
Suburbs rethink mass transit to court millennials - jseliger
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/yearning-for-car-averse-millennials-suburbs-turn-to-transit/2015/03/29/cb916cd8-d259-11e4-8fce-3941fc548f1c_story.html?tid=pm_local_pop_b
======
radicaledward
>> Researchers say they’re intrigued that millennials’ aversion to driving and
owning a car has endured even since the recession ended.

This is a direct response to the above quote.

Every time I read one of these articles I'm surprised that the rise of smart
phones isn't cited as a contributor to this change of preference. Every minute
I'm driving is a minute that I am disconnected from the internet. Constant
connection is arguably a bad thing, but I'm pretty much addicted, and I would
bet that everyone else is too.

Of course there are many other contributing factors to my preference for mass
transit over driving. My perceptions that inform my preference (whether true
or not):

* Cars are simply not safe. It isn't just that I'm worried about getting hurt in an accident. I don't want to be responsible for harming someone else. * Many forms of media have constantly reminded me as I grow up that cars are bad for the environment. * Cars are incredibly expensive. If I never buy another car, I could easily afford a small house with the money I will save over my lifetime. In addition to the car, I have to pay for gas, insurance, and maintenance.

However, in the end, I still have a car. I have a car because my city's public
transit is still slow and unreliable. It is getting better. And I use it quite
a lot to get to things in the interior of the city. My car gets me to the
events I go to on the edge of town, and it covers me when I need to get
somewhere in the middle of the night, when the bus isn't running.

I'm not sure how similar I am to other millenials, but these are the things I
think about when I see a quote like that.

~~~
eqdw
Every time I see one of these articles, I get confused. I have to wonder what
mysterious world they live in.

There are many reasons I don't use a car (I own one; I rarely use it). They're
all touched on in here. But beyond a shadow of a doubt, the number one reason:
fuck. traffic. FUUUUUUUUCK. Traffic.

Traffic infuriates me. It's filled with people who drive unsafely. It's filled
with people who drive too fast. It's filled with people who drive too slow.
It's filled with people who don't understand left hand vs right hand lanes.
It's filled with people who can't read street signs or don't know where
they're going. It's filled with pedestrians who think they can dart out
between parked cars whenever they feel like it. It's filled with cyclists who
ride too aggressively. And, most importantly, it's filled with a billion other
cars.

I went on a day trip to Berkeley -> Monterey last Saturday. Google maps said
"116 miles, 2 hrs 10 minutes". Door to door it was 4 hours 15 minutes. An
average speed of 25 mph. On a fucking freeway rated 70. This is insanity.

Even ignoring the fury, how does anyone plan their life when traffic can swing
so wildly. How does anyone get to work on time and not get fired when LOL
TRAFFIC YOU'RE NOW AN HOUR LATE.

Public transit might be dirty and smelly and crowded and out of the way. But I
also know that, pending someone suicidal, I will always get to work at the
same time.

Is traffic that much different everywhere else in the country?

~~~
panglott
In a mid-sized American city, I prefer to cycle since downtown and the inner-
ring suburbs have 15-20 minute bicycle trips. My wife and I split a car.

Traffic is not as bad as the worst places: you can drive most places in town
within about a half-hour. But when you have to run a couple of errands in the
car-centric suburbs, that time piles up quickly. Try to run 2-3 errands in the
suburbs and you're spending hours driving. It's horrible.

Of course, we have no light rail and the buses are really slow. Cycling is the
main viable alternative.

~~~
restalis
Unfortunately, cycling gets you sweated and crumpled, and that makes itself a
non-starter for a lot of jobs, unless at the destination you have access to
showers and a change of clothes. Cycling is however an option for many other
mobility needs.

------
fuzzywalrus
I'd argue that the ideal of not owning car is more tethered to the lack of
medium-to-high paying jobs for a huge swath of the population in the United
States. I find the idea of millennials not driving simply due to aspiration
sets a little nauseating, as depending on how you're slicing the age cut off,
I'm part of "this generation".

Owning a car is very expensive and out of reach of fair number of people. Even
driving a modest economy car, between parking ($150 monthly downtown in my
city) , my car loan ($200 mo.) and good insurance ($200ish mo.) + gas ($60ish)
means I'm out $600+ of income. That's $7200 yearly without maintenance. That's
as much as many people's rent in many places. I'm privileged enough that I can
afford this without seriously impacting my lifestyle, and I have a sinking
suspicion that if more millennials could, they'd also be car owners/drivers.
With the average income per person, at $26,000, owning car is nearly out of
reach.

However, I suppose I shouldn't look the gift horse in the mouth. Giving more
mass transit options for work is certainly a good thing.

