8 ms·

I think cities should become linearly more car hostile every year. No free parking. Single lanes. Large protected bike lanes and walking areas with trees and sh

I think cities should become linearly more car hostile every year. No free parking. Single lanes. Large protected bike lanes and walking areas with trees and shade. Prioritize plowing sidewalks and bike ways. Then limit total decibel emissions. Just slowly extricate the parasite from our cities.

throwawaysea 5y ago
Parasite? My car is an important part of my life and the lives of most people I know. The alternative is that I would spend significantly more time shuttling humans, getting my weekly shopping done, getting to/from work, and so on. All the infrastructure and amenities that you are suggesting be casually tossed aside, improve my family's life significantly in a way that other modes of transportation simply cannot match. The sheer time savings are worth much more to me than the alleged noise pollution from cars, which isn't really even noticeable.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  Those benefits come at a cost, and you're only paying for some of it. If going downtown and parking there had a direct price in keeping with what it costs to supply, then you wouldn't be a parasite. Instead the costs are obfuscated and forced onto people. If you're driving around somewhere that land is at less of a premium, have fun.
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    > If going downtown and parking there had a direct price in keeping with what it costs to supply, then you wouldn't be a parasite. These are amenities that residents and local governments have elected to have, to the benefit of all. Your claim that I'm only paying for some of it is false. I'm paying exactly the required amount for it, because my taxes fund the city and have done so for a long time. Costs are also not "forced" onto people - the newcomers who don't like my car-centric city are the ones forcing themselves upon the city, demanding density beyond what can be reasonably supplied just so they can have the exact price point they want. These same people can just as well live elsewhere and form their own city instead of trying to simultaneously benefit from the community and economy current residents (and infrastructure policies) have built up over years and decades, while they also insist that things be altered drastically to their desire. Who exactly is the parasite in this picture? Hint: not the long-time residents.
    - eesmith 5y ago
      > have elected to have, to the benefit of all Laws about required parking spaces were put into place many years ago, by different people, with incomplete information about the future. When that information changes, the laws should change too, yes? For example, as the Boomers age, fewer will be able to drive, making their current independent life in the suburbs unsupportable. Many elderly are able to walk even if they can't drive. But if mandatory minimum parking laws prevent the construction of walkable areas then fewer options are available to them. These laws, often put into place in the post-war boom, don't reflect current life, so must change. Hint: retired Boomers are long-time residents. > I'm paying exactly the required amount for it, Unless you have metered or paid permit parking set by free market rates, I have a hard time understanding how you can be so certain. Cities change their tax levels and fee structures often. Surely you don't think that roads and parking happens to be perfectly funded. BTW, many cities have gone into debt to fund their growth. What you see is "a modest, short term illusion of wealth in exchange for enormous, long term liabilities" - https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ . The current residents are not "paying exactly the required amount for it"; it's been pushed off to future residents. Rather like parking minimum laws.
- athrun 5y ago
  I hope you can realise that the issue pointed out here is that the surburban development pattern essentially forces you to take your car to do something as basic as grocery shopping or going to the park. If your neighborhood was walkable and you had access to shops within walking/cycling distance, you would not need your car for this. It might even be more enjoyable for your family than sitting in a car, stuck in traffic. Heck, your children could—gasp!—go get ice cream at the corner shop by themselves!
  - ryathal 5y ago
    Carless grocery shopping for a family sounds awful. If the kids are too young to ride a bike, you lose cargo space on your bike to haul a kid, or need the other parent to be available to take care of the children while one shops. You can't actually buy as much per trip, so you have to go more often, which means more time per week getting groceries. Bulk buying is basically impossible, so things get more expensive. Maybe you can get bulk delivered, but that means more delivery vehicles and is generally always more expensive, unless you live in an area with venture capital money to burn.
    - addicted 5y ago
      It’s hard to unpack this comment because it’s so completely car centered. The simplest thing to do here is to point out that the overwhelming majority of the world does not shop for groceries the way Americans do. And they have families. Heck, many of them have bigger families than Americans.
