> Some other parking reform efforts are trying to take cars more fully out of the equation. In car-heavy Phoenix, real estate developers are building a 17-acre neighborhood called Culdesac Tempe that won’t have any parking, period. (Residents and visitors will have to bike or take public transit.)
Isn't this focused on the young, single, and healthy? I can't imagine having multiple children and living with no car. You cannot bike your 3 kids to schools and hospitals during rainy autumn days. The bigger part of the proposal actually read like it has a big blind zone about the needs of families - having a family or children weren't even mentioned.
EDIT to address some repeating replies:
- Some form of "school" starts at around 2-3 y/o. 2-3 year olds cannot take a bus.
- There is winter, heavy rains, and wind. In most places you cannot rely on a bike all the time.
- In most cities people work far from home, and the early schools the kids go to are also far away. A young family with two 2-5 y/o children will not be able to rely on a bus and a bike, unless they live in some expensive area where everything is nearby and are lucky to have jobs at the same place.
This is a common viewpoint in the US, mostly because we're brought up not knowing alternatives.
It might be worthwhile to check out how cities are planned elsewhere. My wife and I recently moved to the Netherlands because we think the way they do things is much better in this regard. I would highly recommend checking out the Not Just Bikes YouTube Channel, as well as Bicycle Dutch.
Here are some videos that might be of interest to you:
I am not from US. I also grew up without cars and without tap water even. But it circumstances were different. For one - my parents worked 500 meters away from our home, second - my grandmother lived nearby so I didn't have to go to kindergarten, and third when I started going to school it was close enough to reach by walking.
After I started my family and moved out to a bigger city, all of these things changed. Your parents cannot help with the children because they are in another city. For me and my wife it takes about an hour both to reach our jobs. And the kindergarten we were taking our kids to was about 30 minutes (by car) away. The ones that are near our house or near our work-places had 3-year waiting lines.
And then there are winters and heavy rains. And you might have multiple children all of whom need to be taken someplace in the morning. It's just not realistic to bike, unless you somehow have everything nearby.
Yes, unfortunately it takes much more than just designing a car-free village. You need good infra like public transport, more and smaller schools and kindergartens, etc. But it absolutely exists in Europe.
I live 4 km from work and take a bike most of the year, otherwise it would be the tram or maybe even a walk if time permits. I don't have kids but usually the next elementary school is a 15 minute walk tops, there is one across the street for me actually. Kindergartens are even more ubiquitous. This is a city of ~250k. So obviously, you don't just transform an existing city into this by banning cars. And there are plenty of car-first cities in Europe still. Living in the countryside without a car is certainly very inconvenient.
Also, if the health system in the US is really as bad as it always appears to us, having good coverage of family practitioners might be off the table, and I'd certainly feel uncomfortable with the hospital being an hour away if I had toddlers around, and an ambulance either taking forever to arrive or being prohibitively expensive.
Pretty key point right here: it takes a lot of infrastructure spending over a long time to build a city. Can't just snap your fingers and change how that money got spent.
Plenty of the pedestrian-friendly cities with good trains and all got built up during times when there weren't any automobiles.
They're nice to look at and great to live in. But it's not possible to transform Salt Lake city or San Antonio into New York City with the snap of a finger. Takes capital, takes time, and people need to live their lives in the meanwhile.
Transit around here is good in some bits, bad in others. House prices are about double, maybe more, if the house is walking distance to good transit. And transit isn't free. Better economics to own an inexpensive car and drive it. For a lot of people, money's tight and need to put food on the table for the family.
> Pretty key point right here: it takes a lot of infrastructure spending over a long time to build a city. Can't just snap your fingers and change how that money got spent.
Your not wrong, it’s take the Neatherlands 30-50 years to transition from a car centric culture that would make even an American blush, to the cycle centric one they have today.
But as with trees, the best time plant one was ten years ago, the second best time is now. If we keep using the excuse that you can’t build people friendly infrastructure, because there’s no other people friendly infrastructure for it to work with. Then you’ll never build people friendly infrastructure, and you’ll be forever stuck in a car dominated hell scape, where a 30 min drive to do anything is an inescapable reality.