~~~
cperciva
_I 'm privileged enough that I can afford this without seriously impacting my
lifestyle, and I have a sinking suspicion that if more millennials could,
they'd also be car owners/drivers._

At 34, I'm at the upper end of the millennial age range, and I have had a car
for the past decade. But I'm paying about $500/month extra rent for the
privilege of living close to mass transit, and if it could efficiently get me
everywhere I needed to go I would ditch my car in a heartbeat.

Or to put that another way: I would _pay extra_ for the privilege of not
owning a car. I suspect that in Vancouver at least, 20 years from now the
strongest predictor of car ownership will be "too poor to live close to mass
transit".

~~~
mason240
>20 years from now the strongest predictor of car ownership will be "too poor
to live close to mass transit".

I'm sure most people on here realize this, but European cities are the
opposite of US cities - poor people live in suburbs outside the city, living
in the city is desirable.

If you think the debate over gentrification is interesting now, just imagine
what it will look like in US cities where this flip-flop takes place.

I live in the Twin Cities, MN, and see this happening to Minneapolis-St Paul
as they seem to be going through this right now

~~~
Kephael
Unless mass transit were to become more convenient than point to point
transportation via automobiles I can't see this happening. Those who can
afford it will almost always value the convenience and privacy allotted by
automobiles. In Europe, the cities were originally built and designed long
before automobiles, trains, and streetcars and the resulting layout results in
a denser environments where mass transit works better.

~~~
userulluipeste
"In Europe, the cities were originally built and designed long before
automobiles, trains, and streetcars and the resulting layout results in a
denser environments where mass transit works better."

Bucharest (Romania's capital) was a typical European city like that you're
describing, but it was heavily reshaped (especially in the 1977 quake event)
and is continuously worked on both in access infrastructure (extending and
improving) and real estate development, and they somehow manage to keep it
both automobile friendly and convenient for the the rest. The automobile
possession here gets more of a whim than a necessity, as the public
transportation covers literally everything, even at night! This isn't that
much a mater of how things tend to fit naturally, as it is cultural. I get the
impression that in USA they go lengths to keep things in a state where you
have to need a car.

------
Tiktaalik
The first suburbs were built around the public transportation option of the
time, streetcars. It's a shame that most cities threw that away when cars
appeared.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb)

Ignoring the implementation detail of the street car form, the fundamental
idea of designing a suburb neighbourhood around major transit nodes, with some
light commercial at the core stops makes tons of sense. Walk or bike 5-15
minutes to the transit node, get on transit, get to town. No car necessary.

~~~
_delirium
This is more or less how Copenhagen is built. It's most famous for the high
degree of biking in the city (~50% of people living in the city proper commute
by bike), but if you take the metro area as a whole, it's surprisingly
sprawling. Of 1.5m total people, only about 500k live in the city, and the
other 1m live in the suburbs, which spread out to a surprisingly large radius
considering that it's not that large of a population (the outer suburbs are
about 40-50km from downtown).

However that quite geographically large sprawl is _mostly_ channeled along
five main corridors [1], with a fairly fast commuter-rail system serving as
the backbone of each corridor. That allows having large expanses of single-
family homes, but still good transit access.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_Plan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_Plan)

~~~
rayiner
That's also how Westchester in NYC is built. Lots of little suburban towns
built around Metro North stations.

------
secabeen
It will be interesting to see how millennials preferences change once they
have kids. I lived for a few years in a large city without a car, and loved
it. However, once you have kids, things change. Kids often have lots of
accessories that you don't want to be dragging around with you everywhere
(stroller, diaper bag, toys, books, etc). A car is a great place to store
those. Kids also result in more multi-stop trips that aren't necessarily on
the Metro lines.

I think millennials probably won't adopt their parents' car-based solutions to
these problems, but what they do choose will be different than what they're
choosing now.

