This is my first introduction to The War on Cars, but I am such a big fan of this anti car movement. Strong towns was my introduction to the movement but my views were solidified through several city planning youtube channels (city beautiful, not just bikes). Before buying into this and related movements I relocated to a rural town where the vast majority of our taxes go to roads. Plowing, maintaining, building, it's all roads around here. Most of our town is convinced that our taxes are so high because of inept government or corruption but when you look at the city budget it's painfully clear that roads are just really expensive when everyone lives on 2 acres, every road is wide enough for 2 heavy duty dually trucks towing boats and potholes are unacceptable. Not to mention that when roads are high quality and wide, people drive fast. The odds of my kids getting smashed by a speeding truck are way higher than I'd like them to be.
We've got to stop with the whole "everyone gets a quarter acre and a truck" mentality. I live out in the middle of nowhere and everyday construction begins on a new home, filling in every gap of what used to be farmland. All of us are 15 minutes away from the nearest anything. To be fair though, I'm sure they're all moving out here for the same reasons I did. Housing near work or transit is so scarce and expensive that it just doesn't make any sense. We're spending the same as we would in the city center on a house, but we're getting a mansion out in the country instead of a shack in the city.
Aren’t you doing exactly what everyone else wants to do? Mansion in the Sticks for me, but City Shacks for thee?
Everyone is making these same decisions up and down the society economic status lines and across the US.
One thing major cities could do to stave off cheap, cookie cutter expansionism is to buy up large swaths of land for city or state parks, and also cultivate those parks for high quality outdoor recreation. Such a policy would increase land price pressure (what local developer can outbid the government at scale??), particularly focusing on interstate corridors, which were built for… interstate commerce… but gets used for 40 acres and a mule commutes. The city comes away with a large land investment that it can prune as needed, or keep as a preserve as desired and directed by the govt/people.
Ok, so where does an already struggling community come up with $100mm to buy 200,000 acres of land surrounding the community? Land Conservancies are tax shelters where basically rich people or businesses commit their real estate assets to the government, or invest money in the conservancy to go buy up land. The land is conserved according to the conservancy’s covenant. Hold your nose, but its the fastest way to raise $100mm to tighten up development patterns.
Check out Wolf River Conservancy for a fledgling example.
> One thing major cities could do to stave off cheap, cookie cutter expansionism is to buy up large swaths of land for city or state parks, and also cultivate those parks for high quality outdoor recreation. Such a policy would increase land price pressure
I think you underestimate the scale of what you're proposing. You mention 200,000 acres. To buy up enough land to curb suburban development, you'd be looking at buying all the land in at least a 15 mile radius, probably much more (people "happily" commute 15+ miles into every major city), so well north of 700,000 acres. Your 100MM suggestion seems laughable, at $500/acre. Maybe you can get land for that price in the middle of nowhere, but certainly not on livable land within 15 miles of a major city. A quick search indicates farmland costs north of $3000/acre across the US.
Maintaining the land would now be a major expense on the city. It would be a political nightmare (yeah, we could fund basic infrastructure, or we could bankrupt ourselves trying to buy every livable plot within an hour's driving distance). And of course then there's the problem that people would be unwilling to sell and eminent domain attempts would likely fail in court.
> 40 acres and a mule commutes
I have no idea what you mean by this but I would suggest you not. 40 acres and a mule has a very specific context and it's not suburban spawl.
My reference on the 40 Acres comment is clearly off base and not what I intended, thanks for correcting. I thought it was primarily an American Dream relating to Manifest Destiny, but per the wiki it was a lie presented to African Americans after the American Civil War.
I am, however, aware of the scale of what I am proposing. A lot of the land to be controlled ends up being junk land, be it hazardous flood plain or otherwise challenging to develop, but it creates large buffer zones that constrains private development effort. Farmland is relatively expensive land because it has economic output. But that fine, call it $3000/acre. Dont buy high value farmland. Do buy un-farmable floodplain or wetlands. A lot of the land gets donated or conveyed via easement. Bigger cities will have bigger budgets to work with. You dont have to buy all the land, just strategic lands that apply pressure and create value in other forms, namely that a state park is available for all to use, a ranch is available for none.
It is not laughable, it is currently being done in many cities. Probably not viable in major cities, if your frame of mind is NYC or SFO, this process will not make as much sense because its too late.
> My reference on the 40 Acres comment is clearly off base and not what I intended, thanks for correcting. I thought it was primarily an American Dream relating to Manifest Destiny, but per the wiki it was a lie presented to African Americans after the American Civil War.
I had this exact same misconception as well until a few weeks ago. I wonder how common it is! And where it comes from. Also worth noting that UT-Austin has a "40 acres scholarship" as their ultimate tier of endowment, which is a reference to UT-Austin originally receiving 40 acres on which to found their University (from the government as a land grant).
No worries. I assumed you must have meant something like that.
> I am, however, aware of the scale of what I am proposing…
For smaller cities I could see how this might work if it’s done before they really develop. I was thinking in terms of existing large cities, where it seems intractable in part due to the existing sprawl. I can’t imagine how this would play out in Seattle (where I live) because the sprawl is already well outside the control of the city. Even if Seattle wanted to do this, all of the land is under the control of the surrounding towns (Bellevue, Kirkland, Shoreline, etc.) at this point.
> Maybe you can get land for that price in the middle of nowhere, but certainly not on livable land within 15 miles of a major city
That land gets its value from the city. One can imagine border taxes (tolls, employment taxes, et cetera) funding those land purchases.
Initially it will be slow. But as the city buys and razes the writing will be on the wall. If that starts pushing down prices, a prisoner's dilemma will emerge whereby neighbors compete and further drive down prices. In the end there will be holdouts. But they'll be sustaining the infrastructure that supports them, a prospect that only makes sense for the rich and eccentric.
This would only work, however, if cities dramatically ease their effective ban on new development. Though that would largely obviate the need for a green ring in the first place.
Land in the middle of bumblefuck costs more than $500/acre. But this doesn't matter anyway because that high value for land around cities exists presently. An acre of developable land 5 miles outside of Seattle proper is probably worth at least half a million dollars even if there's no infrastructure running there.
> One can imagine border taxes (tolls, employment taxes, et cetera) funding those land purchases.
One can imagine many things that are unrealistic. Cities cannot tax people outside their incorporated territory so this idea that they'll just tax people to death for living outside the city is unrealistic. They could certainly add tolls, but not at the volume that would be needed for this. And if they tried, the state legislature would doubtless swoop in and make it illegal. e.g., In Washington, road tolls can only be applied to road improvements (indeed only to improvements to the road being tolled). Any city that goes overboard trying to tax outsiders aggressively will just get shut down by the state.
> But as the city buys and razes the writing will be on the wall. If that starts pushing down prices...
This is pretty ridiculous. If the city starts reducing supply, costs will go up, not down.
The purchasing scale needed to achieve this is insane. This would absolutely require many billions to achieve. Even if a city could manage to get their citizens to agree, and the state to allow it, and structure the burden so it falls on outsiders, it would still take decades to fund and execute, and in that time land value would go up due to the squeeze, making this more and more difficult for the city.
> Though that would largely obviate the need for a green ring in the first place.
This I agree on. City density won't be improved by preventing suburbs but by allowing more density.
Just my opinion, but I really hate any message created from the template "Shhhh... I'm making a snarky remark against the guy you replied, not contributing to the discussion constructively."
What major cities should do is legalize housing construction in them, and the US would urbanize very quickly, with enormous benefits for the entire country, including much less sprawl construction pressure.
Instead you seem to propose that cities try to expand their no construction zone to rural areas.
Which, when coupled with building height and density limits means Boulder has housing prices like those of a city 10x its size. I live in a subdivision in a small town just on the other side of that greenbelt. Since the bus service is terrible, when I was commuting into the city it took an extra 5-10 minutes of driving through that open space to get to my office.
So while I personally love having the open space, its not a panacea that solves all the problems.
> Aren’t you doing exactly what everyone else wants to do? Mansion in the Sticks for me, but City Shacks for thee?
I'm hoping to be one of these people one day, but I'm also hoping to be taxed appropriately for it. Make people who cost society so much pay taxes to cover their costs.
And until then, stop taxing my condo in the city as if I'm the same as the 4 bedroom house on a 1/4 acre lot down the street.
> And until then, stop taxing my condo in the city as if I'm the same as the 4 bedroom house on a 1/4 acre lot down the street.
Taxes are based on ability to pay rather than actual cost to the city (land value is just a proxy for ability to pay). Otherwise poor people literally could not live in the city.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea to impose higher taxes on residences that have outsized infrastructure costs. But I'm not sure I see it as likely. (Or necessary, given that a city willing to do this could just as easily change zoning and suddenly there would be lots of pressure for those single family homes to turn into condos.)
I can't imagine poor people affording what would presumably be higher taxes in sprawling suburbs (though perhaps the issue is that there are suburbs in the middle of your city?).
Of course, taxing people based off their cost while also forbidding densification would just be a sick joke.
Oh yeah, I guess I didn't feel the need to spell it out in my original post but I'm trying to move. The problem is all my family is in the states, so my options are limited and expensive. I don't think we have a truly walkable city besides New York, and I love New York but that's as far away from my western and Hawaiian family members I can get while staying in the US.
I find your points interesting and I don't like ad hominem... but you start with "I relocated into rural town". It's hard to follow the rest.
It may be a pain point for me; my in-laws are constantly complaining about how "These used to be fields around here, now it's all houses". THEY (my in-laws) all live in houses. How are these other houses different than your house? Whenever I ask that question, I get blank stares, as if I'm failing to understand their obvious point and complaint, which I guess I am. It's kind of like being stuck in traffic and non-sarcastically, angrily wondering "Where are all these people going to on a Saturday Morning (or whatever)??!?" -- umm, probably similar reasons and places that we are :-)
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As a more meaningful discussion though, it's interesting that I see modern living ideas go in both directions:
- We should all live in high density, efficient, foot-friendly urban areas
- We should all create our own farms and lead self-sustaining off-grid lives
The sweet spot is in the middle. Small/medium sized towns and cities 50,000 people or less probably. Walkable and bike-able, train services, and then the surrounding area contains small farms and other recreation areas (parks, hiking trails, etc.) and all of this is accessible by car, bus, or bike.
Basically European towns and small cities.
Higher density is fine but high density like Hong Kong or Mumbai is an anti-pattern just as suburbs are.
coming from exactly one such European town (or more accurately the rural area around it) this is a 20th century bucolic fantasy.
Well-paying jobs are increasingly non-existent as brick&mortar is being killed by tech, education opportunities are limited, as is cultural life increasingly as the economy goes down the drain. More and more people commute 2+ hours to get to the better universities or better paying work. Doctors are hard to get a hold off, and so forth. Internet access as well as infrastructure in general is in mediocre shape because costs are high for small, spread out towns. The demographic shift as young people leave makes it even worse, elderly isolation is awful.
The first time I actually moved to a big city (abroad to Tokyo of all places) it took me a week to understand that the small town is pretty much over and also ridiculously romanticized.
Funny enough all of those things wind up being true in large metropolis areas as well but then also with its own basket of downsides.
Instead of commuting two hours to get to better paying work, you end up commuting two hours to afford the house you want. Doctors you can't get ahold of because their office is too busy to see you, wait 7 months, etc. Universities are impossible to get into because there are too many applicants, or the cost is too high. You can work or be educated over the Internet. Instead of having no culture in the city, you can develop or embrace your local traditions or cultural aspects. If there are none, then you can be the first one to start (building cultures is hard work, like maintaining government).
You can have a bucolic fantasy just as you can have an urban dream. Both can be ridiculously romanticized.
Have you been to Hong Kong? (Not trying to be snarky) It's a got a great transportation system, very walkable, and you're never more than 30 minutes (by public transport) from over 100 miles of lush mountain hiking through the interior or the seashore. The density means that it is profitable to have stores like bakeries that are cheap enough that you walk by and think, I'd love a danta for US$1, while in the US you might make a special trip and get one for $4 + tax but it's not going to be an impulse buy. It even has something like four major universities. It's a travesty that China flagrantly broke their treaty, Hong Kong is what I think of when I think of an amazing city.
I have not and just used it as an example since it was one of the first places I thought of when I mentioned density (along with Mumbai). But I have been to Seoul and lived in South Korea for a year. I had Hong Kong on my list of places to go see... too bad what happened.
I absolutely agree with you that Hong Kong from an infrastructure perspective has a lot going for it, but I think that skyscrapers are an anti-pattern. You can't repair them yourself, they require specialized knowledge to create and support, extremely dense environments are breeding grounds for contagious disease (this is a general statement), and from a natural standpoint they're quite sterile (the parks, while great, are illusions of nature - a toy or a simulation). I think we'll also find that skyscrapers cause anxiety and depression here in the near future as/if research is conducted. You also require massive infrastructure for cities, again more specialization. They're very much reliant on cheap fossil fuels to create and support, even if they're per-capita lower on emissions. If we run out of oil and I live in a 30,000 person city in Europe, life goes on. I still walk like I was before and farmers still bring their goods to the local market. If we run out of oil and I live in Hong Kong the entire thing crumbles to bits.
You're describing a pleasant low population density situation which is a nice romantic fantasy a lot of people long for. I don't blame people for wanting that, but you must realize that it is the exact mentality that leads to suburban sprawl.
I think on aggregate, that is more expensive (financially and environmentally) than high density cities. Take all the infrastructure which needs to be built out for these small cities (roads, electric grid etc) which serve a very small number of people and now imagine if everyone lived like that and multiply that cost with building out this infrastructure for a many many small cities. Building 30 small idyllic villages instead of one hong Kong would end up having a larger environmental impact.
You’re thinking of something I’m not describing “idyllic villages”. Instead I’m describing modern towns and cities that exist all over the world and in Europe in particular where they were built before cars existed. They have low emissions, everyone walks or rides a bike, and they have regular train service.
> Building 30 small idyllic villages instead of one hong Kong would end up having a larger environmental impact.
Depends. If they’re American-style sure. If they are (again these are your words idyllic villages) then I don’t see much impact. You just walk around the small village. Maybe a farmer comes buy and sells apples or whatever. These scale and the evidence is in the city, where you can see companies will create multiple instances of their stores because there’s an upper limit on the number of people served. Also for a right sized city 50,000+ you don’t need massive infrastructure investments which require massive specialization, massive costs, and so forth. They only exist because there are too many people.
Also for items like roads those are fine. You can walk or ride your bike in them. Maybe they’re even multi-purpose. Most wouldn’t be driving cars on them for any reason though which is a big inefficiency.
I agree with this though I'd set the bar higher. I think it's a very personal choice.
