
Open Letter to a Car-Addicted City (2014) - jseliger
http://www.planetizen.com/node/72068/open-letter-car-addicted-city
======
bgirard
I recall in ~2009 my university (UWaterloo) had a referendum to increase
tuition by $50/term (now $80/term) to increase city bus routes to the
university and provide free service to students using your student card. I
voted against it because I could easily carpool and was against another
mandatory fee.

The vote was fairly controversial and passed by a narrow margin. But since the
service was improved to every 15 minutes and I was already paying for it I
started using the service and shortly stopped driving to school altogether.

By the time I graduated I really loved the system since it really improved my
commute and really regretted voting against it. I just checked and now the
approval is at 94% for the UPass.

~~~
m_mueller
This is the dilemma in a car society - whenever you ask people what they want,
it's more roads and parking spaces. People can't even imagine how a good
public transit can improve their lifes, including that of the remaining road
users.

I think the solution is just for everyone to visit a place with a good public
transit network and live there for a few months - in the US I can only think
of New York. Exchange student programs should be mandated anyways, to mend the
cultural gaps within the nation.

~~~
brianwawok
My parents would say the trains are dirty and shake their head.

So hard to get people in the US to like public transit :(

~~~
dexwiz
Because trains are dirty in the US.

Go to Vienna, ride a train, and then go to San Francisco, and ride BART. Its
night and day. Vienna had clean trains with a smooth ride. BART seems to
always be dirty, and the cars screech like banshees.

Its a vicious cycle. No one wants to fund trains, so they fall into disrepair.
The then get a bad rap about being in disrepair, so no one wants to fund them.
If you want a real villain, blame the oil companies that bought up local
trains and dismantled them in the first half of the century.

~~~
vonmoltke
> If you want a real villain, blame the oil companies that bought up local
> trains and dismantled them in the first half of the century.

That's quite a claim, considering air travel's hand in killing train
companies. You have a citation for that?

~~~
Frondo
I thought this was well-known:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy)

~~~
vonmoltke
First, streetcars aren't trains. They're good at circulating people around an
urban center, but not for getting them in and out.

Second, even that article indicates streetcar systems were well on their way
to death before the conspiracy started.

Third, the participation of oil companies in it was tangential; it was auto
manufacturers who drove it.

~~~
m_mueller
As someone who's lived in Zurich, here's the main advantage of streetcars vs
buses: They get their own reserved space in the middle of the road. That makes
them very reliable and on-time like trains (assuming good planning /
operations). That's why they're still popular in places with good service, and
new ones are getting built.

------
marcoperaza
A car gives you privacy and freedom that trains and buses cannot. It's your
space that you control; you're not forced to share it with strangers. You
control the music, the temperature, and the route you take. You talk on the
phone about whatever you want without worrying about being overheard. You can
fill your trunk with a cart-full of groceries and drive it home. When you want
to get somewhere, you can immediately get on your way. No train schedules, and
no late buses. You drive home every day to your reasonably priced house, an
appreciating asset that you own and that comfortably fits you, your spouse,
and children.

There's a reason why even in dense cities with great public transit and
walkable neighborhoods, the rich choose to be driven everywhere.

~~~
seansmccullough
Also, if you have multiple kids and all the stuff associated with them
(stroller, bags, etc), you're going to want a car.

What would you rather do - spend 45 minutes on public transit with two
screaming kids and all your groceries, or drive your own car 15 minutes to the
store?

~~~
Johnny555
You're taking the kid to the store either way, which seems like the hardest
part. And I've noticed that my urban friends really trim down their kid-gear
compared to my suburban friends -- city dwellers use a small stroller (or no
stroller and a child carrier wrap) and a small bag with essentials, suburban
dwellers use a stroller the size of a Mini Cooper (which they hauled around
with a full sized SUV) with several bags of "essentials".

When I lived in the city, both of the grocery stores near me offered home
delivery -- you drop off your bags at the front desk and schedule a delivery
later this afternoon, so no need to carry them home or take them on transit.

But it was a dense enough city that you didn't take transit there, you'd just
walk.

They had some kind of dial-in grocery shopping service as well that you could
use to call in an order for delivery... but nowadays, online shopping seems to
have solved the problem of shopping with children.

------
acd
Why even allow cars in the cities? The air will be cleaner without them. Have
parking spaces outside the center and then automatic electric shuttle trains
to transport people in.

Walking and biking in the city center with lots of green areas.

No cars means clean air and safe traffic. Air pollution from cars is a silent
killer.