As someone who lives in a major city in the US with a dense walkable city center, the health care system in cities is frequently a mess of bureaucracy and completely overwhelmed by demand.
The suburbs (not rural though) have much more accessible… everything really. Go to a Target (a “basically anything that’s not food but also some food” store) in an inner city and they’ll either be out of half the things you need or simply not stock them at all. Suburban stores are fully stocked and prices are lower, with larger sizes available.
The same dynamic exists in healthcare to the point if I actually have real healthcare needs, I go out to the suburbs. I went to the ER in the city one time because I had cut myself pretty badly while cooking. The person who was stitching me up had to stop halfway through to rush and deal with 3 gunshot victims who had all come in at the same time. I sat there with a bleeding, half-stitched hand for 2 hours until they could get someone else.
Much of this was driven historically by racism, redlining and white flight, but it still doesn’t change the fact that health care in cities is more expensive, significantly more burdened and way more of a bureaucratic machine.
> And then there are winters and heavy rains. And you might have multiple children all of whom need to be taken someplace in the morning. It's just not realistic to bike, unless you somehow have everything nearby.
This depends on the country planning. In at least some European countries, the state guarantees enrollment to kindergardens/schools close to the family residence.
I actually wonder how cities (countries) that don't make such guarantee (and are not car-centered like the US) can actually survive. Assuming that all the families with multiple children use the car during winter in the morning (you've described it as a necessity), that would make the city traffic completely stuck. I don't doubt that this may be the reality in those circumstances.
I remember similar descriptions about cities like Rome, where people use the car comparatively more than other European cities. Indeed, traffic in Rome is hell, and ultimately, it boils down to insufficient city infrastructure/planning (the official take is that they can't build underground lines due to ruins), so even willing citizens have very little wiggle room.
Where I come from, big city etc. there seems to be not much time advantage of taking a car vs. taking a bike. After all a bike is very easy to park close to your destination and it's not affected as much by traffic jam (due to rudimentary cycling infrastructure and the ability to use side streets that are too narrow for rush hour drivers to consider).
WRT child transport: child transport bikes are seeing a rising adoption here, so it is feasible to bike to work and drop of your kid on the way. Kids will stay dry below the bike's rain cover, though of course the parent who cycles will need some upgrade to his clothing compared to what's needed when going by car (finding cloth that is both rain-tight but doesn't cause sweating takes some experimentation).
If you want to look at the spectrum of possibilities, have a look at e.g.
(just enumerating what bikes I see on a regular basis, this list would go on and on)
PS: you may also want to factor in the time spent on maintenance and bureaucracy (dealing with car insurance etc) and the extra monetary effort involved with owning a car vs owning a bike.
I checked out the second link and this is IMHO an interesting and thoughtful YouTube channel. These are not words that I co-locate often.
The linked video discusses the deep effect that urban planning can have sociologically; e.g. if a neighbourhood isn't walkable, kids don't walk, and if kids aren't out walking, kids not being out on their own can become normalised, and even lead to censure/punishment for children's independence.
Which seems crazy (to me, anyway) and very much at odds w/ what we want kids to grow into, e.g. that they be independent and active.
That is true. Oslo unlike Amsterdam is not at all flat, with many having 100-200m of height to climb on their way home if going downtown for work or shopping.
However, electric bikes are changing that equation drastically. With an e-bike those climbs are not an issue at all. So there's been a good uptick in people who ride bikes here.
Of course, e-bikes are quite expensive compared to regular bikes, but compared to owning a car they're quite cheap. So for someone living in Oslo, having an e-bike and renting a car a few times for the long trips can be a very good deal.
That's correct. Biycle paths are very well kept. Winters in the Netherlands are pretty mild though, temperature hovers around 2-6c the whole time, and it only snows once or twice a year. The hard parts are the wind and rain.