I wouldn't want to live in Hong Kong or a similar skyscraper supertall metropolis.
And single family homes everywhere with massive lawns are also broken because they make everything too car-ry.
But somewhere like London (less dense) or Paris (more dense) has a good balance somewhere. Like, here (London) we have streets and streets of "single family homes", but they're about 100sqm, they're terraced and thin. Walking by one takes like, two seconds or something.
On my street alone there are probably 200 of these things, and you can multiply that street by another hundred, and all of those are within easy walking distance of a high street and tube station. Those numbers are probably a bit off but you get the idea.
The thing is that people who get super into, well, anything, can't seem to resist going for one or the other extreme, and they seem to want to quantify everything, so it ends up being logically the case that like:
Beep boop
<the best thing to do is build loads of buildings just under the height limit at which the cost per square foot is optimal and then put everyone in them and then make the ground floor retail and then put the metro station>
boop beep.
But that's playing The Sims, not like, living in a world with real humans with wants and desires. Some people want to live in Manhattan and others want to live on 50 acres in Arkansas and that's fine.
I agree with your sentiment, certainly. My main point of contention would be that the government in the US (and the Anglosphere in general) is very much ok with supporting and subsidizing suburbia. This comes in the form of zoning, federal funding for highways (where the bulk of the cost is in maintenance which will be causing local governments to go bankrupt in the future), government subsidies of oil, support for the auto industry, subsidizing environmental costs (i.e. you don't bear the cost for the destruction of the environment) you name it. There's no sidewalk lobby. Ya know?
Proponents of self-sustainment as the way forward advocate off-grid lifestyle that provides energy and large amount of food/materials internally / within family or homestead. A house and a plot of land, and some fruit/veggies/animals, with solar or geothermal, etc.
In my mind then, a 5,000 people town is as much on the other side of the spectrum from that, as a 5,000,000 people town.
In fact, in North America, small and medium towns in my experience (Minnesota, Manitoba, Ontario) are quaint and lovely, but worst possible compromise - no self-sustaining benefits of independent homestead, but with limited to no public transit, no high density dwelling, spread out infrastructure. You cannot live without a car in a small north american town - modern or old. They are beautiful lovely historic worst parts of sub-urban without the urban/core.
[edit/disclosure: In fact, I live in one now (moved there for love:) and it is fascinating how much we get none of the benefits of either farm or downtown living. City Council repeatedly rejects calls for public transit, on probably awful unspoken grounds of not wanting "undesirable elements". We do have a cute main street and the 5% of population who lives on or around it can probably walk there. Literally the rest of 95% of population MUST own several cars to live. I'm always amused when healthy 25 year old SF-downtown dwellers promote bikes as solution to everything - that's just not going to be relevant to the aging population of Canadian or USA snowbelt sub-urbia:]
> Proponents of self-sustainment as the way forward advocate off-grid lifestyle that provides energy and large amount of food/materials internally / within family or homestead. A house and a plot of land, and some fruit/veggies/animals, with solar or geothermal, etc.
Yes but this isn't possible with current population levels so it's a non-started from a practical standpoint. It also has downsides as you can't build things like hospitals or universities, particle colliders, or hardware/electronics to do self-sustainment. All and I mean all who advocate for this specific way of life only do so and are able to do so because it's subsidized by technological innovation throughout the rest of the world. To be clear I support people doing this. I think it’s really cool and good for society, but it’s important to be aware of how you’re actually able to do it.
> In my mind then, a 5,000 people town is as much on the other side of the spectrum from that, as a 5,000,000 people town.
I think this would be a great opportunity to recalibrate, because those are not even remotely the same thing in any way, shape, or form. Even ancient peoples who were undoubtedly more self-sustaining than anyone who exists today had settlements larger than 5,000 people.
> In fact, in North America, small and medium towns in my experience (Minnesota, Manitoba, Ontario) are quaint and lovely, but worst possible compromise - no self-sustaining benefits of independent homestead, but with limited to no public transit, no high density dwelling, spread out infrastructure. You cannot live without a car in a small north american town - modern or old. They are beautiful lovely historic worst parts of sub-urban without the urban/core.
I agree that this is the experience but you need to look to Europe for better examples. I'm also advocating for things like train service, majority of your experience being walking or biking (i.e. a 15-minute town), and very reduced car ownership. Having a car isn't that bad, it's having 2 or 4 cars and using them for everything under the sun. Europeans have cars, and they also have infrastructure, and farms, and self-sustaining areas. It's a great blueprint to improve upon. I'm not advocating for what is, but what could be.
I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution really, I mean I for one would be a miserable alcoholic within a month if I was forced to live in an urban or even suburban environment. I also work with people who are the complete opposite and can't stand being outside cities for long at all.
In rural areas, cars make sense, because public transport is (usually) abysmal: bad connections, not often, don't go on saturdays/sundays, lots of walking, have to take various different connections, or have to phone them up to come (great way to get rid of customers even when they state they need it every workday). A bike is useful, but has its limits. Yes, you can clothe yourself, but doing groceries or going out and about with the family to a remote location (say 50+ km away) is a no-go.
In a city, bikes are useful because everything is compact and therefore relatively easy to reach. If more people go by bike, the traffic must adapt to bicycle popularity (as happened in Berlin, as is default in The Netherlands). Public transport is also good because its popular and various options for various ranges (tram, metro, train, ferry, etc). If both of these are good, the need for cars is less there, and public parking spaces are usually sparse in big cities, therefore expensive (also the required security costs money).
One thing car/bike have which public transport don't is that you are in a relatively private space instead of sharing the commons. In COVID-19 pandemic that's a plus, if you like being social to strangers (I don't, I'm a private person, but I don't condone such behaviour).
It doesn't have to be completely anti or completely pro car. Just like with FOSS and veganism and what not, there are shades of gray, people.
>> In rural areas, cars make sense, because public transport is (usually) abysmal.
Where in rural America is public transportation not abysmal? I don’t believe there is anywhere in rural America where a personal vehicle can be completely replaced by public transportation.
you have to put the disclaimer "usually" because people will downvote you for being "too certain". There is also the haters who are like "I know a friend who lives in a rural town that has great public transport so you are wrong on everything!"
If you’re anti-car you also need to be pro-city-shack for yourself.
I’m 40 and have lived in the US my entire life. I grew up in a very rural area, went to college in a small town, and now live in a tiny urban apartment. I have been anti-car my whole life and have never learned to drive.
Makes me laugh to see anyone in the suburbs say, “Boy I wish I didn’t have to drive everywhere.” You don’t have to drive everywhere! I’m living proof of that. You just have to make different choices and prioritize not-driving over having a McMansion. Yes, it’s inconvenient at times but that’s the trade off.
The gulf between what people say they value and what their actions say they value is monumental.
> If you’re anti-car you also need to be pro-city-shack for yourself.
Many people would like to live in a city but can't afford it because even a multi-bedroom "shack" is incredibly expensive. You're basically suggesting that those folks need to suffer in order to validate their (totally legitimate) desire for better transit and more affordable housing?
That's a totally false choice. No one has to suffer for more (and more affordable) housing and more (and more convenient) mass transit - except perhaps the "winners" of the current system. It's also quite an entitled position you're espousing: just because you have the economic wherewithal to live in cities and forgo driving, doesn't mean that many people (and their families) who work in those same cities do.
Yes, I am quite privileged. Anybody who’s privileged (most people reading HN fit into this category) and isn’t thinking about the sacrifices they can make today for the good of the future needs to take a good hard look in the mirror.
But like I said, humanity is fucked. The next 200-250 years are going to be unimaginably awful for the descendants of people alive today who can’t imagine their lives being unimaginably awful.
Drive if you want. Live in a big house. Do whatever. It clearly doesn’t matter at this point.
The comparison is to a "rural half-acre". If you can afford a half-acre of land in a rural area but not a "shack" in the city, that implies a lot more about the continued under-valuation of "rural" land than costs of urban living. (Which the Georgists were arguing about more than a century ago.)
The easiest "carbon capture" (though it is slow) is and has always been: Trees. We need more forests than ever and we keep bulldozing them instead.
Rural development is often at the expense of trees and forests for at best mostly unvariegated farm land and at worst useless (but "pretty") green yards.
(Here again the externalities of the greenhouse gases aren't felt by corporations building the houses nor the average home owner. We'd never pass Carbon Taxes in the first place, but especially no one wants to talk about Property Tax Carbon Taxes on their homes. But we need to reforest a lot of land to better deal with climate change and that's not going to happen with just market forces at work. Trees, deer, and birds don't have the money to buy land/houses.)
It seems to me those who came first, benefited the most. At the cost of everyone who follows. (if you think longer term). Eg; open land, develop it, live a grand life from the large profits. Subsequent years will have the property market determine the financial benefits from those who come and go. But then eventually, the natural loss starts to become a problem. And then everyone suffers. Everyone who is still around. This is just another kind of debt, just like "kicking the can down the road" wrt finance/national debt/money printing is.
Not only can those much further into the future not "benefit" (financially) from the ability to "cheaply" obtain undeveloped land, but they also sit with the problems due to the natural resources having been depleted (development of land does not only negatively affect tree...)
The whole concept of land ownership as it is, imho , is a problem.
Precisely. I used to live in NYC, and didn't have a car there because it was expensive, inconvenient, and generally not worth the effort.
Moved cities, and now I try to walk/bike everywhere locally, only using the car on weekends when I want to go 50+ miles from home. There's issues sometimes (my city's bike and pedestrian infrastructure is... not ideal), but I do prefer this situation to feeling completely trapped in NYC.
Curious if you have any recommendations for "old suburbs" like where you live -- that's precisely the kind of environment my partner and I are looking for. I know there are some in the suburbs of Boston, but it's really tricky to try to find those places because in my experience walkability scores don't really mean anything.
I live in NYC, but grew up in one of those old towns north of Boston (Salem). Generally these sorts of old towns were originally built with a very walkable downtown area and over the years may have added areas that were more typical of the post-WWII suburbanization. A town like Salem has also gentrified quite a bit from when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, so it's probably completely possible to live in the downtown center and really not need a car at all. If you live in the newer, more suburban parts then your reliance on a car will increase.
Personally I prefer large, dense cities with lots of public transit and the access to international culture you get from being in a place like NYC, but a place like downtown Salem is probably really nice to live in if you're happy being in a small community.
Either way, the fully car based living most of the country relies on has always seemed ridiculous to me (I've never had a license or a car).
Thanks for the tip, Salem is actually on my list of places to check out. Much appreciated.
Agreed that fully car based living is ridiculous -- it's so sad to visit family and realize that I literally cannot go anywhere unless I hop in a car. I run for exercise pretty frequently, and find it a fun way to check out neighborhoods, and it is absolutely pathetic that most of my family members suggest driving someplace to run because their neighborhoods have no sidewalks, 60mph speed limits, and not even a shoulder to run on.
Traffic, price, and crime issues in big cities have largely turned me off from them since Covid started -- I just don't see the price:performance ratio there. But I also don't really take advantage of cultural things like museums and music venues very much, and I grew up in a rural community so cities have always felt a bit uncomfortable for me. So don't take that as an outright hatred of cities... I just feel they aren't for me. Hoping to find that "walkable/bikeable large town/small city" middle ground soon.
My partner and I were in a similar situation several years ago. Escaped from NYC and moved to the greater Boston area. We initially looked at places like Arlington, Waltham, Lexington, Watertown, Newton, and Somerville.
I agree that walk scores can be misleading, especially in this area. There are places that are listed as "walkable" because they have a lot of strip malls bunched together even though there are no actual sidewalks. On the flip side, we ended up moving to a small town with an abysmal walk score but good sidewalks, trails, and bike paths and a small but hardy contingent of neighbors who walk or bike to our local school and grocery store all year round.
I ended up just walking or biking around prospective neighborhoods during weekdays to get a sense of how many people actually get around in the neighborhood. I also ended up chatting with a couple of coordinators from the MA Safe Routes to Schools program to get a sense of which schools had the most kids walking to school. While they didn't have the numbers I was looking for they were friendly and helpful and I got a better sense of the different priorities in different towns.
> If you’re anti-car you also need to be pro-city-shack for yourself.
Not necessarily. If you don't want your nice rural area to be turned into McMansions centrally located on a Wal-Mart, it's important to support stronger cities and towns. I don't think any farmers want to deal with $500,000 4000+ sq. ft. single family homes constantly trying to shut them down because the farm they moved next to smells and sounds like a farm.
> I’m 40 and have lived in the US my entire life. I grew up in a very rural area, went to college in a small town, and now live in a tiny urban apartment
My situation is the same as you except where you veer off the deep end and "I have been anti-car my whole life". I did learn to drive, not sure if I can still do it, but I never liked driving. however, I am not 'anti car'. some people enjoy different things or have different things going on in their life, stop this anti-hate bs.
I suspect it is worth differentiating between `anti car` == `I don't want to need a car in my life` and `anti car` == `nobody should have cars`. I see both usages pretty commonly.
There is a more subtle boundary around opinion about how much city infrastructure should be manipulated to facilitate cars (or not), but this is difficult policy stuff.
I think the message of channels like “not just bikes” is that even if 2 acres and a truck for everybody was economical, its actually not desirable long term. Its just _so nice_ to live in a place with no traffic jams and your kids (and you too) are not just casualties waiting to happen.
The reason for shotgun houses in New Orleans is that the French property tax was created in the age of reason:
The primary cost of the property to the govt was linear road length (later sewer, water, electrical, gas, postal, etc.) so that's how they were taxed (yes, there are other reasons for the architecture, but taxes drives a lot)
Some study that came out a few years ago showed that cities lose money on the richer properties but recoup it in the denser, poorer areas. Not very reasonable.
I guarantee you this is not true. At least it's not true if you look at the totality of property taxes. If your city spends all of its money on roads it's because it's left things like police, fire, schools, and so on to county level government.
Yeah it's really hard to take you seriously when you criticize people for doing exactly what you did. Just because you did it earlier doesnt mean you are morally superior in any way.
I didn't mean to come across like that. I was intending to criticize the system that put us all in this position where this was the obvious choice. Strong towns focuses heavily on the cost aspect of rural and suburban building with all the amenities of a city. I would prefer if we all had the option to move out to the boonies without it being the obvious choice because A) we stop running these towns as ponzi schemes, subsidizing current COL on supposed future growth and B) we built ample high density housing in city centers and near transit hubs so that housing in convenient areas wasn't a Veblen good.
When Uber started, we all thought it was a winner-takes-all market. The theory went something like this:
1. The more drivers are on a given platform, the more value users will derive from the platform in the form of cheaper rides, shorter waits, etc. This will result in more riders.
2. The more riders are on a platform, the more value drivers will derive in the form of higher utilization and more overall income.
