[taeric]

It is frustrating how so much in life can feel car centered, I think. That said, so many of the counter arguments cannot contend with the fact that having a car is convenient. To an absurd degree.

There is a reason why everyone in the dormitories knew who had a vehicle. And though you could get to some of the off campus areas by foot, it was far more likely that you would hitch a ride.

[bryanlarsen]

If your campus had a subway stop in the middle of it, I highly doubt students were more likely to leave by car than via some other form of transport.

That being said, my 2nd cousin who lives in Copenhagen owns a car. It is convenient. She doesn't use it a lot since usually a bicycle or mass transit is also convenient but having the option is nice for certain trips or conditions. Copenhagen is a pretty nice city to drive in. Hundreds of bicycles at every intersection slows you down a lot less than hundreds of cars at every intersection.

That's the secret -- make your city convenient to use without a car, which significantly reduces the number of cars, which makes it much better for those using a car.

[taeric]

The campus I lived on had a transit stop not far off. I'm sure more people used it than my little anecdote made it sound.

I agree that places should be made as convenient as they can be for walking, as well. I just get annoyed with so much of the discourse assuming you can design the cities so that a car is not more convenient. It is almost always a massive convenience. Obnoxiously so.

[stetrain]

But those cities do exist. Just mostly not in the US.

They also don’t need to make non-car options more convenient for all people, or even most people. The larger the share of non-car trips the better things get even for those who still drive, even if that share is going from 10% to 20%. Less congestion and pollution. Fewer traffic accidents. More density of housing in places that have high demand, reducing housing costs.

[taeric]

My point is that, even in the cities that you are referencing, the more affluent people almost always have a car. Because they can afford it, and because it is more convenient.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong on this. Essentially, my assertion is that you get more people out of cars by making them expensive than you do with city design. (Unless, of course, you consider parking costs part of city design?)

[bryanlarsen]

Yes, affluent people will pretty much always own cars. But with a pedestrian/cycle/transit friendly design, they'll use them much less.

I know affluent people in Copenhagen. They own cars. They are basically only used on the weekend, for travel outside of Copenhagen.

Amsterdam has 0.45 cars per household. So lots of households own cars, even in Amsterdam. But the miles driven per household per day is less than a quarter of what it is in the States.

[taeric]

I mean, cars per household is 2+ in large portions of the US.

Again, I'm largely inline with what you are speaking towards. The only change I'm making to the discourse is that, if you want fewer people owning cars, you pretty much have to make it more expensive. You can't just make the city more walkable. You have to make it expensive to own cars.

As I say downthread, this is inline with cheaper dense housing. If you want cheaper dense housing, you wind up with smaller living units. Often without dedicated parking allotments for all residents.

[stetrain]

> (Unless, of course, you consider parking costs part of city design?)

Absolutely. The amount of space taken up by parking, and its related cost, and things like congestion charges, are part of city planning.

And you can still significantly reduce the number of cars and car-trips without eliminating car ownership. A household with one car used occasionally when it’s convenient needs less parking and driving space than one with two cars driven daily.

[taeric]

So on this we are in complete agreement. My criticism is when people show walkable cities, they need to underline that majority of those people will own a car if they can financially make it happen. Almost bar none.

[bkettle]

To what extent is having a car convenient because we've built our cities under the assumption that people own cars? Where I lived for a year in SF (near Church station) I found that for day-to-day life I never once wished I had a car. Groceries, restaurants, bars, and parks were all within (short) walking distance, and my job downtown was easily accessible by transit.

As much as I love college campuses, I think they often miss out on having interesting amenities within the walkability of the campus itself. Still, going to school in Cambridge I never wanted a car and the few times I rented one for a longer trip or a move I wished that I didn't have to.

I think cars are and probably should be convenient for certain things (mainly moving, buying furniture or other big stuff, and to a lesser extent getting into nature). But for day-to-day life, it is a sign of failure (and wasted potential!) when cars are convenient.

[taeric]

Fair questions, I think. I am just pointing out that if you have a lot of options when on foot, you almost certainly have more with a car. And you would have an easier schedule if you own your own car.

I say this as someone that enjoys the long slow walks. They are amazing. But if the goal is to get to the store/office and back, on foot is not as convenient as in a car.

The only times this is not the case, is when something has made the car not possible. Usually this boils down to "it can be prohibitively expensive to park a car at your destination."

[bkettle]

I agree that for in-town trips the only thing that reduces the convenience of driving is when you can't drive fast and park directly at your destination for free. But these things (traffic, parking scarcity, etc) are really common, and are often the direct result of the fact that you are trying to go somewhere interesting. They are rarely artificial costs that could be removed.

