My daily commute is Metro bus/rail. Sometimes, during daylight saving time, I bike home. I also bike/walk for small errands.
I'm now dealing with our second car needing a lot of work. It's got some minor leaks, a bad alternator, needs a new strut, etc. That's a lot of financial friction for a car I might drive on 3 days of the week. Had I been driving to work, this would have come up much sooner.
I don't know how many suburbanites would think of a car getting old as friction, but it's pretty significant for me right now.
Interesting. Good point. It is, of course, but I think we probably don't see it as a choice. I've always thought of finding a problem with the car as kind of like waking up with a cold. Just a thing that happens. (And of course costs a lot more unless you're really sick!) But unless you understand yourself to be choosing to own a car over other viable options, you don't really see the friction of the car as avoidable, I think.
For me, it was a choice because I was able to move to a part of Alexandria with transit access and a good walk score. It was pretty intentional, I wanted those things and was thankfully in a position to afford it, though that's an ongoing challenge.
Where I grew up in Vienna, I wouldn't have transit access. Sure, I could bike or drive to a Metro station, but that'd be 15 minutes each way which is hard to do when then have more commuting. I certainly wouldn't have been doing that on a morning like today in all likelihood.
The less I use a car, the more I hate it when I have to, because they are so expensive. I feel like I was spending $1,200 in repairs annually for something I was driving less than 5,000 miles a year. Of course, that's much cheaper than a monthly car payment...
We could also make it easier for suburbanites to get the most that cities have to offer without the hassle of actually driving in, finding and paying for parking and so on.
I often wonder why more cities don't offer park and ride places on the perimeter of the city with easy and regular shuttles into the city center, especially during big events.
If more people could do this during major sporting and other events in my city, it could keep the central downtown less cluttered with cars and a less frustrating experience for drivers and pedestrians alike.
because suburbanites don't want Park and Ride. They want to take their cars right into the city center. Park and Rides are just another level of friction.
Major East Coast cities have this to varying degrees. DC has Metro. NYC has NJ Transit, Metro North, etc. Philly has SEPTA. Boston has the T. Even Baltimore has a Metro line and a couple of light rails.
The Metro is great, because it goes fairly far out and also runs very frequently. NJ Transit is a little tougher because it's more for commuters (I grew up near an NJ Transit station about an hour from Manhattan, you could commute but you couldn't just go hop on the train in and out without planning, like you can with Metro.)
"Ditch your car and don't bother with annoying city driving" is probably a stronger selling point than "public transit is good and you should support it."
"Cities require more work than suburbia—more planning, more wayfinding, more figuring out, more street smarts. Suburbia, in its oceans of free parking at every destination, effectively outsources the planning of the shopper/visitor to everyone else: to property and business owners, and taxpayers."
I don't think cities do require more work than suburbia. Certainly they do if you are planning to drive. But if I don't have access to a car, suburbia is FAR MORE of a hassle compared to the hassles of driving in cities.
"Cities require more work than suburbia." I don't think you can state that like it's an objective truth? Suburbia feels like WAY more work to me because driving a car is harder for me than walking and taking public transit. Other than left turn lanes with left turn signals, I don't feel like suburbia is doing the planning and logistical work for me at all. If it was, it'd be building a subway! I'm vastly more comfortable figuring out a subway route in Tokyo than I am trying to drive somewhere unfamiliar in the next town over from where I live. It's all in what you're used to I guess, it's fascinating that people can see it so differently.
Yeah, you're right. That's just my experience. Trying to decipher an unfamiliar subway map feels like doing algebra to me. My brain just resists it. Driving is pretty much second nature (especially with Google Maps). I've had similar conversations with city friends w/o cars, who feel like suburbia is this remote uncharted land, which is always exactly how big cities felt to me growing up!
I'd say it's all in what you're used to, but I've had decades now to get used to suburbia and I still don't like it :D I think I gave it a fair shot though!
I traveled to Manhattan once or twice a year during the same decade as you (when my sister lived there), only I flew from the west coast and got around by transit and walking (and the occasional taxi). The experience was transformative. When I was considering where to buy my first home, I chose the urban option in my big city (San Diego, later Portland) and have sought to enhance the urban design of the small Oregon city where I now reside. Once you go urban (parallel, not perpendicular - see “101 Things I Learned in Urban Design School”), you never go back.
As a non-driver in my older years, I have to think about this difference. The boundary wasn't quite as sharp in earlier decades. My grandma grew up in NYC, never learned to drive, and never had a washing machine. She was accustomed to taxis and subways and laundry pickups. She spent the last half of her life in Ponca City in a downtown apartment, where she was able to continue NYC living. Taxis were easy enough to call, laundry was picked up, groceries were delivered. Since 1980 most cities of that size surrendered fully to automobiles. No taxis, no deliveries.
