Uber data reveals motoring slower than walking in many cities

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/05/22/uber-data-reveals-motoring-slower-than-walking-in-many-cities/

by liotier • 7 years ago

270 259 7 years ago

forbes.com

amelius3• 7 years ago

Perhaps we should ban cars from cities altogether.

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/madrid-spain-...

dTal5• 7 years ago

If they're not even faster than walking, what of value would be lost?

catherd• 7 years ago

Arriving to your destination not wet/frozen/soaked in sweat? Or with your luggage... through an area dangerous for walking... to a destination you aren't familiar with... because you are old or infirm.

ben0x539• 7 years ago

Transportation for people who can't walk for whatever reason, also sometimes you gotta transport stuff too bulky to carry.

mrob• 7 years ago

Transport of heavy or bulky items. Although in many cases a bicycle with panniers would be sufficient.

swarnie_• 7 years ago

I prefer to attend my meeting not dripping in sweat from hiking across the city, call me old fashioned.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 7 years ago

There are certain reasons cars are needed: goods transport and people with disabilities for example. I wonder if you could do a general ban with enough exceptions to be okay.

There's be a fraud problem though, and it could make it difficult for disabled people in practice (they may not be able to easily get the right badge, or be believed when they do, they wouldn't be able to benefit from car infrastructure…)

perfunctory• 7 years ago

There's be a fraud problem though

That's a non-argument. You could say that about any regulation. I assume regulating transport for disabled people isn't that hard cause we already have system in place that deals with disabilities.

bunderbunder2• 7 years ago

I'm really fond of the areas I've been where the only cars allowed on many streets are things like delivery and service vehicles.

I would expect that that kind of environment is actually a net improvement to accessibility for people with disabilities. It's probably quite annoying for people who use wheelchairs to get around a lot of places without a car, simply because the sidewalks are so frequently blocked off by people who've parked their cars across the sidewalk. There's one man in my neighborhood who frequently has to go out in the street to get around those sorts of obstructions, and is then stuck out in the middle of the road until he can get to the next wheelchair ramp in order to get back on the sidewalk. Limiting private car usage would admittedly only remove a portion of the sources of obstruction, but it would get rid of essentially all of the safety hazard that he has to take on in order to get around them.

And, especially now that cars are going electric and getting quieter and quieter, I would guess that restricting unnecessary car usage could be a big boon for blind people who want to be able to leave the house without a chaperone. I had one acquaintance who would essentially Uber everywhere - at great expense to herself - because she just didn't feel safe even trying to cross the street.

(Heck, I'm sighted, and sometimes _I_ don't feel safe trying to cross the street, especially later in the evening when a sizable portion of drivers are intoxicated and really are not watching for pedestrians.)

rockinghigh• 7 years ago

Many cities in Europe have successfully banned cars in core downtown areas. You can adapt curbs, street crossings, and buses to work for people with disabilities.

asdff12• 7 years ago

In the U.S. priority parking is already given to people with disabilities, so the exception already exists and would just need to be extended. People using grandmas hangtag does happen but it's not all that common (and cities could always issue huge tickets for violators to deter bad behavior).

randyrand• 7 years ago

Even for disabled people cars are not a strict requirement. You could build a smaller vehicle that goes walking speed specifically for transporting the disabled & severely disabled.

Able bodied people in wheelchairs are the easy case - just pave the roads with enough smooth transitions.

zeristor2• 7 years ago

Don’t forget how much space is taken up by car parks

ryanmercer7• 7 years ago

As someone that will only have taken his car away from him by prying the keys out of his cold dead hands, car parks really are a sad sad thing, all of that acreage wasted on tarmac that could be community gardens or even just pleasing green grass and local wildflowers.

reallydontask4• 7 years ago

I might have this wrong but I think it's not a ban but a restriction on driving and only in the centre of the city. IIRC, so called zero emission vehicles can still drive around unrestricted, to give, but one example.

vetinari2• 7 years ago

I would love to see proponents of such bans trying to explain to a random plumber, gas-fitter, electrician, floor tiler, carpenter or other craftsmen, that they cannot use a car to bring in the material and tools they need to do a work with, that the customer is ordering.

Ideally, when the customer and the person doing the explaining is the same person.

Same for gods delivery. You bought a new freezer, washer or other heavy gods? You can pick it in the store in the fringes. No deliveries into the city, you need cars for that.

imtringued• 7 years ago

Generally a ban on cars only applies to cars owned by private citizens. Often the ban also only applies to parking. Your comment is pretty shallow.

notauser• 7 years ago

My builder bought goods in 100kg at a time by cargo bike from a local aggregation point.

The only things which couldn't be delivered this way were joists, which came by a small electric lorry.

dcosson• 7 years ago

On this topic I am always surprised to notice, walking around downtown SF on a weekday that literally every single parking space is taken up by a work truck, like a contractor, repair person, plumbers, etc.

