5 ms·

I don't even think there's anything wrong with 2-3 car households being the norm in suburbs. I just want single occupancy vehicles banned from city centers, at

I don't even think there's anything wrong with 2-3 car households being the norm in suburbs. I just want single occupancy vehicles banned from city centers, at least in places like Manhattan (where I live). They're dangerous, they're a waste of space, and due to traffic and parking requirements they're usually not even an efficient mode of travel for their owners. If we reserved a few roads in Manhattan for busses, large commercial delivery vehicles, and people with disabilities, and left everything else for bikes, scooters, and pedestrians, transit would be faster and more pleasant for everyone.

josephcsible 5y ago
> I just want single occupancy vehicles banned from city centers Why be so authoritarian? It's one thing to say "I think single occupancy vehicles are inefficient and bad, so I'm not going to use them", but it's another to say "I think single occupancy vehicles are inefficient and bad, so I'm going to take away everyone else's choice to use them".
- Scarblac 5y ago
  Cars need roads and parking space, those take away other people's chance to have a quiet, safe, pleasant city center just as much. It's not a matter of one side being authoritarian, there's conflicting interests.
  - kempbellt 5y ago
    > right to a quiet, safe, pleasant city center Wait...these are rights now? Who do I sue for not having any of these?
    - Scarblac 5y ago
      I didn't intend to enter that discussion with that word choice, so I changed it.
  - smaryjerry 5y ago
    Cities are older than most of the people living there. People know what they get when they move to a city and pay higher prices for that. For quiet there are better cheaper options, ones where you don’t have the noise of sharing buildings and walls with others above, below, and beside you. Obviously if one person wants cars and another doesn’t it will come down to how many want that, but moving to a city for quiet is like wanting to go swimming without getting wet.
    - Scarblac 5y ago
      Cities are also much older than the car infrastructure in them. Cities can be changed: in Utrecht, Netherlands they removed an entire motorway to restore the old moat and a more pedestrian / bicycle friendly environment ( https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/motorway-removed-to-bring-back-original-water/ https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/motorway-remov... ). Many cities ban cars from the city center, restrict them to 30 km/h or one way streets, or make parking prohibitively expensive. People come to cities because of all the other people there, not because there are so many parking lots.
- cowmoo728 5y ago
  Single occupancy vehicles take away my choice to bike safely in downtown Manhattan because most of the available space is dedicated to oversized cars.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    What do you mean by "dedicated to"? Are there streets in downtown Manhattan where cars are allowed but bikes aren't?
    - philipprk 5y ago
      You're also (in some cases) allowed to swim in the same rivers as alligators do. Yet that's not a good idea since the alligators make swimming there pretty dangerous. Same goes for riding a bicycle on roads full of reckless car drivers.
- solveit 5y ago
  It's funny how banning single occupancy vehicles is out of the question for being overly authoritarian (you're downvoted on HN, but I bet you'll win most actual votes in actual American cities), but designing a city center with no roads so no vehicles can use them isn't usually considered authoritarian. People have weird intuitions about rights and commons.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  Because a car is much more dangerous than a bike and regulated much looser than a bus or a truck. There's a high likelihood on an auto heavy street that as a cyclist I gravely hurt myself or lose my life while the driver only had to pay a fine and or higher insurance. I'd gladly support an alternative where any accident with a cyclist or a pedestrian results in immediate license seizure, but that's even more politically dead in the water than closing a street off from cars in the US. Cars in the US are very lightly regulated heavy machinery.