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I think the thing that really struck a chord with me about car-centric development, as someone who lives in a city with fairly poor public transport (by certain

• giraffe_lady 1y ago
  Simply & beautifully satirized by the "bro just one more lane bro, bro I swear just one more lane and it'll fix the traffic bro," meme from a few years ago. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/one-more-lane-bro-one-more-lane-will-fix-it https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/one-more-lane-bro-one-more-la...
  • tialaramex 1y ago
    "One more lane" is so much easier to ridicule because of America, so thank you.
  • colejohnson66 1y ago
    Katy Freeway's at 26 and counting! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_10_in_Texas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_10_in_Texas
  • dijit 1y ago
    I actually counted these two: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/417/129/282.png https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/417/129/282... If it's an average of 1.2 persons per car (which is the typical average) and counting roughly 1,200 cars on those images (in aggregate) it would take roughly 28-29 rail cars to transport this number of people. That's 3-5 trains worth. All that traffic could have been saved (in theory) by 3-5 trains. I don't imagine a train would serve all those people, but imagine the massive dent it would make to have good train systems between large population centers.
• markus_zhang 1y ago
  Public transit needs a lot of money and time so I'm not sure it's even doable for many NA cities. One middle point I think might be more reachable is to build good transit for the busiest part of the city (downtown) and build large parking lots around the terminals, so people can still drive to the terminal and then switch to bus. I live in a suburb on the Montreal island and this is the model the city is trying to build IMO.
  • loloquwowndueo 1y ago
    Car infrastructure also takes a lot of money and time. Remember how long it took to reconfigure the Turcot Interchange - a few years later you still (already?) have bumper to bumper traffic during rush hours there anyway. Public transport gives much better ROI for more people - you don’t need the added expense of the car to benefit from it.
    • mytailorisrich 1y ago
      > Public transport gives much better ROI for more people That's a bold claim without data.
      • loloquwowndueo 1y ago
        You seem to be implying the opposite, also without data. Now THAT is a bold claim.
      • ljf 1y ago
        Just did some very light googling - building out, repairing and developing new road infrastructure seems to have around 2:1 or 2.5:1 ROI - Public transport, active transport seems to have around 4:1 to 5:1 ROI.
        • mytailorisrich 1y ago
          Not sure what any of this means in relation to the comment I replied to. Keep in ming that public transport is built only on the busiest routes while roads are required (yes, actually required) everywhere. Edit to @loloquwowndueo below: I haven't been shown any data, not has my point been replied to. Please guys let's try to have a grown-up discussion.
• notorandit 1y ago
  I think it is not just car-centric. It is "private mobility"-centric. In towns, and large towns especially, public mobility should be the rule and private one the exception. If any. And maybe also for long distance mobility.
  • CalRobert 1y ago
    Might I suggest bikes are a great form of private mobility?
    • colejohnson66 1y ago
      But that's not a personal pod on a pseudo-train that a tech-bro could sell me
      • CalRobert 1y ago
        I’m sure we can find a way to make cargo bikes a status symbol.. hoodmaps already shows the part of Utrecht I couldn’t afford as cargo bike moms :-)
        • deleted 1y ago
          [deleted]
    • Zigurd 1y ago
      I hold out hope that many more Americans will get E bikes, and demand separated bike lanes. There's plenty of room for them on most American roads especially newer suburbs.
      • CalRobert 1y ago
        American Fietser is in Carmel, Indiana and evidently loves using his Urban Arrow everywhere.
        • CalRobert 1y ago
• prmoustache 1y ago
  I am with you. It is not only about lanes but also parking. My in laws live in a very car centric city and it is crazy the way all distances are multiplied when everything need a dedicated parking space. There is almost nothing left at walking distance and every time I visit I have the feeling I spend all my day in a car instead of ... doing stuff.
  • goosedragons 1y ago
    This was one of the things I realized living in a very car friendly city without a car. SO SO MUCH of my walking was just walking past/through GIANT parking lots.
  • noosphr 1y ago
    It's pretty amazing how much time you can save by being able to park in front of whatever you want to get into. Starting at the same point I've beaten cars that should have gotten there 20 minutes faster according to google maps.
