4 ms·

I wonder what percentage of people prefer this kind of hierarchy. Personally if driving were super deprioritized where I live, I'd have more incentive to move

by throwaway22032 3y ago

I wonder what percentage of people prefer this kind of hierarchy. Personally if driving were super deprioritized where I live, I'd have more incentive to move out of the city and live more rurally, which seems like a net negative overall (environmentally). Probably, most people would stay in the city and balance it out though. I enjoy cycling and walking, but I'd rather keep my usage of public transport to a minimum. If we could completely exclude all arseholes, make public transport cover far more places, make every bus and train have good climate control, it might be different. 3 seems possible, 2 seems like it would then approach the energy requirements of driving, 1 is a non starter.

digdugdirk 3y ago
The point is that (in the US) no one outside of New York City and maybe Chicago has any ability to really experience this kind of hierarchy. Even in those cities, it's still not prioritizing pedestrians and bicyclists, it's just increased the relevance of public transport due to the inherent density making driving and parking a pain. Mid sized cities (or larger cities built up after the 50's) just aren't designed to support this kind of lifestyle, and would require laws to change around zoning/parking/etc.
- throwaway22032 3y ago
  Yeah, that makes sense. I'm not sure that you could go much further than NYC without making private car ownership impossible for most, though. Maybe that's the point. Despite having a good transport network overall (I live in London), it's just such an integrated part of my life to be able to jump in the car and go and visit friends say 50 miles away that I can't imagine ever wanting to give that up. I'd rather have that than the fancy downtown bars. Am I old? :)
  - rainsford 3y ago
    The point that always seems to get lost in these discussions is that it really shouldn't be an either/or thing. There's no reason you can't still have a car for journeys that make sense to drive while having great alternatives so you aren't forced to use a car for every single trip, which would be a huge transportation improvement over what exists now in the vast majority of American cities.
- rainsford 3y ago
  I don't think that's true at all, especially thinking about bicycling (or e-bikes or electric scooters or whatever). Biking can get you long enough distances easily enough that you don't need a city to be super dense or ultra mixed use for biking to be a practical mode of transportation. I live in a fairly suburban fairly mid-sized city and there are tons of destinations within a couple of miles of my house. The reason my city isn't more bikable isn't zoning or parking or density or whatever, it's that there is literally no safe way to reach many of those destinations by bike because the only route there is on streets with high speed limits designed exclusively for cars. I think this is the case for a lot of mid-sized cities in the US if you really look at the distances involved. In fact my city is slowly improving things by turning sidewalks into mixed use paths that make it much easier to get places without using a car, so it's clearly doable. Sure, a lot of exurban bedroom community type places are never going to be anything but car dependent without totally rebuilding them, but alternatives like biking are definitely not only possible in the densest American cities.
  - digdugdirk 3y ago
    Sounds like we're in complete agreement then. The hierarchy starts with walking (which it sounds like your city is too spread out to be a useful means of transport) then biking, then public transport. Unless your city also has a public transit system that is sufficient enough in coverage and timing to replace the need for anyone in your city to own a car, in which case... Please send me a direct message with the city name, I don't want the secret to get out before I move there. Also, don't discount the impact that zoning and parking requirements can have on the ability to have communities like this. Does your city have a collection of parking lots occupying valuable real estate in your downtown? Land that could be used to build a valuable business or multi-unit housing? Yep - that's mandatory parking requirements. Does your city have a lack of neighbourhood businesses and restaurants, leading to the necessity to travel by car to big box stores in a spread out car-centric shopping center away from any other part of the community? Yeah, that's because of zoning laws. These laws can be changed, but cities have already been built entirely around the automobile in most of the US - there has to be a specific push to enable alternate lifestyles to be a possibility. Otherwise, the only viable lifestyle revolves around four wheels and two tons of steel.
- burkaman 3y ago
