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I like my car and I like driving. That said, I don't like driving _everywhere_. When I moved to university, it was incredibly freeing to just be able to walk s

I like my car and I like driving. That said, I don't like driving _everywhere_. When I moved to university, it was incredibly freeing to just be able to walk somewhere I wanted to go rather than getting in my car and driving miles to get anywhere. I grew up in a suburb in Texas so walking anywhere except _maybe_ a friend's house was entirely out of the question. I visited Portland recently and it was lovely to be able to get around the whole city without a car. We didn't rent one, save for one day when we went > 100mi out of the city. No Ubers, no Lyfts- just walking, buses, and lightrail. Just my experience as an American.

iammisc 5y ago
Same.... I love driving. But I'm not driving to work ever. Haven't driven to work in years, and I never will. Just not into it.
version_five 5y ago
What's hardest to find, and what I prefer, is somewhere it's easy to walk and drive. I've lived in walkable places where if you do have to drive, traffic is a nightmare. And then of course there are places where you can drive without traffic but there is nowhere to walk to. I think I prefer the latter with my lifestyle, though it becomes more frustrating for meeting friends, going our for dinner + drinks, etc. For sports / leisure, "driveable" areas are better for getting out of town and into nature faster. In bigger cities (in Canada) I never would have considered going skiing after work, but it is possible in smaller places. I find it's also easier to go to league sports in a driveable place. For running, walkable is obviously better, and one reason I like living in the city is that I can step out my door and safely go for a run, where as further out that option doesnt exist. Anyway, just my experience.
- yellow_lead 5y ago
  Where have you been that has both? From my reading, it seems like cities need to prioritize walkable / bikable OR cars, but I've never seen example of a city doing both well.
  - newsbinator 5y ago
    Minsk does both well
  - notJim 5y ago
    IMO Portland is actually kind of like this (for now). I've heard Berkeley, CA sort of, too. In Portland (where I live), I have a driveway and convenient street parking right outside my house, but I can also walk to many shops and restaurants, and have a pretty good busline nearby. I usually take the bus if I'm going downtown, so I don't have to worry about parking. But in my part of town, which is less dense, I can conveniently drive or bike. Parking can be a little annoying on this side of town, but it's usually okay. That being said, Portland is clearly moving in a denser direction. Housing has gotten too expensive here, and the only way out of that is density. Our cycling infrastructure and public transit are decent, but need to get better IMO. All of this will probably negatively impact the car-friendliness, but I think that's the right move for Portland right now.
    - verall 5y ago
      This might not be news for you, but you're in a really desireable location. The land you're on is probably really expensive right now.
      - iammisc 5y ago
        It's desirable only because they don't build the outer burbs this way. As you drive out of the city, the time of building gets later and later. When you hit some point where the homes were built in the 60s, suddenly the walkable neighborhoods, which were the standard before then, make way for huge, sidewalkless developments. If they just built more of the commenters neighborhood, and my neighborhood, there would be more desirable land. Portland is not running out of land...
  - version_five 5y ago
    Ottawa, Canada is pretty good for this. It's a pretty small city but has a few neighborhoods that would be considered walkable, while in 20 minutes you can be out into the country. Compared with Toronto or Montreal where in 20 min if you're lucky you've entered a highway so you can sit in traffic for an hour to clear the city. Not sure about in the US.
- cbdumas 5y ago
  I think it's hard to find because those two preferences are in direct, irresolvable conflict.
  - ummonk 5y ago
    Except in really small towns.
  - 8note 5y ago
    It sounds like the Netherlands has it figure out? Split out streets and roads. Roads are for driving fast, and streets are for destinations, slow driving, and walking.
    - mrgordon 5y ago
      Most Americans would say the Netherlands is tough for driving I think because the cars are smaller, the lanes are smaller, there is light rail everywhere, many pedestrians and bikers everywhere, etc. I think all these decisions are why the Netherlands are so lovely and most of America is seemingly highways, strip malls, and suburbs. One of the most popular Dutch vacations is biking around the country and camping instead of staying at hotels. It’s quite far from American car culture in that regard.
      - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        > One of the most popular Dutch vacations is biking around the country and camping instead of staying at hotels. It’s quite far from American car culture in that regard. American car culture is to go on vacation to drive up camping spots. You can't actually camp in many places without a car. There isn't really public transit from Seattle to Mt. Ranier national park, for example, and the distances is too far and the terrain too hilly for just biking it (the Netherlands is lucky to be flat, in this regard).
        mrgordon 5y ago
        Yes being flat does help for sure. In much of Europe I think they solve this problem with trains or sometimes buses to get to the parks or outlying areas. For example, much of Italy is hill towns and no one wants to walk up huge hills to get to each town but you can typically get there with transit. The United States admittedly is quite large and spread out but if we started to connect more things with transit then I think it would stop feeling so much this way. Like why couldn’t there be a connection from San Francisco to Tahoe that doesn’t involve driving? It’s a very very popular weekend trip and a train would be great for moving skis and other equipment. If you live near Seattle, you’re lucky to have some of the better planning in the United States and some of the more open-minded people with regards to transit, camping, etc. In a place like Florida, for example, it is fairly common to meet people who’ve never been camping unless maybe you count a music festival. The priority is often air conditioning, a nice hotel room towering over the beach, etc. which is not what the Dutch seek out for the most part
- MarkLowenstein 5y ago
  I've never run into a walkable city center where there was one super-obvious and convenient place to park--maybe a gigantic underground garage--and then you walk everywhere from there. Feels like that might work. The attractive city centers have nice stuff, but too few people who live within walking distance to keep them in business and in good shape. They need a way to bring in suburbanites and visitors to supplement the native population.
  - dghlsakjg 5y ago
    Amsterdam has big parking lots outside the city center. If you park there you get a free transit pass into the city I believe. Makes a lot of sense really
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      Montreal is similar. Parking downtown: horrible. Parking out in the 'burbs and then riding the metro into town? easy, and lovely. For a lot of things, anyway.
      - spideymans 5y ago
        Might be a Canadian thing. Toronto is similar. If I recall correctly, Toronto operates the second most used public transit system in the United States or Canada, while the public transit authority there is the largest parking garage operator in North America. It’s a pretty good solution for medium-sized cities, but it breaks down as population increases. Toronto has largely stopped building these garages because they’ve run out of room for them after immense population and ridership growth. Toronto is a pretty big though, so it’s still a solution worth exploring for medium-sized cities that can still reasonably build these facilities.
      - antb123 5y ago
        Same with New Jersey + train into Manhattan
    - aix1 5y ago
      In Britain this is called Park & Ride (or P+R for short): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_and_ride https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_and_ride
- maxerickson 5y ago
  In the US, most suburban areas have plenty of low traffic streets, and many have additional recreational paths for pedestrians. When I lived in a quite rural area, it was no problem jogging on the low traffic roads, and if I wanted long runs, I could have gone ~3 miles on those roads to a converted railroad that ran for miles in either direction.
- userbinator 5y ago
  is somewhere it's easy to walk and drive This exhibit from 1940 might be interesting: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Street_intersection_Futurama.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Street_i...
  - aix1 5y ago
    Relevant: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/oct/02/walkways-in-the-sky-the-return-of-londons-forgotten-pedways https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/oct/02/walkways-in-t...
  - agent327 5y ago
    Hong Kong has that in some places. It makes it hard to navigate on foot, as pedestrian routes are no longer obvious lines but require entering building perpendicular to your direction, for example. However, the idea is nearly perfect. All it really needs is to put the cars in tunnels. Underground there's plenty of room for driving, parking, etc.
throw0101a 5y ago
> I like my car and I like driving. There's a difference between having a car as an option as a form of transportation versus having it be a necessity.