    • bluGill 1y ago
      I save a lot of time by taking a parking spot far from the door and just walking. People who drive spend a lot more time than they think looking for a parking spot close to the door. Plus nobody cares if I take up 3 parking spots way out there (so long as I'm not in a lane of course) so I can stop whereever without checking for the lines saving even more time not trying to get perfectly in the parking spot.
• dijit 1y ago
  I completely agree. You've hit on the central, infuriating paradox of car-centric cities. We're told that building more roads will bust congestion, but the exact opposite happens. It's a self-destructive cycle and a betrayal of drivers. We're sold a promise of freedom and speed, but what we get is a constant, grinding battle. We spend our lives in traffic and our wallets on fuel/tax, and the very infrastructure meant to liberate us ends up imprisoning us. The starkest example of this for me is comparing Orlando, Florida with Malmö, Sweden. Orlando is the end game of car-centric planning. The city feels bigger than its population suggests because you spend half an hour in a car just to get anywhere. The eight-lane highways and endless parking lots are supposed to make driving easier, but they create the very congestion that makes driving miserable. This architecture of disconnection means fewer spontaneous encounters and more social isolation. The city is designed for a machine, not for people. In contrast, Malmö's population is actually larger than Orlando's, yet a 30-minute bike ride can get you literally anywhere. The largest road through the city center is a quiet, two-lane street that prioritises people over cars; as there are large crossings and lights. This isn't an accident, it's a choice. The city's excellent public transportation and extensive bike lanes make the car a choice, not a necessity and because it's penalised: the only drivers are the ones who need to be driving, for which now there are open roads (as long as you're patient). The truth is, every person on a bus, a train, or a bike is one less car in front of you. Giving people real alternatives is the only thing that can truly reduce traffic. This isn't an attack on cars. It's a demand for sanity, a call to build cities that work for everyone, including those who choose to drive.
  • maxerickson 1y ago
    I suppose it is because Florida has a lot of modern development, but the number of disconnected subdivisions there is relatively extreme. In much of the US you can easily walk to the thing you can see.
    • deleted 1y ago
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  • robin_reala 1y ago
    And if you don’t have a bike you can rent one instantly and nearby from an app like https://www.malmobybike.se/ https://www.malmobybike.se/
• silvestrov 1y ago
  Car oriented people seriously underestimate how many people that can be transported in a subway train and how much highway space it would take to transport the same number of people in cars. One subway line can transport more people than even the widest existing highway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_different_Transport_Modes.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_dif... (edit: spelling)
  • yostrovs 1y ago
    Train oriented people always forget that trains don't transport people from the origin to the destination. You still need to get to and from a train station. With all your groceries, gear, children's things, etc. Oh and you might be odor sensitive, but there's a lady next to you on the train that covered herself in perfume.
    • deleted 1y ago
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    • lm28469 1y ago
      I have 4 supermarkets in a 10 min walk radius, to reach one of them I don't even need to cross a single public street. Same for schools, I know of 3 in my street, there are probably more but as I don't have kids I wouldn't know. I think you missed the entire point, it's a design choice, if you design everything around cars of course going grocery shopping will require a car... my supermarkets don't even have parking lots.
      • xnx 1y ago
        > it's a design choice Yes. Americans chose big houses and yards.
        • CalRobert 1y ago
          If that’s what they choose then why make it illegal to build anything else?
• frereubu 1y ago
  The Power Broker by Robert Caro, a biography of Robert Moses that's particularly focused on his long career in the government of New York, is, quite aside from a fascinating psychological portrait and a parable about how bad it is when someone has untrammeled power in a bureaucracy, an absolutely fantastic case study in how building more roads makes traffic worse. And it was published in 1974! For anyone that cares to find out we've know this for decades and have absolutely failed to do anything about it - pretty depressing.
  • arethuza 1y ago
    Seconded - I'm currently listening to the audiobook of this book and I find it utterly fascinating.
    • frereubu 1y ago
      Yeah, the reader of the audiobook is pretty good, although I slightly prefer Grover Gardner, who recorded the audiobooks for his series on LBJ, as a narrator. If you like The Power Broker, I'd highly recommend those.
