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I’m hopeful many people will wake up to the misery that cars and commuting inflicts on themselves. The United States has been consumed with car culture which h

I’m hopeful many people will wake up to the misery that cars and commuting inflicts on themselves. The United States has been consumed with car culture which has bled time and resources from individuals like yourself. But it also is responsible for endless tragedy in the form of accidents and financial overextension. Car culture, partly driven by commuting, has inflated the need for some systems and created entire rent-seeking businesses that could be any number of more useful and interesting investments of human time and capital. I believe a silver lining of the Coronavirus and the actions of political representatives and appointees that have allowed covid to foster will ultimately result in progression in many outdated norms we experienced up through 2020.

randomProducer 6y ago
I feel the same. The amount of poor neighborhoods with brand new cars rolling around really depresses me. As someone who grew up pretty poor it always fascinated me that my family and neighbors would buy cars worth 20k - 30k which would be enough to provide a very basic/safe way of living for the foreseeable future. I would take the peace of mind I would of had over having a status symbol that random people on the highway could look at for a few seconds on a trip. Also driving is such a waste of human potential, I don't think the amount of attention needed to drive safely is worth the monotony/tediousness of driving. It's wasted time on a large scale.
- yodsanklai 6y ago
  > The amount of poor neighborhoods with brand new cars rolling around really depresses me I have no interest in cars and find it quite ridiculous that they can be seen as a social status, so I agree with your statement. But, people have different interests... some will spend their money travelling or playing golf, and some people just like cars!
  - randomProducer 6y ago
    I think that's fair but I think the amount of people that think they're into cars is far more than the amount of people that are actually into cars. Not trying to be a gatekeeper but if I think about myself I know I "felt social pressure" (grew up in a culture that glorifies this material item and sets an expect ion of success/fulfillment) to get a car. I guess you could argue that social pressures like this can grow naturally and I suppose I agree that they can but I don't think this one grew naturally and for some people promotes values that they may not hold. Cars as status symbols, I think, is troubling at the scale they're at. If you enjoy to ride around or appreciate their engineering then by all means. Even as I type this I think if you want to splurge on a Car that you will just take social media pictures with to make you feel good and show others then I think you should, more power to you, do what makes you happy. I guess my problem is that "what makes you happy" .. "is a fancy car" (you can go in debt to get) is a message that is "loud" and unlike a house (arguably the other functional yet status symbol) is within reach of people who it isn't in their best interest to get. I think it's a nuanced subject because as most things in life it's mixed up in all aspects of human life like financial education and personal responsibility but what I'm saying is that current "car culture" (to sweep away all the nuance) doesn't feel right to me right now and I think causes a lot of harm.
    - theodric 6y ago
      Fuck off with your self-righteous second-guessing of what I like and what you think I've apparently only convinced myself I like. People like you are why I will be leaving tech in the next 2-3 years. Take your Messiah complex somewhere it's wanted, like a black hole.
    - baby 6y ago
      I agree. It's not just cars, it's also smart phones, expensive watches, clothes, and so on. At the same time, it is what provides a fake boost of the ponzi-scheme economy. Without all of this wasteful consumption there would be no SP500.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > find it quite ridiculous that they can be seen as a social status Yeah, I wonder when the perception will shift to represent reality. I sometimes see people with cars that are more expensive than you'd expect by the neighbourhood, but my default first thought is that it's either leased or backed by a loan, so nothing to really brag about.
    - pc86 6y ago
      Most cars are not purchased outright so I'm not sure what your point is.
  - xwdv 6y ago
    Why is it ridiculous? Literally anything can be a social status symbol. What does a reasonable social status symbol look like in your view?
    - libraryatnight 6y ago
      Status symbols in general are ridiculous vanity.
    - francisofascii 6y ago
      How about something that requires hard work, sacrifice, and effort to attain. For example, is most social circles, having a faster car is a source of pride and admiration. Driving a fast car requires money and the ability to press a gas pedal. Wouldn’t it be better if training to be fast runner or fast cyclist was instead the thing being judged?
  - rtlfe 6y ago
    Low income neighborhoods would be among the biggest beneficiaries of high quality cycling infrastructure, but a lot of people tend to reject it as gentrification.
- ip26 6y ago
  It's wasted time on a large scale. So is cooking, eating, sleeping, daydreaming... I won't try to glorify a banal commute, but moving from place to place is pretty fundamental to living.
  - mertd 6y ago
    There is something about commuting that is a net stress inducer (whether by car or something else), whereas cooking is somehow relaxing.
    - geodel 6y ago
      Yeah, for me. But it is definitely not true for lot of people. My friends would drive long and through traffic to get some rather average restaurant food but cooking is pain.
    - tsco77 6y ago
      I can feel stressed cooking, but usually that's from an Internal desire to create something good. It's also avoidable with frozen or delivery (or asking my wife to cook). The end result is often enjoyable, too. Driving in traffic stress is external, reduces my faith in humanity, and is most often unavoidable. The end result (was) often that I was at work or home late. Not enjoyable. For me at least.
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      I find driving my car quite enjoyable and my commute became much more fun when I started taking the backroads to the office.