> You cannot bike your 3 kids to schools and hospitals during rainy autumn days.
Two of the most cycling friendly cities in the world are also cities with a lot of rainy days (Amsterdan and Copenhagen). A lot of people with kids there will disagree with you.
It seems to me the biggest issue people who never cycle think stops people from cycling is weather, while in reality it is unsafe infrastructure. Build the infrastructure, people will cycle and will not bother about the weather.
The Netherlands had a relatively large cycling population even before they built paths everywhere, the new infrastructure only contributed to a modest increase in numbers over the last four decades. Some new towns in the UK instated very high quality cycle paths in the 1960s, but to this day they are very lightly used.
Overall I think it's a cultural/convenience thing.
Indeed. Is it raining? There's raincoats to wear, covers for your bagage, and there's even retractable covers for childrens seats on bikes. Is it snowing? It's easy to get wide tires or ones with spikes in countries that have a lot of snowfall. Is it windy? Just switch to a lower gear and get a bit more excercise. Electric bikes help a lot as well nowadays, making it easier to bike in heavy wind or in hilly areas.
having biked to/from school for many years, a bigger issue is that kids don't have a fixed amount of things they need to transport every day and the upper bound (instruments + art/science project + sports gear) quickly limits the distance you can realistically travel. injuries are also a factor, all it takes is a sprained ankle to take biking off the table for several weeks.
also as an aside there's a lot more potential for variance in travel time on a bike and if a school has punitive tardiness systems, this will get taken out on the student a lot.
Having biked to school my entire life: Bikes have a luggage rack... You can easily fit one of those three items on there.
I can't think of many situations where schedules collided to the point where I needed to take several bulky items home and back on the same day. And worst case, I'd just leave my sports kit at school overnight perhaps? Or get a lift on that one day. Or take the bus!
I can't speak to large instruments though, that's a bigger (although fairly niche!?) problem.
Another huge problem with bikes is that in my city your bike is basically public property. At any moment in time someone could just take it with no repercussions. No amount of locks it chains seems to be effective. So you don’t want to invest a lot of money into having one properly outfitted unless you have some place secure to store it on both ends
> Isn't this focused on the young, single, and healthy?
No?
Cars are expensive, and they're not accessible: vision or motor issues will ban you from car usage (and rightfully so). They are also a major and active danger to everyone outside a car. Even more so these days as ebikes, motorized wheelchairs, accessibility scooters, and cantas are more available than ever, and public transport has much improved in their allowance for those (except cantas I guess). I can certainly say that around here, 20 years back, the odds you could get a wheelchair (to say nothing of a motorised one) on a bus were essentially nil.
Limiting cars and improving alternatives makes the entire thing less dangerous and more accessible to everyone.
> I can't imagine having multiple children and living with no car. You cannot bike your 3 kids to schools and hospitals during rainy autumn days.
So… are you saying that the Dutch don't have rain or that they don't have children?
My family, and many families near where I grew up, didn't have cars.
It does plan you build with this in mind -- in the UK it is assumed kids will walk to school, or take a free bus (which is provided by the school). Most schools strongly discourage parents from driving to school, as it causes road blockages and the chance of accidents near the school entrance.
My parents had cars, and took me to and from school in the car most days.
I hated it.
At primary school, if I visited a friend after school we could walk through the park, or the playground, or the library, which was all much more fun than being in a car and then at home 5 minutes later.
At secondary school all my friends took buses, and had the wonderful freedom to take the next bus, or the one after. The playground didn't have the same appeal, but there were shops, cafés and so on.
> in the UK it is assumed kids will walk to school, or take a free bus (which is provided by the school).
The journey will be free, but in larger urban areas (especially London) it's also common for the children just to be given a pass for the city buses.
I lumped nurseries, kindergartens, and pre-schools under "school". 2-5 year olds will not walk and will not take buses. Also if there is a nursery nearby it would probably have long waiting lines just to get a spot for your child, so in most cities it's essential to be able to choose from at least 4-mile radius.
