The point is to provide options - sure, if your job requires a car/truck you're obviously not going to use public transit. If you're in poor physical health, you probably can't take standard public transit - though accessibility options often exist. If you travel with kids often you might be less inclined to take transit (though plenty of people with kids do anyways).
But if you're one of the hundreds of thousands of other people in a major metro who don't fall into those categories, you'd probably appreciate the option to not have to obtain a personal vehicle or use it exclusively for your commute, errands, a night on the town, etc.... and the best part is that for all the remaining people who do drive, every person who takes transit is one less person contributing to traffic congestion!
Transit options benefit everyone. Your comment reads like you don't support transit options because they don't suit your particular tastes - I suggest you instead consider advocating for transit to make life better for both yourself and your community, regardless of whether you personally use transit or not.
Options are great. However, many on HN take the stance that we should push people to public transit by eliminating parking and closing (some) streets to vehicle traffic because density leads to bus routes and bicycles are intimidated by cars. That's not an option so much as a mandatory shift.
I'd be fine making that shift if the public transit deployed today were actually good enough to be a like-for-like replacement of car ownership. It isn't unless you live in very expensive conveniently located neighborhoods.
Society should STOP accommodate individual lifestyle choices that are not in society's best interest.
You say:
> should push people to public transit by eliminating parking and closing (some) streets to vehicle traffic because density leads to bus routes and bicycles are intimidated by cars. That's not an option so much as a mandatory shift
I say society should stop giving away publicly owned real estate to the narrow segment of people who want to make driving their lifestyle choice.
I would prefer that the parking lots be replaced with something more economically valuable. For example,
What is the economic value of so much real estate devoted to machine storage? --- < $0 ( because it takes away from the economic value of surrounding businesses )
If someone wants to drive then they can pay for the privilege.
In the meantime, the rest of society should spend the money saved to make the automobile a museum curiosity.
We have cars and roads because they massively increase the land area within n minutes of a destination relative to demand, which is the only way most of us are able to live in a decent home and not spend our whole lives commuting.
You'll notice that affordability is emphatically not a feature of high-rise, parking-starved, conveniently located urban neighborhoods.
The economic value of parking is in the thousands of dollars per person per month not spent on rent to be within walking distance, and the free time not sacrificed to low-speed transportation.
The people who drive to those stores from ~20 miles around would not necessarily have any money left to spend once they are forced to find homes within 2 or 3, or no will to visit them once transit times from affordable neighborhoods increase from ~15 minutes by freeway to ~90 by bicycle.
Despite the environmental benefits, living within walking distance of downtown offices and amenities is the most ostentatious and fiscally wasteful choice modern humans seem to be proud of making.
What we need to STOP doing is humoring the notion that spending big on urban rent is somehow more virtuous than an equivalently priced vacation or designer handbag, and especially that public policy ought to increase the pressure to spend ever-increasing proportions of income on land value.
You want to kill cars, find a suitable replacement. Paying more for less housing, living with roommates, or multiplying commute times are not acceptable approaches. Bedroom communities around actually good (fast, frequent, reliable, comfortable) commuter rail systems are a lot more compelling. Getting the rent differential between city center and suburb down below the threshold of TCO on a basic car would help too.
> If you’re able to walk instead of drive to the store for a gallon of milk, you and your neighborhood home values may benefit from the exercise. A 2009 study sponsored by CEOs for Cities, a national consortium of civic and business leaders, found that homes in neighborhoods with good walkability are more valuable than similar homes in neighborhoods where residents have to drive to get to amenities.
> Walkability adds anywhere from $4,000 to $34,000 to home values, according to the study. The bigger, more urban the city (think San Francisco or Chicago), the bigger the boost in home prices walkability adds. Neighborhoods in cities with less dense populations like Tucson, Ariz., or Fresno, Calif., have the smallest boost in home prices from being walkable.
> The availability of public transportation also played a role. The higher home values tended to show up in walkable neighborhoods near good public transportation where people could live without an automobile.
