Millennial: same feeling here. When I talk to people of my parents generation they always talk about how cars let them roam about and give them freedom.
I never felt the same way, and I think a large part of that is that I grew up with the Internet; I could always AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) my friends or use ICQ. I was always connected even during an era of dialup. With the always-on functionality of modern phones, I’m sure that feeing is much more magnified. This doesn’t surprise me and I hope it drives a much more efficient future.
Cars are a viable option only on low-density rural areas + long distance trips. Short distance you can do by biking (e-bikes are the modern evolution of the old two-stroke scooter) or walking. In high density public transportation is massively faster, cheaper, and more efficient that personal automobile.
UK here: My brother and my 3 (adult, independent) kids all seem to manage fine without cars, and have done so for years. Only one of them lives in London, the others in much smaller places.
Sure, there are plenty of areas where it would be really difficult. But there are also a lot more places than just London where it's perfectly possible, depending on family circumstances and lifestyle choices.
Yeah I live car-free in Cardiff. It's doable. But I won't kid myself and say that the public transport is good. It's mediocre like every British city outside London. It's a city of half a million and we don't even have a tram. As a nation we have far too low expectations for public transport.
You're entirely right that public transit in the UK isn't great. Compared to European countries like Denmark, the Netherlands, or Switzerland, it's mediocre. But compared to American transit it's incredible.
Two big differences in country design:
- in the UK, I felt like I could get to any town by transit. I imagine that isn't strictly true, but compared to the US, where I live in a half a state that's entirely devoid of any trains... big improvement
- UK cities are walkable, that is you can generally get anywhere just on foot. In the US cities I've lived in, downtown generally supports foot traffic, but as you get further out the sidewalks disappear, get scarier, and never have anyone walking around then.
Most cities in the UK are small enough that you can walk most places. Maybe combined with catching a bus into the center and back out again. Birmingham is possibly in an awkward middle ground where it doesn't have good public transport but is big enough that that's awkward.
Indeed, the dread of having to park somewhere, especially street parking, or in some hideous paid parking lot or scary parking deck, was always a huge turn-off of driving places. It's so much nicer to be able to take public transit and not have to worry about that.
Then you haven’t had the full experience. Let me walk you through the awful things about parking:
* circling the block over and over until you find a spot.
* making sense of the layered rules on parking signs to make sure you can park
* finding the parking stall and/or downloading the app to pay for parking.
* making sure you have no valuables visible and each car ahead and behind have enough space to get out.
This is experience based off living in DC, NY, and the Bay Area. I’m actually OK paying for a car - but I have an absolutely no time for parking and traffic.
Lived in Berkeley for a year after graduation while commuting to South San Francisco and it was nearly impossible to find a street parking spot after getting home from work.
I made the mistake of owning a car in Manhattan. I wanted to have it, but having to move the car like 3 times a week was a chore in itself and usually would end up eating up an hour or more trying to find something before giving up and going a bit far just to park it.
I’m not American nor live in America. But as a resident of cities whose shape pre-dates the car across several dense European countries, I can relate to those fears.
And if you want to choose not to own a car? Too bad! The laws are structured such that cars are forced on you. So now, having been made to buy a car you now must:
1. Spend thousands of dollars a year on gas, whether you want to or not
2. Buy auto insurance
3. Pay for routine maintenance like oil changes and brakes
And none of this is by choice.
I hate cars. Yet I am forced to own one in order to live.
Absolutely...I grew up in a rural place and got a driver’s license at 16, but have lived in NYC for over a decade and have thought about this often.
Teenagers here have no need to have a license or a ride from a parent to meet up with their friends. The level of independence is totally different, starts earlier, and is way safer.
And fat, out of shape, with health problems that are normally associated with older people. I'm astounded at how many 20-somethings I've met who complain about knee and back problems.
This is very obvious when dealing with young people today. When I was growing up, we came home from school, dropped off our bags, and then I didn't see the inside of my house until dinner time. Everything was outside, all the time. Even with the advent of the Nintendo, we still spent the vast majority of play time outside.
But then the Internet become a thing. For some of us sooner rather than later (I started earlier, as a tween, doing FidoNet and running a BBS). That shift online came with a tremendous increase in seat time in front of the computer.
So now I'd have to throw the kids out of the house and lock the door behind them, or they'll happily park in front of their computer playing games, watching YouTube, texting with friends that are literally across the street.
No wonder young people no longer see the car as freedom, they've lost the interest in even leaving their house, much less driving into the wilderness to take a hike or see the stars, etc. Sure, not all of them, but there is a very obvious pattern. And older generations aren't immune, of course, the allure of sitting on your butt in front of a computer screen appeals to all ages. But the older generations started with more habitual roaming habits.
I think there's a little more to this. I'm in my thirties and grew up in a lower-middle class suburb. Once I was in middle school, I didn't leave the house unless I was forcibly pushed out. All of the land around me had been sold and built on. Most of the owners didn't want other people's kids in their yard. The nearest park was several miles away and I wasn't allowed to go alone. My nearest friend was six miles away in the opposite direction.
Going outside the house was boring because all of the fun things I wanted to were too far away or off limits.
I knew a lot of people through my parent's church. This seemed to be a pretty common experience.
Exploring by car is a reaction to how communities of our parent's generation were built. Live in a single family zoned suburb where you can't walk to anything? Of course you're going to end up exploring by car and "getting away".
I'm an older millennial but enjoy living in a community where I only have to get into a car a couple times a week, but can spend the reset of the time walking or biking around my community.
If you live in anything like a real city and don't absolutely need a car to commute, the misery of street parking alone vastly outweighs any kind of occasional benefit.
But it's nice to have a license so you can rent a car if you really want to.
It's misery to you, the driver, and misery to someone else. It's depressing to think the sheer area of land in cities that is dedicated to (free) parking. That the space of what could easily be a nice park or a playground is instead used to store a dozen cars. Not to mentioned the economic value wasted.
Where is this free parking you speak of? I live in a largely suburban city (couple million people) and the vast majority of parking lots are neither free nor taking up land which would otherwise be used by a park or playground. It's nearly all underground, or on top of buildings, or along the street, and almost none of it is free. We have lots of parks.
I'll give the benefit of the doubt and just assume a different life experience, and not just hyperbole.
What is a real city? I live in one of 20 biggest in the US, but even #2 LA is pretty hard to get around without a car. My experience in traveling has been that places where carless transportation is easy, are places I can only afford to visit, not live.
I'm not sure what you mean by this... if you only count the population inside the city limits? Then LA has nearly 4 million residents (of course, inside city limits includes a lot of neighborhoods that are suburban in character). Whether you're talking city limits or metro area, LA is number 2, though the Chicago metro area is pretty close behind.
I think this is a common misconception. People say this about NYC, but it's simply not true. I have artist friends who live in NYC and make something like 30k / year. No, you probably won't be able to live in Manhattan with that kind of money but NYC is much bigger than Manhattan and it is still possible to live quite affordable and have access to the city's public transit and not need a car.
It's one thing to survive, it's another to thrive. Sure the wonder of living in NYC for some people is worth the lower comfort of daily life. I hate and avoid cars too and that alone is a major factor in where I choose to live.
But if they're living on $30k in NYC, do they share their home with one or more roommates? Could they handle a $500 unexpected expense or would it devastate them?
At some age you want to be able to live life a bit more comfortably than in your early 20s, say.
In this case I would say very much thriving. This person could easily handle a $5,000 unexpected expense.
When I moved to NYC, I was able to get a very comfortable apartment outside Manhattan but still very convenient to subway lines, and my rent (by far my largest recurring expense) was lower than I had been paying in my first job out of college 7 years earlier. Sure I had a roommate, but 7 years earlier I had was living with my S.O. Why do we automatically assume that a roommate == lower comfort of daily life than living with an SO?
In my case, I was unquestionably more comfortable in my 30s in NYC than in my 20s in the suburbs in a single family home.
I haven't lived there in a long time, but I lived in Brooklyn both with and without a car. The car rarely added any convenience and was a royal pain in the ass to find parking for. If not for the fact that my job was in CT and I ended up moving there, I would have sold it.
However, everywhere else I've lived, life was much easier with a car.
I sold my car when I moved to LA because traffic was so horrible. I intentionally moved into an apartment close to a metro line, which I took into work. For groceries, I rode my bike into the neighborhood city center (which many LA neighborhoods have).
I loved playing Game Boy or reading a book on my way to and from work. Getting around the neighborhood by bike was wonderful with the LA weather. Occasionally I would go somewhere that needed a car such as off to the mountains to ski, so I would ride with my friends who were joining. If no one owned a car, I’m sure we could have rented. I also once got staffed down in OC for work, so I talked with someone on my team and coordinated carpooling with them, which allowed us to use the HOV lane and improve the horrid traffic situation. My coworker was happy to go out of their way to pick me up in exchange for HOV access.
I’ve since lived in big Texas cities and have been able to also live without a car, but I find it much more difficult because there are zero viable public transit options. LA’s public transit is nothing to write home about, but it is usable. You just need to have a good attitude and plan your life ahead of time. Ride sharing and rentals can fill in the rest.
To your point, LA became much more affordable when I got rid of my car. My situation was not perfectly replicable by all, but I do think the issue of car ownership and getting around without one isn’t an all or nothing affair for every citizen. In my situation it worked. For others, it would not. It would be great if more cities simply allowed for the option of getting around without a car and invested in alternative modes of transit. Ideally for me, I’d have a car that I would use for some errands and take public transit for others.
I can't read this due to the paywall, but taking the title as representative, and assuming the evidence to back the claim up is in the article (which I doubt):
It's irrelevant whether or not the young are "falling out of love" with cars, cars are essential in the rich world (at least in my country, the UK) outside of a few urban areas well-served by public transport infrastructure - and non-EVs at that.
There's a huge amount of development needed in that infrastructure before the luxury of choice will matter to the average Jo.
You can fall out of “love” (or never fall in “love” with them in the first place) with cars and own one.
I’ve never really wanted to own a car but I did when I lived in a small town as there wasn’t really any other option. As soon as I moved to a place where I could live comfortably without one I got rid of it and haven’t had any regrets about that decision.
Older generations (my parent for example) truly love their cars and never could imagine themselves living without one. Same for my grandmother and she lives right next to all the services she uses and mostly walks to them but still she has to own a car.
I do ~23000mi/yr (way above average) commuting at 23mpg (somewhat below average) and gas here is about $3/gal (average) so I pay about $3k/yr. I am nowhere near typical. There is no way the average American pays that much for just gas unless the source is doing some slight of hand.
Obviously I pay more than $3k/yr after you include other expenses but still, few are buying that much fuel.
I used to take the train when I worked downtown and @$350/mo or $4200/yr for a pass (which also covers the subway and buses) it's basically a break even vs driving.
Medium distance rail and bus needs to get a hell of a lot better for it to actually be cheaper for the average person in practice.
> @$350/mo or $4200/yr for a pass (which also covers the subway and buses) it's basically a break even vs driving.
Cost-wise, yes but there are other benefits.
I live in rural MN and used to commute to downtown Minneapolis about 40 miles away. It was far more convenient, not to mention much faster, to drive to an express bus stop and take the bus into the city than to drive. The 6 block walk to the office sucked sometimes when it was raining or -20F but not having to deal with traffic, plus the reduction of wear and tear on my car was well worth the minor inconvenience.
Now, I realize that's an ideal situation: having a bus 15 minutes away and a relatively short distance between the bus stop and my destination, but it's possible. Cities can do this: Minneapolis has streets that are bus-only at rush hour to speed up transit -- cars will get ticketed if the cops see them. The Metro area has a large number of bus routes between suburbs and even to the edge of the ex-urban areas. There was a big push around 20 years ago to improve transit and it's definitely paying off, but it takes commitment and patience that I guess a lot of other areas in the country don't have.
You don’t have to spend 40k on a car. My Toyota was 22k overall and the monthly payments are very manageable. You can still get new cars for under 20k and good used cars for much less.
This is a better comment than other replies are seeing. Many, many "car people" are into older cars - the GMT800 is an object of lust these days. You can buy them for ~4000 in OK shape. Hot rodders were using literal scrap hunks from 30 years in the past. Chicano lowrider culture (one of America's greatest creations) uses very, very cheap old work trucks. Cost is generally not the barrier to entry for any of these, interest is.
Maybe the Zoomer/Millenial focus on luxury goods has lead to a world where people aren't interested in vehicles outside of the high end?
I can't get through the paywall, but I'm one of these car-less youngs (although less young by the day).
Mainly it is for idiosyncratic reasons: I hate being confined where I can't stand up if I want to, and I don't like "car smell". There's something about the air inside motor vehicles that puts me on edge. I get the same feeling on buses and planes, but oddly not on trains, even though rationally I know the air must be of similar quality.
There's the health benefits and the climate stuff and saving money and so on. But that's not what I'm happy about about when I bike around; it's about fresh air and postural freedom.
I'm glad I live somewhere where I don't need a car to do everyday things. It's not as bike-friendly as somewhere like Denmark but it's tolerable.
There's 138 trains per day between Amsterdam and The Hague. It's faster to take the train than to drive on that trip. Driving in either city in an exercise in frustration. Why would anyone in a rich country with a high functioning rail system like The Netherlands want to drive?
I don't know how many rich countries that describes, but I lived happily for years in Boston in the USA without a car. I have one now but only because I have an off-street parking space for it. Otherwise I'd go back to renting one on the ~monthly occasions I want to use one. The main benefit of Zipcar to me versus owning is that the car had a parking space that it went back into.
Now if only the mass transit system in the area wasn't falling apart and the rail connections to other cities were even half as good as the ones in the Netherlands.
It’s faster if you live next to the train station and your work is next to the destination station. Anyway, for some people is better one way than the other
The problem with that is the part where you need to get to and from the train station to your actual destination, which could be on the very other side of town. It can be solved with shuttles or taxis, but that adds even more complexity and annoyance than just driving directly, especially with luggage.
And you again need to figure out and get whatever local card or ticket or app they decided to use to pay for all that, because there is zero standardization, which adds even more financial overhead assuming you're only visiting once, plus figuring out the timetable and route plan so you don't end up on the completely opposite end. Lots of "Oh wait, you were supposed to take the #15 bus, but this is a #15B which doesn't go to your station because fuck you" moments.
Remember, this mess is trying to directly compete with just looking at a satnav and driving where it says with no extra charge, lost time, or mental effort.
Transit agencies should come up with a reciprocity plan. You don't live here, but you have have a monthly pass for the city you live in so I'll let you ride my system for a week - or if system prices are too different pro-rate your time so you get a great discount.
Note that a large part of the above is I think transit agencies should try to get as many people as possible on unlimited ride family passes. Anyone with such a pass must find transit useful enough to use often anyway, and the pass means they don't worry about making one additional trip they just go.
I'm fine with zones, though I think cites get them wrong. The lowest cost zone should include your house, no matter where you live, with additional zones for getting farther away. When traveling your hotel should be how your zone is defined (or where ever you stay).
But you should always strive to have everyone on an unlimited rides pass for their home zone. Anything else encourages getting a car for trips that could go either way and that in turn justifies a car for everything.
> because there is zero standardization
For the Netherlands, you could not be more wrong.
By law, all public transport companies for Trains, Metro, Tram, Bus, Watertaxies are hooked into the exact same NFC payment platform, the OV-chipkaart. Recently, they rolled out debit/credit card payments on these readers nation-wide.
Additionally, all public transportation companies provide standardized service information including live updates (often required by the law). Any journey can be fully planned on 9292.nl.
Bike sharing services are great in those situations. You don't even need to carry your bike in the train. There is also public transit like trams and buses.
Gentle reminder that a significant portion of society is not able to carry out trips on bikes due to infirmity, disability, or needing to convey someone who cannot bike (e.g. small children).
I agree, but in a short time someone will reply here to tell you how they brought their kids to kindergarten in subzero temperatures with a bike, or how they bike half an hour in rain to buy groceries...
For my family it's not even about the physical aspect, but about time. I don't want to waste my free time going to and from places in 2x/3x the time it takes by car.
> in a short time someone will reply here to tell you how they brought their kids to kindergarten in subzero temperatures with a bike, or how they bike half an hour in rain to buy groceries...
Fully expecting that comment, and I look forward to that person describing how they take an elderly parent to the doctor on a bike…
If you take into account the current costs for cars, you can do a lot of kilometer per cab every month. I‘ve done the math for me - I could take the cab around 20-30 times a month for an average distance, for the costs associated with a VW Golf size car.
There are also options that cover the middle ground: Mixed mode (cab, train, cab) or car sharing. Certainly not available for all of us, but just as certainly available to many of us.
The primary issue is that the math only works out if you don’t buy/own a car, otherwise you‘ll have the majority of the costs of car ownership anyways. On a pure mile by mile replacement, the math doesn‘t work out.
If you MUST lease a brand new car and replace it every few years - probably. But driving a slightly older car is perfectly fine.
There're a lot of other variables. Family/life situation, hobbies, health situation, visual (fuck video ads on public transit) and audio noise tolerance...
People upthread ran the numbers and arrived at 600 USD/month for a used car. Seems high to me, but I don't know how the math works out in the US. For Germany, this is a pretty good modeling of the costs https://financer.com/de/blog/was-kostet-ein-auto-im-monat/ and it still arrives at 240 EUR/month for a used car. That's maybe not 20 cab rides, but still a significant number.
Obviously, the math I did for me works out for me. It likely will look different for you. However, I never pretended that the math works out for everyone - it doesn't. But it would work out for a lot of people if they were honest.
I've no idea for US either, but 600 USD/mo looks weird. For me here in Lithuania it was cheaper than that even while I was paying off my car. Now driving a paid-off-but-well-maintained car is more like €150/month for ~ 1k km a month with occasional maintenance, insurance and rare downtown parking. Obviously it is higher than that when including previous lease payments, but historical price is going down every month. So it could be pretty close to €240 after all, but buying a new car and then keeping it is not exactly a „used car“ budget...
„If they were honest“ is a bad argument to be honest. If everybody would change their preferences, they may have similar math to yours :)
By "were honest" I mostly mean "honest with themselves". There are a lot of costs that are easy to forget or ignore. The cost of parking in the city. The occasional repair. Having to tow your car, because it broke. Deprecation of a valuable asset. Very few people take stock of what they actually spend on their car, because it's hard and it's constantly shifting. Some costs are annually and (mostly) independent of your annual mileage - insurance and tax, for example. Others are constant and directly associated with your mileage - fuel. Yet, others again are directly associated but come in lumps - maintenance, tires, ... Deprecation is fuzzy and partially outside of any factor you can control, etc.
That feels like a strawman because most people do knowledge those costs. But they are negligible in the long run. €300 for a tire set over 5 years (but probably longer) literally €5/month. Occasional oil change works out to similar costs.
Of course, someone may run 20" wheels and then prices skyrocket. But then it’a no longer pure transit costs and more like an expensive hobby.
The cost of a taxi ride is not affordable if you need to make that type of trip often. Paying $40 for a ride once or twice a year is okay, but if you need to make a weekly trip to the doctor, plus get groceries and go to church on Sunday - a brand new car is now cheaper (a brand new car is very expensive, most people drive older used cars that are a lot cheaper)
The 'elderly parent to the doctor' case is still an argument for bike infrastructure. The more people choose to travel by bike instead of by car, the more space is available on the roads for those that need motor vehicles.
Don't be silly. The elderly parent with bad reflexes and even worse eyesight will drive themselves to the doctor in their equally decrepit car. That's what really happens when you reinforce the belief that cars are a necessity because bikes are some extreme hardship.
You’re joking but I once took an elderly man from the front entrance of his building to the parking lot in my cab because he couldn’t walk that far with his walker (which wasn’t all that far from the back door) and had to help him get behind the wheel to drive off.
Needless to say I waited a bit for him to clear the neighborhood before driving off.
Oh I'm very much NOT joking! I was stopped at a red light on my bike when I was rear ended by an 83yo. He couldn't judge how far his car was from my bike. He was super angry that I insisted he had to stick around to exchange information because he was going to be late for a doctor's appointment in Brookline. Thankfully it was low speed (he was stopping, he just didn't know where to stop) so all he did was knock me forwards.
Had one back into me at a traffic light, with me honking, and then put it into drive and take off when the light changed. Had to have the cops drag him out of a medical building to get a report and his story went from “no accident” (at the scene) to me rear ending him (on the witness stand contesting his ticket), luckily I was hauling around a passenger who confirmed my side of the story.
Still don’t have a clue why he thought it was a good idea to put it into reverse and barely creep backward at a red light with cars all around him.
A significant portion of society is also not able to drive for similar reasons, but they mostly go ignored in our car-centric society. Nobody's saying that we should completely eliminate the ability to drive, certainly some people will need to, but we need to also provide viable options for those who can't.
This exactly. Different people have different needs and abilities, and we all get better options if more options become available. This is why investing in more bike infrastructure is ultimately good for everybody, even for the people who absolutely need a car; more people in public transit or on bikes means less cars on the load, less stress on infrastructure, less traffic jams, etc.
If you need to convey kids then you buy a bike that conveys kids easily. Copenhagen is full of these sort of box bikes[1] (well, trikes I guess) that at their larger side will happily fit three to four small children.
Taking cars off the roads means more space for the people who do need the roads. Few people are saying get rid of cars entirely, they have important uses. The roads already exist, tearing them out would be stupid. But we shouldn’t design our cities around them and require everyone have one. This has advantages for those who need to drive, reducing traffic.
