14 ms·

Don't let be fooled by the "tourist impression". Staying for some days isn't the same as living in a place, involving commuting to work, bringing children to sc

• oefrha 7y ago
  Having moved from somewhere with working public transportation to the United States (and having lived here for close to a decade), I can assure you it’s not tourist impression.
  • codebolt 7y ago
    How many kids do you have? Any more than one and car becomes necessary in my experience.
    • namesbc 7y ago
      Imagine a world where instead of having to strap your screaming kids in to a car seat for an hour drive in traffic, you walked along a pedestrian street, your kids kicking a ball around, you visit a couple stores, see your kids off to their school, and then walk a couple more blocks to work. When school is over your kids walk safely back home by themselves because there aren't cars out there threatening their lives. This sounds way less stressful than your kids being dependent on you and your car for everything they need.
      • konart 7y ago
        I don't thing this is what codebolt was talking about. If you can one kid - there is no problem really. Walk him or her to school in the morning, ask grandmother to bring them back etc. When you have more than one - it is entrily possible they will end up going to different schools and after the school one of them had to go to the music shool and the other one to his hockey team or something etc etc. You simply can't do this without a car. I was the only child in the family so we never needed a car for this kind of scenario, plus we were living in a relatevely small city (450k), so public transport was more than enough for me, but this is not always the case. >and then walk a couple more blocks to work. yeah, now imaging you have two of them going to two different schools, each 40 minutes walking distance from home, different directions and your office in somewhere else too.
        • adrianh 7y ago
          It’s definitely possible without a car — people here in Holland do it all the time. Maybe qualify your answer to “suburban America” and similarly (non)designed places? Point is, it’s not fundamentally impossible to live with 2+ kids and no car.
          • konart 7y ago
            I live in Russia though. When I went to school (1995-2005) I lived in a 450k city, now it is Moscow. And Moscow have much better public transport than many other places. My point was about little kids, you won't send them off to a public transport. We are not talking about teenagers here. Not me at least.
            • ido 7y ago
              Sounds like a problem of where you live(d) rather than intrinsic to cars or lack thereof. I have 2 kids and live in Berlin and never had nor needed a car. I previously lived for 8 years in Vienna and the same holds true there. The same will be true to most or all decently-sized western European cities.
        • oefrha 7y ago
          As have been pointed out by multiple people, kids are perfectly capable of taking public transit themselves. Kids under ten might need to be accompanied by a guardian, but there are usually two parents in a household, and some grandparents will help, too. Caretakers can be hired in certain cases. Some family “pool” their kids together too, not unlike in the U.S. where parents would take turns to drive neighbors’ kids. Also, having cars but no public transit doesn’t change the fundamental equation and doesn’t improve the situation much (especially considering the fact that in many places driving in the morning rush hours might even be slower than taking the subway), in fact quite the opposite, teenagers are wholly dependent on parents when they could have been independent. > You simply can’t do this without a car. I grew up like that. People have been doing that for decades.
          • 7y ago
    • oefrha 7y ago
      Define “necessary”. Of course I would agree it’s necessary in the U.S., but that’s saying very little.
    • r00fus 7y ago
      Are you talking about shuttling your kids to school? I know in Japan most kids 6y+ just take themselves on public transport or walking. How is it done in other countries?
      • mkagenius 7y ago
        India: School buses come and pick them up. Rest 50% parents drop them on 2-wheelers and car. Close by kids walk to the school with friends if older and with parents if younger.
      • atoav 7y ago
        I walked to school till I could cycle there (~3km). My parents would drive me only if it was pouring or blizzarding. (Central Alps, Countryside)
        • Double_a_92 7y ago
          Can confirm for Switzerland. Primary school was walking with friends for 2-3km, bikes were also allowed for older kids. Middle and high schools are usually farther away. So public bus it is. In the morning there are extra buses for students, but they just stop at the normal stops of the line.
      • martin_a 7y ago
        Germany: Most (all?) cities have special tickets for pupils. There are separate bus lines in the morning which pick up the pupils from the bus stops and take them directly to school. In the afternoon there are some special lines too, otherwise you just take a normal line with your pupil ticket. That's at least how it worked in my time, like 20+ years ago.
        • hef19898 7y ago
          Still does generally. Sometimes city administration is picky in granting these tickets, but my city is a special case when it comes to money anyway. In Munich for example the subway is usually crowded with children around 7:30.
    • Sharlin 7y ago
      In my experience as a kid in a three-child family without a car, it worked fine. Though agreed that it would've been trickier if any of us had had some gear-intensive hobby like ice hockey.
    • moksly 7y ago
      I have one, I live in our second largest city (Aarhus). I’ve lived in Aalborg and Odense as well (two other relatively large cities by Danish standards). I’m 36 and I’ve never taken a drivers license because I’ve never needed it.
