As someone who visited the US as a kid and was even then shocked by the amount of space dedicated to cars, seeing this information on a map still blew me away.
The space needed for these parking lots basically guarantees you can not walk or bike to get anywhere. I believe that unless there's big investment in public transportation, there might be no way for these cities to break out of this vicious circle. And that seems to be politically unfeasible at the moment, for reasons that elude me.
The hyperloop, a ridiculously bad alternative to a subway, garnered so much attention even with its obvious downsides, so having actually useful public transportation should be a no-brainer imho.
> And that seems to be politically unfeasible at the moment, for reasons that elude me.
That's because you are looking from the outside in.
Every person who has grown up in the US has grown up in this situation. Having to drive nearly everywhere is our version of normal.
Public transit in the US sucks. In practically every city that even has it, it's the worst way to get anywhere. It's often a last resort: a tool for the desperately poor.
On top of that, most of the US is made up of small towns that public transit wouldn't make any sense for. A significant percentage of Americans must regularly travel between a major city and a small town. That means they must have a car, and a place in the city to park it. It's a fool's errand to convince most people that they should drive and take public transit all in one trip, even if it would save them time and gas.
There is more to this situation than the vicious cycle that perpetuates it. If we can be clear about how we intend to accommodate that reality, we might be able to do something about it politically.
Biking here in the states isn't a problem from a distance perspective -- the problems are road safety and destination security (bike theft is a big problem but typically not valued by police because of the nominally low dollar impact). Walking, yeah.
The concept of a 'big investment' takes on a whole new meaning when it comes to public transportation in the United States, especially considering the vast geographical expanse of many metropolitan areas. In most cases, unless one resides in the heart of a city, public transportation isn't a practical option. This is evident in the fact that a 20-minute drive can easily transform into a commute of 90 minutes or longer when relying on public transit. I truly wish there were a way for me to avoid driving and still get to my destination efficiently.
I feel assured that the transition is going to be pretty quick, watching Waymos and Cruises going around SF and dealing with some challenging traffic situations and weather(Waymo is definitely better at not getting stuck, but the gap is not insurmountable).
As soon as they proliferate at scale, the risk profile changes such that you can bike everywhere safely, and parking is no longer a major urban issue, because the fleet is going to have a more flexible usage pattern whether or not individuals own the vehicles: instead of one space per vehicle per destination, it's going to be compressed down to parking space for the neighborhood plus drop-off zones.
So to me, it's obvious that the market is going at the problem just about as fast as it can, and once the adoption S-curve hits, "need to drive" relaxes because other potential uses aren't being suppressed. You'll still have many instances where mass transit and active transit present a lower cost structure than taxi, and they'll have a lot of leeway to grow.
> The hyperloop, a ridiculously bad alternative to a subway
The idea was for the Hyperloop was to do the 400 miles straight shot from LA to San Francisco at speeds up to 300mph. I don't see how a subway could do anything comparable.
> seems to be politically unfeasible at the moment, for reasons that elude me.
Ever see that monorail episode of The Simpsons? Yeah that's where we're at. There's a strong desire from many people to slow things down and be more deliberate and careful before any more big changes. There's a sense of disillusionment about "progressivism" amongst even those who crave the most righteous of vibes. This is a weird time to be alive and people just don't want to wake up to construction crews ironically destroying their cities to make way for yet another wave of gentrification pretending not to be.
Step 1 to fix out of control real estate prices and suburbia depression is not public transit.
Step 1 is to deprioritize cars. No more free parking, no single family home zoning, free-for-all zoning around train stations and bus stops.
Step 2 is to keep deprioritizing cars. Ban highway expansion beyond 2 lanes in both directions. Match demand and supply with tolls. Excess revenue goes towards funding public transit.
Step 3 is to fund public transit. Private sector will see massive opportunity to build out private bus lines and trains (see Brightline in Florida). The real play is not ticket revenue, but real estate appreciation around public transit. Republicans should get around this idea with private equity guys. This is a no brainer to me.
In conclusion, the key to this morass to make car owners suffer and switch to real estate appreciation to incentivize private development of transit systems.
Yeah, real estate appreciation has its own costs that we're going to pay for down the line... in particular increased costs of housing/living is causing more homelessness.
Step 1: "Control" house prices (how?)