      - cardiffspaceman 6y ago
        I last had an uncomfortably long commute in 2003. I had 4 or 5 routes I could take, varying from almost totally Interstate freeways to almost no freeways at all. There was a small mountain range in the way. So get to work there could have been a pass via a private dirt road, a variation I never tried. Instead I went around the mountain via a freeway. I definitely rotated through the many routes that led to that freeway, especially when I was rested. Also the freeway gradually extended during the time I worked at that place, which added variety. On the other hand some of the non-freeway parts were fairly cranky because some of them were not empty backroads, but shortcuts through fully populated suburbia. But some routes were empty and enjoyable. Now I have a 9-mile commute and I am using the empty side of the freeway both ways. Sometimes I take a coastal byway on the way home if it's summer.
- xwdv 6y ago
  > The amount of poor neighborhoods with brand new cars rolling around really depresses me. This shouldn’t be depressing, this should give you hope. Imagine a world where even the poorest of people can have access to luxuries of their choosing. The alternative is a world where if you are poor, you must drive a beat up car or more likely have no car at all, while the upper classes drive shiny brand new cars that become more powerful status symbol, because now the poor unwashed masses can no longer get their grimy hands on them. This widens the inequality gap, and stimulates rage. And believe me, many people who have grown up with nothing aren’t sophisticated enough to understand the real goal should be “peace of mind” or sound financial decisions, rather than having a new car or whatever. What’s the average savings rate again? Better to placate them with shiny objects and a consumerized roadmap to happiness than to tell them they’re poor and need to live accordingly so they can find happiness another way, while everybody else gets to be happy by buying cool shit.
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  The poor neighbourhood where I lived had a statistically extremely low rate of car ownership. If you owned a car at all, it was a cheap second-hand. There were expensive cars rolling around though: due to rich people were passing through from expansive suburbs to the financial district, creating pollution and externalities that the poor neighbourhood had insufficient power to deal with.
  - chillwaves 6y ago
    If it makes you feel any better, I live in a wealthy suburb by some major traffic congestion and in the age of Google Maps, has become a major "short cut" so much that backed up cars will block my driveway each morning during rush hour. So even the well off have to deal with these "externalities". Our road is also in poor shape and had no shoulder to begin with. It is not meant for this level of traffic.
- pixelbash 6y ago
  I would consider myself a car person, it has always saddened me when I see very expensive cars being driven badly by people that don't actually care about driving.
  - selestify 6y ago
    What sort of bad driving makes you sad?
    - dgfitz 6y ago
      Not understanding when or how to use the gas or brake pedals. Toss a clutch in the mix and it’s a disaster.
    - pixelbash 6y ago
      Running red lights, getting stuck in intersections, doing 20kmh under the speed limit in the fast lane, drifting between lanes without indicating or looking first, speeding when there's an overtaking lane and then slowing back down when it's finished. The usual.
- imtringued 6y ago
  I bought a new but cheap car and have driven it for slightly more than 100k kilometers. I really like the car and even if I had more money I'd just buy the same car again. I don't see how cars can be status symbols if you can just buy a 3 year old car at a steep discount. Nobody is going to know the difference between a new car owner that kept his car for more than 3 years and someone who bought a 3 year old used car.
sdoering 6y ago
For me it will be interesting. I have been working from home for 21 weeks now but will put in some office days in the next week. so that my SO can have the house for herself and I have a room with a temperature not reminding me of a Finish Sauna. Not sure how it will feel, but I expect to have my mind at least a little bit less occupied with work after 30 - 40 minutes commuting and listening to audible. Maybe thought I will be shocked how traffic feels and gladly go back to full-time WFH. I will probably experiment with times of commute and number of days per week, thought. hoping that this change of scenery will add stimulus to my days.
brightball 6y ago
There’s a big difference between car culture and commuting though. Having a car comes with a great deal of utility and freedom. Commuting is almost entirely driven by city centers and population density that inflates real estate/rent costs so high that living out farther and driving in seems to not only make sense, but be the rational choice. Aside from having a sales office in a densely populated area, there’s almost no real value to other functions of a business being located in the middle of a huge city.
- barcadad 6y ago
  There is a great deal of research (eg., see Enrico Moretti and Ed Glaeser) that documents that you’re statement isn’t accurate. There are very strong network effects of educated cities, and unless you believe all future post-COVID network will be over Zoom or Slack (which feels rather dystopian), then post-COVID cities will do just fine. In fact, you could argue that what will suffer is living close to suburban office nodes in order to save commute times. Even more young people may choose to live in cities if they can avoid the schlep out to their suburban office (think Google bused from SF to Mountain View, but where you only need to take them for big meetings in the office rather than every day).
  - geodel 6y ago
    A lot of research looks like this looks to be deciding on car less way of life and collect facts only to prove that. Seems most people look for ulterior motive in case of oil and tobacco companies research while everything else is obviously right 'science'.
  - dahfizz 6y ago