      • boohoojangles 7y ago
        I am sorry but I've noticed to be a bit different in Copenhagen. I've been living here for 3 years, and the number of cars have grown quite a lot to my perception, specially between families (maybe just because they are luxury cars and Teslas everywhere). I am 36 have one little child and feel like I am missing a bit of the country because I don't have a car, even if I have made few trips by train. Also, a lot of my decisions are now driving by whether it is a short walk distance from home or not. Public transport in Copenhagen is respectful but a bit slow in my opinion (I am from NY), specially if I want to go to the edge of the city or suburbs - which I might want when I decide to settle roots here and buy myself a home (prices in Copenhagen are all time high).
        • ghaff 7y ago
          You're hitting on a point that drives a lot of the disconnects in these sorts of discussions. There are a lot of places where you don't need to own a car or even have a drivers license. And you constrain your activities accordingly. You may rely to some degree on friends with cars (though this tends to become less and less practical as you get older). Or you rent cars as needed if you have a license. But you probably just tend to forgo activities that involve driving out to the country every other weekend or hauling a lot of gear around or visiting people you can't get to easily with public transit. As a visitor, I rarely have a rental car in SF (and never if I'm solely going to be in the city) for example. But it means I am going to be pretty much staying in the city rather than taking a hike somewhere for half a day. I do know a couple that live in SF without a car but they do short-term and longer-term rentals all the time.
          • oefrha 7y ago
            There’s a world of difference between having a car and using it sparingly (or just renting one sparingly) and having to have a car for every goddamn thing in life. Many friends of mine back in my home country have cars, but they don’t need to drive if they want to say grab a snack at 11pm. For me however, the barrier of stepping out of my home is pretty high, and the decision to anything unplanned and unnecessary is usually why bother. I guess it’s different for people who enjoy driving, but I don’t.
    • sqren 7y ago
      To the people who say you need a car if you have kids - this is how we do it in Copenhagen: https://live.staticflickr.com/3662/3465284112_5aab494014_b.jpg https://live.staticflickr.com/3662/3465284112_5aab494014_b.j... A transporter bike can carry 2-3 kids easily. It's the most convenient, cheap and healthy option. As soon as the kids are old enough they get their own bike. Of course, it's convenient to have access to a car a couple of times a month. But definitely not on a daily basis.
      • flexie 7y ago
        Not sure why people are down voting you, but I think this time it may not be the general HN negativity, but simply because they think you are attempting a bad joke. This is exactly how many parents in Copenhagen drive their kids around. I would say that around half of all young parents in Copenhagen get a transporter bike like this one. We were leaving Copenhagen for America shortly after our youngest was born but otherwise we would have biked the kids around as well.
        • briandear 7y ago
          We have transporters in the US, they are called cars. And they have air conditioning. The entire world doesn’t have to be just like the Netherlands. Try riding one of those transporter bikes in the Colorado mountains in winter or in south Florida in the summer.
          • markus92 7y ago
            That's why they invented e-bikes.
            • boohoojangles 7y ago
              Those cargo bikes, like Nihola aren't that cheap though.
          • sqren 7y ago
            Sure, this doesn't work everywhere. But think of Los Angeles. Very high population density, apart from a few hills it's mostly flat and the climate is nice. To get to any place 1 mile away I'd have to go by car. Often there is congestion and I have to wait in traffic. Plus, there is no direct route to the place so have to go a huge detour - perhaps even shortly on a highway. This could be so much easier and healthier by bike - if the city was built for this. Bottom-line: some cities can never be be great for bikes. But most can but just aren't.
    • CalRobert 7y ago
      Only one, but we moved to the city to the country (massively lower CoL) and having to strap the damn kid in to the car every time we go anywhere is pretty annoying. We really miss being able to walk places.
  • baby 7y ago
    Same here. Moved from Europe to SF. I missed taking walks and seeing plenty of things. Things are really quiet here.
    • oefrha 7y ago
      Can’t be that bad in SF. I first lived in SV then in Greater NY Area, but not in the cities. In either case there’s like one or two small grocery stores within walking distance, I can’t even do proper shopping without a car, unless I’m willing to bike for forty minutes or more in the two-feet-wide bike lanes (sometimes nonexistent) without any separation from motor traffic. (And in the latter area, should I choose to bike, I would be the only cyclist in miles.)
• hvidgaard 7y ago
  Often the school is within biking distance of where you live, or they can take the bus - contrary to what many Americans think, even 6 year olds are capable of doing this alone, and they will not be kidnapped. Commuting to work usually involves getting on the bus/subway only a short walk away. It's more stress free than sitting in traffic.
• hnnsj 7y ago
  If anything, the pros of walkability and good public transport compounds over time in daily life.
• adrianN 7y ago
  American cities definitely don't look nice as a tourist. SF for example is terrible if you don't Uber everywhere.
  • te_chris 7y ago
    I didn’t particularly love SF, but this is a weird view. We spent 5 days there walking most places with the occasional (unimpressive) PT trip. It was fine. The Tenderloin is certainly sketchy, but the city is very walkable and quite nice to walk around due to the hills and they way they reveal views of the bay.