Step 2: Change ALL zoning and monetize ALL parking spaces in a country of >0.3B people overnight
Step 3: Create money from thin air to build transit, thereby reversing Step 1
Based on the comments in here (and on related stories) I think the US transportation conversation needs to change in some way.
Mostly, it's a lot of people complaining about cars. Which is fine, I mostly agree. But the anti-car stuff is becoming extremely toxic and parroting half-remembered tweets about induced demand, finding slightly different ways to describe cars as death machines, and good old-fashioned liberal American self-flagellation.
We're past the point where it's transgressive to point out the problems with cars, we need to actually have some kind of a sensible discussion that involves practical considerations. In particular, anti-car people need to have a good handle on why people actually like cars. Otherwise, it'll just be more of trying to punish people, like the guy in this thread who says "the key to this morass to make car owners suffer". We've got to do better than that!
One major issue is that if you as an individual attempt to go car-free, the resulting lifestyle makes cars into such an incredible intrusion into your daily life that it is hard not to become more radicalized.
That has been my story at least. My bus is late and slow, because it's stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic from all these people driving motor vehicles with a single occupant. I need ear protection on my commute because the 14th Street Bridge into DC pairs pedestrians and cyclists side-by-side with 60mph motor traffic with no noise protections. I lost a day at work because I got hit on my bike by a truck driver who was on his phone, and had to go to the ER. I am shaken and my heart rate is pounding and I am pondering my own mortality because someone gunned their engine through a left turn while I was walking across the street with a pedestrian signal - they accelerated instead of stopping to yield and I had to jump out of the way to save my own life while they sped off.
If you recognize how awful cars are for the environment and how they make city life inconvenient, unpleasant and expensive, and so you make the personal decision to forgo them to be part of the solution rather than the problem, you are taking a step into a life that will nudge you more and more to truly despise motor vehicles because your daily life will be filled with only negative interactions with them.
I don't think so; the emergent urbanism conversation is a step in the right direction.
The anti-car stuff is extremely toxic because a large segment of society refuses to listen. Induced demand is how every lane-widening project is a huge money sink while failing to deliver on the promise of reduced congestion. You think complaining about death machines is comparable to the thousands of people inside and outside of cars who have near-death experiences every day due to cars? Or people losing autonomy and dignity by losing the ability to drive is not toxic? These topics have been politely brushed under the rug for too long.
Is it wrong for disenfranchised people to express their frustration? Are they required to empathize and understand their abusers?
Sensible solutions? They've been put forth ad nauseum already. Ending single-family exclusive zoning. Enabling mixed residential-commercial areas. Reducing commute distances. Funding public mass transit. Ending parking minimums. Tolling roads and mileage. Recognizing that roads are overbuilt and there is not enough tax base to maintain them.
Anti-car people know very well why people like cars. The dominant culture is kind of hard to ignore. The most common reasons are a sense of autonomy, the fact that working and doing errands without a car will increase travel time by several multiples, and the fact that it's a comfortable norm that almost everybody has accepted (can't go wrong with the herd right?).
Put another way: "sensible discussion" is the reason why the US is stuck with car-dependent sprawl. The practical considerations were decided decades ago, and have been cargo culted into every facet of US urban and suburban design.
Cars are the designated post-hoc rationalization for an environment that is almost exclusively built for them.
If the "transgressive" tone of the conversation is the only takeaway you have, then perhaps you are not listening closely enough.
As someone who dislikes cars or let's say dislikes the fact there's no other choice
I know exactly why people like cars, because I was one, I grew up playing with toy cars, micro machines, garages, play mat with roads, Sim city for car planning, building cars in Lego, playing need for speed, gran turismo, midnight club run, mad max, grand theft auto, truck simulator, watching Tokyo drift
Cars are everywhere in our culture, huge bits of car infrastructure like traffic lights and roads that run for miles that just connect to a shed are completely normal
The bigger problem for us "anti car" people is that it's so ingrained that people no longer see or care about the determental aspect of car dominance
People look at horrific crashes like a car wedged on a side of a building and they dismiss it as a driver problem
They look at traffic jams and they look at it as an other person problem
They look in their neighbourhood and don't notice that their kids can't safely play in their neighbourhood and then wonder why they're glued to phones
The problem we have is recognition first and foremost then it's education, YouTubers not just bikes and strong towns do an amazing job of that
I like these maps. I do think it glosses over many details of vertical parking. It's hard to compare how tall the parking garages are. It's unclear if it covers underground parking for buildings with other uses or not. It's hard to determine exactly how much parking is provided in the red shaded regions. It's hard to determine what are parking garages and what are parking lots.
