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No. It's about not needing a car. Also, as many mentioned here: in Europe and U.K. you have less dense areas or small towns where you have everything you need t

No. It's about not needing a car. Also, as many mentioned here: in Europe and U.K. you have less dense areas or small towns where you have everything you need there. While in some places in US you might only get groceries in a 30 min drive to Walmart. Changing a 30 min car drive to a 45 min bus ride doesn't solve the problem.

quantumwannabe 6y ago
Someone who is driving 30 minutes to a store lives in an area so rural they don't even live in a town or in a town so small no business could be profitable. A person living in a similar area in the UK would also have to drive. A 30 minute drive on the highway is over 30 miles - more than the diameter of most cities. Subtract a little time for parking and time spent on city streets and you can still get pretty much anywhere in an entire city in less than half an hour door to door. Most people in the US already live in a 20 minute (or less) city. You also just made my point - "it's about not needing a car". Why do you care that someone uses a car? The person living in the suburbs spends around the same amount of time transiting to their daily destinations as someone in a dense area does. So for someone who doesn't mind driving (i.e. most people), your proposed solution to their "problem" (which they don't have) offers little benefit but comes with downsides like smaller (or no) houses.
- coryrc 6y ago
  > Why do you care that someone uses a car? Because the elderly and young can't use them, the poor sacrifice too much to have one.
- piva00 6y ago
  > Why do you care that someone uses a car? I don't care if they use a car, I care if they need a car to do basic things such as: grocery shopping, going to a café, to a restaurant, to a park, to meet friends and so on. I really care if a car is a basic necessity for life, it's stupid, I came from such a country and it's just stressful, stressful to drive in traffic, stressful to maintain a car's upkeep, taxes, parking spot. All of that eats your money so you can have a care idling 95-99% of the time, it's a waste of resources, both financial and mental. > So for someone who doesn't mind driving (i.e. most people) How can you state that? Do you have data to corroborate this statement? What culture are you talking about? I believe you see all of this too much with a US-centric myopic approach, the kinds of cities being discussed already exist in other parts of Earth, have you lived in one of them?
  - quantumwannabe 6y ago
    What I’m trying to tell you is that in most of the US, none of the things in your first paragraph are issues. Traffic is only an issue in big cities, and even then in most of them it is only an issue in rush hour (i.e. not when running errands). Most small and medium sized cities never have traffic. Same is true for parking; that’s only an issue in big cities that have underbuilt parking. Most people in the US do not struggle to find parking during regular errands. Modern cars require very little upkeep - a few hours once a year for a regular checkup is all that’s required. Taxes is unfair, that’s an artificial government action that has little to do with how a mode of transportation works. I could just as easily say that you’d never use transit if the fares were raised to cover 100% of operating and capital expenses. You accuse me of being biased towards the US, and I admit that I am, but you are biased towards your city, and I’m trying to tell you that your issues aren’t really issues for most people in the US. HN is dominated by Bay Area residents, where the local government hasn’t built anywhere close to the amount of new infrastructure of any mode required, so it’s only logical they hate traffic and therefore cars, but the Bay Area does not reflect the typical American city. I hope you try to learn more about what life is like in large parts of America and to not assume that everything is like a handful of areas popular in the tech industry. To your final point asking if I have personally experienced transit oriented development, the answer is yes. I have lived in cities in the US that heavily fund transit and have made it illegal to build new roads or low density housing. I found that when I lived in such an area I spent just as much time traveling to destinations as I did in a much larger car dependent city, but the things to do were much more limited. There were lots of restaurants and bars and nightlife, but any actual errand like a hardware store or anything else that couldn’t fit in a small first floor retail space required traveling to either the sketchy industrial area or the suburbs. I also paid hundreds of dollars in taxes earmarked to the transit system and my employer was forced to pay hundreds more on my behalf for an unlimited use transit pass, which is significantly more than the operating expenses I paid for my car. Since moving, I now pay less for transportation and spend less time traveling. It is rare I spend more than 20 minutes in transit time to go anywhere, so I by definition live in a 20 minute neighborhood. The same was not true in my prior transit oriented area unless you don’t count time spent walking to and from a bus stop and time spent waiting for the bus to come.

