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In my experience, most people really do not understand how fundamentally unsuited cars are to solving urban (or dense suburban) transportation problems. Without

In my experience, most people really do not understand how fundamentally unsuited cars are to solving urban (or dense suburban) transportation problems. Without really staring at the underlying geometry, it is hard for laypeople to understand that automobile-centric development patterns are by-and-large incapable of producing the kind of human-scale, dense, walkable areas that are (1) instinctively pleasing to be in, (2) generators of economic value, and (3) much more environmentally sustainable than the alternative. All this being said, I find it hard to fault 'environmentalist' politicians for their embrace of the electric car: politics is "the art of the possible", and the conventional wisdom, at least in the States, does not yet recognize automobile-centrism as a key problem. There are a lot of entrenched interests in favor of the status quo - not just the traditional car lobby (auto manufacturers, suburban developers, oil companies), but the ~half of Americans who live in suburbs, hence having their lifestyle and wealth reliant on cars remaining a dominant form of transportation. If the choice is between gas cars and electric cars (as, for a mainstream politician it basically seems to be), I am at least happy we are moving towards the latter, even though neither are the right answer. Shameless plug: I recently attempted to visually explain the first issue (why geometry makes cars unsuited to dense transportation) on my nascent blog: https://digital-cygnet.medium.com/a-quick-visual-illustration-of-the-folly-of-street-parking-76f161de02d1 https://digital-cygnet.medium.com/a-quick-visual-illustratio...