      - johnwalkr 5y ago
        As someone who grew up in Edmonton but live in a big city with lots of local stores now, I will never go back to car centric life if I can help it. I don’t have a car but neither does anyone else. There’s no less than 6 grocery stores within a 500m radius of me with the closest being about 100m away. Yeah having a pantry full of food is convenient in a way, but local stores in every neighborhood seems more convenient to me and picking up a few things on your way home, a few times a week is less of a chore than one big trip.
- lm28469 5y ago
  > My car is an important part of my life and the lives of most people I know. Meth is an important part of my life and the lives of other people I know. You know we're fucked when being slave to a machine is viewed as an immutable fact of life
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    Except a car has dramatically more useful functionality than meth, so this is a completely disingenuous comment. Nobody is claiming that cars don't have an associated cost, but one side of this discussion constantly glosses over the benefits of a personal car and only talks about the downsides.
    - Steltek 5y ago
      The utility of cars would plummet if they were not so subsidized by the government and society itself shrugs off externalities. People casually accept needless death from cars because it's seen as a fact of life. How do you talk about the positives of cars after realizing all of that?
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
It's a pipe dream as long as cities are dependent on areas beyond their rail transit networks for labor. The infrastructure of every major city would need to be re-worked to make it not a pipe dream. The kind of re-work it would need simply doesn't happen to existing development. There's too many stake holders and too much valuable existing construction would need to be gotten rid of. Cities in Europe still have the original street layouts of their medieval cores that were left mostly intact when trains and then cars came onto the scene. If something displaces cars it will likely result in new development, not re-work of old development.
- aeternum 5y ago
  Electric bikes could be the game-changer that makes this work. It used to be that most people were opposed to biking due to many issues: safety, arriving sweaty, difficulty riding up hills. Nowadays with the general easy availability of electric bikes in city bikeshare the main complaint is now safety around cars.
  - jandrese 5y ago
    What about rain and snow?
    - jwalton 5y ago
      Rain is not as bad as you think it is. With a not-e-bike, I’m generally pretty warm from cycling, and a little cold rain is usually welcome. Fenders are required for a commuter bike if you want to bike in the rain, and you have to clean your bike more often if you bike in the rain often. Snow is suicidal, not because of your bike, it because of the drivers.
      - jandrese 5y ago
        The problem is that you then arrive at work soaking wet, so you have to change clothes and then store your wet stuff somewhere all day. Then change back into the wet stuff for the ride back (which might be in the rain again).
leetcrew 5y ago
other than NYC, pretty much all US cities have household car ownership >50%. how are you going to sell your plan to these people?
- dionidium 5y ago
  Of course people own cars today; we prioritize driver interests wherever they conflict with other concerns. But even passive changes to the built environment -- allow more density, upzone urban neighborhoods, eliminate parking requirements -- will in many places result in cities that are far more car-hostile. In my view people will naturally respond to changing incentives. Car ownership rates should be understood to exist in a context where the alternatives are more or less illegal. If they weren't literally illegal, then they'd be more common.
  - leetcrew 5y ago
    there's a significant difference between "allow denser construction" and "deliberately ratchet up the pain for drivers each year". a city that's genuinely designed for pedestrians sounds great! having my commute to work be even worse for n years until public transit reaches viability doesn't sound so great.
    - drewcoo 5y ago
      What's the difference? Is it that "deliberately ratchet up the pain for drivers each year" includes (malicious) intent, an overwrought exaggeration, a victim (gasp!), or a timeframe? Or is the whole comparison really just not in good faith?
      - leetcrew 5y ago
        eliminating free parking and parking minimums seems reasonable enough. people who need a car to get to the place where they make money can figure out how to pay for parking. stuff like prioritizing plowing the sidewalk over the road sounds like deliberately pissing drivers off. what it sounds like is important, and most people drive. imagine being a politician outside of maybe NYC and having that as part of your platform. other people like me have more specific issues. I'd actually love to bike or take public transit to work, but there's no bus/train that goes anywhere near my office, it would take over an hour to bike there, and all the other software companies are also outside the city. why are there no virtually no employers in my field in a major american city? kind of a tangent, but if you don't look at things like this too, you are making my life worse without offering anything.
