
Cars Kill Cities - Jakob
http://progressivetransit.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/cars-kill-cities/
======
gress
The post is right, and even more so for developing world cities that emerged
before cars were around.

However the post is also naive. Cars are usually much faster, provide much
better shelter from the weather, and are much less tiring than trying to lug
bags from one place to another on buses or other public transport. They also
place far fewer constraints on when you can travel.

Of course it's possible to structure one's life so as to deal with all of the
issues. I have lived half of my adult life without a car, including 4 years in
the SF Bay Area, and I managed.

But let's stop pretending that there isn't a trade off. Cars are very very
convenient. The key to reducing the need for cars is not just good public
transport - it's services that reduce the reliance on traveling to get chores
done. Things like grocery deliveries, laundry pickup, and amazon.com.

It would be a lot easier to rely solely on public transport if you never had
to carry anything.

~~~
dionidium
Everybody knows this is true, of course. I live three miles from work. To get
here this morning I _could_ have walked 3 blocks to the light rail station
near my apartment, then another 4 or so blocks from the destination station to
my office. This is pretty convenient, especially in St. Louis, where the vast,
vast majority of residents don't have options nearly that good.

But I didn't do it. It was 16F degrees when I left the house this morning. I
drove my car.

~~~
eru
Put on some proper clothing and take your bike?

~~~
dded
Perhaps you're being facetious, but on the off change that you're just not
familiar with 16F (-9C), understand that that's cold. I'm a runner, but I
don't go out if it's below 20F--I can't take it no matter what I wear. And a
given temperature feels much colder on a bike.

Of course, if it's 16F, there's likely some ice and snow about, and riding a
bicycle is treacherous in that. And St. Louis is on the eastern edge of the
central time zone, so it'll be pitch dark out when he gets off work, also
treacherous given traffic.

------
jseliger
If you're interested in this topic, Donald Shoup's _The High Cost of Free
Parking_ and Edward Glaeser's _The Triumph of the City_ are both worth
reading. The former explains how "free" parking isn't really free and how it
distorts a lot of behavior, and the latter is about what cities are good for
and how to build healthy cities in general.

Personally, I wonder why people would want to own a car if they can avoid it:
[https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/why-would-you-
want...](https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/why-would-you-want-to-own-
a-car-if-you-could-avoid-it/) , but that may be a minority viewpoint.

~~~
booyaa00
Lots of people don't want to live in a city.

For me, living in a city is a horrible existence. So living in the unspoilt
countryside a car is pretty useful to get around.

A car is freedom. Do you really want to be completely dependent and beholden
to some public transport system?

~~~
im_a_lawyer
That's great but you assume that there is a choice. I want to live in a nice
city, but I can't. Trillions of dollars, decades of government policies and
dozen of agencies with their "homeownership" programs destroyed our cities and
permanently put them at a disadvantage. My city alone lost almost 1 million
people so far, where blocks with only 2 or 3 houses left standing are
plentiful(this isn't even Detroit!) yet the surrounding suburbs are thriving.
This didn't happen out of choice. If people like you paid the full price of
suburbia or if the situation was reversed and government rewarded city living
instead of suburban living then your lifestyle would change really fast.

~~~
eru
> I want to live in a nice city, but I can't.

If you want city living badly enough, there are countries that still have
viable cities.

------
justinsb
If self-driving cars become a reality, it is interesting to think of what
happens to all this space & infrastructure. If the model is that we don't own
cars, but rather share them like taxis, then there is no need for parking: the
car will just drop you and go to its next trip. If the model is that we own
our self-driving cars, it may be that they can be parked at much greater
distances (10+ miles) from where we spend time (in much denser structures than
today). We can likely eliminate parking from inner cities, both garages and
roadside parking.

If we can design roads and grids for computers and not humans, perhaps we can
make them much efficient by trading off simplicity. Could we have a complex
system of mostly one-way streets?