I also would have liked to compare street parking options in various cities, but this doesn't seem to document it. Street parking can have just a big of an impact as garages and lots, as it leads to wider roads, people hunting for a spot, and a hazard for bicyclist.
I think of the hardest things to believe when I learned about it was that almost everywhere in the United States has laws that force anyone building a business to build parking. Often the parking has to be more in square foot terms then the building itself! In my town if you build a place that serves alcohol you have to build more parking than for any other type of building. It’s crazy to me that we mandate paving over large sections of our town. I used to blame Walmart for moving into an area and buying up local businesses and destroying them to build a parking lot, but now I know they were legally required to do that!
"Maps show how a lack of forward planning, well-structured free parking and public link-transport cause retroactively developed parking to be a commodity that is valued higher than a business sector nobody can drive to"
The rest of the world fixes this by banning cars in these areas, making it a nice place to be, providing out-of-town link-transport (eg Park & Ride) for people driving in.
The car is eating US cities but only because people don't have a better option.
This feels like a positive feedback loop (not the good kind), where the more parking is needed, the more people feel they need to drive. And the more people feel they need to drive, the more they need parking and the more space between stores gets added.
I think the answer to this is to adopt Land Value Taxes. This would naturally incentivize property improvement and dis-incentivize people from owning large swaths of unproductive land. Communities would grow upward before they grow outward. Infrastructure costs would drop significantly and communities (over time) would become more walkable.
The title says cities but it's really about city centers.
Edit: This is relevant because US cities tend to include a large amount of residential areas that don't have parking lots. When city centers are commercial areas that serve the city and surrounding areas inside and outside of the city, people are going to drive there and they need a place to park. There are potential ways to make parking less concentrated in the center though, which includes public transportation, one thing we're often not great at in the US.
I'm curious if there are any bright ideas on practical first and last mile transportation for people who want to take the bus or train. Say my house is 1.5-3 miles from the closest bus stop and my destination is 1.5-3 miles from its closest bus stop. Should I be bringing my scooter on the bus? Is there room for everyone's scooter on the bus?
Curious to hear from people who use the bus or train daily, how do you get to and from the bus stop in a timely manner and in the cold.
In America, driving is far and away the best UX. You go where you want when you want with up to four passengers even in a very small starter car. With the exception of Manhattan and a few other big cities, cost per mile is far lower than transit. Obviously traffic sucks. Nobody likes traffic. I refuse to sit in traffic unless I am picking someone up from the airport.
Even in the UK, it's often cheaper to drive. The other day I drove into Central London (!) from Cambridge in a VW Polo. I calculated the cost per mile, including the car depreciation and the onerous and ever-increasing vehicle tax, and it was STILL a far better deal than the train.
Not to mention the non-negligible chance of an encounter with a risky, mentally ill passenger on transit. My wife was harassed by a man with piss-soaked sweatpants on the SF Bart and nearly missed her flight because she had to get off early. And that ticket was not cheap. I've been called homophobic and racial slurs on the London tube, for wearing short shorts on the way to go play squash. OF COURSE these events are few and far between but in my car they never happen.
Despite this, the subway is still a better UX in Manhattan and London. When I'm in these places I don't drive (obviously). In the Randstad, I also never drive. Because the UX is great. When I'm in my home in North Carolina, I drive everywhere. It's great. Everything is 10 minutes away. There's always parking. Massive boost to quality of life.
Cars are not some revelations-esque phenomenon and parking lots do not "eat" anything. They can always be converted to decks, as they literally always are when the demand is there. There is nothing wrong with that.
> In America, driving is far and away the best UX. You go where you want when you want with up to four passengers even in a very small starter car
Not for children/young people. In the Netherlands it's common for young people to develop independence using bicycles and public transport.
I think that is far more mentally healthy than the US's car centric infrastructure, which excludes young people, making them overdependent on their parents, or dependent on being online in order to socialise.
