[tossandthrow]

While I agree on this, the US is a bit special as having a car is considered mandatory.

IMHO, that culture needs to be changed: better public transport and walkable cities.

When that is established, then it is also easier to revoke the drivers privilege.

[scottbez1]

In some ways, yes, though not in many cities like SF, NYC, Chicago, Seattle, etc.

But it's also a chicken and egg problem: often transit is not viable or is too slow precisely because everything is devoted to cars. The SF Van Ness BRT is an excellent example - I used to routinely get off the 49 bus and walk faster than it stuck in car traffic, but after the BRT the bus is a much better and faster experience than driving could ever be.

One of the most common reasons for watering down or canceling pedestrian, transit, and biking infra projects is a refusal to negatively impact driving in any way, even if the net societal benefit (especially to lower income households who take transit at much higher rates) is far greater.

Good governance requires sometimes unpopular choices (see Paris's recent bicycle transformation, or SF's recent recall election over the creation of a new public park in place of a redundant street)

[Lammy]

> The SF Van Ness BRT is an excellent example - I used to routinely get off the 49 bus and walk faster than it stuck in car traffic

It's funny that you use that particular example considering the SF Supervisors of 1958 are the ones who created that problem by refusing to build the elevated freeway that transit planning engineers correctly envisioned we would need. Tearing down the stub end of it also created the most dangerous intersection in the city at Market & Octavia. As a pedestrian it would be so nice to have cars elevated up off the ground instead of having to wait to cross on foot. A lot of intersections of Octavia and its cross streets don't even allow pedestrian crossing at all lmfao

[renewiltord]

Having a car in SF is not mandatory. It's quite useful but you can live well without.

[rahimnathwani]

  you can live well without

Imagine you and your spouse both work full time, and you have 1-2 children. And your definition of 'living well' includes having those children learn to swim well, and do some sort of after-school sport, and also do math supplementation because SFUSD teaches math at a really slow pace.

I don't believe any of the above are outlier or unreasonable positions to have.

Yet a family in that situation would severely struggle to fit everything in if they had to rely solely on public transport to get between home, school and after-school activities.

(I grew up in London, where public transport is often faster than driving. In San Francisco, most of my car journeys would take 3-4 times as long by public transport.)

[renewiltord]

Admittedly, public transport is garbage. And for the time we'd go to La Petite Baleen, a car is 0.5x the time. So in that respect I agree. In Mission Bay everything else is close by.

But I think perhaps if someone told me "We don't live well. I can only take my child to swim class on the weekends" I would think that somewhat strange.

[rahimnathwani]

Re: La Petite Baleen: 34 mins vs 1 hour 11 mins for me.

My son's swim school is 20 mins away by car, or 60 mins by public transport.

I take your point that these are first world problems.

But my point is that not having access to a car in San Francisco is a significant inconvenience and it's incorrect to say 'you can live well' without that access. You might not be so inconvenienced that you would say "we don't live well", but there's a 'meh' zone in between the two.

[renewiltord]

I wouldn't say it's "meh" that you can take your kids to swim school only on weekends.

LPB is 23 vs 39 for me but I do drive. Either way I wouldn't think it "meh".

But I suppose standards of living in the US are by default so far ahead of other places that these are considered the minimum to not be "meh" here.

[rahimnathwani]

  LPB is 23 vs 39 for me but I do drive. Either way I wouldn't think it "meh".

The 39 minute journey time doesn't include:

- the time between now and the journey start time

- delays

So you would need to budget an hour each way, i.e. a total of 2.5 hours for a 30 minute swim lesson.

Imagine doing that for every single thing you need to do.