What interests me is that not just parking garages go away, but what today is
a four-lane-width road (with two lanes dedicated to parking) may become a
single-lane one-way street. The sidewalk - which used to be 20% of the space -
is now 80% of the space. Looking around busy cities, and trying to imagine
what it will look like post-self-driving car, is IMHO mind-blowing.

~~~
sliverstorm
\- Self-driving cars will still need to park at off-peak times. Unless they
just keep driving in circles.

\- Having your car park 10 miles away from you after every trip adds some
forty miles of travel per commute. That's forty miles of fuel and forty miles
of maintenance, every day.

\- I'm also not thrilled about the prospect of already-dense cities shrinking
streets to one lane. We call them concrete jungles _now_ \- can you imagine if
all the roads were only 15 feet across? Goodbye, sky.

~~~
GuiA
_\- Self-driving cars will still need to park at off-peak times. Unless they
just keep driving in circles._

"they can be parked at much greater distances (10+ miles) from where we spend
time, in much denser structures than today"

 _\- Having your car park 10 miles away from you after every trip adds some
forty miles of travel per commute. That 's forty miles of fuel and forty miles
of maintenance, every day._

Only if we map 1 car to 1 person. Of course that'd be completely unoptimized -
people wouldn't own car, but rather have a "subscription" where they can get a
car dispatched at any time (à la Uber). Cars would only park 10 miles away at
truly off peak hours; the rest of the time they'd go to service some other
customer.

 _\- I 'm also not thrilled about the prospect of already-dense cities
shrinking streets to one lane. We call them concrete jungles now- can you
imagine if all the roads were only 15 feet across? Goodbye, sky._

As the previous poster said, the extra space would go to sidewalks. Outside
patios, trees, grass, parks... the things we could do would be amazing. Some
older European cities from pre-car eras are built like that, and it's
wonderful.

~~~
sliverstorm
_Only if we map 1 car to 1 person_

Please read my parent. He said:

 _If the model is that we own our self-driving cars it may be that they can be
parked at much greater distances (10+ miles)_

That's what I was replying to.

 _Some older European cities from pre-car eras are built like that, and it 's
wonderful._

And a fair number of pre-automobile European cities are built with tiny
streets. Hence, part of why micro-cars are so popular in Europe.

~~~
Xylakant
> And a fair number of pre-automobile European cities are built with tiny
> streets. Hence, part of why micro-cars are so popular in Europe.

Fuel in europe costs about as much in euro per liter as it costs in
USD/gallon. Well, that's a bit exaggerated but last week I paid ~ 1,50 EUR per
liter, so a fuel efficient micro car does not only help you navigate narrow
streets but also saves quite some money.

------
tdees40
This is easy enough to fix from a policy standpoint:

(1) make free parking a taxable benefit for companies

(2) tax the hell out of gas/car registration, or at the very least tax it
enough to pay for infrastructure

(3) no mandated parking minimums in new construction in cities

(4) get rid of publicly paid for parking

But of course this requires transit alternatives and popular support, which
does not exist in places like Atlanta. I live in Orange County, and I bike to
work (we have perfect weather and mediocre bike infrastructure), but people
love their cars here.

~~~
dublinben
I think a better alternative for 2 would be congestion pricing for downtown
areas. An across the board registration hike would be regressive, and
disproportionately affect the rural poor.

~~~
tdees40
Ah yes, even better. But that couldn't even fly in NYC, arguably the place
with the least car friendly political environment in the US.

------
api
I have lived in both car-dependent and transit-based places, and can see
advantages to both. Given that the advantages of transit are commonly
discussed these days, I thought I'd give some of the advantages of cars.

(1) Cars don't have schedules. You can just jump in your car and go any time
of day or night. Cars also don't stop running at 2am, while most transit
systems do.

