
Cars kill cities - ajju
http://progressivetransit.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/cars-kill-cities/
======
henrikschroder
When I visited Hawaii last year I noticed that something was different at all
the hotels compared to hotels at similar locations elsewhere; Thailand,
Indonesia, the Dominican Republic. In Hawaii, all hotels had huge parking
garages and a large valet parking staff. Similar-sized hotels in the other
locations never had parking garages, hotels with hundreds of rooms might have
a tiny parking-lot somewhere, on which a few rental cars would be parked.

But in Hawaii, _everyone_ rents a car, drives it the ten minutes from the
airport to the hotel, parks it at the hotel, leaves it there for a week, then
drives it back to the airport to get home.

It's a pretty funny and stark reminder of the completely different mindset and
attitude towards cars that most americans have. Having a car is so deeply
ingrained that the alternatives don't have a chance.

~~~
vital101
When my wife and I went to Oahu for out honeymoon, we thought it was
absolutely insane that anyone would rent a car while visiting the place. They
have a free bus system that shuttles you around the down town area, and there
are loads of tours that can get you to the regular hots spots that everyone
wants to visit.

~~~
dereg
This is okay if you're a tourist traveling between popular tourist spots. As a
local, taking the bus 10 miles from home to work would take me at least an
hour and half to two hours, verus 40 minutes in a car.

~~~
benjiweber
Or 30 minutes on a bike (once you're fit)

------
skrebbel
I think in the Netherlands, we've had this discussion a while ago already.
Outcome: cities like Amsterdam have intentionally few parking spaces in the
center, and they cost ludicrous amounts of money per hour.

People _living_ in the center either complain their asses off, or ditch the
car.

I'm not sure that this really helped people much. Ditching the car means you
can't go visit your grandma in that village without a train station on the
other side of the country easily. Keeping the car means everything sucks
(super-expensive, no place to put it, takes ages to get from your house to the
highway). Real solution: keep the car and move away from the city center, the
exact opposite from what the OP is suggesting.

Long story short, I doubt there is a simple solution. Back in those wonderful
old days, everybody lived 2 miles from their grandmas anyway.

(there probably are plenty non-simple solutions though)

~~~
derda
In germany the concept of car-sharing is becoming increasingly popular. Most
bigger cities have multiple providers, some are backed by car manufacturers,
some are independent.

So if you want to pick up lots of beverages for your birthday party next
weekend and don't feel like hauling them back in public transport or with your
bike, you can just rent a car for x minutes, go shopping, drive home, park it
in a reserved place in you neighborhood.

The price model of most providers is however not the best for the visit
grandma in the countryside problem, but most of those carsharing companies
have special tarifs with rental providers, so you can get a relatively cheap
car for the weekend.

The way it technically works is almost always the same: You sign up and you
get an RFID Key Card. You go on the internet or use an App to see if a car is
available in your area and book it. You go to the car, open it with you
keycard and find the keys in the glovebox. Sometimes you have to put in a PIN
first. Some providers have a monthly fee, some just charge the usage.

Some Websites for those interested:

www.car2go.com - Backed by Daimler - Smart Cars even in some NA cities

www.greenwheels.com - indipendent, has been around for ages

www.flinkster.de - Backed by Deutsche Bahn (german railways), they also have
bikes for rent

www.stadtmobil.de

www.drive-now.com - Sixt (biggest german rental firm) and BMW - nice 1-series
and Minis

www.web.quicar.de - Volkswagen got into the business,too

\+ multiple regional projects

~~~
nmondollot
And also some peer-to-peer players that are gaining a lot of traction.

A good overview is available here : <http://futureofcarsharing.com/>

~~~
cstuder
Wow, that site looks beautiful, amazing HTML5 and CSS-work. The source looks
handcoded, apart from Modernizer and jQuery.

I wonder how you would event start to design something like that.

~~~
pre
Yeah, but they've broken my middle-mouse-button and I can't open new tabs on
the links. Which is s shame. That seems to be happening more and more.

------
stephth
I completely agree. It's sad that we've let cars completely take over in
detriment of quality of life.

I worked on this set of visualizations on traffic in the center of Madrid a
few years ago: <http://trsp.net/cow>

I found the numbers stunning. Some avenues had an average of 100k vehicles
driving through daily.

I've since moved to San Francisco, and find that traffic in US cities is less
painful, the cities' grids and sidewalks are better prepared. But still, it's
ridiculous how much freedom cars are given. A few months ago traffic in
Valencia St, one of the nicest streets in the Mission, was cut off, and it was
bliss to take a walk there, even though the street was super crowded. At least
some streets should always be traffic free, I dont think it's that much effort
to ask, and the benefits in quality of living are tremendous.

~~~
_delirium
The main opposition to pedestrian streets in the U.S. tends to be from
merchants. Their view is that cars driving by is good advertising. Even if the
cars don't actually stop, when they drive by a store daily, they're reminded
it's there and might eventually visit, while if the traffic gets routed in a
different way, fewer eyeballs will see the stores daily (and instead they'll
see different stores). State Street in Chicago was pedestrianized from
1979-1996, for example, but merchant pressure eventually caused it to be
reopened to traffic.

~~~
ekoontz
It depends a lot on the circumstances. Here's a recent situation where the
decision to make some streets in Chinatown pedestrian-only and removing
parking on others (if only for a day) was supported and well-received by
merchants:

[http://sf.streetsblog.org/2012/01/24/chinatown-businesses-
th...](http://sf.streetsblog.org/2012/01/24/chinatown-businesses-thrive-
during-a-week-without-car-parking/)

------
ynniv
The midtown Atlanta example is all wrong. Yes, there are a lot of cars in
Atlanta. Yes, there are a lot of parking lots in Atlanta. Are these parking
lots required to sustain these cars? Not at all. The rates for parking vary
wildly, because people only want to park near where they are going.

Those parking lots are not for cars, they are for flipping real estate.

Real estate in midtown has been booming for a little over a decade as small
run down buildings are demolished and 10 ~ 40 story skyscrapers are built.
That means huge increases in land value, which attracts speculation. When a
lot with a small building is purchased, what happens next? If the building
stays, it will have to be serviceable, and a tenant found, which will lock the
property up until the tenant leaves. So the building has to go, and the
property might need to be re-zoned from single family residential.

If you pave over that lot, not only do you remove unwanted structures and get
the opportunity to re-zone, there will be some low-maintenance passive income
generated from people using the property to park their car.

So ultimately, those parking lots are good for the city in the long run.
They're useless eyesores right now, but are more easily converted into high
density buildings, as they have been doing for the last decade. In fact the
real problem with midtown is that there has been too much high density
construction too quickly, and not enough people have moved in yet.

So as much as I love a naval gazing rant, reality is a little more subtle, and
a lot more complicated.

