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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

Cities are welcome to erect whatever barriers they like to private cars. But don't think there wouldn't be economic impact if far fewer people commute in, come in for the evening, or decide to move out because visiting the suburbs or the mountains is too much hassle. But maybe it's a worthwhile experiment.

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On the contrary, building cities to be nicer places to be a pedestrian in means you can design them more around people without cars. Look up statistics on how much land we dedicate to parking. You end up with far more effective use of land, higher overall productivity, and a larger tax base which helps support the infrastructure investment in a virtuous cycle.

Park and rides in suburbs so commuters don't have to take up disproportionate space in the more valuable city environment are just a part of this, but the root of the issue is providing viable alternatives to driving. Housing policy and public transit policy are deeply linked with this.

The misunderstanding here is that cars are the primary way people commute into the city. This might be true in some places, but for most cities PT and residents make up the bulk of commercial traffic in a city - it makes sense when you consider that most roads only let a few dozen cars a minute through, vs a few hundred people per train (and way more during peak hours).

However, you look at the built environment in a city and the pedestrians often only get 20% of the road area between buildings, while cars get 80%.

I can't speak to averages but I'll say car traffic into Boston is at least as bad as ever and commuter rail is still way down relative to pre-pandemic. So, yes, people take train but a huge number of people drive. (I try to take train the rare times I go into the office although it takes about the same 2 hours as driving.) And the commuter rail is totally impractical to use for an evening event.

Hah, I was about to respond roughly the same thing: Taking the rail into Boston is so impractical that it's easier to drive.

FWIW: The T/Commuter Rail (apologies for blending the two) has more than 90% of US rail accidents. I noticed a ton of maintenance problems the last time I rode it (in 2021) and I don't know if/when I'll try it again.

I know there have been efforts to improve things but service was also cut back during the pandemic. (There are some express trains again.) I'll still take it preferentially for 9-5ish situations like one I'll have next week but it's not actually any faster in general (though I can sort of relax for most of the trip) and is totally unusable for going in for an evening play.

And that's almost certainly a pretty good commuter rail system by large urban US standards. (Not as good as NYC of course.)

So, to my original point, saying "don't drive" is essentially equivalent to saying stay out of the city in general.

Car skeptics are not saying “don’t drive”

They’re saying “allow viable alternatives to driving”

You wrote "Private automobiles do not belong in cities." I'm not sure what's ambiguous about that. Certainly if you tell me I don't belong someplace, I would take that literally.

> pretty good commuter rail system by large urban US standards

I used to take the Caltrain from Palo Alto to San Francisco. The line from Kingston to Boston doesn't even compare.

Caltrain: Tinted windows, comfortable seats. I'm comfortable using a laptop to check email while I ride to work.

MA Commuter Rail: No tint on the windows, seats so bad I'm uncomfortable using a laptop.

I wouldn't call MA commuter rail "Good" by US standards. It's treating MA residents like a captive audience, and then the politicians and leaders scratch their heads and wonder why we'd rather clog the freeway with luxury cars instead of taking the train.

Why makes it impractical for an evening event?

I've seen in other cities that, bizarrely to me, the rail shuts down before the end of sporting events, concerts, and other things that would attract people to the city.

Maybe they don't want drunks?

There are very few nighttime trains and it would take me a good extra hour to get home even once I caught one of the sparse trains. If I had to take the train in for a play I'd simply pass.

Out of curiosity, how hard would it be to take a rideshare home? Too expensive?

Yes. Probably close to $100. (I'm about 45 miles outside.) And probably hard to get a driver later at night. I do book a private car to and from the airport but I'm not going to do that for a random evening out. (The small theater I have a subscription to also has a free parking deal at a nearby garage so that doesn't even factor in.)

Meanwhile in Tokyo 40 million people virtually all take the train, and those who do drive never experience traffic or gridlock

I like to think of PT as placing an "upper bound" on how bad traffic can get. If PT is faster than sitting in a car, people will take PT instead, alleviating congestion. This more or less results in traffic getting worse until it reaches the speed of PT, at which point people start switching transport modes and it stops getting worse.