  • ascagnel_ 1y ago
    Caro has a way with words; one of my favorite turns was when Moses declared traffic a problem "solved for a generation", only for Caro to begin the next paragraph with a description of the traffic jams that began to develop a few weeks after that particular road (I believe the Bronx River Parkway) opened.
• djrobstep 1y ago
  Cars seem to live in a special category in peoples minds where the costs simply do not exist, and thus the problems can be solved by simply throwing infinitely more resources and space at the problems. Cars are inherently spatially inefficient, which makes them a terrible form of transport for cities. That is the hard mathematical reality that so many people avoid reckoning with. Think of the space taken up by 1000 people on a single metro train, vs 1000 people in nearly 1000 cars. Think of 1000 people on bikes vs 1000 people in cars. It's so obvious that this is a terrible way of moving people about, and we see this in congestion, in longer commutes in spite of cars traveling at higher speeds, sprawling patterns of urban development, road deaths (the biggest cause of death of children in most western countries), noise, pollution, sprawl, inactivity and social isolation. Only ideology (car brain) prevents people from seeing it as the problem it is.
• aunty_helen 1y ago
  This is level one understanding of public transport systems. “We should build metros and then everything will be better” There’s cities that are not setup for efficient public transportation or walkable living. Redesign it from ground up and put a metro smack bang through the middle. Until then, it’s just not going to work. People, and especially people who like the idea of walkable cities that reside in council chairs, often miss this fundamental step. “Build it and they will come” won’t get you housing density, small local retailers, geographic compression of services, suitable climate, a different way of living. All key ingredients for walkable cities with well served public transport.
  • basilikum 1y ago
    Car infrastructure takes so much space that you can repurpose parts of it in place. Just turn one of the lanes into a tram line, make dedicated bus lanes. On huge parking lots you can just split parts of and build housing or more smaller stores there. Of course there are limits to this, but cities are often grown historically over centuries and city planning usually takes place in such constraints rather than planning cities from scratch. Don't let the perfect be the enemie of the good.
  • stephen_g 1y ago
    I think you are being unnecessarily defeatist. Cities can’t be redesigned from the ground up, but at the same time we’ve seen that investment into roads can’t fix traffic in cities once they reach a certain population and density. The first thing we should do is target development. For example, planning laws should require new development (suburbs etc.) to be built around some kind of transit (ideally rail). Zoning should always be mixed - for example it should always be permissible to have at least small apartment blocks, groups of townhouses (like row houses), and small shops and cafes in suburbs. The idea of mandating areas be dedicated to only detached single family dwellings should be consigned to the dustbin of history. There’s just so much like that that can be started right now. But we don’t - we just keep making the same mistakes and things get worse.
  • bluGill 1y ago
    > “Build it and they will come” won’t get you housing density, small local retailers, geographic compression of services, suitable climate, a different way of living. All key ingredients for walkable cities with well served public transport. Yes it does. It will take 20 years, but if you don't start now you will never get there. Are you willing to invest in a better future or just accept the status quo?
• discomrobertul8 1y ago
  There's also the "south east Qld option" (which I'm certain is the region you're describing in your comment) where the government is so roadbrained that all public transport solutions inevitably end up as some form of bus, further adding to congestion and making it worse for everyone, drivers, public transport users and active transport users.
  • stephen_g 1y ago
    You guessed correctly :) The other problem is that city councils historically have run busses, whereas the State Government runs the rail, so a lot of our bus network competes with the rail instead of working together as an integrated network. At least the ticketing is integrated, but the network still has never felt like it’s designed to work together as an integrated transit network.
• Workaccount2 1y ago
  Nobody likes to hear this, including me, But a car with no traffic is the overall best form of transportation. Anything that reduces traffic, just makes driving a car more palatable. So we are stuck forever at an equilibrium of tolerable traffic. More people taking the bus, train, bikes, and walking? Great! I'll zip down the highway and get a parking spot right in front.