~~~
noodle
I live in and own real estate in a building that is pictured on that map. Some
notes:

1) Not every red box is accurate. For example, one of them contains a bank as
well as a parking structure, yet the bank was circled as well.

2) Not everything is counted evenly. Some condo and office buildings' parking
structures are circled, and some aren't. Almost all of the condo buildings
have their own interior parking, most of which is not circled. Hell, mine has
an exterior blacktop parking lot and its not even circled.

3) The majority of those lots circled are not for flipping real estate. The
ones circled are mostly commuter lots and business lots that are often mostly
empty.

~~~
ynniv
_The majority of those lots circled are not for flipping real estate. The ones
circled are mostly commuter lots and business lots that are often mostly
empty._

It might be a matter of perspective, but a mostly empty parking lot is not in
the business of being a parking lot. Flipping commercial real estate can take
decades, the point is that the lot is not required and will likely help the
area become more city-like.

~~~
noodle
I'd hesitate to call that "flipping", then. Flipping real estate is usually
meant to be a short term process to extract quick profit, not a decades long
wait. That would be "investing".

~~~
ynniv
To me, investing is putting it to good use. Buying it cheap, paving it, and
waiting to sell high is not "investing". Again, that could just be
perspective.

------
akharris
Cars do not kill cities - urban planning without enough foresight into how
cars actually interact with one another, and with cities kill cities.

A large portion of current urban plans date to Robert Moses - he essentially
built New York, invented the ring of highways system used in DC and other
places, and advised places like LA in constructing their major arteries. Moses
was in love with cars, but never experienced traffic as his limo was
chauffered with a police escort. He built highways and made them inaccessible
to public transportation (see the West Side Highway) so that poor people could
not use them. He had no real understanding of capacity
utilization/maximization for transport and stopped learning long before he
stopped designing. He never updated his understanding of the damages caused by
simply adding more highways, but retained the power to keep building them.

The most pernicious impact of Moses's style of urban planning is not, however,
gridlock or a lack of walkability. Moses decided that he could put roads
wherever he wanted, and used eminent domain to put them right through vibrant
communities - which he destroyed. He killed the bronx, parts of Queens,
Brooklyn, and almost ran a huge raised highway across 34th street.

In any case, The Power Broker is an amazing book to read if you're curious
about these issues and why cities are designed the way they are now.

------
InclinedPlane
The biggest problem with mass-transit is that most often riders do not want to
pay what it actually costs, so they vote for some form of tax-supported
subsidy. And that almost inevitably hobbles it, because acquiring new
passengers will affect total revenue only a little, whereas conforming to the
whims of the public and the local government will affect its revenue a lot.

Aside from that, these sorts of analyses ignore the many benefits that cars
provide and the many downsides of public transit. You aren't going to get
people to switch just by pointing out how much more efficient something is,
you have to make it actually better.

When I have to commute I prefer to do so by bus, but there are still a ton of
use cases for local travel where I would only consider mass transit as an
absolute last resort due to the intrinsic advantages/disadvantages.

~~~
ajju
>Aside from that, these sorts of analyses ignore the many benefits that cars
provide and the many downsides of public transit.

Actually, the post doesn't ignore the benefits of cars. It says for example
that an SUV is a great option for a family of 6 going to the suburbs. Perhaps
you had some other benefits in mind?

~~~
dangrossman
> Perhaps you had some other benefits in mind?

How many days can you feed your family on 2 bags of groceries? Gonna carry the
new TV you just bought on the bus with you? I can't imagine doing normal
shopping without a car.

~~~
ajju
>How many days can you feed your family on 2 bags of groceries?

4 of us actually live 2 blocks from the grocery store and I think someone gets
a couple of bags every other day. The "10 bags of groceries" shopping trip is
actually an effect of cars (and suburbanization). When cities are walkable,
grocery stores are nearby too.