3. Therefore, all drivers and riders will naturally gravitate to the winning platform. It's a winner takes all market. QED.
Honestly, at the time (and I'm old enough to remember that time), the theory made sense. But it was wrong.
The reason the theory was wrong is that there is actually zero cost for drivers in having multiple apps open at the same time. The switching cost is zero (actually, it's negative--we'll get to that in a second). And so point (3) doesn't happen.
The reason switching cost is negative is that it actually costs money to start driving (and to convince people to become drivers). People quit jobs, and get/fix cars, and invest in a bluetooth headset, whatever. So Uber was actually subsidizing every other platform's drivers.
So instead of an extremely defensible market you end up with a race to the bottom, with no barriers to competition.
While in retrospect the mistake and dynamics are obvious, at the time it seemed like a reasonable, risky, ambitious bet.
At some point these dynamics became obvious to Uber, which is when they started investing in self driving cars (never gonna work), uber eats, etc.
People (in the hand-wavey aggregate but also specifically in tech media, on Hacker News etc.) have been describing Uber as destined to fail and built on a foundation of vc-subsidised-rides since... 2012? 2013? 2011? Uber's rational narrative fell apart when their "earn $100k a year driving for Uber!" myth fell apart, and that was... a year after launch?
Yes, but "people" also used the same arguments to describe the failure of facebook, snapchat, airbnb, amazon, etc. A sort of unsophisticated "these businesses are stupid/illegal/throwing money away" bearishness.
The reason those bears were wrong was because fb, snap, and airbnb are network-effects businesses. If ride-sharing had turned out to be a network-effect service as well, the bears would have lost.
I don't remember any arguments back then talking about why Uber was not a network effects business. And it's actually quite subtle!
For example, why did AirBnB win? On the surface homesharing seems VERY similar to ridesharing and yet it's behaved very differently as a bushiness and has not been a race to the bottom.
> Yes, but "people" also used the same arguments to describe the failure of facebook, snapchat, airbnb, amazon, etc. A sort of unsophisticated "these businesses are stupid/illegal/throwing money away" bearishness.
Those are entirely different arguments about unrelated companies. You seem to be saying that people have said negative things about things, therefore nothing important was being said about Uber.
Virtually every critic I've ever heard commenting about Uber as a business is exactly the one you have painted as having been unthinkable.
Because they were and continue to be completely willing to ignore any and all local laws until someone actually shows up and bashes them for it.
If it weren't for Covid shutting everything down and putting housing back into the local rental market, I suspect AirBnB was headed for some very large lawsuits. We'll see if that continues once things pick up again.
With all due respect, those who operated in the passenger transportation industry before (taxis, towncars, etc.) already knew this was a horrible business (read: low margin) with extremely high liabilities.
I feel like I bump into this a lot in the tech world (especially the highly funded) and I’m not sure what the fallacy is called.
There are existing industries with smart people with a wealth of experience. A tech company comes along and claims superiority by virtue of deductive reasoning. But they pay almost zero heed to the inductive reasoning of the incumbents and have to repeat their mistakes - this time with an app.
I never understood why Uber would win. All it was going to take was an uber-like app that existing companies could pay for and their primary (non-funding) advantage was gone. Otherwise they’re a normal cab company with all that entails.
Because it's actually a spell being cast over investors. You say you never understood why Uber would win, but I'd say that everyone who was actually involved with Uber has won - they've walked away with personal fortunes. In the end, the company is dumped on the public, and then it doesn't matter how the story ultimately turns out.
> So Uber was actually subsidizing every other platform's drivers
My understanding is that with the exception of some very specific niche programs, all of those expenses are paid from the driver's pockets (since, as you recall, they're currently classified as independent contractors).
Uber does have a few competitive advantages that IMHO haven't fully materialized yet: they're pretty much the only company in the space with wide global presence, while simultaneously being a big player in more than one vertical. From a driver perspective, it's kind of a no brainer to be on Uber and Lyft simultaneously if they want to maximize the rate at which they get rider requests, but there's no other platform currently where they can get riders and food deliveries and grocery deliveries. Similarly, no other company can tap into motorcyclists and truckers and who knows what other type of workers Uber can reach these days.
The way I see Uber these days is similar to how I see McDonalds. McD is certainly not the only game in town when it comes to food (and it objectively isn't the best at it, by any measure), but its brand is recognizable worldwide and they're diversified in ways that you probably don't even realize (e.g. breakfast menus compete w/ Timmies in Canada and did you know Doraemon toy collectibles are popular in China?)
Uber was incentivizing new drivers—in the form of artificially high payments and losing money on rides.
This would have been fine if the market were winner takes all, but it turns out that it wasn't, so in a way they ended up subsidizing their competition.
Is there an infinite growth fallacy for economics? Because this business model sounds like it can assume infinite growth. In the same way both pyramid schemes do, and our economy as a whole does as well.
I don't think this is right. It seems likely that driverless cars was the tech vision from the beginning and it later became clear that they would run out of money years before that became viable.
to be more precise, it's not that switching cost is zero, it's that the marginal cost of switching is small. the initial switch into ridehailing is a huge cost, particularly around opportunity costs, but adding another app is a relatively small difference.
it's not negative though. you still have the cost of signing up, taking your car to get evaluated, getting trained, figuring out how/when to get paid, etc. it adds cognitive and accounting overhead, and you run into contention issues between the apps, creating negative rider feedback that you must balance against the increased income potential.
i do agree generally that there is little defensibility in ridehailing, and that's why uber (and lyft) tried to employ its supplier power to create competitive advantage/barriers. for instance, uber eats wasn't an expansion so much as a flanking move to lock in drivers on uber by increasing utilization.
OP was probably referring to the switching costs in the case of competing apps (like Uber and Lyft), not the cost of leaving a job and driving for Uber.
I know what you're saying, but I think I take issue with "death traps".
In my younger, poorer years, I had only a motorcycle (and before that a 10-speed bicycle ... if that dates me) to get to work and community college in the middle of a Kansas winter.
I rode very, very slowly. And spilled once or twice (at low speeds). The highways were of course out of the question (but I avoided the freeway regardless of the weather).
But, yeah, I might have been about the only person out there on a bike/motorcycle in the worst of the blizzard.
Not a motorcyclist, but the classic study on motorcycle accidents found that motorists were responsible for 2/3 of crashes[1]. It's clear that there are plenty of reckless riders gunning for a Darwin Award, but overall what makes motorcycles dangerous is not their riders.
Your point is well taken, but there is some agency on the part of motorcyclists in not getting killed. I wear a white helmet, neon green onsie, and a high-viz airbag vest when I ride. I also won't ride impaired. I also make sure to take at least one safety training course per year. I am fastidious about following distances. I am constantly scanning for situations where drivers are likely to commit an error. I leave my bike in gear at stoplights and watch my rearview mirrors. I give myself an escape path.
Most of these things help me avoid killing myself on my bike, but they also reduce my risk of getting killed by others. The idea that there is a bimodal distribution of riders is pretty apparent to me. EDIT: There are likely many "car at fault" crashes where the motorcyclist, though legally in the right, could have avoided the crash.
That said, hell yeah motorcycles are dangerous even for this safety obsessed nerd. Further, I agree they are not a solution for everyone. My bike stays parked if I think I could encounter freezing road conditions. I love riding, but my bicycle is far more practical as transportation than my motorcycle is.
To be fair, so are automobiles. Stopping distance in wintry conditions can go up by an order of magnitude. 4WD/AWD does little if anything to ameliorate that, though some drivers seem to believe it does, based on my observation. Would you rather be crashed into by someone who thinks their 5000 lb pickup or SUV makes them invincible, or a kid on a moped? At least the moped operator has some skin in the game.
We haven't seen many electric motorbikes yet, though ebikes (bicycles) are taking off. It'd be interesting to see how the two merge (fast/powerful ebike vs electric motorcycle).
To me the main concerns are:
- Commodity vs personal: taxis, trains and hire-bikes are convenient from a shared-ownership perspective, but inconvenient in that you can better customise the experience of having you own vehicle.
- luggage & shelter: a bike / motorbike limits how much luggage you can carry. Also, a car is a much nicer environment that motorcycle leathers in all-weather; It's also easier to get in/out of a car than it is to change clothes.
I wonder if some of this can be improved by mere infrastructure: better dedicated roads highways for certain types of vehicle, better (secure) parking, city storage facilities for commuters etc.
I think inherent safety issues will keep ebikes classified as-is. A fast human humans can sprint 30km/h, and our skulls and skin can mostly survive a fall at that speed. Every ebike is limited to that speed because that's the safe speed. 40km/h doesn't feel much faster when you're doing it, but a fall at that speed is an order of magnitude more likely to need hospitalization.
I expect something between a velomobile and a tuktuk could be engineered to protect a rider from a fall, but where would you drive it? It wouldn't be safe to share a road with trucks, and but it would be a danger to cyclists.
Edit: We have the tech to do it right now--the homebrew combo of bafang motor and phaserunner controller can turn a mountain bike into a suicide machine. It would be a sensible upgrade for a dutch-style cargo bike though. Keep it locked under 30kph and you could take little kids on a grocery run. (Where city trail infrastructure exists.)
Where are you talking about? I love riding motorcycles, but I've also been to Bali and Vietnam and I do not want to live in that kind of traffic environment.
Uber is one of many VC-funded businesses that set out to intentionally flout the intention of the laws where they operate. They find a loophole and drive through it with a dump truck. They expect to litigate when challenged to extend their runway. If they fail, the founders walk away with millions and get to do it all again.
This kind of behavior is a huge disincentive to people that actually want to follow the spirit of the law. I mean, who wants to play a game where the other participants are flagrantly unabashed cheaters? Who wants to try to raise capital honestly, when liars can thrive?
I have plenty of ideas and skills to launch viable startup businesses, but I'm not will to lie, cheat, and steal to compete. And like it or not, that's pretty much exactly what it takes to create a business like Uber.
Indeed. Uber is of the "ask forgiveness, not permission" model. Sometimes, SOMETIMES, this is the only way to get things done. Especially when you're building at the speed of the Internet. Trying to lobby for changes in the law in advance would be a fool's errand as legislators work slowly, and usually only reactively.
Oh, I absolutely blame the game. The fish rots from the head down. But the players here are rotten too.
Just because a person legally can do a thing does not mean that a good honest person should do that thing.
Then what, in your opinion, is one to do? Not every law, whether in spirit or letter, is written for the best interest of the governed. The crypto wars of the 90s are a testament to that and are now rearing their ugly head yet again. Working one's way around unstated assumptions is one of the rights acknowledged by the Constitution in the form of the 10th amendment. It remains one of the few safeguards against the self-righteousness political bodies tend to exhibit.
I am waiting for the revolution to start. Seriously. I know this kind of talk borders on sedition and risks a visit from the powers that be, but it's a risk I will take to defend my principles and those of our Constitution.
I do not see a way of reforming society. I see our governments continuing to devolve into ineffective squabbling and pandering, until the final straw lands and their backs break. The pandemic came wonderfully close. If it had been a little worse, many governments would have had to institute martial law, as they would be forced to institute policies would that actively choose who gets to live and who dies. You can imagine how things would go from there.
The 10th Amendment has been effectively dead since around WW2. The big turning point was Wickard v. Filburn [0], which grossly expanded federal powers over intrastate commerce. Similar efforts have succeeded in castrating the power of the States on many other fronts.
That treasonous status quo alone should be cause for revolution; however, all of our fundamental civil liberties have been curtailed in similarly countless ways. For anyone doubting the veracity of this assertion, I recommend the now-dated-but-still-pertinent book by Naomi Wolff, "The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot". Read it and start sharpening your pitchfork.
They promise a "more convenient taxi" service everywhere. Cheaper too!
What they don't talk about is that their "more convenient taxi" ride is heavily subsidized by VC money - that is why Uber has lost billions of dollars every year. Uber uses the subsidies to undercut traditional transportation which has the (desirable, from Uber's POV) side effect of driving traditional transportation out of the market leaving uber sized holes in cities.
Heavily subsidized rides that are more convenient than a taxi are great until the bezzle collapses and suddenly the cheap, convenient Uber rides disappear and we find out how badly traditional transportation (starting with taxis) has been damaged by the bezzle.
> how badly traditional transportation (starting with taxis) has been damaged by the bezzle.
While the ultimate premise might be correct, this is not exactly a compelling example. Before Uber, cabs (in SF) refused to take credit cards, regularly didn’t show up when pre booked and often smelled like they had a rotting corpse in the back. They were “ok” in New York City - though frequently cabs would flout the law if the driver saw you had a suitcase, fearing a ride to JFK. But everywhere else they were completely terrible.
>Before Uber, cabs (in SF) refused to take credit cards, regularly didn’t show up when pre booked
In September 2005 I spent 20 minutes on a Sunday afternoon trying to get a cab at 19th and Judah before giving up and taking a Muni. (For those unfamiliar with San Francisco, 19th is the main north-south route through the city, so is very very busy at all times.) This is the sort of problem that car sharing has completely solved.
edit: I also didn't have to announce to the entire world where I go. I could flag one down, get in and tell them where I was going, pay, get out, and end the relationship.
Talk about privacy concerns - Uber execs were literally tracking decisionmakers and enemies in realtime.
You could do this with Uber for many years also. The need to specify a destination location corresponded with fixed price rides, at least in New York. None of this changes the fact that you can only specify a destination with a cab if there is one to get in, though.
I'm keeping an eye on some of the developing cooperative ride-hailing and delivery apps (eg [1] [2]). As long as you're not trying to allocate a huge amount of R&D to a huge number growth areas, the core mobile hailing services should actually amount to a pretty low overhead to supply.
By squeezing out costs of a VC management ownership & hypergrowth objectives, as well as automating more of the core administrative needs, that mix of tech and operating approach should be very competitive for providing modern ride services.
> What they don't talk about is that their "more convenient taxi" ride is heavily subsidized by VC money
This meme really needs to die. Uber did burn VC cash earlier on, especially in places w/ intense competition (e.g. vs Didi in China), but that's not an accurate portrayal of the company anymore. Uber has been a public company for like 3 years now, and they actually posted a profit on adjusted ebitda basis on Q3 last year (with a promise for a larger profit for Q4).
The Uber-is-cheaper thing isn't an accurate premise these days either. There have been numerous articles of people complaining about high airport trip fares due to the mismatch between demand and supply curves due to covid lockdowns/reopenings. There were also price hikes in two key markets (SF and LA) partly due to regulation.
Uber has lost roughly $25 billion dollars to date, so any talk of profitability is ridiculous, even if you believe their “adjusted-EBITDA” numbers which simply ignore hundreds of millions in expenses in their last quarter.