FridayoLeary 5y ago
I think that's a terrible idea. It's just a negative. What about when we need to get somewhere?
- chaps 5y ago
  The implication of these pipe dreams includes the doubling down of public transit infrastructure.
  - FridayoLeary 5y ago
    Improve public transport then take away my car. But what they can do is get rid of all those useless, oversized, bloated SUV's. A car doesn't need to be a status symbol, and in approximately 99.99987% of use cases it does not need to be a Mercedes G-Wagen amg. (there are millions of drivers out there, so i'm not sure if i put in enough 9's)
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      If you improve public transit you don't need to take away people's cars. Nobody is enduring a car commute into Boston, NYC, London, Paris, etc, unless their other options are downright terrible.
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      Smart cars for everyone. Statistically that's all anyone should need. Sounds really like a leopard-ate-my-face moment, TBH. It's fine when they come for the things you don't like. Just wait...
      - lamontcg 5y ago
        > Smart cars for everyone. Statistically that's all anyone should need. That's not how statistics work.
- 3np 5y ago
  You use public transport. Which implies huge infrastructure developments, of course.
babyshake 5y ago
One can at least imagine a future in which downtown areas are limited to quiet autonomous electric vehicles that do not have horns and only screech to avoid imminent collision.
ineedasername 5y ago
I'm not sure about other areas if the world, but mass transit in the US isn't sufficient to fill the gap in the need to get people around with even minimal efficiency.
Rapzid 5y ago
Cities are made for people. Those people drive cars.
aspyct 5y ago
I agree and disagree. Bikes are the best transportation for small trips. No questionning it. Unless you can't use a bike because something's wrong with your body. Then you need a car. For some people, it's obvious: they have a broken leg, or no legs at all. They'll get a pass (and boy do they need it!). For other people, like me, it's less obvious. I still have my two legs, my two feet, but some bones are broken, and it hurts to cycle or walk just a few kilometers. Essentially, as much as I hate it, I need a car. Otherwise each day ends in pain and misery. And public transportation doesn't solve it, since I need to walk to the bus stop. So yes, cities need to have less cars, but please don't forget about people who don't have another solution.
- addicted 5y ago
  Or public transport. Or, as in the Netherlands, small golf cart like vehicles that can go on the bike path and the speeds are capped at a level where they are not a threat to everyone around them and they don’t take up inordinate amounts of space.
- timbit42 5y ago
  We need more electric tri/quad-cycles like the Better Bikes PEDL and the Organic Transit ELF. They provide shelter from sun, rain and snow, and have enough battery to not require pedaling. They are also small enough to go on bike lanes and paths yet large enough to been seen by drivers of ICE vehicles.
- foxyv 5y ago
  Better bicycle infrastructure solves this problem too. Sidewalks are okay, but dedicated bike paths are AWESOME for motorized wheelchairs. In addition, the Netherlands came up with a cool system where disabled and elderly persons could use little, enclosed, motor vehicles like the Canta on dedicated use paths. Being disabled doesn't mean you need a car. In fact, it usually means that you cannot use a car at all and depend on public transit and cycle/ped infrastructure. If you are an alcoholic, epileptic, or blind you absolutely need public transportation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canta_(vehicle) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canta_(vehicle)
lolsal 5y ago
What about people with disabilities? Busses or some courier/taxi/delivery services? Eliminating cars for American cities is not as straightforward as "just stop using cars".
- pcmoney 5y ago
  I dont see why disabilities necessitate a mobile armored living room? Maybe an electric scooter or golf cart sized apparatus?
  - lolsal 5y ago
    Have you never seen folks with walkers or wheelchairs out and about? Sometimes loading a wheelchair into a van and driving to the grocery store is easier than using a wheelchair to go 10 miles to pickup groceries.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Parasite? My car is an important part of my life and the lives of most people I know. The alternative is that I would spend significantly more time shuttling humans, getting my weekly shopping done, getting to/from work, and so on. All the infrastructure and amenities that you are suggesting be casually tossed aside, improve my family's life significantly in a way that other modes of transportation simply cannot match. The sheer time savings are worth much more to me than the alleged noise pollution from cars, which isn't really even noticeable.