Those people can still ride mobility scooters, e-bikes, small electric vehicles (like golf carts) but often can't drive. Car centric world means exclusion for those groups.
How frequently do people need to carry luggage? The space afforded by a backpack or panniers on a regular bike suffices for most people most of the time.
We can all conjure circumstances when it is difficult or inconvenient to use public transit, but deep down we all know most people most of the time are driving their cars alone with minimal cargo and the reason they are driving is because our towns are designed to make it as convenient as possible.
It is hard to get groceries for a family into panniers. I did it while I was single, but now that there is a family to feed things don't fit. Even if you go shopping daily, a lot of things don't fit at all.
I've used my bike trailer for groceries. You have to be careful that you don't buy more than fits, but it works.
People carry entire families on their bikes in Amsterdam. There's been a massive boom in cargo bikes of every sort. But even regular bikes often have a small crate.
"Why would anyone in a rich country with a high functioning rail system like The Netherlands want to drive?"
Well, I live in The Netherlands and the place where I work is not very reachable by public transport. The 138 trains per day between Amsterdam and The Hague is all very nice and so on but even in the Netherlands people who live in a village will in many cases be somewhat isolated if they don't own a car.
The job market in the Netherlands is very flexible and the housing market is very inflexible. It's not financially feasible for most people to move for a job every few years. Especially to the Amsterdam region where you would need to be on a waiting list for a decade for social housing or make ~2x national average to even think of moving there.
But it does breakdown or be worse with slightly more complicated routes. Like I used to travel from smaller city to bigger city to other big city. And in the end public transport was probably 50% if not longer in time. First 15-20 minutes to station, then 45 minutes with local train. Wait for intercity, ~2 hours and 30 minutes or get lift to destination. Compared to straight 2 hours from door to door with car.
And this is with perfectly serviceable train network with plenty enough trains. Or at max capacity.
Sure in the case of long commutes or exploration of different areas there are certain advantaged to autonomous vehicles - however the car is by no means king. Helicopter is even better for getting from random distant location to distant location.
But this is not the majority of travel, and in those cases car travel is indeed overkill, and a hassle to boot, as anyone who has ever had to daily wrangle with parking lots and rush hour traffic can attest.
There are different concerns with public transport, but the advantages tend to outweigh the disadvantages, and it appears this is borne out by the data.
Swapping trains can take a while, but until self driving works you can’t do much while driving. And even with self driving simply getting up and stretching, grabbing a bite to eat, or even just going to the bathroom requires you to stop making progress for a while.
Driving has several advantages, but getting stuck in traffic is extremely unpleasant in ways that similar delays on other forms of travel don’t really replicate.
But that's again because these trains are run for profit, cutting every corner they can, and underpaying their employees. I'd prefer to see trains nationalised and run as national infrastructure with the goal of luring more commuters into mass transit. Because that will mean enormous savings in pollution, traffic jams, noise, and road maintenance.
Even when they were nationalised they were terrible. The biggest problem isn't whether it's for profit or not. The biggest problem is the relatively vast value for money, and value in general, of cars, even with extremely large fuel taxes imposed. People don't want to pay a lot of money for transport because they've seen how much value a car gives, and so having the cost and large numbers of people required to operate a really high quality train would require more than anything raising ticket prices significantly.
If you want an emergency services vehicles to get to your house you need a road anyway.
If you want buses and coaches to function, you need roads.
If you want to transport a bootload of stuff more than three times a year you're financially better off paying for a car than renting.
If yor kids have school anywhere that isn't walking/cycling distance from your house, then you need a car, or two.
If you have a job, and don't want to be beholden to a very local employer, you likely need a car. Except if you live close to a train station and your job is close to another one. And except in the last five years, when some jobs can now be remote.
If you want to go anywhere that a train doesn't go, you need a car, probably. Which is everywhere outside of extremely high density urban areas that can afford an underground rail system.
You need any of those things to be true for a road to be needed. You likely need a car for all but the first two. Cars and roads are valuable. I don't see how that's debatable.
Trains are now location-specific optimisations where we know we have hotspots of usefulness, where it's worth laying track and having massive investment as enough people will use that route.
Just as a circuit-switched phone call is a better connection, but packet-switched is better overall, and cheaper, so are trains and cars.
A public road network for cars needs a great deal of infrastructure that a public network for busses and ambulances would. Literally every single street in NYC could be single lane, one way, without any street level parking if you’re not building for cars. Further, the demands of traffic directly relate to the kinds of roads, bridges etc you can get away with building and their cost to maintain.
You also have several objectively false statements here such as:
“If yor kids have school anywhere that isn't walking/cycling distance from your house, then you need a car, or two.” Except 100’s of millions of people currently live further than “cycling distance” from their kids school and don’t own a car.
Frankly cars didn’t exist until very recently and society was fine without them.
Just you and your car + the guys bumper 3 feet in front of you that’s moved 5 feet in the last minute because of a traffic accident or something. Luckily you can just look at waze and holly shit you’re going to be in this mess for another 4 hours, but you can’t even take a nap or something because traffic is still inching along…
Now that’s not universal, but I really do budget 3-4 hours extra for some trips because holiday traffic is just that bad in my area.
This is really the selling point of mass transit for me.
But I have a problem. I'm an introvert and I get fatigued by constant human interaction. I also get fatigued by constant distractions. I really benefit from having some breathing space where I can zone out.
Saying it out load makes it sound reckless and inconsistent, doesn't driving require constant attention? But no, somehow I can zone out drive and drive to my destination completely subconsciously, at least if it's a route I know we'll, like on a commute.
I'm 39 now and I have never caused an accident for what that anecdotle evidence means.
My commutes are my decompress time. I can't do anything during them, and if I could, I wouldn't benefit the same way.
With safe, separated infrastructure, a commute of the same duration via bicycling or walking would be even better for your physical and mental health. We all live in a prison of car supremacy, whether we realize it or not.
I lived very close to my work for a period and tried bike commuting. I don't disagree with the benefits of doing it, but it's not very realistic for most people in most places.
I was having a hard time NOT getting sweaty on my ride into work because humidity is the highest in the morning. And when I wasnt sweating I was getting rained on, or my hands were freezing, or I got chain grease on my pants.
If you got an electric bike, that could help with the sweat. The breeze with the extra speed and the reduction in effort really reduce the amount of sweat dramatically. Or just bring a change of clothes and maybe a towel if that is tolerable. For the rain, a bike poncho works pretty well, especially if you pair it with rubber boots (maybe have a change of shoes ready). For the cold, gloves or bar mitts work pretty well. For the chain grease, you can get a full chain guard to house the entire chain if you want, or just tuck your pants into long socks, or get a pant clip. Given how much maintenance people often have to do on cars, a little care to have the right gear for biking is often easily well worth the effort and cost.
Yes, there are solutions or work arounds for these issues. It just makes commuting on a bike inconvenient for many people.
Electric bikes are great, but other than price, it starts to blur between having an electric motorcycle. Especially after you need to don appropriate gear for the commute to stay dry / comfortable. And the motorcycle would have greater range and more use cases.
And at the end of the day, while riding a bike to work is great and I would encourage everyone to try it if they can, do you really think it works without a backup plan? Even people I know who have taking bike commuting pretty seriously didn't do it literally every single day.
Bike specific trails make a huge difference here. An electric motorcycle is less flexible, costs more, and doesn’t provide exercise. Pedal assist going in + a workout on the way back is hard to beat.
25% longer is not that bad, especially if you consider that you can't work while driving, but for many kinds of work, you can do some work in a train (if you have a seat, at least). Or read a book.
I don't consider train travel to be lost time in the way car travel is.
>There's 138 trains per day between Amsterdam and The Hague. It's faster to take the train than to drive on that trip
If you're going from the Hague central station to Amsterdam central station, sure.
Now plan a more typical commute from say the Hague Wateringen to the over Amstel industrial estate (It takes two times as as driving)
Play around with real life scenarios. Say you're going from Amsterdam Osdorp to your work in Utrecht Lageweide. It takes twice with transit as if you were to drive even with traffic.
Most Dutch people drive, especially those that can afford to.
That really depends on the amount of traffic jam you end up in.
It's true that not every route has a direct train connection, and there are definitely trips where cars are faster, but during rush hour around big cities, cars become a lot less reliable. On top of that, cars are only fast if you have access to parking on each end of the trip. Otherwise you still need to park somewhere else and take local transit for the final leg (which is definitely the preferred way to visit Amsterdam by car).
>That really depends on the amount of traffic jam you end up in.
And on the ammount of leaves/snow/rain/wind/heat/strikes impeding rail traffic.
Terrible traffic jams happen but let's not pretend the NS doesn't have a long list of excuses to run less or no trains or massively delayed trains. I can't count the number of times NS announced that they would stop running trains because of some weather where i had no issue driving home.
On average driving is going to be twice as fast for most typical commutes.
No, I agree. Trains have gotten unreasonably unreliable too. They didn't always have this much trouble with leaves, rain and cold, as far as I recall. I think trains everywhere, and not just in Pennsylvania, suffer from being run for profit on narrow safety/reliability margins.
35 minute drive without traffic, or a 20 minute bike ride to Utrecht Centraal, 40 minute train ride to Lelylaan, and a 15 minute bike ride from Lelylaan. (so 75 minutes predictably-ish, though NS had a lot of delayed/late trains when I visited last).
But the kicker, I suppose, is that in my version you drive 35+ minutes and then need to work out, while the train version means I don't need to go to the gym. When I lived in LA I rode my bike and it meant being in great shape without ever having to work out, and I miss it, but of course it depends on the situation.
Well I don't. I strongly prefer travelling by train, even if it takes longer, because that's more time I can read or do something else productive. Cars are terrible for that.
I had to spend a few months in Holland for work. We we left with the problem of what do do on the weekends. You can't rent bikes if you are not Dutch, and visiting the lovely villages and other places Holland is full of is a time consuming exercise in futility unless one has a car.
A train is great for Rotterdam-Hague-Amsterdam, not so good for visiting the Bosch museum in 's-Hertogenbosch.
Holland has a great road system and parking everywhere. The perfect place for a car owner.
I've rented bikes in the Netherlands several times as a UK citizen, but perhaps in different areas.
Part of the reason the Netherlands is the perfect place for a car owner is that so many people are able to go by bike instead, freeing up space on the roads.
Huh? There's a bike rental place on practically every other corner in most Dutch cities, and most of their profit is from tourists. You only need to show some ID and leave a deposit. Dutch people usually have a cheap old bike, or use the public OV bikes, for which you do need to register and get a card, but even that is possible as a foreigner, it just takes some days to process.
> visiting the lovely villages and other places Holland is full of is a time consuming exercise in futility unless one has a car.
I'm not sure where you're getting this from either. Intercity transport by train works great, and there are many organized bus tours that take you to smaller villages. You can easily see most of the country without owning a car, though it's a personal preference whether you enjoy using public transport or not.
One needs iDEAL for many things in Holland, and needs to be a resident for that. My colleague tried to get a personal OV-chipkaart, https://www.ov-chipkaart.nl/en/apply-for-personal-ov-chipcar..., needed for bikes, he went though the process, and got nowhere. It was 2 years ago, so may have changed. But he said it stranded on need for a local bank account.
I know you can get anywhere by public transport, much better than where I live. But going though tram-train-train (+even bus or a 3rd train) to visit some village that is less than an hour away by car, will multiply the transport time.
The accessibility of OV-kaarten is indeed not great for tourists, which is ridiculous. There's been a lot of criticism of the OV-kaart system. But most things can be paid with a simple bank card transaction. I doubt buying or renting a car would be that much easier.
yes. I dont want to make much out of this. One of the team came from a country close by and he brought his car. Problem solved.
But just about every Dutch person we worked with had a car. They would meet us on weekends in villages, and most drove. Public transport is great in Holland, but cars have their place too. And unlike some countries close by, Holland has a well maintain and well designed road system. Its great for car travel.
This is true. You can really feel by the road surface that you've crossed the border with Belgium or Germany. Netherland isn't just about bikes; it tries to make sure all forms of transport all well-served. Public transport could be better, though.
Why not? Where are you trying to rent? There's bike rentals specifically aimed at tourists, and most people speak English reasonably well.
> A train is great for Rotterdam-Hague-Amsterdam, not so good for visiting the Bosch museum in 's-Hertogenbosch.
I just checked, and from Amsterdam, the train to that museum is actually slightly faster than a car. Though you do have a 15 minute walk at the end. Perhaps Den Bosch should run a bus line there.
It's one of those cities that has two names: Den Bosch and 's Hertogenbosch.
The first simply means "the forest", in slightly archaic spelling. The second is short for "des hertogenbosch", which is archaic for "the duke's forest". "Des" is archaic genitive that's barely used any more in Dutch except in a few phrases and place names.
's ochtends => des ochtends => of the morning
's avonds => des avonds => of the evening
's Hertogenbosch => the duke's forest
's Gravenhave => des graven hage => the count's hedge (also known as Den Haag / The Hague)
I've rented bikes very easily as a UK tourist. All you need is cash in Euros or a credit card.
Disagree about parking, at least what I've seen in Amsterdam city area. You have to use an app and pay for parking. There are patrol cars that will dish out fines if you are caught. There are blue zones in suburbs which are free but it's mainly for visitors/residents.
The US anti-car narrative often refers to the Netherlands as some kind of beacon of proper public infrastructure, whilst not knowing a damn thing about it.
First, let's establish that the Netherlands is a car country. We have 11 million cars on a population of 17 million. On a typical day, 1 million people use public transport. Cars are the norm, not trains or bicycles.
Public transport is rarely faster, not even in the most idyllic example that you give where you go from big city to big city. The thing you conveniently forget to consider is that nobody lives near the station of city A and then also works very closely to the station of city B. It almost always includes additional travel towards A and from B. Cycling, trams, buses, multiple stops in both directions. It adds up.
To illustrate how absurdly slow public transport can be, a personal example. I used to live directly behind a train station in a mid-sized city. Doesn't get much better than that, right?
Let's explore the commute to work, some 60km away...
I have to get up early and be there some 10 mins before departure to secure somewhat of a reasonable spot. Next, I'm on route to the first big city station. This route is slow, it stops 5 times along the way as everybody needs to connect to a big hub to get where they need to be.
I arrive at the hub, where there's a 20 minute connection wait to take the train to the big city destination. This route is longer but fast, no stops along the way.
I get out and have a 10 minute connection wait for the bus to take me to the place closest to work, after which there's a 5-10 minute work.
Total commute time: 2.5 hours single way. To move 60km. And that's living behind a train station and working at one of the countries' largest employers.
What works really well in the Netherlands is living within a cycling radius from work, every other option sucks.
It's similar in Singapore which arguably, because of its size has amazing public transport. But what do a lot of people do if they can afford it? Buy a car, especially if you want to live away from the city center and have kids.
They even pay the $100,000 fee for a 10 year permit to have a car, on top of 100% import tax. That's close to $175,000 just to own some tiny 3-cylinder car for 10 years.
I spent a month in Singapore in 2015, staying at an apartment in Haugong, 10km from my office.
Public transport took an hour to get to the office. A taxi was 20 minutes. I'd agree public transport isn't great by a long way. Riding a bike if I lived there permanently might have been better, even with the 32 degree heat.
Singapore was literally rebuilt for cars very much like America. It's not because cars are better, and even so drivers are miserable here they rank low on waze's rankings of happy drivers, with Netherlands much further up the pack. All new developments (HDB as well) are even more car centric. If you can drive, you are afforded privilege in some respects, and so that's why people do it.
Also, "live away from the city center and have kids" ignores that still 89% of people in singapore don't own cars, and no, 89% of people in sg do not "live near the city center" or "don't have kids."
You kinda prove my point. 11% own cars because thats the government cap (no more cars allowed), but even middle class people are willing to spend hundreds of thousands for the benefits of driving.
And to say Singapore was built for cars is kinda funny. It has one of the best public transit systems in the world.
Maybe wonder how it would look like if car owners actually paid for the cost (environmental, killing pedestrians and cyclists, huge areas of valuable land dedicated to parking, cost of road maintenance). Cars are the most subsidized mean of transportation, no wonder there are so many of them.
This is a pretty unusual situation, where you presumably live in the sticks and commute to the city, or vice versa? In the cities, particularly Amsterdam, cars are not the favored option. In Amsterdam 38% of travel is by bike, Zwolle is 46%. Across the whole country the averages break down at 45% by car, 36% by bike, and 11% by transit. That is to say, a very slight majority prefers modes other than a car across the country as a whole, and within cities the difference is presumably more significant. These figures, even in their most conservative interpretation, are wildly different from the United States, where travel by bike is a rounding error and the public transit options are abysmal.
I think you're missing the point... If you reject car ownership and the associated commute etc, you structure your life around that. You get a job and a house that are compatible with that philosophy. As a couple, neither of you would have a job that requires you to commute such distances.
Couldn't think of a better argument for why most people do not reject cars. Restricting your employment options to a small, say cyclable area around where you live can be extremely limiting for your employment opportunities, especially if you have a partner that also works. Especially considering the point another commenter said that oftentimes central business districts where the best jobs are can be prohibitively expensive for housing.
I'm not one to discount the cost of a long commute, and I'm hopeful that more remote and flexible work options will make it so people have less time commuting. But people like to own cars because in most cases they can be incredibly useful, and ignoring that fact won't help people transition off them.
But that's precisely the point. Many people (and arguably the young people in the OP), value life over "employment opportunities". That's the philosophy behind why many of us reject cars in our daily lives. Those hours of commuting I don't have to do I spend with my children. Equally, the commuting I do do is free exercise.
>Restricting your employment options to a small, say cyclable area around where you live can be extremely limiting for your employment opportunities
You're missing the forest for the trees. If you live in a mid-sized city in the Netherlands and want to limit yourself to a 1 hour commute by public transit, there are just as many, if not more opportunities than if you live in a mid sized city in the US like Richmond because the Netherlands is that much denser, and transit optimizes for commercial centers. The difference that in the Netherlands, you still have the option of commuting by car, whereas, in the US you'd have to move.
And you're missing the point that these types of jobs are in or around the big cities, where people cannot afford housing. Well, maybe 5% can, the rest of us will commute.
That only holds true when your basic needs to survive are met such that you're able to entertain a philosophy such as "reject car ownership". I suspect most people are going to abandon such a philosophy as soon as "putting food on the table" is no longer possible.
Conflicting ideas such as these crop up all the time. For instance, "commuting in a car is dead time, at least I can read/work on the train". A reasonable position at face value, but entirely useless to the person who finishes work at 17:00 and must pick the kids up from school at 17:30. The 30 mins car ride may be "dead time", but the 60 mins by public transport obviously doesn't work for them.
I would guess that the "rejecting car ownership" types probably have this as a subset of a broader philosophy where they've somewhat rejected wealth in favour of something else, or already have the economic freedom to make such a choice.
Yes absolutely it's about choices. I would argue the debate is more worthwhile than that because it's good to think in terms of "what would be ideal" so that as a society we can plan for that. Too often, such public debate become bogged down with a view that those that oppose car usage as part of a daily routine are fundamentally opposed to car usage. In fact, typically we can see a better world and want it for everyone. Since improving things for drivers generally necessarily makes things worse for everyone that isn't in a car, the practicalities of reducing car usage are actually a reduction in existing privilege (which people will always fight tooth and nail).
It's true you often need a car but it shouldn't be the case. Cars are terribly inefficienct way to get around. They are more expensive and slower (once there are enough of them) than alternatives. The anti-car sentiment is about changing the infrastructure so the cheaper/greener and faster alternatives get a chance.
Public transport is one alternative but I think small personal transport devices are more promising.
“Rejecting car ownership” types will probably live walking distance to schools. This doesn’t even have to mean living in a city centre somewhere, if anything schools are the one thing in America designed for local people as opposed being designed for cars.
So only one person instead of two has to suffer through a dreadful commute, you need only one car instead of two, one parent works close to where the kids go to school, etc. If you live in the middle, everything is far away for everybody.
That doesn't mean it's not viable to live in the middle, but I think these are some pretty good arguments why it's often preferable to live close to at least one partner's workplace. Obviously it's not going to work for everybody, but if you're thinking about where to buy your house, this may be worth taking into consideration.
Would you volunteer to have twice the dreadful commute for the benefit of your partner, or do you see yourself being the beneficiary of this configuration?
I've moved between jobs every 1-2 years for the past 10. I've never been more than an hour away (and that was one job that was particularly far away). In most cases, because we have a good public transit system, I'm within 10-15 minutes by subway or 30/40 minutes walking. I don't even consider it too much. Never moved house.
Whenever I've heard people make that argument, what they actually mean is "The huge house I want to live in I can afford if I spend an hour a day in the car, oh and people that live in the cities should not make it harder for me to pursue such a path by restricting car usage. Externalities be damned, won't someone think of my being unable to afford a 5 bedroom house with a big garden in the city".
>> Perhaps because real estate/rent is simply too expensive anywhere closer.
> Whenever I've heard people make that argument, what they actually mean is "The huge house I want to live in I can afford if I spend an hour a day in the car...."
Or it's because it would require 3x-6x their income to afford to live anyplace closer. A major factor of employee shortages is exactly that. There are no homes within 50 mi (often much further) of that job that can be afforded with those wages.