~~~
mzw_mzw
I'm guessing it never snows where you live, and nobody ever needs to buy more
than one bag of groceries at a time?

~~~
chongli
Snow is even more of a reason to get rid of cars. A car-less city with
underground subways/metros and integrated residential/light commercial
districts sounds like a dream. No more shovelling, no more plows, no more
going outside during the cold wind! I would love to be able to go from my
house to the grocery store and work and the movie theatre (or whatever else)
without ever having to set foot outside. This is possible for some people in
Toronto and a few other big cities (that I know of) but not the common case.

~~~
FrancoDiaz
Remember downtown Minneapolis being like that for obvious reasons. I think a
lot of people in the Minneapolis area have heated garages so essentially you
can park in a garage downtown, walk around the skywalks between the downtown
skyscrapers, and never have to set outside.

I was only there for the Superbowl and never actually walked one, so maybe
it's not so convenient.

------
nickff
Speaking as someone who is from Vancouver, it is very hard for me to see it
(or cities like it) as a good example. Congestion has skyrocketed there, and
many people are wasting 5-10 hours a week in traffic delays because of
infrastructure which does not match citizens' needs.

City planners have wreaked havoc on cities with their continual obsessions
with fads; maybe they should focus on helping people get what they want
instead of trying to change people.

~~~
criddell
So if what people want are car-based cities that work well, what should a city
planner do? Take measures to limit growth? Massive taxes on new construction?

The city I grew up in had a population of around 27,000 people 30 years ago. I
think it's roughly the same today. Unsurprisingly, traffic and parking work
about as well today is it did when I was a teenager.

~~~
nickff
The Greater Vancouver Regional District is made up of many municipalities, so
if only one limits growth, the others will probably absorb that additional
population (causing increases in congestion).

Additional taxes on new construction would exacerbate any traffic problems by
pushing people out to the suburbs (, especially with Vancouver's already high
housing prices). I would argue for precisely the opposite: allow for much
greater construction everywhere, with fewer restrictions. City planners'
efforts to 'sculpt' a city usually involves restricting supply to force people
to live where the planners want them to, which drives up prices and drives
population to suburbs.

~~~
criddell
Luckily for me, the suburbs are exactly where I want to be.

------
toodlebunions
This is part of the reason many European cities are so walkable and livable,
they were designed for people rather than vehicles.

~~~
mc32
I think a couple of things have helped their cities compared to the US. Their
cities developed and grew before cars became locally mass-available and our
move to the city (from farms) more or less coincided with the rise and
availability of cars to consumers. Especially post-wwii. Plus, in suburban
Europe, you see more cars. However, in cities, which developed before cars,
they have lots of public transit with the requisite higher density housing.

~~~
TillE
"Suburban Europe" is sort of a tricky concept. In most countries, you have the
outskirts of cities, and then you have the countryside with towns and
farmland. You generally need to own a car in the latter areas, though you also
typically get half-decent bus service.

Even in the UK I don't think there's anywhere that truly resembles American
suburbia, with its vast sprawling acres of large houses and large yards where
it's actually impossible to safely walk anywhere. It's a uniquely inefficient
design.

~~~
mc32
True, in Europe as in advanced east Asian countries, the urban rural/agrarian
transition is usually more abrupt. One side of the road is development the
other is fields. However, Marseilles, for example [I imagine outer London and
beyond has areas exhibiting suburban detached housing tracts] do have suburbs
and if you want some mobility you need an estate sedan or the like to get
things done.

~~~
aninhumer
There are some "suburbs" in the UK, but they're much more compact than
American ones, and usually still have some local shops and public transport.

------
Tade0
I have an idea: stop making people commute to work. Half of the folk who hop
in their cars every morning to spend two hours in traffic have no business
going anywhere - their line of work doesn't require them to be in any specific
place.

------
vdnkh
[2014]

Here's the 2016 update of the "Walkscore": [https://www.walkscore.com/cities-
and-neighborhoods/](https://www.walkscore.com/cities-and-neighborhoods/)

1\. NYC

2\. San Francisco

3\. Boston

...

7\. Washington DC

This list makes a lot more sense than the 2014 list.