> The higher home values tended to show up in walkable neighborhoods near good public transportation where people could live without an automobile.
You're making my argument for me. Housing costs a great deal more in walkable and transit-friendly areas. Equivalently, car-friendliness lowers housing costs.
I could drive a new BMW for less than it would take to upgrade from East Bay suburbia to an equivalent apartment within walking distance of my downtown SF office (~$2500/mo up to $4500/mo). But both of those choices would be equally and severely irresponsible from a personal finance perspective.
We should be running as far away as possible from policy intended to push people to spend even more on housing.
The car lets me live where housing is cheap(er), while still getting to work and accomplishing day-to-day tasks reasonably quickly. You propose to take that option away and force me to spend that extra $2000/mo, downgrade to a worse apartment, or spend more of my already-scarce free time commuting.
"Average" car costs are weighted upwards by new SUVs and luxury cars. It does not hurt very much to drive a boring reliable Japanese compact as a personal daily driver, everything beyond that is choice.
The economic value of surrounding businesses is increased because customers, employees, and suppliers are all able to be there. They have a place to park.
Two examples: The last time I was in San Francisco, I wanted to stop and eat. I drove around in ever-widening circles seeking a place to park, then gave up and drove away. That business lost out. On another day, across the bay in Freemont I think, I stopped at a place that had free parking right outside the door. They got my business.
You are surprised to learn that your particular experience is not the norm.
In fact studies have shown devoting vast expanses of land to parking is economically bad. See : Stroup "The high cost of Free parking" and the http://www.strongtowns.org/ .
Also refer to the New York City data about removing parking in order to create a more bike/ped friendly neighborhood.
Most patrons to a business live local to that business. Your example of being willing to drive all the way from San Francisco to Fremont demonstrates this point well. You are not the normal example.
Wrt the business that did not get your business.... they may not have even noticed because they had more than enough local patrons.
That was "On another day", probably about 10 days later.
On the day in San Francisco, I finally found a place to park in some super-rich residential area miles away from where I had started. At that point I parked, but only to rest and assess the situation. I think I then said "screw this" and went back to my hotel in South San Francisco. I probably ate cold food at the hotel, purchased from a supermarket.
On a different day in San Francisco, just a few years ago, I thought I'd try the public transportation. Silly me, that doesn't work either! I ended up walking from the bottom of the California line up to Russian Hill. Afterward, I tried to take a tram/streetcar thing. This being July 4, a day when public transportation is particularly sensible, they shut it down near the crowds who might want it. Of course! WTF SFO. I walked all the way back, then down into the subway station. I get on the train that runs south along the east side, I think the J train. This goes up to street level. It's dark and my cell phone battery is dying. Unlike the T in Boston since at least 1993, this train fails to have: a voice-over for the stops, an overhead text display for the stops, or big lighted signs at the stops. Boston had/has all that, but San Francisco has none of it even 2 decades later. Also, the train doesn't actually stop unless there is a person waiting, so you can't count stops to know where you are. It's GPS or screw you. I get off, walk too far to the "connecting" bus stop, and wait for the last bus. Oh, the sign didn't make it clear that you aren't supposed to wait at the bus shelter. The bus goes by on the other side of the street. So then walk several more miles, cut through Glenn Canyon in the dark, and finally back to the car parked at Turquoise Way.
Obviously, the car doesn't work, but neither does the public transportation. It seems I'm expected to hike up and down all those hills like it's 1849. My knees are too old for that, and my kids are too young for that.
But if you're one of the hundreds of thousands of other people in a major metro who don't fall into those categories, you'd probably appreciate the option to not have to obtain a personal vehicle or use it exclusively for your commute, errands, a night on the town, etc.... and the best part is that for all the remaining people who do drive, every person who takes transit is one less person contributing to traffic congestion!
Transit options benefit everyone. Your comment reads like you don't support transit options because they don't suit your particular tastes - I suggest you instead consider advocating for transit to make life better for both yourself and your community, regardless of whether you personally use transit or not.