Dylan16807 5y ago
Those benefits come at a cost, and you're only paying for some of it. If going downtown and parking there had a direct price in keeping with what it costs to supply, then you wouldn't be a parasite. Instead the costs are obfuscated and forced onto people. If you're driving around somewhere that land is at less of a premium, have fun.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  > If going downtown and parking there had a direct price in keeping with what it costs to supply, then you wouldn't be a parasite. These are amenities that residents and local governments have elected to have, to the benefit of all. Your claim that I'm only paying for some of it is false. I'm paying exactly the required amount for it, because my taxes fund the city and have done so for a long time. Costs are also not "forced" onto people - the newcomers who don't like my car-centric city are the ones forcing themselves upon the city, demanding density beyond what can be reasonably supplied just so they can have the exact price point they want. These same people can just as well live elsewhere and form their own city instead of trying to simultaneously benefit from the community and economy current residents (and infrastructure policies) have built up over years and decades, while they also insist that things be altered drastically to their desire. Who exactly is the parasite in this picture? Hint: not the long-time residents.
  - eesmith 5y ago
    > have elected to have, to the benefit of all Laws about required parking spaces were put into place many years ago, by different people, with incomplete information about the future. When that information changes, the laws should change too, yes? For example, as the Boomers age, fewer will be able to drive, making their current independent life in the suburbs unsupportable. Many elderly are able to walk even if they can't drive. But if mandatory minimum parking laws prevent the construction of walkable areas then fewer options are available to them. These laws, often put into place in the post-war boom, don't reflect current life, so must change. Hint: retired Boomers are long-time residents. > I'm paying exactly the required amount for it, Unless you have metered or paid permit parking set by free market rates, I have a hard time understanding how you can be so certain. Cities change their tax levels and fee structures often. Surely you don't think that roads and parking happens to be perfectly funded. BTW, many cities have gone into debt to fund their growth. What you see is "a modest, short term illusion of wealth in exchange for enormous, long term liabilities" - https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ . The current residents are not "paying exactly the required amount for it"; it's been pushed off to future residents. Rather like parking minimum laws.
athrun 5y ago
I hope you can realise that the issue pointed out here is that the surburban development pattern essentially forces you to take your car to do something as basic as grocery shopping or going to the park. If your neighborhood was walkable and you had access to shops within walking/cycling distance, you would not need your car for this. It might even be more enjoyable for your family than sitting in a car, stuck in traffic. Heck, your children could—gasp!—go get ice cream at the corner shop by themselves!
- ryathal 5y ago
  Carless grocery shopping for a family sounds awful. If the kids are too young to ride a bike, you lose cargo space on your bike to haul a kid, or need the other parent to be available to take care of the children while one shops. You can't actually buy as much per trip, so you have to go more often, which means more time per week getting groceries. Bulk buying is basically impossible, so things get more expensive. Maybe you can get bulk delivered, but that means more delivery vehicles and is generally always more expensive, unless you live in an area with venture capital money to burn.
  - addicted 5y ago
    It’s hard to unpack this comment because it’s so completely car centered. The simplest thing to do here is to point out that the overwhelming majority of the world does not shop for groceries the way Americans do. And they have families. Heck, many of them have bigger families than Americans.
    - johnwalkr 5y ago
      As someone who grew up in Edmonton but live in a big city with lots of local stores now, I will never go back to car centric life if I can help it. I don’t have a car but neither does anyone else. There’s no less than 6 grocery stores within a 500m radius of me with the closest being about 100m away. Yeah having a pantry full of food is convenient in a way, but local stores in every neighborhood seems more convenient to me and picking up a few things on your way home, a few times a week is less of a chore than one big trip.
lm28469 5y ago
> My car is an important part of my life and the lives of most people I know. Meth is an important part of my life and the lives of other people I know. You know we're fucked when being slave to a machine is viewed as an immutable fact of life
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  Except a car has dramatically more useful functionality than meth, so this is a completely disingenuous comment. Nobody is claiming that cars don't have an associated cost, but one side of this discussion constantly glosses over the benefits of a personal car and only talks about the downsides.
  - Steltek 5y ago
    The utility of cars would plummet if they were not so subsidized by the government and society itself shrugs off externalities. People casually accept needless death from cars because it's seen as a fact of life. How do you talk about the positives of cars after realizing all of that?