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    > I'd gladly support an alternative where any accident with a cyclist or a pedestrian results in immediate license seizure If I'm going the speed limit, and a pedestrian on the sidewalk 6 inches away from me (because someone decided that narrow lanes are better) decides to step in front of me, not at a crosswalk, avoiding an accident would require me to have a negative reaction time. Are you saying I'd deserve to have my license seized in that case?
    - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      Yes and get it back after police/judge agrees that it isn't your fault. Right now damages are not proportionate between drivers and anyone else, so a rational actor will drive. If this is acceptable I'll take it and let cars gladly downtown. Elsewise, I'll take a ban on cars in downtown streets.
      - josephcsible 5y ago
        > get it back after police/judge agrees that it isn't your fault You're advocating for a guilty-until-proven-innocent system?
        Karrot_Kream 5y ago
        If I need to accept the risk of maiming to play, the other side does not, and both of us are innocent until proven guilty, then I'm not playing unless I really have no alternative. Unsurprisingly this is what actually happens in the US; only a few people proportionally actually use non car modes on streets. The majority are those that have no other option, either because they cannot own a car for cost reasons or other physical or legal reasons (physical disability, suspended licenses, etc). > You're advocating for a guilty-until-proven-innocent system? Come on, stop putting words in my mouth. We're talking about city downtowns not the whole US. I'm for restricting car use there, which you claim is authoritarian. I proposed an alternative, one used in the Netherlands, to put the onus of harm on the less vulnerable party and balance unfair externalities. You complain that this is "guilty-until-proven-innocent". If you want to rules lawyer your way to a car hegemony be my guest, but I'll continue to advocate for decreasing the unbalanced harms to non-car drivers on American streets.
- trainsarebetter 5y ago
  this is a good point. push away the poor infrastructure design, and subsidies. The cars will go!
ericmay 5y ago
> I don't even think there's anything wrong with 2-3 car households being the norm in suburbs. I don’t either. I think the suburbs themselves are what is wrong. Having 2-3 cars is just the adaptation for a moronic building style.
- Ma8ee 5y ago
  And I’m sitting here in my European suburb and considering if we could get rid of our single car. When I still had to go to the office I always bicycled or took the bus. There’s a grocery store and pharmacy within 5 minutes walk, but we order most groceries online anyway. The kids daycare is 200 meters away, and when they begin school it will be a 10 minutes walk. The car is useful when we go on holidays the whole family or when I need to buy some lumber. From where I live now it’s hard to fathom why any family would need two, or even three cars. Those suburbs that made that a necessity must be considering utter failures.
  - hunter-gatherer 5y ago
    Most of my experience woth "europe" is Finland as I have lived there a couple years and married a Finn, so I don't dare say "european vs american suburbs" but I do dare say that what constitutes as a "suburb" in Finland is much different than what you can find in the US. Here, we have suburbs that just seemingly go forever, with nothing but houses. Usually when there is a suburb in the US, it is zoned such that it is only homes, and nothing else. It is the worst (imo)
  - lost_soul 5y ago
    In American suburbs it's typical for there to be nothing but houses within a 3 to 5 mile area. Any supplies or groceries must be transported a significant distance in a pedestrian hostile environment.
    - tpm 5y ago
      That would be hell for me. I have never lived more than 1km from a grocery store, even in our village 20 years ago. Most time, including now, about 100-200m.