I think it's obvious that just like a family of 6 can't fit on a bicycle and
would need a SUV to go to Florida, you'd need a big vehicle to get a TV home.
Presumably, you don't buy a TV every week.

~~~
bdunbar
_When cities are walkable, grocery stores are nearby too._

I live in a small town in the American midwest, considered very walkable, lots
of bike lanes, etc.

We don't have smaller retail stores within walking distance. Instead we have
big-box grocery stores like everywhere else.

We _used_ to have those but in the late 50s they were zoned out of existence.

------
backrecord
In Phnom Penh (where I live), people are just starting to get rich enough to
own cars, so you can watch the transition happening. The roads and the (lack
of) traffic rules work really well with just motos / pedestrians / bicycles.
But add cars into the mix and it starts to fall apart. 1. More congestion. 2.
the "road rules" don't work with such large objects. 3. lack of consequence if
anyone hits anyone else.

------
cletus
I'm Australian and have lived in Germany (Cologne), Zurich, London and (now)
New York City so I'll add my perspective. I'll also add that I can't drive
(because of an eye condition).

Australia is very much like California. Population density is low. Almost all
of Australia is car dependent. Land sizes are large. This makes public
transport largely uneconomic and unworkable, with certain exceptions (eg parts
of Perth, inner Sydney, Melbourne). Even then, that transport is largely
limited to going into and out of the city. If you want to go somewhere else
it's a huge problem.

Gas taxes are much higher in Australia (petrol costs $1.40-1.50 per litre last
I saw and there are ~4 litres to the gallon). I'm not sure if this covers the
cost of roads and infrastructure (for the quarter acre dream) but I highly
doubt it, especially once you factor in indirect costs.

London is a mix of inner London where public transport is very good and outer
London (Zone 5+) where you are car dependent but you absolutely can get away
with using car rental when you need it most of the time. The problem is public
transport largely stops at midnight (apart from night buses).

Personally I found the light rail in Cologne (and Bonn) great and never felt
the lack of a car.

You absolutely do not need a car in Zurich or pretty much all but rural
Switzerland. Intracity and intercity transport is superb. Even getting to ski
resorts by train/bus is fine.

Which brings me to NYC. NYC for me has the ultimate public transportation
system. It's cheap, goes almost everywhere, runs 24 hours a day (HUGELY
important IMHO) and unlike every other example listed above, cabs are actually
relatively cheap, although there are oddities to the system (eg the
peculiarities of shift change make it somehow impossible to get a cab to the
airport in Manhattan at 3pm).

NYC also has an extremely large commuter belt covered by trains and buses such
that no one I know drives into the city for work.

I live 7 minutes walk to work, which I love. Actually the idea for me is about
20-30 minutes walk each way because that's just about the right balance
between time taken and getting some exercise (IMHO), particularly for us
engineers.

What I don't see in this thread is the issue of people (like me) who don't
have the option of driving a car. For this reason I can see myself largely
living in either NYC or one of several European cities.

Charging homeowners fairly for their infrastructure costs is a hugely divisive
and problematic issue. For example, hiking gas taxes would have all sorts of
unintended consequences, not the least of which is inflation (since that cost
is built into transporting food and everything else).

It seems fair(er) to build maintenance costs into property taxes and initial
capital costs into land costs.

Peak oil [1] is either here or soon will be (IMHO we've already passed it).
Arguably cities produce lower per-capita carbon footprints [2]. At some point
people are going to need to realize that their gas-guzzling ways can't (and
won't) continue forever.

[1]: [http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/01/nature-journal-study-
pe...](http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/01/nature-journal-study-peak-oil/)

[2]: [http://www.infrastructurist.com/2011/01/31/new-study-
shows-t...](http://www.infrastructurist.com/2011/01/31/new-study-shows-that-
suburbs-can-pollute-more-than-cities/)

~~~
melling
Yeah, NYC is great except for that Lincoln Tunnel bus congestion in the
morning and the evening. It would help to have more rail lines to NJ. Let's
start with the 7 Line:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_Subway_Extension#Proposed_New...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_Subway_Extension#Proposed_New_Jersey_extension)

~~~
daeken
Honestly, I'd just love to see the 7 actually be a functional subway line.
It's the only one near my girlfriend's house in Queens, and it's often
completely non-functional; IIRC, it's completely shut down Queens-bound for
the next 11 weekends or something like that. Constant problems.

~~~
bradleyjg
The weekend is the MTA's Achilles heel. You are much better off at 3AM on a
Tuesday than Noon Saturday. At least in the outer boros, they try and keep the
lines in Manhatten south of 110 at least vaguely useable.

I don't know what the solution is though, they have to do maintenance and
upgrades sometime or other.

~~~
Piskvorrr
In Prague, the metro system runs 4AM to 0AM - all maintenance and upgrades are
done in the four-hour window without revenue moves. It's a system that's an
order of magnitude smaller (in revenue track length) than New York subway,
though - I'm not sure how this would scale.

------
Killah911
If a city is a conglomeration of asphalt and buildings, then Cars are just a
part of that. Sure traffic jams suck, but another effect of a car is less
social interaction overall. If a city is a place for people to live, interact,
share ideas etc, the picking up the dry cleaning by driving is not only bad
for the environment etc, it's also a way to really isolate yourself from
others en route to your destination. Commutes on the other hand where you're
driving yourself can be equally anti social and wastes the most precious thing
we have, time. In NYC, used to take the subway. I was able to read books, meet
others. Got to know some neighbors who also took the train the at the same
time to get to work, and even ran into friends I hadn't seen in a while. I'm
sure you wouldn't want to run into a long lost friend while driving (or anyone
else for that fact).

After moving down south I realized how little social interaction I get outside
my specifically chosen work group or actively seeking out social engagements.
Mass transportation is sparse at best here and walking to the dry cleaners
would take half a day.

~~~
agilecaveman
Good point. One of the best places for social interaction in the US are
universities. It's no coincidence that students rarely own cars.

Back in my college (Yale), the campus and building layouts were pretty great.
Some dorm complexes were much larger than city blocks, food was available in
most living spaces. The ability to bump into people you know without need for
mass planning is sorely missing from "adult" life.

~~~
usaar333
Most of that is due to college being an incredibly efficient social filter.
The odds of a social interaction between Yale student and another being
worthwhile (so to speak) are an order of magnitude higher than a Yale student
and non-Yale New Haven dweller.

------
draggnar
This reminds me of a study that compared Hartford, New Haven, and Cambridge:

[http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/11/17/parking-
dat...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/11/17/parking-datapoints-
of-the-day/)

Basically, all 3 cities had been steadily increasing the number of parking
spots they had, until Cambridge deviated and banned creating new parking
spots. Cambridge grew much faster than the other two after this change was
made, and the chart correlated fairly closely. This may have been because of
rent-control or other issues but the case for parking rules is strong.

~~~
ghaff
I doubt it had a lot to do with parking spaces. Cambridge has had huge growth
in biotech and other high-tech in a lot of the old industrial area over the
past couple of decades. Several of the more rundown areas have gentrified as a
result. Parking in Cambridge varies. It's really tight in some areas--though
those are mostly fairly accessible by public transportation. In others, it's
not bad.

------
dkarl
Cars need lots of land for parking because they spend most of their time idle,
because people find it cheaper to own their own car than to use taxicabs.
Also, people buy the largest car they could plausibly need, unless they buy
more than one. Individuals' strong identification with the car they drive
further contributes to excessive size and power.

