We Should Design Cities For Shorter Distances, Not Faster Speeds

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Definitely not true. Auto ownership share has been dropping in NYC and other major U.S. cities. Urban auto ownership rates in transit-oriented cities were higher 40-50 years ago. You see this in Boston, DC, Chicago, Seattle and others. Car ownership would obviously be much lower if it weren't so heavily subsidized and our priorities weren't so seriously skewed.

The war against cars is a "losing battle" in the sense that even Brooklyn, which if taken as a separate city would be considered far and away the second most urban in US/Canada, has a car ownership rate of 44% even though 85% of its geography has very good to great Subway coverage. In other words, not nearly as many households need to own cars, yet they do so anyway out of choice for various reasons. Rich brownstone Brooklynites with kids (I think you're among that crowd?) are a total minority; Orthodox neighborhoods like Borough Park (communities that are purposefully insular and self-contained) have a dense cluster of synagogues and yeshivas within walking distance, and driving is forbidden on Sabbath anyway.

So if 45% of NYC households own at least one car, I can only imagine what the numbers are for Chicago, SF, Boston, Philly, and DC. These are cities generally regarded as being places where one doesn't need to own a car... yet car-owning households form the majority.

Also not true. There are more car-free households in NYC's outer boroughs and adjacent parts of Jersey than in all those core environments combined. There are relatively few people, anywhere, living in skyscraper/core environments.

By "across-the-board car-freedom," I'm talking "choice people" and Manhattan-level rates, which is to say that more than 75% of households don't own a car. There's no reason for me to believe that Hudson County car ownership is any less than Brooklyn.

"Core" at the neighborhood residential level basically means CBD-adjacent. Think West Village, Gold Coast, Rittenhouse Square, Beacon Hill, Dupont Circle, Telegraph Hill. Park Slope is "inner outer core."

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL

The Earth's population will be nearly 10 Billion by 2050. There is simply no way that space can be made for an additional 3 billion personal vehicles on the road (especially given the trend of ever-increasing vehicle size) without completely eviscerating the planet and making conditions much much worse for pedestrians and cyclists (who are already suffering record casualties in the US due to said increased vehicle size) and everyone else—just wait until there's absolutely nowhere to go to escape the adverse health effects of air pollution and traffic noise, the latter of which has only recently started to get attention from the WHO and other European health agencies—but not the US, of course).

I'm not making the case for cars, but rather raising two points:

1) It's clear that even in some of the most well-designed, attractive urban neighborhoods where quality transit options and amenities are both plentiful and well within comfortable walking distance, lots of people living there still want to own car(s).

2) Car ownership can and does exist in unison with public transit, pedestrians, and bike lanes. This isn't even disputable. In the most urban city in the Western Hemisphere, about half of all households own at least one car, but 67% commute to work by taking public transit, walking, or biking.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Quixote

The war against cars is a "losing battle" in the sense that even Brooklyn, which if taken as a separate city would be considered far and away the second most urban in US/Canada, has a car ownership rate of 44% even though 85% of its geography has very good to great Subway coverage. In other words, not nearly as many households need to own cars, yet they do so anyway out of choice for various reasons. Rich brownstone Brooklynites with kids (I think you're among that crowd?) are a total minority; Orthodox neighborhoods like Borough Park (communities that are purposefully insular and self-contained) have a dense cluster of synagogues and yeshivas within walking distance, and driving is forbidden on Sabbath anyway.

So if 45% of NYC households own at least one car, I can only imagine what the numbers are for Chicago, SF, Boston, Philly, and DC. These are cities generally regarded as being places where one doesn't need to own a car... yet car-owning households form the majority.



By "across-the-board car-freedom," I'm talking "choice people" and Manhattan-level rates, which is to say that more than 75% of households don't own a car. There's no reason for me to believe that Hudson County car ownership is any less than Brooklyn.

"Core" at the neighborhood residential level basically means CBD-adjacent. Think West Village, Gold Coast, Rittenhouse Square, Beacon Hill, Dupont Circle, Telegraph Hill. Park Slope is "inner outer core."

