[rayval]

The article mentions how global cities outside the US are building out urban rail systems.

Here's some more detail about China, which has the two largest transit systems in the world: Shanghai and Beijing.

In 1993, Shanghai had one line running 2.7 miles with 4 stations. Less than 30 years later, the system had 15 lines, 500 miles of track, and 500 stations. [1]

And in that same time frame, the Beijing subway system was expanded, from 2 lines in 2002 to 27 lines and 500 miles of track, with 13 million riders per day in 2022. [2]

Also in that time, 30 other cities in China got subway systems as well.[3]

In 1993, China's per-capita GDP was $537. By comparison, per-capita GDP in the US was 50 times larger (about $23k). Since then, the gap has narrowed. US per-capita GDP is now 5x of China (66k vs 12k).

China demonstrates that, even with small GDP, if you prioritize the needs of the people over entrenched commercial interests, it can be done.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Shanghai_Metro [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Subway [3] https://qz.com/1010911/a-beautiful-data-animation-shows-the-...

[shiroiushi]

In the US, if you prioritize the wants of the people, you'll just get wider roads. The people there don't want better public transit; you can see this every time these discussions come up on HN and Americans here respond about how much they hate riding on public transit or walking anywhere. And their all-suburban cities aren't dense enough to make it work economically or practically anyway: everything is just too far apart.

Finally, the largest transit system in the world isn't in China, it's in Tokyo, Japan (though to be fair, it isn't really a single system since it's run by many different companies).

[Kbelicius]

> In the US, if you prioritize the wants of the people, you'll just get wider roads. The people there don't want better public transit; you can see this every time these discussions come up on HN and Americans here respond about how much they hate riding on public transit or walking anywhere.

Everybody wants a car because public transit sucks. Do you think that those people would still want a car if they lived somewhere with a good public transit and walkability?

[pandaman]

This is a tired meme and essentially an ad hominem "silly Americans never experienced civilization so they don't know better", often repeated by American "urbanists" too. I grew up in Moscow, USSR. With 2 min subway, trams, rail, buses and trolleybuses going everywhere. There was no private car ownership in the USSR until 1950s so nothing was built "for cars". Yet everyone dreamed of owning a car. There were films about people getting cars. The government ran lottery where prizes were appliances and the main prize was a car. The wait list to buy an overpriced (~2 annual average incomes) car was 5+ years. People still bought them at 3x price on the black market. Some people bought motorcycles and drove them with a sidecar as poor replacement for an unaffordable for them car. People went to work in the oil fields in the north for a year to afford a car. So yes, people do want cars even after they experienced the wonders of public transit. People who have anxiety driving or cannot give up their drinking habit are a small minority.

[Kbelicius]

> This is a tired meme and essentially an ad hominem "silly Americans never experienced civilization so they don't know better"

It has nothing to do whit Americans, nor did I imply it. Simply put, as it wasn't already simply put, my claim is that changing incentives changes peoples (not just Americans) wants. I would really like to hear why you think that that isn't true. I didn't even mention the US in my post, GP did. But he isn't making an ad hominem but somehow, according to you, I am. Is that because you agree with him and not with me so I'm making a fallacy and not him? Either way, neither did I nor GP make an ad hominem. If you thing that somebody made an ad hominem show some good faith and show where and why is it an ad hominem.

> I grew up in Moscow, USSR. With 2 min subway, trams, rail, buses and trolleybuses going everywhere. There was no private car ownership in the USSR until 1950s so nothing was built "for cars". Yet everyone dreamed of owning a car. There were films about people getting cars. The government ran lottery where prizes were appliances and the main prize was a car. The wait list to buy an overpriced (~2 annual average incomes) car was 5+ years. People still bought them at 3x price on the black market. Some people bought motorcycles and drove them with a sidecar as poor replacement for an unaffordable for them car. People went to work in the oil fields in the north for a year to afford a car. So yes, people do want cars even after they experienced the wonders of public transit.

It didn't occur to you that maybe back then people dreamed of owning a car because it was a novelty, a status symbol? Are they still making films about getting a car in Russia? Why not?

I'm not saying that nobody wants or needs a car. All I'm saying is that in places with good public transit and walkablity not everybody needs a car for day to day life, and of those that don't need a car majority don't dream of getting a car as you put it.

> People who have anxiety driving or cannot give up their drinking habit are a small minority.

Wow, everybody that doesn't dream of owning a car suffers anxiety or is an alcoholic... really?

[pandaman]

Changing incentives does not change what people want, it can only change what people do, IME. And I am pretty sure I described why I think so in my post - the incentives in the USSR were against private ownership of cars yet people still wanted that, even though the vast majority could not afford them and kept using public transportation. It's not limited to cars though, people also want to live in big stand-alone houses but in many countries are forced to live in tiny apartment, for example. Does not mean they want to share room with their grandma and listen to what their neighbors are watching on TV, does it?

>It didn't occur to you that maybe back then people dreamed of owning a car because it was a novelty, a status symbol?

It could be for whatever reason, I am not a psychic to read people minds, for all I care they wanted cars because they liked the sounds they make with the horn. The empirical fact remains unchanged: people wanted cars despite the developed public transportation network and heavy burden of car ownership. Which is contrary to the "urbanists" claim that people only want cars because of the lacking public transportation and as soon as the latter becomes "good" people will abandon cars. Some might, some people still want cars. If you see footage of Tokyo, London or whatever place is touted as the public transportation paradaise, you will still see cars on the streets.

>Everybody wants a car because public transit sucks.

>I'm not saying that nobody wants or needs a car.

These two statements cannot be true at the same time, can they?

>Wow, everybody that doesn't dream of owning a car suffers anxiety or is an alcoholic... really?