Automated taxis solve the problem. They will spend much less time idle, can be
parked more compactly, don't need to be parked near a destination, and can
have a size distribution that matches the needs of individual trips (i.e.,
mostly very small.) If they're cheap enough, then they'll be widely used, and
wait times will be small. Because they will be automated, they can be taken in
and out of service very quickly, and there will always be about the right
number available. Also, they'll be much safer for cyclists and pedestrians to
share the road with, and they'll use less of the existing road space, allowing
us to add and widen bike lanes throughout our cities.

------
seles
Driving is like a chicken and egg problem. I need to drive because everyone
else drives. I live in a city that is very sparse because of all the parking
lots and wide roads, like the article mentions. So not much is walkable. I
also can't feasibly bike to work because the direct route involves taking an
interstate as there aren't any near alternatives over a river, doing this on
bike is illegal. Add in the no bike lanes and idiot drivers and it just isn't
not a good idea.

All of these reasons for needing a car are caused by infrastructure to support
cars. Therefore the only way to break this cycle for the public good is to
make driving less economic. Gas tax seems like the obvious choice, but it is
usually not done because of purported public opinion. But really it actually
would be fair as onemoreact said the maintenance for roads is so expensive,
that without gas tax you are really just subsidizing driving.

~~~
agilecaveman
Gas tax is an annoying way to make something less economic, because there is
no way to control where the money will go.

What about tolling roads and/or privatizing them? This way it's easier to know
which roads need expansion and which one's need to go away.

------
woodpanel
It may be the story's catchy title or the implying "solutions" of it, but i
feel compelled to play devils advocate here, and defend the car.

Cars improve the lives of drivers with increased range movement, more time
independent movement (start your journey when it suits you, not when a
timetable allows you to) and allow for more freight to be carried.

When cars are criticized for bringing down the quality of life it is mostly an
issue in urban environments. People in rural or suburban areas rely heavily on
cars. The car may even have saved the quality of life in rural areas (ie
stopped/slowed down the flight from those areas into cities) while it's what
makes the existance of modern suburbia possible. It therefor provides cheaper
housing and a broader choice of how you want to live (Not everybody needs five
starbucks and a movie theatre in the neighbourhood). They also slowed the
population increase of cities.

Adding costs to drivers in urban areas mean higher burdens for people that
have to commute by car, since suburban/rural areas are too thinly populated to
allow for efficient public transportation.

The quality of life argument often tends to demonize technological progress
and romanticizes the past. The funny thing is, that this romance is only
possible because technologies provided us with spare time. So did
motorization. People who lived back then, would have always opted for the new
technologies.

That being said, cars do decrease urban quality of life in certain ways. But
it is important to not let generalization allow for bad policies. Light Rail
for instance is alwas proposed, while it costs more than individual motorized
traffic and while rail tracks usually decrease nearby quality of life more
than any road could.

I'd propose simpler measures:

1) stop providing free parking. Allow the parking space usage to be priced at
what the value of that land would have provided in real property taxes, if it
had been tilled with a house. There's an interesting book about the "cost of
free parking" by an UCLA Professor <http://www.uctc.net/papers/351.pdf>

2) get rid of cab driving restrictions to dramatically lower cab fair prices.
cities with limited amounts of cab driving licenses have higher fair costs. A
NY cab medallion is considered a better investment than gold
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-31/ny-cab-
medallions-w...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-31/ny-cab-medallions-
worth-more-than-gold-chart-of-the-day.html)

3) If property owners where to decide, they'd propably opt more likely for
narrowing the streets and expanding sidewalks as it would increase their
properties value. BID (business improvement districts) often do this. Enable
more owners to make those decisions.

4) start with yourself and ditch your car if you don't need it. Do you really
need more range? Do you really need to be able to start your journey every
minute and not just every 10 minutes. And do you always need to be able to
haul up to 4 fridges? And thus do

5) car sharing. i'm a very satisfied user of <http://www.car2go.com/> and
similar services.

6) if there's a growing need for light-rail, chances are, this need could have
already been eliminated by using more buses for public transport.

~~~
onemoreact
The problem with buses for transport is they use the same infrastructure as
cars. So, as congestion increases they become less viable. Light rail really
solves 2 problems, it can transport more people than an equivalent investment
in roads and it increases property values by decreasing the need for parking
spaces while increasing mobility.

PS: Roads are really expensive if you compare road infrastructure costs to
miles driven you need a ~3$ / gallon gas tax to break even. Anything less than
that and your just subsidizing cars which does not lower costs it just hides
them.

~~~
woodpanel
As I said, "If there's a growing need for light-rail, chances are" buses being
the better solution. I'm not arguing against light-rail in general. But most
of the times light-rail is considered as solution in political debates, buses
would do a better job. Cheaper prices allow for even more transportation
capacities than light-rail. Light-rail is a good option when bus-capacities
can't be increased anymore.

"The problem with buses for transport is they use the same infrastructure as
cars" IMHO this is to be considered as advantage over light-rail. There is no
additional infrastructure to be built or maintained.

~~~
_delirium
In theory this could be solved politically, but when I'm looking for housing
options, I tend to ignore bus and look only at rail, because it's the only
thing I can be reasonably sure will still be there in a few years. Buses get
rerouted all the time, so I can't assume that my convenient directly-on-the-
line-to-work bus route will still exist in 5 years, but I can fairly safely
assume that BART will still be on the same route in 5 years, because the cost
of moving rails and building stations makes it much more stable (light rail
isn't _as_ expensive to reroute as BART, but still too expensive to do
normally).

From what I've read, developers think similarly: they're willing to invest
capital in housing developments near rail-transit lines, but not on the basis
of bus lines, because they need to be able to assume that the transit
situation will be stable for long enough to pay off their investment. In other
words, the flexibility of buses is precisely the problem, because it means
residents/developers/employers can't rely on them in making plans.

~~~
woodpanel
"Buses get rerouted all the time" living in Hamburg, Gemrany most of my life,
I have had seen bus lines rerouted maybe 2-3 times in my life. Changing public
transit access that often as in your city argubaly adds uncertainty to
development projects. but i'd tackle this problem from another angle.

I think a lot more urban public transportation could be achieved by tackling
your mentioned correlation: Property owners benefit by far the most from
public transport infrastructure errected nearby their property (at least if
underground or not noisy etc.).

Even if the owner's property taxes rise, the tax increase usually lacks behind
the actual property value increase by some years up to a decade.

So if I want to solve it politically I'd:

1) get rid of that lacking-behind in property valuation. Then

2) maybe add the expectalbe increased property-tax income to my calculation
when planning a new subway line

3) consider talking to owners. if a subway line is to be errected, I'd propose
to owners that I'am willing to errect stations nearby their property if they
participate in the costs.