One big piece is convenient car rental. UChicago's contract with Enterprise is such that I can rent cars for super cheap for personal use, so renting a car ~once a month for a trip out into the plains or whatever is pretty simple, especially with an Enterprise location just a few blocks away.

[Quixote]

Car ownership rates (ACS 2019 1-year estimates, code B08201). Boston's the only one that isn't a neatly defined geopolitical entity, so I added Cambridge and Somerville to give it the heft it deserves. In each of these cities (minus NYC), the number of households that own one vehicle exceeds the number of households that own no vehicle.


Households that own at least one vehicle:

Chicago: 72%
Philadelphia: 71%
SF: 68%
DC: 65%
Boston: 64% (66% when including Cambridge and Somerville)
...Cambridge: 67%
...Somerville: 77%
NYC: 45%


One-person household, no vehicle:

NYC: 75%
SF: 55%
Boston: 54% (52% when including Cambridge and Somerville)
...Cambridge: 49%
...Somerville: 42%
DC: 48%
Chicago: 46%
Philadelphia: 43%


One-person household, one vehicle:

Philadelphia: 52%
Chicago: 50%
DC: 48%
Boston: 44% (49% when including Cambridge and Somerville)
...Cambridge: 49%
...Somerville: 53%
SF: 41%
NYC: 23%

[mhays]

Car ownership and frequent use are two different things. It's common for urban residents to have cars but only use them to leave town or carry loads.

[Steely Dan]

From my experience, car-free is 8 million times easier when you don't have kids.

I was a happy car-free bachelor for 12 years in chicago.

Then I met my wife, and she came bundled with a car.

Now we have two kids, and our family car is a gigantic convenience at times.

We still live in an urban-ish city neighborhood (Lincoln Square certainly isn't the east village, but it also ain't exactly schaumburg either), so we do lots of stuff on foot/bicycle, but sometimes a car to lug your kids and their crap around in is a very nice luxury to have. It's certainly not my go to transportation tool, but I like having it none-the-less because it's very well suited to certain kinds of trips.

I'm not saying that we couldn't do the car-free family thing in chicago if we really wanted to commit ourselves to that mission, just that there is so much about raising kids that I didn't fully appreciate until I had them. The advantage of car ownership is one of those things.

And our 3-flat condo unit came with a deeded parking space off the alley in back (as do the lion's share of chicago's small-scale multi-family flat buildings), so it's kind of a no-brainer for us.




Thinking about this just reminded me that our family car gets paid off this coming February!!! A 5 year old car with only 33,000 miles, a large share of which are our very frequent (pre-covid) trips up I-94 to visit my wife's family in Milwaukee. Not too shabby; it should be able to last us for a very long while.

Originally Posted by Quixote

I'm not making the case for cars, but rather raising two points:

i was just responding to your contention that "private automobiles, public transit, pedestrians, and bicyclists can co-exist." even now, private autos coexist like shit, as is evidenced by the disproportionate amount of space they devour, the amount of environmental damage they inflict, and the number people they murder every year—not to mentioned the adverse health effects that we're only beginning to acknowledge. my point is that, as the population keeps growing, it's complete insanity to think that every human being can drive around in (or even just store somewhere) a personal, resource guzzling tank that demands 20 people's worth space covered in concrete.

[homebucket]

Originally Posted by mhays

Car ownership and frequent use are two different things. It's common for urban residents to have cars but only use them to leave town or carry loads.

Good point. Percent that commute by public transit or walking vs private automobile is a better indicator of how auto centric an area is, not car ownership.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ the difference is that I don't expect overnight urbanism to form in places like schaumburg.

Hell, I don't expect it to happen even gradually, ever.

They are lost causes unless they are obliterated off the map and rebuilt from scratch from the street layout up.

As monkeyronin said in like the 3rd post of this thread, it's not that I'm against suburbia existing, I just don't get why they had to make it so goddamn ugly in the postwar era.

Coulda had millions more people living in oak parks.

Whoops.




Higher bus ridership will never fix the community on the right pictured below.

Where did I say Schaumburg can urbanize overnight, or that high bus ridership would fix Roselle or any suburb?