That’s pretty crazy when you stop to think about it. The space isn’t actively being used all day, I’m guessing these folks just know the right time to get there early after street cleaning to get a spot they can sit in all day because it’s cheap. Is there really no better use for this public space on some of the most expensive land in the world? Surely they could unload their equipment and then go park in a garage around the corner.

So to your broader point, yes obviously there needs to be some way to get heavy equipment, furniture, etc into cities. But there’s no reason it needs to be the extreme it is today, with so much priority given to private cars and parking.

asdff12• 7 years ago

Commercial license for your work van? Even if only work trucks and delivery vehicles were allowed that would be a huge reduction in congestion.

dTal5• 7 years ago

Uber’s Speeds dataset also shows that exceeding the speed limit on some roads is endemic, but the company says its data is anonymized and cannot be used to track–and sanction–individual speeding drivers.

Yeah, bullshit. Maybe that's true of this particular "anonymized" dataset, but Uber did the anonymizing. They absolutely have the data to track and sanction speeding drivers. They just don't care to. Why would they?

kaicianflone• 7 years ago

I believe it could open their business to legal subpoenas. Perhaps obfuscating this data in the first place would protect them, as then they can't be forced to program it in.

Or it gets passengers to their destination faster and they can charge less. Lol

jon-wood2• 7 years ago

Their driver app shows your current speed, and pops up a warning when you exceed the posted limit for the road you're on. Are they seriously trying to tell us they couldn't fire off an API call to report the driver is over the limit at the same time?

Nasrudith• 7 years ago

There is a difference between can and should.

Would you want your car to do so completely insensitive to current contexts? Especially if the road data winds up inaccurate in areas. I have had several GPSes tell me that I was "speeding" by going the 45 MPH because it thought it was a 25 road.

There is an expectation of servicing the user - if they did that they would be called Orwellian and lose drivers enmasse. It would also fail to address speeding in general as they would speed without tracking then.

2T1Qka0rEiPr• 7 years ago

My (completely anecdotal) experience of London, was that having a car anywhere near the city center was close to pointless, as you could easily outpace it on a bike. It's also nice to see a gradual shift towards making the city public-transport- and bike- friendly (e.g. super-highways, but also ultra-low emission zones), but there's a lot more to be done!

cbzoiav2• 7 years ago

Rain, luggage, bike theft, having a driver so you can work from the back etc.

Also depends on time of day. In the early hours a car is definitely faster than a bike in 95% of the city.

garethrees• 7 years ago

This is a well-known principle of urban transport. If driving is faster than the alternative transport mode (whether that's public transport, if any, or walking), then at the margins people will switch to driving, but that means more traffic on the road, more congestion, and slower driving speeds. Conversely, if driving is slower than the alternative, then at the margins people will switch away from driving, reducing traffic and increasing driving speeds. So in places where road space is the bottleneck, we expect driving speed to be similar to the speed of the alternative mode. In central London, for example, travel speed has been roughly the same whether you drive or take the Underground, for more than a century.

Update since some commenters seem to be having trouble: this process depends on the travellers "at the margin", that is, the people who are most willing to switch modes to reduce their journey time. Thinking in terms of the average or typical traveller is misleading.

agumonkey2• 7 years ago

jevons paradox ?

neaanopri• 7 years ago

This doesn't mean driving is useless. Cars are generally air conditioned, and have a greater capacity to carry luggage than walking.

...so cars should this be _slower_ than cars, given these benefits

dannyw2• 7 years ago

On the other hand, there’s no need to find and pay for parking, and you can be drunk and take public transport.

zulln• 7 years ago

Driving cost more and then you have the parking problem. There are ups and downs to both alternatives.

pergadad• 7 years ago

The average commuter won't carry huge luggage around. But they might spend the time reading or working out they are sitting in a train/metro compartment. And they exercise when using the bicycle, meaning they will be healthier and have reduced health issues and cost. Bicycles are also much less costly and environmentally friendly, don't pollute, are less likely to have accidents (except with cars), ... But infrastructure is much cheaper and easier to maintain then that for cars. Cars on the other hand block the roads not just for each other, but also for public transport, trucks, emergency vehicles, ... They produce co2 and microparticles, take up valuable space when parked, etc. Overall cars have huge externalities.

So no, cars are not the best means of transport just because you can carry lots of stuff which you usually don't carry...

megablast3• 7 years ago

Cars also have the huge advantage of killing 40,000 every year in the USA. Yeah, go cars.

graeme• 7 years ago

You’re putting your preferences on others. Some people will drive for these benefits. Others prefer fresh air and exercise. Others prefer reading.

A set of people will gravitate to each option. But as OP said, it is people at the margin who help equalize times.

jandrese• 7 years ago

Also, there's an assumption that the car is going from someplace in the city to some other place in the city.