  This is absolutely not true, most midsized cities in the US are decently bikeable and have usable bus systems. If you live in a massive sprawling southwestern city like Phoenix or you live in a relatively rural area, then yes you have to use a very different hierarchy.
  - digdugdirk 3y ago
    What's your definition of mid-sized city? I ask because the hierarchy in the article starts with walking, and very few midsized cities are livable if your only form of transportation is your own two feet. I'm also curious about what your concept of "usable" is with regards to bus transportation, since in my experience bus service tends to be highly focused around commuting to a downtown work area - with very degraded service outside these times and areas.
    - burkaman 3y ago
      Also not sure what counts as mid-sized, but I'm thinking of places like Richmond, Asheville, Chattanooga, Little Rock, Tulsa, Santa Fe, Flagstaff. > very few midsized cities are livable if your only form of transportation is your own two feet. I mostly agree, but nobody is saying you shouldn't own any kind of vehicle, just that you should consider walking first for closer destinations. If you can't walk then you start moving down the hierarchy. "Usable" bus system is also hard to define, if I'm being honest what I mean is when I was there and moving around for non-work reasons, I was often able to use a bus. I don't have a better source than my own limited experience so you can ignore that part of the comment.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
I feel the same way. I don't enjoy cycling and walking at all and I certainly don't want to share vehicles with other people. I don't really enjoy driving either but it's the least bad and most comfortable form of transportation. What you said about climate control is extremely important to me. It's very hot where I live, just standing outside makes me anxious to the point my blood pressure spikes. Not having a car is just unfathomable to me and if my city starts screwing things up to favor bicycles I will move out of here.
Delk 3y ago
At least in terms of individual choices, it might be better to see it as some kind of a weighing scheme than as a rigid hierarchy. All kinds of individual and environmental factors can make you weigh some of the modes more or less. Arseholes aren't the norm in public transportation where I live. Not non-existent but also not the norm. If your local system tends to have more of them, that probably makes it less attractive to you. Large and thinly spread out communities generally make public transport less attractive from a resources point of view because it's harder and less economical to have it efficiently cover the area. But generally preferring community structures that do allow for efficient public transportation makes sense from a resource use point of view, even if that doesn't always mean it's preferable to you in a particular location. Giving a greater weight to walking or cycling makes sense both from resources and health points of view.
- throwaway22032 3y ago
  It's probably <5% where I am, but that is enough. And there seems to be no mechanism for removing them. I wish that we had conductors or something. I would gladly pay to have someone like that who could at least tell antisocial people to calm down. Passengers don't want to deal with it.
  - Delk 3y ago
    5% of passengers sounds rather high to me. That would mean at least one per full bus or rail carriage on average. 5% of trips being disturbed also sounds high albeit not outlandish. (It's still significantly higher than what I'd expect in commuter traffic here. On weekend night buses quite possibly yes but I use those so rarely that I wouldn't be able to say.) Either way, the point was that such things obviously carry weight for individual preferences, but that they may apply on top of some kind of a baseline weighing hierarchy from a broader point of view.
    - throwaway22032 3y ago
      I mentioned less than 5, that wasn't intended to be an accurate figure. For me I just don't want to interact with weirdos. It doesn't have to be that extreme, the marker is something like - if I went to a restaurant, bar, workplace, party etc and it had the same number of degens as public transport I wouldn't go back there, I have options. I place great importance on spending time in places where the people around me feel like equals that I can converse with rather than potential threats. edit: No, I don't mean "different strata of society". I mean dickheads. A different strata of society is, say, Matt Hancock MP vs. an immigrant single mum, both of which travel on the Tube. I enjoy living in a diverse neighbourhood. My neighbours are from all walks of life. A dickhead is someone smoking weed on a bus, shouting homophobic slurs at people who look a bit different, playing loud music on speakerphone. I am indeed intolerant of in-your-face antisocial behaviour and I'm proud of that fact.
wesapien 3y ago
Not every city needs to be the same. Cities have different climates, demand, geography, and population. Cities should be able to offer different things for different people.