I do think anecdotes are effective here, so: from my old SF apartment I could bike or ride Muni to the office. I generally chose to bike, but both options were more convenient than driving. The speed of driving and biking were both limited mostly by traffic and traffic lights, so biking was just as fast as driving. Both the traffic and the traffic lights are necessary because other people also want to live and work in a similar place as I do. But since my office was downtown in an urban, popular area where land value is high enough that parking is not a good use of land, if I drove I would have had to park a few blocks away (for a high price) and walk. Since bike parking is so much more space efficient than car parking, I could easily park my bike in my office. Taking the train was faster than either option; if it rained I would simply take the train.

I think you are not correct that a car is a strictly better option for all tasks. I think the convenience of not having to deal with all the things that make driving difficult is extremely valuable, and I think the things that make driving difficult are unavoidable because driving scales extremely poorly.

[taeric]

Personal anecdotes definitely shape thoughts here. Mine is that I have used transit and biking in Atlanta and Seattle to get to work for the past few decades. I have liked the money savings, especially back when I couldn't afford a car. I also like the exercise portion. I didn't even mind the having to wait for a bus/train aspect, as I enjoy consuming books.

However, I couldn't ignore that I was virtually alone in my office for having taken transit in Atlanta. In Seattle, I'm assuming more of my colleagues were using it, but as you went up the pay ladder, cars became the norm. Overwhelmingly so. And yes, traffic was bad in both places, but if I wanted to be home to office in the least time, I left early in a car.

And I want to be clear that I don't think they are strictly superior. Certainly not for single people. But the biggest question I have to ask about taking a car somewhere is if I have the money for the gas. To get there by transit takes considerably more thought. (Or luck, if you are on a main transit point at both locations, I suppose?)

[queenkjuul]

See where i live my car is drastically less convenient than walking, biking, or taking the bus for basically any trip under ~5 miles. The effort to get out of my garage and out of the neighborhood and sitting in traffic and finding parking on the other end means biking is basically always faster, and for anything within a half mile (which covers most things i need day to day) walking is just easier.

I enjoy having a car for when i want to go on road trips or move something big or go to some specialty shop of the clear other side of town, but it is not at all convenient for ~90% of the places I go.

[taeric]

5 miles is a ridiculously short radius. Even keeping to that, though, the elementary school is 2.5 miles away, with 250 feet of climb. 20 minutes down to about 5 if I consider bike to car. (And that is at speeds I can keep on that climb. The kids are almost certainly taking longer than 20 minutes on a bike.)

Back when I was in Seattle proper, I can agree. As I say elsewhere, I'm actually a major fan/proponent of transit and walking. Thought it was amazing that the elementary school would walk the kids to the science center for field trips. But I couldn't not see that as you get people that can afford a car and home to park it, they used their car more.

[queenkjuul]

5 miles covers everything from my house to downtown? That's not a small area lol. There's elementary schools within a few hundred feet of my house, high schools within a mile.

My point: cars are not always convenient, you just live in a place specifically designed to make them so, whereas i don't.

Edit to add: 5 mile radius is what like 75 sq mi? That's half the entire area of the city. A full one half of the entire city i can access quickly and easily without touching a car. And i can still take trains to the other half while anyone driving that far will be making a terrifying trip on the expressway.

[taeric]

I agree it can be workable. It can be amusing to consider how much more area people cover today than in history. I specifically remember walking 5 miles to a friends house somewhat regularly from back in the day.

For the kinds of people that want space, though, it is a very short radius. For families with kids that they want to do activities, it can be crippling.

I think it is fair to argue that many of the things that make me support that statement are themselves very problematic. I largely agree. But that is also largely against the point I was intending.

My point is only that you will get more and more people actively driving as long as you don't take steps to keep it specifically expensive to do so. NYC is the poster child example for what I mean, here. Has good transit by US standards. Still saw measurable increases in use from congestion pricing for tolls.

Being more clear, here. My point is not that you can replace design considerations with pricing strategy. My assertion is that you can't ignore pricing strategy with design considerations. And the opportunity/convenience cost of vehicles is such that you have to be somewhat aggressive on that control, as you have to cut into the natural benefits of a modern car.

My template for this thought is largely NYC's congestion pricing success. And knowing that Tokyo does a pretty aggressive policy of not letting you register a car if you don't have off street parking. Which is very expensive.

[stetrain]

Asking most Americans to go car free isn’t realistic.

But I think asking for the kinds of development that reduce the need for and length of car trips, as a choice of place to live, is reasonable.

There’s also a vast gulf between a car-free household and the current situation where many suburban households have 3+ cars due to two working adults plus children in high school or college, each of which needs their own car every day.

[taeric]

On this I fully agree, and is largely what I mean with my lead-in. It sucks how much we have to drive around. Back when I lived in the middle of a city, it was remarkably nice how much I could do without a car. I still opened up more options when I had one, is the only point I'm making.