[yupper32]

Why is it always framed this way? This is NOT the solution.

The solution is to build better public transportation options. That will necessarily include removing a decent amount of the car infrastructure, but you can't just remove car infrastructure and hope people adapt.

The way you frame it, it sounds like (and it often is the case with people framing it this way) that you think that if we remove car infrastructure, people will be forced to use other means of transportation to get around. And while technically true, all it will actually do is piss people off and make it so much harder to get around.

[SR2Z]

It's framed this way because car infrastructure is so massive and sprawling that it by necessity crowds out public transit in cities.

It's also a vicious cycle: making public transit marginally worse increases the number of people who drive to get places, which makes the government build more roads, which makes cities sprawl more, and eventually you end up with a city like Atlanta that spans 50 miles and is barely navigable without a car.

Yes, it will piss people off - it will make cities MUCH less convenient for suburban drivers. That's not a bad thing unless you happen to be a suburban driver.

[foxyv]

It will make homes, 25 miles from the city center, nearly worthless. People will want to live into the denser, walkable neighborhoods. They limit the amount of mixed use, medium density housing because it would crash the market for new car dependent suburbs which provide the funding for road maintenance and construction.

[mikem170]

> They limit the amount of mixed use, medium density housing because it would crash the market for new car dependent suburbs which provide the funding for road maintenance and construction.

It is my understanding that many car dependent suburbs got subsidies from higher levels of government to build new roads [0], which allowed them to expand their tax base, but that the density of their taxpayers, per mile of infrastructure, is not enough for longer term expensive maintenance after several decades. This applies not just to roads, but also water and sewer infrastructure. Cities with ten times the density of suburbs have an easier time paying the fixed per-mile portion of infrastructure costs.

The infrastructure in suburbs has already been subsidized, and may need more subsidies. Or services will degrade.

I don't know that anything you said above conflicts with what you said about mixed use, I wasn't sure about the funding part though.

[0] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/

[foxyv]

Yeah, the new houses are what pay the bills. Once the music stops playing though the game is over. Medium density, mixed use housing would stop the music by making demand for crappy new R1 housing plummet. No one wants to rip the bandaid off though so it just gets worse and worse until they turn into Detroit.

[SauciestGNU]

Part of the problem is that the suburbs already externalize their maintenance costs. Nearly none of them generate enough tax revenue to maintain their sprawling infrastructure, so repairs get subsidized by the tax base in denser areas, or the maintenance is just not done at all.

If suburban drivers and homeowners weren't benefitting from urban success and externalizing all their costs then those properties would already be close to worthless.

[CydeWeys]

I live in Manhattan and I find a bicycle to be a better choice for the majority of my trips than public transit (it's faster, too). I only use public transit for long trips or when I'm traveling with suitcases.

Bikes are simply better at point-to-point transportation (the same advantage that cars have), except that they don't take up a lot of space so it's actually a scalable solution to have everyone using them to get around even in a dense city; see Amsterdam as an example.

[yupper32]

Excuse my language but I think it's worth it here: Dear fucking lord, if biking in Manhatten is your idea of bikes shining, then you are way out in left field.

In my week in Manhatten last month I saw several crashes (including a near miss with a sit-down scooter riding in the bike lane who had to bail and slide before nearly crashing into a crowd of pedestrians), pedestrians jumping out of the way of bikes who don't stop at red lights, and bikes swerving around car traffic barely getting by without taking out car mirrors or getting run over.

Biking in Manhatten is not for the faint of heart and not for anyone who isn't decently athletic.

You could have lauded the subway system, but you chose bikes?

[asoneth]

Echoing the above, I had a bike commute in midtown Manhattan as well and found it more convenient than the subway and safer than biking in the suburbs.

Compared to the NYC subway it was faster, more consistent, and less prone to delays.

Compared to biking in the suburbs the car traffic typically moved more slowly, I didn't have as many close passes, and drivers seemed more aware of their surroundings. In the suburbs the majority of the people I see biking are middle-aged men in lycra, whereas in the city it seemed more like a demographic cross section.

I also saw other cyclists cross on red lights, knock into pedestrians, and swerve erratically in traffic, though I also saw drivers, moped riders, and pedestrians do the same at roughly the same rate so I always assumed it was a crazy New Yorker thing and not a crazy biker thing.

[CydeWeys]

Sounds like you had an exceptional experience, having seen more crashes in one week than I see in years of living here. And I promise you, I spend a lot more time on foot and on bike in the city than you do.

[yupper32]

Then either you're used to the mayhem and aren't seeing it, or you mostly stay away from where I was (between Houston and 42nd St mostly).

Regardless, are you really saying that "bikes are simply better at point-to-point transportation" for most people in Manhatten? Because that's absurd.

[CydeWeys]

That's exactly where I live and work. I dunno what to say, you had an exceptional experience. That's not my lived daily experience at all.

And yes, I would say it's best for most people in Manhattan. It would be even better if we build more bike lanes and get more cars off the road.

[foxyv]

I think, if you take their argument with a bit of generosity, that they are arguing for more balance in our approach to cities. Right now the balance is so far in favor of cars, that it makes walking and cycling into an extreme sport. The result is loud, dangerous, expensive, and dirty cities that are built almost exclusively for cars.

The humungous parking lots, the 50-foot wide roads, the high speeds, the increasingly larger vehicles, the demolished housing for more freeways, parking minimums, extensive R1 zoning... They all contribute to a city exclusively for cars. Even if we don't get rid of ALL of it, we can certainly cut it back significantly.