If the train took the same amount of time as driving I'd take the train every time - driving sucks, whereas I can read or watch videos on the train.

This works because (grade-separated) PT can (at least relative to roads) take on an effectively unlimited amount of extra commuters without getting slower, as pretty much all of its costs and transport times are fixed, whereas roads just continually get slower with additional traffic. This is part of the problem with busses and the like - they get caught up in traffic, so unless they get their own dedicated lanes you won't get the same traffic-reducing benefits as you would with heavy rail and the like.

When I was an undergrad there was I think one bus route I took in 4 years because it was marginally quicker than walking an extra 15 minutes to catch the subway depending on where I was.

My preference within the city when I'm there these days is subway or walk. But the connection to the subway really only works on a commuting timetable and, if I'm going to park on the outskirts anyway to catch the subway I'll mostly just drive in.

It's very, very possible for public transport to be overloaded to the point where people have to wait for another train because there's just no room left. Some NYC subway lines are like that routinely during rush hour.

Yeah, that's why I specified "relative to roads" :P. There are capacity limitations, they are just much more generous than the alternatives.

> you look at the built environment in a city and the pedestrians often only get 20% of the road area between buildings, while cars get 80%.

How is that significant? I very rarely have run out of room on the sidewalk. Cars are larger than I am, they need more space.

I agree with the general consideration that cars waste real estate, but sidewalk width hasn't been a problem that I've seen.

Uh, I encounter that everywhere from San Jose to NYC to Miami

You run out of room on the sidewalk? Like a traffic jam? Maybe we're talking about different things. I rarely have to stop moving on a sidewalk, or if I do it's not for more than a moment, and I'm talking about the most dense cities.

Maybe NYC in the theater district when some plays are letting out ...

Times Square can get pretty bad. But, yes, that's unusual.

My more conventional frustration is wide roads with shitty traffic signalling that hold up a crowd of pedestrians while 10-15 cars crawl through the intersection. That being said, at peak times some areas definitely get extremely busy with pedestrian traffic.

Realistically you do need vehicles in cities for logistical reasons etc, so it's not really a sensible line of thought - but it's still annoying :). It's probably worse in other cities, as Melbourne has plenty of street-level trams with separated rights of way as well as many roads being single-laned both ways, so it's honestly not that bad here.

>> for most cities PT and residents make up the bulk of commercial traffic

"According to the American Community Survey (ACS), public transportation commuters constituted about 5 percent of all workers in the United States in 2019. Though public transportation (transit) was a relatively uncommon method of traveling to work in the United States as a whole, it played a prominent role in certain places, like the cities of New York, where over 2 million people commuted by public transportation, and San Francisco, where over one third of workers did so."

-- https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

So even pre-pandemic when public transportation was in higher usage, there was maybe one city in the US that meets your criteria. For the other 19,494 of the 19,495 cities in the US, private transportation was a large majority.

5% of commuter trips in the US are by public transportation. Under 3% are walking. 85% are car, truck, or van, either alone or carpooled. If cars only get 80%, sounds like they are being cheated. They should get 85% instead.

So your observation is US cities don’t have transit, therefore we should invest more in car infrastructure?

It will depend on your definition of "city". I live in Melbourne, AU, and realistically only the inner couple of km around the CBD are "proper" city area where space is truly at a premium.

In the CBD and surrounding area you'd have to be insane to drive - there's simply not enough space. However, in the "metro area" which sprawls for many km in all directions, I would expect a lot of commuting is done by car, due to poorer PT service coverage and frequency, along with lesser traffic congestion.

> The misunderstanding here is that cars are the primary way people commute into the city

The number of cities this is true for in the US is extremely small.

> Cities are welcome to erect whatever barriers they like to private cars.

