[Shaddox]

I'm jealous of parking abundant American cities. In this part of the pond, your choices are between walking, taking a face-planted-against-the-window bus or train, or take your car and spin around for 30 minutes at your destination trying to find somewhere to leave your car.

Neither of these are very good. I'd rather one problem be solved than have a choice between 3 awful compromises.

[Isinlor]

I use bike to go everywhere. It is a prefect solution:

1. Cheap

2. Takes very little space

3. Good for health

4. In a dense city almost as fast as a car; sometimes faster

For people who doubt biking is possible. In Finland there is a city near arctic circle called Oulu with population of around 100 000 people. They have 2h of day light in winter. Temperatures often go to -10 degrees centigrade. And 22% of all trips are done by bikes. Including children going to primary schools.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wZ0tXMSAfs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

[toyg]

The answer to that is not more parking; it's cheap rideshare / carpooling / taxi when weather is bad, and incentivising usage of space-efficient bikes and motorbikes when weather is good.

In fact, London's taxi culture already has (or had) that sort of approach.

[zozbot234]

The answer also involves congestion pricing for parking spots, so you don't have to spin around so much in your car looking for a free spot. Of course, the higher prices involved would themselves create a higher incentive for these alternate solutions.

[zemvpferreira]

More parking can definitely be part of the solution. Above or underground automated parking cylinders can fit many cars, especially in the periphery of the city center where people can then use a short taxi ride/walk to their final destination.

[adreamingsoul]

Commuting to work, five days a week opens up a lot of possibilities. But it also becomes a source of many problems.

Your commute to and from work are now influenced by traffic. Some days are worse than others, but your boss doesn’t care as long as you are on time.

Fuel/electricity, maintenance, tires, and all the other costs for owning a vehicle add up to be a significant cost. And if you are already paying a premium to drive, might as well capitalise on that.

Eventually you move a little farther from work to buy a bigger house for less, and free up some of your income for other things. That 30 minute commute is now an hour and maybe less on a good day.

Well, if your going to spend two hours a day in a vehicle, might as well buy something more comfortable.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

That is the mentality of a slave. Rise up, and employ a chaffeur to drive you where you need to be, and be back in an instant when you need the car again.

[wayoutthere]

More parking just makes the sprawl worse and the traffic awful. Many Americans have commutes well over an hour each way because traffic is so bad. Doing so has a serious negative impact on quality of life and overall health since you’re sitting in a car so much.

[poooogles]

Cycle?

[Tade0]

Doesn't and can't actually replace a car over a certain size of the city.

It is said that in the Netherlands 27% of all trips are done by bicycle - IIRC it's the highest percentage in Europe.

What is not mentioned though is that 50% are done by car.

If you look at the distance traveled it's 75% car, 8% bicycle.

The cities in that country that have a higher trip percentage are tiny, 100k towns.

Bicycles replace walking, not driving.

[Jochim]

You're correct in that once you start building for cars your city sprawls out and other modes of transport become impractical.

I don't think the 27% number is particularly useful because it offers no context into the type of trip. No one is suggesting you use bicycles for intercity trips, but for city transport they're perfect. This is reflected in the mode share numbers for cities compared to the national average: Wikipedia has Amsterdam at 40% bike share with 29% public transport and 27% driving. In the context of a city, biking and public transport are the obvious choices to get more people into the same area.

I think you have a chicken and the egg problem in many cities where driving is hugely subsidised and no investment takes place in other transportation methods. For example, in the UK the majority of trips seem to be around 5 miles or less. By bike this is only a 30 minute commute at the extreme end. Once you account for traffic it ends up being only 10-20 minutes slower than driving the same distance.

Compared to the Netherlands cycling only makes up 2% of the national mode share. The difference between the UK and the Netherlands is that we have almost no investment in cycling infrastructure, and what we do get is typically poorly executed.

> Bicycles replace walking, not driving.

Personally I don't believe driving belongs in any city where you also want people to have an enjoyable time walking the streets and socialising. It's a perfectly acceptable way of getting between cities or from remote locations, but within a city there are almost always better options.

[Tade0]

> Wikipedia has Amsterdam at 40% bike share with 29% public transport and 27% driving.

That's the thing: in Amsterdam. Who are those people that are responsible for half of all trips and where are they headed with their cars?

Looking at the map I wouldn't drive in this city as well - the distance from the city limits to the centre is less than 5km, so as much as I have from my apartment to the centre of the city I live in, and I generally don't drive into this 5km radius circle around here.

