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Comment by wonderwonder | Hacker News Reader

I live on a cul-de-sac and its great. Kids can play in the street, no concerns with getting run over. It really does make life easier.

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Yes, cul-de-sacs are a design element that can help to reduce the negative impacts of cars - in the immediate area. Though if you build an area out of cul-de-sacs with no bike/pedestrian shortcuts, you end up not being able to practically get around without a car, so the area around the cul-de-sacs needs lots of car infrastructure. (Which is not so great if your kids are unlucky enough to live across a wide arterial from their friends from school.)

But ultimately yes, reducing through traffic can be a good thing, and there are ways to do that in cities too. There's a good video on this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqQw05Mr63E

This is such a weird take. Have you ever actually lived in a such a place? Because your description is NOT what it's like to live there.

Suburbs designed around cul-de-sacs are amazing to get around in, very very easy, extremely bike friendly!

One way to do it is you'll have a main road with shops, and no houses, and leading off of that tons of very quiet residential streets with barely any cars. Kids play in the street, people bike all over the place, and when you shop all the stores are in one place so you save on car trips.

Obviously I don't know exactly the type of neighborhood you're envisioning from that description, but what you're describing sounds a lot like the suburb just north of me, and at least here that main road with shops is not a particularly friendly place to be without a car. The residential areas may be bikeable if you're staying very local, but the moment you need to cross one of the arterials crisscrossing the area it gets significantly less so.

Though I would have liked more nearby options, growing up I enjoyed being able to walk to nearby corner stores and such. Would you feel comfortable letting kids walk or bike to a nearby shop unattended in the places you're talking about?

Yes. My town is all cul-de-sacs and main roads with no sidewalks.

It's great when you have 3-year-old kids, because they can play safely in front of your house. But when they become 10-16, they can't safely walk or bike to anywhere and have to be driven to school, sports practices, Burger King, the Quik Mart, everywhere. The middle school is only a half mile from my house and the high school is only a mile a way, but none of the kids can safely walk or bike to these schools. Everyone gets dropped off by their parents.

And those pickup lines are embarrassingly long and tend to spill into main roads.

I'm lucky enough to have a cul-de-sac and the entire area has side walks and bike lanes. My 7th grader bikes a mile to school each day and my 5th grader will start this year. Only time I have to drive them is if there is rain.

Its really an awesome perk to living in the suburbs, and my kids being able to just say "Hey. I'm going for a bike ride" and me not having to worry is a massive life upgrade for everyone involved.

Cul-de-sacs are great for the people who live in them, and they are a nightmare for people who live in densely populated areas that suffer constant traffic from the car-dependent suburbanites that drive there from their quiet cul-de-sacs.

You don't want other people driving their cars in front of your home, but neither do the people who live in the urban core.

This is where mass transit from the suburbs to the urban areas are need. The transit needs to be faster, cheaper, and easier than driving and parking.

I lived in the Chicago suburbs for a while and never drove downtown. I was a passenger a couple times, but when I went, I always took the Metra. During rush hour it would take half the time, or better, and it was fairly cheap. Though I won’t say the entire system was perfect.

Where I’m at now, the only option to avoid driving is the bus. The bus takes at least 3x longer than driving. No one is going to take it unless they have to due to their circumstances. I don’t want to drive and park down there, which leaves me with Uber. I’ve done it a few times, but it’s far from ideal, and fairly expensive. If they had some light rail and a free commuter lot, I’d go down there all the time.

Culs-de-sac aren’t the problem, it’s the lack of non-car options to bridge the suburbs and the city, to reduce car traffic in cities while allowing people from the suburbs to come into the city to spend their time and money. Not everyone will use the transit options, but it just needs to be enough to make the roads manageable. The better the transit options, the more people we’ll likely see opt in.

> Culs-de-sac aren’t the problem, it’s the lack of non-car options to bridge the suburbs and the city

North American suburbs typically lack the necessary population density to make the sort of transit you ask for viable. Car dependence is intrinsic to low density single family zoning.

I agree, but this is not the fault of the people that live in the suburbs. The vast majority of urban centers and suburbs outside of major areas like NYC and Chicago have very limited public transport. So people have to drive to where the jobs are. I think the nearest bus stop to my house is probably a 2 mile walk.

On top of that, in many states, riding the bus is essentially seen as a poor person activity as everyone is expected to have cars. So if you want to ride the bus, you have to walk 30 minutes in the 100+ degree temp or if its not hot, its raining. Then sit (if you are lucky enough to be next to a bus stop with a bench instead of just a sign) on an uncovered covered bench. Its made (designed??) to be such a bad experience that people avoid it if they can.

That's the eternal trade off of city vs suburb. In the suburbs you have to drive everywhere but there are fewer people. In the city (some of them) you can walk or use public transportation but there are far more commuters coming into your area. The choice really just depends on your life needs and personal situation

I live on a 4 way corner of a small small neighborhood roundabout that teenagers like to speed around. One teen drunkenly crashed into our parked car overnight.

Not so safe. :(

But a four-way intersection is the exact opposite of a cul-de-sac, even in a small neighborhood. The only people that will ever drive to the end of a cul-de-sac are the owners or visitors of the three or four houses that are at the cul-de-sac.

>The only people that . . .

You underestimate the perverseness of teenagers in loud cars.

Yea, I almost spit out my beer reading that. We have people who deliberately race down our suburban road to the cul-de-sac, slam on the brakes to make as much noise as they can, do a few burnouts there, and then race back, for no reason other than to be belligerent and antisocial. Not teenagers, either. Grown-ass men do this for the lulz.

I feel like that would end very badly indeed for someone in my neighborhood. Everyone looks out of everyone while minding our business at the same time.

Plus we have a huge amount of local cops in the area at all times to the point I have to warn uber drivers that if they speed they are going to get pulled over, guaranteed.

Also Delivery drivers, lost drivers, maintenance workers, mail man, etc

Well, they don't exist in my neighborhood, on the cul de sac that I live on. I suspect most neighborhoods don't have teenagers terrorizing random culdesacs at any appreciable level.

Very difficult to create a safe env if teens can freely drink and speed around.

In my town there are cul de sac neighborhoods with houses to fit 4-5 people right next to a elementary school. But, the houses are primarily filled with single or couple 60+ year old folks who don’t want to move. It is really a shame. My cul de sac has 10 houses and 3 children.

very hard for people to move now. If they have been there a while, they have a ~3% interest rate. If they have to buy a new home, they are looking at at least double.

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