We live 45mi out from a (until recently, inexpensive) US metro area and we require 4 incomes to cover basic expenses.
It is both the desire to not live in an apartment, but rather have a detached single family house with a garage and backyard, and also a desire to live away from people below your socioeconomic level and near people at or above your socioeconomic level (referred to as “good schools”).
If Americans were okay with living in Tokyo sized abodes, then there would be sufficient density for sufficient housing and job opportunities to exist in a region that could support sufficient public transit.
There’s plenty of detached houses in Tokyo (even in the 23 wards) and they cost 1/4 of what they cost in a major American city. Tokyo is denser than any American city but less dense than Paris, and greater Tokyo, which is even cheaper for housing, still has great transit/no need for a car for most people and has a density of only 1000/km^2. Also available in Tokyo is small apartments for single people. A minimum wage worker there will live in a small apartment, yes, but can survive without 5 roommates in a moldy basement suite.
Americans would be okay living in “Tokyo sized abodes” if they knew what that actually meant and didn’t assume all of Tokyo looks like Shibuya. One thing I’ll grant is that garages are rare, because they count as finished space for property tax purposes.
Tokyo is actually a great example of what a city without car-centric planning and free parking everywhere can be like and a perfect example of a “15 minute city”. It’s not only about transit, but what transit and walkability encourages. I lived there for 6 years in a very residential neighborhood, but I was still within 10 minutes walking of virtually any daily necessity, 5 or so grocery stores, dozens if not hundreds of restaurants, 3 public baths, one of which was a legit onsen, a few furniture stores, and even 2 aquarium shops. I’m trying to think of a counter example and I can only think of one thing that wasn’t a ten minute walk away: a movie theatre, although there were multiple within a 15 minute train ride.
Tokyo style abodes are illegal in a huge part of many urban areas.
Given the choice between a some of the shitty living situations I dealt with while living in the US, and an affordable, compact efficient apartment. I'll take the latter
Humans have always been that way. Adam Smith observed in his "wealth of the nations" that once someone has enough to eat and other basics, increases in income are mostly used to make their house better (mostly meaning larger). If your plan for bettering the world doesn't account for this, then you have lost.
That might have been the case a decade ago, but with the uptick in real estate prices it's not even that any more.
I have friends who bought an apartment in a small town next to the city where the jobs are because they didn't have the credit score for anything closer to work.
This is the reality (and realty) people in the market for living space are currently facing.
Because most people don't have the luxury of choosing those things.
- I don't have any meaningful control over where I'm allowed to work
- I don't have any meaningful control over where my spouse is allowed to work
- I only have a tiny amount of control over where I'm allowed to live (most of it prices us out, despite being above-average income)
- even if I do exercise some control, it can be changed or stripped from me by others at any time. (You may get laid off and have to find a new office. Or your office may move away from you -- when you are hired, the office might only have been 12 miles away, but later they moved the office so it's now 25 miles away)
- You may not always be allowed to move in response to those changes (you might not be able to afford to move your whole house every two years, when job situations for you/your spouse change. And if you have kids, doing this super disrupts any chance they may have at a social life via school)
- You may not even be allowed to change home or school locations. (Divorced people exist, shared-custody children exist and are in some places, the most common form of parenting in 2023, you might not be allowed to relocate your kids schools ever)
A lot of anti-transportation "15 minute city" idealists like to handwave away how incredibly complicated it is, to magically get your entire life to line up such that you don't ever have to travel medium-sized distances. That is an extreme luxury that most people will never have.
The 15 minute city isn't one you never leave, it is one where basic tasks of life are within 15 minutes. Most people will leave it for work, but they will stop and play within 15 minutes of home.
Otherwise you are spot on. If your company moves offices within the same city's MSA they assume you can get there. If they move office to a different city they will pay to move you.
> Most people will leave it for work, but they will stop and play within 15 minutes of home.
Even that assumes you don't have relatively specific hobbies. Which I guess is true for many people, but it's highly unlikely that (for example) my preferred martial arts instructor and my preferred dance instructor are going to be within 15 minutes of where I live.
And of course, your girlfriend/boyfriend, if you don't live together.
What are you getting at? Are you incapable of nuance? It was already stated that a 15 minute city isn't a place you never leave, it's a place where you can meet your daily needs within 15 minutes. If you want to go to a specific martial arts instructor, then yes, you probably have to leave. But if you just want a place to work out, that will be around. If you want to go to a specific grocer, you will probably have to leave, but there will be a place where you can get your milk and veggies within 15 minutes. If you meet someone from outside your neighborhood, you'll have to visit them, but if you spend more time in your neighborhood, you'll likely make stronger bonds there.
> What are you getting at? Are you incapable of nuance?
Your rudeness aside, what I'm getting at is that I'll likely have to leave once or twice a day even not accounting for work. I live in a European city and get everywhere by car BTW.
The average in the Netherlands is 20 kilometers if anyone is wondering.
I think public transport is pretty good if you live in the Den Haag-Rotterdam-Amsterdam area. Which in America would be considered a single metro area. Something like 5 million people.
Ebikes also tend to change the equation. I live 37km from where I work. By bike its 1hr20 when its not too windy. By ebike its 1hr flat (ok, its a speed pedalec, requires a license). By car its 45 min. By train its 1hr10. Despite having the means to own a car I sold it a few years ago and never looked back. I rent one every few weeks I need one.
I lived 5 miles away from my downtown office in Chicago. My apartment was 5 minutes from the train and my office was 1 minute on the other side. There were no connections, so this is an ideal public transit situation. It still took 40+ minutes each way versus 20 minutes by car during rush hour or ~10-15 outside of rush hour.
This is the third largest US city and one with comparably few major thoroughfares (compared to many other large US cities). It seems that it’s just really hard for public transit to beat cars at any distance.
Moreover, lots of people are constrained on where they can work and live. I think a lot of the anti-car rhetoric in America seems to assume everyone is a healthy, childless, young urban professional who aspires to live in the densest habitat he can find, and this is a very unrealistic portrait of Americans.
In truth, an environment built for people over cars is better for everyone. Including those that can't drive (which is all children, and many with disabilities) or can't afford to drive. Your case sounds like a perfect situation where a bike with proper cycling infrastructure would be the best option.
Not really. Chicago is pretty damn cold in the winter and hot in the summer and very wet in between. Of course, a Sufficiently Committed Cyclist can and will cope, but that's an unrealistic expectation for the majority of the population. Moreover, my example was an idyllic case for public transit (or as idyllic as it gets in the US). Most places are far less dense than Chicago and traveling by car is easier.
To be clear though, I would like to see more walkable places, and while "people over cars" is hopelessly vague and verging on ideology, I probably agree with some of what people envision when they make this statement. I think it would be great if our urban and semiurban environments had more, smaller shops and more safe infrastructure for bikes and cars. More separation of fast moving car traffic from side streets. Etc. But we have a loooong way to go before bikes or public transit are more practical than cars, and as others have pointed out even the most bike-friendly countries in the world still have high (and growing) rates of car ownership.
Cars are undeniably handy for all but some people in the densest environments, but we still need to take care not to overfit to cars.
São Paulo has more car than population, and has so many cars that their area summed is bigger than the area of all streets in the city.
It is so many cars that sometimes walking 1 hour to your workplace is faster than a car route where you can spend 2, 3 hours to go to a neighborhood next to yours during rush hour.
So many cars that the city became also the city with most helicopters, because as ludicrously expensive they are, for people that need to reach their workplace really fast (CEO, firemen, medics...) helicopters are good idea.
Situation got so bad that the government wants to heavily restrict the use of helicopters because private helicopters were causing literally airborne traffic jams along the normal traffic jam, blocking public services like police from moving to emergency sites.
EDIT: indeed I was talking about adults, forgot to make it clear. Still the percentage of cars to people in Brazil tends to be high. It is one of the reasons car companies love Brazil. There are historical reasons for that. Mostly politics related.
Does São Paulo have more cars than people even if you include children? Surely there must also be an underclass of very poor or homeless people who do not own cars. What accounts for the fact that there are more cars than people? Is it common for a household of four (mother, father, son, daughter) to own five or six cars?
I don't know Brazil, but based on what I know of the US I wouldn't be surprised. A couple will often own 3 cars, 2 daily drivers and one for some other odd task (truck, or the sports car) that is used as a backup. It will be one car per kid of driving age, though most kids are not old enough to drive. Then there are work cars, which for tax/legal reasons can't be used for personal trips so those who have them will also have a personal car for non-work trips. There are people who keep a car at their vacation house. Rental cars also add a fair number of cars. Plus collectors who have a dozen cars that they only drive to shows. It all adds up.
The more important metric is that there are only 238 million licensed drivers in the US.
So if every single licensed driver went for a drive, they could invite all 26 million licensed Canadians to come down and use a spare car, and still have 22 million registered cars left over.
No, São Paulo doesn't have more cars than people. I don't know where the parent got their data. I'll stand corrected if shown data supporting it, but the numbers I found were more like 7 cars for ever 10 inhabitants, and I don't even know if children taken into account. I lived in São Paulo for many years, and I sold my car before I moved there. Living downtown, one is better off without one. However, more cars than inhabitants seems and exaggeration.
Edit: Did some quick checking. According to the national institute of statistics, São Paulo's fleet is about 8.8 million (this includes over 1 million motorcycles, plus all the busses, tractors, trucks, etc. Regular cars are 6 million). Population is 12.3 million.
We have an office in São Paulo which I visited, so I'm familiar with it. It's a ridiculous city. It's so complicated that even people working in the office regularly get lost in the city. A true concrete jungle. We were in a 3 hour traffic jam just to go to a place for lunch.
You forgot to mention the rodízio. Depending on the final digit of your car plate, there's one day of the week in which it is forbidden from being used in the rush hour within the central part of that huge city.
I just checked the Detran and IBGE's numbers. There aren't more cars than people in São Paulo. It's a traffic hell, for sure, but still less cars than people.
>First, let's establish that the Netherlands is a car country...On a typical day, 1 million people use public transport. Cars are the norm, not trains or bicycles.
Anyone visiting a Dutch city can see what a distortion this comment is. The sheer volume of bike traffic on largely safe infrastructure is phenomenal. Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock. Life may be good for Dutch drivers, but only because so many others leave their cars at home.
How is that a distortion? It seems like you’re violently agreeing with the parent that many people bike to work but far, far fewer than the majority (which is essentially what the American anti-car rhetoric suggests).
> Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock.
There are 10 million employed Dutch (Statista) of whom 65% drive (Statista), so an additional half a million would be a 10% traffic increase, which is probably not “gridlock”, but in any case I don’t see how this refutes the original claim that Netherlands is a car country.
I think the problem is that American anti-car rhetoric doesn't speak with one voice. There are people who know what they're talking about, who are mostly saying "If we follow some of the Dutch practices, we can get a city where people can get to a local destination by bike safely. But we should also take note that even in the Netherlands, the need to engineer roads for bike safety is something they continually forget". But there's others who say "The US is a hell-hole, Americans are evil and dumb, cars are evil, they will destroy the earth, we must all copy the enlightened Europeans who are good and wise people".
It is like that for so many reform proposals. Heterodox economists (MMT or gold standard or anything really) will say "we ought to consider this evidence in making our economic decisions", and their acolytes on forums like this will say "If we adopt this reform, we will be able to solve all our problems, but it's just corruption and self-interested politicians who stop us". Voting system reform people say "The US is screwed by FPTP, if we adopted proportional representation we will depolarise and have a nice consensual politics", but people who study the politics of countries that use proportional representation don't really indicate that (I think in this case there are some political scientists who get close, but only by circularly defining perfection in politics as exhibiting the consequences of proportional representation).
I agree that it’s hard to represent groups accurately, but I don’t think your “person who knows what they’re talking about” falls reasonably within bounds of anyone’s “anti-car” definition. For one, it’s not actually an anti-car argument, it’s a pro-cycling argument and lots of Americans favor safer cycling without getting anywhere near anti-car. Moreover, every identifiably anti-car community I’m aware of (e.g., r/fuckcars) has a tone that is more akin to your “Americans are evil” example—are there identifiably anti-car communities that embody your former example?
I don't know of any such communities online, but in real world local politics the first example is more common. People who support things like bike lanes, bus lanes, and light rail don't describe themselves as "anti-car", but their opponents call them that among less polite names, so I'd argue it's the more mainstream definition of anti-car.
Yeah, I think we're talking about different groups. I'm talking about people who self-identify as "anti-car". I've never heard of anyone who uses "anti-car" as a derogatory term for others, but I wouldn't be surprised if they exist somewhere. Personally, it seems unreasonable to me to define "anti-car" as "supports other modes of transit"; "anti-car" by my definition (which I think is the main definition) requires emphatic opposition to cars.
> ...but only by circularly defining perfection in politics as exhibiting the consequences of proportional representation
Oh, I love "logic" like that. Another common example is: "the free market is the best economic system because the perfect allocation of goods in society is how the market does it."
You need fine-grained statistics. It certainly isn't true that 65% of the people living or working in big dense Dutch cities like Amsterdam drive to work. That statistic more reflects how much the population of the Netherlands is spread out as a whole, not concentrated in its biggest cities as is more common in many other European countries.
The original poster claimed that car usage is the norm in the Netherlands, which implies that anything else is outside the norm, or unusual. This is obviously incorrectly.
There are various other posts in this thread that also give statistics, and the number of car vs bike journeys is not so far apart.
In a country that famously has more bikes then people, the idea that if half the bike journeys converted to cars there would only be a ten percent increase in traffic is quite clearly ridiculous. Especially within cities bikes carry volumes of people that would overwhelm roads if those people used space-inefficient cars.
> The original poster claimed that car usage is the norm in the Netherlands, which implies that anything else is outside the norm, or unusual
This isn't a reasonable interpretation. "the norm" only implies that it's the majority mode of transportation (in contrast with the anti-car rhetoric). This implies that other modes are not the majority, but it does not imply that those other modes are particularly rare.
> In a country that famously has more bikes then people, the idea that if half the bike journeys converted to cars there would only be a ten percent increase in traffic is quite clearly ridiculous.
I mean, I showed my math--feel free to point out where I erred, but just stating "it's quite clearly ridiculous" is like putting your fingers in your ears and shouting, "I can't hear you".
> The sheer volume of bike traffic on largely safe infrastructure is phenomenal. Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock.
Having visited Amsterdam by chance after missing a flight to London due to NYC gridlock traffic, this was one of my first thoughts on arrival.
Generalising from the centre of a city to the whole country is a distortion. Last time i was in the Netherlands, i arrived in Amsterdam, then went out to the countryside, somewhere near Dedemsvaart. I looked at doing the trip by public transport, but it would have taken forever. Instead, we rented a car and drove there, along wide, fast, busy roads. The Netherlands is indeed a heavily motorised country.
Dutch cycling infrastructure is close to ubiquitous, extending practically the length and breadth of the country. The idea that bikes are used only in city centres is another distortion. But of course the bike tends to be used for shorter, local trips.
Your (roughly 130 km) journey would have been less fast had those people making their shorter distance journeys by bike got into their cars instead.
You'll find plenty of people cycling in Dedemsvaart itself though. Nobody is claiming cars don't have their place. It just shouldn't be the default mode - or even worse, the only viable option - for every single trip.
>>Anyone visiting a Dutch city can see what a distortion this comment is.
Your parent comment is saying the same thing. Stay inside the city, close enough to your office that you can reach it by a bicycle. Of course in that case you could say the rent you would be pay would be equally higher. Plus not every one can afford to do that(given school availability, and your spouse office has to be close by too).
On a net basis, its again the same thing. You just pay for your time with higher rents.
Even in the most urbanised part of the country most people still drive for most distances over ~5km. If you have to get from one side of Rotterdam to the other side a car is much faster than a bike or public transportation.
> Anyone visiting a Dutch city can see what a distortion this comment is. The sheer volume of bike traffic on largely safe infrastructure is phenomenal. Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock. Life may be good for Dutch drivers, but only because so many others leave their cars at home.
I was actually considering making the same point, but sarcastically: "B b but, when I was a tourist visiting the walkable tourist areas Amsterdam where tourists go, I didn't passively observe any locals needing a car!"
It's a mistake to think tourist/visitor experiences give you a good idea what it's like to live anywhere.
That assumes that the tourists and visitors confine themselves to the major tourist areas. If you bother to cycle outside the major tourist areas of the Netherlands, whether to minor cities or villages, you'll still notice many people cycling for local journeys.
The mistake is people used to car dependence being unable to imagine any alternative, thus refusing to believe that it can be true.
> That assumes that the tourists and visitors confine themselves to the major tourist areas.
Which is a valid default assumption, unless it's made clear the speaker didn't do that.
Especially in this case, where you have an actual Dutch person who lives in the actual Netherlands getting told they were wrong by someone who cites visitor experiences.
Cycling is ubiquitous in the Netherlands though. Even in small towns. The only place where it's not convenient is if you're living out in the fields in say Flevoland.
It seems you're assuming that majority of the people live in the city or would love in a city? Many people, me included, do not want to live in a city, at least not in an American city. What a city boasts to offer are not relevant to my life: bars, shops, boutique stores, fancy restaurants, active social circles, loud parties, fashion shows, you name it. All those activities are just either too noisy or too crowded. On the other hand, there's not enough outdoor activities in a city. Things are so small in a city too. I want to stay in a spacious coffee shop talking to my friends without raising my voice. I want to have a huge gym instead of those crammed multi-floor ones in a city. I want to have a house that has large enough backyard and front yard and quiet streets for my kids to play around. I want to be able to play drum on my front yard and my neighbors won't hear a thing (I'm exaggerating but you get the idea). I want to be able to hop on a vehicle to ski in a place no more than 30 minutes away from my home whenever I want to. And I certainly don't want to take a bus for grocery shopping for a family of 6. The only thing in a city that I miss is those amazing huge libraries. God I enjoy spending my whole day there.
And if I can afford such life without a car, I'm all for it. But I don't know how.
> We have 11 million cars on a population of 17 million.
Yeah, but we have 23 million bikes.
It's true that our public transport has been neglected. The privatisation of the 1990s was a bad idea in my opinion, and public transport should be run for the public good, not for profit. Like roads, it's part of the nation's infrastructure. And better public transport means less people on the road, which means less traffic jams, which will also mean better travel times for people who really do need cars.
The number of bike trips and car trips aren't that far apart (25% and 32%). Public transport still lags way behind at 3%.
All of that is true but it doesn’t seem to refute the parent’s claim that the American anti-car rhetoric envisions a nation where cycling and taking public transit to work is the norm because the Dutch have figured out how to make cycling and public transit faster than driving.
It doesn't refute it because I think it's a mischaracterization of what "anti-car" or bike/transit/pedestrians advocates are typically asking for
What I and many other advocates in the US want is for anything besides cars to be even considered in public infrastructure and urban design. Living without access to a car is near impossible in lots of US cities.
The default is to design around the car, if bikes or pedestrians are mentioned it's tacked on as an afterthought.
An example I had just last night was my US city presented their first phase of the "bike master plan". Essentially the engineers told us they didn't want to maintain protected bike infrastructure or interfere with traffic. About half of the "improvements" they listed out were "sharrows", bike symbols painted in the travel lane. The other half were striped bike lanes with no protection from vehicles.
And this is in a city that's inherited some bike/ped/transit friendliness by the nature of it being built pre-war.
Good luck in the exurban sprawl, South and Sunbelt - you'll be lucky to even have a sidewalk, nevermind a bike lane on the 8 lane road. The car is default in the US.
Not Just Bikes on youtube (strongly recommended) loves to point out that Netherland is not just better for bikes, but also for cars, exactly because so many people travel by bike, leaving the road available for those who really do need a car. And the roads here are far better maintained than in any of our neighbouring countries.
For some trips, cycling or public transport really is faster than driving, but for others obviously not. The most important thing is that all three are viable options. Forcing everybody into only one of those three will hurt everybody.
Isn't the hype more about the relative difference (I don't think most people are claiming NL is a utopia)? The amount of miles driven per capita in the US is twice as much as that of the NL. The percent of trips on bike is 25% in the NL vs 2% in the US. About half of all trips made in the NL are on bike, transit or walking. The other half of trips are made with cars. If the US suddenly had half the amount of driving per capita that it does now that would mean dramatic lifestyle differences on average.
Japan seems to have the least driving per capita of any wealthy nation (at least from the data I see), so maybe people should be using that as an example more, but I think a lot of people in the US really appreciate the physical protection that people on bikes often get in the NL (even if it isn't everywhere). It sends a different message about priorities.
In the US, even if you don't want to drive, that is often your only choice for most trips, whereas in the NL you can drive if you want, but it is easier to find an alternative. That is a 'car-oriented' mindset versus 'multi-modal transit' mindset. However, I am sure that the NL could still make many changes to reduce car ownership if it really wanted to.
> Isn't the hype more about the relative difference (I don't think most people are claiming NL is a utopia)?
We're talking specifically about self-designated "anti-car" people. I doubt there are any surveys, so we're all just conjecturing, but the rhetoric I see definitely holds NL and Europe generally up as a car-less utopia. For example, the first post on r/anticar is titled "cities built for people rather than cars are so beautiful" and it shows an idyllic picture of a German street. https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticar/comments/mp6t4p/cities_buil...