~~~
chris_va
To me, SF does not seem particularly walkable, bike friendly, nor transit
friendly (it is ranked #2 for all). It isn't terrible, but #2 in the nation?

~~~
sqrt
I think that might speak more to the dismal state of cities in the rest of the
country, rather than SF being particularly good.

------
innocentoldguy
I think the reason many people refuse use public transit, me included, is
because it is costly, the service sucks, and it takes twice as long to get
anywhere. The foul smell and filthy conditions that too often accompany the
public transportation experience aren't good selling-points either.

Where I currently live, the high-speed commuter trains, which only stop at a
handful of hubs, come every 30 minutes during the morning and evening rushes,
and then once an hour outside of those times. Even then, sometimes the train
goes all the way to my destination, but other times, it stops and goes out of
service half-way there, so I end up having to wait for 30 minutes for the next
train.

Regular trains, that stop at every station, arrive every 15 minutes, and are
NOT coordinated, meaning that instead of being able to transfer by jumping off
one train and walking across the platform to get on another, or waiting just a
minute or two, I end up standing around for 12 minutes for the transfer train
to arrive.

In my case, I can drive to work in 40 to 50 minutes in heavy traffic, or I can
take the train and get there in an hour and a half each way.

Furthermore, rail passes are a joke where I live. They don't sell a pass for
just the commuter train, or just between two commuting points. Instead, you
have to buy the premium pass, which includes bus, train, and commuter rail
services to everywhere the transit authority goes. I don't need that! A
monthly commuter rail pass costs $198.00. I drive a Toyota Avalon Hybrid, and
a rail pass ends up costing me about $100 more a month that I spend on gas.

If we want to make public transit attractive, it has to be cheaper and faster
than driving, otherwise nobody with an ounce of economic sense will do it. I
lived in Japan for a number of years, and the train system there is one of the
best in the world. It is cheaper and faster to use the trains there, so most
people do. I never wanted to own a car while I lived in Japan. In their
society, especially in big cities, it is cars that don't make economic sense.
This is what must take place for a public transit society to exist in America,
in my opinion. We can't provide an abysmal experience for riders, and expect
anything to change.

~~~
ryandrake
> If we want to make public transit attractive, it has to be cheaper and
> faster than driving, otherwise nobody with an ounce of economic sense will
> do it.

Hell, I would take either one of those--cheaper OR faster. Where I live and
work, public transit is neither of those.

------
JumpCrisscross
Posted this on an Uber tread the other day:

I live in New York, frequently travel to suburbs around the country and world,
and have not missed for a second the driver's license I gave up almost 5 years
ago.

It's not always seamless, but neither is driving. A shockingly good trade,
already, and one that will only get better as cars drive themselves.

~~~
Tempest1981
Although taking Uber isn't any different than having your own car -- as far as
highways being over-capacity.

Uber may save on parking density, but not traffic density.

[http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-
traffic-...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-traffic-Uber-
Lyft-SFMTA-blame-10791265.php)

(Maybe your argument is that you normally walk/bike/train, and use Uber for
rare special situations?)

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Although not having a car makes one more likely to use public transit, even if
you take uber most of the time.

------
paulsutter
Self driving buses will be smaller, more flexible, and less of a hindrance to
traffic than current buses, because there will be no need to amortize the cost
of a driver over so many passengers.

Self driving cars will reduce the cost of Uber-like services as well, and
lower the cost of tunneling (self driving cars will mean higher capacity and
smaller shoulders and lanes, and electric cars will mean less ventilation
required). Going underground is the best way to increase travel speeds and
reduce friction between pedestrians and vehicles. Cities should look more like
Venice.

~~~
Smaug123
Venice is sinking and floods regularly, by the way.

------
colinshark
The car of the future fixes many of the problems, and it fits right into
existing infrastructure. Think autonomous electric single/dual occupant taxis
(2+ per lane).

We are still a ways off, but this is where things are headed.

We might not need the parking, but the roads will be useful.

~~~
hrktb
This piece is centered on congestion and moving from a place to another, but
the discussion on how to manage cars in a city extend beyond that 'moving'
part.

Roads are also the target of a lot of rethinking, and the model where whole
blocks of the city are completely closed to motorized circulation got traction
in a few big cities already.

------
andrewmutz
If I were making decisions in a city that was currently car-centric, I would
wait until the effects of self-driving cars are better understood before
making dramatic changes.

If we get fleets of on-demand self driving cars in cities that are currently
car-centric, many of the disadvantages of car transportation will be
ameliorated. A 45 minute commute by car is no fun, but when the car is able to
drive itself and you've got high speed wireless data access, it probably won't
be so bad.

~~~
sampo
If a self-driving car makes driving more palatable, people will buy homes
behind even longer commutes, and you get even more traffic (more miles driven
per day). The throughput capacity of a road (cars per hour) will not improve
much, so they may even make congestion worse.

~~~
andrewmutz
I think it's too early to be sure of the effects.

A widely available fleet of self-driving cars may help the last-mile problem
with public transportation (how do you get from, say, the subway station to
your workplace or from the subway station to your house). If this makes public
transportation easier, this may decrease miles driven per day.

Will self-driving cars reduce the accident rate, and the congestion that
results from traffic slowdowns near accidents?

Will self-driving cars make better use of less obvious travel routes and avoid
bottlenecks in the road network?

