Designing transport for humans, not econs | Hacker News Reader

Designing transport for humans, not econs

behavioralscientist.org

31 pointsagronaut17 comments

I strongly agree with "The greatest fallacy is that travel time is wasted time, so the only option is to speed it up or cut it out."

Most people probably don't mind spending extra time traveling somewhere, especially if:

- They can zone out, use their phone, or talk to friends while traveling.

- They feel safe and strangers won't bother them

- Comfortable climate (heating/cooling)

- It is clear how to get to the destination, e.g., clear signage, GPS integration with a phone app, etc.

I’d agree with that to a point. It breaks down when the difference in time is greater than an hour. I’m not leaving Boston on a train to Las Vegas or a boat to Aruba.

It also breaks down when the alternative transportation (typically an alternative to a car in the US) doesn’t provide a key function that the car provides.

If I’m going to play a round of golf or softball game after work, my car doubles as a secure (enough) locker for that equipment and transportation directly to the sports location. If I’m going to a town 30 miles away, my car serves as a conveyance not only for that 30 miles but also for local transit while I’m there. My car is likewise ready for me in 5 minutes of walking to, unlocking, and starting it. I never “miss” my car by it leaving without me and once I’m there, I never have to wait for my next car to depart.

If it was easy to displace cars, more progress would already have been made, because they’re expensive already in terms of fixed costs. Once the fixed costs are covered, the apparent cost per incremental trip seems very modest.

You make very good points that I have not seen "shared mobility" advocates address. The idea that people will give up owning cars... well, it presumes a whole lot of other lifestyle changes have happened beforehand.

Cars must be very valuable. In a blog explaining why hydrogen will never be a transport fuel,[1] the author mentioned in passing that cars average well under 4% utilization, and the average fill frequency is once per month.

To have something so expensive and little used, the option of being able to use it on demand must be highly valuable. And as you say it's secure storage and portage.

1. In a month, a steel-walled 200 bar hydrogen tank with 10 mm (0.4 inch) thick walls will lose over 80% of its hydrogen through its walls.

How would you feel about public lockers near high traffic areas as a potential solution to that? I know that there is the potential these will get robbed anyways, but cars get robbed all the time anyways (SF).

There is definitely maintenance and cultural expenses for public lockers, but there’s no way it’s anywhere near as expensive or time consuming as maintaining roads.

Not public, but gyms/athletic clubs fit this description in some cities. If you have a private, permanent locker at a gym/club close to your office, you can stash clothes, equipment etc. to avoid hauling everything back and forth on transit.

Doesn't really solve for sports like softball and golf that GP mentioned since those are in lower-traffic areas basically by necessity.

If would depend on the details whether or not they were competitive with a car’s trunk.

Can they fit a golf bag? Can I know that I’ll get one when I show up? Is it roughly on the way? If I’m wanting to go home to office to golf to dinner/drinks to home in a day, how different is it to go home to transit to transit/locker to work to locker/transit to transit to golf to locker to dinner to locker to home?

Before kids, I’d play sports 4-5 nights a week. These fields often take up a lot of space (it’s obviously hard to fit a golf course in a high density area) meaning public transit would never be robust to get to them.

I also strongly agree (with the original statement, and your own items). It is incredible how many urban planers and/or transport engineers subscribe to that fallacy, and consequently how the tides of consensus in planing forums/reddits/... are turning towards sub-optimal solutions. One thing that irks me on those forums is the resurgence of the idea of focusing on buses (as opposed to rail) in urban mass transport. No one seems to understand that buses are much more uncomfortable, and doesn't allow you to zone out because:

- All kinds of strong accelerations (stopping on intersections, turning right angles, jumping around on hills or potholes), impossible to read anything without getting motion-sickness, and in extreme cases sometimes you have to use gym-equipment-like strength to just keep yourself from falling. - The time spent waiting for a bus at the stop or connection doesn't allow zoning out, you have to keep constantly on the lookout for the right bus among other buses and other traffic (while in a metro station you can completely forget about the world and still you won't miss a giant train arriving and opening its doors).

The best transport is no transport.

The rules for residential zones need to change to require sidewalks, playgrounds, and parks, and to encourage low-traffic service businesses such as co-working spaces, professional services (e.g. accountants, lawyers, real estate offices, ...), convenience stores and small cafes (up to 10 seat). And then there are lot size, lot coverage, and off-street parking rules to be abolished...

Hand in hand with that we'll need new bank regulations to force them to finance suburbs that work for people and communities.

Beware, what you described sounds a lot like what France and other places did with projects in the 70s. Every thing was in reach, but for some obscure reason it collapsed in less than 20 years. Not saying it's a bad idea, but it's sociologically subtle.

When you build a new residential area, people move in with kids. After 15-20 years, kids move out, population collapses, and local services die. The best way to avoid this is building within / next to existing areas instead of building completely new areas.

Because then one is forced to go to what we dentist is there, whatever handful of restaurant are there, the grocery store that is there. No one wants zero or relative few choices like that, so trying to build mini self contained ecosystems isn’t going to work well

Nobody was forced but somehow something was missing, i tried to find reasons why these failed, it's a complex blend of mild poverty, mass social dynamics (same problems as in other neighborhood except it's not in higher concentrations and become unmanageable quick, broken window + reputation + tribalism). It devolved too fast to be handled. Even though on paper, they had best in class standards of living for average citizen (at that time my aunt lived in flat in Paris without toilets, it was the way for old building in her paris area; a year later she had electric kitchen appliance and her own toilet/bathroom).

Are they talking about dedicated roads like Istanbul? I would take their metrobus system (bridge-excepted) over an equivalent light rail that shares the road with cars like the green line in Boston.

The key, to me, is dedicating space for public transit rather than a shared system.

Worth noting for non-locals that a large part (maybe the majority of rail-miles but surely the majority of people-miles) of the green line is on dedicated rail not shared with cars.

I've been watching a channel that really opened my eyes on how terrible urban planning is in america.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k&ab_channel=NotJu...

The Strong Towns group also has a ton of material on the subject, including the latest book by the founder: https://www.confessions.engineer/

A local group set up an event where he spoke, so I was lucky to get a signed copy.

The other way: travel internationally to Asia or Europe and see what a functional transit/transport system looks like.

The short answer: nearly the opposite of everything that the US does. :-(

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