Maybe ban cars in places where we don't need them anyways like Valencia street in San Francisco or the Spanish super blocks. Decrease speed limits and design streets to enforce them properly. Add walking and cycling paths to the grocery stores. Add raised crosswalks. When you don't have people using their cars to travel 5 miles everyday it leaves them open to the people who REALLY need to use them. Allow walkable neighborhoods in city planning initiatives.

People WANT to live in places like these, but we refuse to build them for some reason. It's why walkable neighborhoods, built when they were still legal, cost an arm and a leg now. Heck, we even build theme parks to give people a vague feeling of being someplace like that. People go on vacation to countries with places like that.

[aeturnum]

To me, this discussion is very similar to the discussion around "defund the police": should we lead with the unpopular thing that people will have to accept or should we lead with the goal?

My sense of why this framing is popular is that we've had ~30+ years of passing "public transit" initiatives that are doomed to fail because we would not disrupt car infrastructure. This becomes a double-whammy because we spend money to get very mediocre results, and people reasonably blame the transit system.

Instead, if you're clear from the start that you are going to remove an entire lane in the city for your BRT system - you face more opposition, but you have a much better chance of implementing an actual BRT system!

I think reasonable people can disagree on this, but it's not a mystery how we got here.

[treffer]

As you say it is technically the solution.

It is also not like car infrastructure would turn into non-existance. It most cases all that happens is reuse. Playing fields. Pedestrian areas. Bike lanes. Bus lanes. Bike areas.

The only common thing is they all cist car infrastructure space. This is the common ground. The reallocation of that infrastructure and space is a different story.

I have yet to see a case where it didn't pass people off no matter what the future use was. So even if technically the other framing should be different I have not seen a case where it makes a difference. All while seeing that even pure car infrastructure blockage makes a difference.

[yupper32]

> As you say it is technically the solution.

No, I said technically people will adapt and take the shitty and overrun public transportation because there's no other option. It's not a solution because it often drastically increases travel time, put people in danger because public transportation without proper security is much more dangerous, and overall it will rightfully piss people off.

The solution is improving public transportation. This isn't something that people are advocating for. They just want the cars out.

[TedKroft]

The people who want cars out absolutely want improved public transportation.

[yupper32]

Then they should say that and frame their arguments around that. That's my entire point. Do you see any mention of public transportation improvements in the comment I originally replied to? No, you don't.

The movement has no hope if the movement is simply trying to get rid of cars. "Fuck cars" as they say.

[munk-a]

As the original poster I'd mention that I'd love to see a much better public transit system but that I've also seen it repeatedly stymied by car-centric interests. I've seen stupidly large bus exchanges placed in the middle of fields because all the land closer to what people actually want to get to is covered with acres of parking and I've seen bus lanes shot down because of the expected impact on traffic. We need to accept that car infrastructure will be degraded to actually get meaningful transit changes and city densification efforts through and those box stores in lakes of parking need to die as a default footprint to build retail. If it takes seven minutes to walk from one storefront to the next then you're never going to get people out of their cars no matter how many buses you throw at the problem.

At the end of the day it comes down to: car infrastructure, walkability - choose one.

[ryukafalz]

Often the car infrastructure itself is what makes getting around without a car infeasible even for short trips - and short trips are a very large portion of trips taken. There are many, many destinations near me that are within easy biking distance, but doing so involves crossing highway ramps and mixing with fast-moving cars.

We do not need to allow cars to take every possible route. Alternative modes of transport are more useful if they're prioritized on the most direct routes. Cars are fast, a diversion won't impact them as much as it does someone on a bike or scooter.

[soperj]

> Why is it always framed this way? This is NOT the solution.

Because it's the actual solution.

> you can't just remove car infrastructure and hope people adapt.

You don't have to hope. They will adapt.

[yupper32]

If you remove car infrastructure in SF, for example, there are massive amounts of the city that will die because they lack adequate public transit options.

You remove mobility, and you remove any hope for underserved communities to survive, let alone improve.

Instead, you could advocate for MORE mobility via better public transportation. But you don't for some reason that I may never understand.

[jgon]

No they wouldn't. They would take to the polls and vote in a city council that would reverse whatever sort of plans you think would be implemented. A lot of people seem to think that they will just be able to force a majority of people to join them in bike heaven on the other side of sweeping infrastructure changes but there are far too many people who aren't interested in it and won't let it happen. Car driving and the things it enables are valued much higher by a much bigger proportion of the population that many people seem to want to believe.

[DoneWithAllThat]

Ah yes the progressive strategy: make lives miserable for people to force them to adopt your worldview. The only thing it seems to do successfully is lose them elections.

[burtness]

I mean this is basically all politics - who should suffer and how much to keep society running. I don't think you'll find a progressive monopoly on that

[hackernewds]

Exactly this reminds me of the Market Street closure in San Francisco, that has the intention and result of inconveniencing citywide traffic while making zero improvements to the tardiness, reach and infrequency of public transit

[hnov]

Ironically, the closure also made Market St more unpleasant (an already unpleasant experience before) to walk after dark.

[bombcar]

If you want the real answer it's pretty easy to figure out. There's a group of people that want a particular form of society and that necessitates the absolute removal of the personal car, usually without actually fixing the problems that the car is supposedly causing.

People will adapt to many things, but that doesn't mean it is good - you could stop food deliveries to major cities and they'd empty in days; cars included; but that wouldn't be good.