Yeah, that's why I qualified by saying it's on adjusted ebitda. The ridesharing industry doesn't use GAP yet under the argument it's still a nascent industry, so the narrative right now mostly centers around showing a trend towards actual profitability quarter after quarter (as opposed to this narrative that 1B+ losses are still somehow just being masked by VC cash injections of equal weight).
The being public thing is especially important since it basically means these companies (Uber, Lyft, Grab, Didi, etc) can't rely on cute accounting tricks. It's kinda do or die before the runway ends.
If you're talking about the Q3 net loss figure, I already mentioned downthread that a good chunk of it was due to the Didi stake write-off. This is kinda why I mentioned the rideshare industry talks so much about ebitda; the equity side is so leveraged and volatile that it overshadows the operations numbers at this point, despite not actually having all that much impact in day-to-day operations.
I mean, we already went over this, i.e. there isn't such a quarter on record, if that's the only metric you're looking at.
At least from what I've seen, many analysts are bullish right now (mostly due to a combo of low stock price, growth momentum in hedged verticals and scale of operations). Another data point is Doordash; some have pointed out that Uber eats' volume is bigger than DD, yet that isn't reflecting in the stock price (i.e. they think uber is undervalued considering the trajectory of profit in uber's delivery segment)
Disclaimer: I've been keeping a pretty close eye on uber because I have a fairly sizable stock position. My intention here isn't to shill or cheerlead or whatever. Obviously, take whatever I say with a grain of salt, do your own research, etc.
> Disclaimer: I've been keeping a pretty close eye on uber because I have a fairly sizable stock position. My intention here isn't to shill or cheerlead or whatever. Obviously, take whatever I say with a grain of salt, do your own research, etc.
Totally fair. I would have a different position (obviously) if I had invested in them.
I just really don't see them getting enough profits to justify their valuation, but then I was wrong about FB so I may just be a perma-bear.
In the linked transcript Doctorow suggests that Uber's profits come from selling off divisions. "I’m finally curing my starvation by eating my own arms" is the rather colourful metaphor he uses. Does that line up with the 2021Q3 profit you mention, or maybe he's talking about something that happened earlier?
There were some boosts to some numbers in some quarter from sale of divisions (the self-driving division acquisition by Aurora being one of the bigger one) yes, and there were also some boosts from pulling out of some markets (e.g. the Grab deal) but conversely, the timing of the Didi stake write-off in Q3 also put a negative dent in the metrics for that quarter. IMHO, those are purely paper equity numbers and don't represent the state of core operations at all. The implication to bottom line, though, is that these division were bleeding cash and the path to positive ROI was dubious, so they had to go. If you're gonna go w/ an arm-eating metaphor, I think an appendicitis might be a closer metaphor to the real story.
Regardless of equity-related stuff, the Q3 report did specifically state that the rides division were in the green for the first time ever (on adjusted ebitda basis), with eats posting a near-break-even loss. The point isn't so much about where exactly the "green" line stands (whether it's adjusted ebitda basis, regular ebitda basis or GAP), but that the data points have been going up (and rather aggressively, according to some). This is supposed to suggest that operations are no longer bleeding cash mindlessly and actually working towards optimizing expenses etc.
This is always mentioned as the endgame for uber-style monopolism, but it seems to me that taxis are an extremely difficult market to capture in this way. As soon as the VC subsidies disappear and prices rise (as they surely must to pay all those SF SWE salaries), anyone with a car will be able to jump back in. You don't even need an app to start, just loiter around busy places.
Not ad hoc maybe, but if Uber prices would rise a lot I definitely could see a resurgence of the traditional "linger at busy nightlife area" style taxi where you just pay with cash. If the price differential becomes large enough that could draw enough customers back to "normal" taxi drivers.
I don't think Uber can compete with public transportation. It is still an order of magnitude more expensive. Maybe some edge cases like airport/train station rides, but that's it.
Moreover, in some countries, regular taxi companies and taxi aggregators quickly developed similar systems. So there's no difference between Uber and them, except that local companies know their market better.
That would be very convenient indeed, but for whatever reason, that didn't happen. I keep running into many places where Uber is hard to find or non-existent, Turkey, parts of Mexico, Russia, I'm sure there are more.
The difference is that it's cheaper by Uber pushing down labour costs, a.k.a the driver's compensation. But since that reason isn't as pleasant, vague rationalizations are used instead.
That's not the point. Yes, Uber et. al. made a desirable product, but it's not a sustainable one. As Uber feels the purse strings tighten, they now have to raise prices to roughly what taxis were charging before. The last time I hired a car from the airport to home, it was actually cheaper to hire a guy at the taxi stand than to call a car.
It would be all fine and well if that just meant that some investors ended up subsidizing movement of people for most of a decade, but those subsidies caused real damage. Diverting people from public transit, municipalities subsidizing rides rather than building infrastructure, entrenching worker precarity via things like Prop 22.
WEF video envisioned carless human lives rebuilt around "neighborhood hubs" that are 15-min walking distance from their home offices, containing gym and bars, but no restaurants since those would be replaced by ghost kitchens. They envisioned biometric ID of each human by their heartbeat. WFH opens the door to workplace surveillance policy being applied to home-workspace activity. https://twitter.com/wef/status/1427721919483326470
> A so-called "15-minute city design" will allow residents to access their workplaces, schools and amenities within a quarter-hour commute of their homes. Although planners are still scouting for locations, possible targets include Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Texas and the Appalachian region.
> One popular concept hailing from Paris is the 15-minute city. It’s a city in which, wherever you live, everything you need is located within a 15-minute walk or bike ride away ... which of America’s largest cities have the greatest potential for transitioning into a 15-minute city?
This comment does a good job of citing why the 15-minute city concept feels kind of "off" to me.
It's ostensibly a good idea. I actually probably could live it, I'm 15 minutes walk from essentially everything I'd need.
But whenever I read 'marketing material' it always just sounds like some way to ensure that the proletarians exist less. Use less resources, basically just corral most people off into these little life simulators.
If you deleted long-distance transport like cars tomorrow I could still _do_ most of the things I need in order to subsist, but you would have immediately essentially just turned off the reason I get up in the morning.
It's more that I have a fundamental desire to travel further than 15 minutes from my home on a regular basis, via any mode of transport.
That is to say that the feeling of being in a different place is psychologically important.
I think that most people have this desire and many of them don't realise it until they fall into a habit of not really leaving their local area (e.g. staying indoors for weeks on end doing WFH). They start to feel sad or frustrated and can't really identify why.
Exploration and novelty is important for the human spirit.
By far the best exploration and novelty I've ever had in terms of cities has come from those cities that embody the '15 minute' approach. Surprise - nobody bans you or even discourages you from travelling away further than necessary from your closest conveniences!
By contrast, cities that are car dependent and spread out have been invariably the most alienating environments possible in terms of novelty. You have to drive, and quite quickly, because there's nothing else but concrete and parking lots and gigantic stores on any human scale.
To stereotype a little (or not so little), Americans do their once-in-a-lifetime trip through the classic European cities and walk wide-eyed along the narrow winding streets, and eat ice cream along the many small town squares/piazzas/whatever, sighing happily.
And then they go home and vote for widening their local stroad, as if that would in any way contribute to solving the suburban hellscape problem.
I live in my little shoebox in inner/central London and then go and rent a big beefy beefcar and drive around the US, then go home and get on the tube. :D
Being able to quickly fetch a gallon of milk or easily walk your kids to school actually enhances the ability to explore and take in novelty. Being forced to drive everywhere adds monetary and time costs as well as a great deal of risk from crashes.
Characterizing life in suburban America as it is currently built as embracing and enabling exploration and novelty seems pretty far off. It is much more common for people, especially young people who most desire exploration and novelty, to find our omnipresent suburbs to be stifling.
The source of confusion is probably that I'm not talking about the suburban US but basically just most cities in Europe or the UK.
You can live in basically any city (actual city, not the suburbs) and have most things close by, it's an available option.
What I'm arguing against is the idea that we should make everywhere like this, or that within those zones we should seek to make travel awkward for the sake of maintaining the 15-minute ideal.
For example, if you have to ban cars in my street to bring it from a 'everything within 20-minutes' to 'everything within 15-minutes', then logically in my view you lose more. This is just anecdotal, but my street is full of stuff like camper vans, off road vehicles, tourers and cool shit, they'd have to either give up their hobbies or move out and into the country.
The desire to travel doesn't support the conclusion that automobiles are somehow natural and vital to the human spirit. In my world, traveling is a much richer experience when automobiles aren't involved. Indeed, they're a real buzz-kill.
China has hundreds of millions of people living in '15 minute cities'. You can still get out and explore with public transport that will take you literally anywhere in the country faster than driving.
It isn’t always about speed. Even if I could get to work faster via rail or bus, I would still prefer to use my car. I like being alone, I like driving, I like being in control of the temperature and airflow, I like being able to pick my route and make any stops I want.
When you look at the best selling vehicles in the US it’s clear that people generally aren’t buying the least expensive vehicle that would work for them. They spend tens of thousands more because they want to.
Yeah I'm at a loss there- I have good Turkish, Greek and British food locally, but I need to travel if I want the best Indian, or vegan, or cocktails, or... it's not like I'm trapped here, I just have quick and slow options.
I live in a European city! A city in which I could live my entire life without using delivery services and without stepping further than 15 minutes from my front door. Okay, maybe 20.
I agree that by that metric basically any European capital or major city has loads of this.
That's not what I understand the '15-minute city' concept to mean. The video posted is a good example of it. It seems to be centred more about fundamentally rewriting the way I live my life (e.g. get rid of the office, try to discourage me from going outside of that 15-minute zone by encouraging walking over all other forms of transport including trains/buses).
It's weird because I've just re-read my initial comment and I'm just re-typing what I said. Is there something confusing there?
Optionality is tautologically great, but discouraging people to travel is not that.
My dentist, my general practitioner, my gym, my favourite restaurant(s), my friends, the food store(s) I use are all in different parts of town, and I believe that hugely enriches my life. The job I used to have was about 30-45min away, and after work I would then explore _that_ area.
I could go to the ones next door, but then I'd only ever go next door. Why would I want to only ever go next door?
I guess basically I'm just reading American shit and thinking "what's all this nonsense about 15 minutes? what you want is a dense urban city with public transport".
I actually want my city and its' trains to expand out so that it's a 4 hour city and I can tap a card and get the tube to Manchester and wander about there, lol.
> I actually want my city and its' trains to expand out so that it's a 4 hour city and I can tap a card and get the tube to Manchester and wander about there, lol.
That’s what I want in the US. Unfortunately we don’t have a city-to-city train system to speak of, Amtrak isn’t even close, and it doesn’t seem to be on the horizon either. I don’t really know, but part of the issue may be that cities in the west and midwest aren’t yet big enough and numerous enough and dense enough to support the financing for a better train system.
It's also perplexing to Americans who don't hate cars, as we all live in 15-minute cities as well (by the definition that no daily task takes more than 15 minutes of one-way travel time).
Sometimes in the inner cores, yes. But many North American cities are new. Built mostly post-war. For example, Calgary is a city of ~1.2 million now. In 1946 it was ~100,000.
More than 90% of the city was built in the post-car era, and the main city planning stage (in the 50s and 60s during the population explosion) was of course, heavily car-centric. That's the legacy we're still living out, with similar stories in cities across North America.
I live in a developing "15 minute city" that encompasses a border with Denver and one of its neighboring cities. Development has been... okay I guess. We have a light rail stop that goes downtown to Union Station and to all the main stadiums, and bike trail that runs alongside it.
That's pretty much it. The area has been zoned for everything a 15 minute city might need, but developers have been reluctant to build anything beyond 5+1 apartment buildings and small townhome developments. It's hardly a 15 minute city and both municipalities (Denver and the other) that have a stake in the development don't seem to care much about the area.
We are still fully car dependent for basic errands, and now that they are enforcing parking laws for blocking hydrants, alleys, etc, people are up in arms.
The "which of America’s largest cities have the greatest potential for transitioning into a 15-minute city?" line is really confusing. Instead, I believe they're talking about American suburbs and minor cities.
"It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us. While I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised, I have little hope that voting will make things better."
That was directly linked from the original article, and happened over a decade ago. That's enough for me; Doctrow seems either to be parroting a falsehood or simply incorrect.
The reason that this keeps getting repeated is that it's a not-unreasonable summary/digestion of Peter Thiel's position, though you're correct that it's not precisely what he's saying.
Reading that quote by him in context, Peter Thiel's nuanced stance is more along the lines of "The extension of voting rights to women has likely resulted in an America that I think is worse/less preferable to the one that would probably exist if women were not allowed to vote".
So no, he hasn't advocated for taking away the vote from women in as many words, he just makes it known that he wishes they had never been allowed to do so. One can reasonably see how these positions are similar enough that some people have editorialized slightly. Especially since, given these views, it seems also reasonable to suppose that were the question of women voting to be put forth once more, he would probably vote against.
This is a common malicious misrepresentation of conservative commentary in general: even a slightly counter-progressive reading of history (maybe things haven't just gotten better and better in every possible way) is often painted as wanting to turn back the clock in the most extreme and extremely plausible of ways. Search old HN to see discussion about Curtis Yarvin to see this.
I think this is a reasonable representation, though.
The idea behind voting is to say "I think this way is the best way", right?
So if Thiel is saying "that way was not the best way", then presumably if the issue came to a vote today, he would vote against.
It's true that he's not advocating for turning back the clock, but I think it's fair to say he wants to turn back the clock, in that he has expressed his opinion that he would prefer to live in a world where it were so.
It's deeply unfair, because Thiel never pretended to comprehensively summarize the consequences of women's suffrage, and sum them up as an overall judgment of the sort "America has become better/worse off". His argument is strictly about the prospects for the formerly better-represented variety of libertarian/classical liberal politics. Even if you think "less capitalism" is per se undesirable, there can be countervailing benefits.
Oh sure, he's not "against" women voting. He just says that their doing so is bad for democracy.
The point is - Thiel is crank, and if needs to sugarcoat the true import of what he's really saying: "We'd all be better off if women's suffrage never happened" -- that's just Thiel being Thiel.
What he seems to be saying is that it was bad for democracy back then.
Maybe it would be terrible if Napoleon had access to nuclear weapons in the early 1800s. Am I saying we should have let the Rape of Nanking go on indefinitely?
Maybe you're aware of more than just the linked tweet and that's why I'm not seeing what you're seeing. Some reasonable interpretations of that quote:
1) We would be more capitalist (whatever that means) if welfare beneficiaries and women were not able to vote.
2) Libertarian initiatives would succeed more often.