~~~
acketon
It's not just he car... most of these cities are not affordable to live in
when you have kids. A 1 or 2 bedroom is fine for a young & single worker or a
young couple. But bigger apartments have been converted into dorm style living
in many cases since rents have shot through the roof.

Many cities like Boston, NY and SF are trying to add affordable housing but
that seems to be either a few units for very low income people or micro-units
that are just a couple hundred square feet. Unless you make a huge amount of
money I think most families get pushed to the suburbs to try to find somewhere
they can afford to live.

I'd like to see better designed suburbs that combine dense larger housing with
public transit to connect the suburb communities with each other and the city
they encircle. We need a size of home between the micro-apartment and the 2
million dollar mini mansion.

I'd love to be able to take public transit into Boston from my place in the
suburbs but train stations only have a few dozen parking spots and the bus
service is limited to the city areas. So I drive for now.

~~~
secabeen
>I'd like to see better designed suburbs that combine dense larger housing
with public transit to connect the suburb communities with each other and the
city they encircle.

This is a good point. Even if we increase public transit, almost all of these
plans only improve connectivity between the suburb and downtown. When you need
to get from one suburb to another to see a friend from work or school, that
can take hours, even if both families are close to transit. Increased options
between suburbs is important too.

------
rayiner
It's really interesting to see companies like Apple and Google double-down on
faceless suburban office parks while the rest of the country is moving past
them.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
I remember taking the light rail everyday in North Sunnyvale on Java Drive a
few years ago, and wondered why companies like Google, Facebook, etc didn't
move over there-there were so many vacant buildings, all next to VTA light
rail. Apple's campus has mediocre bus service (VTA 55), Google's has
practically none I can think of (piss poor location for transit) and FB is
banking on the unicorn-like hope of revitalizing Redwood Junction and building
a Caltrain spur.

I bet dollars to doughnuts most people who work at big name tech companies in
Santa Clara County, and who actually live in Santa Clara County, drive to
work.

~~~
andrewfong
Has there been any actual public discussion about revitalizing Redwood
Junction? I mean, there are literally train tracks running from the Redwood
City Caltrain all the way to Facebook. Curious what the main obstacles are.

~~~
asploder
The various public agencies involved are restarting a project to bring
commuter rail service to the area:
[http://www.greencaltrain.com/2015/02/dumbarton-policy-
commit...](http://www.greencaltrain.com/2015/02/dumbarton-policy-committee-
seeks-project-restart/)

The project was originally intended to connect Redwood City Caltrain to Union
City BART in the East Bay, but the (partial) funding was redirected to the San
Jose BART extension. There was no real chance of the project being built
before now anyway; rebuilding rail bridges is pretty expensive.

------
shubb
Millennials is trending hard:
[https://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore#q=millennials](https://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore#q=millennials)

It's hard to see why - I see a lot of pretend statistical articles on the
subject but nothing validating that this group is actually any sort of
cluster.

It's also interesting that when they talk about millennial, commentators are
usually not talking about poor people. They mean middle class kids. I guess
it's good clickbait for ads because it's a category that could describe anyone
with monies children.

------
CalRobert
For what it's worth, I'm moving from Europe to a very car-dependent city (San
Diego) and desperately trying to find a neighborhood where I and my wife will
at least not need _two_ cars, and ideally none. It's a hell of a sprawling
city. Bankers Hill or Little Italy seem like good choices but the jets are
damned loud.

A suburb with good train/trolley service would be fairly appealing. I won't
pretend to like National City or El Cajon (I don't), but at least Mission
Hills is an option. However, Mission Hills hates bicyclists and opposes bike
lines, so I'm trying to avoid that area out of principle.

