5 ms·

Except ... cars do solve every use case. Suboptimal, yes, but I can get whoever & whatever I need to practically every square kilometer of this country (4200 x

Except ... cars do solve every use case. Suboptimal, yes, but I can get whoever & whatever I need to practically every square kilometer of this country (4200 x 2500) within 50 hours (5400km). Public transport simply can't, because it can't have stations within anywhere close to each of 10,500,000 square kilometers - and even where it does, I'm waiting (maybe hours) for service, and am severely limited in cargo options.

benrbray 7y ago
The thing is, right now our cars-first city planning means that things like groceries, schools, shopping centers, etc. are built far away from where people live so that you NEED a car to get there. Places like CityLab are advocating for future development that places these daily necessities within walking distance of where people live. Cars are great for long-distance travel, but it would be great to spend less time in them!
- burfog 7y ago
  That is mainly a density issue. Most people don't like density. At an ordinary population density, supermarkets are about 2 to 5 miles from each other, which is probably 3 to 7 miles by road. Large stores require many customers in order to remain in business. If supermarkets are closer, then they lose efficiency. Prices must be higher. Variety drops; you'll get just 2 types of cheese and 1 type of apple if the stores have to be smaller. Without a car, large shopping trips become impossible. A young healthy adult can carry 1 or 2 shopping bags about 0.7 mile without major difficulty, but that just isn't enough. Stores would have to shrink by a factor of 20 to 100 in order to get them close enough, but the efficiency still plunges. Think of the portion of each sale that must support the manager's salary, or the number of stores at which each delivery truck must stop. Without a car, frozen food can only be purchased in winter. Hot food, such as the fried chicken my supermarket offers, would never be able to get home in good condition.
  - ctdonath 7y ago
    Well put. Couple days ago I literally counted >100 varieties of marinara spaghetti sauce in the store. There's no way a walking-distance grocery is going to carry anywhere close to that (ripple effect on to all the people employed in making each specialty) AND do so at Walmart prices. I live close to the grocery, and there's still no way I'm going to carry supplies for 4 that far (recall as a child doing similar with my mother, that was quite a trek made possible in part by not having a job). Y'all who want pervasive public transit and no cars, yes I see your point - and really don't want to live that way. Do as you like, just don't do it in a way that compels non-urban living to comply. 'scuze me now, I have to get the kids from school - driving them because herds of children on mass transit is a haven for bullies.
    - organsnyder 7y ago
      Funny... I prefer to avoid the big stores precisely because they have so many varieties of basically the same product. I prefer to get groceries at a local small grocery store or Aldi—they have 95% of what I need.
  - larnmar 7y ago
    It’s not even a population density issue, it’s just a bad planning issue. Where I live (in the middle ring of a large Australian city) we have density comparable to an American suburb, but I have several mini-downtowns within walking distance. I did the maths a while ago; even if every house has a quarter-acre block (subtract actual street space from that to get a slightly smaller block) you can fit 4000 houses, about twelve thousand people, within a 1km radius of a mini-downtown point. Twelve thousand people is certainly enough to support a supermarket, a bunch of restaurants, cafes, specialty stores etc (think of what a town of twelve thousand people looks like). The only trick is actually zoning rows of shops in appropriate places. Of course I still drive to the supermarket anyway, unless I’m only buying a couple of items. This isn’t an argument against cars, it’s just an argument that low(ish) density housing and walkability aren’t incompatible. More broadly I think that Americans looking for solutions to their city-planning problems should look less at Europe (or god forbid, Asia) and more at Australia, since I think we’ve done a decent (though as always imperfect in implementation) job of combining European and American city planning virtues.
organsnyder 7y ago
By that notion, walking also solves every use case except for long-distance travel. I can walk about 150 miles in 50 hours. Add a hand cart for getting groceries.
asavadatti 7y ago
I think you are being disingenuous. Yes it is suboptimal but we don't need public transportation covering the entire country. When you are trying to solve for the use case of dense urban areas it is far more efficient and optimal to have a functional public transport system

benrbray 7y ago

The thing is, right now our cars-first city planning means that things like groceries, schools, shopping centers, etc. are built far away from where people live so that you NEED a car to get there. Places like CityLab are advocating for future development that places these daily necessities within walking distance of where people live. Cars are great for long-distance travel, but it would be great to spend less time in them!

burfog 7y ago
That is mainly a density issue. Most people don't like density. At an ordinary population density, supermarkets are about 2 to 5 miles from each other, which is probably 3 to 7 miles by road. Large stores require many customers in order to remain in business. If supermarkets are closer, then they lose efficiency. Prices must be higher. Variety drops; you'll get just 2 types of cheese and 1 type of apple if the stores have to be smaller. Without a car, large shopping trips become impossible. A young healthy adult can carry 1 or 2 shopping bags about 0.7 mile without major difficulty, but that just isn't enough. Stores would have to shrink by a factor of 20 to 100 in order to get them close enough, but the efficiency still plunges. Think of the portion of each sale that must support the manager's salary, or the number of stores at which each delivery truck must stop. Without a car, frozen food can only be purchased in winter. Hot food, such as the fried chicken my supermarket offers, would never be able to get home in good condition.
- ctdonath 7y ago
  Well put. Couple days ago I literally counted >100 varieties of marinara spaghetti sauce in the store. There's no way a walking-distance grocery is going to carry anywhere close to that (ripple effect on to all the people employed in making each specialty) AND do so at Walmart prices. I live close to the grocery, and there's still no way I'm going to carry supplies for 4 that far (recall as a child doing similar with my mother, that was quite a trek made possible in part by not having a job). Y'all who want pervasive public transit and no cars, yes I see your point - and really don't want to live that way. Do as you like, just don't do it in a way that compels non-urban living to comply. 'scuze me now, I have to get the kids from school - driving them because herds of children on mass transit is a haven for bullies.
  - organsnyder 7y ago
    Funny... I prefer to avoid the big stores precisely because they have so many varieties of basically the same product. I prefer to get groceries at a local small grocery store or Aldi—they have 95% of what I need.
- larnmar 7y ago
  It’s not even a population density issue, it’s just a bad planning issue. Where I live (in the middle ring of a large Australian city) we have density comparable to an American suburb, but I have several mini-downtowns within walking distance. I did the maths a while ago; even if every house has a quarter-acre block (subtract actual street space from that to get a slightly smaller block) you can fit 4000 houses, about twelve thousand people, within a 1km radius of a mini-downtown point. Twelve thousand people is certainly enough to support a supermarket, a bunch of restaurants, cafes, specialty stores etc (think of what a town of twelve thousand people looks like). The only trick is actually zoning rows of shops in appropriate places. Of course I still drive to the supermarket anyway, unless I’m only buying a couple of items. This isn’t an argument against cars, it’s just an argument that low(ish) density housing and walkability aren’t incompatible. More broadly I think that Americans looking for solutions to their city-planning problems should look less at Europe (or god forbid, Asia) and more at Australia, since I think we’ve done a decent (though as always imperfect in implementation) job of combining European and American city planning virtues.

organsnyder 7y ago

By that notion, walking also solves every use case except for long-distance travel. I can walk about 150 miles in 50 hours. Add a hand cart for getting groceries.

asavadatti 7y ago

I think you are being disingenuous. Yes it is suboptimal but we don't need public transportation covering the entire country. When you are trying to solve for the use case of dense urban areas it is far more efficient and optimal to have a functional public transport system