3 ms·

> Waymo and other taxi services are inherently bad for cyclists compared to increasing transit utilization Anecdote: I take transit way more in San Francisco w

> Waymo and other taxi services are inherently bad for cyclists compared to increasing transit utilization Anecdote: I take transit way more in San Francisco with Waymo. Because booking is deterministic (it says 20 minutes, it will be there in 20 minutes, even if it’s a short ride), I can connect with the loose network of city and regional rail systems in a way that was tedious with human drivers. (I lived in New York for 10 years, and eagerly take the subway there.)

dangus 7mo ago
Which, again, is a band-aid to bad regional transit connectivity.
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  > a band-aid to bad regional transit connectivity Maybe. American suburbs are already spread out. It doesn’t make sense to run subways to every corner the way we do in urban centers. Doing last mile with shared transport—versus cars which park idle for most of the day around train stations—makes sense.
  - dangus 7mo ago
    Did I say we should run subways to every corner? Here’s a nice video about how small suburbs and even farms don’t need to involve deep car dependence: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg https://youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg Meanwhile, Arlington, Texas has over 200,000 people with no bus system. And before you say “oh it’s Europe it’s old” I will point out that the Netherlands had a huge car dependency problem in the mid-century and deliberately moved away from it during/after the oil crisis. You can see multiple single family home developments that would be right at home in a US suburb in this video. The author even reaches a rural farm without a car. What about if American transit authorities just did basic stuff like work together and perform actual regional planning rather than working in silos and having conflicts with each other? For example, there’s zero reason why NJ transit should be a different agency than NYC’s transit authority. They should be the same agency that works toward a comprehensive regional transit system focused on the metropolitan area rather than arbitrary state borders. Instead, they’re forced to do things like sell $100 World Cup train tickets because they haven’t been empowered to reap the rewards of the economic development they enable.
    - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
      > Here’s a nice video about how small suburbs and even farms don’t need to involve deep car dependence I’ll watch in detail-thank you. An important caveat, though, and it’s not about age but density. The Netherlands ex Amsterdam has just under 1,400 people per square mile. That’s still denser than every single U.S. state. (New Jersey and Rhode Island are the only two that break 1,000, and only the former if we exclude each state’s largest city.) The tenth-densest state, Pennsylvania, is still almost 5x less dense than the Netherlands, and again, I’m doing this for the Netherlands ex Amsterdam. We can absolutely build more transit in our metropolitan centers. But the layout of America, in part driven by history, in part by our embrace of car culture, forces fundamentally different transport optima than almost anywhere in Western Europe. > there’s zero reason why NJ transit should be a different agency than NYC’s transit authority Same reason the Dutch and German authorities are separate.
      - dangus 7mo ago
        > But the layout of America, in part driven by history, in part by our embrace of car culture, forces fundamentally different transport optima than almost anywhere in Western Europe. It’s worth pointing out here that, 1. Again, this is an ongoing choice and not an inevitability. 2. A large amount of America was built during the railroad era and a lot of urban fabric was actually just removed/demolished and could be replaced. A lot of it sits empty waiting to be rehabilitated (and to many cities’ credit, a lot of it has been rehabilitated). 3. When you watch the video you’ll see it’s not all about density, it’s also about road and street design. It’s about making spaces that feel safe to exist in as a pedestrian or cyclist. Many suburban Americans don’t actually travel that far to get around, they just can’t get places without getting in a car (e.g., a typical big box store area is a dense shopping area just like a typical high street but traversing it on foot is hostile).
      - retired 7mo ago
        I'm not sure why you would compare states to cities? And while The Netherlands as a country is dense, the cities are not, partially due to the massive amount of urban sprawl that The Netherlands has (compared to other European countries). Amsterdam has a density of just under 5,000 people per square kilometer. That is way less than New York City, and less than any of the Burroughs except Staten Island. Manhattan comes in at 28,000, so over 5 times more. Amsterdam Metropole has only 950 people per square kilometer. NYC, San Francisco and Boston are massively more dense than Amsterdam. Chicago, Philadelphia and Miami are about the same. Washington D.C. and LA are only slightly less dense.
- kelnos 7mo ago
  We live in the real would and have to work with what actually exists. I'd love it if my city had Tokyo's rail system, but it doesn't, and won't.
  - dangus 7mo ago
    We actually don’t have to work with what exists. We actively chose and continue to choose what exists. Every day new land is developed that perpetuates these choices. Every day we decide to keep things the same or implement change. Here’s a nice video about how rural towns can be configured to not be car dependent: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg https://youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg You’ll notice that this isn’t some ancient European pre-automobile city stuff, you’ll see many single family home tract houses in the suburbs and small towns of the Netherlands that would be at home in any American suburb. The Netherlands did struggle with post-war car-oriented development that it has successfully pushed back against. If you live in Arlington, Texas, you live in a city of over 200,000 people that doesn’t even have bus service.
    - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
      > Every day new land is developed that perpetuates these choices. Every day we decide to keep things the same or implement change This is a great argument. Retrofitting America is one discussion. But building new developments such that they don't require a car–at least within themselves–should be doable.
      - dangus 7mo ago
        I still think it’s worth observing the Netherlands as an example because they also had mid-century car-oriented development that they successfully retrofitted. And of course, also, this doesn’t mean “nobody owns a car in the Netherlands.”
        JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
        Do you have a good source on that retrofit?

dangus 7mo ago

Which, again, is a band-aid to bad regional transit connectivity.

JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
> a band-aid to bad regional transit connectivity Maybe. American suburbs are already spread out. It doesn’t make sense to run subways to every corner the way we do in urban centers. Doing last mile with shared transport—versus cars which park idle for most of the day around train stations—makes sense.
- dangus 7mo ago
  Did I say we should run subways to every corner? Here’s a nice video about how small suburbs and even farms don’t need to involve deep car dependence: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg https://youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg Meanwhile, Arlington, Texas has over 200,000 people with no bus system. And before you say “oh it’s Europe it’s old” I will point out that the Netherlands had a huge car dependency problem in the mid-century and deliberately moved away from it during/after the oil crisis. You can see multiple single family home developments that would be right at home in a US suburb in this video. The author even reaches a rural farm without a car. What about if American transit authorities just did basic stuff like work together and perform actual regional planning rather than working in silos and having conflicts with each other? For example, there’s zero reason why NJ transit should be a different agency than NYC’s transit authority. They should be the same agency that works toward a comprehensive regional transit system focused on the metropolitan area rather than arbitrary state borders. Instead, they’re forced to do things like sell $100 World Cup train tickets because they haven’t been empowered to reap the rewards of the economic development they enable.
  - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
    > Here’s a nice video about how small suburbs and even farms don’t need to involve deep car dependence I’ll watch in detail-thank you. An important caveat, though, and it’s not about age but density. The Netherlands ex Amsterdam has just under 1,400 people per square mile. That’s still denser than every single U.S. state. (New Jersey and Rhode Island are the only two that break 1,000, and only the former if we exclude each state’s largest city.) The tenth-densest state, Pennsylvania, is still almost 5x less dense than the Netherlands, and again, I’m doing this for the Netherlands ex Amsterdam. We can absolutely build more transit in our metropolitan centers. But the layout of America, in part driven by history, in part by our embrace of car culture, forces fundamentally different transport optima than almost anywhere in Western Europe. > there’s zero reason why NJ transit should be a different agency than NYC’s transit authority Same reason the Dutch and German authorities are separate.
    - dangus 7mo ago
      > But the layout of America, in part driven by history, in part by our embrace of car culture, forces fundamentally different transport optima than almost anywhere in Western Europe. It’s worth pointing out here that, 1. Again, this is an ongoing choice and not an inevitability. 2. A large amount of America was built during the railroad era and a lot of urban fabric was actually just removed/demolished and could be replaced. A lot of it sits empty waiting to be rehabilitated (and to many cities’ credit, a lot of it has been rehabilitated). 3. When you watch the video you’ll see it’s not all about density, it’s also about road and street design. It’s about making spaces that feel safe to exist in as a pedestrian or cyclist. Many suburban Americans don’t actually travel that far to get around, they just can’t get places without getting in a car (e.g., a typical big box store area is a dense shopping area just like a typical high street but traversing it on foot is hostile).
    - retired 7mo ago
      I'm not sure why you would compare states to cities? And while The Netherlands as a country is dense, the cities are not, partially due to the massive amount of urban sprawl that The Netherlands has (compared to other European countries). Amsterdam has a density of just under 5,000 people per square kilometer. That is way less than New York City, and less than any of the Burroughs except Staten Island. Manhattan comes in at 28,000, so over 5 times more. Amsterdam Metropole has only 950 people per square kilometer. NYC, San Francisco and Boston are massively more dense than Amsterdam. Chicago, Philadelphia and Miami are about the same. Washington D.C. and LA are only slightly less dense.
kelnos 7mo ago
We live in the real would and have to work with what actually exists. I'd love it if my city had Tokyo's rail system, but it doesn't, and won't.
- dangus 7mo ago
  We actually don’t have to work with what exists. We actively chose and continue to choose what exists. Every day new land is developed that perpetuates these choices. Every day we decide to keep things the same or implement change. Here’s a nice video about how rural towns can be configured to not be car dependent: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg https://youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg You’ll notice that this isn’t some ancient European pre-automobile city stuff, you’ll see many single family home tract houses in the suburbs and small towns of the Netherlands that would be at home in any American suburb. The Netherlands did struggle with post-war car-oriented development that it has successfully pushed back against. If you live in Arlington, Texas, you live in a city of over 200,000 people that doesn’t even have bus service.
  - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
    > Every day new land is developed that perpetuates these choices. Every day we decide to keep things the same or implement change This is a great argument. Retrofitting America is one discussion. But building new developments such that they don't require a car–at least within themselves–should be doable.
    - dangus 7mo ago
      I still think it’s worth observing the Netherlands as an example because they also had mid-century car-oriented development that they successfully retrofitted. And of course, also, this doesn’t mean “nobody owns a car in the Netherlands.”
      - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
        Do you have a good source on that retrofit?