Retric 6y ago
The issue boils down to roads and parking more than cars. Trees need sunlight, but cars don’t so roads work just fine segregated below street level away from pedestrians and inclement weather. It sounds expensive, but work out how expensive NYC’s above ground road network costs both in terms of land value and ongoing property taxes and you see just how pricy cheap roads end up. Go 3D to segregate N/S traffic from E/W traffic thereby eliminating traffic lights and things really pick up. Of course it’s much easier to blame cars, but counties only have so many people you can actually build enough infrastructure to solve the root issues.
- Tiktaalik 6y ago
  lol ok elon
  - Retric 6y ago
    The original idea is vastly older than Elon. From the 1939 worlds fair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World%27s_Fair)#/media/File:Street_intersection_Futurama.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World%27s_F... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World%27s_Fair) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World%27s_F...
zip1234 6y ago
Nice blog post. It really does come down to just how big cars are and how much space they take up. A car in motion takes up a ridiculous amount of space factoring in stopping distance.
nightski 6y ago
How many people want to live in dense cities without any means of escape? It sounds miserable to me. But I live in a really small city (< 250k) and drive maybe 3-5k miles a year (mostly to our cabin in a neighboring state) and bike a LOT. It's kind of ironic I am pretty far from your utopian dense dream yet largely living it.
- TheTrotters 6y ago
  What do you mean “no means of escape?” There are trains, buses, taxis, bikes, rental cars etc. To me owning a car seems much more miserable!
  - FpUser 6y ago
    >"To me owning a car seems much more miserable!" Well you are free not to own it. Nobody's forcing you. Actually my main mean of transportation in Toronto is bicycle myself (well I work from home for the last 20 years anyways). I also own car (van actually) and it gives me great and hassle free degree of freedom. If I am in a mood and I often am I can jump in and in few hours be in complete wilderness swimming in some godforsaken lake. Or if I need to grab some heavy stuff and bring it somewhere which happens rather often. And I do not need to arrange / wait for anything. Just get in and go. So no. Screw that dense car free living. To each their own.
    - adrianN 6y ago
      Car centric infrastructure forces people to own cars.
      - FpUser 6y ago
        >"Car centric infrastructure forces people to own cars." Where? I live in Toronto and I certainly do not feel that I am forced to have a car.
        FpUser 6y ago
908B64B197 6y ago
Love the explanation. But what about adding some underground parking?
- Tiktaalik 6y ago
  It's a fix but a costly one. An underground car spot costs in the tens of thousands and so this ends up boosting the price of housing in addition to making construction more complex and time consuming. As well there's the environmental impact. Concrete creates a lot of CO2 and we actually need to use less of it going forward.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    Issue is, cars are incredibly convenient. Need to get somewhere in the suburbs? Carry large items? Go in the nature for the weekend? Any route that's not been anticipated by the central-public-transport-planning-committee is probably way better done with a car latency-wise. Above a certain income threshold, it'll be really hard to convince people to ditch their car completely. You might get away with reducing car footprint from one per adult to one per household. Any dense development should have some sort of underground parking planned for it. Then it makes it much easier to get rid of on-street parking and convert the space into safe cycling infrastructure.
    - Tiktaalik 6y ago
      It's no real argument that cars will always win the day on the edge cases, though the real question is whether we should be designing our cities to accomodate the edge cases for the majority cases. The majority of transportation uses are much more mundane and can be well served by active transportation and public transportation. For example creating a bus route to the base of the mountain so that hikers and snowshoers can access the wilderness is a big win for the public at large, but nonetheless there will always be a group of enthusiasts that want go on a further flung mountain hike, and they'll need to use a car to get there. Doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea to create the infrastructure that accommodates the bigger group. Building big expensive concrete car lots, assuming everyone has a car, is an example of building for the edge case. In Vancouver, a city that has done not a bad job of building protected bike lanes, there's data out now to support that the parking lots that it has mandated in new apartment buildings are in fact overbuilt, under utilized and part vacant!
noja 6y ago
Is parking possible on both sides of each apartment block (re: your blog post)?
- digital-cygnet 6y ago
  Thanks for the comment -- yes it is, but all sides also have more apartment buildings on them so it doesnt change the analysis. I probably could have explained that better in the post
Ma8ee 6y ago
If they started to charge the same for parking and street space as for any other property in places like NYC, the problem would disappear rapidly.
sunstone 6y ago
The coming sea change in electrifying transportation will include roads just as much as cars. Right now we are just barely off the bottom of the 'S' curve of transitioning from ICE to electric. But in about fifteen years we'll be near the middle of that curve and that's when we'll realize roads could be much better if the ICE cars where banned. With only electric vehicles the air will cease to be continually poisoned by emissions and then roads and streets will start to move indoors. Covered roads will become practical with electric only vehicles and the majority of those e-vehicles will be a lot smaller than the current average ICE car because electric technologies make smaller vehicles much more practical. The current boom in e-bikes is just the beginning of a major trend to electric smaller vehicles. A lot more quickly than you expect ICE vehicles will be restricted to the highways and periphery of towns and cities because they'll be too big, heavy and poisonous. In a word they'll become unsafe for urban transport and our cities will become much more healthy and livable.
- DocTomoe 6y ago
  The trend has already started. E.g. in Germany, some cities prohibit older Diesel engines within city limits. This has lead especially commuters of low-wage jobs quickly being forced to buy a new, more environmentally-friendly car (and their Diesel car just lost a lot of value in the market), so they have no option other than switch to gasoline engines - which are usually OLDER cars than they used to be with WORSE pollution statistics. Buying a new car is not affordable to them. Public transportation is a lot better than in the US, but still will not solve the issue completely, and where it is a viable alternative, it's expensive both in time consumption and in money spent. With a new law that was meant to lower pollution (and the jury is still out on if the goal was achieved, as during the corona crisis, pollution sank overall), we've created worse conditions for the underclass and lower middle class. This is how you destroy support for ecological policymaking. If you want a better world for yourself and your children, you cannot achieve it by making it worse for others and the present.
  - Ma8ee 6y ago
    The change won’t be for free (even though it probably in the end will save us all a lot of money), and unfortunately, everything that cost money will hit the poor hardest. But that is a problem that is solved with progressive taxes and redistribution, not something that should stop us from saving the environment.
tomjen3 6y ago
>In my experience, most people really do not understand how fundamentally unsuited cars are to solving urban (or dense suburban) transportation problems. In my experience, most people who are against cars really do not understand how fucking awesome it is to drive a car and how well it works in terms of getting me from A to B in the minimum time with the minimum fuss with plenty of space for my shopping. Nothing else comes close unless you are only going around an uber dense area in rush hour. Yes, there are issues with cars. I will still rather be stuck in traffic, sitting in my own comfortable indoor seat than riding a bike to work or taking the bus with no guarantee of a seat, nor enough space to sit even if I get it. A little planning and I am at work before rush hour and it isn't even an issue. If I was to take public transportation it would need to not take twice the time (I measured it from the time I was outside my building to the time I was inside at work), it would need to be far more comfortable and I would need to be certain that there wouldn't be trouble in the bus. But most of all? I would need to be certain that the people who made the changes were previously happy drivers and are now happy public commuters. I did just buy a nice bike for the exercise and the ease of parking, but it only makes sense for short journeys to dense places where parking is the major issue.
- digital-cygnet 6y ago
  The key driver of our apparent disagreement is likely the definition of "urban (or dense suburban)" in my post. There are plenty of places and use cases for which cars are magical things, whisking you from place to place with no effort and a minimum of cost. However, the important things to understand are: 1) Many countries effectively subsidize cars over public transit in ways that are non obvious (not charging for externalities, minimum parking requirements, huge comparative investment in automotive public works), so your accounting of the costs you see (insurance, gas, depreciation) will likely underestimate the true societal cost. 2) The problem that cars seem to solve (getting around a sparse world) is also _the problem that cars cause_ (sparsification). If you have to drive three miles to get to the grocery store, you could think "thanks cars for making this drive easy", or "boo cars for making this drive necessary". In the city I live in there are 3 grocery stores within a 10 minute walk of my apartment. 3) Some people truly do prefer the spread out, population-sparse lifestyle enabled by cars. But some other people truly prefer the dense, walkable urban lifestyle that, as I have mentioned, cars seriously disrupt. The damage comes when people in one group try to force the other to adapt to rules that make sense in their preferred environment (e.g., if Urbanite A wants to ban cars while Ruralite B wants to put highways through the urban center so she can get to work via car). I tend to side with the Urbanites on this issue at present, because it doesnt take much to see who has the upper hand in American cities right now. (viz: Rober Mosesization of most major American metros in the 60s-80s)

