[zozbot234]

> A lot of people would have to give up their cars.

You don't have to give up the car, you just park it farther away from the dense and crowded downtown and use some other personal transportation (scooter, bike) for the last mile trip.

[crote]

In a city with a properly-designed transit system you wouldn't need a car at all.

I think it is quite telling how car ownership is viewed here: it it something you "have to" "give up". Car use has been normalized to such a point that it is viewed as a necessity, almost a God-given right, rather than just another mode of transport to get you from A to B.

Even in bike-heavy and transit-heavy cities you'll be hard-pressed to find trips which are impossible to do by car. Sure, it might not be the cheapest or most convenient option, but (outside of small pedestrian zones) completely banning cars is practically unheard of. On the other hand, there are plenty of suburbs where public transit basically doesn't exist, and any kind of bike infrastructure is met with hostility. For all intents and purposes, you can't live there without a car. That doesn't exactly sound like freedom to me.

[7bit]

> In a city with a properly-designed transit system you wouldn't need a car at all.

That's the wrong argument. People stay in traffic for hours, being frustrated about the waste of time. Yet, when asked why they wouldn't take public transport, you hear a bunch of dumb arguments why public transport is shit.

I experience this all of the time in my city. Public transport is awesome and you get around just as fast as with a car (given there is no traffic, which rarely happens). Yet, people complain about how bad public transport is and how unreliable. But if you point out that car traffic is just as unreliable and slower, then they take their freedom-card. That's some cognitive dissonance, if nothing else.

I wouldn't give a shit about these people. It's just so damn funny to see that - unless public transport is immediate teleportation - it never is good enough for them -- even if it's objectively faster a lot of times. Public transport will never good enough for these negative Nellie's.

[iknowstuff]

I take the subway all the time in SF but usually won’t take buses because they rattle, feel like the cheapest afterthought, are cramped, and make me feel poor. The quality of the experience matters too.

[skybrian]

The San Francisco neighborhoods I'm thinking of aren't downtown. they usually require residence permits to park.