It almost certainly will not be faster to bike from a suburb 20 miles out of the city into the city than it would be to drive.

petra• 7 years ago

// So in places where road space is the bottleneck, we expect driving speed to be similar to the speed of the alternative mode.

Doesn't this mean, that the real "battle" between the public transportation and cars, should be based on a better experience ?

And since driving a car in traffic, everyday, is a negative experience and will stay so until autonomous driving - in theory, we could create the right public experience, that will win over most drivers ?

And so, why haven't we done that ?

rayiner6• 7 years ago

Because it would cost too much. About 90% of commutes are driving, versus 5% for transit (mostly buses). But even though transit accounts for only about 5% or commutes, it accounts for 25% of spending at the federal, state, and local levels (combined): https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/....

The majority of people, quite reasonably, will not pony up even more money for transit until it can actually improve their commutes. And it can’t, for two different reasons. First, it costs us five time as much money to build a unit of rail as it does say Paris (a city where the majority of people don’t drive to work). That kneecaps your ability to increase coverage of the transit network—making it a viable choice for the majority of commuters. Paris has a dense network of subways and commuter stations, which means that people can take a reasonable walk to a transit station. You can’t build a dense network like that if each mile of track costs you five times as much.

Second, our cities don’t look anything like the cities where most people take transit to work. People are catching on to measuring population density of metro regions in weighted terms (calculating the density in a way that shows the density in the places where most people live, rather than using arbitrary administrative lines). Under those measures, places like Paris and Barcelona have metro are densities of 30,000-50,000 people per square mile. Only New York City comes close. San Francisco and LA are at 12,000. DC, Seattle, Portland, etc. are in the 5,000-6,000 range.

Taking both figures together kills you. When you build 10 miles of subway in Barcelona, you might cover 250,000 people (assuming you get people walking from 0.25 miles on either side). And say it costs you $1 billion. In DC that same 10 miles of subway covers 30,000 people. And it costs you $5 billion.

Oh, there is really a third reason. Because you have to drive everywhere anyway, our job centers in the US are widely dispersed. Google’s main Paris office is in Paris itself. Google’s main Bay Area office is in the suburbs of San Francisco. Google’s main DC area office is in the suburbs of DC. Fixed transit networks are awful for such layouts.

esotericn2• 7 years ago

Private transportation is fundamentally at odds with public transportation as far as I can tell; public transport campaigners just don't "get it".

In cities where public transportation is a huge success, it's because driving is completely impractical due to congestion.

Even a first class compartment on a train is frankly uncomfortable compared to sitting in a car.

An autonomous car or a chauffeured car beats it hands down, because public infrastructure is never going to be as clean or as luxurious as an individual can afford.

I love public transport and I want it to do well because, well, it's ultimately the only thing that's going to scale. But it's just not acceptable to say "oh well the train is warm and smelly, deal with it". Unless it's a cause that really matters to them, most people who can afford it are going to opt out of that.

_ea1k• 7 years ago

Comments like this make me really wonder if companies like the boring company actually have the right idea, but maybe a slightly wrong implementation. What if the tunnel networks were based on pedestrian traffic rather than vehicle traffic? The tunnels wouldn't have to be exceptionally large, but they could carry a tremendous amount of traffic.

Even better, they would be insulated from the weather, which is by far the worst part of the pedestrian experience in big cities, IMO.

Cars on surface streets are quite probably the worst approach possible from an efficiency standpoint, but they appeal for experience reasons.

SmellyGeekBoy• 7 years ago

I'm not sure this is true in Copenhagen, although I've only visited once and I don't have any data to back me up. There is a huge cycling culture there and it seemed that the bike lanes were often pretty badly jammed up while the car lanes were relatively clear. But perhaps this is more a result of it being impractical to own a car there (eg parking) as opposed to the cost or convenience of operating one.

It would seem to be an outlier so it would be interesting to see some data.

anonymou24• 7 years ago

That was the whole point of bike lanes, get cyclists off the roads and leave these exclusively for motorists. So It seems it has worked pretty well. Generations of cyclists fooled by this, it's so sad.

liotier6• 7 years ago

Why do those cyclists stay on the bicycle lane when it is clogged and other lanes are clear ? Here in Paris, I can't imagine anyone behaving in such submissive manner

gerbilly• 7 years ago

This is called induced 'demand'¹, and it is why I love biking in downtown.

I like to play a game where I pick a distinctive car 3 blocks ahead, and see if I can catch up to it and pass it. If the car does not turn off the road, I almost always do, and by a wide margin.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

asdff12• 7 years ago

I love filtering through traffic on my bike. My favorite hobby while passing cars trapped in traffic is counting how many aren't solo drivers in a given stretch of traffic, excluding work trucks/delivery. Usually it's under 10%. It's fun to imagine how this would look if all these people were on a bike, but 20' x 6' apart like they are currently arranged in these singly occupied cars. Bonkers.

baxtr• 7 years ago

I changed jobs recently and one of the biggest factors for me was being able to bike to work. 6km a trip mostly through parks circumventing traffic as much as I can. It’s an important life quality factor for me.