digdugdirk 3y ago

The point is that (in the US) no one outside of New York City and maybe Chicago has any ability to really experience this kind of hierarchy. Even in those cities, it's still not prioritizing pedestrians and bicyclists, it's just increased the relevance of public transport due to the inherent density making driving and parking a pain. Mid sized cities (or larger cities built up after the 50's) just aren't designed to support this kind of lifestyle, and would require laws to change around zoning/parking/etc.

throwaway22032 3y ago
Yeah, that makes sense. I'm not sure that you could go much further than NYC without making private car ownership impossible for most, though. Maybe that's the point. Despite having a good transport network overall (I live in London), it's just such an integrated part of my life to be able to jump in the car and go and visit friends say 50 miles away that I can't imagine ever wanting to give that up. I'd rather have that than the fancy downtown bars. Am I old? :)
- rainsford 3y ago
  The point that always seems to get lost in these discussions is that it really shouldn't be an either/or thing. There's no reason you can't still have a car for journeys that make sense to drive while having great alternatives so you aren't forced to use a car for every single trip, which would be a huge transportation improvement over what exists now in the vast majority of American cities.
rainsford 3y ago
I don't think that's true at all, especially thinking about bicycling (or e-bikes or electric scooters or whatever). Biking can get you long enough distances easily enough that you don't need a city to be super dense or ultra mixed use for biking to be a practical mode of transportation. I live in a fairly suburban fairly mid-sized city and there are tons of destinations within a couple of miles of my house. The reason my city isn't more bikable isn't zoning or parking or density or whatever, it's that there is literally no safe way to reach many of those destinations by bike because the only route there is on streets with high speed limits designed exclusively for cars. I think this is the case for a lot of mid-sized cities in the US if you really look at the distances involved. In fact my city is slowly improving things by turning sidewalks into mixed use paths that make it much easier to get places without using a car, so it's clearly doable. Sure, a lot of exurban bedroom community type places are never going to be anything but car dependent without totally rebuilding them, but alternatives like biking are definitely not only possible in the densest American cities.
- digdugdirk 3y ago
  Sounds like we're in complete agreement then. The hierarchy starts with walking (which it sounds like your city is too spread out to be a useful means of transport) then biking, then public transport. Unless your city also has a public transit system that is sufficient enough in coverage and timing to replace the need for anyone in your city to own a car, in which case... Please send me a direct message with the city name, I don't want the secret to get out before I move there. Also, don't discount the impact that zoning and parking requirements can have on the ability to have communities like this. Does your city have a collection of parking lots occupying valuable real estate in your downtown? Land that could be used to build a valuable business or multi-unit housing? Yep - that's mandatory parking requirements. Does your city have a lack of neighbourhood businesses and restaurants, leading to the necessity to travel by car to big box stores in a spread out car-centric shopping center away from any other part of the community? Yeah, that's because of zoning laws. These laws can be changed, but cities have already been built entirely around the automobile in most of the US - there has to be a specific push to enable alternate lifestyles to be a possibility. Otherwise, the only viable lifestyle revolves around four wheels and two tons of steel.
burkaman 3y ago
This is absolutely not true, most midsized cities in the US are decently bikeable and have usable bus systems. If you live in a massive sprawling southwestern city like Phoenix or you live in a relatively rural area, then yes you have to use a very different hierarchy.
- digdugdirk 3y ago
  What's your definition of mid-sized city? I ask because the hierarchy in the article starts with walking, and very few midsized cities are livable if your only form of transportation is your own two feet. I'm also curious about what your concept of "usable" is with regards to bus transportation, since in my experience bus service tends to be highly focused around commuting to a downtown work area - with very degraded service outside these times and areas.
  - burkaman 3y ago
    Also not sure what counts as mid-sized, but I'm thinking of places like Richmond, Asheville, Chattanooga, Little Rock, Tulsa, Santa Fe, Flagstaff. > very few midsized cities are livable if your only form of transportation is your own two feet. I mostly agree, but nobody is saying you shouldn't own any kind of vehicle, just that you should consider walking first for closer destinations. If you can't walk then you start moving down the hierarchy. "Usable" bus system is also hard to define, if I'm being honest what I mean is when I was there and moving around for non-work reasons, I was often able to use a bus. I don't have a better source than my own limited experience so you can ignore that part of the comment.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

I feel the same way. I don't enjoy cycling and walking at all and I certainly don't want to share vehicles with other people. I don't really enjoy driving either but it's the least bad and most comfortable form of transportation. What you said about climate control is extremely important to me. It's very hot where I live, just standing outside makes me anxious to the point my blood pressure spikes. Not having a car is just unfathomable to me and if my city starts screwing things up to favor bicycles I will move out of here.

Delk 3y ago

At least in terms of individual choices, it might be better to see it as some kind of a weighing scheme than as a rigid hierarchy. All kinds of individual and environmental factors can make you weigh some of the modes more or less. Arseholes aren't the norm in public transportation where I live. Not non-existent but also not the norm. If your local system tends to have more of them, that probably makes it less attractive to you. Large and thinly spread out communities generally make public transport less attractive from a resources point of view because it's harder and less economical to have it efficiently cover the area. But generally preferring community structures that do allow for efficient public transportation makes sense from a resource use point of view, even if that doesn't always mean it's preferable to you in a particular location. Giving a greater weight to walking or cycling makes sense both from resources and health points of view.

throwaway22032 3y ago
It's probably <5% where I am, but that is enough. And there seems to be no mechanism for removing them. I wish that we had conductors or something. I would gladly pay to have someone like that who could at least tell antisocial people to calm down. Passengers don't want to deal with it.
- Delk 3y ago
  5% of passengers sounds rather high to me. That would mean at least one per full bus or rail carriage on average. 5% of trips being disturbed also sounds high albeit not outlandish. (It's still significantly higher than what I'd expect in commuter traffic here. On weekend night buses quite possibly yes but I use those so rarely that I wouldn't be able to say.) Either way, the point was that such things obviously carry weight for individual preferences, but that they may apply on top of some kind of a baseline weighing hierarchy from a broader point of view.
  - throwaway22032 3y ago
    I mentioned less than 5, that wasn't intended to be an accurate figure. For me I just don't want to interact with weirdos. It doesn't have to be that extreme, the marker is something like - if I went to a restaurant, bar, workplace, party etc and it had the same number of degens as public transport I wouldn't go back there, I have options. I place great importance on spending time in places where the people around me feel like equals that I can converse with rather than potential threats. edit: No, I don't mean "different strata of society". I mean dickheads. A different strata of society is, say, Matt Hancock MP vs. an immigrant single mum, both of which travel on the Tube. I enjoy living in a diverse neighbourhood. My neighbours are from all walks of life. A dickhead is someone smoking weed on a bus, shouting homophobic slurs at people who look a bit different, playing loud music on speakerphone. I am indeed intolerant of in-your-face antisocial behaviour and I'm proud of that fact.

wesapien 3y ago

Not every city needs to be the same. Cities have different climates, demand, geography, and population. Cities should be able to offer different things for different people.