I was just talking about how small changes to the designs of new subdivisions can make them more inclusive and better connected to the rest of the region, to make the central city better connected as well, to minimize or even reverse the shift toward cars. Just slowing or stopping the spread of the car culture and shifting development away from greenfields towards infill, from outward growth to upward growth. To dismiss the role of transit in all that is just strange to me, but as I said before that's probably just me. I don't know what else I can say.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL

The Earth's population will be nearly 10 Billion by 2050. There is simply no way that space can be made for an additional 3 billion personal vehicles on the road

Says who? China's massive growth in auto sales over the last 20 years says the global auto industry will easily scale up. And if Western/Japanese/Korean car companies don't want to sell cars to the developing world, then I'm sure Chinese ones will be happy to sell it to them, alongside Chinese air conditioners and refrigerators and the other conveniences expected in the developed world.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by mhays

Car ownership and frequent use are two different things. It's common for urban residents to have cars but only use them to leave town or carry loads.

Yes, I understand the difference between car ownership and auto-dependency. Hence why I brought up NYC in the first place.

The numbers are telling. Even if used sparingly (a point that only helps to cement my argument), the benefits (comfort, convenience) of a private auto are clearly worth the costs (gas, insurance, maintenance, storage) in the minds of many urban residents to the tune of a near 50/50 split for one-person households in Chicago, Philly, Boston, and DC. SF fares a little better because single residents tend to live in the denser northeast quadrant of the city, but the rest of the city is largely SFH—most with a garage, many with a driveway.

Originally Posted by homebucket

Good point. Percent that commute by public transit or walking vs private automobile is a better indicator of how auto centric an area is, not car ownership.

Only I wasn’t making any sort of argument about auto-centricity. Re-read what I wrote, think about it, and then try and counter it.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL

i was just responding to your contention that "private automobiles, public transit, pedestrians, and bicyclists can co-exist." even now, private autos coexist like shit, as is evidenced by the disproportionate amount of space they devour, the amount of environmental damage they inflict, and the number people they murder every year—not to mentioned the adverse health effects that we're only beginning to acknowledge.

So NYC, with its 45% car ownership rate (I’m not factoring in number of vehicles owned or miles driven), extensive subway system that moves 5.6 million people each weekday (pre-COVID), and the millions of feet that touch ground and move about Manhattan chaotically every day isn’t proof that “private automobiles, public transit, pedestrians, and bicyclists can co-exist” in a dense, urban city?

my point is that, as the population keeps growing, it's complete insanity to think that every human being can drive around in (or even just store somewhere) a personal, resource guzzling tank that demands 20 people's worth space covered in concrete.

That’s a quite a leap. I’m not sure where you got the impression that this was subtext.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Quixote

The war against cars is a "losing battle" in the sense that even Brooklyn, which if taken as a separate city would be considered far and away the second most urban in US/Canada, has a car ownership rate of 44% even though 85% of its geography has very good to great Subway coverage. In other words, not nearly as many households need to own cars, yet they do so anyway out of choice for various reasons. Rich brownstone Brooklynites with kids (I think you're among that crowd?) are a total minority; Orthodox neighborhoods like Borough Park (communities that are purposefully insular and self-contained) have a dense cluster of synagogues and yeshivas within walking distance, and driving is forbidden on Sabbath anyway.

I don't quite agree here re: Brooklyn. A lot of Brooklyn is very transit friendly, BUT a significant amount of Brooklyn isn't that transit friendly. The darker shaded areas from the map in central and southern Brooklyn are neighborhoods packed with SFHs and duplexes, where public transit is mostly in the form of buses. The neighborhoods in north Brooklyn with lower car ownership have way more transit options (bus, subway, LIRR, water taxis).

In many central and south Brooklyn neighborhoods, it is fairly typical to have at least one car per household, and sometimes more than one. These areas are more similar to Queens than they are to north Brooklyn, hence why the auto ownership percentages look similar.

[jd3189]

I agree with Quixote. I lived in New York as a kid, and despite the fact that my family could literally walk around to any corner store, laundromat, park, subway station, etc, we still had a car parked on the side street and we still mainly drove to school, work, daycare, church, etc. We didn't have to have a car, but we had one out of choice.