> I lumped nurseries, kindergartens, and pre-schools under "school". 2-5 year olds will not walk and will not take buses.
For as long as I was in daycare, I was walked there by my parents. When I started school, I first walked, then biked there. It was not until I started grade 7 where any form of transport was necessary, and since then I took public transportation until I graduated.
This was in the suburbs of a mid-sized city (~100k) in Sweden, with comparatively bad public transportation.
A 4 mile / 6 km radius is a huge. I assumed you lived in the US when you wrote miles, but your profile says Lithuania. A 6km radius covers most of Vilnius, and plenty of pre-schools.
But about Vilnius - public pre-schools in Vilnius are well placed, but they have huge waiting lines. If you want to get one in time realistically you would have to register your child before his/her birth, which is of course impossible. So most people join the line after birth and when the child reaches 2 years old they take them to a private one, until they reach their place in line and can transfer.
But let's say you get a place for your children 1-1.5 km away and you have a job that takes 30 minutes to reach by car (which in the morning is quite optimistic due to traffic). So to take children and go to work for yourself would take, say, 40 minutes.
One alternative to cars - biking. Only possible in summer days and warm autumn/winter days, and when it's not raining. So maybe 50% of the year. So the bike would take you probably 1.5 hours. Add this time for also going back and its 2 additional hours lost per day, and only on those good sunny days.
Another alternative is a bus. In non-corona times some busses in Vilnius are so crowded that you cannot get in and have to wait for another one. Nobody with young kids even tries to get there. But assume you live in one of less crowded places. Then the question is - how far the bus stop is from your house, how far the bus stop is from the kindergarten, and how far it is from your place of work. And how many different busses you will have to take in order to reach everything, and the waiting and travel times between transfers. So this scenario depends on luck.
That's just how I see it from my perspective here in Vilnius. A big number of families here have 2 cars. For some reason I imagine most bigger US cites would only be worse in that regard.
Many families here in Copenhagen have one car, though certainly not all of them — and it's much more related to where people live than how much they earn.
It's very common to see bicycles with a child seat, or box bicycles, used to take children to/from nursery on the way to work.
There are slightly fewer days with rain here than in Vilnius, but it only matters if it's raining during the journey, which is far less often than ⅓-½ of the year. I usually wear a raincoat, though sometimes I just take the bus.
I don't think the goal is to remove 100% of driving, or private cars, but it is great when a city (including its suburbs) is practical and accessible without one. It also makes it accessible to people without cars, like old-enough children, some pensioners, poor people, etc.
Vilnius could build at least one metro / U-bahn line, or perhaps two. It is already big enough that the transport backbone should be grade separated from the streets, and metro is the easiest way to go.
My understanding of the US is most kids get a yellow bus to school. The U.K. on the other hand is either weak or drive - at least at primary school. At sexiest school theres more chance to be generic public transport.
at least here the situation was that rich kids get chauffeured, upper middle class take the yellow bus and poor kids (who usually live out of district) take public transit.
> Isn't this focused on the young, single, and healthy?
E-bikes are a wonderful thing. In countries with good cycling cultures, the older population cycles more than the younger.
People bike as children and teenagers, then get driving licenses and drive for a few years. Once the novelty of car wears off they start cycling again. It’s cheaper, quicker, easier, and healthier.
> You cannot bike your 3 kids to schools and hospitals during rainy autumn days.
Yes you can. The Dutch do it everyday. Also you don’t need to bike your kids to school, with proper cycle infrastructure, they can bike themselves, sans helicopter parent.
> Some form of "school" starts at around 2-3 y/o. 2-3 year olds cannot take a bus.
There are many types of bikes, include cargo bikes designed to transport multiple young children, driven by one adult. You can even get motor to help you out!
> There is winter, heavy rains, and wind. In most places you cannot rely on a bike all the time.
Dress appropriately! Wear coats! We solved this problem a long time ago. There are plenty of countries where people of all ages and experience cycle year round. In the sun, in the rain, in the wind, in the snow! Don’t limit your cycling to just pleasant weather, by proper clothing so all weather is pleasant.