Neither of those seem to me to obviously translate to "We'd all be better off if women's suffrage never happened". For one thing, the quote seems to be missing anything that says those groups shouldn't be voting. But again, I'm only looking at the words on the page.
This is of course exactly what Thiel, rhetorical genius that he is, wants you do to: perform a sufficient number of mental backflips and other cognitive gymnastics as necessary to obfuscate the true import of what he's plainly saying.
Neither of those seem to me to obviously translate to "We'd all be better off if women's suffrage never happened".
That's because I'm starting with what he said. Whereas it seems you're starting with what you would have preferred he had said.
So I guess that's where I'm limited here. Unlike you, I have no idea what Thiel wants me to do. I also have no preference as to what some billionaire that I'll never meet says. I just read the words on the page and didn't attempt to fill in any blanks.
Thiel doesn't need you to actually do anything, he just wants to plant the seed of the idea that "women's suffrage is bad for western democracy" in your head, and let that germinate into something in support of whatever worldview he's working for.
Well if that's what he was trying to do, he failed. I didn't believe that women's suffrage is bad for western democracy, and no more so after reading that quote. I read that libertarianism has failed to speak to women voters and welfare participants ("two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians").
Just because someone says something and you didn't buy it doesn't mean it might not have appealed to other people. That is not how public statements work.
Except while I wouldn't call myself a libertarian, I would consider myself sympathetic to a lot of libertarian ideas, and so I'm probably the type of person who would be susceptible to such a skilled rhetorician.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that you and the other poster here already have some preconceptions about what a man like Thiel wants people to think, and aren't exactly looking for the most charitable reads.
I certainly could be wrong, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find too many people that didn't already have strong opinions on the man interpreting his words the way you have.
Come now, there is no need to talk about ideology. It's all about simple parsing of the sentence. In his statement Thiel names two voter constituencies that have "rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron." Now, you can argue what the latter actually entails but given that he is pro-capitalist democracy- as a libertarian- his very words indicates he doesn't believe that it is a positive thing. Therefore, the enlargement of the franchise, or at least of those two constituencies, have been detrimental for "capitalist democracy"- insofar it has "rendered" it "into an oxymoron". This is a very straightforward reading of the words as spoken. That is literally what Thiel "wants people to think".
If you refuse to accept that A is A, there's no end of convincing to move your subjective opinion.
> Therefore, the enlargement of the franchise, or at least of those two constituencies, have been detrimental for "capitalist democracy"- insofar it has "rendered" it "into an oxymoron"
This is where my reading and yours differ. You seem to see capitalist democracy being an oxymoron as a value judgment. I see it as saying that these constituencies have historically voted for more socialist style policies. So in this case more democracy equals less capitalism, therefore capitalist democracy is an oxymoron. Now you may see this as "cognitive gymnastics", but that's kind of how I see your reading, so I think that's just our biases at play.
Not sure if you saw me say this elsewhere in the thread, but I'm curious what you think:
> I can believe that my coworker getting a huge bonus/raise means that I am getting less as a result. It doesn't mean I think it shouldn't have happened, or that I'm going to attempt to sabotage them. I can acknowledge something that isn't beneficial for my cause without immediately desiring to end that thing
> You seem to see capitalist democracy being an oxymoron as a value judgment. I see it as saying that these constituencies have historically voted for more socialist style policies.
Do you think Thiel would be in favor of more socialist-style policies? Even some? Do you think he views the diminishment of capitalist democracy as a negative trend? Well, there you have it.
> I can acknowledge something that isn't beneficial for my cause without immediately desiring to end that thing
Thiel doesn't strike me as someone who's politically "live and let live", so to speak. This is a situation where the man's reputation precedes him. Perhaps he doesn't want to overturn something beneficial to others, but he might be in favor of offsetting that benefit in order to further his cause.
And what you are willing to acknowledge is immaterial, as you are not Peter Thiel.
> Do you think Thiel would be in favor of more socialist-style policies? Even some?
Does that mean that he will automatically be opposed to anything that could contribute to socialist policies being enacted? I think this is the jump that you're making, and was what I was trying to address with my pay raise analogy. To take it to the extreme, the sun coming up tomorrow makes it possible for socialist policies to be enacted. Do you think if Thiel realizes this, he'll try to blow up the sun?
And I'm not claiming to know anything about whether the guy wishes women couldn't vote, maybe he does. I just don't see that in what is written.
OP edited his post to include a link of Thiel responding himself, but with your opinion of him being what it is, is it safe to assume you don't believe him?
EDIT: someone linked to a comment thread from 6 years ago talking about this. Its interesting to see how similar the discussion is. I think both sides are mostly arguing in good faith, this is just one of those "is the dress blue or is it gold" things.
> And I'm not claiming to know anything about whether the guy wishes women couldn't vote, maybe he does. I just don't see that in what is written.
I'm relying here on a priori context tying Thiel to the internet neoreactionary movement [0], which does consist of figures who are comfortable voicing opinions that are quite appalling and out there- or at least were a decade ago. I don't think Thiel is literally a neoreactionary, but he does seem to be a fellow traveller or comfortable enough in association with them to be willing to entertain unconventional opinions.
This isn't really a value judgment, either. It's just identifying one subset of the company that Thiel has publicly kept before, noting the type of ideas they are open to, and thus concluding that Thiel is possibly within the ballpark of such ideas, if not fully aligned.
> OP edited his post to include a link of Thiel responding himself, but with your opinion of him being what it is, is it safe to assume you don't believe him?
That link does provide context. And it sort of shows the rather extreme position that neoreaction arrives at: quibbling over suffrage is immaterial, because democracy is inherently flawed. There is no political solution.
I believe Thiel when he says people shouldn't be disenfranchised. But I also believe him when he says he believes that voting will not solve anything.
I think that the link doesn't disprove that if Thiel could have retroactively prevented this state of affairs from arising, he would not have done that. But then we arrive at angels dancing on the head of a pin territory of hypotheticals, so I will concede there.
> To take it to the extreme, the sun coming up tomorrow makes it possible for socialist policies to be enacted. Do you think if Thiel realizes this, he'll try to blow up the sun?
Once Palmer Luckey comes up with a plan, yes.
Edit:
Rereading the context of the original Cato Unbound essay, and the paragraph after, it does sound more innocuous than previously portrayed. But it's still questionable framing. Thiel is placing the blame for the oxymoronizing of "capitalist democracy" on those two constituencies. And that's placing the cart before the horse. It's almost as if he's forgetting there was something that happened at the end of his beloved roaring 1920s to change American politics, and in fact the political structures of nearly almost all western democracies, forever. And that was followed by other sweeping historical events leading to the centralization of government power.
Thiel's framing makes it sound like two groups of voters just decided to vote capitalist democracy away, for no reason stated. It's a twisting of the truth by omission, by oversimplification. Which detractors would get understandably upset by.
My understanding is:
1) Given Peter Thiel is for more capitalism and more libertarian initiatives;
2) Peter Thiel believes that women's enfranchisement prevented more capitalism and libterarian initiatives;
3) Peter Thiel believes at the very least that women's enfrachisement has a consequence of preventing more of what he stands for.
Recall that in his famous quote, Thiel did not refer to "capitalism and more libertarian initiatives". He specifically chose (and perhaps coined) the curious phrase, "capitalist democracy". And you can be sure he chose that phrase for a reason.
Against this backdrop -- it's interesting that you chose to drop the "d" part of the phrase as if Thiel never said it. Let's see how your paraphrase works using the "d" word in place of the "c" word:
1) Given Peter Thiel is for more democracy; 2) Peter Thiel believes that women's enfranchisement prevented more democracy; 3) Peter Thiel believes at the very least that women's enfrachisement has a consequence of preventing more of what he stands for, which is democracy.
This isn't just a rhetorical exercise. It's very important to his message that he used the word "democracy" as the central noun in the phrase, and not "capitalism" or "capitalist ideals".
That's because at his core, the man is and always has been -- expressly, unapologetically anti-democratic.
Thanks for calling out the nuance of the interpretation of rhetoric here. I think you're right in that the focus was on decreased democracy, not decreased capitalism, being the consequence of women's enfranchisement. It made very little sense to me that allowing women to vote caused less democracy, even in Peter Thiel's worldview, so I assumed it had something to do with libertarian/capitalistic beliefs instead.
I think that's a reasonable reading. I don't think 3 obviously implies what others in this thread seem to think.
I can believe that my coworker getting a huge bonus/raise means that I am getting less as a result. It doesn't mean I think it shouldn't have happened, or that I'm going to attempt to sabotage them. I can acknowledge something that isn't beneficial for my cause without immediately desiring to end that thing.
> It doesn't mean I think it shouldn't have happened, or that I'm going to attempt to sabotage them.
You can probably see how if you go to your coworker, and tell them "It would have been in my best interest and created a world I more prefer if you had gotten less", they may get upset with you. This is what's happening here.
The thing is, cars are neither more nor less independent then public transport, in practice. Sure, if I have a driver's license, a car, and money for gas, I can hop into my car and drive... wherever the government has seen fit to allow me to drive (most importantly, by building roads to those places). Of course, I also have to find some place to park, and I have to abstain from alcohol for many hours before getting in my car; I need to be well-rested as well. While driving, I have to be constantly alert, so the most I can do in parallel is have a conversation or listen to some music.
With public transport, I just need to buy a ticket - no need to buy and maintain a car, no need to spend weeks to get a driver's license. Then, once I have the ticket, I can wait and then hop on a bus/train/subway and go to... wherever the government has seen fit to allow me to ride. In practice, today, roads lead to many more places than public transit, but this is not a necessity of the world, it is to a great extent a choice that was made long ago. Also, I can get on a bus drunk (but not disorderly) or tired out of my mind. While riding, I can work, play, read etc.
Yep, you buy a ticket and go wherever the government allowed you to go by adding public transit there. Which still relies on the roads most of the time. There are a lot more more roads than buses. During 2020-2021 I wanted to explore green spaces just outside of London. Guess what, doing it without car is incredibly painful. I'd rather take 1h drive than 3h journey on 4 different buses that includes 1h total wait on different bus stops. But hey, I can be drunk on those buses!
Once you go a tiny bit more rural than a million city, you start encountering "once an hour buses" and "there are only 3 buses a day here, only 2 on Sundays" situations.
Don't get me wrong, I am happy that I don't need a car to go to a supermarket nor to meet a mate in a pub. But cars do provide a lot more independence.
>Once you go a tiny bit more rural than a million city, you start encountering "once an hour buses" and "there are only 3 buses a day here, only 2 on Sundays" situations.
So? Those are some of the best places. They slow the rat race frenzy down, for one...
So, I have a friend. He owns a farm. I want to go and visit him on his farm.
There is never going to be a bus service that goes there, ever.
I love public transport and use it whenever I can because it's better. My house costs hundreds of thousands of pounds more than an equivalent one that's far from public transport. It was a very active choice.
But independent is one thing it definitely is not.
Last month my local train services were cut from every 15 minutes to every 30 "Cus COVID".
> So, I have a friend. He owns a farm. I want to go and visit him on his farm.
The state built a road to their farm (and presumably that road goes past the farm as well). What would stop them from also running a (rare, definitely) bus line around there?
> Last month my local train services were cut from every 15 minutes to every 30 "Cus COVID".
Sure, global pandemics are one weak point of public services of every kind, unfortunately.
Okay, so I go and get in my car and I'm going to visit my friend on his farm.
You're waiting at the bus stop for this rare service. How often is it coming? 99.99% of the time no-one even uses it. Once every day, then? Weekly?
It doesn't make any sense at all. You'd turn basic interactions that I have into something approaching booking intercontinental flights. Absolute madness.
Like, this bus service will not exist. Quantum tunnelling is more likely.
I can't even get a bus to my friend who lives 10 miles away from me in London.
On your second point - sure, the independence argument for public transport has become weaker. In 2020 my local tube station was actually fully closed for months on end "Cus COVID". Car 1, public transport 0.
I'm not suggeting a bus that only goes to your friend's farm. It could be a (small) bus that passes very close, or that goes to a series of neighboring farms.
The point is not that this is available today, as we clearly live in a very car-centric culture and no one is planning this type of small scale public transit.
But it's not at all inherently impossible, it could well be achieved, especially where you're still near to a major city. In my country for example there is public transport for taking kids from small (and very poor) villages that don't have their own school to neighboring villages that do - and that's much more feasible and much more economical than expecting each family to buy and maintain their own car and gas, and to drive each child individually to school in the morning, then to drive back to school in the afternoon, pick them up, and drive back. And the kids are much more independent by having access to this than if they had to synchronize with their parents.
Car infrastructure is far, far too expensive. The U.S is already deep under water in its maintenance, and as this problem continues to be ignored, the lower the viability of cars will be.
It's actually pretty interesting to see people on the economic right being so staunchly in favor of this incredibly socialized waste of money - it's a testament to the marketing and lobbying efforts by the car industry for sure.
This depends on the region. In the EU some countries have such high gas taxes that the infrastructure could be entirely paid for, maintained and there would still be money left. In practice that money isn't earmarked for road infrastructure though. But the end user could in theory pay for it all, so that it's not socialized to everyone. It's also possible that there are tax reductions for driving a car or tanking fuel, so it's definitely not the whole picture and this would need to be accounted for.
Hah I still remember watching one of the TopGear specials in Africa, and them comparing domestic roads (pothole ridden) to ones made by chinese apparently “uk quality”. Looking at that “shitty african road” I was like “hey thats a normal second grade road in Eastern Europe where I live.
Moral of the story - cars are tough and can handle much (much) worse roads that US and eastern europe think of “normal” roads.
I prefer cycling myself and don’t really like cars, but “failing US road infra” just sounds so naïve…
> Moral of the story - cars are tough and can handle much (much) worse roads that US and eastern europe think of “normal” roads.
And here we come to the old saying of "poverty is expensive". A modern, well made and maintained asphalt road is no issue for a modern car, it will require its usual scheduled maintenance and that's it.
But put the same modern car on a poor or dirt road and the maintenance expense for the car will explode: tires, springs, O-rings and other seals, rust, the list goes on and on. Pot-hole repairs in particular can get really expensive.
I recall some story about the 90'ies after the fall of the Soviet Union when all the mobsters got loaded and bought fancy German sport cars, which promptly broke down due to the poor state of the roads. Whereas the local simple but rugged cars continued working just fine.
Americans seems to abhor car/fuel/etc. taxes to the point that they vote out any politician who dares suggesting anything even approximating that, and as a result they have a huge infrastructure maintenance backlog waiting to pop. Not helped by the fact that suburban sprawl is incredibly expensive to maintain (per the tax revenue the municipality gets) compared to more densely built environments.