[Jochim]

The problem is that the majority of people do end up driving within that ~5km limit in cities that don't invest in public transport and cycling infrastructure. In the UK most cities are around this size, but our modal share for cycling is much lower, despite similar climate conditions. The main difference I see is that we invest heavily in infrastructure suited for cars, but very little in public transport or cycling.

I guess what I'm trying to say is cities typically end up the way they do due to how their residents approach transport planning. You can either continue with a car centric approach that leads to more sprawl and a city center that's less welcoming/interesting to visit, or you can try to make the city friendly towards more efficient modes of transport that encourage people to onto the streets.

[sime2009]

To get back to the article for moment which is really about how parking and cars destroy cities, the discussion about whether bikes/walking replace driving is missing the point somewhat.

The point is if you build city centres around the idea of biking/walking then you can have much smaller and compact cities centres which are more pleasant and suitable for biking/walking at the same time. Biking/walking doesn't replace driving so much as eliminate it.

For people coming from further away, you drive to the edge of the city centre, park (often in a multilevel car park), and then walk the last part to your destination. This is how most Dutch cities are set up. Bigger cities of course have more short distance public transport too.

[Elte]

What types of trips? Distance traveled isn't really a relevant metric if you consider that cars may be used between cities (where distances are longer) and bikes inside of cities.

I'm from the Netherlands, 30 years old and have never owned a car. I do most everything by bike and public transport, occasionally if the situation calls for it I rent or borrow a car (I know people with cars that, unsurprisingly, aren't being used all the time). It certainly depends on your exact living situation, but my impression is that infrastructure plays a big role. I lived in Amsterdam for 12 years, and almost everything in that city encourages you to use a bike, and almost everyone does. Recently I've moved to Germany, and even though it's generally considered a bike friendly country with lots of people owning bicycles, the infrastructure doesn't compare. Dedicated bike lanes are way less common, and whatever is there is often bad quality (avoiding bumps all the time is really energy consuming). Again, unsurprisingly, people use cars here over distances where it wouldn't even cross my mind.

Of course distance matters, and cars will be preferable for long distances with bad public transport connections. I've never found driving a car inside a city to make a lot of sense though, it's often not even faster taking congestion etc into account. Put the bike infrastructure in place, and people will use it. Lots of Dutch train stations now have what's referred to as a "public transport bike", a few euros lets you borrow a sturdy bike for a 24-hour period. Take a train into town, do the rest with the bike, it's all really simple and fast. I see this being added to large parking spaces outside of cities in the future (maybe they already have - I don't own a car so I wouldn't know ;]).

[locallost]

68% of work and school related trips are by bicycle in Amsterdam. so obviously they replace quite a bit more than walking.

[kokx]

Bicycles replace both walking and driving trips. In Dutch cities, most people walk or cycle to the grocery store, which is a great example of cycling replacing walking trips.

In smaller villages however, that are more spread out and usually only have one or two grocery stores, people usually take the car or their bike to the grocery store, because walking is too far. In this case, bikes do replace trips by car.

Also note that in general, Dutch cities are quite walkable and cycleable. If I visit a friend on the other side of the city I live in, I go by bike. Which is about as fast as going by car. Going by public transport also takes about the same time. This is a result of the Downs-Thomson paradox [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox

[davidhbolton]

Here in the UK, approx 10 million (about 16% of the population) people live outside of towns and cities. My nearest supermarket is seven miles away. Public transport is almost non-existent. Cars are a necessity not a luxury.

In cities (and I lived in London until six years ago) you needed a car for transporting shopping. Its either that or pay inflated prices at local convenience stores. Where I lived (Leyton) there were 1 or 2 supermarkets within a mile or two but other parts of London you had to travel further. Even with the much better public transport, you would not be able to carry more than a couple of bags of shopping. And much of London was just too dangerous to cycle on.

So I can understand why people like their cars even in cities.

[HPsquared]

Taxi not an option?

[eafkuor]

Last time I checked taxis are pretty expensive. Not everyone wants or can spend 10 or 20 euros every time they need to go somewhere.

[jonvk]

Free parking is also quite expensive, although it's hard to see.

It increases the costs of private properties when it's part of the property, and public parking increases government expenditures. It also consumes lots of otherwise very valuable space.

That's without factoring in the increased costs on social structures from the extra drivers on the road when there is more parking space.

[ldoughty]

If you're going to work, that might be 15-30% of your income to pay for the trip

[hobofan]

If you are going to work as a freelancer and bill commute as working time (as you should, to disincentivize useless meetings), you might even make money while being driven.

[Cockbrand]

Or cycling?