> The amount of miles driven per capita in the US is twice as much as that of the NL. The percent of trips on bike is 25% in the NL vs 2% in the US. About half of all trips made in the NL are on bike, transit or walking. The other half of trips are made with cars.
I don't see how this is relevant? I don't think anyone in this thread disputes that cycling is more prevalent in NL versus US, and none of this refutes the toplevel claim that NL is a car country nor supports the anti-car rhetoric which suggests that NL is a car-free utopia. Like many "non-anti-car" Americans, I would like to see American transit become more multi-modal, but that's not what we're debating at present.
> However, I am sure that the NL could still make many changes to reduce car ownership if it really wanted to.
Sure (the obvious/extreme example is banning cars by legislation), but this seems circular, because we're implicitly interested in why doesn't the NL public want fewer cars (on the contrary, car ownership was increasing as of 2016)? Like in the US we can plausibly argue that Americans haven't experienced the Dutch cycling/pubtransit system and thus doesn't know what they're missing out on, but that's a much harder argument to make about the Dutch. :)
The Netherlands ranks 36th on the list of cars per capita [0]. This is higher than I thought it would be but it's still quite a ways away from the countries I would consider to be car-centric like the US and Canada (ranked 6th and 8th, respectively).
I also found this plot interesting relating vehicles and GDP [1], though the data seems outdated compared to the first link.
I'd also guess, though I can't find the data, that the US is one the highest cars per capita rates in its cities. Outside of NYC and Chicago, there is a real lack of public transport infrastructure in most US cities.
My guy, nobody thinks the Netherlands is a perfect beacon of transit, but you just can't understand what it's like living in the US. Even if you live in a large metro, unless it's NYC or you live and work in the right parts of Chicago, public transit just isn't even an option--unless an hour and a half commute on a bus is worth it to you.
Let's compare your commute to work to a commute in the US:
>I have to get up early and be there some 10 mins before departure to secure somewhat of a reasonable spot.
In the US, you have to be there at least 30 minutes early, because the parking lot will be absolutely packed, and the busses don't run on time, so it might get there too soon.
>Next, I'm on route to the first big city station.
We don't even have this in the US. You would have had to already be in the city to get on the bus.
>This route is slow, it stops 5 times along the way as everybody needs to connect to a big hub to get where they need to be.
In the US, this route stops the same five times, but also gets stuck in rush hour traffic, because we rarely have dedicated transit lanes.
I arrive at the hub, where there's a 20 minute connection wait to take the train to the big city destination.
The connection in the US would be at least 30 minutes, if you're lucky it will be scheduled at 20 during rush hour, but the bus is probably late. Also, again, it's not going into the city, you were already there, you just need to get on a different route.
>I get out and have a 10 minute connection wait for the bus to take me to the place closest to work, after which there's a 5-10 minute work.
If you have to make another connection outside the hub, you're probably waiting at least 45 minutes, in addition to the bus being late. The closest bus stop to where you work is another 30 minute walk away, along a 45 mph highway with no bike lanes and a sidewalk that just randomly ends occasionally.
>Total commute time: 2.5 hours single way. To move 60km. And that's living behind a train station and working at one of the countries' largest employers.
In the US, this was actually entire hypothetical. The route just doesn't actually exist.
Hope this helps you see why we place NL on a pedestal. We know it's not perfect, but it's so much better than what we have. Unless you live in an incredibly small portion of the country, it's just not an option.
>In the US, this was actually entire hypothetical. The route just doesn't actually exist.
Drag your butt over to Google maps and punch in a route from Lowell, Leominster, Worcester or Taunton Massachusetts (outlying cities in the Boston area people many commute in from) to any portion of the Boston area just inside I95 but not downtown and eyeball the times.
The route exists in the US and the times are in line with his estimates.
I live about a 7 minute drive from the North Leominster commuter rail. I'm about 90 minutes door to door to Boston/Cambridge depending upon where I'm going--which is better than driving at rush hour.
That said, it's only useful for commuting. There are far too few trains after evening rush hour to use it if attending an evening event.
My guy, dude...I didn't contradict the idea that the Netherlands has superior transit options compared to the US. I was giving push-back against the idea that the Dutch situation is utopian as if some kind of paradise. It isn't.
Well said. The pro-EU narrative hypes up everything in the EU or Europe zone ignoring data. For e.g., US rail infra is more than that of Netherlands per capita:
> Let's explore the commute to work, some 60km away...
Well. There's your problem.
The idea of travelling 60km to work is a very modern phenomenon. Like a lot of people you've built your life around car travel. It's hard to get back from that.
Well it seems you're criticizing Americans' rosy view of Dutch public infrastructure without realizing how absurd the US is in terms of infrastructure. I challenge you to visit the US and not use a car at all. In many cities you wouldn't even be able to get out of the airport. Yet Schiphol has a massive station underneath it with trains that can take you, not only to Amsterdam, but to virtually any city and even small town in the country.
Not just in the county, but to other countries, which thanks to Shengen, means it's viable to live in one country and work in another. High speed rail ftw.
The problem in the Netherlands is the peripheral connections. Transport between the cities is great. Inside them also. Suburban areas are crap though. In my town my house 15km from the city center of Amsterdam had a bus one time per hour. And really unreliable, often wouldn't appear etc. Walking to the train station was possible but 20 minutes.
This makes any trip much more difficult. Anyway I had to have the car for work. I hated that thing and the consultancy job.
> Why would anyone in a rich country with a high functioning rail system like The Netherlands want to drive?
Because some people don’t live in Amsterdam or The Hague.
Taking public transportation will take me over twice the time, and that’s when there’s no outage or delay.
“But traffic jams!” I hear you say. Well, the % time in traffic jams is drastically less for me than the % time lost due to missing a transfer, a delayed train or a canceled train.
Traffic jams are annoying but not very common or large, and will only rarely cause me to miss an appointment. Also, you just use cruise control and wait.
Experiencing a delay, cancelation or missing a transfer is almost guaranteed for any trip I make, and this usually means waiting another 30 mins for the next train or bus, and trying to figure out what I need to do to get to my destination (finding alternative trains)
All while being more expensive and less comfortable than just driving somewhere. If it were (drastically) cheaper, I could convince myself to take the time loss. But it is not, it is literally more expensive to take the train or bus than to drive if you already own a car.
> The main benefit of Zipcar to me versus owning is that the car had a parking space that it went back into.
I used to wholeheartedly agree with this. I lived in a very parking-constrained area. Zipcar had cars with dedicated spots on random corners throughout town, which was extremely convenient! At least prior to 2020...
Then the pandemic hit, and the number of package delivery trucks skyrocketed, along with doordash, uber eats, etc. And also just a general decrease in people's willingness to follow parking rules and signs. In the final year of my Zipcar membership before cancellation, literally 100% of my rentals involved dealing with a blocked parking spot when trying to return the car. I just don't think Zipcar's concept is viable anymore.
Not everyone want to spend their whole life in an urban environment. Perhaps there is not much opportunity for this in the Netherlands, but I can't imagine not having a vehicle to go camping/rock climbing/kayaking/mountain biking/hiking which requires going to remote areas not typically serviced by public transport.
Depnds on country. In Czech Republic public transport is common and take you in almost every village. It is actually more comfortable to go hiking by public transport, because you can plan route from place A to place B. You do not have to go from A to B and back to A bcause of car.
Because number of trains per day makes little sense if you have to plan the trip months in advance to get affordable prices, and the ticket binds you to a specific train.
One line of thought that hadn't occurred to me until this thread is that The Netherlands car infrastructure is also probably quite good, in keeping with their general high quality of infrastructure all around.
Although as many of the other commenters noted, one reason that driving in some places in the country is doable is that many others choose alternatives, themselves made attractive by high quality infrastructure.
The article specifies rich, maybe beacuse, at least in the US, only the rich can afford to live in places where cars aren't strictly necessary? Some choose to live elsewhere anyway, for scenery or privacy, but the poor or even median 60% can't choose an area with a 15 minute walk to necessities. The Seattle walkability map on hn recently highlighted that fairly well I think?
I also wonder if it is truly cars or just driving that is out of favor? If so, will full self drive fix that if and when it ever arrives?
The rhetoric and trends around transportation seem to be reflective of the increasing bifurcation (both economically and socially) of society in general.
This is the situation where I live too, in a non-London part of the UK. There are buses and trains but they mostly just link you to the larger cities, outside of the cities it isn't a viable replacement for car ownership.
Also if you're planning to have a family, a car is essential. Herding children on packed public transport is a no-no. I can imagine it being easier to walk with children if you're living in high trust communities where all amenities are available within walking distance, but that might also be a wealth thing too.
Is your argument that those national statistics are being driven entirely by changes in rich cities?
That the changes in driving habits have been so large that it drags down the bottom 60%.
The article says that in 1997 43% of 16-year olds had a driver's licence but by 2020 it had fallee to 20%.
Since you're claiming that's entirely driven by the richest 40% let's do some simple math to quantify the implications of your claim.
If richest 40% of 16 year olds had 0 driver's licences... Not a single one in the entire country... Then the national rate would have fallen to 25% not 20%. So the richest 40% must actually have NEGATIVE driver's for the math to work out on your claim.
Or maybe it isn't just a phenomenon limited the rich places.
I'd also be curious to see an inflation adjusted cost of use+ownership model for the average car owner. Cars are getting more complicated, and manufacturers are almost forcing owners to take them to a dealership for any kind of service.
I'm generally handy and usually perform my own maintenance on my vehicles. As such, I tend to drive 10-20 year old Japanese vehicles. I remember once when I confidently told my partner that I'd swap their burnt out headlight bulb, no problem. Imagine my surprise when I found out that a 2010ish GM sedan recommended taking the front bumper off to access the headlight housing.
If every little thing that goes wrong requires a multi-hundred dollar maintenance bill at a minimum, it's no wonder people want a viable alternative.
Maintenance difficulty varies a lot by make and model. Doing anything on a mini Cooper is an exercise in sheet frustration. A Honda Civic is a breeze.
In fact, it should probably be no surprise that Toyota and Honda typically fill out the entire top end of the "easy to maintain" spectrum, and American and European brands the other end.
> The article specifies rich, maybe beacuse, at least in the US, only the rich can afford to live in places where cars aren't strictly necessary?
I assumed it was because countries like India and China are following different trends - lower initial car ownership rates, more two-wheelers on the road, but a growing middle class.
The article jumps from talking about teenagers to talking about people under 40. I think different factors are at play.
Among teens, their basic needs are often already met by their family, teens are less likely to work than a generation ago, and a lot of their interaction is online anyway. Teen physical independence dropped for other reasons and the appeal of cars went with it.
For adults I think you're right about only high income people being able to live in neighborhoods with close amenities, but also reliance on delivery services, Uber/Lyft are also ways that high income lifestyle can make you dependent on cars while not owning one yourself.
In college (90s) I dated a 19 year old who didn’t have a drivers license (this was in ft. Worth tx). It blew me away, she just shrugged and said “I never really needed it”. She was ridiculously bright and had that glow that truly remarkable people do. I guess she was just ahead of the curve.
/well dating me does cause me to question her decision making ability now that I think about it heh
I got my license just in time to be able to drive my pregnant wife to hospital to give birth, aged 33. Before that I didn't really need one. Now I love my car and the life I want to live absolutely involve owning one (I don't necessarily love the ownership part though...). I suspect a lot of young people will eventually discover the same.
I don’t think that car ownership is related to poverty or absence of disposable income. In fact, a well off person in a well functioning city has little if any reason to own a car and can get away without one.
Subreddits like r/solarpunk, r/fuckcars, r/notjustbikes, along with the push for 15 minute cities are a testament that young people dont want to be in the grip of petrol companies or owning a car as they are not sustainable, cause traffic, accidents, and on and on.
> In fact, a well off person in a well functioning city has little if any reason to own a car and can get away without one.
You can get away without one, that is if you don’t mind sharing transit with violent junkies in any North American city. Transit can be down right terrifying to use these days.
I'm not sure what value there would be in that comparison. Cars and public transit are not filling the same role in society, regardless of how often that claim is made on HN. And that's completely ignoring the counterfactual of how mortality overall would change if we actually tried to make public transit fill all the roles cars have today.
I’ve relied on public transit for 7 years in 3 different cities and never once have I encountered a “violent junkie”. It’s far safer to take transit than to drive. Cars kill 40,000 people a year in the US. Cars are the leading cause of death for Americans age 15-24. These are deaths we just normalize and wave away because it’s the living cost of car-dependent infrastructure. But it’s not and shouldn’t be normal or acceptable.
Anecdotally, in Boston the MBTA is one of the "falling apart" systems. I could still rely on it to commute to my college / job, and the worst that has happened was sometimes being late due to delays. There are certainly a lot of sketchy people, but I have never seen someone attacked or have anything stolen or been harassed myself - then again I am a man and I'm certain it's different for women.
But more importantly, when living in Boston I never had to use the train. Only when commuting. Because when I lived in Boston everything was at most a 3 mile walk. Even in the really bad weather I could layer up still get places without public transit.
Now I'm in a less urban area but it's the same: I don't have a car and rarely end up using transit / Lyft. I do get groceries and things delivered though, but my job and everything else is within walking distance.
I still agree it would be a lot better if public transit was more reliable, but I think many people in cities can be well-off without a car. Not anecdotally I know that most of the college students in Boston don't have a car (especially because there is basically no parking...)
There's no shortage of parking in Boston, the market price of $40/day or $400 a month is just unaffordable for most college students. The ones driving exotic sports cars sure don't have any problem finding parking in the city.
As you point out, when you can find all of life's necessities within a reasonable walking distance, the need to own a car is significantly diminished. That's the goal that "anti-car" activists are pushing for.
> Subreddits like r/solarpunk, r/fuckcars, r/notjustbikes, along with the push for 15 minute cities are a testament
... that the Internet is dominated by the small niche of loud people who think other people want to hear their opinion. That's it. Anybody who is not deep inside the Reddit (and HN, for that matter) bubble can quickly appreciate how dissimilar the viewpoints on Reddit are from the real world.
Yes, most people are lurkers. That doesn't mean that lurkers can't show their presence with interactions in the form of up or downvotes or that the different subreddits, hashtags, and so on aren't a mirror of the user base.
Now, I understand your cynicism, but you'd be naive to believe that small pockets of change are not happening. But then again, what does a European know about European cities?
Anyhow, I found this somewhere on HN, I am certain you will enjoy the irony.
> everyone is preening, bragging, trying to seem better than you, claiming to have the moral high ground, or the only correct answer.
Berlin is super progressive. You absolutely don't need a car in Berlin. Berlin certainly has the highest percentage of people (in Germany) aggressively telling everyone that you shouldn't want a car.
Around 30% of households in Berlin do not own a car.
The "I like bikes and I bike everywhere" group is a small minority. I know, I'm one of them. As soon as it's even slightly rainy mine is the only bike in front of the super market (though I'm sure it would be slightly different in Berlin, or at least in some parts of Berlin). But if you looked at surveys, you'd think that driving your car to the super market would be the exception. People on reddit talking about how much they hate cars aren't representative.
I lived in Copenhagen, 2/3 of the population walked or commuted via public transit to work. This obviously isn’t the same as owning a car but I don’t have stats for that off the top of my head.
I walked everywhere, but I saw people riding their bikes in the rain, in the snow, and all kinds of weather in between.
Now, I am not expressing that everyone shouldn’t own a car nor that people outside cities shouldn’t.
I am expressing that __young__ people seem to not want to own a car, with young people being predominantly in cities. Wanting to own, and having to own are two different things as well.
My claim appears to be incongruous to what other commenters seem to have assumed I meant.
> a well off person in a well functioning city has little if any reason to own a car
Even in this small town (~2,000 people) in which I live I have almost no reason for a car. Everything I need is in comfortable walking distance... Other than family and friends who live in other places that I like to visit from time to time.
When I was young there was enough economic hardship around that people had to disperse to make a living, leaving those social ties I established all over the place. With the strong economy we've been living for a number of years one has been comfortably able to stay put; living a great life anywhere they want. Now everyone in your life is able to remain close. If I could walk to their homes, that would certainly remove the last reason I keep a car. The younger people have that option.
I absolutely share your opinion. There is no money left for a car after paying all the bills in euro inflation zone. 200€ just to own something, another 100€ insurance with maintenance and the insanely expensive fuel on top. Let’s say 150€ when car is used occasionally.
It certainly helps! But in California (my home) at least neighbourhoods that are walkable and nice often have very expensive homes. We liked South Park, San Diego, but there were almost no homes under $1 million for instance.
Changing that is the entire goal of the "anti-car" crowd, right? They want city-planers to build neighborhoods that are walkable, accessible by public transport and don't require owning a car. And they want them everywhere, for everyone.
The anti-car crowd has in the US has that new convert zeal. If you poke them enough, a lot will say that no one anywhere should be allowed to own a car. Not that are cities aren't horribly car centric though, but I don't think we should empty out the countryside to get rid of cars.
We definitely want them available to everyone! strongtowns.org/ were at the forefront of this and they're not even "anti-car" really, just "anti-forced-car". It shouldn't be illegal to open a restaurant without a bunch of parking around it, etc.
But then why would they have no money? Their parents are rich (per the article) and they're young (high school age) so we should be able to assume that their basic costs are funded by those rich parents.
Is it because of this intense fear of getting a job that was starting to emerge when I was young and seems to have really taken off since?
> Is it because of this intense fear of getting a job that was starting to emerge when I was young and seems to have really taken off since?
Something odd, that I haven't seen many folks talk about, is that a lot of jobs are tacitly considered "beneath them" for Gen Z who grow up in middle class or higher affluence families. This is despite the fact that their parents don't think this, but the kids see a lifestyle on social media and an expectation that they have set for themselves that is not realistic and refuse to accept anything less. My own teenager is going through something similar, and it's a huge argument every time we talk about her getting a summer job. The type of work I did (stocking shelves and later running a till at a grocery store) when I was her age appalls her, even though it was by my standards pretty easy since at least I was inside in the air conditioning while working during the summer.
At the same time, hardly anyone in Gen Z would dare utter any statement that might be considered to be classist, because many Gen Zers believe in some chopped up Marxist fantasy, and consider classism one of the deadly sins, saying that those jobs are beneath them and they think they're better than the kids who take those jobs would get them cancelled. But that's exactly what they're thinking. They all want to be YouTubers or influencers, not the person who works the drive through at McDonald's.
To be fair, no one wants to be the person who works the drive through at McDonald's. Back in the day it used to be good money for a high school kid, and maybe it arguably still is, but high school kids, particularly high performing ones, don't have time for part-time jobs that aren't contributing to a college resume. Let alone time to spend any money they make with friends.
I guess I could have expanded on my last sentence more and completed the thought. Of course nobody wants to be the person who works the drive through at McDonald's as their life's ambition. This type of job used to be seen as a stepping stone that provided you some spending money and an opportunity to meet people outside your parents social circle and school, a first taste of the working world, but wasn't a determinant of what your career ended up being. Gen Z though sees people /their age/ every day online who have become multi-millionaires on the Internet by being social media influencers or content creators, and they want to jump straight to the end where they're famous, rich, and respected (arguably).
My generation was never exposed to that, we were exposed to Tommy the lawyer who got his start working the stock room at the hardware store and now drives a Porsche. The type of "instant" fame and money that kids get exposed to now just wasn't even in the realm of possibility for my generation, except perhaps sports stars. Even though the number of people who "make it" vs those who try is vanishingly small, a lot of folks in Gen Z seem to think being an influencer or a similar role is the primary career path they want to try for, and unlike something like being a sports star, it's less limited by outside influences and requires less genetic talent. Anyone could, possibly, be an influencer, even though very few people actually will become one.
Now, taking that job is no longer seen as a stepping stone, it's seen as giving up and admitting to yourself and the world you won't be able to hack it online. It's truly remarkable if you observe high schoolers, girls especially, these days and how much of their life is spent online vs with those directly around them. Social media is not just entertainment, it's one of the most important things in their lives, and their presence there is seen as a determinant for their future. This is a very different social zeitgeist than my generation grew up with, and I'm a Millennial, grew up with Internet and computers, but prior to the dawn of social media.
This isn't an economic issue in that sense, then, it's a social issue, a rejection of the type of work that most people in the US started with when they were that age. A drive through worker at McDonald's makes nearly $37k/yr if they work full-time at the starting wage where I reside now. That's more than many professionals made when they started their careers when I was a teenager, and it's more than double what I made starting as a shelf-stocker /inflation-adjusted/. It's not that the job doesn't pay enough to attract people who are starting out, it's that those people see it as a serious social faux pas to be caught working that type of job, it's an admission and acceptance of failure, rather than an admirable place to begin.
Well I'll admit hadn't considered that factor, I guess I'll find out in a decade or so when my daughter reaches that age, although hopefully that mentality will have died out once that generation gets a decade of reality under their belt.
That said I kinda get the social media obsession, that was college for me and I was all in on the facebook parasocial queues (not liking someone's post that they KNOW you saw was an offense, and other crazy shit). For me it was ultimately a function of not having anything better to do. High school is supermax prison in terms of options, college is like minimum security prison, it's not really until you hit the realization that your decisions have actual weight in your life and you aren't just going to be pushed along by external forces that you start to grow out of that. High school ends and eventually becomes irrelevant, but good luck explaining that to a teenager.