SketchySeaBeast• 7 years ago

I wonder what percentage of the population could be considered at the margins, as it were - in my city cars very very quickly outpace alternative modes for transportation. I'm lucky to be in a position where transport is the same time as driving, and walking is just the right distance to be enjoyable, but that's incredibly rare.

n4r93• 7 years ago

The data from the article is surprising even after taking this into account, since public transport is generally a lot faster than walking. However, I suspect that people who are driving will normally start and/or finish well outside central London thus making the journey worth it.

I had a play around with some travel times in London on google maps (using the look-ahead function by one day):

Shortish journey (Waterloo to St Pancras)

- Drive: 12-35 mins

- Walk: 46 mins

- PT: 27 mins

Longish journey (Wimbledon to Arsenal)

- Drive: 50-120 mins

- Walk: 4hrs

- PT: 56 mins

heavenlyblue• 7 years ago

Yeah, but you must also consider that there’s literally nowhere to park you car in St Pancras or Waterloo, and consider the fact that central London is incredibly prone to congestion which gives the driving less predictability.

jschwartzi• 7 years ago

I think London and New York will be among the few places this bears out. In Seattle many of my trips double, triple, or even quadruple in time if I try to take public transit. EG driving to the Amazon locker for a pickup takes 10 minutes, or 45 minutes by bus. The bus time is for travel time only, and doesn't include time spent waiting.

And trying to get to my SO's house by bus takes a 15 minute trip up to about an hour and a half of walking and transferring.

JAlexoid8• 7 years ago

If you're comparing walking, driving and public transport, then at least pick realistic scenarios.

Waterloo to St Pancras will never be a 12 minute drive, even at 4AM - that's practically impossible with the amount of traffic lights.

Let's presume that you're a wealthy Lloyds Group banker(City of London office) living in Holland Park area. Your commute is 35-1:30 by car or 27 minutes by public transport.

Or you're not so wealthy Canary Wharf worker living in Southwark - stable 20 minutes for PT and 30 minutes driving.

Balgair• 7 years ago

In central London, for example, travel speed has been roughly the same whether you drive or take the Underground, for more than a century.

Demonstrated humorously by Top Gear here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_POxZSkaU

lutorm• 7 years ago

What ends up being "faster" doesn't just depend on travel speed though. It also depends on startup costs. The startup cost for biking can be higher than a car (if you need to carry the bike out from your apartment) but also the other way (if you need to walk to your parked car and then walk from wherever you find parking to where you're going).

People might also be willing to trade some extra time for less exertion, but this depends heavily on the terrain.

magwa101• 7 years ago

Duh

jpalomaki• 7 years ago

I would love Uber to use this data to propose me options for taking a short walk to cut total travel time.

In some places walking a few hundred meters puts you in a much better position for pick-up. Same thing in destination, propose a location that minimizes total travel time.

blairbeckwith• 7 years ago

Uber sort of does this in some cities with their Express Pool option, where they tack a short walk on to either end of a ride to pick up/drop off you and the other Pool passengers at the same spot.

cbzoiav2• 7 years ago

The number of tourists in London getting the underground distances that are less than the distance down to the train and back up...

megablast3• 7 years ago

Sure, the underground is an experience in itself. And walking around a foreign city can be very confusing for a lot of people.

jasonkester2• 7 years ago

It’s all part of the experience.

I once got off a night bus in Asyut, hailed a cab, hopped in and asked to be taken to the train station. The driver pointed out the window to the giant sign on the building across the street reading “Asyut Railway Station”.

Travel wouldn’t be the same without making silly mistakes like this. It’s where our stories come from.

jasonkester2• 7 years ago

My entry point to Uber is usually google maps, which does show walking time alongside driving, public transport and ride hailing times.

In cities like London, it’s often half an hour for every option, so the decision comes down to whether it’s raining and how well the tube entrances line up.

asdff12• 7 years ago

Uber/lyft routing is screwed for this because all too often drivers heading the wrong way will jump on accepting your ride to beat other drivers. There's been times when I've opened the map, saw dozens of drivers orbiting me like sharks just 1-2 blocks out, yet the driver who accepts my request is the one 5 going on 6 miles away on the highway. Then I have to stand there for 10 minutes while the driver pulls off and turns around then battles through the dozen plus drivers orbiting the neighborhood I'm in.

