[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.

[bryanlarsen]

The goal isn't, or shouldn't be, fewer people owning cars. The goal should be fewer miles driven in urban areas. My cousin in Copenhagen basically only uses it for driving out to a rural area to visit her parents.

Owning a car in Denmark is incredibly expensive. That does significantly impact the ownership rate. And of course if fewer people own cars the miles driven by cars does go down. But lowering the ownership rate is a means to the end, not the end itself.

[queenkjuul]

Amsterdam has fewer cars because it is designed to be convenient without one, not because cars are that much more expensive there.

[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.

[stetrain]

I think that may be a bit of an exaggeration.

Yes the financial component is part of it. Building dense walkable urban developments makes car ownership more expensive and non-car options cheaper and more convenient.

Some would argue that in many places car ownership is being subsidized by the way we develop and tax.

Some households will still have cars, but households are not the same as individual people.

And I think there are plenty of places where the majority of households don’t own cars. You can say they would if it was cheap and convenient enough, but that’s the whole point we’re discussing. Not dedicating so much development and infrastructure to cars will make them less convenient and more expensive options than the alternatives for at least some of the population.

[queenkjuul]

This really just isn't true. Most people i know here in Chicago take transit or bike in the city. Many people i know who can easily afford a car choose not to because it's so easy to get around without one.

Make a city that doesn't require a car, and people that aren't compelled to use one won't.