A lot of US cities still have parking minimums. If you want to build a store that has capacity for X you need to have Y parking. And the cheapest way to do that is a lot by far. This has the effect of spreading everything out because you need all this space for parking which then makes it more necessary to drive everywhere because everything is so spread out and it's a vicious cycle that encourages car usage.
From many cities I have visited and some I have lived
one of the major problems are sports stadium and related
are located within dense cities.
When you need to shuffle in 10.000 to 100.000 cars
(at worse, none of these have enough parking spaces for it)
you need parking spaces.
Moving these venues outside of the cites is a good solution.
It does not require forced behavioural modifications.
Then the city can arrange busses to and from the stadium
for those that need it. Or a high speed dedicated train.
Any other establishment with a huge number of visitor
should be moved out as well.
Huge hospitals are also entities that take up a huge amount
of space and can have a lot of parking.
These should be moved outside the city to lower density areas.
The space these things take up, and their huge parking lots
can then be converted into parks and green lungs within
the city.
Greed real estate developers who wish to increase density
for big profit should be barred from any activity.
The density is already far too high.
I'm reading in the comments on this HN story about how things like lack of showers or longer distances or hills make bicycling impractical. As a lifelong cyclist and a recent electric bike owner, I view recent technological advancement in electrified micro-mobility to be a game changer. I've made a significant investment in a custom-built steel frame electric bike that I have outfitted with racks and panniers for shopping trips and commuting to the office.
As a former Trek customer who hasn't been inclined to purchase another bike from them, they still send me their new product line magazines. Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention, but I was astonished when I grabbed the latest edition from my mailbox yesterday and thumbed through it. Trek is going ALL IN on electric bicycles. Pages 4-5 have a big flow chart helping people decide what type of electric bike to buy, depending on factors such as whether you're on dirt trails or paved streets, whether you will be transporting cargo and children, whether you value speed or comfort, and so on.
Non-electric bikes are now sort of an afterthought. If you flip to the back of the magazine you'll still find them, but the electric versions of several models are still interspersed. For example they have the Domane SLR (a model I still have in my garage), but on the next page they pimp the electric Domane+. Their blitz on electric bikes might be working for me, since I'm seriously considering being a Trek customer again and "trading up" for it, in spite of the bad experiences I've had trying to get them to support the Domane SLR they sold me in 2017.
America is facing a reckoning with its transportation infrastructure and car culture. Electric bikes are so compelling in terms of cost, convenience, fun, and practicality, more and more people will be riding them on the "stroads" and will be demanding changes so they feel safer doing so. If that means taking away lanes and parking spots from vehicular traffic, adding separated cycle tracks, reducing speed limits, adding traffic-calming measures, introducing safe-passing laws, and stepping up enforcement and penalties, then in my book that can't happen soon enough.
Columbus is sprawling, sad to see so much of that from parking and other pavement. As a driver though it is much better than Cleveland.
Ultimately I do wish we had more biking trails and pedestrian friendly cities in Ohio. And I'd trade my car in for an electric bike if my city made it happen.
There's an entire genre of anti-car content popular on social media right now that completely overlooks the reality of how most US cities are dispersed. I agree that the utopian ideal of a car-free existence is appealing, but it's far from realistic for a lot of places and there's an awful lot of shaming and shunning going on of regular people living their lives right now.
Defaults are powerful. Undoing them will feel uncomfortable.
Since the 1940s, the vision sold to society is one of private motor transport, free-flowing highways, and houses on big lots. The past 80 years have seen the execution of this plan with little to no reflection or criticism.
We're finally starting to wake up to the reality that we find ourselves living in. We're questioning the choices made by our forebears and the infrastructure that has been constructed. If we want to change how cities are designed, we have to recognize the problem first. Only then can we embark on a decades-long transformation where we slowly replace buildings and roads with ones that reflect a new vision.
The fact that US cities are dispersed is a red herring. Most cities will have expensive areas that people want to move into but are prevented from doing so due to a lack of available housing. The demand to densify already exists. By adjusting zoning laws, parking minimums, and transportation networks, housing can be added in those areas, and no one would be coerced to move to somewhere they don't want to be.
It's not about shaming and shunning. It's about educating, so that people are more amenable to non-car-centric changes to public transit and their cities that will improve everyone's way of life.