Skunkleton2• 7 years ago

I'm not personally convinced that the cars shown on the Uber app are 1) available cars, or 2) real cars

lqet6• 7 years ago

We live in a town in Germany with roughly 250.000 inhabitants, but I grew up in a small village. I always get weird looks from relatives when I tell them that we do not own a car. For some of them, not owning a car is literally equivalent to "cannot leave the house", because buses only serve their village every 2 hours or so, and the service stops at around 8pm.

We use car sharing, but only if we have to buy something that really cannot be transported via bike or public transport, like furniture, or for trips to remote places that are very complicated to reach via public transportation. I tried driving to work a few times (~8 km across town), but it takes me roughly 35 minutes by car, compared to 25 minutes by bike, and is much, much more stressful than using my bike. If the weather is very bad, I take the tram. For groceries, we usually walk to the nearest supermarket.

Truth is, at least in Europe, I cannot think of any reason why you should own a car in a town with an average public transportation network and some form of car sharing.

thomasz2• 7 years ago

Getting anywhere outside the immediate vicinity of your home with small children is incredibly exhausting without a car, even in cities with somewhat decent public transit systems

lqet6• 7 years ago

This is true, I forgot to mention that above, and I do not understand why you are being downvoted for this. We have a small daughter and are planning a 300 km trip next month. Long-distance trains here have special apartments for families with small children, but even with that option we decided to use car sharing.

eythian3• 7 years ago

Get a bakfiets.

megablast3• 7 years ago

I always get weird looks from relatives when

There are some people like that everywhere. People who will never walk or cycle or catch PT.

lqet6• 7 years ago

Well, as I have mentioned above, I don't blame them. It makes a huge difference if it takes you 80 minutes on average to the nearest supermarket via PT (because the bus only runs every 2 hours, and takes 20 minutes) or 10 minutes via car. I would definitely opt for a car in their situation.

anthonypasq• 7 years ago

its physically impossible to live a modern life without a car if you dont live in a city

ryanmercer7• 7 years ago

(I assume the massive downvotes are from the people that have never lived in the Midwest and/or have never lived anywhere other than 'downtown' in a major city, or ancient city that was built before locomotion, and are wholly unfamiliar with suburbs)

I cannot think of any reason why you should own a car in a town with an average public transportation network and some form of car sharing.

Because you don't want to waste an hour or more every day standing around waiting on a train/bus? Would like to regularly visit friends and family on the other side of town? Would like to not have to plan your life around transportation schedules?

I could maybe see getting by in Europe, I've one friend in Germany that is quite happy taking the train a half mile or so from his apartment for most stuff but even he still owns a car for getting to work, doing groceries, going to his postal box, bringing home stuff for art, going to the woods etc.

I cannot fathom life without a car. I'd say my closest friend is 10 miles away, two I go to see fairly regularly are 50 miles away. If I want to go see a movie it's 3-20 miles depending on which theater I want to go to, work is about 10~ miles from my apartment with my two gyms between me and work that I'm at 4x a day each and at another a 5th day. All of the performing arts theaters around Indianapolis are downtown, on the east side or north of Indy in Carmel - all of which are a 20-40 minute drive for me probably 15-25 miles.

I can go to these places above in 5-60 minutes in my car, public transportation would require multiple transfers and probably 4-5 hours, with some of them running fairly infrequently, for some of them and a couple of them I simply could not get to with public transportation.

Without a car I'd also have no way to get to the meetinghouse of my Church, or to singles firesides at a meetinghouse on the other side of town.

Without a car in the spring and summer I'd show up to dates, or to hang out with friends, sweaty and smelly. It will be 86F with the humidity reaching a high of 87% today.

Without a car, I couldn't go shooting if I wanted... I can't get on a bus with long arms and a few bricks of ammunition and be like "hey, I know that isn't a stop up there, but can you drop me in front of that range... this stuff is heavy". I couldn't go hunting, I couldn't go fishing, I couldn't go mushroom hunting in the spring, I couldn't go hiking because buses don't go to the woods.

lqet6• 7 years ago

I agree, it may not work everywhere, and this is why I mentioned the precondition of having an average public transportation network and some form of car sharing. You are forgetting that time spent driving is essentially dead time, while you can do all sort of things in a train, and with a bike you get exercise for free. So you cannot compare the travel times directly. For example, my work place is roughly the same distance from our apartment as yours. As I have mentioned, it saves me roughly 10 minutes driving there by bike, and I do not have to go to the gym, because I ride the bike for 20 miles daily.

I'll give you a few other examples:

* If I want to go see a movie in town, I can take the tram (20 minutes, runs every 5 minutes) or the bike (10 minutes), or car sharing (5 minutes walk to nearest station, 10 minute drive, 10 minutes searching for a parking spot in a garage, 10 minutes walking from said garage to the cinema.)

* If I want to visit my parents, it is a 2.5h car drive or a 3.5h tram/train/bus ride with 3 changes. Time lost in car: 2.5 hours. Time lost with PT: at most 30 minutes waiting at stations, the 3 hours in the train can be used for reading or working.