Retric 6y ago

The issue boils down to roads and parking more than cars. Trees need sunlight, but cars don’t so roads work just fine segregated below street level away from pedestrians and inclement weather. It sounds expensive, but work out how expensive NYC’s above ground road network costs both in terms of land value and ongoing property taxes and you see just how pricy cheap roads end up. Go 3D to segregate N/S traffic from E/W traffic thereby eliminating traffic lights and things really pick up. Of course it’s much easier to blame cars, but counties only have so many people you can actually build enough infrastructure to solve the root issues.

Tiktaalik 6y ago
lol ok elon
- Retric 6y ago
  The original idea is vastly older than Elon. From the 1939 worlds fair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World%27s_Fair)#/media/File:Street_intersection_Futurama.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World%27s_F... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World%27s_Fair) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World%27s_F...

zip1234 6y ago

Nice blog post. It really does come down to just how big cars are and how much space they take up. A car in motion takes up a ridiculous amount of space factoring in stopping distance.

nightski 6y ago

How many people want to live in dense cities without any means of escape? It sounds miserable to me. But I live in a really small city (< 250k) and drive maybe 3-5k miles a year (mostly to our cabin in a neighboring state) and bike a LOT. It's kind of ironic I am pretty far from your utopian dense dream yet largely living it.

TheTrotters 6y ago
What do you mean “no means of escape?” There are trains, buses, taxis, bikes, rental cars etc. To me owning a car seems much more miserable!
- FpUser 6y ago
  >"To me owning a car seems much more miserable!" Well you are free not to own it. Nobody's forcing you. Actually my main mean of transportation in Toronto is bicycle myself (well I work from home for the last 20 years anyways). I also own car (van actually) and it gives me great and hassle free degree of freedom. If I am in a mood and I often am I can jump in and in few hours be in complete wilderness swimming in some godforsaken lake. Or if I need to grab some heavy stuff and bring it somewhere which happens rather often. And I do not need to arrange / wait for anything. Just get in and go. So no. Screw that dense car free living. To each their own.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Car centric infrastructure forces people to own cars.
    - FpUser 6y ago
      >"Car centric infrastructure forces people to own cars." Where? I live in Toronto and I certainly do not feel that I am forced to have a car.
      - FpUser 6y ago

908B64B197 6y ago

Love the explanation. But what about adding some underground parking?

Tiktaalik 6y ago
It's a fix but a costly one. An underground car spot costs in the tens of thousands and so this ends up boosting the price of housing in addition to making construction more complex and time consuming. As well there's the environmental impact. Concrete creates a lot of CO2 and we actually need to use less of it going forward.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  Issue is, cars are incredibly convenient. Need to get somewhere in the suburbs? Carry large items? Go in the nature for the weekend? Any route that's not been anticipated by the central-public-transport-planning-committee is probably way better done with a car latency-wise. Above a certain income threshold, it'll be really hard to convince people to ditch their car completely. You might get away with reducing car footprint from one per adult to one per household. Any dense development should have some sort of underground parking planned for it. Then it makes it much easier to get rid of on-street parking and convert the space into safe cycling infrastructure.
  - Tiktaalik 6y ago
    It's no real argument that cars will always win the day on the edge cases, though the real question is whether we should be designing our cities to accomodate the edge cases for the majority cases. The majority of transportation uses are much more mundane and can be well served by active transportation and public transportation. For example creating a bus route to the base of the mountain so that hikers and snowshoers can access the wilderness is a big win for the public at large, but nonetheless there will always be a group of enthusiasts that want go on a further flung mountain hike, and they'll need to use a car to get there. Doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea to create the infrastructure that accommodates the bigger group. Building big expensive concrete car lots, assuming everyone has a car, is an example of building for the edge case. In Vancouver, a city that has done not a bad job of building protected bike lanes, there's data out now to support that the parking lots that it has mandated in new apartment buildings are in fact overbuilt, under utilized and part vacant!

noja 6y ago

Is parking possible on both sides of each apartment block (re: your blog post)?