(2) Cars permit sprawl. Sprawl has been bashed to hell and back for some
justifiable reasons, but it has one big advantage: it breaks the backs of real
estate markets. Sprawling car-dependent regions are much safer from the real
estate hyperinflation that plagues cities that are either transit-based or
geographically constrained. Bubbles of local real estate inflation surround
transit hot spots, creating a two-tier society in which ease of transportation
is exponentially (not linearly, as with cars) correlated to income. The poor
get loooooong bus->train commutes while the wealthy get fast train->train
commutes.

(3) Cars can haul stuff, which gets increasingly important when you have
children. Pretty much everything about the suburbs seems idiotic until you
have kids, then it seems reasonable.

I can't stress #2 enough. Compare the Los Angeles metro area to the San
Francisco bay. The former is a largely car-based sprawling metropolis, while
the latter is partly transit-based and also geographically constrained (which
for the market does the same thing as transit-dependence). In the LA metro
area there are many neighborhoods where poor and working class people can
afford to live. In the Bay Area you're spending $3000/month for a crack den.
Everyone but professionals and the rich are completely priced out of all but
the absolute worst neighborhoods, or are pushed out to the fringes with the
longest commutes.

It's funny that transit is often cited as good from an equality point of view
as it gives everyone access to mobility without requiring car ownership, but
the real estate inflation that it engenders negates this IMHO.

~~~
StaceyEC
Great insight.

------
was_hellbanned
I walked around Tokyo marveling at the infrastructure. Fully enclosed (or
perhaps 3/4 enclosed) freeways that explode out of the ground, split off to
surface streets, and arch up through the sky and around corners. Well-
engineered, rubberized mounting systems and the enclosure mean you only heard
the faintest hint of cars rocketing by at speed. Highways branching to high-
capacity, multi-lane surface streets, which further branch into narrow
neighborhood streets (similar to an alley in the US) meant that pedestrian
traffic was quite safe, and generally well-respected.

By contrast, American cities have a couple of arterial freeways, a massive
grid of wide-yet-low-capacity surface streets, and neighborhood streets that
people speed through in an effort to shave seconds off their commute. And when
they get to work, they park in huge parking lots, instead of stacked parking
structures (ideally under the target building itself).

American transportation infrastructure is terrible.

~~~
deegles
I think the road infrastructure pales in comparison to the subway/rail system.
The volume of people it moves is incredible. Also remember that it's all built
in an earthquake-prone area!

~~~
was_hellbanned
I didn't even bother getting into the rail system, since I assume everyone
realizes how advanced it is. I really wanted to put this in though: I've
watched Shinkansen pull into the switchyard at night to "go to bed". It's
quiet. Here's a bullet train, cruising into a rail yard pretty much in the
middle of a neighborhood, idling along after midnight, and you only hear a
very muffled motor as it glides by. Compare that to America, where our trains
seem to be built solely to meet basic load requirements, and where they honk
four times (as long or short as they want) before every crossing that's not
guarded with quad-gates.

------
abduhl
This post is a rant backed up with only anecdotal evidence and an enraged
author with a penchant for catchy headlines.

No solutions are offered because no problem is properly presented.

~~~
marcosdumay
At the other side, the author presented the less fitting anedocte he came up
with, saying "see, even if I try hard to refute the hypothesis, I can't". And
it's not an extraordinary hypothesis.

------
Xylakant
I'm genuinely curious: Here in germany we have car-sharing offers that allow
you to pick up a car on the street, ride it to where you want to go and then
leave it parked there in the larger cities. The fee is usually about half of
the fee of a cab. Then there's the same for bicycles. The combination of
public transport and car-sharing in berlin is awesome, at least in the city
center: I go most ways by public transport and then grab a car or bike if I
need to. If I really need to travel long distance by car, I get a rental and
I'm coming out ahead financially, even if I throw in the occasional taxi ride
because it's late and I'm lazy. From the posts here I get the impression that
this doesn't exist in the US - and I can't imagine that.

~~~
dustcoin
What you are describing sounds like
[https://www.car2go.com](https://www.car2go.com), which is available in some
US cities.