* If we want to visit the parents of my wife, it is a 50 minute car drive or a 80 minutes tram/train/bus ride. Time lost on car: 50 minutes, time lost with PT: roughly 10 minutes.

* If I want to visit someone in a remote village, or take a leisure trip to some remote place, or go hikin, I walk 5 minutes to the nearest car sharing station and take a car from there.

FabHK2• 7 years ago

Because you don't want to waste an hour or more every day standing around waiting on a train/bus?

In the train (or while waiting for the train) I can read, listen to a podcast or audiobook (with full concentration and no interruption), eat, and even work. That is not a waste of time for me.

Driving, now that is a waste of time.

swish_bob• 7 years ago

I think you're misunderstanding the phrase "in a town with an average public transportation network". It's quite clear you don't live in such a place ...

JAlexoid8• 7 years ago

Owning a car and without a car is not a synonym.

An efficient car sharing infrastructure can easily alleviate the need for the odd drive.

Living in rural area - you need a vehicle and a gun. That's true for people in Europe as well as in US.

The problem with midwest, is that sprawling poorly connected suburbia was a form of social engineering. Most old world cities have grown organically, not with someone's "grand design" in mind. Thus - in US, outside of NYC, you don't have an option to not own a car.

FabHK2• 7 years ago

I've only owned a car for 3 years or so when living in California. For my other locations (university towns in Germany and UK, capital cities in Europe and Asia) there is really no need. (Maybe different if you have kids.)

C1sc0cat2• 7 years ago

Which is fine if you can afford to live there.

0x50022• 7 years ago

It's always fascinating how people here generalize an entire continent's major cities by anecdotal evidence from one city. This can also be observed by comments from people clearly living in SV or NYC - none of those apply to suburb-dwelling me in the South.

I used to live in a ~350k city in Germany. It has public transport - given the college in town, probably also one of "average" quality. Unless you live very close to a tram, you are bound to use a bus which will get you into the city center (~3 mi, 10 min by car), which was scheduled every 30 mins and took another 30 mins. From there, you might get a train (or another bus!), often times scheduled in such a way that you'd have to wait another 30 or so minutes for it.

For me, getting to see a friend in the next town over (~15mi) would take me 25 mins by car, including traffic, and 1hr to 90mins by public transport. Going to work, a solid hour by car due to really bad traffic, took 90mins to 2 hrs using public transport (~30 miles).

Not to mention common trips that take me from store A to B and back home - every single stop requires you to wait for a bus and often change lines as well.

Don't get me wrong - I'd love more public transport in the US (we have some, but it is horrendous where I live). But even for Europe, saying you don't need a car is a very narrow-minded outlook.

rocgf• 7 years ago

Depends how you define 'need', how much you can afford to spend and what your usual routes are, so I agree that generalizing is not that great, but that goes both ways.

lqet6• 7 years ago

It's always fascinating how people here generalize an entire continent's major cities by anecdotal evidence from one city.

I apologize for my misleading post, my experience is based on living in multiple major and / or university cities in southwestern Germany, 3-10 days visits to smaller and larger towns all across Europe and frequent visits to Switzerland.

But even for Europe, saying you don't need a car is a very narrow-minded outlook.

You seem to confuse me with a no-car evangelist/fundamentalist, because I have never said that. I have merely stated that if you live in a town with some sort of car sharing and an average public transportation system, you do not need to own a car. From what you describe, I would consider the public transportation system in the city you lived in edge-case average for a 350k city, but certainly not optimal. However, a 3 mile distance to the city center (where the train station appears to be) is easily covered by bike.

For me, getting to see a friend in the next town over (~15mi) would take me 25 mins by car, including traffic, and 1hr to 90mins by public transport. Going to work, a solid hour by car due to really bad traffic, took 90mins to 2 hrs using public transport (~30 miles).

I would also choose a car for visits to your friend. But you do not visit you friend daily, so why would you need to own a car for that? Even if you visit him weekly, car sharing might be enough, and less overhead. Your daily commute may indeed be a reason for owning a car. However, if I would have to choose between a 1h car ride to work, or a 90 min PT ride, I would still choose public transportation, for the reasons stated below (you can do stuff on PT).

agumonkey2• 7 years ago

It's obvious with the new trend of electric scooters. Cars, due to traffic and intersections.. are sluggish in cities.

kijin2• 7 years ago

It would be a waste of time and money to take an Uber to get from one end of Trafalgar Square to the other. But if your destination is several miles away and your route just happens to take you through a busy block, driving will still be faster than walking because the car can reach higher speeds in less congested parts of the route.