    > There are very strong network effects of educated cities. According to the research you mentioned[1], the "network effect" you mentioned raises wages moderately for uneducated people and a little for educated people. But still nowhere near enough to account for the astronomical rent prices in a city. They also show that educated cities grow faster than uneducated cities, but don't make a comparison to smaller towns and suburbs. I see no reason why cities are objectively better. They are convenient for some segment of the population, and they are very unenjoyable for some segment of the population. [1]https://gulzar05.blogspot.com/2011/02/ode-to-cities.html?m=1 https://gulzar05.blogspot.com/2011/02/ode-to-cities.html?m=1
iso947 6y ago
Commuting in the UK tends to mean getting and standing on a crowded train for 40 minutes, with a 20 minute walk at each end. Car culture is a very different problem and affects people who don’t commute
- udp 6y ago
  In London maybe. The Beeching report made sure that as soon as you’re outside a major city you are unlikely to be connected to anywhere useful by train.
  - iso947 6y ago
    Manchester picadilly is crammed at peak evening. Northern is known for overcrowded trains.
collyw 6y ago
I miss my commute, but that's probably because I cycle. 20 minutes hard each way, it keeps me quite fit.
- steelframe 6y ago
  I have also spent years cycling between work and home, until my luck ran out and a motorist hit me. I had several close calls before then. I spent a lot of time piecing together a route that keeps me away from vehicular traffic, but there are a few dangerous intersections that I have no choice but to go through in order to go where I have to go, and sure enough one of them was where a motorist broke my hand. Now, working from home, I often start the day with a bike ride, but since I’m not forced to go between two specific points, I can choose a route that has a lot less risk. I am also not limited by the length of my commute, so rather than 40 minutes of riding split in two 20-minute segments, I can instead ride for a full hour if I want. When (if?) it’s time to go back into the office, I will go back to using a steel cage with crumple zones and air bags to traverse the dangerous intersections. The cycling for fun and exercise will continue to be on my own terms with whatever routes I think are safest.
  - rtlfe 6y ago
    If you haven't yet, be sure to call your city councilperson and demand improvements for cycling safety. Probably nothing will happen, but it can't hurt.
    - souprock 6y ago
      Sure: 1. Cycling is only permitted on cycling paths. 2. Cycling may not exceed 5 MPH. 3. Required gear includes leather pants, a leather jacket, a helmet, a mouth guard, a crotch guard, boots, gloves, safety glasses, and a wearable air bag system. 4. Plates (a.k.a. "tags") with inspection stickers are required. Safety inspections will be quarterly. 5. Licenses will be required. Licensing implies consent for random drug testing.
      - rtlfe 6y ago
closeparen 6y ago
I worry that you think it would be better if parent wasted 3x as much of his life commuting on public transit instead. Distance between homes and offices is the problem; cars are the worst solution except for all the others.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- chiefofgxbxl 6y ago
  Except that cars have influenced the way we build towns and cities: separate everything by non-walkable, non-busable distances because the basic assumption is that everyone has a car. Public transit "sucks" for a number of reasons, many of them car-related: (-) buses have to share roads with cars, so they have to put up with the congestion they are trying to solve, (-) money that would have been spent on public transit is being spent on road expansions to "solve traffic", and others. > cars are the worst solution except for all the others. This doesn't explain cities that have successful public transit systems... We wouldn't have built our offices and homes so far from each other if the expectation was to walk/bike/bus everywhere. Unfortunately this is a chicken-and-egg problem, where things may need to get worse temporarily for things to get better.
  - iateanapple 6y ago
    > This doesn't explain cities that have successful public transit systems... Do these cities simply have terrible private transit options? I don’t know anyone who would prefer to take public transport except in cities with poor car infrastructure. I do know lots of people who would rather walk or bike to work.
    - devdas 6y ago
      You have to explicitly optimise the city for public transit. Quite a lot of European cities do that.
      - 6y ago
dicomdan 6y ago
Unfortunately car culture is making a comeback now because nobody wants to use public transport during the pandemic.
u801e 6y ago
Higher density living conditions results in conditions that significantly increase transmission of diseases. Mass transit won't help due to crowded conditions. Other individual transportation options like walking or cycling cannot cover the distance that a powered vehicle can and also are not desireable during low or high temperatures or significant amounts of precipitation.
- rtlfe 6y ago
  > walking or cycling cannot cover the distance that a powered vehicle can The whole point is that in a dense city, you don't need to cover a long distance. 75% of car trips in NYC are under 5 miles, which is an easy distance to cycle with proper infrastructure.
  - iateanapple 6y ago
    > 75% of car trips in NYC are under 5 miles What % of people who work in NYC have a commute to work of under 5 miles?
- thatfrenchguy 6y ago
  Surely Paris and Hong Kong would be drowning in COVID compared to the US if that was the case :-)
  - whatch 6y ago
    ... all else being equal
- Fricken 6y ago
  >Higher density living conditions results in conditions that significantly increase transmission of diseases Oh, I guess this is why low-density Florida and Texas are doing so well with Coronavirus, and all those super-dense Asian cities are having a tough time managing it. Of course, if people are super dense between the ears disease transmission starts becoming more of a hazard. General population density evidently has little to do with it.
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> I’m hopeful many people will wake up to the misery that cars and commuting inflicts on themselves. > The United States has been consumed with car culture which has bled time and resources from individuals like yourself. But all of the problems being discussed here are related to commuting; none are related to cars. Commuting through a big subway system takes just as much time while being much less pleasant.
vkou 6y ago
People have woken up to that misery, it's why cutting your commute time by 60 minutes will cost you ~$300-500,000 in the price of your home.