I'd argue the income question is also part of the problem, the "mail room to executive" pipeline, if it ever really existed, has been completely broken. As you say, it used to be that person working the McDonalds drive through might be something big some day. Nowadays that's 100% assured to not be the case, McDonalds drive through is a dead-end job you do to stay alive until you can trade up to a different career path.
> As you say, it used to be that person working the McDonalds drive through might be something big some day. Nowadays that's 100% assured to not be the case, McDonalds drive through is a dead-end job you do to stay alive until you can trade up to a different career path.
Can you expand on how you see these two statements as different conceptually? At least for folks in my generation, I don't think anyone harbored delusions that they were going to make it big by working at McDonald's, but it was seen as a way to get basic work experience and the benefit of a wage while you worked towards something different. The "mail room to executive" pipeline was always a fantasy, as far as I'm concerned, just due to basic math, there's a lot more mail room clerks than executives, so it in all probability won't happen to you. On the flip side, working a summer job provides you a pathway to pay for entertainment and a modicum of freedom so you can explore the world and figure out what you actually want to do. At least that's how it was seen when I was a teenager.
I guess I'm conflating two concepts, my overall point is that getting a job in high school used to be seen as "getting your foot in the door", one way or another. Like you said, at the very least it got you money/freedom to explore, and you had time to explore. You were seen as someone who was getting their start in the world.
Nowadays the options for standard middle-class success are a lot more constricted. There is much less "freedom" and "exploring" unless you're wealthy, working at McDonalds will just get you an ultimately meaningless amount of money and experience that no one values, while sucking up your time. Even when I was in high school there was no time for "exploration" outside of academics if you wanted a positive outcome. You were either on the AP/honors track and going to college to be a "success", or you had a job/took normal classes and either couldn't afford college or were just coasting into mediocrity. I imagine it's gotten even more stark since I graduated, given prevailing economic circumstances.
I'd say the desire to be an influencer/streamer is also partially the result of that. Sure statistically most influencers/streamers don't make much, but there's at least the potential of freedom/success that doesn't exist with a McDonalds job, directly or indirectly; and the barrier to entry is low. It would be like if everyone's parents bought them a guitar/drum set and there was a social hierarchy based on being a rock star.
If I can be so bold as to link it into larger trends, one thread I've noticed is that in previous generations' countercultures, whether it was the hippies in the 60s/70s or grungy Xers in the 90s, there was an underlying assumption that the American Dream was vanity. That you didn't need all of that stuff and could "drop out", calling someone a "sellout" was a serious insult. You could always find a way to "get by" even if you weren't living large. Because during those times where the income/cost of living disparity wasn't so large, you probably could. Don't worry about prosperity, go become an assistant manager at Staples and spend your time on what really matters! Nowadays economics don't support that, so we have "hustle culture", where you're expected to "grind", and that's the superficially "cool" thing to do. Even if you're just hocking bullshit, make that money! Given the limited options available to high school students, it follows that being an influence/streamer, something they can literally do on their phone, is the only universally attractive objective.
That's the source of fear I mentioned earlier, being sold this idea that the only way to get a job is to go to college and if you don't 100% focus on college you won't make it. But there is nothing in the data to suggest that idea actually panned out. All signs point to young adults having a much harder time moving up because they didn't work in their youth to gain the experience necessary to navigate the waters of the economy.
That all sounds like anxiety that if they settle now, they're locked in (or at least constricted to working their way up step-by-step instead of being a temporary position until leaping forward)
I think that plays a major part of it. When I asked my teenager about it, one of her points was that in order to be successful as an influencer, you needed to speak the language and know the things that have social currency, which is somewhat age limited. Gen Z is targeting Gen Z, if they walk away from that world of spending all day engrossed in social media and trying to be an influencer to work a regular job, they quickly lose pace with everything happening online and its direction.
So, if they are seriously trying to become an influencer, accepting any time commitment that doesn't further that objective and removes them from that social sphere effectively ends any chances of it happening. Additionally to the above, my teenager has admitted to me that she knows that influencers are time-limited with their success, it's something that really only happens when you're young, cool, and pretty, and shortly after you have a fall-off. They'd rather make the attempt while they're young and have a lot of anxiety around not doing it, and falling into mediocrity.
N=1, I am young, have a great job, I don't own a car, I haven't owned a car in 5 years, and I deliberately avoid living in places where I need to own a car.
I am not interested in owning a "house", too expensive, there is little to no reason to strap myself with long term responsibilities.
I am also not interested in drinking, given all evidence on how bad alcohol is, I am not keen on destroying the only tool I have that allows me to live as well as I do. Unless of course you mean drinking for social reasons, which is another thing entirely but I don't do that either.
Stocks are better for that in every way. If you buy a house you are dependent on political will to arbitrarily keep house prices high while for stocks the political incentives for growth are guaranteed to go in your favour.
You don't need the value to remain in any one place. You just need your house to not tank relative to the rest of them so that you can leverage up when you get rich and develop a fetish for "good school district" and downsize when the next is empty.
It's a store of value, not an investment. The goal isn't to get rich. It's to not have to pay rent in retirement (yes, I know property taxes).
And never experienced a severe rent shock or an asshole landlord apparently. I hope that remains the case.
Having been a renter for the last 10 years, I'm sick of landlords dragging their heels on repairs (in one case I had to take a landlord to small claims court) and my monthly rent spiking 6-10% or else going up by a mere 2-3%, forcing me to lock-in longer term leases to save money.
Especially now that the wife and I are in the family formation part of our lives, buying a house in the suburbs is looking more and more attractive. More space, room to do stuff at home, a fixed-rate payment to plan around etc. But I'm assuming that doesn't apply to you at your current stage of life.
From a financial perspective, renting is great for staying relatively mobile, but if you're planning to stay in one place for more than a few years, buying is probably the way to go. Nerdwallet has a good calculator comparing the two with a couple of dozen factors taken into account: https://www.nerdwallet.com/mortgages/rent-vs-buy-calculator
I agree with you that at the end of the day housing is an expense, I'd much rather fund my retirement with stocks. Although once the kids have moved out downsizing might be able to net a few hundred grand more, but that's a decision for 30 years from now.
I'm by far not a millennial, and not cash-strapped, but I've completely fallen out of love with cars now I live somewhere where there is ubiquitous and cheap 'automated' transport, ie public transport, uber, grab, etc. I use a bike when I want to be 'free' to just wander. A car can never be that anyway, in a city.
I get that a car is the only realistic option in the 'great outdoors', but anywhere even slightly dense, they're a pain to buy, to maintain, to drive, to park. If you want the fun of driving, go to a track. If you want to get around, there are often better options. Car ownership seem like an outdated aspiration, IMHO.
No. Young people always have had no money. It's the nature of being young.
Cars are really just trash technology that has made city life worse.
Older generation have an emotional attachment to cars, and project a lot of virtuous attributes onto it (freedom, independence, wealth, ...). Younger generations just do that less. They accurately see what cars are.
The young have that luxury. They're not at that age yet where they need to capitulate to the cult of the car. Once you have children, the thousands of vectors pushing a family in all directions, car life in some burb is the only one that's financially affordable.
It's the other way around. Youth reject cars because cars are objectively shit. As people get older, options dwindle, aspirations get adjusted, and people submit.
I feel like cars are only good for older people of a certain age, and as healthcare (for now) has gotten better for well-to-do people, they can continue on older than the greatest generation could. But, when they hit 80 or 90 or so, or they get disabled, the car centric cities will turn out to be very inhibiting for older folks, and many end up feeling isolated. It is also a major problem with car centric city planning that isn't as well discussed IMO.
Absolutely. It's a huge cliff. Old people eventually can't drive, and in car centric places, immediately lose all independence. we're going through it right now in my family. Keep your ears open and you hear it all the time; "grandpa drove into a parked car, not sure if he should still be driving".
I plan to retire (finances willing) in a walkable city, for just that reason.
Same argument at the other end of age spectrum. American children have no independence, only because cities are dangerous because of cars.
It's probably this. Best things about cars are luxury, not strictly utility.
Having to own a car and drive it everywhere every day can be pretty miserable. Being able to afford owning a car and not having to drive it all the time is wonderful. Freedom of having an option to just go anywhere at any time is not something I ever thought I would appreciate so much before I had to get a car for security reasons. But it absolutely is a luxury as even mediocre public or commercial services will get you 90% of own car utility. And good public or commercial services can eliminate whole categories of car use cases.
of course they are, cars are expensive, dangerous, and dirty… traffic is miserable, maintenance is expensive, you can’t trust anyone else on the road… a car might be the worst thing I own but I live in a place where I couldn’t eat or get to the doctor’s office without one
Oil changes are inexpensive and new cars often have them included for the first few years. On top of that with modern oils the change interval is longer than it used to be.
Unless you're driving an obscene amount or doing burnouts everywhere a set of tyres should last 3-4 years. A set for a small sedan really isn't that expensive.
Because you’ll find in life not everywhere has what you want and not every city is for everyone.
The unfortunate reality is if you wait for American cities to become less car dependant you’ll be waiting a very long time. If this is important enough to you in a city there are places you’d be happy.
It’s worth remembering that name calling and personal attacks are not allowed on HN.
There are very few cities where you can get around without a car. Even fewer of those are affordable.
This is more problematic as people age. Should elderly drivers retake driving tests? Many argue yes, but no one provides a solution as to what to do when you take their license away. In most cities you'd be screwed.
In Montreal(and other places throughout Eastern Canada) we have a "car-sharing" program called communauto.
It's pretty cheap and is competitive with a bus pass depending on where you're going. It covers gas, insurance, maintenance, and you have access to all local parking permits. You can get essentially 'unlimited rides' for less than 100$/month.
I had a car off and on over the last couple of years, and I would barely use it, mostly just to change parking spots. I also sank a couple ~4k into repairs only to finally scrap it (I'm a bit of an idiot).
Communauto is a great inbetween, where I can do groceries, can go on extended trips. It's a great option for the occasional (<3/week) or frequent in-city motorist.
I really wished this demonisation of the car stopped. Modern cars are way more climate friendly than merely 10-20 years ago and many climate-conscious persons do pool to commute.
But we need to understand. There are cases where the car is a must. Unavoidable. Imagine having toddlers, having to do heavy groceries, and living in a place with difficult landscape or challenging weather. Imagine having a neurological disease or some other disability.
Replace the words "the car" with "good public transit" and your last paragraph makes equal if not more sense.
There's different ways of living a life, and the current trend shouldn't be seen as car demonization. I see it more as a new generation seeing the current US car-centric society and pushing for a better (for the life they want to live) alternative.
It depends where you live. Good public transit is unfortunately the exception in many places and not the rule. Cars are still needed in many use cases.
> Good public transit is unfortunately the exception in many places and not the rule.
This is a fixable problem. The biggest issue is...
> Cars are still needed in many use cases.
... the people who say this and, as a result, block any attempt to improve public transit whatsoever. Even worse, some are apt to frame it a "war on cars" because they're spending money on transportation that's not going to cars.
My village has about 300 people in it, so call it 300 return trips per day.
Those trips might be east to the small city. Or west to the mid-sized down. There's a bus in those directions, about once every 2 hours, last one at 6pm so useless for evening activities, or commuting further on the train. It's just gone past my front door now, it's rare to see more than 2 or 3 passengers on board other than at college time.
My options for going further - to London or Manchester
1) bus to the station, train to london, tube across london, then return on tube, train, and get a taxi back from the station
2) drive to the station in the morning, park, drive back in the evening (last train arrives about midnight)
3) drive the entire journey, under 3 hours so about the same amount of time
Same if I go to Manchester and Birmingham, but the drive is about half the time of public transport.
They might be south towards the big village. Or north to another big town. There's no bus services there.
Now you might say "just put on more public transport". My wife drives to work at a hospital 25 miles away. I suspect you could meet the entire daily demand from my village in that direction with a single minibus. The route doesn't pass any other major settlements, it's south-west down the lanes. How frequently would a bus need to run to be useful? Every hour? How early would it start? How late would it run? How many people would it take on each journey, and how much would it cost to run? How much pollution would it cause? What benefits would there be?
Public transport doesn't work below a certain density. If you want to depopulate the country and put everyone in tower blocks in the city - leaving the country for the rich - then just be honest about it.
> If you want to depopulate the country and put everyone in tower blocks in the city - leaving the country for the rich - then just be honest about it.
I don't want to do this. But the fact that you immediately go to the suggestion that I do is emblematic of the "war-on-cars" mentality. Just so much as mention wanting to improve public transit and you get a screed that concludes that I'm an evil person with ulterior motives.
No, public transit doesn't work everywhere. I'm not going to even try to pretend that it does. And consequently, I'm not going to attempt to propose it in places where it doesn't work. So why do the "war-on-car" people so vehemently oppose public transit when its proposed in the places where it very obviously works?
In the country I live in, you can't get a bus or train after a certain hour of night.
If you had business in a different city that's a few hours distance, and you miss the last bus of the day, you'll need to wait at least 6-8 hours to be able to get the first bus or train of the next day.
In this case you can probably still find a taxi, but then we're back to the car situation.
(EDIT: Of course the problem would also be solved if you could get a bus or train any time of the day.)
>But we need to understand. There are cases where the car is a must. Unavoidable. Imagine having toddlers, having to do heavy groceries, and living in a place with difficult landscape or challenging weather. Imagine having a neurological disease or some other disability.
Bud, nobody is taking the car away from those kinds of use cases. It's very clear for most people that cars are necessary in those situations, and that's fine. What we're demonising is the car as the only way to go about getting from A to B. If you watch some of the urban planning videos on the topic, or lurk the r/f*cars subreddit you'll quickly see that most people also* want to make the driving experience better! And by better they don't mean to build one more lane, but sensible infrastructure that makes sense for everybody, not just the cars. The whole point is about inclusion: why isn't using a car unavoidable?
Bud, no. The demonising is complete and utter. To the point in some cities in Europe ecoterrorists attack parked cars. Some cases are so ridiculous, they've even attecked parked Teslas and other electric cars.
Fact of the matter is the following: not everyone lives near a fantastic commuting infrastructure, let alone can physically achieve moving from A to B against the elements or their other problems.
Well, my mom has Parkinson's. Can't walk/bike/take public transport anywhere so I have to drive her around (mainly to therapy). How could I possibly manage without a car?
Who told you that? Not all neurological diseases or disabilities mean you cannot drive. And even if you cannot YOURSELF (as the patient) drive, you certainly can have some car with a special badge to park closer to your destination.
These are more common than those that require automobility, but aren't discussed because they don't help the cause. Most common disabilities are eyes, hearing, and mental. None of those can drive.
And as I said, it does not matter if you can drive YOURSELF. These cars get special permits for the relatives to drive the disabled person to the destination.
But other than that, you are wrong again. The most common neurological disabilities actually affect motor and sensitivity. Are people are allowed to drive.
> Imagine having toddlers, having to do heavy groceries, and living in a place with difficult landscape or challenging weather. Imagine having a neurological disease or some other disability.
I tick all of those boxes and never had a car.
I live in the city, walking and using public transit. Toddlers love to walk and to be carried in the stroller.
Cars from the suburbs are a constant inconvenience for us living in inner cities: they are a danger to pedestrians and cyclists alike, they make our streets noisy and our air polluted.
If people liked the suburbs so much, they would stay there. But no, they want the convenience and services of the city while shoving the externalities of their lifestyle onto other people.
So what do you imply? That (inner) cities will be only for your carless people? Good for you that you tick the boxes and still not use the car. I know of people that cannot manage this.
The inner cities are also places were the suburbs people come to work and play. So space in underground parkings or other accomodations is expected. Imagine if the sububs people decided to say to you (inner) city people that you are not allowed to go to their green parks and recreation areas because you are "shoving externalities of your (city) lifestyle to them".
Thankfully you are not to decide this. Inner city areas contain many offices and amenities that are critical for the whole population, regardless where they live.
I hear such outrageous arguments all the time by inner city dwellers. Just because they own or rent a microscopic appartment in a condo, they think they own the city and all must abide to their lifestyle.
Car-owners can still come there, just not in their car.
Amsterdam has slowly tried to move cars out of the city center over the past couple decades. Residents can still get a parking permit, but parking space has been reduced to make more space for people, and visitors had better park their car at the edge of the city and take public transport into the city center. Or just come by train.
No, they are tax-payers, they should be allowed to come with whatever vehicle they want. I agree that cheap public transportation should be offered, but also parking spaces for those who cannot come with public transportation.
I think you're taking me for someone else. I do not make these decisions.
I support them, though. I'm a tax payer too, and I live here, and I like the fact that this city is a lot nicer now.
And there are parking spaces. Lots of them. At the edge of the city. With fast public transport to the center, and if you combine the two, the parking is incredibly cheap. It's a win for everybody. I have no idea where your weird entitlement comes from.
I grew up in a very rural part of northern Florida. When I was 16 my parents said I’d have to learn how to drive so I could get to the job that I’d use to pay for a car.
I thought that was dumb and just decided to get by with less money and no car.
Throughout high school, I’d walk to the general store a mile away and that was about all I did other than go fishing (my favorite thing to do at the time). For a bit of money I tutored at school and tied flies (a fishing thing) for a local tackle shop.
In college I’d think nothing of walking 3-5 miles round trip for errands. Outside of peak school hours I was often the only person on the limited local bus system. I kept tutoring and writing grad school entrance essays for kids for money.
After college I moved to Portland, OR and still haven’t learned to drive (I’m 40 today). I walk and bike everywhere and take the bus once in awhile.
Oh no, sorry I meant that the college town I went to had a bus. No non-school bus where I grew up.
Growing up it was 1 mile to the general store or 35 miles to Walmart. I went there with my parents or I didn't go there at all. My job tying flies was by mail. I worked at home and mailed them to the shop. It paid about minimum wage but kept me in fishing tackle and I got better at tying flies. Plus I could listen to the radio while I worked. And we had a schoolbus to get to/from school which I don't think is that rare.
My son (20 yrs old) like driving but he doesn't like where new cars are going in becoming "phonish". He wants a 1970s boat of car but in a place with severe winters and road salt I think we are adding a 2000-2010 vintage asian car to the motor pool at the farm but the state of the car market is a little intimidating right now.
I expect in the future cars will be used for fewer but longer trips. Commuting to work should not be a thing, and most cities will adapt to the new reality where the home is also the office.
On the other hand people will seek better living quality in less dense areas and this makes the car necessary, however infrequently. Maybe the news of their demise is greatly exaggerated
I'm not sure if I still qualify as young, but yeah, I have no love of cars. I prefer bicycling and trains. (Or just walking for sufficiently short trips.)
Cars are a necessary evil in my life for the moment, but I hope for a future where that "necessary" part goes away.
It's like the Yogi Berra saying: Nobody drives, there's too much traffic.
I mostly gave up a car living in Washington, DC. I still had one, but only because my apartment had free parking. It came in handy for occasional work trips and road trips, but day-to-day I walked or biked almost everywhere.
Yet, the main reason it was not useful was because the roads were so packed with traffic, at almost all hours of the day, that it was nearly impossible to drive anywhere. Let alone find somewhere to park that wouldn't charge you $20.
If enough people fall out of love with cars, maybe it driving will become attractive again.
As discussed many times past, including on HN, if you live in or near a major city, and in a country or area which prioritises goood public transport, you can get by admirably --even better-- without a car.
As soon as you move even a little away from the metropolis, and/or to somewhere that doesn't prioritise good public transport, access (at least) to a car becomes close to a necessity for many activities. This rule holds true in my direct experience in the UK, US, Switzerland, and Germany.
For example, in the US compare living in Denver to a small town a couple of hours' drive out in the sticks. Or in the UK, living in one of the major cities to virtually anywhere in the countryside.
Nobody is talking about taking away cars from people who live outside of cities. Yet this argument always comes up when problems with cars in densely populated areas are discussed.
This probably occurs because people and governments love one size fits all solutions. There’s a good chance any rules about cars made in the city will spill over and cause issues for people in the country, it happens all the time in regards to other things so why not this?
That's because the tone of "problems with cars in densely populated areas" and those discussing them tend to completely ignore the significant part of the population that the argument is redundant for.
Yes, talking about adding bike lanes in cities and improving public transportation should really infuriate the rural demographic that continually think everything is about them and their way of life. These ideas must all come from the cult of anti-car that wants to come into every tiny city and change everything overnight apparently. It’s typical status quo paranoia that always tries to halt any progress in these areas.
the rural demographic that continually think everything is about them and their way of life
Rubbish, these articles are nearly always written by and supported by the dominant voice in the mainstream media - young, liberal city-dwellers, who seem to have no concept that there is a huge part of the population who are funding their "progress", often at the expense of their own infrastructure and quality of life.
I buy groceries every week. Several times a week when I want something fresh. There are three shops in walking distance.
I don't buy furniture every week. Nor building materials. It's cheaper for me to rent a car for those occasions than to maintain a private car 24/7 for that.
Cars being necessary for some tasks does not mean it's necessary to own and garage one they will sit idle most of the time.
I live in a city with light rail and busses everywhere. Everything I want to do in this city is 20-30 min driving. Put the bus/train into it? Make that 1-2 hours or longer if I have to transfer. Then hope whatever I want is near a train/bus stop. I have traded money for time. The cost of my car buys me time. If I did not value my time I would use the public transportation more. The places near my work if I wanted to 'walk to work' cost nearly 3x-4x what I am currently paying. So I have to trade off some time for money. It takes a balance of what you want and can afford. It mostly depends on how you see time and the options afforded to you by where you live and can afford. But mostly depending on how you see these two sentences 'there are 24 hours in a day to do whatever I want' or 'there are only 24 hours in a day and that is not enough'.