Many people who drive around in urban centers aren't really trying to get from one part of the urban center to another; they just happen to be in the same car they just drove in from the suburbs. That trip as a whole tends to be much faster than walking, and it takes quite a bit of time to park somewhere other than your destination. So if you're optimizing for speed, it can still be rational to drive all the way to your destination.

ghaff• 7 years ago

That’s true in a lot of places. Do I get in a car to go 5 blocks if I’m already in a city? Of course not barring special circumstances (injury, heavy packages, etc.)

But if I’m driving in from where I live for dinner and theater in the evening, yes I drive, including through congested areas.

Theodores2• 7 years ago

The example of Trafalgar Square is quite comical.

On a bicycle you have options when the traffic is slow, including getting off to walk. But the place would be that densely packed with buses, motorbikes, taxis and actual cars that this was neigh on impossible. If you did walk then you would be waiting for lights, at least by bicycle you have the Highway Code on your side.

Before the top bit of Trafalgar Square was pedestrianised it took 27 lane changes to go from the Whitehall side to the Charing Cross road exit, by bicycle using the bus lane shortcuts.

Even though you could see where you were heading you could emerge from the hell of Trafalgar Square to make it onto easier roads to then see a clock, e.g. Big Ben. Only then would you realise that navigating the square had taken twenty minutes as half an hour had gone by since leaving work.

The other vehicles would take considerably longer. But that is motoring, there is no expectation of forward movement, sitting in traffic spewing fumes and blaming the world for the predicament is par for the course. If you are on a bus you can just dibble with your phone so it doesn't matter. People put up with it.

Wheaties466• 7 years ago

I can tell you i've taken ubers when I could have easily walked. But there are several reasons why my wife and I did not.

Weather/tempature. We live in FL and sometimes walking more than 5 min outside brings you to a full sweat. Conversely you may want it to take an uber because it is way too cold.

clothes - if you're in high heels or a dress you may not want to walk as far.

bartread• 7 years ago

Speed isn't necessarily the reason you take an Uber though. I used to use them a lot more when I worked for a client in London and would have to head back to the railway station after a few days with my suitcase. It wasn't fast, but it did mean I didn't have to drag a suitcase through the London Underground at rush hour (not fun).

If you want to get places fast in London, as the article suggests, you want to be on two wheels. Cycling is probably the best option, but motorcycle or scooter also works well.

bunderbunder2• 7 years ago

Random anecdotes:

When I'm traveling, if I ask the hotel staff to recommend any restaurants "within walking distance", they'll grimace and say there aren't really any, even while Yelp informs me that there are six within a kilometer.

Yesterday I ended up spending about 15 minutes waiting for a bus that was late. Someone else spent about the same amount of time as me waiting on that normal street corner, and then got back off the bus about 5 blocks later. So, that makes ~15 minutes standing around waiting for the bus and $2.25 spent on a fare, in order to save a 5 minute walk. I assume they're at least as able-bodied as I am, because, unlike me, they didn't opt to sit on the bench during the wait.

I just don't think the US has a culture that considers feet to be a valid mode of transportation.

bognition• 7 years ago

I just don't think the US has a culture that considers feet to be a valid mode of transportation.

it almost as if we've had decades of social and political lobbying to get people to walk less and use cars

freehunter2• 7 years ago

I travel a lot for work and hardly ever rent a car, and I'm always appalled by the state of walking in areas around hotels. There may be plenty of restaurants within half a mile, but it's almost impossible to walk to them from your hotel. No sidewalks, no crosswalks, parking lots separated by huge ditches. I've actually ordered Uber Eats from a place less than half a mile away because there was no safe way to walk there.

And right now we're fighting a battle in my hometown (small town) where the city and a developer wants a hotel downtown and a group of citizens are fighting that it should be 5 miles away out by the freeway where there is nothing to do and you would have to drive everywhere. For some reason people actively and loudly enjoy not being able to walk from store to store.

dwild2• 7 years ago

So, that makes ~15 minutes standing around waiting for the bus and $2.25 spent on a fare, in order to save a 5 minute walk.

I did something similar the other day, and it wasn't because I was lazy. There's 2 key points that you miss, the existence of monthly bus pass and the fact that the bus was late. If you are close to a bus stop, and the bus is going to be there on time, you could save some time. Let say it takes 5 minutes in bus and 10 to walk, if he is in time, you saved 5 minutes, if he is 5 minutes late, you lost nothing, but if he is 10 minutes late, well, you just lost 5 minutes. The thing is, that's always true at any given point. After waiting 5 minutes, the same rules apply because you still have the 10 minutes walk.

In the end, I started walking about nearly 10 minutes later. I should have done it before because there was others stop on the way (and could have taken the bus at theses stops instead) but I neglected that. I did the right choice by about 30 seconds though, because I reached my final stop just before the bus. It was a 7 minutes walk.

mikestew• 7 years ago

I just don't think the US has a culture that considers feet to be a valid mode of transportation.