- worik 5y ago
  Which is the whole point of designing cities so cars are not needed
  - crispyambulance 5y ago
    Whereas Americans buy cars so that cities are not needed ! :-)
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  Yes, though a lot of Americans don't see it that way. People I talk to think I must hate driving, because I think we should have effective options for walking, biking, and public transit. I don't hate driving. I hate being forced to drive.
megablast 5y ago
You like pollution? You like polluting waterways with micro plastics from your tires? You don't care about the 40k killed every year in the USA? You don't care about the destruction of countryside with roads???
- ketzo 5y ago
  Aw, hush. That’s a needlessly antagonistic take. Someone can say “I like driving” without us assuming that they’re totally ignorant of the negative externalities. I can say “I like ice cream” without you having to say “you like saturated fat??? you like increasing your risk of diabetes????”
  - megablast 5y ago
    You killing yourself is not the same as someone killing the planet. Can you not see why people care about the planet they inhabit??
    - Vinnl 5y ago
      But you do like ice cream? You like millions of animals getting killed? People getting killed from antibiotics no longer working? Water shortages? The planet getting killed? I don't know what you're trying to achieve with your comment, but I'm quite sure I didn't turn you vegan just now. Even if you care about not killing the planet, what matters is not that you make it clear that you do, but that you're effective in preventing that from happening.
- readflaggedcomm 5y ago
  Love it. Enormous benefits.
throwawayboise 5y ago
I like living out in the country on a large private wooded lot. I have lived in dense cities where I could get groceries and other necessities within a short walk, and with pervasive public transportation. Hated it. I like space and seclusion. I like being able to drive anywhere to get what I need, when I need it, and not having to wait for a bus or a train.
- yarky 5y ago
  It looks like you need a car indeed. I grew up the way you live and just loved it when I first lived in a city where I didn't need a car. If you needed a bus/train to do your groceries I understand that you hated it, that's why I'd rather choose to stay at a walkable distance of everything.
browningstreet 5y ago
I live adjacent to a mid- sized downtown area. It’s walkable, but from my house to anything on the other side of it… not as walkable. Driving it is very annoying though… lights, weird traffic patterns, a million turns, one way streets, etc. if any single one of those roads were converted to a bike only street, it’d be 100x easier and more rewarding to bike it. I wish American towns… especially the smaller ones where streets are too narrow for bike lanes, would embrace no-car streets. The fact that they don’t exist AT ALL is disheartening.
SilasX 5y ago
I remember hearing a joke that Americans like vacationing in Paris (or Rome, London, etc) because it reproduces the walkable life they only ever had in college.
jollybean 5y ago
The hardest thing to do is explain that experience to people. Also having grown up in the burbs, it wasn't until adulthood in SF and Europe that I realized how materially different 'walking' can be. It's shocking, because it's something so fundamental, right in front of our eyes, that's just hard to fathom. So 1) we have to think about how we communicate this and 2) we may want to thin of ways to even adapt the Burbs to something more ammenable. On the later, it seems crazy, but people do like convenience, and expansion of commuter lines may bode very well. People will use transit if it's faster and more convenient. If Dallas were connected to Planto etc. through something fairly quick, clean and safe it would transform the city. Not holding my breath.
atoav 5y ago
I liked driving too, but I lived in a larger German city for the past decade and didn't need a car. If I want groceries I walk across the street. If I want to go to work I cycle there (which is faster than taking the car or the subway at that time of the day, additionally you are more awake at work and get a little movement). The few times a year where I need to transport something bigger, I just rent a car or get one from a car sharing service, or I transport it in the subway/S-Bahn. I grew up on the countryside, where cars were a necessity and give you freedom, but living here not having a car gives me freedom. I don't have to think about my car, where to park it, where I parked it, how to maintain it etc.
xorfish 5y ago
Just imagine how much freedom people that can't drive a car (disabilities, too young, too old) get in a walkable city. Can you imagine to live in a city where you can give a 10 year old money to get some ice at a stand that is 2 km away? That happens if you do city planning right.