randomProducer 6y ago

I feel the same. The amount of poor neighborhoods with brand new cars rolling around really depresses me. As someone who grew up pretty poor it always fascinated me that my family and neighbors would buy cars worth 20k - 30k which would be enough to provide a very basic/safe way of living for the foreseeable future. I would take the peace of mind I would of had over having a status symbol that random people on the highway could look at for a few seconds on a trip. Also driving is such a waste of human potential, I don't think the amount of attention needed to drive safely is worth the monotony/tediousness of driving. It's wasted time on a large scale.

yodsanklai 6y ago
> The amount of poor neighborhoods with brand new cars rolling around really depresses me I have no interest in cars and find it quite ridiculous that they can be seen as a social status, so I agree with your statement. But, people have different interests... some will spend their money travelling or playing golf, and some people just like cars!
- randomProducer 6y ago
  I think that's fair but I think the amount of people that think they're into cars is far more than the amount of people that are actually into cars. Not trying to be a gatekeeper but if I think about myself I know I "felt social pressure" (grew up in a culture that glorifies this material item and sets an expect ion of success/fulfillment) to get a car. I guess you could argue that social pressures like this can grow naturally and I suppose I agree that they can but I don't think this one grew naturally and for some people promotes values that they may not hold. Cars as status symbols, I think, is troubling at the scale they're at. If you enjoy to ride around or appreciate their engineering then by all means. Even as I type this I think if you want to splurge on a Car that you will just take social media pictures with to make you feel good and show others then I think you should, more power to you, do what makes you happy. I guess my problem is that "what makes you happy" .. "is a fancy car" (you can go in debt to get) is a message that is "loud" and unlike a house (arguably the other functional yet status symbol) is within reach of people who it isn't in their best interest to get. I think it's a nuanced subject because as most things in life it's mixed up in all aspects of human life like financial education and personal responsibility but what I'm saying is that current "car culture" (to sweep away all the nuance) doesn't feel right to me right now and I think causes a lot of harm.
  - theodric 6y ago
    Fuck off with your self-righteous second-guessing of what I like and what you think I've apparently only convinced myself I like. People like you are why I will be leaving tech in the next 2-3 years. Take your Messiah complex somewhere it's wanted, like a black hole.
  - baby 6y ago
    I agree. It's not just cars, it's also smart phones, expensive watches, clothes, and so on. At the same time, it is what provides a fake boost of the ponzi-scheme economy. Without all of this wasteful consumption there would be no SP500.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > find it quite ridiculous that they can be seen as a social status Yeah, I wonder when the perception will shift to represent reality. I sometimes see people with cars that are more expensive than you'd expect by the neighbourhood, but my default first thought is that it's either leased or backed by a loan, so nothing to really brag about.
  - pc86 6y ago
    Most cars are not purchased outright so I'm not sure what your point is.
- xwdv 6y ago
  Why is it ridiculous? Literally anything can be a social status symbol. What does a reasonable social status symbol look like in your view?
  - libraryatnight 6y ago
    Status symbols in general are ridiculous vanity.
  - francisofascii 6y ago
    How about something that requires hard work, sacrifice, and effort to attain. For example, is most social circles, having a faster car is a source of pride and admiration. Driving a fast car requires money and the ability to press a gas pedal. Wouldn’t it be better if training to be fast runner or fast cyclist was instead the thing being judged?
- rtlfe 6y ago
  Low income neighborhoods would be among the biggest beneficiaries of high quality cycling infrastructure, but a lot of people tend to reject it as gentrification.
ip26 6y ago
It's wasted time on a large scale. So is cooking, eating, sleeping, daydreaming... I won't try to glorify a banal commute, but moving from place to place is pretty fundamental to living.
- mertd 6y ago
  There is something about commuting that is a net stress inducer (whether by car or something else), whereas cooking is somehow relaxing.