The "Not Just Bikes" youtube channel has a series of videos on the strongtowns, uh, thingy, that goes into more details. In particular this one describes the financing of suburban infrastructure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0
You're being downvoted but it's a fact that cars satisfy some scenarios in a way that alternatives can only approximate. For example: if you want to stay dry, or you're impaired, or you are carrying significant loads, the experience in cars is objectively superior to bikes or public transport. One can tweak the urban environment as much as one wants, this will still be the case. And as you mention, the degree of freedom that it provides simply cannot be matched by public transport.
It is possible, however, to shave some of the excessive and frivolous use, so I wouldn't necessarily bet that we'll have more cars in the future. I would bet that they won't disappear or even reduce in numbers particularly dramatically; considering population growth and economic development, at global level the best one could hope for, if anti-cars, is to keep absolute numbers as they are today - already a very tall order.
A lot of impaired people can't drive at all, their lives would be objectively improved if they could use bike lanes to move about. Look at any video of bike paths in the Netherlands and you will see a ton of people on mobility scooters.
>or you are carrying significant loads
Everything can be delivered to your door at the press of a button now.
>Everything can be delivered to your door at the press of a button now.
Right, could you provide me a solution if I want to buy an used coffee table off FB marketplace or something like that? Do I hire a van beforehand? What if I get there and that guy from FB already sold it to someone else? What if I don't like it? Do I try to call a big uber while standing outside under the rain with a damn table?
What if I go to IKEA to buy a mattress, it is right there, I can take it [if I had a car], but they tell me "sorry, our delivery slots are all taken for next 2 weeks"?
What if I want to order my weekly groceries like I always do, but suddenly we have a global pandemic, everybody wants groceries, and all I can get is pickup from a store 5 miles away?
If you don't have a car, when you have large items, there's either delivery available, you hire someone to transport it, or you rent a vehicle to go get it. I've lived without a car for 12 years. It's really not that big of a deal, and the situations you're discussing are pretty infrequent.
As for groceries, if you have a grocery store within a 5 minute walk (which is the norm in dense cities), you don't need to buy a week's worth of groceries at a time. I go to the grocery store for quick trips a couple times a week. If you have more groceries, there's little carts (the ones you usually see old people with) that you can pull behind you. The nicest thing about this approach is that your food will generally be fresher; not only because you use it closer to when you buy it, but also because the sales in the store is higher so food isn't sitting on the shelves for long periods of time.
You're considering a reduction of cars as if your city is like it currently is; just without cars. The reality is that there'll be an increase in pedestrians and bike riders, which will lead to higher density and more demand for smaller, closer shops, restaurants and grocery stores. It's something that will happen slowly, and in general your life will become more livable in many ways. Of course if you refuse to adapt, it'll be annoying in other ways, since there'll be less (or no) free parking, lower speed limits, more narrow streets, and you will have to pay greater attention to pedestrians and bikers.
I live without car my entire life and I am sick of it. I've had so many times when I thought "gosh, I wish I just had a car so I don't have to beg someone or pay someone".
For the reference, I live in London. Yes, it has stores within 5-10min radius. Normally I don't mind going there every other day. However, in March 2020 everybody was going fucking crazy and, you know, the government told me to not go out unless it is necessary.
Before that, I lived in French Alps. It was splendid, I commuted by bike. However, every single weekend I was facing a choice: either I beg someone to drive me to mountains or I pray that there is a bus going where I want to go and I can calculate my hike well enough to catch one of 3-5 buses a day to come back home.
Not having a car sucks balls. I really can't see how anyone can argue the opposite. I think what you mean is "you don't need a car every single day".
Get a car then. In general folks aren't saying that you can't have a car. We're saying that we want cities to prioritize people over cars, which includes removing free parking, removing parking minimums, having protected bike lanes, having slow streets, having better public transportation, having denser cities, etc. Basically, build cities for the people that live there, and not for people who commute in.
You can still have your car, but the convenience is going to cost you. And yes, I'm very much saying you don't need a car every day, even if you maybe need one on occasion. I currently live in tokyo and I've used a car maybe six times in the past two years.
Not having a car is incredible. I love it. I'd argue the opposite in that having a car sucks. I don't have to worry about where it's parked. I don't need a space at my home dedicated to it. I don't need to pay for a car loan, maintenance, gas, insurance, etc.
In the rare cases when I need a car for a day or more, I rent one. In the rare cases where I need a car briefly in the city I call an Uber (or hail a taxi). My average transportation costs per month are $60. With the amount I'm saving, I can have temporary access to vehicles whenever I want.
> You can still have your car, but the convenience is going to cost you.
In other words: poor people will have to pay for the environmental crimes that rich people commit.
I have lived with and without car, currently I only own a motorbike; but I can't help thinking the hypocrisy of modern green movements stinks to high heaven. Where I live, rich people in leafy neighborhoods get public money to build fashionable bike lanes they'll never use, but whenever it's time to close roads and "disincentive the use of cars" it's always the dense working-class neighbourhoods who get targeted. They keep adding flat congestion charges that businesses can just unload on consumers, which in practice restrict the options only of the less-well-off. Meanwhile, who owns the actually-polluting business interests...? Certainly not white-van-man or Mr. Urban Commuter.
Needing to own a car is a massive financial burden on the poor, who typically pay the cost of a new car for a used car, plus all the maintenance burden of owning an older used car.
You're misrepresenting my argument. Increasing access to public transportation greatly reduces the expenses for folks who are poor. Part of making a city dense is making it easy to build, and usually also includes different types of housing, which lowers pricing. Removing parking, and parking minimums makes it easier and cheaper to build.
I'm not advocating cities designed around people for green reasons. I'm advocating for them because I've lived in dense cities, which prioritize people and I've lived in places that are built for cars, and the ones built for people are simply nicer to live in, and generally cheaper to live in.
My current monthly transportation costs are $60 per month.
I do not disagree on the fact that dense cities can work better, particularly in a US context where cities are simply not built for humans. But in an European context, where I am, it is different. Here we already have very mixed environments, and green zealotry often fails to appreciate the long-term economic impact of certain proposals (to be charitable).
Before we restrict mobility option, we should ensure that compensation is paid by rich people through increased capital taxation, to funnel funds to public transport - at the very least.
> What if I want to order my weekly groceries like I always do, but suddenly we have a global pandemic, everybody wants groceries, and all I can get is pickup from a store 5 miles away?
Funnily enough I did exactly that with my bike during the initial lockdown.
> you will see a ton of people on mobility scooters.
Mobility scooters in bike lanes are dangerous - they take a lot of space and sit below line of sight of many bikers. They are dangerous to themselves on the road, and are dangerous to people on pavements. All in all, they tend to be a terrible idea.
> Everything can be delivered to your door at the press of a button now.
Mobility scooters are just fine in bike lanes. Your view is unimpeded on a bike; if you can't see a mobility scooter in front of you (especially since, as you say, they're a bit bigger), I dunno what to say.
Perfect, right? Somehow, not everyone driving to the dump to get rid of their trash - but one car picking it up in the neighborhood! Not everyone driving to the post office, but a single car bringing mail to the neighborhood!
I predicted a return to delivery of generics at the begin of the pandemic (e.g. milk, bread, toilet paper) and was obviously very wrong - but it sure would be more efficient.
Ow, you should experience one of the tropical rains in my hometown (Yucatan peninsula). There's NO way you will stay dry through your public-transport experience once it starts raining. In fact, if you take the bus and it starts to rain before you have to get down, you would normally accept that you'll get soaked, no matter how many coats, umbrellas and other water-repellent mechanisms you have.
>Cars are like distributed computing - millions of independent transportation options are superior to top-down, limited public transportation.
And yet we do most of our computing in centralized centers in the cloud and as SaaS - with the machines they have being increasingly more like dumb terminals for most people's needs.
Also "are superior to top-down, limited public transportation" on what metric?
Not on energy and environmental costs, congestion, and several more besides...
Cars will be a luxury due to unavoidable environmental regulations and general decreasing economies as the world's population gets older.
I am pretty convinced that my current ICE vehicle is my last one, or next to last one, and that probably I won't have a justification to buy an electric one after the end of life of my last ICE car.
IDK there are lots of games you can play with accounting when you have as much cash flow Uber has and not operating at a profit is more of a tax-avoidance strategy than a 70B dollar scam on public market investors...
It's also wild how much money they need to commit to lobbying on the state and local level against union interests.
This is a single point that got my attention. He says that we, society, should run transportation for a net loss, because it benefits everybody, and especially benefits poor, who can't afford living close to their work.
This is sounds about right, but at the same time it creates an incentive to live even farther, because farther is cheaper.
Imagine me, a poor man, already settled for my current commute from point A to point B for two hours, and point A suddenly gets a better transportation, and I have one hour to myself because of that.
I may spend it to my health or my family, but at the same time I may choose to cash this hour out by moving to point C, where I still have a two hour commute (because it is one hour from point A), but rent is cheaper.
So this would be basically a subsidy, but there's another nuance. Rent at point A will go up because of better transportation. This is the most sure thing in the whole reasoning, because everybody old enough just saw things like that: subway station opens, and rent around it goes up. Moreover, there's a construction of higher class condo starts immediately, even before the opening.
So in the end said subsidy goes to the pockets of landlords and development companies. What am I missing here?
I think the most interesting subject is the question of just how are we going to manage the climate shift? It seems to me that we have all the technology we need already, and it's a matter of organization and motivation. We even have negotiation and communication technology (I'm thinking of things like Nonviolent Communication here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication ) that we can utilize.
The city has declared an all-out war against cars
for the last 10 years at least.
They have done some productive things, some annoying things
and some downright sadistic things as far as driving.
Removing damn near all city parking spaces.
Regulating away even more.
There is still some parking in garages and private lots but it is $$$$.
Plus with the constant development in the city
(Unrelated to the citys activities) you never know
what roads will be closed temporarily and semi permanently (years)
As one example:
The national government decided that their safety required that
an important underground car tunnel had to be closed to rebuild it
2 meters farther down. [1]
That is going to take a while.
If you live downtown and you have a bike it is kinda nice.
Except we have winters (should not surprise many) when travelling
by bike a good option.
(Yes there is a tiny minority who risk life and limb by biking all
year around)
Most people dont ride a bike if the weather is bad even during the summer.
Oslo is also far from flat.
Riding around in Amsterdam or Denmark
its pretty flat. Makes riding a lot easier.
In Oslo we go up and down, up and down etc.
This is mitigated in part by a sharp increase in bikes with electric engines.
(Which I am not a huge fan of since it takes a near zero polluting vehicle
and bang on a not ideally green battery)
I think spending so many millions of dollars to make Oslo better for
bikes is an unfortunate strategy. If they instead spent the money
in improving and expanding public transit (something sorely needed)
it would benefit a lot more people all year round.
I have been a strong advocate for public transit most of my life
and a staunch rider for most of my life.
I dont live downtown. It is terribly expensive. I cant afford to.
Until a few years ago where I was involved in an accident and
I am no longer able to ride a bike, or use public transport.
I am restricted to travelling by car. (or taxi if I could afford it).
The nature of my injuries do not qualify me for the nationwide
disabled person program where you get a sticker in your car that
makes the city easier to handle by car).
Due to the anti car movement, freedom/options has been severely downgraded.
There are museums, cultural events, restaurants, and people to visit that
I simply cannot do anymore in any practical sense.
I miss that.
I know it is selfish.
But if you were in my shoes, you would find it annoying as well
Believe me.
Huge shopping malls outside downtown usually have a lot of parking and
accessible but it's not at all interesting for em.
Aside from myself, for my father and 10.000s of other senior citizens
who are not in the best of health they suffer from the same issues.
As do thousands of others who are in some way disabled but do not qualify
for the national standard.
(There are still a lot of senior citizens who benefit from it.
It is not black or white)
Anti car movement seems best for rich, healthy young people.
Rich in that they can usually afford to live downtown or right
next ot a subway station.
Health because you do need to be in decent health to ride a bike.
even ebikes.
Young in that all physical activity is easier when you are young.
(lets say less than 50)
So from embracing it, I have gone on to hate it.
It is not inclusive.
As an ironic aside:
The city wants to move towards 0 cars in the city or as close as they can get.
HOWEVER, there are toll stations anywhere and the city has become dependent on
the income from them. When Covid was in full effect and a lot less driving
was taking place the city had budget problems.
They do not have a plan on how to replace that income (yet).
> Removing damn near all city parking spaces. Regulating away even more. There is still some parking in garages and private lots but it is $$$$.
The key thing to understand here is that the parking wasn't cheap before and it didn't get expensive suddenly when it was subject to market conditions. It was always expensive, but government was subsidizing your car-centric lifestyle. Now it's not and the true price of that lifestyle has been revealed to you.
I live in a city. I own a car. I pay 25 EUR/month for a personal parking space reserved just for me, just outside my home. If the value of real estate in the area would be included in the price for parking, the price would be somewhere around 250 EUR/month, 10 times more. Though the comparison isn't entirely fair, if parking would pay for it's usage of land, I'd guess we would have no on-street parking, narrower streets and instead parking would be in multi-story parking garages.
So although I'm one of those who benefit from the cheap parking, I do think it's stupid, and in the end it just causes sprawl making us all worse off.
on the other hand, road maintenance is also quite expensive, which wouldn't be an issue if there were no - or at least far fewer - cars. parking spots are lost to all usage except for parking; it costs me 100€ per year. on the other hand i pay taxes for road maintenance, which is partially financed by taxes on fuel.
people often mention that bicycle paths need maintenance too, which leads to the fourth power rule: "What these researchers found is that damage to the roadbed is proportional to the 4th power of the axle load of the vehicle, and they called this “the Generalized Fourth Power Law.” This means that if you double the weight on an axle, your vehicle does sixteen times the damage to the road.
...
You saw that, right? A tractor trailer causes roughly 6500 times more road damage than a Prius.
...
We see the Prius does 38,000 times more road damage than a bicycle."
The absolute arrogance of thinking that the city should use some of their most valuable real estate so that you can cheaply store your personal property is baffling.
>If you live downtown and you have a bike it is kinda nice. Except we have winters (should not surprise many) when travelling by bike a good option. (Yes there is a tiny minority who risk life and limb by biking all year around)
Entirely a question of infrastructure maintenance and entirely not a question of geography. Cars only work in the winter because of the high amount of money spent on making roads accommodate winter driving, and the same is not done for bicycle infrastructure.
>This is mitigated in part by a sharp increase in bikes with electric engines. (Which I am not a huge fan of since it takes a near zero polluting vehicle and bang on a not ideally green battery)
If only someone told you about this other type of vehicle that has to run on fossil fuels, or be extremely heavy in order to carry around a decently-sized battery.