I think the thing about Public Transit, is if you truly love driving your car, you should still be in favor of public transit, because better public transit means less traffic for you.
So this is a common argument, but I don’t think it holds true. Here is a video comparing the train system in Spain to the one in the US. Around the 8 minute mark he compares the population of the US east coast with Spain and their train system. The truth is that the population density in certain areas of the US is certainly high enough to support much better public transit that doesn’t exist.
> There's an entire genre of anti-car content popular on social media right now that completely overlooks the reality of how most US cities are dispersed
This content is literally about how US cities are dispersed.
I don't see the "shaming and shunning" aspect much, myself. When I do see it it's usually directed at people who are driving dangerously or fighting policy that would make it easier to live without a car.
The point of this is that city planning is a slow process it literally takes decades to change cities. So yes you can't change cities to only operate with public transport overnight, because they have not been designed that way, but if you want to make them so that public transport becomes an option then you need to start now. And we do need to change how we get around, even if we go full electric cars, we still use too much of our energy needs for transport.
Trends come and go, but the suburbs will continue to grow.
Anti-car posts are fun because they are escapism from the worst part of the suburbs. However, you lose all of the best parts when you switch to the current alternatives (expensive density and shared public transportation).
I've been fascinated with Milliron’s Department Store [1] from the late 1940s and it's use of parking on the roof of the department store. At the time "autotopia" was something developers cater too and seeing how architecture at the time responded is something in itself.
Sadly the rooftop lot was removed with the rear X ramps blocked off, and the store is now a relatively generic Kolhs. In Southern California though a lot of the parking lots are getting retrofitted with solar, which while still taking up space, at least providing energy and shade.
Surely, new development can hide the parking in multi-level underground parkades. That solution isn't being rolled in those specific lots for whatever reason. We would have to interview the land owners to understand why they don't develop it into something more useful, and possibly with more parking than it has now. Might it be they are hanging on to the land as an investment, hoping to get more money in the future, and the taxation of parking lots is favorable, not to mention operating costs? Next to no utility bills, no roofs to patch, ...
I sometimes wonder, if building underground parking lots and tunnels becomes affordable due to advances in boring machines, AI and robots, how far underground could you build? How many stories worth of space underground would be practical?
[+] [-] fnordian_slip|3 years ago|reply
The space needed for these parking lots basically guarantees you can not walk or bike to get anywhere. I believe that unless there's big investment in public transportation, there might be no way for these cities to break out of this vicious circle. And that seems to be politically unfeasible at the moment, for reasons that elude me.
The hyperloop, a ridiculously bad alternative to a subway, garnered so much attention even with its obvious downsides, so having actually useful public transportation should be a no-brainer imho.
[+] [-] thomastjeffery|3 years ago|reply
That's because you are looking from the outside in.
Every person who has grown up in the US has grown up in this situation. Having to drive nearly everywhere is our version of normal.
Public transit in the US sucks. In practically every city that even has it, it's the worst way to get anywhere. It's often a last resort: a tool for the desperately poor.
On top of that, most of the US is made up of small towns that public transit wouldn't make any sense for. A significant percentage of Americans must regularly travel between a major city and a small town. That means they must have a car, and a place in the city to park it. It's a fool's errand to convince most people that they should drive and take public transit all in one trip, even if it would save them time and gas.
There is more to this situation than the vicious cycle that perpetuates it. If we can be clear about how we intend to accommodate that reality, we might be able to do something about it politically.
[+] [-] loeg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kortilla|3 years ago|reply
Because the majority of the people in the US don’t actually want to ride public transportation and they like houses. It’s not that difficult to grasp.
[+] [-] avar|3 years ago|reply
There's places elsewhere in the developed world where there's no public transportation, and everyone uses a car for longer trips.
You can usually still cross the street safely as a pedestrian, and expect to reliably find a sidewalk next to the road.
US roads, intersections, parking spots etc. are also absurdly large by the standards of most other countries, it all adds up.
[+] [-] unsignedint|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vGPU|3 years ago|reply
Can you understand why I avoid public transport at all costs and don’t wish to expose my family to it?
[+] [-] syntheweave|3 years ago|reply
As soon as they proliferate at scale, the risk profile changes such that you can bike everywhere safely, and parking is no longer a major urban issue, because the fleet is going to have a more flexible usage pattern whether or not individuals own the vehicles: instead of one space per vehicle per destination, it's going to be compressed down to parking space for the neighborhood plus drop-off zones.