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

It's a pipe dream as long as cities are dependent on areas beyond their rail transit networks for labor. The infrastructure of every major city would need to be re-worked to make it not a pipe dream. The kind of re-work it would need simply doesn't happen to existing development. There's too many stake holders and too much valuable existing construction would need to be gotten rid of. Cities in Europe still have the original street layouts of their medieval cores that were left mostly intact when trains and then cars came onto the scene. If something displaces cars it will likely result in new development, not re-work of old development.

aeternum 5y ago
Electric bikes could be the game-changer that makes this work. It used to be that most people were opposed to biking due to many issues: safety, arriving sweaty, difficulty riding up hills. Nowadays with the general easy availability of electric bikes in city bikeshare the main complaint is now safety around cars.
- jandrese 5y ago
  What about rain and snow?
  - jwalton 5y ago
    Rain is not as bad as you think it is. With a not-e-bike, I’m generally pretty warm from cycling, and a little cold rain is usually welcome. Fenders are required for a commuter bike if you want to bike in the rain, and you have to clean your bike more often if you bike in the rain often. Snow is suicidal, not because of your bike, it because of the drivers.
    - jandrese 5y ago
      The problem is that you then arrive at work soaking wet, so you have to change clothes and then store your wet stuff somewhere all day. Then change back into the wet stuff for the ride back (which might be in the rain again).

leetcrew 5y ago

other than NYC, pretty much all US cities have household car ownership >50%. how are you going to sell your plan to these people?

dionidium 5y ago
Of course people own cars today; we prioritize driver interests wherever they conflict with other concerns. But even passive changes to the built environment -- allow more density, upzone urban neighborhoods, eliminate parking requirements -- will in many places result in cities that are far more car-hostile. In my view people will naturally respond to changing incentives. Car ownership rates should be understood to exist in a context where the alternatives are more or less illegal. If they weren't literally illegal, then they'd be more common.
- leetcrew 5y ago
  there's a significant difference between "allow denser construction" and "deliberately ratchet up the pain for drivers each year". a city that's genuinely designed for pedestrians sounds great! having my commute to work be even worse for n years until public transit reaches viability doesn't sound so great.
  - drewcoo 5y ago
    What's the difference? Is it that "deliberately ratchet up the pain for drivers each year" includes (malicious) intent, an overwrought exaggeration, a victim (gasp!), or a timeframe? Or is the whole comparison really just not in good faith?
    - leetcrew 5y ago
      eliminating free parking and parking minimums seems reasonable enough. people who need a car to get to the place where they make money can figure out how to pay for parking. stuff like prioritizing plowing the sidewalk over the road sounds like deliberately pissing drivers off. what it sounds like is important, and most people drive. imagine being a politician outside of maybe NYC and having that as part of your platform. other people like me have more specific issues. I'd actually love to bike or take public transit to work, but there's no bus/train that goes anywhere near my office, it would take over an hour to bike there, and all the other software companies are also outside the city. why are there no virtually no employers in my field in a major american city? kind of a tangent, but if you don't look at things like this too, you are making my life worse without offering anything.