  - geodel 6y ago
    Yeah, for me. But it is definitely not true for lot of people. My friends would drive long and through traffic to get some rather average restaurant food but cooking is pain.
  - tsco77 6y ago
    I can feel stressed cooking, but usually that's from an Internal desire to create something good. It's also avoidable with frozen or delivery (or asking my wife to cook). The end result is often enjoyable, too. Driving in traffic stress is external, reduces my faith in humanity, and is most often unavoidable. The end result (was) often that I was at work or home late. Not enjoyable. For me at least.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    I find driving my car quite enjoyable and my commute became much more fun when I started taking the backroads to the office.
    - cardiffspaceman 6y ago
      I last had an uncomfortably long commute in 2003. I had 4 or 5 routes I could take, varying from almost totally Interstate freeways to almost no freeways at all. There was a small mountain range in the way. So get to work there could have been a pass via a private dirt road, a variation I never tried. Instead I went around the mountain via a freeway. I definitely rotated through the many routes that led to that freeway, especially when I was rested. Also the freeway gradually extended during the time I worked at that place, which added variety. On the other hand some of the non-freeway parts were fairly cranky because some of them were not empty backroads, but shortcuts through fully populated suburbia. But some routes were empty and enjoyable. Now I have a 9-mile commute and I am using the empty side of the freeway both ways. Sometimes I take a coastal byway on the way home if it's summer.
xwdv 6y ago
> The amount of poor neighborhoods with brand new cars rolling around really depresses me. This shouldn’t be depressing, this should give you hope. Imagine a world where even the poorest of people can have access to luxuries of their choosing. The alternative is a world where if you are poor, you must drive a beat up car or more likely have no car at all, while the upper classes drive shiny brand new cars that become more powerful status symbol, because now the poor unwashed masses can no longer get their grimy hands on them. This widens the inequality gap, and stimulates rage. And believe me, many people who have grown up with nothing aren’t sophisticated enough to understand the real goal should be “peace of mind” or sound financial decisions, rather than having a new car or whatever. What’s the average savings rate again? Better to placate them with shiny objects and a consumerized roadmap to happiness than to tell them they’re poor and need to live accordingly so they can find happiness another way, while everybody else gets to be happy by buying cool shit.
throwaway2245 6y ago
The poor neighbourhood where I lived had a statistically extremely low rate of car ownership. If you owned a car at all, it was a cheap second-hand. There were expensive cars rolling around though: due to rich people were passing through from expansive suburbs to the financial district, creating pollution and externalities that the poor neighbourhood had insufficient power to deal with.
- chillwaves 6y ago
  If it makes you feel any better, I live in a wealthy suburb by some major traffic congestion and in the age of Google Maps, has become a major "short cut" so much that backed up cars will block my driveway each morning during rush hour. So even the well off have to deal with these "externalities". Our road is also in poor shape and had no shoulder to begin with. It is not meant for this level of traffic.
pixelbash 6y ago
I would consider myself a car person, it has always saddened me when I see very expensive cars being driven badly by people that don't actually care about driving.
- selestify 6y ago
  What sort of bad driving makes you sad?
  - dgfitz 6y ago
    Not understanding when or how to use the gas or brake pedals. Toss a clutch in the mix and it’s a disaster.
  - pixelbash 6y ago
    Running red lights, getting stuck in intersections, doing 20kmh under the speed limit in the fast lane, drifting between lanes without indicating or looking first, speeding when there's an overtaking lane and then slowing back down when it's finished. The usual.
imtringued 6y ago
I bought a new but cheap car and have driven it for slightly more than 100k kilometers. I really like the car and even if I had more money I'd just buy the same car again. I don't see how cars can be status symbols if you can just buy a 3 year old car at a steep discount. Nobody is going to know the difference between a new car owner that kept his car for more than 3 years and someone who bought a 3 year old used car.