So to me, it's obvious that the market is going at the problem just about as fast as it can, and once the adoption S-curve hits, "need to drive" relaxes because other potential uses aren't being suppressed. You'll still have many instances where mass transit and active transit present a lower cost structure than taxi, and they'll have a lot of leeway to grow.
[+] [-] donatj|3 years ago|reply
The idea was for the Hyperloop was to do the 400 miles straight shot from LA to San Francisco at speeds up to 300mph. I don't see how a subway could do anything comparable.
[+] [-] m463|3 years ago|reply
Do folks realize that walking somewhere in a city is like running a gauntlet to some of the population?
[+] [-] sublinear|3 years ago|reply
Ever see that monorail episode of The Simpsons? Yeah that's where we're at. There's a strong desire from many people to slow things down and be more deliberate and careful before any more big changes. There's a sense of disillusionment about "progressivism" amongst even those who crave the most righteous of vibes. This is a weird time to be alive and people just don't want to wake up to construction crews ironically destroying their cities to make way for yet another wave of gentrification pretending not to be.
[+] [-] favflam|3 years ago|reply
Step 1 is to deprioritize cars. No more free parking, no single family home zoning, free-for-all zoning around train stations and bus stops.
Step 2 is to keep deprioritizing cars. Ban highway expansion beyond 2 lanes in both directions. Match demand and supply with tolls. Excess revenue goes towards funding public transit.
Step 3 is to fund public transit. Private sector will see massive opportunity to build out private bus lines and trains (see Brightline in Florida). The real play is not ticket revenue, but real estate appreciation around public transit. Republicans should get around this idea with private equity guys. This is a no brainer to me.
In conclusion, the key to this morass to make car owners suffer and switch to real estate appreciation to incentivize private development of transit systems.
[+] [-] xracy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bojangleslover|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wilg|3 years ago|reply
Mostly, it's a lot of people complaining about cars. Which is fine, I mostly agree. But the anti-car stuff is becoming extremely toxic and parroting half-remembered tweets about induced demand, finding slightly different ways to describe cars as death machines, and good old-fashioned liberal American self-flagellation.
We're past the point where it's transgressive to point out the problems with cars, we need to actually have some kind of a sensible discussion that involves practical considerations. In particular, anti-car people need to have a good handle on why people actually like cars. Otherwise, it'll just be more of trying to punish people, like the guy in this thread who says "the key to this morass to make car owners suffer". We've got to do better than that!
[+] [-] actionablefiber|3 years ago|reply
That has been my story at least. My bus is late and slow, because it's stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic from all these people driving motor vehicles with a single occupant. I need ear protection on my commute because the 14th Street Bridge into DC pairs pedestrians and cyclists side-by-side with 60mph motor traffic with no noise protections. I lost a day at work because I got hit on my bike by a truck driver who was on his phone, and had to go to the ER. I am shaken and my heart rate is pounding and I am pondering my own mortality because someone gunned their engine through a left turn while I was walking across the street with a pedestrian signal - they accelerated instead of stopping to yield and I had to jump out of the way to save my own life while they sped off.
If you recognize how awful cars are for the environment and how they make city life inconvenient, unpleasant and expensive, and so you make the personal decision to forgo them to be part of the solution rather than the problem, you are taking a step into a life that will nudge you more and more to truly despise motor vehicles because your daily life will be filled with only negative interactions with them.
[+] [-] nayuki|3 years ago|reply
The anti-car stuff is extremely toxic because a large segment of society refuses to listen. Induced demand is how every lane-widening project is a huge money sink while failing to deliver on the promise of reduced congestion. You think complaining about death machines is comparable to the thousands of people inside and outside of cars who have near-death experiences every day due to cars? Or people losing autonomy and dignity by losing the ability to drive is not toxic? These topics have been politely brushed under the rug for too long.
Is it wrong for disenfranchised people to express their frustration? Are they required to empathize and understand their abusers?
Sensible solutions? They've been put forth ad nauseum already. Ending single-family exclusive zoning. Enabling mixed residential-commercial areas. Reducing commute distances. Funding public mass transit. Ending parking minimums. Tolling roads and mileage. Recognizing that roads are overbuilt and there is not enough tax base to maintain them.
