3 ms·
Again, this is about density. If you imagine an urban core in the center and a disk of suburbs around it, the availability of housing rises with the square of
by rsj_hn 7y ago
Again, this is about density.
If you imagine an urban core in the center and a disk of suburbs around it, the availability of housing rises with the square of the radius from the core, and the cost of providing a rail/bus line to the core will grow with the square of the radius, but the cost of giving each person an individual vehicle grows with the population. So there is a density in which personal vehicles make sense and a density in which rail lines make sense, and this trade off is determined by the relative cost of providing individual cars versus rail lines. But because of this squaring effect, it's always the case that at some distance from the radius you need personal transportation.
While Holland is notable for its bike usage, it has 440 cars per 1000 people, or more than 80% of households own 1 car even in Holland, and 30% of Dutch households own 2 or more cars (See Figure 15, https://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object/uuid:a33eb3a5-5f30-4744-934e-613644fd14d2/datastream/OBJ/download https://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object/uuid:a33eb3a5...)
Now maybe in the future there will be a fleet of self driving cars that you can call up -- who knows? Maybe electric bikes. There are many options, but density remains key in this trade off, and it's important to realize that different households have different circumstances.
I don't own a car, I live in San Francisco, but I realize this is because I am rich enough to live in the more expensive urban core, and that I am wealthy enough to be able to walk to stores staffed by people who are earning less money than I am and have to drive into the city in order to serve me coffee, food, alcohol so that I can just walk to their business. I am also dependent on goods being trucked in from far away so that I can walk up and buy them. So, it would be a bit inconsiderate for me to tell those people who can't afford to live in the dense core that they need to do without their cars and share my lifestyle. They are doing the best they can under the circumstances.