It sounds like you're describing my experience with Seattle's public transit system. As much as I want to love it, driving almost anywhere in the city was faster (even taking into account time to find parking). Not to mention, in my own car I don't have to deal with (other peoples') pee and needles.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 383 ms ] threadI never felt the same way, and I think a large part of that is that I grew up with the Internet; I could always AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) my friends or use ICQ. I was always connected even during an era of dialup. With the always-on functionality of modern phones, I’m sure that feeing is much more magnified. This doesn’t surprise me and I hope it drives a much more efficient future.
This assumes the public transportation is competently run, which is a rarity in the Anglophone world. In the UK I think the only good one is TfL.
Meanwhile Birmingham has a million people and no metro.
The one time I visited NYC the subway seemed third world.
Sure, there are plenty of areas where it would be really difficult. But there are also a lot more places than just London where it's perfectly possible, depending on family circumstances and lifestyle choices.
Two big differences in country design:
- in the UK, I felt like I could get to any town by transit. I imagine that isn't strictly true, but compared to the US, where I live in a half a state that's entirely devoid of any trains... big improvement
- UK cities are walkable, that is you can generally get anywhere just on foot. In the US cities I've lived in, downtown generally supports foot traffic, but as you get further out the sidewalks disappear, get scarier, and never have anyone walking around then.
You literally just drive around for 5ish minutes and you find a spot. Ive lived in two major cities in america fwiw.
* circling the block over and over until you find a spot.
* making sense of the layered rules on parking signs to make sure you can park
* finding the parking stall and/or downloading the app to pay for parking.
* making sure you have no valuables visible and each car ahead and behind have enough space to get out.
This is experience based off living in DC, NY, and the Bay Area. I’m actually OK paying for a car - but I have an absolutely no time for parking and traffic.
Just an anecdote to cancel out your anecdote.
1. Spend thousands of dollars a year on gas, whether you want to or not
2. Buy auto insurance
3. Pay for routine maintenance like oil changes and brakes
And none of this is by choice.
I hate cars. Yet I am forced to own one in order to live.
Teenagers here have no need to have a license or a ride from a parent to meet up with their friends. The level of independence is totally different, starts earlier, and is way safer.
And fat, out of shape, with health problems that are normally associated with older people. I'm astounded at how many 20-somethings I've met who complain about knee and back problems.
But then the Internet become a thing. For some of us sooner rather than later (I started earlier, as a tween, doing FidoNet and running a BBS). That shift online came with a tremendous increase in seat time in front of the computer.
So now I'd have to throw the kids out of the house and lock the door behind them, or they'll happily park in front of their computer playing games, watching YouTube, texting with friends that are literally across the street.
No wonder young people no longer see the car as freedom, they've lost the interest in even leaving their house, much less driving into the wilderness to take a hike or see the stars, etc. Sure, not all of them, but there is a very obvious pattern. And older generations aren't immune, of course, the allure of sitting on your butt in front of a computer screen appeals to all ages. But the older generations started with more habitual roaming habits.
Going outside the house was boring because all of the fun things I wanted to were too far away or off limits.
I knew a lot of people through my parent's church. This seemed to be a pretty common experience.
I'm an older millennial but enjoy living in a community where I only have to get into a car a couple times a week, but can spend the reset of the time walking or biking around my community.
But it's nice to have a license so you can rent a car if you really want to.
I'll give the benefit of the doubt and just assume a different life experience, and not just hyperbole.
But if they're living on $30k in NYC, do they share their home with one or more roommates? Could they handle a $500 unexpected expense or would it devastate them?
At some age you want to be able to live life a bit more comfortably than in your early 20s, say.
When I moved to NYC, I was able to get a very comfortable apartment outside Manhattan but still very convenient to subway lines, and my rent (by far my largest recurring expense) was lower than I had been paying in my first job out of college 7 years earlier. Sure I had a roommate, but 7 years earlier I had was living with my S.O. Why do we automatically assume that a roommate == lower comfort of daily life than living with an SO?
In my case, I was unquestionably more comfortable in my 30s in NYC than in my 20s in the suburbs in a single family home.
I haven't lived there in a long time, but I lived in Brooklyn both with and without a car. The car rarely added any convenience and was a royal pain in the ass to find parking for. If not for the fact that my job was in CT and I ended up moving there, I would have sold it.
However, everywhere else I've lived, life was much easier with a car.
I loved playing Game Boy or reading a book on my way to and from work. Getting around the neighborhood by bike was wonderful with the LA weather. Occasionally I would go somewhere that needed a car such as off to the mountains to ski, so I would ride with my friends who were joining. If no one owned a car, I’m sure we could have rented. I also once got staffed down in OC for work, so I talked with someone on my team and coordinated carpooling with them, which allowed us to use the HOV lane and improve the horrid traffic situation. My coworker was happy to go out of their way to pick me up in exchange for HOV access.
I’ve since lived in big Texas cities and have been able to also live without a car, but I find it much more difficult because there are zero viable public transit options. LA’s public transit is nothing to write home about, but it is usable. You just need to have a good attitude and plan your life ahead of time. Ride sharing and rentals can fill in the rest.
To your point, LA became much more affordable when I got rid of my car. My situation was not perfectly replicable by all, but I do think the issue of car ownership and getting around without one isn’t an all or nothing affair for every citizen. In my situation it worked. For others, it would not. It would be great if more cities simply allowed for the option of getting around without a car and invested in alternative modes of transit. Ideally for me, I’d have a car that I would use for some errands and take public transit for others.
It's irrelevant whether or not the young are "falling out of love" with cars, cars are essential in the rich world (at least in my country, the UK) outside of a few urban areas well-served by public transport infrastructure - and non-EVs at that.
There's a huge amount of development needed in that infrastructure before the luxury of choice will matter to the average Jo.
I’ve never really wanted to own a car but I did when I lived in a small town as there wasn’t really any other option. As soon as I moved to a place where I could live comfortably without one I got rid of it and haven’t had any regrets about that decision.
Older generations (my parent for example) truly love their cars and never could imagine themselves living without one. Same for my grandmother and she lives right next to all the services she uses and mostly walks to them but still she has to own a car.
Obviously I pay more than $3k/yr after you include other expenses but still, few are buying that much fuel.
I used to take the train when I worked downtown and @$350/mo or $4200/yr for a pass (which also covers the subway and buses) it's basically a break even vs driving.
Medium distance rail and bus needs to get a hell of a lot better for it to actually be cheaper for the average person in practice.
Cost-wise, yes but there are other benefits.
I live in rural MN and used to commute to downtown Minneapolis about 40 miles away. It was far more convenient, not to mention much faster, to drive to an express bus stop and take the bus into the city than to drive. The 6 block walk to the office sucked sometimes when it was raining or -20F but not having to deal with traffic, plus the reduction of wear and tear on my car was well worth the minor inconvenience.
Now, I realize that's an ideal situation: having a bus 15 minutes away and a relatively short distance between the bus stop and my destination, but it's possible. Cities can do this: Minneapolis has streets that are bus-only at rush hour to speed up transit -- cars will get ticketed if the cops see them. The Metro area has a large number of bus routes between suburbs and even to the edge of the ex-urban areas. There was a big push around 20 years ago to improve transit and it's definitely paying off, but it takes commitment and patience that I guess a lot of other areas in the country don't have.
Today, you’re looking at 10-15 year old cars at that price range. Reality is a decent used car from a condition perspective is about $15k.
Maybe the Zoomer/Millenial focus on luxury goods has lead to a world where people aren't interested in vehicles outside of the high end?
Mainly it is for idiosyncratic reasons: I hate being confined where I can't stand up if I want to, and I don't like "car smell". There's something about the air inside motor vehicles that puts me on edge. I get the same feeling on buses and planes, but oddly not on trains, even though rationally I know the air must be of similar quality.
There's the health benefits and the climate stuff and saving money and so on. But that's not what I'm happy about about when I bike around; it's about fresh air and postural freedom.
I'm glad I live somewhere where I don't need a car to do everyday things. It's not as bike-friendly as somewhere like Denmark but it's tolerable.
I don't know how many rich countries that describes, but I lived happily for years in Boston in the USA without a car. I have one now but only because I have an off-street parking space for it. Otherwise I'd go back to renting one on the ~monthly occasions I want to use one. The main benefit of Zipcar to me versus owning is that the car had a parking space that it went back into.
Now if only the mass transit system in the area wasn't falling apart and the rail connections to other cities were even half as good as the ones in the Netherlands.
Remember, this mess is trying to directly compete with just looking at a satnav and driving where it says with no extra charge, lost time, or mental effort.
Note that a large part of the above is I think transit agencies should try to get as many people as possible on unlimited ride family passes. Anyone with such a pass must find transit useful enough to use often anyway, and the pass means they don't worry about making one additional trip they just go.
But you should always strive to have everyone on an unlimited rides pass for their home zone. Anything else encourages getting a car for trips that could go either way and that in turn justifies a car for everything.
Additionally, all public transportation companies provide standardized service information including live updates (often required by the law). Any journey can be fully planned on 9292.nl.
I do hope there is an eventual push for an EU-wide NFC system for public transport, that would be pretty dope.
For my family it's not even about the physical aspect, but about time. I don't want to waste my free time going to and from places in 2x/3x the time it takes by car.
Fully expecting that comment, and I look forward to that person describing how they take an elderly parent to the doctor on a bike…
There are also options that cover the middle ground: Mixed mode (cab, train, cab) or car sharing. Certainly not available for all of us, but just as certainly available to many of us.
The primary issue is that the math only works out if you don’t buy/own a car, otherwise you‘ll have the majority of the costs of car ownership anyways. On a pure mile by mile replacement, the math doesn‘t work out.
There're a lot of other variables. Family/life situation, hobbies, health situation, visual (fuck video ads on public transit) and audio noise tolerance...
Obviously, the math I did for me works out for me. It likely will look different for you. However, I never pretended that the math works out for everyone - it doesn't. But it would work out for a lot of people if they were honest.
„If they were honest“ is a bad argument to be honest. If everybody would change their preferences, they may have similar math to yours :)
Of course, someone may run 20" wheels and then prices skyrocket. But then it’a no longer pure transit costs and more like an expensive hobby.
Needless to say I waited a bit for him to clear the neighborhood before driving off.
Had one back into me at a traffic light, with me honking, and then put it into drive and take off when the light changed. Had to have the cops drag him out of a medical building to get a report and his story went from “no accident” (at the scene) to me rear ending him (on the witness stand contesting his ticket), luckily I was hauling around a passenger who confirmed my side of the story.
Still don’t have a clue why he thought it was a good idea to put it into reverse and barely creep backward at a red light with cars all around him.
Additionally, bike infrastructure works great for mobility scooters too: https://youtu.be/xSGx3HSjKDo
[1] https://christianiabikesamerica.com/collections/all-models
We can all conjure circumstances when it is difficult or inconvenient to use public transit, but deep down we all know most people most of the time are driving their cars alone with minimal cargo and the reason they are driving is because our towns are designed to make it as convenient as possible.
I've used my bike trailer for groceries. You have to be careful that you don't buy more than fits, but it works.
Well, I live in The Netherlands and the place where I work is not very reachable by public transport. The 138 trains per day between Amsterdam and The Hague is all very nice and so on but even in the Netherlands people who live in a village will in many cases be somewhat isolated if they don't own a car.
Do you have idea how many Americans commute 37 miles each way, every single day?
But you're absolutely right that it's better to work in the same city where you live, so you can simply ride a bike to work.
But it does breakdown or be worse with slightly more complicated routes. Like I used to travel from smaller city to bigger city to other big city. And in the end public transport was probably 50% if not longer in time. First 15-20 minutes to station, then 45 minutes with local train. Wait for intercity, ~2 hours and 30 minutes or get lift to destination. Compared to straight 2 hours from door to door with car.
And this is with perfectly serviceable train network with plenty enough trains. Or at max capacity.
But this is not the majority of travel, and in those cases car travel is indeed overkill, and a hassle to boot, as anyone who has ever had to daily wrangle with parking lots and rush hour traffic can attest.
There are different concerns with public transport, but the advantages tend to outweigh the disadvantages, and it appears this is borne out by the data.
Driving has several advantages, but getting stuck in traffic is extremely unpleasant in ways that similar delays on other forms of travel don’t really replicate.
But you also don't have to take a 3 hour coach ride because the driver or other staff's union is striking. It's just you and your car.
Fuel taxes don’t even come close to paying for our road networks while rail is lumping all these costs together on a per trip basis.
If you want an emergency services vehicles to get to your house you need a road anyway.
If you want buses and coaches to function, you need roads.
If you want to transport a bootload of stuff more than three times a year you're financially better off paying for a car than renting.
If yor kids have school anywhere that isn't walking/cycling distance from your house, then you need a car, or two.
If you have a job, and don't want to be beholden to a very local employer, you likely need a car. Except if you live close to a train station and your job is close to another one. And except in the last five years, when some jobs can now be remote.
If you want to go anywhere that a train doesn't go, you need a car, probably. Which is everywhere outside of extremely high density urban areas that can afford an underground rail system.
You need any of those things to be true for a road to be needed. You likely need a car for all but the first two. Cars and roads are valuable. I don't see how that's debatable.
Trains are now location-specific optimisations where we know we have hotspots of usefulness, where it's worth laying track and having massive investment as enough people will use that route.
Just as a circuit-switched phone call is a better connection, but packet-switched is better overall, and cheaper, so are trains and cars.
You also have several objectively false statements here such as:
“If yor kids have school anywhere that isn't walking/cycling distance from your house, then you need a car, or two.” Except 100’s of millions of people currently live further than “cycling distance” from their kids school and don’t own a car.
Frankly cars didn’t exist until very recently and society was fine without them.
Now that’s not universal, but I really do budget 3-4 hours extra for some trips because holiday traffic is just that bad in my area.
But I have a problem. I'm an introvert and I get fatigued by constant human interaction. I also get fatigued by constant distractions. I really benefit from having some breathing space where I can zone out.
Saying it out load makes it sound reckless and inconsistent, doesn't driving require constant attention? But no, somehow I can zone out drive and drive to my destination completely subconsciously, at least if it's a route I know we'll, like on a commute.
I'm 39 now and I have never caused an accident for what that anecdotle evidence means.
My commutes are my decompress time. I can't do anything during them, and if I could, I wouldn't benefit the same way.
I was having a hard time NOT getting sweaty on my ride into work because humidity is the highest in the morning. And when I wasnt sweating I was getting rained on, or my hands were freezing, or I got chain grease on my pants.
Electric bikes are great, but other than price, it starts to blur between having an electric motorcycle. Especially after you need to don appropriate gear for the commute to stay dry / comfortable. And the motorcycle would have greater range and more use cases.
And at the end of the day, while riding a bike to work is great and I would encourage everyone to try it if they can, do you really think it works without a backup plan? Even people I know who have taking bike commuting pretty seriously didn't do it literally every single day.
I don't consider train travel to be lost time in the way car travel is.
If you're going from the Hague central station to Amsterdam central station, sure. Now plan a more typical commute from say the Hague Wateringen to the over Amstel industrial estate (It takes two times as as driving) Play around with real life scenarios. Say you're going from Amsterdam Osdorp to your work in Utrecht Lageweide. It takes twice with transit as if you were to drive even with traffic. Most Dutch people drive, especially those that can afford to.
That really depends on the amount of traffic jam you end up in.
It's true that not every route has a direct train connection, and there are definitely trips where cars are faster, but during rush hour around big cities, cars become a lot less reliable. On top of that, cars are only fast if you have access to parking on each end of the trip. Otherwise you still need to park somewhere else and take local transit for the final leg (which is definitely the preferred way to visit Amsterdam by car).
And on the ammount of leaves/snow/rain/wind/heat/strikes impeding rail traffic. Terrible traffic jams happen but let's not pretend the NS doesn't have a long list of excuses to run less or no trains or massively delayed trains. I can't count the number of times NS announced that they would stop running trains because of some weather where i had no issue driving home. On average driving is going to be twice as fast for most typical commutes.
But the kicker, I suppose, is that in my version you drive 35+ minutes and then need to work out, while the train version means I don't need to go to the gym. When I lived in LA I rode my bike and it meant being in great shape without ever having to work out, and I miss it, but of course it depends on the situation.
You have to make owning a car impossible. Take away parking spaces, block roads into the city, increase taxation.
A train is great for Rotterdam-Hague-Amsterdam, not so good for visiting the Bosch museum in 's-Hertogenbosch.
Holland has a great road system and parking everywhere. The perfect place for a car owner.
Part of the reason the Netherlands is the perfect place for a car owner is that so many people are able to go by bike instead, freeing up space on the roads.
Huh? There's a bike rental place on practically every other corner in most Dutch cities, and most of their profit is from tourists. You only need to show some ID and leave a deposit. Dutch people usually have a cheap old bike, or use the public OV bikes, for which you do need to register and get a card, but even that is possible as a foreigner, it just takes some days to process.
> visiting the lovely villages and other places Holland is full of is a time consuming exercise in futility unless one has a car.
I'm not sure where you're getting this from either. Intercity transport by train works great, and there are many organized bus tours that take you to smaller villages. You can easily see most of the country without owning a car, though it's a personal preference whether you enjoy using public transport or not.
I know you can get anywhere by public transport, much better than where I live. But going though tram-train-train (+even bus or a 3rd train) to visit some village that is less than an hour away by car, will multiply the transport time.
But just about every Dutch person we worked with had a car. They would meet us on weekends in villages, and most drove. Public transport is great in Holland, but cars have their place too. And unlike some countries close by, Holland has a well maintain and well designed road system. Its great for car travel.
Why not? Where are you trying to rent? There's bike rentals specifically aimed at tourists, and most people speak English reasonably well.
> A train is great for Rotterdam-Hague-Amsterdam, not so good for visiting the Bosch museum in 's-Hertogenbosch.
I just checked, and from Amsterdam, the train to that museum is actually slightly faster than a car. Though you do have a 15 minute walk at the end. Perhaps Den Bosch should run a bus line there.
That said, I would love to know why 's-Hertogenbosch is spelled that way. I asked a few locals, and none knew.
The first simply means "the forest", in slightly archaic spelling. The second is short for "des hertogenbosch", which is archaic for "the duke's forest". "Des" is archaic genitive that's barely used any more in Dutch except in a few phrases and place names.
's ochtends => des ochtends => of the morning
's avonds => des avonds => of the evening
's Hertogenbosch => the duke's forest
's Gravenhave => des graven hage => the count's hedge (also known as Den Haag / The Hague)
Disagree about parking, at least what I've seen in Amsterdam city area. You have to use an app and pay for parking. There are patrol cars that will dish out fines if you are caught. There are blue zones in suburbs which are free but it's mainly for visitors/residents.
First, let's establish that the Netherlands is a car country. We have 11 million cars on a population of 17 million. On a typical day, 1 million people use public transport. Cars are the norm, not trains or bicycles.
Public transport is rarely faster, not even in the most idyllic example that you give where you go from big city to big city. The thing you conveniently forget to consider is that nobody lives near the station of city A and then also works very closely to the station of city B. It almost always includes additional travel towards A and from B. Cycling, trams, buses, multiple stops in both directions. It adds up.
To illustrate how absurdly slow public transport can be, a personal example. I used to live directly behind a train station in a mid-sized city. Doesn't get much better than that, right?
Let's explore the commute to work, some 60km away...
I have to get up early and be there some 10 mins before departure to secure somewhat of a reasonable spot. Next, I'm on route to the first big city station. This route is slow, it stops 5 times along the way as everybody needs to connect to a big hub to get where they need to be.
I arrive at the hub, where there's a 20 minute connection wait to take the train to the big city destination. This route is longer but fast, no stops along the way.
I get out and have a 10 minute connection wait for the bus to take me to the place closest to work, after which there's a 5-10 minute work.
Total commute time: 2.5 hours single way. To move 60km. And that's living behind a train station and working at one of the countries' largest employers.
What works really well in the Netherlands is living within a cycling radius from work, every other option sucks.
They even pay the $100,000 fee for a 10 year permit to have a car, on top of 100% import tax. That's close to $175,000 just to own some tiny 3-cylinder car for 10 years.
Public transport took an hour to get to the office. A taxi was 20 minutes. I'd agree public transport isn't great by a long way. Riding a bike if I lived there permanently might have been better, even with the 32 degree heat.
Also, "live away from the city center and have kids" ignores that still 89% of people in singapore don't own cars, and no, 89% of people in sg do not "live near the city center" or "don't have kids."
And to say Singapore was built for cars is kinda funny. It has one of the best public transit systems in the world.
I wonder what car ownership would look like if there was no fee and taxes were much lower?
It's incredibly expensive to owns cars and people still pay.
That tells you how valuable they find owning a car.
I'm not one to discount the cost of a long commute, and I'm hopeful that more remote and flexible work options will make it so people have less time commuting. But people like to own cars because in most cases they can be incredibly useful, and ignoring that fact won't help people transition off them.