~~~
gregl
Which just happens to be a German company :)

We have it in Toronto and it's super useful sometimes to quickly get somewhere
within the downtown when transit would be slower and cabs more expensive.

------
conjecTech
As a life long ATLien, I want to know when Atlanta was walkable, and if it
could have even been considered the same city as it is now. For those of you
who don't know, the population of metro Atlanta more than doubled between 1990
and 2010.

Yes, all types of transportation suck in Atlanta, but roads and cars are an
extensible, scaleable solution with most of the costs being marginal as
opposed to fixed, meaning additional demand can be handled easily. Like others
have noted, you offered no real solutions to that problem. MARTA is kind of a
joke of a system for anyone that values their time. A trip on MARTA will take
about twice the time it would take to drive in a car. At the average commuter
distance, you recoup the cost of buying a $5,000 car in a year if you value
your time at minimum wage. If you actually care about fixing the problem, fix
the economics of alternatives. Don't just go about complaining about the fact
that you don't like not being able to walk where you want to go, suggest
solutions.

And please try to consider this problem outside of the perspective of being a
student, because that honestly seems to be the only perspective you've given
to this. A lot of the vehicles you see in Atlanta are work vehicles, and that
mobility makes a lot of things possible that you probably are a fan of. You
may want to consider the dynamics of the local economy further.

Honestly, I have to say this article isn't up to the standards I'd expect of a
fellow Tech student, particularly a PhD candidate. You are very well
intentioned and undoubtedly intelligent, but simply pointing out what everyone
knows isn't very helpful. I'll be interested to see the future posts you
promised.

------
bhavvik
Before cars invaded Ahmedabad, India, two wheelers and rickshaws were primary
modes of transportation for longer distances. Walking and bicycles were used
for shorter distances.. Cars were used on occasions.. Traffic issues were non-
existent. People starting using cars as primary mode of transportation because
everyone else started doing it.. meaning using two wheelers became less safe,
more car traffic, increased pollution effects, etc.

Idea is to go back to using cars as only ocassional mode of transportation and
for that one option is govt helps reduce traffic for two
wheelers/rickshaws/bicycles.. Dedicated lanes for these would help.

------
Anechoic
FYI, the author of that post address self-driving cars in his next post:
[http://progressivetransit.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/self-
driv...](http://progressivetransit.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/self-driving-cars-
freedom-or-more-of-the-same/)

~~~
jstalin
That betrays the basic attitude of these anti-car folks. It's not the cars,
but the freedom to live where you want that they detest.