> In most cities people work far from home, and the early schools the kids go to are also far away. A young family with two 2-5 y/o children will not be able to rely on a bus and a bike, unless they live in some expensive area where everything is nearby and are lucky to have jobs at the same place.
This is very US centric world view. The US has a strange obsession with spreading everything out as much as possible, ensuring that you have to spend your life in car going from A to B. I would argue that more enlighten approach is to put stuff close together, so you can spend your time doing stuff, not travelling to stuff.
> Dress appropriately! Wear coats! We solved this problem a long time ago. There are plenty of countries where people of all ages and experience cycle year round. In the sun, in the rain, in the wind, in the snow! Don’t limit your cycling to just pleasant weather, by proper clothing so all weather is pleasant.
That honestly sounds masochistic. I'm not from US btw.
I don’t know about you, but I put a coat on when it’s cold or rainy and I’m going outside. The alternative is being wet and cold.
I’m not sure what wonderful part of world you live in, but for me, dressing correctly for the weather is a basic requirement for comfortable living. Assuming of course you ever want to leave your home.
I have two kids and no car. Only three bicycle. We live in Oslo, Norway, so the winters can be cold. It helps living in a city with trams, bicycle lanes and electric cars spread around that can be rented by the minute. I just got totally fed up being stuck in traffic jams every day, so I eventually sold the car.
I live in Vietnam where effectively nobody has a car. We also have a monsoon rainy season for six months a year that dwarfs any rain anywhere in America gets.
Somehow people are still able to have families and get kids to school.
Ha! People in Vietnam are notorious for walking nowhere. Need to go to the store down the street? Get the motorbike. Sidewalks are crammed with bikes so being a pedestrian sucks hard in Vietnam.
Add on top you’ll often be riding a motorbike in between container trucks i think your example makes the opposite point you think it does.
I’ve come to the conclusion 90% of HN has no experience raising children and what it entails. This is evident in the replies of people saying “just do x”. Never contains any context as to the country you live in, it’s infrastructure or the requirements of your family.
Absolutely, but I remember seeing a HN survey that showed most HN users were in their 20’s so no surprise there.
When I lived in Singapore, it was very common for families to have cars despite the world class transit system. And despite the $50-70k for a permit to own a car and the 100% tariffs. That just demonstrates how much utility people get from cars. People are willing to pay a lot to have access to a car.
I remember discussing commutes with a developer in Singapore, she "had to" drive for an hour every day. We were looking at Google Maps to help me follow what she described, and I noticed a rail line. Was that an option? No! She couldn't be seen using the train.
Maybe among the very rich, but I worked with plenty of middle-upper class Singaporeans (~$100 to 150k SGD incomes) who spent money on cars.
Keep in mind despite the rail lines, it's much cheaper to own a place that isn't within easy walking distance. For the same amount of money you'd get a much bigger place.
But regardless, it was mostly just due to the demands of family. The train makes sense when it's you alone. When you're paying $20-30 per day for a family's transit costs (4 rides at $1.50 each times for 2 adults and 2 teens), then suddenly the $700-$1000/month to own a car doesn't seem so silly.
Yeah that’s also important math folks miss taking a family downtown it’s often cheaper to pay parking than bus fare both ways for a family of 4. Even at 2 it’s basically break even with 3$ fares
Yes and no. The cost savings from not using a car mostly is an all or nothing deal. You save a lot by not owning one all together but you don’t save much by not using one you already have
I agree that before I had kids it was easy to be blind to how different life is even when having those close to me with them. But people have kids in cities without cars and inclimate weather all over the world. I moved from a car-centric city when I had kids because the thought of driving from work, to childcare or school, to soccer practice, then home made me incredibly miserable. Suburbs accommodate this better, but that seems to almost necessitate two cars.
A decent city accommodates this, requires a lot less upfront cost, and just fewer resources all around. The comment you're replying to seems to think its not feasible.
