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Comment by cypress66 | Hacker News Reader

The reason why there are so many cars is because people find them convenient and there are many objective benefits to owning a car compared to whatever you propose (sharing cars or public transport).

You personally might not find these benefits useful, or they might not outweigh the disadvantages (which BTW are subjective). But every person is different.

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But the reason we find them convenient is that, at least in most of the US, cities are built for cars. Before cars became common, Los Angeles was zoned for higher density and had trolleys that extended all the way into the city's NE reaches. Same goes for São Paulo, the largest city in the Americas. In the case of SP—which is still way serviceable via public transit than LA—an urban planner/mayor built a series of radial avenues & encouraged people to move out of the city center to its new peripheries. That, plus other "improvements," cut the population density of the center by at least 50%, and exacerbated patterns of residential segregation that began after abolition.

This is all to say that cars aren't solely a matter of personal choice. Car culture was been imposed on us by urban planners with tremendous power. For more on this, even in NYC, see the introduction to Robert Caro's Pulitzer Prize-winning book on Robert Moses.

I live in a city that is awful for cars (Buenos Aires) and has kind of serviceable public transport (it's the method of transport for most people). Yet people that can afford to own a car will do so. And they'll use it whenever the situation allows it (mostly pparking related).

Remember that owning a car doesn't ban you from using the subway or whatever if it's a better choice for that trip.

And public transport will never have the privacy that a car has. Comfortable heated seats. Setting the AC to your liking. Blasting your music. Having a quiet conversation with your partner. Not worrying about others people COVID or whatever. People selling you stuff or crazy in general. Leaving from your driveway and arriving at the destination's doorway. Which is a big deal if it's raining, if you're with your elderly parent, if your carrying something heavy, etc. And if you're a nocturnal beast like me, cars are so much better in general.

BTW I much preferred living in LA when I lived there, to the few stays I had in NYC Manhattan, and to Buenos Aires.

To solve a wide variety of problems we face we really should suck up to it and bare some minor inconveniences. Especially regarding climate change.

> But the reason we find them convenient is that, at least in most of the US, cities are built for cars.

A subtly better way to frame this is to say that American cities were destroyed for cars. Streetcar tracks were ripped up. Roads were widened at the expense of sidewalk. Neighborhoods were demolished and replaced with parking lots, freeways, and car dealerships. Many municipalities stopped maintaining their core inner cities and bet the house on big-box stores on the outskirts. It cost hundreds of billions of dollars collectively to subsidize the car in the U.S., which had the side effect of cannibalizing passenger rail and metropolitan transit, as well as building places that are prohibitively dangerous to cycle or walk in.

One illuminating exercise is to find photos of Houston from the 1920s and compare them to the 1970s. You would think that someone had carpet-bombed the city.

Living in a walkable city is extremely convenient. I would much prefer to do so than drive. For short trips parking is a significant time sink that's not necessary with other modes of transportation.

However that ship has largely sailed in North America so you're not wrong. Given the pattern of city planning we're stuck with cars are not going to be replaced any time soon.

Yes and no. They are very convenient in most of the built environment we have in the US (I’d go further and say they’re _necessary_). But we can also build environments where they’re not needed, or even a nuisance for the owner.

There’s a reason most New Yorkers don’t drive.

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