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Comment by cyberax | Hacker News Reader

> We should be using smaller vehicles, such as electric scooters or automated microbuses in dedicated lanes, etc.

No. The current model is pretty close to the perfect one. Surface roads efficiently and _flexibly_ move people. There is NOTHING else that comes even close to them.

We just need to push self-driving cars, and then start working on the REAL problem: dense cities. They should be deconstructed and un-densified, except for selected historically-significant areas.

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then start working on the REAL problem: dense cities

Absolutely not.

I moved from the Midwest - small to medium sized towns (populations of 3k to 60k) - to a larger city in Northern Europe. It wasn't safe to walk in the US, and if I walked at the wrong times, there was always police presence and occasionally harassment. Things weren't close: Even in the small city, I couldn't safely walk to every store.

I never really knew freedom until I lived here without a car. I walk to the grocery store and places that are 30-50 minutes away. I use public transportation. The two of these mean I get a lot more physical activity than I ever would in the US and this is without having to do special exercise.

I'll never be stuck in the house due to poverty again. Other folks aren't as likely to get stuck in the house due to disability either. I like living in the countryside, but it is a trap unless you can travel. In general, this means you have to drive and pay for a reliable vehicle.

What an awful idea. Sorry, but just no. Smearing cities out over large areas turns them into giant ponzi schemes that inevitably collapse. You're just turning nature into a giant parking lot because fuck you, that's why. And what are you smoking that you would look at soul-sucking traffic jams and say "Yes, I love misery. Let's do more of that!".

> The current model is pretty close to the perfect one.

I disagree. The current model looks to be awful in most ways to me. I don't see how self-driving cars address most of the problems with it.

in which utopian US city are you loving life?

gotta say i never met any human describe US car infrastructure as "perfect" no matter where on the car lover spectrum they fall.

disclaimer: i'm a bike bro as you call it

> in which utopian US city are you loving life?

I loved Houston, TX. Its road system and zoning are freakishly well-designed, and it allows people to have commutes that are far more comfortable (and shorter!) than in dense cities.

In fact, Houston ("Greater Houston Area") had shorter commute time than ANY European city of a comparable size!

I moved out of there because I couldn't tolerate the climate. My second-favorite city is Salt Lake City.

> disclaimer: i'm a bike bro as you call it

Well, duh.

thanks for the reply. never been to houston. been to salt lake city, it's too spread out for me but surprisingly it feels walkable, even in 100°+ heat. probably because it's super flat. I enjoyed the people there.

do you ever wonder why dense cities are dense though? we're all fooled? slaves? red pilled or whatever color the saying is

> do you ever wonder why dense cities are dense though? we're all fooled? slaves? red pilled or whatever color the saying is

There are no conspiracies, just pure market forces. Dense cities are more efficient for _companies_ because they allow access to larger talent pools. Basically, if you are Google, it might make sense to open an office near Amazon's campus, and hire away some of Amazon's engineers.

This has an externality: more people will have to commute into that small area, resulting in longer commute time. Alternatively, they can move to live closer to that workplace, downsizing their living space and/or increasing the real estate price (more people competing for an inherently limited resource).

We also know the market way to fix that: price the externalities via taxes or cap-and-trades. In this case, the density needs to be treated in this way.

This ignores that people actually enjoy living in dense cities. There is a reason that so much media is set in NYC or a big city, people see it as exciting.

People enjoy _visiting_ dense cities (I do too!). Living there?

Not so much: https://www.builderonline.com/money/economics/80-percent-of-...

I just looked up Houston's commute time and all[^1] the[^2] sources[^3] I found seem to say otherwise.

I also found this[^4]: Apparently Europe's cities with the longest commute time have about the same commute time as Houston. Not to mention that Paris and Budapest have populations many times the size of Houston.

^1 https://houston.innovationmap.com/houston-worst-traffic-comm...

^2 https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/transpor...

^3 https://houston.culturemap.com/news/city-life/03-04-19-houst...

^4 https://www.mynewsdesk.com/eurofound/news/budapest-paris-and...

Here's your source: "The average commute time in Houston is 26.1 minutes" (^1).

The average commute time for Berlin is 31 minutes, London is 47 minutes (https://www.timeout.com/london/news/london-is-only-the-sixth...), Paris area is 32 minutes, Madrid is 31 minutes.

Population: Paris area is 12 million, Berlin is 4 million, Houston Area is 7.5 million, Madrid is 6.5 million.

What am I missing?

You're trying to compare numbers across different studies with different methodologies. The articles above show that Houston is consistently terrible for a given study.

Also, the article you linked draws from an irrelevant page on businessnamegenerator.com (???). Is this a troll?

> I loved Houston, TX

Houston is famous for its nonsensical zoning and inefficient infrastructure. It's difficult to react to Houston being "freakishly well-designed" with a straight face.

I've been to Houston and it's just a terrible place to visit, even considering the oppressive weather.

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