quantumwannabe 6y ago

Someone who is driving 30 minutes to a store lives in an area so rural they don't even live in a town or in a town so small no business could be profitable. A person living in a similar area in the UK would also have to drive. A 30 minute drive on the highway is over 30 miles - more than the diameter of most cities. Subtract a little time for parking and time spent on city streets and you can still get pretty much anywhere in an entire city in less than half an hour door to door. Most people in the US already live in a 20 minute (or less) city. You also just made my point - "it's about not needing a car". Why do you care that someone uses a car? The person living in the suburbs spends around the same amount of time transiting to their daily destinations as someone in a dense area does. So for someone who doesn't mind driving (i.e. most people), your proposed solution to their "problem" (which they don't have) offers little benefit but comes with downsides like smaller (or no) houses.

coryrc 6y ago
> Why do you care that someone uses a car? Because the elderly and young can't use them, the poor sacrifice too much to have one.
piva00 6y ago
> Why do you care that someone uses a car? I don't care if they use a car, I care if they need a car to do basic things such as: grocery shopping, going to a café, to a restaurant, to a park, to meet friends and so on. I really care if a car is a basic necessity for life, it's stupid, I came from such a country and it's just stressful, stressful to drive in traffic, stressful to maintain a car's upkeep, taxes, parking spot. All of that eats your money so you can have a care idling 95-99% of the time, it's a waste of resources, both financial and mental. > So for someone who doesn't mind driving (i.e. most people) How can you state that? Do you have data to corroborate this statement? What culture are you talking about? I believe you see all of this too much with a US-centric myopic approach, the kinds of cities being discussed already exist in other parts of Earth, have you lived in one of them?
- quantumwannabe 6y ago
  What I’m trying to tell you is that in most of the US, none of the things in your first paragraph are issues. Traffic is only an issue in big cities, and even then in most of them it is only an issue in rush hour (i.e. not when running errands). Most small and medium sized cities never have traffic. Same is true for parking; that’s only an issue in big cities that have underbuilt parking. Most people in the US do not struggle to find parking during regular errands. Modern cars require very little upkeep - a few hours once a year for a regular checkup is all that’s required. Taxes is unfair, that’s an artificial government action that has little to do with how a mode of transportation works. I could just as easily say that you’d never use transit if the fares were raised to cover 100% of operating and capital expenses. You accuse me of being biased towards the US, and I admit that I am, but you are biased towards your city, and I’m trying to tell you that your issues aren’t really issues for most people in the US. HN is dominated by Bay Area residents, where the local government hasn’t built anywhere close to the amount of new infrastructure of any mode required, so it’s only logical they hate traffic and therefore cars, but the Bay Area does not reflect the typical American city. I hope you try to learn more about what life is like in large parts of America and to not assume that everything is like a handful of areas popular in the tech industry. To your final point asking if I have personally experienced transit oriented development, the answer is yes. I have lived in cities in the US that heavily fund transit and have made it illegal to build new roads or low density housing. I found that when I lived in such an area I spent just as much time traveling to destinations as I did in a much larger car dependent city, but the things to do were much more limited. There were lots of restaurants and bars and nightlife, but any actual errand like a hardware store or anything else that couldn’t fit in a small first floor retail space required traveling to either the sketchy industrial area or the suburbs. I also paid hundreds of dollars in taxes earmarked to the transit system and my employer was forced to pay hundreds more on my behalf for an unlimited use transit pass, which is significantly more than the operating expenses I paid for my car. Since moving, I now pay less for transportation and spend less time traveling. It is rare I spend more than 20 minutes in transit time to go anywhere, so I by definition live in a 20 minute neighborhood. The same was not true in my prior transit oriented area unless you don’t count time spent walking to and from a bus stop and time spent waiting for the bus to come.