~~~
mturmon
I see your argument, and in some places, this might work.

I believe that in most places in the US, your suggestion that nearby property
owners might support nearby transit to the extent of partially paying for it
would be a non-starter. Usually, nearby (say, within 200m of the route)
property owners oppose new bus/train routes tooth and claw.

One of the most famous examples of anti-transit sentiment from property owners
is the congressional bill that Henry Waxman (a generally liberal Democrat) got
passed, prohibiting a subway extension from downtown Los Angeles toward the
ocean
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westside_Subway_Extension_(Los_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westside_Subway_Extension_\(Los_Angeles_Metro\)#Opposition_and_halt_of_Wilshire_branch)).

About 25 years later, this law was lifted, but a lot of the sentiment remains.

~~~
woodpanel
wow... this NIMBY mentality is a complete different issue. my idea isn't
really thought through and may be naive. But i think the anti-transit
sentiment is very much comparable to anti-gerntification sentiments and a
somewhat blurred definition of public space, real property and the like.

~~~
mturmon
Thanks for your perspective. It's interesting to connect anti-gentrification
to NIMBYism.

I have come to believe that most anti-gentrification sentiment, at least where
I live in LA, is misplaced. It's a young city and to expect neighborhoods to
stay the same on the time scale of decades is unrealistic. There are laws
(many mistaken, IMHO) to prevent property taxes from rising more than about 2%
per year, so nobody will be forced from their home. Renters may have to move,
although there are rent protections on many properties also.

Anyway, anti-gentrification sentiment is interesting because it never stops.
People who moved to my neighborhood in 2000 think the 2010'ers are
gentrifiers. People who moved here in 1990 think it's the 2000'ers. People who
moved here in 1970 think it's anyone after 1980.

Most resentment and name-calling about "gentrification" is among the young,
however. By contrast, NIMBYism is more of a middle-age and old person's thing.
At least where I live.

~~~
woodpanel
"anti-gentrification sentiment is interesting because it never stops."

Excactly! Where does one draw the line? Usually one draws the line so that
protection includes himself. For me, it's a moral problem as well, because
this line-drwaring scales up to elections that justify way too much government
regulation. From my perspective anti-gentrification sentiment is almost always
misplaced.

"By contrast, NIMBYism is more of a middle-age and old person's thing."

Maybe the difference is also, that NIMBY-ians engage proactivly against
changes (they know that where they live is already good), where as anti-
gentrificationists seem to be more reactionary (not anybody expected sudden
price rises to occur).

Where I connect NIMBY- and anti-gentrification-sentiments is that one want's
prohibit things to change (anti-immigration, trade restrictions). All of those
sentiments are understandable. But prohibiting things from change via
legislation tends to be an unfair deal for future generations. The change I
don't want to happen is an opportunity that for many will never occur.

"to expect neighborhoods to stay the same on the time scale of decades is
unrealistic."

Absolutely. In Hamburg there are restrictions on building heights. The most
stupid one is, that in downtown 'no bulding should block the view of the
churches'. It's the one place in Hamburg, where land is so expensive that
buildings need to rise in height if you want affordable rent prices. But the
buildings can't rise, so no one lives there anymore. Thus the churches have
lost their communities and downtown is a dead place after 8pm. Just one
example where the attitude of "conserving culture" leads to killing it off.

Update:

Took a while for me to find it, but to prove that anti-gentrification really
never stops, take st.tropez/côte d'azur france, where the millionaires don't
wan't the billionaires to come in [http://www.amb-cotedazur.com/Did-you-
know/rich-russians-are-...](http://www.amb-cotedazur.com/Did-you-know/rich-
russians-are-a-mixed-blessing-to-the-cote-dazur.html)

------
lordlarm
You'll find many videos of this on YouTube, but here is an example:

Rush hour traffic in the center of Amsterdam:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-AbPav5E5M>

It is really striking to see how many bicycles and buses there are.

As I live in Norway I'm seeing a stronger focus on public transport here as
well, but nothing compared to e.g. Amsterdam or Copenhagen in Denmark.

~~~
Ergomane
"Bicycle Rush Hour __Utrecht __(Netherlands) III" :)

Utrecht is a much nicer city for cyclists than Amsterdam.

------
Tichy
What I really need is a good international network of car rental stations,
such that I would only have too pay for transits between places. My main
problem are holidays: renting a car for two or three weeks still seems too
expensive (~1000€). I've never owned a car in my life, but my girl-friend
loves driving and the discussions everytime we plan holidays are a huge pita.

Likewise in the city a car sharing service that worked like that would be
great. We need the car to visit our son's grandparents, and paying by the hour
would easily come to 20 to 30€ per visit, while the car is mostly just sitting
there waiting.

Meanwhile I can only wait for autonomous cabs, I suppose :-(

------
akg
When I used to live in LA I used to be so dependent on my car, not to mention
the hassle of finding parking wherever I went. Since then, I got rid of my car
and have lived in SF, NY. I haven't had a need to own a car in any of these
places. Public transportation in SF and NY are really great and whenever you
do need to make that trip out to the suburbs or have to make an IKEA run,
there is always Zipcar. Zipcar works really well in SF.

I'm walking more, which is healthier, have no need to find parking, which is
less stressful, and no need to pay loan-payments/gas, which saves me a ton of
money every month.

------
tlb
_Dedicating all this land to car storage basically reduces the density by
about half, doubles the average distance between locations ..._

Halving density increases average distance by sqrt(2), not double.

------
tmh88j
>I completely agree. It's sad that we've let cars completely take over in
detriment of quality of life.

