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people _think_ it's what they want because it's all they know. cities should be pushing for alternatives because they're better in literally every possible way

people _think_ it's what they want because it's all they know. cities should be pushing for alternatives because they're better in literally every possible way, except convenience. better for our safety, for our health, for the environment, for less noise, for the cost, for a sense of community, for the saved space, and so on.

standardUser 3y ago
> cities should be pushing for alternatives Most are, but a massive number of Americans live in sprawling suburbs and small-to-medium sized towns, not cities. Most of those places are ill-suited (to the extreme) for mass transit and other non-car options - yet they are perfectly designed to handle cars.
- taylodl 3y ago
  63% of Americans live in an urban area having a population density greater than 1,500 per square mile. There's no agreed-upon definition of "sprawl", but it's generally computed at being under 2,000 residents per square mile. None of the people collecting this particular data used that definition, they used 1,500. Even so, some 2/3 of Americans live in areas that would benefit from pursuing alternatives.
  - standardUser 3y ago
    As someone who has driven around a lot of this giant country, that 2/3rds number sounds hopelessly optimistic. Most places that fit that criteria are still remarkably ill-suited for mass transit solutions. Because they were deliberately designed that way.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      Yeah, there's more to it than just population density. There also needs to be a sufficient density of walkable places for people to take transit to, and that's also missing in much of American suburbia. Bog standard suburban strip mall is way too spread out and buried in a sea of parking lots. They're simply not designed around pedestrian travel.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Suburbs are not that badly suited to mass transit. It costs more per person than in denser cities, but most suburbs are dense enough to support great mass transit, and it would be cheaper than the cost of cars. However great is key. This means you need great operations: including worse case waiting time everyone should be 15 minutes or less from a place where they can find plenty things to do in the community (stores, parks, schools); and a transfer to express service to elsewhere. If you don't have great transit: people in the suburbs can afford a car, and traffic isn't a problem so they will just drive. Note that this is a higher level of service than many downtowns get. The above is very very expensive. However cars are very very very expensive.
  - standardUser 3y ago
    When I think of the hilly suburbs of California, I cannot imagine a system that could convince even a fraction of those people to give up cars, no matter how elaborate or well-designed. But the design of those streets and the terrain make them extremely well-suited for cars. So instead of devising some radical and expensive re-design of the thousands of suburbs in America, autonomous cars seem to solve the problem quite elegantly. And there's nothing stopping people from tacking their autonomous car or taxi to a train station for more urban-oriented travel.
    - JAlexoid 3y ago
      It's probably going to be financials... The most common argument against suburbs is that they aren't self sustaining at paying for the services/infrastructure/utilities they consume.
      - bluGill 3y ago
        That is the most common argument, but they have been successfully doing it for more than 100 years. It is time to kill the argument, when you dig in you discover they are using some really weird definitions of self sustaining. (they don't count money that comes in from other sources even though everyone gets it all the time)

standardUser 3y ago

> cities should be pushing for alternatives Most are, but a massive number of Americans live in sprawling suburbs and small-to-medium sized towns, not cities. Most of those places are ill-suited (to the extreme) for mass transit and other non-car options - yet they are perfectly designed to handle cars.

taylodl 3y ago
63% of Americans live in an urban area having a population density greater than 1,500 per square mile. There's no agreed-upon definition of "sprawl", but it's generally computed at being under 2,000 residents per square mile. None of the people collecting this particular data used that definition, they used 1,500. Even so, some 2/3 of Americans live in areas that would benefit from pursuing alternatives.
- standardUser 3y ago
  As someone who has driven around a lot of this giant country, that 2/3rds number sounds hopelessly optimistic. Most places that fit that criteria are still remarkably ill-suited for mass transit solutions. Because they were deliberately designed that way.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    Yeah, there's more to it than just population density. There also needs to be a sufficient density of walkable places for people to take transit to, and that's also missing in much of American suburbia. Bog standard suburban strip mall is way too spread out and buried in a sea of parking lots. They're simply not designed around pedestrian travel.
bluGill 3y ago
Suburbs are not that badly suited to mass transit. It costs more per person than in denser cities, but most suburbs are dense enough to support great mass transit, and it would be cheaper than the cost of cars. However great is key. This means you need great operations: including worse case waiting time everyone should be 15 minutes or less from a place where they can find plenty things to do in the community (stores, parks, schools); and a transfer to express service to elsewhere. If you don't have great transit: people in the suburbs can afford a car, and traffic isn't a problem so they will just drive. Note that this is a higher level of service than many downtowns get. The above is very very expensive. However cars are very very very expensive.
- standardUser 3y ago
  When I think of the hilly suburbs of California, I cannot imagine a system that could convince even a fraction of those people to give up cars, no matter how elaborate or well-designed. But the design of those streets and the terrain make them extremely well-suited for cars. So instead of devising some radical and expensive re-design of the thousands of suburbs in America, autonomous cars seem to solve the problem quite elegantly. And there's nothing stopping people from tacking their autonomous car or taxi to a train station for more urban-oriented travel.
  - JAlexoid 3y ago
    It's probably going to be financials... The most common argument against suburbs is that they aren't self sustaining at paying for the services/infrastructure/utilities they consume.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      That is the most common argument, but they have been successfully doing it for more than 100 years. It is time to kill the argument, when you dig in you discover they are using some really weird definitions of self sustaining. (they don't count money that comes in from other sources even though everyone gets it all the time)