~~~
restalis
For places like San Diego (sprawled and in a climate without snow), in the
worst case you can opt for a motorbike or a scooter. That will give you
mobility and avoid some of the car's drawbacks. It would be better if you
won't have to own any transport though.

~~~
CalRobert
I suspect we're going to wind up as a 1 cheap car (for long out of town trips)
+ 1 electric bicycle household. I can deal with that. Even if we're near the
trolley, it barely goes anywhere. Alternately I might see how life is relying
on car2go and then decide whether I really need to own a vehicle. I really,
really don't miss having a car.

------
michaelpinto
It's not just millennials: As suburban boomers age, more of them won't be able
drive due to health reasons. My hope is that self driving cars and better
planning can help us rethink things.

~~~
BrainInAJar
We don't need driverless cars, we need carless drivers. Urban densification,
not self-driving Ubers.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Never going to happen. Self-driving cars will always be cheaper than
rebuilding a non-insignificant amount of the US.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Growth is geometric. Whatever has come before is the smaller part of what we
will need in future. We're always, constantly rebuilding a non-insignificant
amount of the US.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Want to make a long bet? You're counting on enough economic activity in the
suburbs to drive the growth needed to revamp urban planning in those areas.
With an aging populace in the US, we're hard pressed to pay for our existing
obligations, let alone rebuilding communities on a massive scale.

~~~
ghaff
The article weaves a story out of some incremental light rail in areas where
it makes sense. But that's a long way from transforming what suburbs (and even
sprawling cities) look like on a broad scale. IMO autonomous vehicles that can
really replace car ownership are a long way away but mass transit planning is
a long time horizon as well. And if/when they do arrive it's almost inevitable
that they'll make driving more attractive, not less.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> IMO autonomous vehicles that can really replace car ownership are a long way
> away but mass transit planning is a long time horizon as well. And if/when
> they do arrive it's almost inevitable that they'll make driving more
> attractive, not less.

The problem is that you can approach self driving cars in an incremental way,
while light rail is extremely expensive upfront.

I don't have time at the moment to go into detail, but look at the Greenlight
Proposal in Pinellas County (Florida). It was advertised as a light rail/bus
transportation network overhaul, and it was downvoted due to being too
expensive (while adding extremely minimal taxes to cover it).

[http://www.psta.net/plansandreports.php](http://www.psta.net/plansandreports.php)

------
mason240
What I find most interesting in this pushback against cars and suburbs is just
how temporary the criticisms of them are.

We are on the verge of having self driving electric cars and most of the
complaints about suburb life will seem silly.

~~~
Tiktaalik
Self driving electric cars will have little effect on traffic congestion. If
the region is completely car-centric in its design, with a weak public transit
system, you'll still have traffic jams and lengthly commutes.

The only difference is that the single people in the cars can look at their
phone instead of looking at the bumper infant of them.

~~~
forgotpasswd3x
> Self driving electric cars will have little effect on traffic congestion.

Are you sure? It seems like it would definitely have a decent impact on
traffic in certain situations, like those traffic jams that are only caused by
people slowing down too early and speeding up too late, compressing the
traffic.

I believe a lot of problems of traffic could be fixed with self-driving cars,
especially if they worked together.

Certainly you'll never make certain cities free of traffic congestion, but I
think a lot could be done in smaller cities and suburbs.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Actually, I think the biggest market will be china, where mega cities like
Beijing are incredibly congested without much more room to build anymore
roads. The gov might just say: self-driving only inside the 5th ring, and the
traffic would be much much better, even it just applied to limited access ring
roads (though I bet they would do arterials also).

------
gglitch
My whole line of thought on this subject changed when we decided to have a
child. I am/was an enthusiastic user of public transportation, but the idea of
trying to have a baby and not be able to get around on precisely my own terms
(that is, on my own schedule, and with the burden of stuff my little family
requires to be clean and comfortable) seemed absurd to me and now, though I
still take the train to/from work every day, the idea of not having a car
seems untenable.

~~~
restalis
The alternative of car ownership is not necessarily the reliance on public
transportation. Having no need for public transportation (in the context of
parenting), like having close-by all that you'd need is even better than
having a car.