My daily commute is Metro bus/rail. Sometimes, during daylight saving time, I bike home. I also bike/walk for small errands.
I'm now dealing with our second car needing a lot of work. It's got some minor leaks, a bad alternator, needs a new strut, etc. That's a lot of financial friction for a car I might drive on 3 days of the week. Had I been driving to work, this would have come up much sooner.
I don't know how many suburbanites would think of a car getting old as friction, but it's pretty significant for me right now.
Interesting. Good point. It is, of course, but I think we probably don't see it as a choice. I've always thought of finding a problem with the car as kind of like waking up with a cold. Just a thing that happens. (And of course costs a lot more unless you're really sick!) But unless you understand yourself to be choosing to own a car over other viable options, you don't really see the friction of the car as avoidable, I think.
I think for many people it's not a choice.
For me, it was a choice because I was able to move to a part of Alexandria with transit access and a good walk score. It was pretty intentional, I wanted those things and was thankfully in a position to afford it, though that's an ongoing challenge.
Where I grew up in Vienna, I wouldn't have transit access. Sure, I could bike or drive to a Metro station, but that'd be 15 minutes each way which is hard to do when then have more commuting. I certainly wouldn't have been doing that on a morning like today in all likelihood.
The less I use a car, the more I hate it when I have to, because they are so expensive. I feel like I was spending $1,200 in repairs annually for something I was driving less than 5,000 miles a year. Of course, that's much cheaper than a monthly car payment...
We could also make it easier for suburbanites to get the most that cities have to offer without the hassle of actually driving in, finding and paying for parking and so on.
I often wonder why more cities don't offer park and ride places on the perimeter of the city with easy and regular shuttles into the city center, especially during big events.
If more people could do this during major sporting and other events in my city, it could keep the central downtown less cluttered with cars and a less frustrating experience for drivers and pedestrians alike.
because suburbanites don't want Park and Ride. They want to take their cars right into the city center. Park and Rides are just another level of friction.
Major East Coast cities have this to varying degrees. DC has Metro. NYC has NJ Transit, Metro North, etc. Philly has SEPTA. Boston has the T. Even Baltimore has a Metro line and a couple of light rails.
The Metro is great, because it goes fairly far out and also runs very frequently. NJ Transit is a little tougher because it's more for commuters (I grew up near an NJ Transit station about an hour from Manhattan, you could commute but you couldn't just go hop on the train in and out without planning, like you can with Metro.)
"Ditch your car and don't bother with annoying city driving" is probably a stronger selling point than "public transit is good and you should support it."
"Cities require more work than suburbia—more planning, more wayfinding, more figuring out, more street smarts. Suburbia, in its oceans of free parking at every destination, effectively outsources the planning of the shopper/visitor to everyone else: to property and business owners, and taxpayers."
I don't think cities do require more work than suburbia. Certainly they do if you are planning to drive. But if I don't have access to a car, suburbia is FAR MORE of a hassle compared to the hassles of driving in cities.
"Cities require more work than suburbia." I don't think you can state that like it's an objective truth? Suburbia feels like WAY more work to me because driving a car is harder for me than walking and taking public transit. Other than left turn lanes with left turn signals, I don't feel like suburbia is doing the planning and logistical work for me at all. If it was, it'd be building a subway! I'm vastly more comfortable figuring out a subway route in Tokyo than I am trying to drive somewhere unfamiliar in the next town over from where I live. It's all in what you're used to I guess, it's fascinating that people can see it so differently.
Yeah, you're right. That's just my experience. Trying to decipher an unfamiliar subway map feels like doing algebra to me. My brain just resists it. Driving is pretty much second nature (especially with Google Maps). I've had similar conversations with city friends w/o cars, who feel like suburbia is this remote uncharted land, which is always exactly how big cities felt to me growing up!
I'd say it's all in what you're used to, but I've had decades now to get used to suburbia and I still don't like it :D I think I gave it a fair shot though!
I traveled to Manhattan once or twice a year during the same decade as you (when my sister lived there), only I flew from the west coast and got around by transit and walking (and the occasional taxi). The experience was transformative. When I was considering where to buy my first home, I chose the urban option in my big city (San Diego, later Portland) and have sought to enhance the urban design of the small Oregon city where I now reside. Once you go urban (parallel, not perpendicular - see “101 Things I Learned in Urban Design School”), you never go back.
As a non-driver in my older years, I have to think about this difference. The boundary wasn't quite as sharp in earlier decades. My grandma grew up in NYC, never learned to drive, and never had a washing machine. She was accustomed to taxis and subways and laundry pickups. She spent the last half of her life in Ponca City in a downtown apartment, where she was able to continue NYC living. Taxis were easy enough to call, laundry was picked up, groceries were delivered. Since 1980 most cities of that size surrendered fully to automobiles. No taxis, no deliveries.