sdoering 6y ago

For me it will be interesting. I have been working from home for 21 weeks now but will put in some office days in the next week. so that my SO can have the house for herself and I have a room with a temperature not reminding me of a Finish Sauna. Not sure how it will feel, but I expect to have my mind at least a little bit less occupied with work after 30 - 40 minutes commuting and listening to audible. Maybe thought I will be shocked how traffic feels and gladly go back to full-time WFH. I will probably experiment with times of commute and number of days per week, thought. hoping that this change of scenery will add stimulus to my days.

brightball 6y ago

There’s a big difference between car culture and commuting though. Having a car comes with a great deal of utility and freedom. Commuting is almost entirely driven by city centers and population density that inflates real estate/rent costs so high that living out farther and driving in seems to not only make sense, but be the rational choice. Aside from having a sales office in a densely populated area, there’s almost no real value to other functions of a business being located in the middle of a huge city.

barcadad 6y ago
There is a great deal of research (eg., see Enrico Moretti and Ed Glaeser) that documents that you’re statement isn’t accurate. There are very strong network effects of educated cities, and unless you believe all future post-COVID network will be over Zoom or Slack (which feels rather dystopian), then post-COVID cities will do just fine. In fact, you could argue that what will suffer is living close to suburban office nodes in order to save commute times. Even more young people may choose to live in cities if they can avoid the schlep out to their suburban office (think Google bused from SF to Mountain View, but where you only need to take them for big meetings in the office rather than every day).
- geodel 6y ago
  A lot of research looks like this looks to be deciding on car less way of life and collect facts only to prove that. Seems most people look for ulterior motive in case of oil and tobacco companies research while everything else is obviously right 'science'.
- dahfizz 6y ago
  > There are very strong network effects of educated cities. According to the research you mentioned[1], the "network effect" you mentioned raises wages moderately for uneducated people and a little for educated people. But still nowhere near enough to account for the astronomical rent prices in a city. They also show that educated cities grow faster than uneducated cities, but don't make a comparison to smaller towns and suburbs. I see no reason why cities are objectively better. They are convenient for some segment of the population, and they are very unenjoyable for some segment of the population. [1]https://gulzar05.blogspot.com/2011/02/ode-to-cities.html?m=1 https://gulzar05.blogspot.com/2011/02/ode-to-cities.html?m=1

iso947 6y ago

Commuting in the UK tends to mean getting and standing on a crowded train for 40 minutes, with a 20 minute walk at each end. Car culture is a very different problem and affects people who don’t commute

udp 6y ago
In London maybe. The Beeching report made sure that as soon as you’re outside a major city you are unlikely to be connected to anywhere useful by train.
- iso947 6y ago
  Manchester picadilly is crammed at peak evening. Northern is known for overcrowded trains.

collyw 6y ago

I miss my commute, but that's probably because I cycle. 20 minutes hard each way, it keeps me quite fit.

