[SamBorick]

> People needing to move non-trivial distances for periodic tasks shapes everything. Cars, and thus car parking, come about because of this need.

This is not true. Every city in the US used to have a robust public transit system. No cars or parking lots needed. You can hitch 2 horses per car space, and 10-20 bikes in the same space.

Those pre-car public transit systems were bankrupted by artificially low fares, and because a small number of cars literally got in the way: https://www.vox.com/2015/5/7/8562007/streetcar-history-demis...

[fatnoah]

> This is not true. Every city in the US used to have a robust public transit system. No cars or parking lots needed.

That WAS true, but that's not the reality that's shaping planning now. Further, many central business districts have been eroded by cars + big box suburbanization, so that many of those essentials are only obtainable in areas that never even had transit or didn't exist when transit was still a thing.

In the past, I had the good fortune to live car-free for many years in a US city with a working transportation system. Not having to account for the car was actually liberating, despite having to plan my adventures a bit more carefully to align with said transit systems.

[hughesjj]

> That WAS true, but that's not the reality that's shaping planning now

Yes, this is indeed a problem we need to fix, agreed. For now I'm open to reducing the comical over provisioning of parking spots in strip malls by removing minimum parking requirements and hopefully replacing the large car parking spots with smaller bike and motorcycle parking spots and even bus stops.

[falcolas]

> Every city in the US used to have a robust public transit system.

Every major urban center, perhaps. No city in Montana (I'll go so far as to say the midwest, minus perhaps Chicago) has a "robust" public transit system.

And even when we create a perfect 15 minute utopia, people will still need one-off transportation on a periodic basis to spots more than 15 minutes away. Doctor visits, specialized purchases, bulk orders, building materials, recreation, etc.

[OGWhales]

> Every major urban center, perhaps. No city in Montana (I'll go so far as to say the midwest, minus perhaps Chicago) has a "robust" public transit system.

Your comment is talking about the present tense while theirs is not. I’m sure they would agree with you that non-car transportation options are lacking currently. I don’t know what Midwest transportation options were before we entered this car dependency era, from a quick search it appears streetcars were a thing there (which is what their linked article was about).

> And even when we create a perfect 15 minute utopia, people will still need one-off transportation on a periodic basis to spots more than 15 minutes away. Doctor visits, specialized purchases, bulk orders, building materials, recreation, etc.

You can include options for cars without making them the main method of transportation for everything. Having cars as an option is not the problem, designing everything around cars and letting other options fall to the wayside is the problem.

[dublinben]

It took me less than a minute to confirm that Billings Montana did, in fact, used to have an electric trolley system 100+ years ago.[0] Just like nearly every other US city at one time.

[0] https://billingsgazette.com/streetcars/image_1048a3b1-20c3-5...

[matt_kantor]

So did the tiny city of Bozeman (I just got back from a trip there).

[8note]

Those one-offs have specialized folks to do the job - taxis and delivery drivers and the like.

You don't need everyone to have their own car when a couple cars can serve everyone