>I think spending many millions of dollars to make Oslo better for bikes is an unfortunate strategy. If they instead spent the money in improving and expanding public transit (something sorely needed) it would benefit a lot more people all year round.
False dichotomy - it's entirely possible to do both, in particular if you continue to divest in absurdly expensive car infrastructure.
I'm sorry to hear about your injury. It's odd that you do not qualify for an exception if you are as restricted as you say. I wish you luck in getting that sorted out . That doesn't mean that we need to accommodate non-disabled car users in cities, though.
>Anti car movement seems best for rich, healthy young people.
Not at all. People with reduced mobility generally benefit from not having to risk being hit by cars when they traverse the built environment, plus public transportation is a great option for people who are not allowed to drive on account of their disability. Finally, those that do have a disability that requires them to move around using a car, they benefit from having streets with less car traffic on, so that they can efficiently move about the built environment.
>Entirely a question of infrastructure maintenance and entirely not a question >of geography. Cars only work in the winter because of the high amount of money >spent on making roads accommodate winter driving, and the same is not done for >bicycle infrastructure.
Have you ever lived in a place that has -real- winters?
Show me a city that has real winters with real cold,
real snow, real ice which lasts months where the city has accomplished
what you mention.
Yes, I have lived in a place that has real winters, unless you don't think the northern part of Sweden qualifies.
For a city that does winter cycling properly, refer to Oulu in Finland. Winter cycling is common, because the infrastructure is well-maintained, and hence not an issue.
1) Its fairly flat.
2) It is unique in that it stays consistently below 0 for extended periods.
Avoiding problems with ice, rain and so on.
3. The median age is young. (but growing consistently older)
During the summer in Oulu bikes account for 19% of travel.
During the winter it is about 9%.
During the winter in Helsinki its 7%
So they do use their bikes a lot.
And a lot more than Oslo.
But over 90% travel by car or bus in the wintertime.
I'm sorry to hear that you're no longer able to ride public transportation or a bicycle. Your comment is like a full bingo card of anti-cycling fallacies though.[0]
Ultimately, the more people who can get around without driving, the less traffic there will be for someone like yourself. You indirectly benefit from better transportation infrastructure, even if you're not able to take advantage of it directly.
sorry, but it seems you're an extreme outlier. disabled but not in a way the government recognizes, unable to use public transport (or e-/bikes) but able to operate cars. the problem here is that you don't seem to fall into any exempt category, so accommodating you would mean going back to the fully car centric city.
in my experience most of those people who would benefit from reducing car traffic and boosting alternate forms would be the disabled, elderly or kids and the poor.
additionally, riding bikes (even e-bikes) is not just for the healthy, it improves health. this might be of scant comfort for those who area already crippled by decades of dependence on cars, but i see it as an investment in the health of future generations. cycling for the "less than 50" is a far too low a number, there are plenty of 50 plus riders who leave me in the dust. many of the ladies i see riding around look like 70+.
I think a lot of people are dismissing some of your very valid points here, cherry-picking things that annoy them. Tough to avoid with a comment of this size, of course, but I do think it's dismissing how much of a role public transit plays in this picture. It sounds like you're saying that public transit has actually gotten worse in recent years in Oslo ("There are museums, cultural events, restaurants, and people to visit that I simply cannot do anymore in any practical sense. I miss that.")... but for the select group of people who CANNOT travel the city using bikes or public transit. Does Oslo really not have exceptions to the "zero car movement" for inviduals with disabilities like yourself? Amsterdam, for instance, allows microcars to use bike lanes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9ly7JjqEb0 ... which is mildly annoying by bike, but seems like a great solution to let disabled folks take advantage of bike infrastructure.
Overall I understand your frustration with how the city accommodates you, but I don't think the solution is allowing more cars in the city. It sounds like you would be best off if the city introduced some solution like microcars, forced all private vehicles (barring exceptions, like moving trucks and deliveries) from the city, and let you get around without traffic. Not sure if bikes are really causing the problems for you.
> Except we have winters (should not surprise many) when travelling by bike a good option. (Yes there is a tiny minority who risk life and limb by biking all year around)
I live in a US city that gets decent amounts of snow December->April. I really, really, really want to bike around my city, but:
- they don't do a good job clearing the roads or bike lanes
- (and much more importantly) private cars drive like maniacs and I'm convinced they'd kill me if I tried to bike when it snows
Obviously when it's actively snowing, it's hard to bike unless your city is really, really on top of clearing snow from bike paths. But the biggest obstacle for me by far is other people driving their personal cars around way too fast when there's snow on the road, which feels way too dangerous to risk.
One more point:
> I dont live downtown because it is far too expensive.
And here is the issue: if you don't live IN a city, it's insane to expect that you can take a car in every time you want to do something in the city. I live in my city, but I completely understand that I can't do certain activities, like concerts and public events, in other cities when it's going to be busy. Because I don't live in those cities. It is expensive, yes -- but that level of access is why it's so expensive.
I wonder how a real self-driving taxi may look like if optimized for size. Something like Smart For Two, with upper part folding inside when not in use by humans. This way it may be stored in a vertical carousel or otherwise optimize available parking space vertically while charging.
I briefly thought about golf cart with folding tent shade above, but it is not that viable: climat control would be too complicated. But it may be actually a lower-grade variant for adequate weather or undemanding passengers.
The article is illustrative for a number of reasons, but something stuck out to me which bugged me, which is that it's common for people on one side of an issue to throw out minor comments which would have major implications if true, but which generally feel quite unexamined.
For example, cars are pitted against cycling as if one is somehow diametrically opposed to the other. But we have empirical examples of this not being the case.
I live in a city which is pretty car heavy (London). It's not LA, we don't have sprawling freeways everywhere, but the road outside my house is lined with cars on either side, there are multiple ring roads that are 2, 3, 4 lane roads, the vast majority of the city centre is not pedestrianised, etc.
Yet I can and do ride my bike every day, in areas both with and without cycle lanes, and so do lots of other people. The time taken for me to get from point A to point B via bicycle could not be meaningfully improved that much - if I had a direct monorail-style route it'd be a bit faster, sure.
Very very roughly, NL is at 2.5 deaths or serious injuries per 10 million km cycled, UK is at about 10, and the US is at about 40.
I'm going to use this data and further make an unsubstantiated claim that in the UK, London probably has fewer accidents than a more car heavy town.
So yeah, it's more dangerous than the stereotypical example of a cycling paradise, but it's not some sort of hellscape.
The point then is that you don't need to eliminate cars in order to create an environment in which people both have and exercise the ability to walk and cycle. You do need the roads to not be urban motorways.
The main part is that drivers understand that cyclists are a thing that exist. In London you don't expect to drive about at 30mph everywhere because well, the road is thin, bicycles, buses, taxis, people stepping out, whatever. It's not a divided motorway, you don't own it.
Another example is the idea that geometry is inherently against cars. It's inherently against cars the use of cars for commuting from a large suburban area to a small business district. But there exists no geometrical constraint that effects me driving from village/town/suburb A to village/town/suburb B.
This assumes again though that you have a balanced town/country plan. If you make everything a massive big expansive road and spread out too far, then sure, cars end up predominating.
I guess moderation, and the use of cost-benefit analysis, is just boring. No-one wants to campaign for it, and would anyone even listen? Is it catchy?
It is a balance, but is it the right balance? London is breaching the European and UK air pollution limits. My dad was a very confident cyclist but has almost stopped due to the accidents and near misses. He didn't wait for a fatality.
I feel like the demographics of who cycles in London is pretty limited, it's the young confident cyclists. No children, very few tandem bikes with children, few women [1].
Much of London doesn't have room for cycle lanes (we have a few, and many mixed cycle/bus lanes. Even those are often used by turning vehicles rather than being physically separated like in NL). US transformations, once they get rid of (enough of) the cars, have lots of space for BRT, or cycle lanes, or etc.
London also has a not-enough-parking policy for the city centre, which helps reduce car traffic, parking minimums are the bane of dense, cycle-friendly and pedestrian-friendly development. In other words, the picture of a high street is showing good transit first of all, not good cycling infrastructure.
I guess that from the perspective of someone who both cycles and drives on the roads, the balance seems to self-evidently be correct (or at least close to it) because I both want to and are able to do both.
It's not _perfect_, but yeah, my city is not the M1 (main motorway/highway in the UK), you can cycle in it, if you don't want to, you don't have to. There are loads of other options, not only the car but the train, the bus, walking, etc.
I've never really been a fan of using the statistical approach because it doesn't work without first defining some sort of goal.
Changing the percentage share, or absolute level, of either cycling or driving, in either the positive or negative direction, isn't something that I have any interest in.
My original post is kind of aimed at that problem - that it seems as if these issues are painted as "pro-cycling group wants X" or "pro-driving group wants Y" when really what we need is "pro-both group wants X/2 and Y/2" or something like that. Freedom of choice is generally better than the alternative.
Yes: I think the official injury stats are only part of the story. When I lived in London I got knocked off my bike by cars or motorbikes several times. None of them were bad enough to be reported, but they left me with bruises and scrapes.
Because of that, there's absolutely no way I'd consider cycling from the station to the office now that I commute.
>So yeah, it's more dangerous than the stereotypical example of a cycling paradise, but it's not some sort of hellscape.
Last week I had somebody do a really close pass at 50 or 60 mph. It was obviously an attempt at intimidation and to some extent it worked, it did make me think about why I cycle rather than drive. That sort of thing is going to put off a lot of people which is why we need a lot more infrastructure.
Yeah, I hate cycling out in the country. It's kind of interesting.
I have friends that consider this to be a fun weekend out, clean air, birdsong, etc.
But to me it's just super boring (I find the city visually stimulating and like a real-world progress bar) and also quite dangerous. If I fall off my bike in the city there's a pretty good chance I'll be alright. If I fall off on an A-road I'm very very dead.
Counterpoint: The picture you linked doesn't look at all like a 'reasonable balance' to me, but more like they just slapped some paint on the crossing and called it a day.
Are there roads with no separate cycling infrastructure? Certainly, but the urban landscape tends to be designed such that motor traffic is discouraged from using such roads.
In contrast, the picture you linked looks frankly horrid for cyclists, by Dutch standards. The road looks to be busy with both cars and buses, but there doesn't appear to be any substantial cycling infrastructure present, except for a singular buffer.
In general, many Dutch people (including myself) would be terrified of cycling on London's roads.
Sure, but I would argue that if the goal is to reduce car dependence (not just for some cycling enthusiasts, but among the general population), separate cycle lanes are a must. After all, to lure drivers out of their cars, cycling must not only be minimally feasible, but actually attractive (i.e. safe and convenient).
Consider also the fact that Dutch cycling infrastructure hasn't always existed: it's a result of decades of focused policy. For example, consider this road (in front of busy Den Haag HS railway station) in the '80s vs. now: https://www.denhaagfietst.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/head...
On the other hand, London compensates for its lack of cycling infrastructure with its excellent transit, which is commendable.
I think this is probably a better top line comment on this thread. I don't think that London is car dependent.
Most of the US is, large parts of the UK are including many of our cities.
My argument is that London is a happy middle ground where you can cycle, or get the tube, or ride the bus, or use a car, and all of those work and that's fine. If anything the car is probably quite a bit less convenient than the others, mainly due to the geometry issues outlined in the article, and you have to really want to drive for the sake of it.
Though it's probably a good way to frame it. Car dependence is bad, having cars is not. My street is full of them yet I also live ten minutes away from a few different tube lines. Best of both worlds and this means I use my car maybe 50-100 times a year instead of 500+.
I have another friend. From my house at this time, I can cycle there in ~20 mins, drive in ~25-30, get the bus in ~55, the train in ~45mins or walk in ~1h20min.
Most of the time I cycle. So am I cycling dependent then? No, I'm just choosing the best option! It'd be annoying if it was gotten rid of out of some quest just to remove cycling because someone didn't like cycling or whatever.
I feel justified for being pro car egostically by looking back at the pandemic.
When employers and politicians herded workers through tightly packed public transport with zero effective protection (partially due to lack of discipline, partially due to lack of investment), I felt save & secure in my movable tin box.
Yes, I am paying a lot for that box.
And, do realize, that public transport is and will be for the plebs. Even if it's green. Not spoken in derogative manner, it's just that. Noone of high enough status is going to bike or limit themselves in any way, shape, or form. If they do bike, they'll be taking the car when you aren't looking or helicopter in. That probably still is going to solve the problem of mass transit, but the few who are not mass are going to continue to enjoy unlimited individual and privat transport whereas the rest of us won't. It's a decline in a dimension of freedom and not recognizing and admitting that fact is dishonest.
I thought the “geometry hates cars” premise had a lot of promise. I’m a bit disappointed that it turned out to be a footnote to a long discussion of Uber.
Maybe fuel for a blog post? There are some great urban planning and architectural directions this could be taken.
It's a common phrase/point in anti-car activist circles; it's already background knowledge for the guest, the host, and the audience. Hence the "I mean, I don’t have to tell The War on Cars this" that Doctorow prefaces it with.
Don't want to be a nitpicker, but that article is from ~5 years ago and here we are talking about Uber. That seems to be the opposite of "called it", no? :)
Yes, the joke was that I took the title of the article literally and it says "nobody will be talking about uber". Yet, at least us two are talking about it and so is the rest of this HN page. Therefore, "nobody" cannot be literally true.
You are not wrong. Uber is still a multi-billion dollar company that provides useful services to many people. I used them last week to order food. In 2016, Uber was dominating the news cycle left and right. And by comparison, it has become quiet around the company.
Y'all writing these articles consistently forget about rural areas that both have no consistent internet and no Uber-type services. No food delivery, no grocery store (drive 45 min hour for a real grocery store).
I think the name of the concept "Anti-Car" is a bit misleading. A lot of people in power want to get cars off the road, but forget the important part, which is "People need to have alternatives that are BETTER"
Well run public transportation is always better than a car. Cheaper, easier, faster, and less stressful. The goal is for people living in urban areas to not need a car. Not for them to have to go without a car. People living in rural areas would still need cars.
We've built our cities so that you absolutely need a car to get where you need to go. Strong towns and Not Just Bikes aren't advocating for the end of cars so much as a re-think of our urban planning.
Imagine driving into town from 45 minutes out and having zero traffic and parking right next to the grocery store. Or even better, being able to drive 15 minutes away to the nearest walkable town, with affordable housing and a market with everything you need. Not needing to drive 45 minutes because car centric infrastructure killed the town and forced everyone to drive hours to a car clogged metro area funded by new development just to get groceries until road maintenance kills that city too.
In the interview they discuss Uber in the context of cities. Which makes sense, because if you look at a heat map of Uber activity, rural areas don't really register. So it's not that anyone's ignoring rural areas. They're just irrelevant to the topic at hand.