iammisc 5y ago

Same.... I love driving. But I'm not driving to work ever. Haven't driven to work in years, and I never will. Just not into it.

version_five 5y ago

What's hardest to find, and what I prefer, is somewhere it's easy to walk and drive. I've lived in walkable places where if you do have to drive, traffic is a nightmare. And then of course there are places where you can drive without traffic but there is nowhere to walk to. I think I prefer the latter with my lifestyle, though it becomes more frustrating for meeting friends, going our for dinner + drinks, etc. For sports / leisure, "driveable" areas are better for getting out of town and into nature faster. In bigger cities (in Canada) I never would have considered going skiing after work, but it is possible in smaller places. I find it's also easier to go to league sports in a driveable place. For running, walkable is obviously better, and one reason I like living in the city is that I can step out my door and safely go for a run, where as further out that option doesnt exist. Anyway, just my experience.

yellow_lead 5y ago
Where have you been that has both? From my reading, it seems like cities need to prioritize walkable / bikable OR cars, but I've never seen example of a city doing both well.
- newsbinator 5y ago
  Minsk does both well
- notJim 5y ago
  IMO Portland is actually kind of like this (for now). I've heard Berkeley, CA sort of, too. In Portland (where I live), I have a driveway and convenient street parking right outside my house, but I can also walk to many shops and restaurants, and have a pretty good busline nearby. I usually take the bus if I'm going downtown, so I don't have to worry about parking. But in my part of town, which is less dense, I can conveniently drive or bike. Parking can be a little annoying on this side of town, but it's usually okay. That being said, Portland is clearly moving in a denser direction. Housing has gotten too expensive here, and the only way out of that is density. Our cycling infrastructure and public transit are decent, but need to get better IMO. All of this will probably negatively impact the car-friendliness, but I think that's the right move for Portland right now.
  - verall 5y ago
    This might not be news for you, but you're in a really desireable location. The land you're on is probably really expensive right now.
    - iammisc 5y ago
      It's desirable only because they don't build the outer burbs this way. As you drive out of the city, the time of building gets later and later. When you hit some point where the homes were built in the 60s, suddenly the walkable neighborhoods, which were the standard before then, make way for huge, sidewalkless developments. If they just built more of the commenters neighborhood, and my neighborhood, there would be more desirable land. Portland is not running out of land...
- version_five 5y ago
  Ottawa, Canada is pretty good for this. It's a pretty small city but has a few neighborhoods that would be considered walkable, while in 20 minutes you can be out into the country. Compared with Toronto or Montreal where in 20 min if you're lucky you've entered a highway so you can sit in traffic for an hour to clear the city. Not sure about in the US.
cbdumas 5y ago
I think it's hard to find because those two preferences are in direct, irresolvable conflict.
- ummonk 5y ago
  Except in really small towns.
- 8note 5y ago
  It sounds like the Netherlands has it figure out? Split out streets and roads. Roads are for driving fast, and streets are for destinations, slow driving, and walking.
  - mrgordon 5y ago
    Most Americans would say the Netherlands is tough for driving I think because the cars are smaller, the lanes are smaller, there is light rail everywhere, many pedestrians and bikers everywhere, etc. I think all these decisions are why the Netherlands are so lovely and most of America is seemingly highways, strip malls, and suburbs. One of the most popular Dutch vacations is biking around the country and camping instead of staying at hotels. It’s quite far from American car culture in that regard.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      > One of the most popular Dutch vacations is biking around the country and camping instead of staying at hotels. It’s quite far from American car culture in that regard. American car culture is to go on vacation to drive up camping spots. You can't actually camp in many places without a car. There isn't really public transit from Seattle to Mt. Ranier national park, for example, and the distances is too far and the terrain too hilly for just biking it (the Netherlands is lucky to be flat, in this regard).
      - mrgordon 5y ago
        Yes being flat does help for sure. In much of Europe I think they solve this problem with trains or sometimes buses to get to the parks or outlying areas. For example, much of Italy is hill towns and no one wants to walk up huge hills to get to each town but you can typically get there with transit. The United States admittedly is quite large and spread out but if we started to connect more things with transit then I think it would stop feeling so much this way. Like why couldn’t there be a connection from San Francisco to Tahoe that doesn’t involve driving? It’s a very very popular weekend trip and a train would be great for moving skis and other equipment. If you live near Seattle, you’re lucky to have some of the better planning in the United States and some of the more open-minded people with regards to transit, camping, etc. In a place like Florida, for example, it is fairly common to meet people who’ve never been camping unless maybe you count a music festival. The priority is often air conditioning, a nice hotel room towering over the beach, etc. which is not what the Dutch seek out for the most part
MarkLowenstein 5y ago
I've never run into a walkable city center where there was one super-obvious and convenient place to park--maybe a gigantic underground garage--and then you walk everywhere from there. Feels like that might work. The attractive city centers have nice stuff, but too few people who live within walking distance to keep them in business and in good shape. They need a way to bring in suburbanites and visitors to supplement the native population.
- dghlsakjg 5y ago
  Amsterdam has big parking lots outside the city center. If you park there you get a free transit pass into the city I believe. Makes a lot of sense really
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    Montreal is similar. Parking downtown: horrible. Parking out in the 'burbs and then riding the metro into town? easy, and lovely. For a lot of things, anyway.
    - spideymans 5y ago
      Might be a Canadian thing. Toronto is similar. If I recall correctly, Toronto operates the second most used public transit system in the United States or Canada, while the public transit authority there is the largest parking garage operator in North America. It’s a pretty good solution for medium-sized cities, but it breaks down as population increases. Toronto has largely stopped building these garages because they’ve run out of room for them after immense population and ridership growth. Toronto is a pretty big though, so it’s still a solution worth exploring for medium-sized cities that can still reasonably build these facilities.
    - antb123 5y ago
      Same with New Jersey + train into Manhattan
  - aix1 5y ago
    In Britain this is called Park & Ride (or P+R for short): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_and_ride https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_and_ride
maxerickson 5y ago
In the US, most suburban areas have plenty of low traffic streets, and many have additional recreational paths for pedestrians. When I lived in a quite rural area, it was no problem jogging on the low traffic roads, and if I wanted long runs, I could have gone ~3 miles on those roads to a converted railroad that ran for miles in either direction.
userbinator 5y ago
is somewhere it's easy to walk and drive This exhibit from 1940 might be interesting: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Street_intersection_Futurama.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Street_i...
- aix1 5y ago
  Relevant: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/oct/02/walkways-in-the-sky-the-return-of-londons-forgotten-pedways https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/oct/02/walkways-in-t...
- agent327 5y ago
  Hong Kong has that in some places. It makes it hard to navigate on foot, as pedestrian routes are no longer obvious lines but require entering building perpendicular to your direction, for example. However, the idea is nearly perfect. All it really needs is to put the cars in tunnels. Underground there's plenty of room for driving, parking, etc.