I agree that they can be a burden if you live in a major city with an average
or slightly-above average income because parking becomes an issue. However, I
am probably not on the same page as everyone else because I'm a huge
automotive enthusiast. I'm the kind of guy that would go on vacation to go
driving in another area. I could easily spend more money on renting an exotic
car than what I would pay for the hotel. Nurburgring anyone?

~~~
dedwards8
Auto-enthusiasts should be all for alternative transportation. It gets jerks
like me, who don't like to drive, off the road and out of the way.

------
sakopov
This is probably going to sound foreign to many of you guys. After reading
these comments, it almost seems like most people here are from the Bay Area,
NYC, Chicago. So here i go...

Just because you live in a certain area where walking from A to B is possible
or even preferred, doesn't mean the rest should/can follow. I live in Kansas
City, a place where owning a vehicle isn't a convenience, but a necessity. My
residential neighborhood doesn't have any sidewalks to any convenience stores
or main roads. I have to walk on a narrow two-way road, which is a tragedy
waiting to happen. I simply cannot WALK anywhere. I could opt-in for public
transport, which happens to be very inefficient because nobody uses it, and
wait 40-50 minutes for a bus to arrive. The irritating thing is that I'd have
to drive to the closest bus station. This scenario is pretty typical for most
suburban neighborhoods in KC. I even tried biking at some point, but people
here just don't understand it. They'll honk at you, flip you off, run you off
the road or throw stuff at you.

Commuting by foot has never been popular here. Therefore, the city
infrastructure never saw the need to support it and likely never will, unless
people start mass-croaking from heart failure. So, when someone start a BS
rant about cars killing cities and the need to abolish personal transport, I
immediately close the browser tab. You guys need a reality check.

------
melling
If only there was a smartphone app that allowed you to call your self-driving
car to swing by your apartment/office to pick you up. Then cars could be
located underground in some out of the way location many miles from the city
center.

Of course, what I'm saying is science fiction, we don't have self-driving cars
capable of driving 30mph to pick us up.

<http://udacity.com>

~~~
7952
Or just walk ten minutes to the underground location.

~~~
melling
I would guess that the average person might cover .5 mile (< 1km) in 10
minutes so it wouldn't be possible to reach the parking that's located "many
miles" away. Also, I didn't say your car is 10 minutes by foot away, more like
10 miles. It could easily be 15-20 minutes for your car. Your goal is to
minimize your commute time not your cars.

This wouldn't work in NYC or London, which are much bigger cities than
discussed in the article. The first leg of your journey there should be a
train whisking you away from the city at 120 mph to a train station within
15-20 miles of your home where your car will leave home to pick you as soon as
your phone tells it you are 15 minutes from your station.

~~~
7952
That sounds very inefficient. Fill the roads with cars that don't even have
drivers in them. The optimal solution it to just commute less.

~~~
melling
Same number of cars as today. Granted, each car will be driving a little more
but pickup and dropoffs could be made more efficient with taxi stand pull-up
lanes, for example.

I think the commuting option doesn't seem to work for many people. Seems like
people spend too much time on the lawn, but sure it does work for some people.

------
fossuser
This seems like a problem that will be largely solved (or at least nominally
effected) by autonomous vehicles.

~~~
spacemanaki
If everyone had their own self-driving car we'd still have the same problems
described in the OP.

~~~
fossuser
True, but I think that's thinking too small. In a autonomous car world why
would everyone have their own? The car could drive itself home after driving
you to work to take other people where they need to go, but that is still
thinking too small - thinking within the current system.

In a world with autonomous cars I think a subscription service for car
ownership makes more sense. A parked car is a wasted resource, autonomous cars
could have uptimes similar to airplanes. Of course this isn't even including
the advantages an autonomous fleet would have with fuel efficiency and traffic
handling.

------
anamax
How much of the "road cost" can be eliminated by reducing car usage by 90% in
cities?

I'm pretty sure that buses, delivery trucks, ambulances, and police cars need
roads, so a significant fraction of the road cost (in cities) is required even
if there isn't a single private passenger car.

~~~
saalweachter
Eliminating extra traffic reduces the amount of wear-and-tear on a street,
which means you can go more years without resurfacing or replacing it. So even
if you still need all of the roads, they could still cost significantly less
to maintain.

That said, I'm not really sure how the math works: delivery trucks and buses
are a smaller number of the vehicles on the road, but they also weigh a lot
more than cars. Some DOT probably has a chart somewhere which breaks down road
wear by vehicle type.

~~~
anamax
> Eliminating extra traffic reduces the amount of wear-and-tear on a street,
> which means you can go more years without resurfacing or replacing it.

The standard argument is that wear goes up either exponentially (which seems
wrong) or quadratically (seems more reasonable) with vehicle weight. Since
heavy vehicle use will actually go up (more delivery) if we eliminate cars....

I've seen how other activities, tearing up streets for utilities and the like,
which are surprisingly common in cities, lead to street repair. Those
activities won't change if cars are eliminated.

Parking garages will go away, and major streets could be narrower. I doubt
that either effect is significant compared to the road costs which have been
claimed to be huge.

~~~
saalweachter
The formula I found was quartic, from [1]

    
    
      Nref = Nx (Wx / Wref)^4
      Nref = number of trips of reference vehicle
      Nx = number of trips of other vehicle
      Wref = weight of reference vehicle
      Wx = weight of other vehicle
    

The quartic formula really works in our favor for bicycle commuting: if a
bicycle (with rider) is 1/20th the weight of a car, the bicycle will produce
0.000625% the wear of the car. So if commuting were the only purpose of the
road, you would essentially never need to replace a road again.

This does make adding (larger) delivery vehicles quite bad. If the average
delivery vehicle is twice as heavy as the average passenger car which was
formerly used, each trip will produce 16 times as much wear. Looking up the
curb weights for a Chevy cargo van (5000 lb) and a Toyota Corolla (2800 lb),
the actual wear factor is 10x.