I couldnt really read this article due to the tone beyond the introduction where they talk about the business model.
They talk very dismissively about the whole thing, but I believe the business model was clear for Uber. Build a new transportation network to replace our current taxis, then other things, using technology. Once self driving cars are a reality, they have a strong position to be dominant.
Their real issues have been execution once (losing to doordash should have never happened) as well as the delay of self driving cars. Both started happening really once they ousted Travis.
The pandemic also hurt their core business dramatically.
"then other things, using technology" is about the level of sophistication I've come to expect here.
Uber had two paths to success: either invent self-driving cars and get enough of them to replace private car ownership, while costs of cleaning and maintenance are handled by riders fees. OR Use VC dollars to subsidize a taxi service, while not investing in infrastructure and simultaneously fighting against regulations that protect riders (such as background checks and commercial insurance).
Guess which one they're stuck on? Because self-driving cars haven't happened yet, and won't happen in a meaningful way on city streets for some time yet.
But you know what? I've ridden an autonomous vehicle in a major city. Line 14 of the Paris Metro is driverless. It's also a train, and a public good. Uber would rather not see the proliferation of that kind of self driving vehicle.
> Once self driving cars are a reality, they have a strong position to be dominant.
Everyone presumes this but it may not actually be true. I used to work with perhaps the most preeminent tech journalist covering Uber/Lyft/self-driving cars, and he would always point out that even if self-driving cars became a thing, would Uber now have to own a massive fleet of cars?
Uber will set up a program where you rent your self driving car to them while you aren’t using it. This lets them have their customers keep paying maintenance and depreciation (and only the ones who actually do the math will realize it costs them money).
This seems extremely unlikely to happen. If people were truly interested in renting out their cars while they aren't using them (and letting them get driven into the ground), Turo or Getaround would be huge.
Rental car companies usually have a fleet of leased vehicles, and current Uber/Lyft drivers are very often leases as well. It seems likely that future self-driving Ubers/Lyfts would continue that trend.
Yeah this article made a lot of claims that seem completely untrue. For example, CD says that Uber's money is running out. If you look at their net assets on hand it went up last year.
This past year with tighter labor markets has shown that Uber does have substantial ability to increase prices without losing all of their riders. They are running losses, but the margins are not that far from profitable. For every dollar you spend on Uber, Uber's costs are $1.02 on average.
I mean, it's easy to grow when you're selling dollars for $0.90. That's all Uber have ever done, and I find it astonishing that they haven't gone broke yet.
That's Cory's whole schtick - he critiques big corps. I follow him a bit and most times his analysis is good and other times he dismisses things that don't fit in his ideological viewpoint.
Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but hear me out: the issue of social and physical comfort in public transit is probably at least as important as the issue of efficiency. In public transit, the expectation of adhering to a social contract is almost non-existent. Women deal with creepy gropers, everyone deals with the smell of urine, and of course there's the ubiquitous annoyance of music played over phone speakers (or worse, bluetooth).
If you want people to prefer to take transit, and you should want that, you need to deal with the lack of a social contract on public transit. That means, in other words, that behavior not tolerated in a private business (such as a bar or restaurant) can't be tolerated on public transit either.
For urban liberals, that means confronting some uncomfortable choices. A public space (and transit is public) is supposed to be open to all, but if we want public spaces to be livable, that probably means smells and behaviors are more tightly regulated in public, either through direct enforcement by transit police (unlikely) or more social pressure (also unlikely).
> Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but hear me out: the issue of social and physical comfort in public transit is probably at least as important as the issue of efficiency. In public transit, the expectation of adhering to a social contract is almost non-existent. Women deal with creepy gropers, everyone deals with the smell of urine, and of course there's the ubiquitous annoyance of music played over phone speakers (or worse, bluetooth).
My incredibly liberal (left of Bernie) economics professor used to say that you need to build public transit infrastructure for the middle class, not the poor. It increases ridership amongst those paying the lion's share of taxes and causes development along high utility economic corridors, spreading outward, trickling down. It stops the service from being stigmatized and increases ridership at all levels.
>In public transit, the expectation of adhering to a social contract is almost non-existent.
That's not the case in the UK or the rest of Europe. Of course there are occasional nut jobs out there but the fact that so many people use public transport controls that sort of behaviour.
I've encountered far more "nut jobs" driving in Scotland than I have on public transport...
Edit: The only awkward scene I ever witness on my occasional commute into Edinburgh by train is when two laptop users sitting across from from each other accidentally touch screens - of course, both people immediately apologise. It's hell.
It's not just that. Europe in general has at least somewhat decent mental health care, way less veterans with untreated horrible PTSD, somewhat working involuntary admission to mental institutions, and somewhat affordable housing - meaning you have a lot less homeless and mentally unstable persons forced by circumstances to survive in/on/near public transit.
Not to say Europe is perfect: London, Berlin and other urban areas certainly have their issues in all of the mentioned areas. But we are miles ahead of the US.
The public transit in the US smells like piss for the same reasons you see human feces on the street: there's no accessible public restrooms. We don't need stricter enforcement on public urination, we need to provide restrooms so people don't need to do so.
The problem you describe with public transport is basically a tautology; if the only people using public transport are the ones who cannot afford automobiles, then yeah, maybe we should expect it to be a bit of a shitshow. Liberal has nothing to do with it, except that maybe liberals are able to understand this a priori.
Public transit designed to get poor people to work usually operate in a state of failure (bad schedule, long trip times, bad environment). Public transit designed to be a better alternative to driving for everyone tends to be fantastic and useful - and ironically helps solve the getting people to work problem, too. Maybe focus on building a better alternative to cars?
I'm not sure what point you're making unless it's to underscore the tautology. The better alternative exists. It's only the political will to implement it that's lacking.
Most mass transit systems that are actually built are the kind focused on getting poor people to work. The results are that cars remain the best option, often even for the very people the system was designed for.
What are some concrete examples of these systems that are specifically "designed to get poor people to work?" At first, I thought you were confusing the relationship between a transit system's design and implementation with its budget, but it sounds like I'm wrong.
Almost every city in "flyover" states outside Chicago are this way. Most often they are in the form of bus systems, and the routes, frequency of routes and location of stops make it very clear what the purpose of the system actually is. Most of the people who the system was designed for would rather take an uber and save 30-45 minutes of their life each way. It's really sad because great public transportation makes city living much better for everyone. When it's not great, it sucks for everyone and people that can't afford a car pay a huge tax in time spent riding and waiting for the bus. In fact, it makes owning a car more attractive.
> Most often they are in the form of bus systems, and the routes, frequency of routes and location of stops make it very clear what the purpose of the system actually is.
Yes, of course. A naive person might think that city budgets were the issue, but "focused on getting poor people to work" is doubtless the mission statement for each of these concrete flyover state examples (outside Chicago). I agree and it's really sad, because if you have the political will and finances to send a crappy bus by a tilting signpost once an hour, surely you can whip up a tram network to rival Melbourne or Budapest's.
> I agree and it's really sad, because if you have the political will and finances to send a crappy bus by a tilting signpost once an hour, surely you can whip up a tram network to rival Melbourne or Budapest's.
This is very true. There are probably 20 cities in the US that are decent public transit away from going from ~1M population to 4-5M population, with all the opportunities (and problems) that go with growth. It's really sad, because the just continue to sprawl and sprawl, and quality of life goes down with congestion on the beltway.
> For urban liberals, that means confronting some uncomfortable choices. A public space (and transit is public) is supposed to be open to all, but if we want public spaces to be livable, that probably means smells and behaviors are more tightly regulated in public, either through direct enforcement by transit police (unlikely) or more social pressure (also unlikely).
All you list here is repressive regulation, with all the problems that come with it - e.g. both unintended (correlation between homelessness distribution and ethnicity) and intended (discriminatory behavior by police) racism.
The worst problem in public from a safety point of view are homeless and mentally unstable people, and then "wild urination" and litter. To use police against the first two is just plain inhumane even if it's the sad "standard" - the solution to these problems are affordable housing and accessible mental health care. Using repression only shifts the problem to somewhere else, it does not solve the problem.
As for wild urination and litter, the issue here is that public toilets and trash bins are scarce. In Munich for example, trains used to have litter bins at every seat, buses and trams had tiny litter bins bins for tickets and small litter and a lot of subway stations had public, free-to-use toilets - both were cut due to cost-cutting, and then the problems arose.
> As for wild urination and litter, the issue here is that public toilets and trash bins are scarce.
Yes! I don't get why more people (and elected officials) don't realize this. The city I live in (Philadelphia) has approximately zero public toilets. Many of our train stations also constantly smell of urine. These two things seem related?
> Yes! I don't get why more people (and elected officials) don't realize this.
They realize, but they don't care. Their equation is: Why put in public taxpayer money (and thus, risk their own "political capital") for a service that's:
- mostly going to be used by homeless (and a few people with medical issues like IBS)
- going to be constantly vandalized (graffiti), mistreated (discarding tampons and condoms in toilets is a "classic"), abused ("glory holes", drug consumption, ...) or in questionable hygienic conditions (e.g. people flinging poo to the walls and ceilings), requiring a significant maintenance budget
- mostly going to improve the quality of a service (public transit) that mostly poor and other down-on-their-luck people are using
when the ones that vote for the politicians don't profit?
Not to mention that many small city/town budgets are already severely under strain.
Middle-class and rich people and companies don't need public transport, they have cars, and they don't need public toilets as they have toilets at home, at their employment place and if need be can afford to buy a snack at a restaurant to use their toilet.
That perverse incentive is why it needs regulation of minimum standards for urban areas at a state or better federal level.
> Middle-class and rich people and companies don't need public transport, they have cars
This I think misses the geometric constraint here: in particularly dense city centers, there isn't really room for cars. I'm fairly well-off and have a car in the city, but I wouldn't bother trying to drive it around here, because it's honestly less convenient than taking public transport.
You can drive to your destination fairly quickly, but you then have to find a place to park the car and walk from there to where you're going. In Center City especially, that can take nearly as long as the drive there in the first place. No thanks.
My car mostly only gets used when I want to leave the city.
> mostly going to be used by homeless (and a few people with medical issues like IBS)
This is a weird trope, and also just generally cruel. First: when public restrooms are generally available, they tend to be well used (I use them frequently in Tokyo, for instance). Second: even if they are mostly used by the homeless, that's good for them and us, because it means they have a humane place to use the bathroom, and it means we see less feces on the street and fewer places smell like piss.
I'm not describing my own viewpoint here, but the thought train of average centrist to right-wing politician.
They don't care in a positive way about poor, ill or otherwise disadvantaged people unless they can use their plight to gather votes (which is a rare occasion in itself).
Never did I say that and I never will. Repressive regulation is almost never the answer, it's the last resort because it carries so many problems with it - not just racism, classism and other discrimination, but plainly the fact that repression does not solve the underlying cause of the problem you want to repress.
You did say it implicitly. Dont understand your point about the underlying cause. If a homeless person is peeing on a subway and you keep them off subways. the problem IS solved.
Then the homeless person will pee somewhere else in unsanitary condition. As said: all that is doing is shift the problem around, when the real problem is that the homeless person does not have access to a facility to relieve himself - which ffs is considered to be one of the basic human rights!
JFC "these people" are American citizens, and to a disturbingly large part former veterans that risked their life in one of the various wars the US fought and got (c)PTSD as a result.
Honestly, I think the victim narrative is coming from you. I don't really agree with a lot of the conclusions here (you seem to agree a lot more than I do), but they aren't pursuing a victim narrative. They have agency and take on responsibility, which victims don't do.
I think the focus on corporations is just because the focus of this episode is specifically on Uber. I don't think any serious anti-car movement would fail to place blame with the government.
The government and corporations can simultaneously be complicit. If the interview doesn't touch on this, it's fair to point it out, but turning it into the subject of a rant seems a bit much.
Maybe corporations just want to sell their products, and governments help them if they think it benefits the people. Like maybe the government noticed rents are high in the city, so they thought with cars people could afford nice homes in the countryside?
Even if that reasoning might have been wrong in the end, it just seems off to attribute everything to nefarious motives. It's the whole language - conspiring instead of cooperating, for example.
>Leftists are always victims (of the "bezzle" according to Cory Doctorow). Someone made them buy cars and move to the suburbs. Someone built cities in an unsustainable way. And so on. It was never their own free choice, they are never responsible for anything themselves.
Similarly how liberals are always blaming themselves, like people in an abusive relationship/family that have learned it's their fault, and are always eager to bend over and take abuse.
Fair point, but even in an abusive relationship the solution is to take on responsibility and get out of the relationship, not whine until somebody frees you from it.
With regard to cars, bicycles already exist. I personally have never owned a car in my life.
>Fair point, but even in an abusive relationship the solution is to take on responsibility and get out of the relationship, not whine until somebody frees you from it.
Well, in that sense, aren't leftists also "taking on responsibility and getting out of the relationship", by e.g. organizing, protesting, throwing down governments, and establishing global socialism? :)
>With regard to cars, bicycles already exist. I personally have never owned a car in my life.
Yes, but what's missing is that a city structured for cars is already a different beast than a city structured for pedestrians (and/or bikers). You can always personally use or not use a car in city X. But if X is built for car use, it wont be a good city to walk or bike in.
So, if enough people want to reshape it, they should be able to have a go.
Like the car people had their go in the prior, car-focused re-shaping of the city (there was one, since cities that existed pre-car were initially built more walking friendly), but them with the trillion dollar car industry and lots of private interest to assist them.
"Well, in that sense, aren't leftists also "taking on responsibility and getting out of the relationship", by e.g. organizing, protesting, throwing down governments, and establishing global socialism? :)"
That is just crying for help, not creating what they want themselves.
"Yes, but what's missing is that a city structured for cars is already a different beast than a city structured for pedestrians (and/or bikers). You can always personally use or not use a car in city X. But if X is built for car use, it wont be a good city to walk or bike in."
There it is again. They should not whine about "cities being built for car use", they should build (or move to) cities build for bicycle use, if that is what they want. Cities are being built by people, not by some mysterious higher powers.
"So, if enough people want to reshape it, they should be able to have a go."
Exactly. They should just do it, not whine about capitalism.
We've got to stop with the whole "everyone gets a quarter acre and a truck" mentality. I live out in the middle of nowhere and everyday construction begins on a new home, filling in every gap of what used to be farmland. All of us are 15 minutes away from the nearest anything. To be fair though, I'm sure they're all moving out here for the same reasons I did. Housing near work or transit is so scarce and expensive that it just doesn't make any sense. We're spending the same as we would in the city center on a house, but we're getting a mansion out in the country instead of a shack in the city.