Anti-car people know very well why people like cars. The dominant culture is kind of hard to ignore. The most common reasons are a sense of autonomy, the fact that working and doing errands without a car will increase travel time by several multiples, and the fact that it's a comfortable norm that almost everybody has accepted (can't go wrong with the herd right?).
[+] [-] GaryNumanVevo|3 years ago|reply
Cars are the designated post-hoc rationalization for an environment that is almost exclusively built for them.
If the "transgressive" tone of the conversation is the only takeaway you have, then perhaps you are not listening closely enough.
[+] [-] slifin|3 years ago|reply
I know exactly why people like cars, because I was one, I grew up playing with toy cars, micro machines, garages, play mat with roads, Sim city for car planning, building cars in Lego, playing need for speed, gran turismo, midnight club run, mad max, grand theft auto, truck simulator, watching Tokyo drift
Cars are everywhere in our culture, huge bits of car infrastructure like traffic lights and roads that run for miles that just connect to a shed are completely normal
The bigger problem for us "anti car" people is that it's so ingrained that people no longer see or care about the determental aspect of car dominance
People look at horrific crashes like a car wedged on a side of a building and they dismiss it as a driver problem
They look at traffic jams and they look at it as an other person problem
They look in their neighbourhood and don't notice that their kids can't safely play in their neighbourhood and then wonder why they're glued to phones
The problem we have is recognition first and foremost then it's education, YouTubers not just bikes and strong towns do an amazing job of that
[+] [-] kohidavez|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] htag|3 years ago|reply
I also would have liked to compare street parking options in various cities, but this doesn't seem to document it. Street parking can have just a big of an impact as garages and lots, as it leads to wider roads, people hunting for a spot, and a hazard for bicyclist.
[+] [-] 0x53|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spockz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oliwarner|3 years ago|reply
The rest of the world fixes this by banning cars in these areas, making it a nice place to be, providing out-of-town link-transport (eg Park & Ride) for people driving in.
The car is eating US cities but only because people don't have a better option.
[+] [-] xracy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b1ue64|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josephcsible|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keenboy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rascul|3 years ago|reply
Edit: This is relevant because US cities tend to include a large amount of residential areas that don't have parking lots. When city centers are commercial areas that serve the city and surrounding areas inside and outside of the city, people are going to drive there and they need a place to park. There are potential ways to make parking less concentrated in the center though, which includes public transportation, one thing we're often not great at in the US.
[+] [-] frosted-flakes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DangitBobby|3 years ago|reply
Curious to hear from people who use the bus or train daily, how do you get to and from the bus stop in a timely manner and in the cold.
[+] [-] bojangleslover|3 years ago|reply
Even in the UK, it's often cheaper to drive. The other day I drove into Central London (!) from Cambridge in a VW Polo. I calculated the cost per mile, including the car depreciation and the onerous and ever-increasing vehicle tax, and it was STILL a far better deal than the train.
Not to mention the non-negligible chance of an encounter with a risky, mentally ill passenger on transit. My wife was harassed by a man with piss-soaked sweatpants on the SF Bart and nearly missed her flight because she had to get off early. And that ticket was not cheap. I've been called homophobic and racial slurs on the London tube, for wearing short shorts on the way to go play squash. OF COURSE these events are few and far between but in my car they never happen.
Despite this, the subway is still a better UX in Manhattan and London. When I'm in these places I don't drive (obviously). In the Randstad, I also never drive. Because the UX is great. When I'm in my home in North Carolina, I drive everywhere. It's great. Everything is 10 minutes away. There's always parking. Massive boost to quality of life.
Cars are not some revelations-esque phenomenon and parking lots do not "eat" anything. They can always be converted to decks, as they literally always are when the demand is there. There is nothing wrong with that.
[+] [-] okeuro49|3 years ago|reply
This website provides a good counter argument:
https://www.strongtowns.org/
> In America, driving is far and away the best UX. You go where you want when you want with up to four passengers even in a very small starter car
Not for children/young people. In the Netherlands it's common for young people to develop independence using bicycles and public transport.
I think that is far more mentally healthy than the US's car centric infrastructure, which excludes young people, making them overdependent on their parents, or dependent on being online in order to socialise.