Did you notice people on the Internet do these sound imitations in writing if and only if they cannot make a concise argument? It's rather peculiar. You can see somebody writing pretty well and making logical points until they can't and then, suddenly, it's "er,...,hhmmm, wow, ugh" etc?

[racional]

There was no "er,...,hhmmm, wow, ugh" in the commenter's post. To the extent that rambling and evasive rhetoric is being deployed here, it's coming from you.

First you made a plainly irrational (and basically pretty silly) assertion -- that the only people who don't want to own cars are anxiety cases and alcoholics. Right here, on the internet, in front of all these people. And so you got rightly cornered and called out for it.

You then followed that up by attributing a quote to person that you're responding to ("Everybody wants a car because public transit sucks") that they plainly didn't say, and then put it alongside something they did say, in order to claim they were making some kind of contradiction.

It's difficult to see what you might hope to accomplish with such tactics.

[shiroiushi]

>Do you think that those people would still want a car if they lived somewhere with a good public transit and walkability?

Yes, I really do. You can see it in comments here on HN and any other place the transit-vs-cars discussion comes up and Americans are involved. Sure, there's some Americans who'd really like to live someplace with good public transit and walkability, but don't be fooled: most Americans (IMO) just aren't like this and really do want to stick with their car-based lifestyle. If most Americans were like you say, there'd be a huge exodus of Americans moving to Europe.

[Kbelicius]

> Yes, I really do.

So you don't think that people respond to incentives? Quite an interesting take.

> most Americans (IMO) just aren't like this and really do want to stick with their car-based lifestyle.

Because nobody, not just Americans, likes change. I'd like to stick with my public transit/walking lifestyle but if overtime that lifestyle becomes hard to maintain I'd want to get a car.

> If most Americans were like you say, there'd be a huge exodus of Americans moving to Europe.

You've missed the point. I made absolutely no claims about Americans. If I made a claim about people it was about all people, Americans, Europeans, Asians... That claim is that people respond to incentives.

When a person moves from a place with bad public transit and walkablity to place with good public transit and walkablity it is likely that they'll go car free or at least use their care much less. Same applies the other way around.

[shiroiushi]

>You've missed the point. I made absolutely no claims about Americans.

You didn't, but I did. Like any place, Americans have a culture of their own, and car ownership is a big, big part of that culture in most of the country. (Similarly, owning guns is a big part of that culture for a large fraction of the population.)

>When a person moves from a place with bad public transit and walkablity to place with good public transit and walkablity it is likely that they'll go car free or at least use their care much less. Same applies the other way around.

Well, of course: people have to be practical at some point. Someone moving to a car-bound hellscape is going to need to get a car to have an enjoyable life, and someone moving to a dense city where car ownership is extremely expensive and inconvenient is likely to not want a car at all. But people don't just randomly move to these places: they move there because they want to for some reason, and the ubiquity (or not) of cars is probably a big part of that reason for many. People who absolutely love driving everywhere and hate public transit aren't going to move from suburban USA to Manhattan or Berlin or Tokyo, and people who like living carfree in major cities aren't likely to make the reverse move unless there's some huge incentive (high-paying job, family obligation, etc.) and even here they're probably not going to be too happy with the change.

I really feel like a large portion of the pro-dense-city people really think that almost everyone really secretly wants to live this way and only buys into car culture because it's forced on them. While growing up in a particular environment obviously has a huge effect on your personal preferences, and people sometimes change their opinions after seeing or experiencing a different environment, I think they're discounting how many people really do like car culture, even after seeing the alternatives. My view is that car ownership is a luxury, and a car-based society has huge economic and ecological costs and is ultimately unsustainable outside of rural areas, and eventually more-efficient societies are going to outcompete car-based societies (or, they'll both be destroyed in an ecological collapse leading to general societal collapse). I think we're already seeing a lot of this with the US, where labor costs there are absolutely insane compared to the rest of the world.

[onecommentman]

Absolutely yes. Families with children would want it. People with erratic schedules and demands for travel would want it. The aged would want it. People who highly value their and their children’s personal safety and security would want it. People living in harsh climates would want it. People with last-mile issues would want it. People with certain disabilities would want it. People who value their personal time highly would want it. People whose jobs require carrying equipment, but don’t need a company truck, would want it. People who want personal space while traveling would want it. People who need to get to places reliably, and thus want the freedom to reroute their trip in the event of an infrastructure failure, would want it. People who don’t want to be at the mercy of work stoppages when trying to get from A to B would want it. People providing Meals on Wheels would want it. People whose trips involve several intermediate destinations would want it. People who enjoy day-trips and vacations to off-the-beaten-track domestic locations would want it. And, blessedly, almost all Americans can satisfy those needs with their personal automobile on well-maintained public roadways.

Now it is true that age 18-45 healthy childless commuters living in small apartments in safe neighborhoods who go to the same few locations all their lives (should we call them the privileged ones, the boring ones?)…they may get by comfortably without a car. But they’d still want one.

[archagon]

I guess I'm one of your so-called "boring" ones. I fucking hate cars. They're expensive, they're dangerous, and finding parking is a massive time and money suck. Living life getting shuttled from bubble to bubble in your little bubble car is no life at all.

[fragmede]

> all-suburban cities aren't dense enough to make it work economically or practically

I'm not sure why we even call those cities, because they're not. They're big sprawling towns.

[HDThoreaun]

> China demonstrates that, even with small GDP

China's public transit success was because of their small gdp per capita, not in spite of it. Their developing economy gave them labor at slave wages and allowed the government to just bulldoze peoples houses without much backlash. Not having those things are the biggest problems the US faces when it comes to building infrastructure.