~~~
Tiktaalik
People can live where they want, but I'm critical of having to subsidize the
excessive amount of infrastructure necessary for the lifestyle choice of
unnecessarily travelling very large distances. For me it's even worse because
I live in a region where the terrain requires a lot of bridges.

~~~
DannyBee
"but I'm critical of having to subsidize the excessive amount of
infrastructure necessary for the lifestyle choice of unnecessarily travelling
very large distances"

Why choose this choice as the the line in the sand?

Are you also critical of having to subsidize the excessive amount of
infrastructure necessary for the lifestyle choice of living in a strictly
large than necessary place, for example?

Because you subsidize that to a large degree too.

Everyone who has a larger dining room because they have made the lifestyle
choice of wanting to host dinner parties. Or large kitchens. Large bedrooms.
Large yards. You name it.

It's all strictly unnecessary, and all lifestyle choice. Among other
subsidies, all of it takes up valuable space that could be given to the
public, or something else done with it. It requires more infrastructure -
greater water supplies, greater sanitation requirements, power supplies, gas
supplies, what have you.

Yet we subsidize this just the same as you are paying for roads, you are just
paying for it in different places.

In truth, we subsidize a large number of lifestyle choices that impact
infrastructure (having kids, riding bikes, heck, even buying groceries, you
name it).

From what I can tell, it just seems some people are upset that they subsidies
don't always match whatever their particular ideology of how cities should be
built is.

Just remember there really is no "better" or "worse", when it comes to
lifestyle choices, just different (you may impose moral judgements on
lifestyle choices depending on ideology and viewpoint of purpose of society,
but the truly vast majority of these moral judgements are not universally
shared)

------
samatman
In the East Bay, I ride a 3000w electric scooter. A kWh of power is a good
days ride, commute, shopping and socializing (I tend to charge twice a day,
because I can).

Please consider joining me: the more scooters there are the safer we all get
to be. It's fun! When you get going fast, you can't even hear the motor, just
the wind.

------
6d0debc071
Do people actually _want_ to live in cities, how many of them? - (and whatever
for?)

One narrative here goes, there are lots of cars, so it creates an unfriendly
environment, so people have to live outside the city and have cars.

But that narrative doesn't make sense for how the cars got there in the first
place.

Another narrative goes: cars enabled people to move about quickly, they
enjoyed this. One manifestation of this ability was to escape from cities and
still get to work. Thus carparks and reasonably fast roads.

#

Or maybe people just enjoyed moving about quickly even over relatively small
distances and it snowballed

For example, I live about five miles away from where I used to work. I could
spend 10 minutes walking to the nearest busstop, 15 minutes waiting for that
bus, another 10-15 minutes getting to the busstop in town, another 10-15
minutes waiting for the next bus to work, another half hour or so while the
bus drives there (takes longer because of stops).

Or I could just get in the car and be there in 16-20 minutes.

An hour and a half vs 16-20 minutes. And this isn't a _bad_ place for public
transport. Buses, on average, every 10-15 minutes is pretty good. It just adds
up. Heck, given a couple of hours I could probably walk there.

It's far from clear that it makes sense, even under generalised utility, to
agree with the author's desire to make cities better places to live at the
potential cost to people who may prefer to live elsewhere and drive.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
You could also bike there in 30 minutes and get some excercise as a bonus.

------
elhector
High correlation with another post in the board:

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2013/12/10/why_cul_de_sac...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2013/12/10/why_cul_de_sacs_are_bad_for_your_health_happy_city_by_charles_montgomery.html)

Can be a bit of a catch 22 in today's world, where new cities and developments
are created assuming high volume / usage of cars.

You can see how dense cities can work very well with very few cars in places
like Amsterdam, but there city setup and infrastructure eases walking / biking
and is very unfriendly to cars.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Amsterdam#Car](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Amsterdam#Car)

------
revelation
I think what we need are exponential tolls based on distance to city center or
density of pedestrian traffic around. I couldn't care less about cars on
streets dedicated for them, but everywhere else they need to piss off and
quickly. They are death machines.

------
CapitalistCartr
I fond our cities profoundly ugly, but cars serve an essential service. I need
a flexible, quick means of secure transport. I need to move a variable number
of people from 1-4. I often need to bring tens of kilograms of stuff with me.
What else can fill the bill around a large metro area (~3 million people)?

I would love an alternative, to live in beautiful cities, to walk around the
way I can overseas.

~~~
rayiner
Walking + a cart.

------
tootie
New York City recently launched it's CitiBike program and set up bike racks in
spots that used to be reserved for street parking and you should have seen
people flipping out despite the fact that less than 50% of us actually own
cars. And let's not forget about the amount of space we dedicate cars being
able to move around.

------
kyrra
At this point for a lot of cities, it would require a large amount of
infrastructure change. Mass transit in most cities sucks today, so people use
cars. To do this right, the city needs to do a massive up-front investment in
public transit. And there is no guarantee that this investment will ever pay
off.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Yes, it would require a change in infrastructure. No, it is not necessary for
the investment to be done upfront. You quickly ramp up cheap mass transit
options (bus service segregated from regular vehicular traffic with dedicated
lanes, MUCH cheaper than light rail construction) while using
permitting/zoning to phase out car-friendly policies.