The automobile is an American phenomenon in terms of how it has influenced not only our cities but the public conscious. It goes beyond the government conspiracy to support suburban development in the mid 20th century.

People love cars. They love the independence and freedom it gives them to explore, the diverse makes and models they can choose from, etc.

Yes, motor vehicle accidents happen that lead to the deaths of many a year. Cars also take a lot to maintain ( depending on what make you choose), and insurance is no joke. But if you are
responsible, financially stable, and desire it, you might buy a car.

Personally, I do think cities should build more for pedestrians, cyclists, and public transportation rather than only for automobiles. But I also think cars can coexist with other modes of transportation. It's already like that in NYC, SF, Chicago, and possibly London, Paris, and other large global cities.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Quixote

So NYC, with its 45% car ownership rate (I’m not factoring in number of vehicles owned or miles driven), extensive subway system that moves 5.6 million people each weekday (pre-COVID), and the millions of feet that touch ground and move about Manhattan chaotically every day isn’t proof that “private automobiles, public transit, pedestrians, and bicyclists can co-exist” in a dense, urban city?

Autocentricity destroys urban form. Yes, many transit-oriented cities still have a large share of auto ownership, especially in wealthy first world nations, but private cars are a cancer on the urban environment, even in places like Paris.

So I think it's more accurate to say that cities with fantastic transit coverage and urban form are more likely to survive the cancer of autocentricity than those cities built during the auto age. It isn't "coexistence" any more than crime or blight is "coexisting" with urbanity.

NYC has an absolute shit-ton of prewar urbanity and pre-auto transit infrastructure, on both measures probably more than anywhere on the planet. So its urban form was better able to survive the Robert Moses nightmare, simply because there's so much of it, not because autocentricty is compatible with urban living.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Quixote

The numbers are telling. Even if used sparingly (a point that only helps to cement my argument), the benefits (comfort, convenience) of a private auto are clearly worth the costs (gas, insurance, maintenance, storage) in the minds of many urban residents to the tune of a near 50/50 split for one-person households in Chicago, Philly, Boston, and DC. SF fares a little better because single residents tend to live in the denser northeast quadrant of the city, but the rest of the city is largely SFH—most with a garage, many with a driveway.

This cost-benefit analysis isn't factoring in the autocentric decisions that lead to people owning vehicles.

For example, Chicago has, for North American standards, excellent transit and urban form. If you live in the pre-auto parts, there's no need to own a car. But Chicago has (or had) minimum 1:1 apartment to parking space rules, meaning that a 200 unit building will have at minimum 200 parking spaces. So a single person with a downtown apartment can easily keep a car in a covered, dry space just an elevator ride away. Then if that person wants to go to Target or Whole Foods, there will be free, convenient parking, right in the urban core.

That isn't "choice", it's public policy dictating some degree of autocentricity. Mobility decisions are hugely impacted by public policy. That single urbanite has a car because public policy has made it convenient, and the external costs of that public policy are paid by all, whether or not they own a vehicle.

[the urban politician]

^ Luckily those requirements changed years ago with TOD zoning.

For years now, new buildings have been built around the city at far below 1:1 parking ratios, sometimes with no parking at all.

But yes, it would be nice if those requirements went away entirely, instead of in just transit served locations.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I don't quite agree here re: Brooklyn. A lot of Brooklyn is very transit friendly, BUT a significant amount of Brooklyn isn't that transit friendly. The darker shaded areas from the map in central and southern Brooklyn are neighborhoods packed with SFHs and duplexes, where public transit is mostly in the form of buses. The neighborhoods in north Brooklyn with lower car ownership have way more transit options (bus, subway, LIRR, water taxis).

In many central and south Brooklyn neighborhoods, it is fairly typical to have at least one car per household, and sometimes more than one. These areas are more similar to Queens than they are to north Brooklyn, hence why the auto ownership percentages look similar.