throw0101a 5y ago

> I like my car and I like driving. There's a difference between having a car as an option as a form of transportation versus having it be a necessity.

worik 5y ago
Which is the whole point of designing cities so cars are not needed
- crispyambulance 5y ago
  Whereas Americans buy cars so that cities are not needed ! :-)
TulliusCicero 5y ago
Yes, though a lot of Americans don't see it that way. People I talk to think I must hate driving, because I think we should have effective options for walking, biking, and public transit. I don't hate driving. I hate being forced to drive.

megablast 5y ago

You like pollution? You like polluting waterways with micro plastics from your tires? You don't care about the 40k killed every year in the USA? You don't care about the destruction of countryside with roads???

ketzo 5y ago
Aw, hush. That’s a needlessly antagonistic take. Someone can say “I like driving” without us assuming that they’re totally ignorant of the negative externalities. I can say “I like ice cream” without you having to say “you like saturated fat??? you like increasing your risk of diabetes????”
- megablast 5y ago
  You killing yourself is not the same as someone killing the planet. Can you not see why people care about the planet they inhabit??
  - Vinnl 5y ago
    But you do like ice cream? You like millions of animals getting killed? People getting killed from antibiotics no longer working? Water shortages? The planet getting killed? I don't know what you're trying to achieve with your comment, but I'm quite sure I didn't turn you vegan just now. Even if you care about not killing the planet, what matters is not that you make it clear that you do, but that you're effective in preventing that from happening.
readflaggedcomm 5y ago
Love it. Enormous benefits.

throwawayboise 5y ago

I like living out in the country on a large private wooded lot. I have lived in dense cities where I could get groceries and other necessities within a short walk, and with pervasive public transportation. Hated it. I like space and seclusion. I like being able to drive anywhere to get what I need, when I need it, and not having to wait for a bus or a train.

yarky 5y ago
It looks like you need a car indeed. I grew up the way you live and just loved it when I first lived in a city where I didn't need a car. If you needed a bus/train to do your groceries I understand that you hated it, that's why I'd rather choose to stay at a walkable distance of everything.

browningstreet 5y ago

I live adjacent to a mid- sized downtown area. It’s walkable, but from my house to anything on the other side of it… not as walkable. Driving it is very annoying though… lights, weird traffic patterns, a million turns, one way streets, etc. if any single one of those roads were converted to a bike only street, it’d be 100x easier and more rewarding to bike it. I wish American towns… especially the smaller ones where streets are too narrow for bike lanes, would embrace no-car streets. The fact that they don’t exist AT ALL is disheartening.

SilasX 5y ago

I remember hearing a joke that Americans like vacationing in Paris (or Rome, London, etc) because it reproduces the walkable life they only ever had in college.

jollybean 5y ago

The hardest thing to do is explain that experience to people. Also having grown up in the burbs, it wasn't until adulthood in SF and Europe that I realized how materially different 'walking' can be. It's shocking, because it's something so fundamental, right in front of our eyes, that's just hard to fathom. So 1) we have to think about how we communicate this and 2) we may want to thin of ways to even adapt the Burbs to something more ammenable. On the later, it seems crazy, but people do like convenience, and expansion of commuter lines may bode very well. People will use transit if it's faster and more convenient. If Dallas were connected to Planto etc. through something fairly quick, clean and safe it would transform the city. Not holding my breath.

atoav 5y ago

I liked driving too, but I lived in a larger German city for the past decade and didn't need a car. If I want groceries I walk across the street. If I want to go to work I cycle there (which is faster than taking the car or the subway at that time of the day, additionally you are more awake at work and get a little movement). The few times a year where I need to transport something bigger, I just rent a car or get one from a car sharing service, or I transport it in the subway/S-Bahn. I grew up on the countryside, where cars were a necessity and give you freedom, but living here not having a car gives me freedom. I don't have to think about my car, where to park it, where I parked it, how to maintain it etc.

xorfish 5y ago

Just imagine how much freedom people that can't drive a car (disabilities, too young, too old) get in a walkable city. Can you imagine to live in a city where you can give a 10 year old money to get some ice at a stand that is 2 km away? That happens if you do city planning right.