[+] [-] goosedragons|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThinkBeat|3 years ago|reply
When you need to shuffle in 10.000 to 100.000 cars (at worse, none of these have enough parking spaces for it) you need parking spaces.
Moving these venues outside of the cites is a good solution. It does not require forced behavioural modifications. Then the city can arrange busses to and from the stadium for those that need it. Or a high speed dedicated train.
Any other establishment with a huge number of visitor should be moved out as well.
Huge hospitals are also entities that take up a huge amount of space and can have a lot of parking. These should be moved outside the city to lower density areas.
The space these things take up, and their huge parking lots can then be converted into parks and green lungs within the city.
Greed real estate developers who wish to increase density for big profit should be barred from any activity. The density is already far too high.
It is a win win situation all the way around.
[+] [-] steelframe|3 years ago|reply
As a former Trek customer who hasn't been inclined to purchase another bike from them, they still send me their new product line magazines. Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention, but I was astonished when I grabbed the latest edition from my mailbox yesterday and thumbed through it. Trek is going ALL IN on electric bicycles. Pages 4-5 have a big flow chart helping people decide what type of electric bike to buy, depending on factors such as whether you're on dirt trails or paved streets, whether you will be transporting cargo and children, whether you value speed or comfort, and so on.
Non-electric bikes are now sort of an afterthought. If you flip to the back of the magazine you'll still find them, but the electric versions of several models are still interspersed. For example they have the Domane SLR (a model I still have in my garage), but on the next page they pimp the electric Domane+. Their blitz on electric bikes might be working for me, since I'm seriously considering being a Trek customer again and "trading up" for it, in spite of the bad experiences I've had trying to get them to support the Domane SLR they sold me in 2017.
America is facing a reckoning with its transportation infrastructure and car culture. Electric bikes are so compelling in terms of cost, convenience, fun, and practicality, more and more people will be riding them on the "stroads" and will be demanding changes so they feel safer doing so. If that means taking away lanes and parking spots from vehicular traffic, adding separated cycle tracks, reducing speed limits, adding traffic-calming measures, introducing safe-passing laws, and stepping up enforcement and penalties, then in my book that can't happen soon enough.
[+] [-] paulryanrogers|3 years ago|reply
Ultimately I do wish we had more biking trails and pedestrian friendly cities in Ohio. And I'd trade my car in for an electric bike if my city made it happen.
[+] [-] JeremyNT|3 years ago|reply
https://parkingreform.org/resources/parking-lot-map/
[+] [-] kbos87|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nayuki|3 years ago|reply
Since the 1940s, the vision sold to society is one of private motor transport, free-flowing highways, and houses on big lots. The past 80 years have seen the execution of this plan with little to no reflection or criticism.
We're finally starting to wake up to the reality that we find ourselves living in. We're questioning the choices made by our forebears and the infrastructure that has been constructed. If we want to change how cities are designed, we have to recognize the problem first. Only then can we embark on a decades-long transformation where we slowly replace buildings and roads with ones that reflect a new vision.
The fact that US cities are dispersed is a red herring. Most cities will have expensive areas that people want to move into but are prevented from doing so due to a lack of available housing. The demand to densify already exists. By adjusting zoning laws, parking minimums, and transportation networks, housing can be added in those areas, and no one would be coerced to move to somewhere they don't want to be.
[+] [-] xracy|3 years ago|reply
I think the thing about Public Transit, is if you truly love driving your car, you should still be in favor of public transit, because better public transit means less traffic for you.
[+] [-] 0x53|3 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/wfxJhX8Y4QI
[+] [-] magicalist|3 years ago|reply
This content is literally about how US cities are dispersed.
[+] [-] ripley12|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cycomanic|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kortilla|3 years ago|reply
Anti-car posts are fun because they are escapism from the worst part of the suburbs. However, you lose all of the best parts when you switch to the current alternatives (expensive density and shared public transportation).
[+] [-] ecliptik|3 years ago|reply
Sadly the rooftop lot was removed with the rear X ramps blocked off, and the store is now a relatively generic Kolhs. In Southern California though a lot of the parking lots are getting retrofitted with solar, which while still taking up space, at least providing energy and shade.
1. https://www.gruenassociates.com/project/millirons-department...
[+] [-] kazinator|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ETH_start|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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