You're missing the forest for the trees. If you live in a mid-sized city in the Netherlands and want to limit yourself to a 1 hour commute by public transit, there are just as many, if not more opportunities than if you live in a mid sized city in the US like Richmond because the Netherlands is that much denser, and transit optimizes for commercial centers. The difference that in the Netherlands, you still have the option of commuting by car, whereas, in the US you'd have to move.
Conflicting ideas such as these crop up all the time. For instance, "commuting in a car is dead time, at least I can read/work on the train". A reasonable position at face value, but entirely useless to the person who finishes work at 17:00 and must pick the kids up from school at 17:30. The 30 mins car ride may be "dead time", but the 60 mins by public transport obviously doesn't work for them.
I would guess that the "rejecting car ownership" types probably have this as a subset of a broader philosophy where they've somewhat rejected wealth in favour of something else, or already have the economic freedom to make such a choice.
Public transport is one alternative but I think small personal transport devices are more promising.
That doesn't mean it's not viable to live in the middle, but I think these are some pretty good arguments why it's often preferable to live close to at least one partner's workplace. Obviously it's not going to work for everybody, but if you're thinking about where to buy your house, this may be worth taking into consideration.
> Whenever I've heard people make that argument, what they actually mean is "The huge house I want to live in I can afford if I spend an hour a day in the car...."
Or it's because it would require 3x-6x their income to afford to live anyplace closer. A major factor of employee shortages is exactly that. There are no homes within 50 mi (often much further) of that job that can be afforded with those wages.
We live 45mi out from a (until recently, inexpensive) US metro area and we require 4 incomes to cover basic expenses.
If Americans were okay with living in Tokyo sized abodes, then there would be sufficient density for sufficient housing and job opportunities to exist in a region that could support sufficient public transit.
Americans would be okay living in “Tokyo sized abodes” if they knew what that actually meant and didn’t assume all of Tokyo looks like Shibuya. One thing I’ll grant is that garages are rare, because they count as finished space for property tax purposes.
Tokyo is actually a great example of what a city without car-centric planning and free parking everywhere can be like and a perfect example of a “15 minute city”. It’s not only about transit, but what transit and walkability encourages. I lived there for 6 years in a very residential neighborhood, but I was still within 10 minutes walking of virtually any daily necessity, 5 or so grocery stores, dozens if not hundreds of restaurants, 3 public baths, one of which was a legit onsen, a few furniture stores, and even 2 aquarium shops. I’m trying to think of a counter example and I can only think of one thing that wasn’t a ten minute walk away: a movie theatre, although there were multiple within a 15 minute train ride.
Given the choice between a some of the shitty living situations I dealt with while living in the US, and an affordable, compact efficient apartment. I'll take the latter
I have friends who bought an apartment in a small town next to the city where the jobs are because they didn't have the credit score for anything closer to work.
This is the reality (and realty) people in the market for living space are currently facing.
Because even if I could, work is unstable, I can't keep moving.
Because I have a girlfriend, any move closer to work is further away for her.
Because my family and friends are here, and I need to take care of my parents.
- I don't have any meaningful control over where I'm allowed to work
- I don't have any meaningful control over where my spouse is allowed to work
- I only have a tiny amount of control over where I'm allowed to live (most of it prices us out, despite being above-average income)
- even if I do exercise some control, it can be changed or stripped from me by others at any time. (You may get laid off and have to find a new office. Or your office may move away from you -- when you are hired, the office might only have been 12 miles away, but later they moved the office so it's now 25 miles away)
- You may not always be allowed to move in response to those changes (you might not be able to afford to move your whole house every two years, when job situations for you/your spouse change. And if you have kids, doing this super disrupts any chance they may have at a social life via school)
- You may not even be allowed to change home or school locations. (Divorced people exist, shared-custody children exist and are in some places, the most common form of parenting in 2023, you might not be allowed to relocate your kids schools ever)
A lot of anti-transportation "15 minute city" idealists like to handwave away how incredibly complicated it is, to magically get your entire life to line up such that you don't ever have to travel medium-sized distances. That is an extreme luxury that most people will never have.
Otherwise you are spot on. If your company moves offices within the same city's MSA they assume you can get there. If they move office to a different city they will pay to move you.
Even that assumes you don't have relatively specific hobbies. Which I guess is true for many people, but it's highly unlikely that (for example) my preferred martial arts instructor and my preferred dance instructor are going to be within 15 minutes of where I live.
And of course, your girlfriend/boyfriend, if you don't live together.
Your rudeness aside, what I'm getting at is that I'll likely have to leave once or twice a day even not accounting for work. I live in a European city and get everywhere by car BTW.
And that's exactly why remote work should be the norm (for the professions where it is at all possible)
I think public transport is pretty good if you live in the Den Haag-Rotterdam-Amsterdam area. Which in America would be considered a single metro area. Something like 5 million people.
This is the third largest US city and one with comparably few major thoroughfares (compared to many other large US cities). It seems that it’s just really hard for public transit to beat cars at any distance.
Moreover, lots of people are constrained on where they can work and live. I think a lot of the anti-car rhetoric in America seems to assume everyone is a healthy, childless, young urban professional who aspires to live in the densest habitat he can find, and this is a very unrealistic portrait of Americans.
To be clear though, I would like to see more walkable places, and while "people over cars" is hopelessly vague and verging on ideology, I probably agree with some of what people envision when they make this statement. I think it would be great if our urban and semiurban environments had more, smaller shops and more safe infrastructure for bikes and cars. More separation of fast moving car traffic from side streets. Etc. But we have a loooong way to go before bikes or public transit are more practical than cars, and as others have pointed out even the most bike-friendly countries in the world still have high (and growing) rates of car ownership.
Cars are undeniably handy for all but some people in the densest environments, but we still need to take care not to overfit to cars.
São Paulo has more car than population, and has so many cars that their area summed is bigger than the area of all streets in the city.
It is so many cars that sometimes walking 1 hour to your workplace is faster than a car route where you can spend 2, 3 hours to go to a neighborhood next to yours during rush hour.
So many cars that the city became also the city with most helicopters, because as ludicrously expensive they are, for people that need to reach their workplace really fast (CEO, firemen, medics...) helicopters are good idea.
Situation got so bad that the government wants to heavily restrict the use of helicopters because private helicopters were causing literally airborne traffic jams along the normal traffic jam, blocking public services like police from moving to emergency sites.
EDIT: indeed I was talking about adults, forgot to make it clear. Still the percentage of cars to people in Brazil tends to be high. It is one of the reasons car companies love Brazil. There are historical reasons for that. Mostly politics related.
There are 286 million registered vehicles for a population of 331 million people.
And the US is the wealthiest nation in the world.
So if every single licensed driver went for a drive, they could invite all 26 million licensed Canadians to come down and use a spare car, and still have 22 million registered cars left over.
Edit: Did some quick checking. According to the national institute of statistics, São Paulo's fleet is about 8.8 million (this includes over 1 million motorcycles, plus all the busses, tractors, trucks, etc. Regular cars are 6 million). Population is 12.3 million.
No, you are confusing the Netherlands an a whole with cities like Amsterdam.
People refer to the latter as an example of walkable cities.
Anyone visiting a Dutch city can see what a distortion this comment is. The sheer volume of bike traffic on largely safe infrastructure is phenomenal. Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock. Life may be good for Dutch drivers, but only because so many others leave their cars at home.
> Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock.
There are 10 million employed Dutch (Statista) of whom 65% drive (Statista), so an additional half a million would be a 10% traffic increase, which is probably not “gridlock”, but in any case I don’t see how this refutes the original claim that Netherlands is a car country.
It is like that for so many reform proposals. Heterodox economists (MMT or gold standard or anything really) will say "we ought to consider this evidence in making our economic decisions", and their acolytes on forums like this will say "If we adopt this reform, we will be able to solve all our problems, but it's just corruption and self-interested politicians who stop us". Voting system reform people say "The US is screwed by FPTP, if we adopted proportional representation we will depolarise and have a nice consensual politics", but people who study the politics of countries that use proportional representation don't really indicate that (I think in this case there are some political scientists who get close, but only by circularly defining perfection in politics as exhibiting the consequences of proportional representation).
Oh, I love "logic" like that. Another common example is: "the free market is the best economic system because the perfect allocation of goods in society is how the market does it."
People don't just commute to work. Millions of Dutch students commute to school and I expect a large majority of those will bike.
There are various other posts in this thread that also give statistics, and the number of car vs bike journeys is not so far apart.
In a country that famously has more bikes then people, the idea that if half the bike journeys converted to cars there would only be a ten percent increase in traffic is quite clearly ridiculous. Especially within cities bikes carry volumes of people that would overwhelm roads if those people used space-inefficient cars.
This isn't a reasonable interpretation. "the norm" only implies that it's the majority mode of transportation (in contrast with the anti-car rhetoric). This implies that other modes are not the majority, but it does not imply that those other modes are particularly rare.
> In a country that famously has more bikes then people, the idea that if half the bike journeys converted to cars there would only be a ten percent increase in traffic is quite clearly ridiculous.
I mean, I showed my math--feel free to point out where I erred, but just stating "it's quite clearly ridiculous" is like putting your fingers in your ears and shouting, "I can't hear you".
Having visited Amsterdam by chance after missing a flight to London due to NYC gridlock traffic, this was one of my first thoughts on arrival.
Your (roughly 130 km) journey would have been less fast had those people making their shorter distance journeys by bike got into their cars instead.
Your parent comment is saying the same thing. Stay inside the city, close enough to your office that you can reach it by a bicycle. Of course in that case you could say the rent you would be pay would be equally higher. Plus not every one can afford to do that(given school availability, and your spouse office has to be close by too).
On a net basis, its again the same thing. You just pay for your time with higher rents.
Not Just Bikes: "Rotterdam: the City Rebuilt for Cars": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ovt1EMULY
I was actually considering making the same point, but sarcastically: "B b but, when I was a tourist visiting the walkable tourist areas Amsterdam where tourists go, I didn't passively observe any locals needing a car!"
It's a mistake to think tourist/visitor experiences give you a good idea what it's like to live anywhere.
The mistake is people used to car dependence being unable to imagine any alternative, thus refusing to believe that it can be true.
Which is a valid default assumption, unless it's made clear the speaker didn't do that.
Especially in this case, where you have an actual Dutch person who lives in the actual Netherlands getting told they were wrong by someone who cites visitor experiences.
And if I can afford such life without a car, I'm all for it. But I don't know how.
Yeah, but we have 23 million bikes.
It's true that our public transport has been neglected. The privatisation of the 1990s was a bad idea in my opinion, and public transport should be run for the public good, not for profit. Like roads, it's part of the nation's infrastructure. And better public transport means less people on the road, which means less traffic jams, which will also mean better travel times for people who really do need cars.
The number of bike trips and car trips aren't that far apart (25% and 32%). Public transport still lags way behind at 3%.
What I and many other advocates in the US want is for anything besides cars to be even considered in public infrastructure and urban design. Living without access to a car is near impossible in lots of US cities.
The default is to design around the car, if bikes or pedestrians are mentioned it's tacked on as an afterthought.
An example I had just last night was my US city presented their first phase of the "bike master plan". Essentially the engineers told us they didn't want to maintain protected bike infrastructure or interfere with traffic. About half of the "improvements" they listed out were "sharrows", bike symbols painted in the travel lane. The other half were striped bike lanes with no protection from vehicles.
And this is in a city that's inherited some bike/ped/transit friendliness by the nature of it being built pre-war.
Good luck in the exurban sprawl, South and Sunbelt - you'll be lucky to even have a sidewalk, nevermind a bike lane on the 8 lane road. The car is default in the US.
For some trips, cycling or public transport really is faster than driving, but for others obviously not. The most important thing is that all three are viable options. Forcing everybody into only one of those three will hurt everybody.
Japan seems to have the least driving per capita of any wealthy nation (at least from the data I see), so maybe people should be using that as an example more, but I think a lot of people in the US really appreciate the physical protection that people on bikes often get in the NL (even if it isn't everywhere). It sends a different message about priorities.
In the US, even if you don't want to drive, that is often your only choice for most trips, whereas in the NL you can drive if you want, but it is easier to find an alternative. That is a 'car-oriented' mindset versus 'multi-modal transit' mindset. However, I am sure that the NL could still make many changes to reduce car ownership if it really wanted to.
https://internationalcomparisons.org/environmental/transport...
We're talking specifically about self-designated "anti-car" people. I doubt there are any surveys, so we're all just conjecturing, but the rhetoric I see definitely holds NL and Europe generally up as a car-less utopia. For example, the first post on r/anticar is titled "cities built for people rather than cars are so beautiful" and it shows an idyllic picture of a German street. https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticar/comments/mp6t4p/cities_buil...
> The amount of miles driven per capita in the US is twice as much as that of the NL. The percent of trips on bike is 25% in the NL vs 2% in the US. About half of all trips made in the NL are on bike, transit or walking. The other half of trips are made with cars.
I don't see how this is relevant? I don't think anyone in this thread disputes that cycling is more prevalent in NL versus US, and none of this refutes the toplevel claim that NL is a car country nor supports the anti-car rhetoric which suggests that NL is a car-free utopia. Like many "non-anti-car" Americans, I would like to see American transit become more multi-modal, but that's not what we're debating at present.
> However, I am sure that the NL could still make many changes to reduce car ownership if it really wanted to.
Sure (the obvious/extreme example is banning cars by legislation), but this seems circular, because we're implicitly interested in why doesn't the NL public want fewer cars (on the contrary, car ownership was increasing as of 2016)? Like in the US we can plausibly argue that Americans haven't experienced the Dutch cycling/pubtransit system and thus doesn't know what they're missing out on, but that's a much harder argument to make about the Dutch. :)
> Yeah, but we have 23 million bikes.
> (...)
> The number of bike trips and car trips aren't that far apart (25% and 32%).
Wow, that's a good point. But, is the number of bike trips compared to car trips growing, shrinking, or staying the same?
It's a bit of a long commute by US norms (I think average is 20mi, 32km) but not too crazy compared to what some people do.
I also found this plot interesting relating vehicles and GDP [1], though the data seems outdated compared to the first link.
I'd also guess, though I can't find the data, that the US is one the highest cars per capita rates in its cities. Outside of NYC and Chicago, there is a real lack of public transport infrastructure in most US cities.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_... [1]
Let's compare your commute to work to a commute in the US:
>I have to get up early and be there some 10 mins before departure to secure somewhat of a reasonable spot. In the US, you have to be there at least 30 minutes early, because the parking lot will be absolutely packed, and the busses don't run on time, so it might get there too soon.
>Next, I'm on route to the first big city station. We don't even have this in the US. You would have had to already be in the city to get on the bus.
>This route is slow, it stops 5 times along the way as everybody needs to connect to a big hub to get where they need to be. In the US, this route stops the same five times, but also gets stuck in rush hour traffic, because we rarely have dedicated transit lanes.
I arrive at the hub, where there's a 20 minute connection wait to take the train to the big city destination. The connection in the US would be at least 30 minutes, if you're lucky it will be scheduled at 20 during rush hour, but the bus is probably late. Also, again, it's not going into the city, you were already there, you just need to get on a different route.
>I get out and have a 10 minute connection wait for the bus to take me to the place closest to work, after which there's a 5-10 minute work.
If you have to make another connection outside the hub, you're probably waiting at least 45 minutes, in addition to the bus being late. The closest bus stop to where you work is another 30 minute walk away, along a 45 mph highway with no bike lanes and a sidewalk that just randomly ends occasionally.
>Total commute time: 2.5 hours single way. To move 60km. And that's living behind a train station and working at one of the countries' largest employers.
In the US, this was actually entire hypothetical. The route just doesn't actually exist.
Hope this helps you see why we place NL on a pedestal. We know it's not perfect, but it's so much better than what we have. Unless you live in an incredibly small portion of the country, it's just not an option.
Drag your butt over to Google maps and punch in a route from Lowell, Leominster, Worcester or Taunton Massachusetts (outlying cities in the Boston area people many commute in from) to any portion of the Boston area just inside I95 but not downtown and eyeball the times.
The route exists in the US and the times are in line with his estimates.
That said, it's only useful for commuting. There are far too few trains after evening rush hour to use it if attending an evening event.
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Transport/Ra...
Usage (totals):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag...
Well. There's your problem.
The idea of travelling 60km to work is a very modern phenomenon. Like a lot of people you've built your life around car travel. It's hard to get back from that.
This makes any trip much more difficult. Anyway I had to have the car for work. I hated that thing and the consultancy job.
Because some people don’t live in Amsterdam or The Hague.
Taking public transportation will take me over twice the time, and that’s when there’s no outage or delay.
“But traffic jams!” I hear you say. Well, the % time in traffic jams is drastically less for me than the % time lost due to missing a transfer, a delayed train or a canceled train.
Traffic jams are annoying but not very common or large, and will only rarely cause me to miss an appointment. Also, you just use cruise control and wait.
Experiencing a delay, cancelation or missing a transfer is almost guaranteed for any trip I make, and this usually means waiting another 30 mins for the next train or bus, and trying to figure out what I need to do to get to my destination (finding alternative trains)
All while being more expensive and less comfortable than just driving somewhere. If it were (drastically) cheaper, I could convince myself to take the time loss. But it is not, it is literally more expensive to take the train or bus than to drive if you already own a car.
I used to wholeheartedly agree with this. I lived in a very parking-constrained area. Zipcar had cars with dedicated spots on random corners throughout town, which was extremely convenient! At least prior to 2020...
Then the pandemic hit, and the number of package delivery trucks skyrocketed, along with doordash, uber eats, etc. And also just a general decrease in people's willingness to follow parking rules and signs. In the final year of my Zipcar membership before cancellation, literally 100% of my rentals involved dealing with a blocked parking spot when trying to return the car. I just don't think Zipcar's concept is viable anymore.
Because some people, like me, find driving to be blissful and elating, and I will never not take the opportunity to do it.
Although as many of the other commenters noted, one reason that driving in some places in the country is doable is that many others choose alternatives, themselves made attractive by high quality infrastructure.
I also wonder if it is truly cars or just driving that is out of favor? If so, will full self drive fix that if and when it ever arrives?
Also if you're planning to have a family, a car is essential. Herding children on packed public transport is a no-no. I can imagine it being easier to walk with children if you're living in high trust communities where all amenities are available within walking distance, but that might also be a wealth thing too.
Is your argument that those national statistics are being driven entirely by changes in rich cities?
That the changes in driving habits have been so large that it drags down the bottom 60%.
The article says that in 1997 43% of 16-year olds had a driver's licence but by 2020 it had fallee to 20%.
Since you're claiming that's entirely driven by the richest 40% let's do some simple math to quantify the implications of your claim.
If richest 40% of 16 year olds had 0 driver's licences... Not a single one in the entire country... Then the national rate would have fallen to 25% not 20%. So the richest 40% must actually have NEGATIVE driver's for the math to work out on your claim.
Or maybe it isn't just a phenomenon limited the rich places.
I'm generally handy and usually perform my own maintenance on my vehicles. As such, I tend to drive 10-20 year old Japanese vehicles. I remember once when I confidently told my partner that I'd swap their burnt out headlight bulb, no problem. Imagine my surprise when I found out that a 2010ish GM sedan recommended taking the front bumper off to access the headlight housing.
If every little thing that goes wrong requires a multi-hundred dollar maintenance bill at a minimum, it's no wonder people want a viable alternative.
In fact, it should probably be no surprise that Toyota and Honda typically fill out the entire top end of the "easy to maintain" spectrum, and American and European brands the other end.
You don't wanna have to work on 10lb of shit in a 5lb sack no matter who's badge is on the grill.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/11/3/our-self-impos...
I assumed it was because countries like India and China are following different trends - lower initial car ownership rates, more two-wheelers on the road, but a growing middle class.
Among teens, their basic needs are often already met by their family, teens are less likely to work than a generation ago, and a lot of their interaction is online anyway. Teen physical independence dropped for other reasons and the appeal of cars went with it.
For adults I think you're right about only high income people being able to live in neighborhoods with close amenities, but also reliance on delivery services, Uber/Lyft are also ways that high income lifestyle can make you dependent on cars while not owning one yourself.
/well dating me does cause me to question her decision making ability now that I think about it heh
Subreddits like r/solarpunk, r/fuckcars, r/notjustbikes, along with the push for 15 minute cities are a testament that young people dont want to be in the grip of petrol companies or owning a car as they are not sustainable, cause traffic, accidents, and on and on.
You can get away without one, that is if you don’t mind sharing transit with violent junkies in any North American city. Transit can be down right terrifying to use these days.
=> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
Anecdotally, in Boston the MBTA is one of the "falling apart" systems. I could still rely on it to commute to my college / job, and the worst that has happened was sometimes being late due to delays. There are certainly a lot of sketchy people, but I have never seen someone attacked or have anything stolen or been harassed myself - then again I am a man and I'm certain it's different for women.
But more importantly, when living in Boston I never had to use the train. Only when commuting. Because when I lived in Boston everything was at most a 3 mile walk. Even in the really bad weather I could layer up still get places without public transit.
Now I'm in a less urban area but it's the same: I don't have a car and rarely end up using transit / Lyft. I do get groceries and things delivered though, but my job and everything else is within walking distance.
I still agree it would be a lot better if public transit was more reliable, but I think many people in cities can be well-off without a car. Not anecdotally I know that most of the college students in Boston don't have a car (especially because there is basically no parking...)