Just do x never accounts for time spent doing x. Many times x is possible but does not meet time constraints. If you add another hour plus to your kids school commute then another hour to your own you might never actually see your kids
I remember my thoughts of being forever enriched in regards of what’s possible for bikes when I was in Norway 10 years ago and saw a man drag a bike child cart uphill an icy ~12% hill in February at -14C
> I can't imagine having multiple children and living with no car.
That is because everything in U.S. American life is centered around having a car and not having a car is fighting against that setup. There are perfectly viable alternatives for living without a car but there's been a strong social trend away from these for a very long time.
It will require new modes of living and some re-organization of our cities to get back to a point where not-having a car becomes an attractive default mode again.
The local elementary school has a large number of walkers and a large number of children who are driven in. Those who walk in are frequently accompanied by their parents, the parents appear to enjoy the time with their children, and the parents typically hang around to socialize with other parents. Parents who drive their children in usually drop their children off in dangerous spots and spend an awful lot of time socializing with police officers. A number of those parents also try to drive through crossing guards (sometimes literally) who are there to keep the children safe, including the children who were dropped off on the wrong side of the street. Driving may be convenient, but there are many times when convenience is taken too far and the walkers seem to be happier.
Schools in my city tend to be cancelled when the weather is too dangerous for driving yet safe for walking (e.g. large snowfalls) and are virtually never cancelled when it is too dangerous for walking yet fine for driving (e.g. high wind chill). In a way, it makes sense. Walkers can still be driven in when it is unsafe to walk, while most of the children who are driven in cannot walk to school. It is one of the many costs of designing car centric cities instead of walkable ones.
I wish this weren't the case in more places in Canada and the U.S. Where I grew up in central Canada this would almost certainly be a similar experience, but I did happen to live within walking distance, even in the awful suburbs, to every school I attended. Now on the west coast, without a family, I have no doubt that everyone walks their kids to wherever they need to be. There are about 15 schools within some reasonable walking distance, and I think that's incredible and I hope that propogates. Weather is a non-position to me, I don't see how it could be sufficiently arduous as to require a car all the time if the other conditions are met (maybe some of the time), but I'd be curious what I'm missing there. I grew up in hilariously cold winters and now live in extremely wet winters. This of course changes if you've chosen or have had to live really far out from where you need to be every day, but my impression is that this is more often a choice in NA than it is in EU where the centre is the premium for all these reasons (afaik)
> You cannot bike your 3 kids to schools and hospitals during rainy autumn days.
Where I live, people walk their small children to school. There's also a "footbus" which is basically parents taking turns walking the kids from their block to the school.
17 acres may be a bit small to have a school, but a moderately dense neighbourhood should be able to afford a school within 5-10m walking distance.
One of the ironies of cities designed and operated around cars:
Most of my life is close to my home, so I can bike to work and bike for shopping. When the snow hits, people start asking why I don't walk instead. According to them, biking in the snow is dangerous. The answer is simple enough: sidewalks are impassible for a few days after a snowfall, and can be icy for weeks after. Aside for side streets, roads tend to be dry and ice free within hours of the snow stopping. Even the side streets aren't too bad except for the intersections. The worse part is climbing over a three foot tall snowbank to get onto and off of the road.
Isn't this focused on the young, single, and healthy? I can't imagine having multiple children and living with no car. You cannot bike your 3 kids to schools and hospitals during rainy autumn days. The bigger part of the proposal actually read like it has a big blind zone about the needs of families - having a family or children weren't even mentioned.
EDIT to address some repeating replies:
- Some form of "school" starts at around 2-3 y/o. 2-3 year olds cannot take a bus.
- There is winter, heavy rains, and wind. In most places you cannot rely on a bike all the time.
- In most cities people work far from home, and the early schools the kids go to are also far away. A young family with two 2-5 y/o children will not be able to rely on a bus and a bike, unless they live in some expensive area where everything is nearby and are lucky to have jobs at the same place.