  • virgilp 7y ago
    Really? SF is one of the best, IMO. You can actually take long walks, it actually has a subway (plus busses, trams), it has sidewalks almost everywhere..... sure, less parks than one would like/ a bit too much concrete, lots of homeless people, etc. but hey, it's a big USA city, what did you expect? Compare it to e.g. the nearby San Jose - SF is so much better that it's not even funny. What US city would you consider more "walkable"/ tourist friendly? MAYBE NY, if we only include Manhattan and nothing else.
    • boohoojangles 7y ago
      Agreed. For a week or so tourism SF, Manhattan, Seattle downtown, Boston. Cities I can think to not be very walkable are LA and DC perhaps.
    • adrianN 7y ago
      You can walk in SF, I also did it, but the difference is that you don't really see much of the city if you do, compared to Berlin, London, or Tokyo. In those cities you can go from pretty much anywhere in the city to anywhere in less than an hour with public transport and on foot. Less than half an hour if you restrict yourself to the touristy center area. That is just not possible in SF.
      • ginko 7y ago
        >You can walk in SF, I also did it, but the difference is that you don't really see much of the city if you do What are you talking about? The first time I visited SF I just stumbled upon Haight-Ashbury and Japantown by walking around.
• ronnie_fr3 7y ago
  Public transportation is also full of impolite people, un-assimilated people etc... which makes the commute very unpleasant. Taking the bus/metro everyday at the worse hour, in summer, with rednecks all around you is definitely not the good side of transportation. As soon as i'll get a car, i'll never get back into public transportation
  • wozniacki 7y ago
    This and a dozen very closely related and tangential things concerning safety, sanitation, hygiene & propriety of people using public transportation is the reason people like me would never opt for it. Unless standards in those aspects of public transit were raised to such a high degree that they were no longer a threat or annoyance, a car would be exponentially more preferable. I think people on HN seem to underestimate how small of a cross section, the fashionable opinions on HN appeal to and how unrealistic they are, once you bring into full view the jarring realities of modern life and how people cope with them.
    • tarsinge 7y ago
      Keep in mind this is specific to the US, in Paris you have a lot of suits going to the office using the public transportation (me included), though it depends on the line and the hour of the day.
      • agent008t 7y ago
        Is it not more out of necessity though? Would those people not prefer to drive if that was a viable option? In Paris specifically, the public transportation is fairly unpleasant - a lot of homeless people, antisocial behavior, bad odours, etc. Not sure how it is during rush hour, but probably uncomfortably packed too, so the ideal that Americans seem to have of sitting in a pleasant train reading a book or doing some work doesn't quite apply.
        • tarsinge 7y ago
          It depends but for me definitely not. I have a car and much prefer public transports instead of having to be stuck in traffic then having the hassle of parking the car. I feel way more free in the city without my car, and the journey is faster as well. You are right that it’s quite packed in the rush hour, but you can still read a book standing. Regarding the other issues you cite it really depends of the line. The one I take regularly (RER A) is very calm and clean. And keep in mind that there are more than 1 million passengers every day. Touristic areas are certainly problematic but it’s a completely different issue (to put it simply a lot of touristic areas in Paris are dirty and/or in sketchy neighborhoods to start with. Parisians usually don’t go or work there). Source: taking public transports nearly everyday since more than 15 years in the area. I love my car but for road trips and going to the countryside.
• neuronic 7y ago
  Spent 6 years in the US as a European. By far the worst part on a daily basis was the missing public transportation due to the enormous focus on cars. Many towns didn't even attempt to be accessible to anyone without a car. I sometimes waited for hours in NY state blizzards to catch a bus before I was able to afford a car. I walked 2-3 hours to a mall and to Walmart when all other students went home for break. Bus service was irregular and spotty. We have shittier bus services in small towns and villages as well and people often use cars for convenience. But public transport is still present at a minimum level. I honestly don't get this dependence and focus on cars in the US. Must be some former Detroit lobbyism that led to this.
  • noobermin 7y ago
    There's an old conspiracy, although its accuracy is debatable, google the "General Motors streetcar conspiracy." Another potential possibility is many cities scrapped their streetcars for spare metal during WWII. Along with that, market forces and lobbying and policy by people like Robert Moses, the current form of America was created.
    • Dobbs 7y ago
      They lost court cases over it, I don't think it is fair to call its accuracy debatable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy#Court_cases,_conviction,_and_fines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
      • jefftk 7y ago
        The debatable aspect is how much of an impact it had. Many other cities without a similar conspiracy also got rid of their streetcars.
    • iguy 7y ago
      These things all happened. But a huge part is simply that people live in suburbs built at a time when people could afford cars. So they did. Just as their grandparents moved out to districts served by streetcars as soon as they could, for the same reasons -- affordable floor area, cleaner air, less noise. The central part of most EU cities is pre-1914, when cars were a curiosity. And for decades after that, cars were nowhere near as affordable to citizens as they were in the US, because the US was just much richer in (say) 1960.
• JDiculous 7y ago
  I've been for the last 6 months, spending maybe half that time living with a Korean family. I think I'm past the "tourist" phase. Also I only mentioned Korea because I happen to be there right now, but functional transportation and not needing a car is also prevalent in Japan and much of Europe. America is pretty unique in its sprawl and car-dependence.