[1] <http://www.nvfnorden.org/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=601>

~~~
anamax
> So if [bike] commuting were the only purpose of the road, you would
> essentially never need to replace a road again.

You're assuming that use is the only thing that harms roads, and that's
clearly wrong.

I mentioned tearing up the roads for utility changes.

Another factor is weather, which amplifies the problems caused by utility
"tear ups".

It's fairly easy to see these effects; pedestrian-only and bike-and-
pedestrian-only "roads" deteriorate.

However, we know also know that (as you mentioned), these roads won't be bike
only.

In short, there will be some maintenance savings, but not a lot.

------
twelvechairs
This article is very broad and (probably because of this) doesnt really go in
depth on many issues. If anyone is seriously interested in transportation, I
highly reccommend the excellent blog <http://www.humantransit.org/>

I do take some issue with the title of this article however. Whilst agreeing
with the general sentiment of the article (US cities need to generally focus
on more accessible development), cars dont 'kill' cities. Cities couldn't
survive without cars (and trucks) - this is important. Cars kill
pedestrianisation, but this is a different story - only small parts of our
cities (even European cities) are (and have to be) attractive and enjoyable
for pedestrians....

------
karman
One case not mentioned here is families with small children. With 3 little
ones, public transportation becomes a real hassle, especially when there is
walking to be done on either side. It is by far my top reason for owning a car
in the city.

~~~
mildavw
I have two little kids (I know that's not three) and public transit or biking
(I can fit both on my bike) is great for outings. It turns the journey into an
experience itself. Driving with the kids strapped into car seats the whole
time is much less fun. I live in a very bikable town within walking distance
to light rail, but that was by design. We bought our house by drawing 1/2 mile
circles around parks, rail stops, and grocery stores. Bought the first place
that intersected all three. I was just thinking recently about how my kids
likely be autonomous much earlier. By age 11 or 12 they'll be able to go all
around the city on their own.

~~~
cchurch
Curiously, where do you live? I wouldn't let my kids ride transit by
themselves; that's where the crum bums go to pee.

I also don't want to be against a grocery store as the noise from the large
parking lot (and busy road) is annoying. Living by a park is highly desirable.

~~~
mildavw
[http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=45.528017,-122.598179...](http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=45.528017,-122.598179&spn=0.003609,0.00567&t=h&z=18&vpsrc=6)

We're protected from the busy road and the grocery store parking lot by
elevation; we're 50 ft below either. We can hear the highway, but I only
notice it when the din is missing when we visit friends in the country!

~~~
cchurch
That looks nice.

------
IceCreamYou
I wrote up my response to this article here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3516307>

As a resident of Atlanta, I disagree with many of the assumptions this article
makes.

------
jonstjohn
My wife and I share a single car in Salt Lake City and have done so in other
places, included Washington DC and semi-rural West Virginia. This setup is
ideal, because we can coordinate our use of the car and combine that with
biking/walking and public transportation. We also have a 2 year-old son who
goes to pre-school every day and has to get dropped off an picked up by car.
Sharing w/i a couple or family is a really good way to reduce car usage but
retain the benefits of having a car. I'm definitely a proponent of reduced
usage combined with biking/walking and public transportation.

------
VMG
It will be interesting to see what happens when self-driving cars become
viable.

~~~
Gring
One of the things that might happen is that you get out of the car in the
city, and the car drives itself to a parking space a few kilometers away. This
will make all those inner urban parking spaces available for better use again.

------
Detrus
Masdar City is an experiment around Dubai where all cars are underground, top
level is pedestrian. They built it from scratch so they had that luxury.

<http://www.masdarcity.ae/en/> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masdar_City>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB_5TBZQNRY>

Also the cars are automated - self driving. They don't have to deal with
pedestrians and traffic, so much easier to automate driving.

------
maurits
Build safe bicycle infrastructure and the cyclists will come

"How the Dutch got their cycle paths"
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o>

------
llcoolv
good morning - a 10 seconds glance at a US city, 30% of whose area is occupied
by parking lots and (always-clogged) highways is more than enough to come to
that conclusion.

------
idlecapacity
I love your point that car storage decreases city density and therefore
walkability. I was made aware in grade school that cars enabled low density
settlement, but you have enlightened me to a case in which they FORCE it!
Something you may investigate in further posts is that the path versatility of
cars(and trucks) is also a waste of resource capacity on most long or oft
repeated trips.

------
RyanMcGreal
For those times when a car is the only practical way to get somewhere, car-
sharing is a much more sensible alternative to universal personal car
ownership.

Most cars sit idle and unoccupied for 90-95% of the time. That represents a
huge opportunity to increase the productivity of each car while reducing the
price of access _and_ the cost in money and wasted space of storage (i.e.
parking).

------
mhartl
It's not cars that are the problem. It's cars that are usually 3/4ths empty
that are the problem. Full cars are comparably good to other forms of mass
transit.

The solution is called "jitney transit". It is illegal due to taxi medallion
laws. So the _real_ problem is special-interest groups (such as taxi
cartels)—and a political system that encourages their formation.

------
dandrews
The original vision for Walt Disney's EPCOT was a radially designed city,
where "the pedestrian will be king" (Walt's own words) and electric vehicles
are segregated from the streets. See:
[https://sites.google.com/site/theoriginalepcot/the-epcot-
fil...](https://sites.google.com/site/theoriginalepcot/the-epcot-film-
transcript)

------
whatusername
Has anyone noticed the problem with that picture (with the bus/cars/bikes?)

The bus and bikes are at full capacity. The Cars are at 1/5th capacity.

~~~
SCdF
Yes, but that's how cars are driven. Bikes are obviously at capacity (since
it's 1). Buses are arguable, but the point of a bus is that you get it to
capacity, which is not how cars are driven.

If you're really bored sometime sit beside a busy road and count the number of
cars that have more than one person in them, it's a surprisingly low number.

------
berserkpi
Hi from Mexico City.

Do you think you are living a "cars nightmare", then believe when I say this:
"Never come here pals!".

Civic/Vial culture is absolutely absent. Public transport is a surreal dream,
I would say... an adventure (not an enjoyable one).

"Urban planning" is not a known term for people on charge.

We are a troubled city in a troubled world.

