a half then I'll have to think about other options. Hopefully the city will do a phased implementation where they implement the new bus routes but keep the express routes that are being replaced by the LRT until the LRT is ready. This seems like the obvious solution, but for some reason the city is keeping quiet on what they're doing for that interim period.

impostir 8y ago

I do not hate cars; what I hate is the fact that America is built around the car, not a person. For significant portions of the American population, you must have access to car to survive. That is the problem that I hate, not the simple existence of a car