As you point out, when you can find all of life's necessities within a reasonable walking distance, the need to own a car is significantly diminished. That's the goal that "anti-car" activists are pushing for.
... that the Internet is dominated by the small niche of loud people who think other people want to hear their opinion. That's it. Anybody who is not deep inside the Reddit (and HN, for that matter) bubble can quickly appreciate how dissimilar the viewpoints on Reddit are from the real world.
Now, I understand your cynicism, but you'd be naive to believe that small pockets of change are not happening. But then again, what does a European know about European cities?
Anyhow, I found this somewhere on HN, I am certain you will enjoy the irony.
> everyone is preening, bragging, trying to seem better than you, claiming to have the moral high ground, or the only correct answer.
No, most people are not on Reddit.
Around 30% of households in Berlin do not own a car.
The "I like bikes and I bike everywhere" group is a small minority. I know, I'm one of them. As soon as it's even slightly rainy mine is the only bike in front of the super market (though I'm sure it would be slightly different in Berlin, or at least in some parts of Berlin). But if you looked at surveys, you'd think that driving your car to the super market would be the exception. People on reddit talking about how much they hate cars aren't representative.
I walked everywhere, but I saw people riding their bikes in the rain, in the snow, and all kinds of weather in between.
Now, I am not expressing that everyone shouldn’t own a car nor that people outside cities shouldn’t.
I am expressing that __young__ people seem to not want to own a car, with young people being predominantly in cities. Wanting to own, and having to own are two different things as well.
My claim appears to be incongruous to what other commenters seem to have assumed I meant.
Even in this small town (~2,000 people) in which I live I have almost no reason for a car. Everything I need is in comfortable walking distance... Other than family and friends who live in other places that I like to visit from time to time.
When I was young there was enough economic hardship around that people had to disperse to make a living, leaving those social ties I established all over the place. With the strong economy we've been living for a number of years one has been comfortably able to stay put; living a great life anywhere they want. Now everyone in your life is able to remain close. If I could walk to their homes, that would certainly remove the last reason I keep a car. The younger people have that option.
I wonder if that's what has changed?
"You will own nothing"...
Is it because of this intense fear of getting a job that was starting to emerge when I was young and seems to have really taken off since?
Something odd, that I haven't seen many folks talk about, is that a lot of jobs are tacitly considered "beneath them" for Gen Z who grow up in middle class or higher affluence families. This is despite the fact that their parents don't think this, but the kids see a lifestyle on social media and an expectation that they have set for themselves that is not realistic and refuse to accept anything less. My own teenager is going through something similar, and it's a huge argument every time we talk about her getting a summer job. The type of work I did (stocking shelves and later running a till at a grocery store) when I was her age appalls her, even though it was by my standards pretty easy since at least I was inside in the air conditioning while working during the summer.
At the same time, hardly anyone in Gen Z would dare utter any statement that might be considered to be classist, because many Gen Zers believe in some chopped up Marxist fantasy, and consider classism one of the deadly sins, saying that those jobs are beneath them and they think they're better than the kids who take those jobs would get them cancelled. But that's exactly what they're thinking. They all want to be YouTubers or influencers, not the person who works the drive through at McDonald's.
My generation was never exposed to that, we were exposed to Tommy the lawyer who got his start working the stock room at the hardware store and now drives a Porsche. The type of "instant" fame and money that kids get exposed to now just wasn't even in the realm of possibility for my generation, except perhaps sports stars. Even though the number of people who "make it" vs those who try is vanishingly small, a lot of folks in Gen Z seem to think being an influencer or a similar role is the primary career path they want to try for, and unlike something like being a sports star, it's less limited by outside influences and requires less genetic talent. Anyone could, possibly, be an influencer, even though very few people actually will become one.
Now, taking that job is no longer seen as a stepping stone, it's seen as giving up and admitting to yourself and the world you won't be able to hack it online. It's truly remarkable if you observe high schoolers, girls especially, these days and how much of their life is spent online vs with those directly around them. Social media is not just entertainment, it's one of the most important things in their lives, and their presence there is seen as a determinant for their future. This is a very different social zeitgeist than my generation grew up with, and I'm a Millennial, grew up with Internet and computers, but prior to the dawn of social media.
This isn't an economic issue in that sense, then, it's a social issue, a rejection of the type of work that most people in the US started with when they were that age. A drive through worker at McDonald's makes nearly $37k/yr if they work full-time at the starting wage where I reside now. That's more than many professionals made when they started their careers when I was a teenager, and it's more than double what I made starting as a shelf-stocker /inflation-adjusted/. It's not that the job doesn't pay enough to attract people who are starting out, it's that those people see it as a serious social faux pas to be caught working that type of job, it's an admission and acceptance of failure, rather than an admirable place to begin.
That said I kinda get the social media obsession, that was college for me and I was all in on the facebook parasocial queues (not liking someone's post that they KNOW you saw was an offense, and other crazy shit). For me it was ultimately a function of not having anything better to do. High school is supermax prison in terms of options, college is like minimum security prison, it's not really until you hit the realization that your decisions have actual weight in your life and you aren't just going to be pushed along by external forces that you start to grow out of that. High school ends and eventually becomes irrelevant, but good luck explaining that to a teenager.
I'd argue the income question is also part of the problem, the "mail room to executive" pipeline, if it ever really existed, has been completely broken. As you say, it used to be that person working the McDonalds drive through might be something big some day. Nowadays that's 100% assured to not be the case, McDonalds drive through is a dead-end job you do to stay alive until you can trade up to a different career path.
Can you expand on how you see these two statements as different conceptually? At least for folks in my generation, I don't think anyone harbored delusions that they were going to make it big by working at McDonald's, but it was seen as a way to get basic work experience and the benefit of a wage while you worked towards something different. The "mail room to executive" pipeline was always a fantasy, as far as I'm concerned, just due to basic math, there's a lot more mail room clerks than executives, so it in all probability won't happen to you. On the flip side, working a summer job provides you a pathway to pay for entertainment and a modicum of freedom so you can explore the world and figure out what you actually want to do. At least that's how it was seen when I was a teenager.
Nowadays the options for standard middle-class success are a lot more constricted. There is much less "freedom" and "exploring" unless you're wealthy, working at McDonalds will just get you an ultimately meaningless amount of money and experience that no one values, while sucking up your time. Even when I was in high school there was no time for "exploration" outside of academics if you wanted a positive outcome. You were either on the AP/honors track and going to college to be a "success", or you had a job/took normal classes and either couldn't afford college or were just coasting into mediocrity. I imagine it's gotten even more stark since I graduated, given prevailing economic circumstances.
I'd say the desire to be an influencer/streamer is also partially the result of that. Sure statistically most influencers/streamers don't make much, but there's at least the potential of freedom/success that doesn't exist with a McDonalds job, directly or indirectly; and the barrier to entry is low. It would be like if everyone's parents bought them a guitar/drum set and there was a social hierarchy based on being a rock star.
If I can be so bold as to link it into larger trends, one thread I've noticed is that in previous generations' countercultures, whether it was the hippies in the 60s/70s or grungy Xers in the 90s, there was an underlying assumption that the American Dream was vanity. That you didn't need all of that stuff and could "drop out", calling someone a "sellout" was a serious insult. You could always find a way to "get by" even if you weren't living large. Because during those times where the income/cost of living disparity wasn't so large, you probably could. Don't worry about prosperity, go become an assistant manager at Staples and spend your time on what really matters! Nowadays economics don't support that, so we have "hustle culture", where you're expected to "grind", and that's the superficially "cool" thing to do. Even if you're just hocking bullshit, make that money! Given the limited options available to high school students, it follows that being an influence/streamer, something they can literally do on their phone, is the only universally attractive objective.
That's the source of fear I mentioned earlier, being sold this idea that the only way to get a job is to go to college and if you don't 100% focus on college you won't make it. But there is nothing in the data to suggest that idea actually panned out. All signs point to young adults having a much harder time moving up because they didn't work in their youth to gain the experience necessary to navigate the waters of the economy.
So, if they are seriously trying to become an influencer, accepting any time commitment that doesn't further that objective and removes them from that social sphere effectively ends any chances of it happening. Additionally to the above, my teenager has admitted to me that she knows that influencers are time-limited with their success, it's something that really only happens when you're young, cool, and pretty, and shortly after you have a fall-off. They'd rather make the attempt while they're young and have a lot of anxiety around not doing it, and falling into mediocrity.
I am not interested in owning a "house", too expensive, there is little to no reason to strap myself with long term responsibilities.
I am also not interested in drinking, given all evidence on how bad alcohol is, I am not keen on destroying the only tool I have that allows me to live as well as I do. Unless of course you mean drinking for social reasons, which is another thing entirely but I don't do that either.
equity, retirement
It's a store of value, not an investment. The goal isn't to get rich. It's to not have to pay rent in retirement (yes, I know property taxes).
Having been a renter for the last 10 years, I'm sick of landlords dragging their heels on repairs (in one case I had to take a landlord to small claims court) and my monthly rent spiking 6-10% or else going up by a mere 2-3%, forcing me to lock-in longer term leases to save money.
Especially now that the wife and I are in the family formation part of our lives, buying a house in the suburbs is looking more and more attractive. More space, room to do stuff at home, a fixed-rate payment to plan around etc. But I'm assuming that doesn't apply to you at your current stage of life.
From a financial perspective, renting is great for staying relatively mobile, but if you're planning to stay in one place for more than a few years, buying is probably the way to go. Nerdwallet has a good calculator comparing the two with a couple of dozen factors taken into account: https://www.nerdwallet.com/mortgages/rent-vs-buy-calculator
I agree with you that at the end of the day housing is an expense, I'd much rather fund my retirement with stocks. Although once the kids have moved out downsizing might be able to net a few hundred grand more, but that's a decision for 30 years from now.
I get that a car is the only realistic option in the 'great outdoors', but anywhere even slightly dense, they're a pain to buy, to maintain, to drive, to park. If you want the fun of driving, go to a track. If you want to get around, there are often better options. Car ownership seem like an outdated aspiration, IMHO.
Cars are really just trash technology that has made city life worse.
Older generation have an emotional attachment to cars, and project a lot of virtuous attributes onto it (freedom, independence, wealth, ...). Younger generations just do that less. They accurately see what cars are.
The young have that luxury. They're not at that age yet where they need to capitulate to the cult of the car. Once you have children, the thousands of vectors pushing a family in all directions, car life in some burb is the only one that's financially affordable.
It's the other way around. Youth reject cars because cars are objectively shit. As people get older, options dwindle, aspirations get adjusted, and people submit.
I plan to retire (finances willing) in a walkable city, for just that reason.
Same argument at the other end of age spectrum. American children have no independence, only because cities are dangerous because of cars.
Having to own a car and drive it everywhere every day can be pretty miserable. Being able to afford owning a car and not having to drive it all the time is wonderful. Freedom of having an option to just go anywhere at any time is not something I ever thought I would appreciate so much before I had to get a car for security reasons. But it absolutely is a luxury as even mediocre public or commercial services will get you 90% of own car utility. And good public or commercial services can eliminate whole categories of car use cases.
This is largely just nonsense for a lot of modern cars. I’m at 80k in 4 years and have only done oil changes and tyres.
My mother only had her first “big” repair on her car at 140k after 10 years.
Cars are more reliable than they’ve ever been.
Tires last at least 3 years..
Unless you're driving an obscene amount or doing burnouts everywhere a set of tyres should last 3-4 years. A set for a small sedan really isn't that expensive.
> more reliable
So what? They are still a cost that is forced upon us. I don’t want a car. Yet I have to have one whether I like it or not.
Gas does cost a decent amount, but it's also something you can control. Combine trips, drive less, and drive more tamely.
In my opinion the freedom and convenience of a car is worth the cost of fuel.
The unfortunate reality is if you wait for American cities to become less car dependant you’ll be waiting a very long time. If this is important enough to you in a city there are places you’d be happy.
It’s worth remembering that name calling and personal attacks are not allowed on HN.
There are very few cities where you can get around without a car. Even fewer of those are affordable.
This is more problematic as people age. Should elderly drivers retake driving tests? Many argue yes, but no one provides a solution as to what to do when you take their license away. In most cities you'd be screwed.
A full set of tires generally costs more than the average american has in their emergency fund
> Cars are more reliable than they’ve ever been
Larger and more expensive too, gas prices are also higher than they have been historically.
The statistics on emergency funds are sketchy at best, at least here in Canada. I recommend you look at who is funding them and their methodology.
It's pretty cheap and is competitive with a bus pass depending on where you're going. It covers gas, insurance, maintenance, and you have access to all local parking permits. You can get essentially 'unlimited rides' for less than 100$/month.
I had a car off and on over the last couple of years, and I would barely use it, mostly just to change parking spots. I also sank a couple ~4k into repairs only to finally scrap it (I'm a bit of an idiot).
Communauto is a great inbetween, where I can do groceries, can go on extended trips. It's a great option for the occasional (<3/week) or frequent in-city motorist.
But we need to understand. There are cases where the car is a must. Unavoidable. Imagine having toddlers, having to do heavy groceries, and living in a place with difficult landscape or challenging weather. Imagine having a neurological disease or some other disability.
There's different ways of living a life, and the current trend shouldn't be seen as car demonization. I see it more as a new generation seeing the current US car-centric society and pushing for a better (for the life they want to live) alternative.
>Good public transit is unfortunately the exception in many places and not the rule.
Then let's make it better! :-)
>” Then let's make it better! :-)”
Why respond with such condescension? And, why follow it up with such a hollow and glib call to action?
This is a fixable problem. The biggest issue is...
> Cars are still needed in many use cases.
... the people who say this and, as a result, block any attempt to improve public transit whatsoever. Even worse, some are apt to frame it a "war on cars" because they're spending money on transportation that's not going to cars.
Those trips might be east to the small city. Or west to the mid-sized down. There's a bus in those directions, about once every 2 hours, last one at 6pm so useless for evening activities, or commuting further on the train. It's just gone past my front door now, it's rare to see more than 2 or 3 passengers on board other than at college time.
My options for going further - to London or Manchester 1) bus to the station, train to london, tube across london, then return on tube, train, and get a taxi back from the station 2) drive to the station in the morning, park, drive back in the evening (last train arrives about midnight) 3) drive the entire journey, under 3 hours so about the same amount of time
Same if I go to Manchester and Birmingham, but the drive is about half the time of public transport.
They might be south towards the big village. Or north to another big town. There's no bus services there.
Now you might say "just put on more public transport". My wife drives to work at a hospital 25 miles away. I suspect you could meet the entire daily demand from my village in that direction with a single minibus. The route doesn't pass any other major settlements, it's south-west down the lanes. How frequently would a bus need to run to be useful? Every hour? How early would it start? How late would it run? How many people would it take on each journey, and how much would it cost to run? How much pollution would it cause? What benefits would there be?
Public transport doesn't work below a certain density. If you want to depopulate the country and put everyone in tower blocks in the city - leaving the country for the rich - then just be honest about it.
I don't want to do this. But the fact that you immediately go to the suggestion that I do is emblematic of the "war-on-cars" mentality. Just so much as mention wanting to improve public transit and you get a screed that concludes that I'm an evil person with ulterior motives.
No, public transit doesn't work everywhere. I'm not going to even try to pretend that it does. And consequently, I'm not going to attempt to propose it in places where it doesn't work. So why do the "war-on-car" people so vehemently oppose public transit when its proposed in the places where it very obviously works?
If you had business in a different city that's a few hours distance, and you miss the last bus of the day, you'll need to wait at least 6-8 hours to be able to get the first bus or train of the next day.
In this case you can probably still find a taxi, but then we're back to the car situation.
(EDIT: Of course the problem would also be solved if you could get a bus or train any time of the day.)
Bud, nobody is taking the car away from those kinds of use cases. It's very clear for most people that cars are necessary in those situations, and that's fine. What we're demonising is the car as the only way to go about getting from A to B. If you watch some of the urban planning videos on the topic, or lurk the r/f*cars subreddit you'll quickly see that most people also* want to make the driving experience better! And by better they don't mean to build one more lane, but sensible infrastructure that makes sense for everybody, not just the cars. The whole point is about inclusion: why isn't using a car unavoidable?
Fact of the matter is the following: not everyone lives near a fantastic commuting infrastructure, let alone can physically achieve moving from A to B against the elements or their other problems.
But other than that, you are wrong again. The most common neurological disabilities actually affect motor and sensitivity. Are people are allowed to drive.
I tick all of those boxes and never had a car.
I live in the city, walking and using public transit. Toddlers love to walk and to be carried in the stroller.
Cars from the suburbs are a constant inconvenience for us living in inner cities: they are a danger to pedestrians and cyclists alike, they make our streets noisy and our air polluted.
If people liked the suburbs so much, they would stay there. But no, they want the convenience and services of the city while shoving the externalities of their lifestyle onto other people.
The inner cities are also places were the suburbs people come to work and play. So space in underground parkings or other accomodations is expected. Imagine if the sububs people decided to say to you (inner) city people that you are not allowed to go to their green parks and recreation areas because you are "shoving externalities of your (city) lifestyle to them".
Jesus.
Regarding green spaces, they easily coexist in dense walkable neighborhoods.
I hear such outrageous arguments all the time by inner city dwellers. Just because they own or rent a microscopic appartment in a condo, they think they own the city and all must abide to their lifestyle.
Amsterdam has slowly tried to move cars out of the city center over the past couple decades. Residents can still get a parking permit, but parking space has been reduced to make more space for people, and visitors had better park their car at the edge of the city and take public transport into the city center. Or just come by train.
No, they are tax-payers, they should be allowed to come with whatever vehicle they want. I agree that cheap public transportation should be offered, but also parking spaces for those who cannot come with public transportation.
I support them, though. I'm a tax payer too, and I live here, and I like the fact that this city is a lot nicer now.
And there are parking spaces. Lots of them. At the edge of the city. With fast public transport to the center, and if you combine the two, the parking is incredibly cheap. It's a win for everybody. I have no idea where your weird entitlement comes from.
Im sorry for the snark but your comment seems out of touch and elitist.
So perhaps with this new context you can rethink where my comment was coming from.
Kids need to be able to explore independently! Thank you for understanding this.
Cars have reasons to exists and a no-car future is neither likely nor desirable; but today they are overused as an inefficient but easy solution.
Here in Switzerland I see people biking with toddlers AND heavy groceries all the time. And the landscape and weather are definitely challenging.
I have a neighbor who drives her 3 small kids around on a bicycle (one in the rear child seat, two in a trailer). In her defence it's an e-bike.
I thought that was dumb and just decided to get by with less money and no car.
Throughout high school, I’d walk to the general store a mile away and that was about all I did other than go fishing (my favorite thing to do at the time). For a bit of money I tutored at school and tied flies (a fishing thing) for a local tackle shop.
In college I’d think nothing of walking 3-5 miles round trip for errands. Outside of peak school hours I was often the only person on the limited local bus system. I kept tutoring and writing grad school entrance essays for kids for money.
After college I moved to Portland, OR and still haven’t learned to drive (I’m 40 today). I walk and bike everywhere and take the bus once in awhile.
Growing up it was 1 mile to the general store or 35 miles to Walmart. I went there with my parents or I didn't go there at all. My job tying flies was by mail. I worked at home and mailed them to the shop. It paid about minimum wage but kept me in fishing tackle and I got better at tying flies. Plus I could listen to the radio while I worked. And we had a schoolbus to get to/from school which I don't think is that rare.
On the other hand people will seek better living quality in less dense areas and this makes the car necessary, however infrequently. Maybe the news of their demise is greatly exaggerated
Cars are a necessary evil in my life for the moment, but I hope for a future where that "necessary" part goes away.
I mostly gave up a car living in Washington, DC. I still had one, but only because my apartment had free parking. It came in handy for occasional work trips and road trips, but day-to-day I walked or biked almost everywhere.
Yet, the main reason it was not useful was because the roads were so packed with traffic, at almost all hours of the day, that it was nearly impossible to drive anywhere. Let alone find somewhere to park that wouldn't charge you $20.
If enough people fall out of love with cars, maybe it driving will become attractive again.
As discussed many times past, including on HN, if you live in or near a major city, and in a country or area which prioritises goood public transport, you can get by admirably --even better-- without a car.
As soon as you move even a little away from the metropolis, and/or to somewhere that doesn't prioritise good public transport, access (at least) to a car becomes close to a necessity for many activities. This rule holds true in my direct experience in the UK, US, Switzerland, and Germany.
For example, in the US compare living in Denver to a small town a couple of hours' drive out in the sticks. Or in the UK, living in one of the major cities to virtually anywhere in the countryside.
Alternatives such as public transport, walking and cycling have always been gimped in favour of car traffic, lest the car driving populace complain.
Yes, obviously, cars are a necessity in more remote places. Nobody's taking away your cars.
Maybe this needs a shorthand. Just preface every discussion with "*not about you, fur trapper!"
Rubbish, these articles are nearly always written by and supported by the dominant voice in the mainstream media - young, liberal city-dwellers, who seem to have no concept that there is a huge part of the population who are funding their "progress", often at the expense of their own infrastructure and quality of life.
But whenever I can avoid driving, I prefer to do that.
I don't buy furniture every week. Nor building materials. It's cheaper for me to rent a car for those occasions than to maintain a private car 24/7 for that.
Cars being necessary for some tasks does not mean it's necessary to own and garage one they will sit idle most of the time.