digital-cygnet 6y ago
Thanks for the comment -- yes it is, but all sides also have more apartment buildings on them so it doesnt change the analysis. I probably could have explained that better in the post

Ma8ee 6y ago

If they started to charge the same for parking and street space as for any other property in places like NYC, the problem would disappear rapidly.

sunstone 6y ago

The coming sea change in electrifying transportation will include roads just as much as cars. Right now we are just barely off the bottom of the 'S' curve of transitioning from ICE to electric. But in about fifteen years we'll be near the middle of that curve and that's when we'll realize roads could be much better if the ICE cars where banned. With only electric vehicles the air will cease to be continually poisoned by emissions and then roads and streets will start to move indoors. Covered roads will become practical with electric only vehicles and the majority of those e-vehicles will be a lot smaller than the current average ICE car because electric technologies make smaller vehicles much more practical. The current boom in e-bikes is just the beginning of a major trend to electric smaller vehicles. A lot more quickly than you expect ICE vehicles will be restricted to the highways and periphery of towns and cities because they'll be too big, heavy and poisonous. In a word they'll become unsafe for urban transport and our cities will become much more healthy and livable.

DocTomoe 6y ago
The trend has already started. E.g. in Germany, some cities prohibit older Diesel engines within city limits. This has lead especially commuters of low-wage jobs quickly being forced to buy a new, more environmentally-friendly car (and their Diesel car just lost a lot of value in the market), so they have no option other than switch to gasoline engines - which are usually OLDER cars than they used to be with WORSE pollution statistics. Buying a new car is not affordable to them. Public transportation is a lot better than in the US, but still will not solve the issue completely, and where it is a viable alternative, it's expensive both in time consumption and in money spent. With a new law that was meant to lower pollution (and the jury is still out on if the goal was achieved, as during the corona crisis, pollution sank overall), we've created worse conditions for the underclass and lower middle class. This is how you destroy support for ecological policymaking. If you want a better world for yourself and your children, you cannot achieve it by making it worse for others and the present.
- Ma8ee 6y ago
  The change won’t be for free (even though it probably in the end will save us all a lot of money), and unfortunately, everything that cost money will hit the poor hardest. But that is a problem that is solved with progressive taxes and redistribution, not something that should stop us from saving the environment.

tomjen3 6y ago

>In my experience, most people really do not understand how fundamentally unsuited cars are to solving urban (or dense suburban) transportation problems. In my experience, most people who are against cars really do not understand how fucking awesome it is to drive a car and how well it works in terms of getting me from A to B in the minimum time with the minimum fuss with plenty of space for my shopping. Nothing else comes close unless you are only going around an uber dense area in rush hour. Yes, there are issues with cars. I will still rather be stuck in traffic, sitting in my own comfortable indoor seat than riding a bike to work or taking the bus with no guarantee of a seat, nor enough space to sit even if I get it. A little planning and I am at work before rush hour and it isn't even an issue. If I was to take public transportation it would need to not take twice the time (I measured it from the time I was outside my building to the time I was inside at work), it would need to be far more comfortable and I would need to be certain that there wouldn't be trouble in the bus. But most of all? I would need to be certain that the people who made the changes were previously happy drivers and are now happy public commuters. I did just buy a nice bike for the exercise and the ease of parking, but it only makes sense for short journeys to dense places where parking is the major issue.

digital-cygnet 6y ago
The key driver of our apparent disagreement is likely the definition of "urban (or dense suburban)" in my post. There are plenty of places and use cases for which cars are magical things, whisking you from place to place with no effort and a minimum of cost. However, the important things to understand are: 1) Many countries effectively subsidize cars over public transit in ways that are non obvious (not charging for externalities, minimum parking requirements, huge comparative investment in automotive public works), so your accounting of the costs you see (insurance, gas, depreciation) will likely underestimate the true societal cost. 2) The problem that cars seem to solve (getting around a sparse world) is also _the problem that cars cause_ (sparsification). If you have to drive three miles to get to the grocery store, you could think "thanks cars for making this drive easy", or "boo cars for making this drive necessary". In the city I live in there are 3 grocery stores within a 10 minute walk of my apartment. 3) Some people truly do prefer the spread out, population-sparse lifestyle enabled by cars. But some other people truly prefer the dense, walkable urban lifestyle that, as I have mentioned, cars seriously disrupt. The damage comes when people in one group try to force the other to adapt to rules that make sense in their preferred environment (e.g., if Urbanite A wants to ban cars while Ruralite B wants to put highways through the urban center so she can get to work via car). I tend to side with the Urbanites on this issue at present, because it doesnt take much to see who has the upper hand in American cities right now. (viz: Rober Mosesization of most major American metros in the 60s-80s)