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Comment by bkettle | Hacker News Reader

To what extent is having a car convenient because we've built our cities under the assumption that people own cars? Where I lived for a year in SF (near Church station) I found that for day-to-day life I never once wished I had a car. Groceries, restaurants, bars, and parks were all within (short) walking distance, and my job downtown was easily accessible by transit.

As much as I love college campuses, I think they often miss out on having interesting amenities within the walkability of the campus itself. Still, going to school in Cambridge I never wanted a car and the few times I rented one for a longer trip or a move I wished that I didn't have to.

I think cars are and probably should be convenient for certain things (mainly moving, buying furniture or other big stuff, and to a lesser extent getting into nature). But for day-to-day life, it is a sign of failure (and wasted potential!) when cars are convenient.

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Fair questions, I think. I am just pointing out that if you have a lot of options when on foot, you almost certainly have more with a car. And you would have an easier schedule if you own your own car.

I say this as someone that enjoys the long slow walks. They are amazing. But if the goal is to get to the store/office and back, on foot is not as convenient as in a car.

The only times this is not the case, is when something has made the car not possible. Usually this boils down to "it can be prohibitively expensive to park a car at your destination."

I agree that for in-town trips the only thing that reduces the convenience of driving is when you can't drive fast and park directly at your destination for free. But these things (traffic, parking scarcity, etc) are really common, and are often the direct result of the fact that you are trying to go somewhere interesting. They are rarely artificial costs that could be removed.

I do think anecdotes are effective here, so: from my old SF apartment I could bike or ride Muni to the office. I generally chose to bike, but both options were more convenient than driving. The speed of driving and biking were both limited mostly by traffic and traffic lights, so biking was just as fast as driving. Both the traffic and the traffic lights are necessary because other people also want to live and work in a similar place as I do. But since my office was downtown in an urban, popular area where land value is high enough that parking is not a good use of land, if I drove I would have had to park a few blocks away (for a high price) and walk. Since bike parking is so much more space efficient than car parking, I could easily park my bike in my office. Taking the train was faster than either option; if it rained I would simply take the train.

I think you are not correct that a car is a strictly better option for all tasks. I think the convenience of not having to deal with all the things that make driving difficult is extremely valuable, and I think the things that make driving difficult are unavoidable because driving scales extremely poorly.

Personal anecdotes definitely shape thoughts here. Mine is that I have used transit and biking in Atlanta and Seattle to get to work for the past few decades. I have liked the money savings, especially back when I couldn't afford a car. I also like the exercise portion. I didn't even mind the having to wait for a bus/train aspect, as I enjoy consuming books.

However, I couldn't ignore that I was virtually alone in my office for having taken transit in Atlanta. In Seattle, I'm assuming more of my colleagues were using it, but as you went up the pay ladder, cars became the norm. Overwhelmingly so. And yes, traffic was bad in both places, but if I wanted to be home to office in the least time, I left early in a car.

And I want to be clear that I don't think they are strictly superior. Certainly not for single people. But the biggest question I have to ask about taking a car somewhere is if I have the money for the gas. To get there by transit takes considerably more thought. (Or luck, if you are on a main transit point at both locations, I suppose?)

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