This is inaccurate - for liability purposes, most road design in the US conforms to the MUTCD (and other design standards), which have very car-centric requirements. For example, the minimum lane width it allows is 11 feet (3.3m). If you design and install a 10 foot lane, you're not supported by that standard, and will likely get sued for damages if someone sideswipes someone, etc. The same applies for many other features that can improve pedestrian safety. It's one of the fundamental reasons north American built environment looks so much different (even compared with a car-centric design in other countries)

Yes, but cities can presumably limit parking, make it very expensive, perhaps implement congestion charges. They have lots of levers to keep cars out if they want to without not complying with design standards.

> cities can presumably limit parking, make it very expensive, perhaps implement congestion charges

These are three very difficult to implement changes (due to complaints), and also very ineffective at increasing safety (fewer vehicles = more speeding = no improvement in accident rates).

> have lots of levers to keep cars out

It's not about keeping cars out, it's making them behave safely. You can put a 20mph limit at an elementary school, but if your lanes are limited to 11 foot width, you'll still have cars driving 40, you still have long crossing distances, you still have all these factors reducing safety. If your corner radius has to be designed for a transport truck turning at 15 mph, you'll have cars turning at 40, failing to yield at crosswalks, etc.

> without not complying with design standards.

It's not about "not complying with design standards" - it's about the standards being too car-focused and having unintended consequences for others.

> Cities are welcome to erect whatever barriers they like to private cars.

https://youtu.be/VWDFgzAjr1k?si=IQbceOTAEhmJ6nmw&t=537

"The real problem is that we couldn’t build another place like this if we wanted to. It’s not allowed. It’s literally illegal in Canada, to build something like this today."

There are islands in the US that may or may not be literally car-free but certainly have very few cars, e.g. the Cranberry Islands in Maine, Isle au Haut, etc. Probably around the San Juans in Washington State. Of course, taking a boat to go to the grocery store may not be what you have in mind. But there are certainly at least almost car-free options if you're willing to live with the tradeoffs. Of course, they're not cities.

I've never been to Maine, but we have many small islands in BC with very few cars as well. However, despite the small quantity of cars, they're as car-dependent as anywhere; it's very dangerous for pedestrians to walk across them, because the roads have high speed limits, no sidewalks or shoulders, blind turns, and no lighting, so you're in danger of being hit by one of the (very few) cars screaming by at a high speed. Just like most rural areas in North America, and nothing like the neighbourhood described in the linked video. But maybe it's better in Maine.

Plenty of small islands off Maine have essentially no car traffic, even if they have roads, and are very safe to walk; I've done it plenty of times. Of course, others are essentially just rural communities with no sidewalks and traffic on country roads.

That said, I'm guessing most people envisioning car-free cities aren't thinking in terms of a once a month trip to the mainland to buy groceries.

It’s so strange when motorists talk and act like there aren’t countless cities around the world where people do just that - live life with zero need for or benefit from a car. They buy groceries, take the kids to soccer practice and visit grandma too you know.

> But don't think there wouldn't be economic impact if far fewer people commute in, come in for the evening, or decide to move out because visiting the suburbs or the mountains is too much hassle.

Maybe more people would commute in, parking outside the city and taking public transit, and enjoying all the benefits of a low-traffic, pedestrian city: No parking problems or costs, no traffic, no fuel costs, highly available transit, things built for pedestrian and transit travel. Maybe they'd move in.

Outside of some big commuter lots, I'm skeptical a lot of people are going to do a lot of multi-mode transport into a city outside of regular commuting. I certainly don't do it. And more pedestrian friendliness wouldn't tempt me to move into a city either.

So you don’t even live in the city, you don’t find pedestrian or bike friendliness attractive, yet you demand that cities bend over backwards in a never ending attempt to accommodate more cars, faster bigger roads, parking lots etc etc

Glad we have that on the record

I never wrote anything like that. I said that cities should make choices about what their residents (and businesses) want to accommodate or not. Personally, I don't care much.. If I'm traveling I'm mostly not driving (so I do prefer pedestrian-friendly cities with good transit). And I rarely feel like dealing with the hassle of driving into the only nearby large city for the evening--so I mostly don't do it, which I'm perfectly fine with. I'm not demanding anything.

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