In some cases, I've found that to literally be true. I used to live a few miles from a large suburban mall (well, Castleton Square Mall is/was technically within the city limits of Indianapolis). I decided to walk to the mall one day, what the hell, good exercise. There were no crosswalks or signals to cross either the N/S nor E/W roads. No sidewalks. I recall no bike racks once you got there. It was as if (and I imagine literally true) there was no consideration given to any other means of transportation but a car. Other examples abound, but that one particularly stands out in my mind.

JAlexoid8• 7 years ago

The irony of motorists' outrage on small towns banning car parking in the city and creating pedestrian only zones, is that they don't produce enough economic activity to let them park.

There's a reason why the most coveted retail real estate is in pedestrian accessible areas... not parking only strip malls.

hellllllllooo• 7 years ago

The number of times I've seen people in the US wait for their Uber/Lyft to pick them up exactly where they are instead of crossing a road that would make it easier and faster for the driver astounds me.

People here seem to optimize for low effort more than their time. Same reason why people stand on escalators. If they cared about time they'd walk up it.

tyfon2• 7 years ago

I was at Isla Mujeres (island outside of Cancun, Mexico) a couple years ago and I was walking from the dock to the hotel with my baggage when an American stopped on a golf cart of sorts (they were all over the place) and asked if I wanted a ride. I said "thank you, but I'm Norwegian, we walk". The man looked at me for a few seconds then barked "Well I'm American!", then drove off and we both laughed.

The feet are superior everywhere except highways, especially if you are not known in the area and need to get familiar.

I also enjoy walking, when I am at home I take 1-2 hour walking trips in the forest by the house while listening to audio books almost every day.

Since I currently live in the countryside I need a car for large item transportation and things like that, but I have never owned one when living in a city.

radcon2• 7 years ago

I said "thank you, but I'm Norwegian, we walk". The man looked at me for a few seconds then barked "Well I'm American!", then drove off and we both laughed.

What a clever, considerate American, making use of energy-efficient transportation and stopping to offer rides to strangers along the way!

The feet are superior everywhere except highways

Try walking to work in business attire on a few 100 degree (38C) days and then tell me how you feel about that...

tyfon2• 7 years ago

What a clever, considerate American, making use of energy-efficient transportation and stopping to offer rides to strangers along the way!

Yes, he was really nice. Americans usually are from my experience :)

Try walking to work in business attire on a few 100 degree (38C) days and then tell me how you feel about that...

I'll concede to this point. I don't have to wear that kind of outfit very often and the temperatures here rarely reach that high luckily.

S_A_P• 7 years ago

Context here matters. I would uber if I were in work clothes, and its Houston in August in the afternoon. Im not trying to walk 15 minutes and arrive drenched in sweat to a work meeting.

ativzzz2• 7 years ago

This should say "many European cities". This is certainly not true anywhere in Texas, and probably not anywhere else in the U.S.

asdff12• 7 years ago

I beat cars all the time on my bike and I'm in the midwest; I go 12-15mph while traffic goes maybe half that averaging for the lights. Splitting lanes means you go the same speed regardless of traffic and therefore I'm always at the front of the intersection at a red and the first to move on green, while that car I passed 200 yards ago has to sit through another light cycle.

ativzzz2• 7 years ago

Title says walking, not biking. In addition, cycling and walking are becoming less safe in the U.S.[1]. Also, enjoy your 20+ mile bike commute in the summers down here in Texas.

[1] https://www.civilbeat.org/2019/03/us-cities-are-becoming-mor...

andy_ppp• 7 years ago

* On very specific routes in high congestion parts of the city. The article and headline reads as if the data says walking is faster - for 99% of journeys this isn't true!

We really need better journalism than using statistics to make up lies to get clicks...

dwild2• 7 years ago

There's a subway station 20 minutes away from my work that I take from time to time when I want to go to a specific movie theater. There's a bus that go pretty directly, without much stop, but during rush hour, it takes at least 5 minutes less to walk.

sneak• 7 years ago

Less sweaty, though.

korethr2• 7 years ago

When I click on the link, I get a 404. That's not the usual response to the hug of death. Anyone have an alternate link?

Asmod4n• 7 years ago

I know I shouldn’t post this here, but the only reason I got a car and stopped using public transport are ppl who don’t stay home when they have the flu. I’ve been sick 2 months each winter because of it, with flu shots. Aren’t their ACs which can filter that out?

quickthrower2• 7 years ago

It's a good point, and one of my bugbears of getting on a crowded rush hour Sydney bus or train. Geez the amount of sneezing. That said Sydney generally has journeys that are way to expensive by car (you need to park) so public transport is the only option and conversely journeys that are epic by public transport but quite quick by car. There rarely feels like there is a "hmm what do I fancy today" kind of choice.

Uber data reveals motoring slower than walking in many cities

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