steelframe 6y ago
I have also spent years cycling between work and home, until my luck ran out and a motorist hit me. I had several close calls before then. I spent a lot of time piecing together a route that keeps me away from vehicular traffic, but there are a few dangerous intersections that I have no choice but to go through in order to go where I have to go, and sure enough one of them was where a motorist broke my hand. Now, working from home, I often start the day with a bike ride, but since I’m not forced to go between two specific points, I can choose a route that has a lot less risk. I am also not limited by the length of my commute, so rather than 40 minutes of riding split in two 20-minute segments, I can instead ride for a full hour if I want. When (if?) it’s time to go back into the office, I will go back to using a steel cage with crumple zones and air bags to traverse the dangerous intersections. The cycling for fun and exercise will continue to be on my own terms with whatever routes I think are safest.
- rtlfe 6y ago
  If you haven't yet, be sure to call your city councilperson and demand improvements for cycling safety. Probably nothing will happen, but it can't hurt.
  - souprock 6y ago
    Sure: 1. Cycling is only permitted on cycling paths. 2. Cycling may not exceed 5 MPH. 3. Required gear includes leather pants, a leather jacket, a helmet, a mouth guard, a crotch guard, boots, gloves, safety glasses, and a wearable air bag system. 4. Plates (a.k.a. "tags") with inspection stickers are required. Safety inspections will be quarterly. 5. Licenses will be required. Licensing implies consent for random drug testing.
    - rtlfe 6y ago

closeparen 6y ago

I worry that you think it would be better if parent wasted 3x as much of his life commuting on public transit instead. Distance between homes and offices is the problem; cars are the worst solution except for all the others.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chiefofgxbxl 6y ago
Except that cars have influenced the way we build towns and cities: separate everything by non-walkable, non-busable distances because the basic assumption is that everyone has a car. Public transit "sucks" for a number of reasons, many of them car-related: (-) buses have to share roads with cars, so they have to put up with the congestion they are trying to solve, (-) money that would have been spent on public transit is being spent on road expansions to "solve traffic", and others. > cars are the worst solution except for all the others. This doesn't explain cities that have successful public transit systems... We wouldn't have built our offices and homes so far from each other if the expectation was to walk/bike/bus everywhere. Unfortunately this is a chicken-and-egg problem, where things may need to get worse temporarily for things to get better.
- iateanapple 6y ago
  > This doesn't explain cities that have successful public transit systems... Do these cities simply have terrible private transit options? I don’t know anyone who would prefer to take public transport except in cities with poor car infrastructure. I do know lots of people who would rather walk or bike to work.
  - devdas 6y ago
    You have to explicitly optimise the city for public transit. Quite a lot of European cities do that.
    - 6y ago

dicomdan 6y ago

Unfortunately car culture is making a comeback now because nobody wants to use public transport during the pandemic.

u801e 6y ago

Higher density living conditions results in conditions that significantly increase transmission of diseases. Mass transit won't help due to crowded conditions. Other individual transportation options like walking or cycling cannot cover the distance that a powered vehicle can and also are not desireable during low or high temperatures or significant amounts of precipitation.

rtlfe 6y ago
> walking or cycling cannot cover the distance that a powered vehicle can The whole point is that in a dense city, you don't need to cover a long distance. 75% of car trips in NYC are under 5 miles, which is an easy distance to cycle with proper infrastructure.
- iateanapple 6y ago
  > 75% of car trips in NYC are under 5 miles What % of people who work in NYC have a commute to work of under 5 miles?
thatfrenchguy 6y ago
Surely Paris and Hong Kong would be drowning in COVID compared to the US if that was the case :-)
- whatch 6y ago
  ... all else being equal
Fricken 6y ago
>Higher density living conditions results in conditions that significantly increase transmission of diseases Oh, I guess this is why low-density Florida and Texas are doing so well with Coronavirus, and all those super-dense Asian cities are having a tough time managing it. Of course, if people are super dense between the ears disease transmission starts becoming more of a hazard. General population density evidently has little to do with it.

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> I’m hopeful many people will wake up to the misery that cars and commuting inflicts on themselves. > The United States has been consumed with car culture which has bled time and resources from individuals like yourself. But all of the problems being discussed here are related to commuting; none are related to cars. Commuting through a big subway system takes just as much time while being much less pleasant.

vkou 6y ago

People have woken up to that misery, it's why cutting your commute time by 60 minutes will cost you ~$300-500,000 in the price of your home.