  • bluGill 1y ago
    > But a car with no traffic is the overall best form of transportation. I hate driving even when I'm alone on the road. I'm forced to stare at the road when I want to be doing something else. I can't even take a break, since a simple 5 minute nap has high odds of killing me even if I'm the only car on the road. Plus cars are slower than trains or airplanes. Even on the autobahn with unlimited speed allowed, most people are not going nearly as fast as a high speed train, much less an airplane.
    • Workaccount2 1y ago
      Don't get me wrong, I ride my bike to work, but it's abundantly clear that (at least americans) really fucking love cars. To make matters worse, in the near future it looks like most cases of self driving will be solved, so now people will have their personal pod that moves them around.
      • bluGill 1y ago
        No it isn't clear that Americans love cars. Some Americans love cars or course, but for many they are something they think they must have but they don't really care about the car. People want to get places, people need to get food, and so one - a car enables all of those things, but they are a tool to get things done, not the point. They do not think there is any other tool that will work, but that doesn't mean they care about that tool. They are against transit because they think it is a waste of money since even after spending that money it still wouldn't work (this may or may not be true) and so it isn't worth it.
  • 1y ago
• akudha 1y ago
  There is always some private company benefiting when a town/city rejects public transport. I remember reading an article about a town that rejected public transport, there was intense door-to-door lobbying by some Koch brothers funded group. It was a small town, I suppose they were just testing their lobbying efforts before deploying the same in large cities. All this to say, if the public is sufficiently informed, they are not going to reject public transport. We've been brainwashed that car centric transport is the best. Then there is Japan, they kept a station open just for one girl, so she can get to school - https://www.ndtv.com/feature/kyu-shirataki-station-japanese-train-station-ran-every-day-for-just-one-girl-9072404 https://www.ndtv.com/feature/kyu-shirataki-station-japanese-...
• meetpatelcurry 1y ago
  [flagged]
• LtdJorge 1y ago
  Extremely off-topic, but do you have ADHD?
  • stephen_g 1y ago
    No, why?
• graemep 1y ago
  I grew up in London where it is almost always preferable to take public transport anywhere central (cars work fine in suburbs). I prefer to walk and take public transport, but where I live now (small town) busses are infrequent, and fairly short journeys can require changing. It can take two hours on the bus to get somewhere that is less than half an hour by car. I think people here would be delighted with more public transport. The main complaint I hear about roads is not repairing potholes which is not hugely expensive. The problem is that the political push is to use a stick (make cars more expensive and inconvenient) rather than a carrot (provide better public transport).
• hammock 1y ago
  Car-centric does not mean driver-centric. Even driver-centric is less anti-human than car-centric. Maybe we need a “People First” movement in this world. I know the climatists and PETA won’t like that, but it’s worth considering as some sort of competing, balancing force in the world vs everything else we have today.
  • nehal3m 1y ago
    'Climatists' is a strange way of putting this because pulling everything we do back to human scale will be a huge boon to solving the climate crisis. As someone who's worried about threats to the future of the species in the form of climate change I'd be all for a human centric movement.
    • cryptopian 1y ago
      Exactly. If you have plenty of community spaces spread around an urban area - cafes, pubs, small businesses, public parks - you both reduce the amount of travel required, and strengthen local communities
      • hammock 1y ago
        Lovely way of looking at it
• lucideer 1y ago
  This. The quickest & most pleasant places to drive a car are the places with the fewest large single-mode roads & - importantly - even fewer cars on them.
• scott_w 1y ago
  > Prioritising cars actually makes things worse for drivers. I 100% agree. I live in Newcastle, a city that is fairly car centric, but we have a Metro line and have had pushes to increase bus and bicycle transport (though Labour are generally bad for active travel). My brother moved to Leeds, one of the largest cities in Europe without a Metro or tram. Driving anywhere in the city is fucking awful. The planners clearly kept trying to add one more lane and the result is congestion everywhere, even at quiet times. I've also driven round Liverpool and Manchester and found, though they're better as they have Metro lines, the car-centric roads are still really awful to drive on.
• ambicapter 1y ago
  This is just a factor of car driving being wildly more inefficient at "people-carrying" than public transport. That is why "improving things" for cars just makes things worse-you're spending your sparse resources (money, land, manpower) more and more inefficiently.