josephcsible 5y ago

> I just want single occupancy vehicles banned from city centers Why be so authoritarian? It's one thing to say "I think single occupancy vehicles are inefficient and bad, so I'm not going to use them", but it's another to say "I think single occupancy vehicles are inefficient and bad, so I'm going to take away everyone else's choice to use them".

Scarblac 5y ago
Cars need roads and parking space, those take away other people's chance to have a quiet, safe, pleasant city center just as much. It's not a matter of one side being authoritarian, there's conflicting interests.
- kempbellt 5y ago
  > right to a quiet, safe, pleasant city center Wait...these are rights now? Who do I sue for not having any of these?
  - Scarblac 5y ago
    I didn't intend to enter that discussion with that word choice, so I changed it.
- smaryjerry 5y ago
  Cities are older than most of the people living there. People know what they get when they move to a city and pay higher prices for that. For quiet there are better cheaper options, ones where you don’t have the noise of sharing buildings and walls with others above, below, and beside you. Obviously if one person wants cars and another doesn’t it will come down to how many want that, but moving to a city for quiet is like wanting to go swimming without getting wet.
  - Scarblac 5y ago
    Cities are also much older than the car infrastructure in them. Cities can be changed: in Utrecht, Netherlands they removed an entire motorway to restore the old moat and a more pedestrian / bicycle friendly environment ( https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/motorway-removed-to-bring-back-original-water/ https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/motorway-remov... ). Many cities ban cars from the city center, restrict them to 30 km/h or one way streets, or make parking prohibitively expensive. People come to cities because of all the other people there, not because there are so many parking lots.
cowmoo728 5y ago
Single occupancy vehicles take away my choice to bike safely in downtown Manhattan because most of the available space is dedicated to oversized cars.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  What do you mean by "dedicated to"? Are there streets in downtown Manhattan where cars are allowed but bikes aren't?
  - philipprk 5y ago
    You're also (in some cases) allowed to swim in the same rivers as alligators do. Yet that's not a good idea since the alligators make swimming there pretty dangerous. Same goes for riding a bicycle on roads full of reckless car drivers.
solveit 5y ago
It's funny how banning single occupancy vehicles is out of the question for being overly authoritarian (you're downvoted on HN, but I bet you'll win most actual votes in actual American cities), but designing a city center with no roads so no vehicles can use them isn't usually considered authoritarian. People have weird intuitions about rights and commons.
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
Because a car is much more dangerous than a bike and regulated much looser than a bus or a truck. There's a high likelihood on an auto heavy street that as a cyclist I gravely hurt myself or lose my life while the driver only had to pay a fine and or higher insurance. I'd gladly support an alternative where any accident with a cyclist or a pedestrian results in immediate license seizure, but that's even more politically dead in the water than closing a street off from cars in the US. Cars in the US are very lightly regulated heavy machinery.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  > I'd gladly support an alternative where any accident with a cyclist or a pedestrian results in immediate license seizure If I'm going the speed limit, and a pedestrian on the sidewalk 6 inches away from me (because someone decided that narrow lanes are better) decides to step in front of me, not at a crosswalk, avoiding an accident would require me to have a negative reaction time. Are you saying I'd deserve to have my license seized in that case?
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    Yes and get it back after police/judge agrees that it isn't your fault. Right now damages are not proportionate between drivers and anyone else, so a rational actor will drive. If this is acceptable I'll take it and let cars gladly downtown. Elsewise, I'll take a ban on cars in downtown streets.
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      > get it back after police/judge agrees that it isn't your fault You're advocating for a guilty-until-proven-innocent system?
      - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
        If I need to accept the risk of maiming to play, the other side does not, and both of us are innocent until proven guilty, then I'm not playing unless I really have no alternative. Unsurprisingly this is what actually happens in the US; only a few people proportionally actually use non car modes on streets. The majority are those that have no other option, either because they cannot own a car for cost reasons or other physical or legal reasons (physical disability, suspended licenses, etc). > You're advocating for a guilty-until-proven-innocent system? Come on, stop putting words in my mouth. We're talking about city downtowns not the whole US. I'm for restricting car use there, which you claim is authoritarian. I proposed an alternative, one used in the Netherlands, to put the onus of harm on the less vulnerable party and balance unfair externalities. You complain that this is "guilty-until-proven-innocent". If you want to rules lawyer your way to a car hegemony be my guest, but I'll continue to advocate for decreasing the unbalanced harms to non-car drivers on American streets.
trainsarebetter 5y ago
this is a good point. push away the poor infrastructure design, and subsidies. The cars will go!

ericmay 5y ago

> I don't even think there's anything wrong with 2-3 car households being the norm in suburbs. I don’t either. I think the suburbs themselves are what is wrong. Having 2-3 cars is just the adaptation for a moronic building style.

Ma8ee 5y ago
And I’m sitting here in my European suburb and considering if we could get rid of our single car. When I still had to go to the office I always bicycled or took the bus. There’s a grocery store and pharmacy within 5 minutes walk, but we order most groceries online anyway. The kids daycare is 200 meters away, and when they begin school it will be a 10 minutes walk. The car is useful when we go on holidays the whole family or when I need to buy some lumber. From where I live now it’s hard to fathom why any family would need two, or even three cars. Those suburbs that made that a necessity must be considering utter failures.
- hunter-gatherer 5y ago
  Most of my experience woth "europe" is Finland as I have lived there a couple years and married a Finn, so I don't dare say "european vs american suburbs" but I do dare say that what constitutes as a "suburb" in Finland is much different than what you can find in the US. Here, we have suburbs that just seemingly go forever, with nothing but houses. Usually when there is a suburb in the US, it is zoned such that it is only homes, and nothing else. It is the worst (imo)
- lost_soul 5y ago
  In American suburbs it's typical for there to be nothing but houses within a 3 to 5 mile area. Any supplies or groceries must be transported a significant distance in a pedestrian hostile environment.
  - tpm 5y ago
    That would be hell for me. I have never lived more than 1km from a grocery store, even in our village 20 years ago. Most time, including now, about 100-200m.