It won't happen overnight, but its a start.

~~~
chongli
Bus service does not work. People hate buses, no matter how well designed and
efficient their routes are. Buses have an extreme social stigma attached to
them.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Unfortunately, just because you hate something doesn't mean we should continue
to support policies for wasteful/inefficient transportation.

~~~
chongli
You know what's wasteful and inefficient? Empty buses driving around all day.
My city is full of them!

------
kator
I lived most of my life in Los Angeles, having a car was a right of passage. I
moved three years ago to New York City and I sold my car (finally) last year.
It's amazing how liberating it is, no insurance, parking, gas, maintenance.
These things eat into your life and you really don't see it until it's gone..
I'd be glad to never own another car, but if I move again to a place that
doesn't support it I guess I'll buy another chunk of metal and watch the
quarters fly out the tail pipe..

------
forrestthewoods
Self driving cars my pick for best solution. You can have fewer cars services
more people with higher efficiency. It's all wins across the board.

I hope the bloggers solution ideas aren't "better public transportation".
Public transportation sucks, even in Europe. A pre-requisite to good public
transportation is poor infrastructure for private transportation. I view
asking for better public transportation as asking for a faster horse. We can
do way better than that.

~~~
Tiktaalik
Self driving cars doesn't change much.

Supposing that there would exist car sharing systems such that a single car
may be used throughout the day by several people, then we could cut back on
parking spots, but I'm sure there will be many that own their own self driving
car and share it with no one.

During morning rush hour the only difference from now would be that commuters
could do the crossword puzzle instead of focusing on traffic.

~~~
kjackson2012
Incorrect. If you have self-driving cars, the entire flow of traffic could be
much more efficient, virtually eliminating traffic jams.

You could drive at the speed limit with a lot smaller distance between cars,
etc, packing in a greater density of people without sacrificing speed.

~~~
Tiktaalik
I think you'll see some gains in efficiency, but negligible compared to how
efficiently we can move people via rapid transit. At the end of the day you're
still going to be having most often a single person in a large vehicle that
takes up a lot of room on the road.

------
Tiktaalik
Car oriented design is not efficient at all for most city trips and we need to
dramatically increase funding for alternatives.

Alongside directing our infrastructure dollars toward supporting a more
balanced mix of travelling options, the most sensible thing we can do is to
expose more of the real cost of car oriented infrastructure to the end
consumer via road fees, bridge tolls and ending free parking.

------
digitalsushi
If most things could be delivered by drones to where you lived, do you think
we would space out, or clump together, or stay the same?

I think, for me, I could use my car payment on taxi service if I didnt need to
commute or do errands, and it would be about the same. Except I wouldnt have a
car, something that breaks down.

------
x0054
Cars kill density, but they don't kill cities. I live in San Diego, a very car
friendly city. I can get to almost any store, restaurant, or shop in 15
minutes or less. The key is medium density city with lot's of freeways. High
density is not all that it's cracked up to be.

------
andrewliebchen
For a forum that spends a lot of time talking about disruption with members
who I'm sure pride themselves on their rationality, there is a surprising
amount of "damn the torpedoes" defense of the status quo here.

------
jpb0104
Did you guys see this one?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6882352](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6882352)

------
glomph
David Byrne's book Bicycle Diaries has some fantastic analysis of the effects
of cars on cities (particularly American ones). I would highly recommend it!

------
alexeisadeski3
Wonder when the liberals will wake up and smell the coffee: Private busses are
the miracle solution to public transport.

~~~
wh-uws
Trying to be as non promotional as possible here.

With my startup I'm working on this problem aiming to make easily setting up
private transport a reality.

You can check out my vision here.

[http://www.driveless.co/about.html](http://www.driveless.co/about.html)

My contact if is in my profile if you have any comments or criticism.

------
kimonos
We can use solar powered vehicles instead..

------
saraid216
Eh, IMO, cars are killing democracy, too. I haven't lined up the studies to
actually show the causal chain, though. It's something I need to get around to
doing.