FridayoLeary 5y ago

I think that's a terrible idea. It's just a negative. What about when we need to get somewhere?

chaps 5y ago
The implication of these pipe dreams includes the doubling down of public transit infrastructure.
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  Improve public transport then take away my car. But what they can do is get rid of all those useless, oversized, bloated SUV's. A car doesn't need to be a status symbol, and in approximately 99.99987% of use cases it does not need to be a Mercedes G-Wagen amg. (there are millions of drivers out there, so i'm not sure if i put in enough 9's)
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    If you improve public transit you don't need to take away people's cars. Nobody is enduring a car commute into Boston, NYC, London, Paris, etc, unless their other options are downright terrible.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    Smart cars for everyone. Statistically that's all anyone should need. Sounds really like a leopard-ate-my-face moment, TBH. It's fine when they come for the things you don't like. Just wait...
    - lamontcg 5y ago
      > Smart cars for everyone. Statistically that's all anyone should need. That's not how statistics work.
3np 5y ago
You use public transport. Which implies huge infrastructure developments, of course.

babyshake 5y ago

One can at least imagine a future in which downtown areas are limited to quiet autonomous electric vehicles that do not have horns and only screech to avoid imminent collision.

ineedasername 5y ago

I'm not sure about other areas if the world, but mass transit in the US isn't sufficient to fill the gap in the need to get people around with even minimal efficiency.

Rapzid 5y ago

Cities are made for people. Those people drive cars.

aspyct 5y ago

I agree and disagree. Bikes are the best transportation for small trips. No questionning it. Unless you can't use a bike because something's wrong with your body. Then you need a car. For some people, it's obvious: they have a broken leg, or no legs at all. They'll get a pass (and boy do they need it!). For other people, like me, it's less obvious. I still have my two legs, my two feet, but some bones are broken, and it hurts to cycle or walk just a few kilometers. Essentially, as much as I hate it, I need a car. Otherwise each day ends in pain and misery. And public transportation doesn't solve it, since I need to walk to the bus stop. So yes, cities need to have less cars, but please don't forget about people who don't have another solution.

addicted 5y ago
Or public transport. Or, as in the Netherlands, small golf cart like vehicles that can go on the bike path and the speeds are capped at a level where they are not a threat to everyone around them and they don’t take up inordinate amounts of space.
timbit42 5y ago
We need more electric tri/quad-cycles like the Better Bikes PEDL and the Organic Transit ELF. They provide shelter from sun, rain and snow, and have enough battery to not require pedaling. They are also small enough to go on bike lanes and paths yet large enough to been seen by drivers of ICE vehicles.
foxyv 5y ago
Better bicycle infrastructure solves this problem too. Sidewalks are okay, but dedicated bike paths are AWESOME for motorized wheelchairs. In addition, the Netherlands came up with a cool system where disabled and elderly persons could use little, enclosed, motor vehicles like the Canta on dedicated use paths. Being disabled doesn't mean you need a car. In fact, it usually means that you cannot use a car at all and depend on public transit and cycle/ped infrastructure. If you are an alcoholic, epileptic, or blind you absolutely need public transportation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canta_(vehicle) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canta_(vehicle)

lolsal 5y ago

What about people with disabilities? Busses or some courier/taxi/delivery services? Eliminating cars for American cities is not as straightforward as "just stop using cars".

pcmoney 5y ago
I dont see why disabilities necessitate a mobile armored living room? Maybe an electric scooter or golf cart sized apparatus?
- lolsal 5y ago
  Have you never seen folks with walkers or wheelchairs out and about? Sometimes loading a wheelchair into a van and driving to the grocery store is easier than using a wheelchair to go 10 miles to pickup groceries.