~~~
WildUtah
I bike commuted in Mexico City for a year and it was excellent. Also, the
public transit is great; it's just that lines 1, 2, and 3 of the Metro and 1
of the Metrobus are badly overcrowded and need to be expanded with quadruple
express tracks and higher frequency automatic train control systems.

------
thomasfl
The city building industry must be one of the greatest business opportunities
ahead of us. It's very cost intensive, and the stakes are hight, but the
possible returns is even higher.

In short, create a new manhattan on a desolate location, and the increase in
real estate prices could be extreme.

------
anamax
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300078153>

"Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Failed (The Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University)"

------
euccastro
How this was solved in a Brazilian city back in the 70s. Some nice thinking in
there.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRD3l3rlMpo>

------
thetrendycyborg
The reason people commute is generally because living in a city is very
expensive, and living outside the city means a nice house and maybe even a
back yard.

~~~
pwthornton
This is a supply and demand issue. A lot of people do want to live in dense,
urban areas, but there isn't enough housing stock to meet demand, hence the
expensiveness of urban living. But if you factor in your transportation costs
into living expenses, all of the sudden living outside of an urban area isn't
so cheap: <http://htaindex.cnt.org/>

There has been a big push to see housing affordability as intertwined with
transportation costs. If you have to drive a car to do everything in your
life, that costs a lot more than someone who can walk to the grocery store,
movie theater, bar, etc.

~~~
wes-exp
The flaw (or shall I say, "limitation") of this HTA index is that it
apparently ties affordability to the median income of the region.

I think this would be subject to a kind of selection bias, for example
punishing rural areas for employing laborers and so on. In fact, one of the
reasons manufacturers set up shop in rural areas is because the areas have
lower _real_ costs of living.

If laborers move to Manhattan, they won't suddenly start making a banker's
salary. So the fact that housing is affordable somewhere relative to average
incomes there, in many cases, is wholly irrelevant.

Similarly, if an urban high-earner could take his earnings into a low-cost
suburban area, his purchasing power would be huge.

Transportation costs are a real issue that should be weighed, but that index
completely distorts it by tying cost of living to regional incomes.

If I'm wrong, then all the retirees in Florida must be misguided, and really
they should move to NYC, where things are "cheaper".

------
driverdan
One thing this article disregards and I haven't seen touched on here yet is
time value. My time is worth money. If driving a car saves me more money in
time than it costs I'll drive a car.

For example, if it would take 20 minutes in a car vs 1 hour in a bus I've
saved 40 minutes. If I bill at $75/h that's $50 worth of time or $100 round
trip (assuming I work instead). Do that a few times a month and the car has
paid for itself.

~~~
pdkp
"My time is worth money. [...] assuming I work instead"

That is a big assumption. I think the assertion that time is ALWAYS money is
incorrect. Often, it is just time. At 3AM, or after you stop working, your
time is probably not worth $75/h.

In your example, you only loose money if you stop working early to account for
the drive. So, for example, instead of working 8AM-5PM, you work
8:30AM-4:30PM, in order to still get home at 5PM.

With that sort of logic, you could just as easily say that if you work 2 Extra
hours each day for a month, the car paid for itself and you still get to live
in the country. However, like your example, this assumes your work amount is
infinite.

So, while an argument could certainly be made for saving money in gas,
spending less time driving, or more time with family, unless you decide to
take the drive time out of your work hours, the opposite of how most people
determine when they need to be at or leave work, you wouldn't be loosing
money, only time.

------
agilecaveman
Great article. Maybe another request for startups could be to kill cars.

------
quadyeast
In the US, an increased tax on gasoline is political suicide. Another
solution, would be for the oil companies to pay their fair share of the wars
we have been in to defend their supply. This would more directly, make real,
the cost of our gas.

------
guard-of-terra
Moscow citisen here.

You can make a reasonably well working mass transit that everyone will use.
People would still buy cars to stay in traffic for hours.

But the real long-scale problem is that cities discourage children. People
living in a big city tend to have two to zero children and that makes country
population unsustainable. On the upside, you can always find a good school for
your few children if you care.

In recent times I don't see many children on the streets. It seems that
children are being turned into indoors pets. This is sad. Adults feel obliged
to drive children around to their activities. The pedophile hysteria being
promoted by media doesn't help either.

In other word, it's sad.

------
newandimproved
Cars are essentially what is causing urban sprawl and the rapid annihilation
of nature.

It would also seem city planners design municipalities for cars first, not
people. But it's bad planning for everyone, and even bad for business:
[http://allsprawldown.com/activism/a-big-reason-canadians-
are...](http://allsprawldown.com/activism/a-big-reason-canadians-are-so-happy-
and-why-its-at-risk/)

------
vacri
Cars also grow cities - the blanket of small-to-medium cities covering the
eastern half of the US is the product of having cars. Public transport needs
serious population before it can start up.

------
Kilimanjaro
Cars don't kill cities, hi-rise buildings do. A thousand people getting in an
out of on acre of land will cause all the problems we see today in big cities.
Stick your head out of your window office and see how many people there is in
your own acre and then imagine how many cars are needed to move all of them.
If I were a benevolent dictator I would prohibit all buildings higher than a
story and solve the traffic issue once and for all.

You say you like tall buildings? Then enjoy your damn traffic and shut up.

~~~
frankus
What you've just described is known in the planning field as suburban sprawl,
and is not without traffic problems of its own.

If you start with an assumption of auto-dependence, then your conclusion
follows, but the article is really arguing against making that assumption in
the first place.

~~~
Kilimanjaro
You can't decouple urban density from traffic of any kind, be it pedestrians,
bicycles, cars, buses or even flying cars, they go hand in hand. There is no
magic trick to solve it no matter how much money you throw at the problem.

Show me the city in the world with the worst traffic and I'll show you the
city with the highest buildings.

Only accepting that fact we can start planning better cities. Also worth
considering, giving telecommute a high priority, since most of the office work
done in these big cities can be easily done from home.

Suburban sprawl becomes a problem only when those millions of people have to
drive downtown to work clogging the driveways, but traffic is not an issue in
suburban areas per se, lower urban density wins again.

