Abundance Starts with Mobility
abstraction.substack.comGlad to see practical suggestions that don't call for building new rail lines.
Pricing road use appropriately (which includes everything including: congestion pricing, parking rates, tag violations, automated red light cameras, citizen reports, and tag violations) would go a long way.
Thanks for the feedback! I'll try to add something about automated cameras and tag violations (which I didn't address) in my next deep dive.
Even if every housing reform went into effect tomorrow, construction timelines mean it could be years before we see meaningful improvements in affordability or availability. To improve quality of life and opportunity in the near term, we need high-leverage, low-friction interventions that reshape how people live and move right now.
Mobility is the highest leverage near-term option we have.
Interesting to see NYC public transport compared in a less favorable light to the San Francisco where BART can be a nightmare and busses are not a reasonable way to get around. I guess the abundance grass is always greener…
As someone who rode BART for decades, and who just completed an easy, pleasant, and affordable trip via BART and bus from the East Bay to Golden Gate Park, the idea that BART and buses are not a reasonable way to get to and around SF seems just wrong. Are they perfect? Definitely not. Are they better than trying to drive to and in the city, for riders and for everyone else trying to enjoy city life? Hard yes from me.
Completely agree- the coverage of MUNI + BART is actually pretty good (with some notable exceptions) and in my experience (ymmv obviously) less stressful than driving and seeking parking.
The idea was not that San Francisco does everything perfectly, but instead that there are things they've tried that have been demonstrated to be successful we can learn from in NYC.
Prioritize trees over roads
So the solution to increase mobility is… to make it less practical for people to have cars, ie, to be mobile. Aha aha.
I actually own a car in NYC and think these would make things more practical. I would happily trade time spent looking for parking for a minor fee and would happily trade time spent in traffic for a toll.
Sounds like you would trade convenience for a reduction of freedom for the young and the poor.
I see these changes as expanding freedom, not reducing it. Car ownership costs thousands annually, which many young and low-income New Yorkers can't afford. Improving buses, creating safe bike lanes, and making parking more efficient gives everyone more affordable transportation choices. From my perspective, the current system restricts freedom, which excludes precisely the young and less affluent.
The young and poor in NYC do not own cars because it's too expensive to do so.
Do not act like cars are the only way for transport. Less cars means more modes of transport. More options means mobility. Cars and their parking and road infra exceed at providing ON DEMAND transportation. Beyond that their storage and use and prioritization makes other modes of transportation less able. - So its the other way around. Less cars, more mobility
In car-choked cities the average car speed taking into account congestion may be lower than walking or cycling. So less of them will increase mobility for sure, both for those in cars and those using other tranportation means.
Good point. For me the issue is the variance which governs the time that I have to leave. For the subway, if I give myself a 10 minute margin beyond the median time, I'm quite likely to be on time, for walking or biking if I give myself a 5 minute margin, I'll almost certainly be on time. For driving on the other hand... as per the article, a trip with a median travel time of 17 minutes can take me over an hour when traffic backs up.
Paradoxically yes.
Cars are truly one of the worst possible options when compared against most other forms of inter-city transit.
A car is a great tool when you need to haul a large amount of things over a very long distance (100+ miles). Or you need to go more than ~30 miles in a day (while the US average is above this, most metros are far below).
It's absolutely asinine to think that a car is the right tool for things like simple trips to stores, day to day errands, work commutes, or any other intercity activity.
Those should all be easy and convenient with safe, low cost solutions for all people in a metro, and cars have - again and again - utterly failed at that. They're slow, expensive, unusable by children and the elderly. They actively make the area worse with parking requirements that often emphasize sprawl over density (that parking lot could be housing...). They pollute at an incredible rate and are a leading cause of death.
Wanting a car is fine. Wanting to always drive a car in a dense urban area is fucking dumb.
The lack of understanding in your comment seems pretty intentional.