Bensonhurst, which I think is a good microcosm of Brooklyn in terms of urban form, has very good Subway coverage; I can’t find an address that is beyond a 0.6-mile walk from a station. Its Subway coverage is similar to Bushwick, but Bushwick has a lower car ownership rate. Bensonhurst, however, has better Subway services with the D, N, F, and F express trains providing a one-seat ride into more of the “meat” of Manhattan.

The easternmost section of Brooklyn—particularly the area bounded by Rockaway, Jamaica, Linden, and the Queens border—has greater station density than both Bensonhurst and Bushwick, yet has 40-60% car ownership. This is contrary to your point about the correlation between level of transit service and level of car ownership. What I see in a place like Bensonhurst (although they exist in many other parts of the borough) are post-war duplexes with sloping driveways and older detached SFHs that have had their front yard/courtyard modified to accommodate a vehicle, which clearly signal a desire for private automobiles in spite of: 1) there being plenty of quality transit service nearby, and 2) the neighborhood not being originally designed for that many automobiles.

We can only speculate about the reasoning behind these people wanting to own an automobile, what they use it for, and how often they use it. All three are immaterial to my original premise: Americans want to own car(s) even in places where they aren’t needed and are willing to jump through hoops to do so because they fulfill a certain need/desire/preference that total car-freedom doesn’t afford. The numbers, anecdotal evidence, and common sense bear this out.

[Crawford]

Bushwick is much more urban and transit-oriented than Bensonhurst. And Bensonhurst is far from "average" Brooklyn, it's one of the least dense/urban areas.

Bushwick is basically an eastern extension of Williamsburg. It's a traditional working class tenement and factory neighborhood. In contrast Bensonhurst was mostly developed right before WW2 and is semi-suburban in parts.

Also, Bensonhurst has lots of elderly white ethnics who are less likely to be regular transit riders, while Bushwick has lots of Hispanics and hipsters, who are more likely to be regular transit users.

I don't see how Bensonhurst has better rail coverage. Bushwick has two lines, the L, and the JMZ, both obviously closer to Manhattan. Bensonhurst has the D and N. The F doesn't serve Bensonhurst. The L is one of the busiest/highest frequency lines in the entire system. And the N barely serves Bensonhurst, in the Orthodox part, where they have their own transit.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Quixote

Bensonhurst, which I think is a good microcosm of Brooklyn in terms of urban form, has very good Subway coverage; I can’t find an address that is beyond a 0.6-mile walk from a station. Its Subway coverage is similar to Bushwick, but Bushwick has a lower car ownership rate. Bensonhurst, however, has better Subway services with the D, N, F, and F express trains providing a one-seat ride into more of the “meat” of Manhattan.

The easternmost section of Brooklyn—particularly the area bounded by Rockaway, Jamaica, Linden, and the Queens border—has greater station density than both Bensonhurst and Bushwick, yet has 40-60% car ownership. This is contrary to your point about the correlation between level of transit service and level of car ownership. What I see in a place like Bensonhurst (although they exist in many other parts of the borough) are post-war duplexes with sloping driveways and older detached SFHs that have had their front yard/courtyard modified to accommodate a vehicle, which clearly signal a desire for private automobiles in spite of: 1) there being plenty of quality transit service nearby, and 2) the neighborhood not being originally designed for that many automobiles.

Bushwick definitely has way better subway/train coverage than Bensonhurst. There are three distinct routes through the neighborhood, and the A/C line also stops closer to the eastern of the neighborhood at Broadway Junction.

We can only speculate about the reasoning behind these people wanting to own an automobile, what they use it for, and how often they use it. All three are immaterial to my original premise: Americans want to own car(s) even in places where they aren’t needed and are willing to jump through hoops to do so because they fulfill a certain need/desire/preference that total car-freedom doesn’t afford. The numbers, anecdotal evidence, and common sense bear this out.

I don't think your premise is accurate. The only reason people own cars is to make their lives easier. If a car doesn't somehow make a person's life easier, they will not own a car. It's just that simple. The people who own cars in south Brooklyn do so because it makes their lives easier. The people who do not own cars in north Brooklyn don't because cars won't make their lives easier. This point is emphasized by the fact that the north Brooklyn neighborhoods are generally wealthier than the south Brooklyn neighborhoods.