Downtown Freeway Loops

[dave8721]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

When I was going to Charlotte a lot for work I'd see Cam Newton riding his segway back and forth between his apartment and Bank of America stadium.

Lebron James used to bike to Heat games:

[Doady]

Transit can mean the difference between 3 or 4 cars vs. 1 or 2 cars per house. It's not cars or no cars. Choice riders is often defined as drivers leaving their car at home, but whether or not to buy that second or third or fourth car is an important choice too that is often overlooked. But that's the danger when we look at a transit-oriented city as something fundamentally different than a car-oriented city. It is not, as Toronto and its suburbs illustrate well.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by JManc

You can have my heated steering wheel, surround sound and heated leather seats when you when you pry them from my cold dead hands. I love mass transit when I am traveling but doubt I can dealing with it on a daily basis.

You know what's better? Being able to post to SSP on your commute .

[pip]

Originally Posted by JManc

If I lived in Chicago, I would use CTA to go into town to do something fun or on the weekend but for the everyday grind of going to work, I'd have to drive. It's often shorter, less drama and you have your personal space. When I am in the Bay Area, I plan on driving to work but taking BART or VTA to get in to SF or SJ simply because it's a pain in the ass to park and theft is bad there plus you don't save a lot of time.

It really depends on where you live though. When I moved to Chicago I lived in the below area of the image, still do. I brought my car with me to Chicago. Parking is impossible. After never finding street parking I ended up putting my car in a garage 4 blocks from where I live. After a few months of paying for parking, insurance and never using the car I sold it.

If I were to drive to visit a friend there would be no parking, wherever I go there is no parking. If I were to drive to the grocery store the walk to get my car is further away then the grocery store. I worked in downtown and the train was the fastest and by far the cheapest. It my my case it is easier to live without one. Yup I know that most of America is not like this nor most of the Chicago area. But there are places where a car is an inconvenience.


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FNv2xv2W...jpg&name=large

[homebucket]

Originally Posted by pip

It really depends on where you live though. When I moved to Chicago I lived in the below area of the image, still do. I brought my car with me to Chicago. Parking is impossible. After never finding street parking I ended up putting my car in a garage 4 blocks from where I live. After a few months of paying for parking, insurance and never using the car I sold it.

If I were to drive to visit a friend there would be no parking, wherever I go there is no parking. If I were to drive to the grocery store the walk to get my car is further away then the grocery store. I worked in downtown and the train was the fastest and by far the cheapest. It my my case it is easier to live without one. Yup I know that most of America is not like this. But there are places where a car is an inconvenience.

Yeah this scenario is very common in SF as well, where parking is more difficult in neighborhoods than downtown since there are no parking garages, and this is where public transit or biking/walking becomes a vastly superior option.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

You know what's better? Being able to post to SSP on your commute .

Where I work, our work day starts when we board because you can work and same for leaving so there's that. You have the commute but you're on the clock.

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by pip

It really depends on where you live though. When I moved to Chicago I lived in the below area of the image, still do. I brought my car with me to Chicago. Parking is impossible. After never finding street parking I ended up putting my car in a garage 4 blocks from where I live. After a few months of paying for parking, insurance and never using the car I sold it.

If I were to drive to visit a friend there would be no parking, wherever I go there is no parking. If I were to drive to the grocery store the walk to get my car is further away then the grocery store. I worked in downtown and the train was the fastest and by far the cheapest. It my my case it is easier to live without one. Yup I know that most of America is not like this nor most of the Chicago area. But there are places where a car is an inconvenience.


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FNv2xv2W...jpg&name=large

Great shot of the city. Parking in Lakeview is a mixed bag - if the Cubs are in town, forget it, but much of the year, it's not all that difficult, especially east of Halsted or maybe Sheffield. Where I lived, just off Southport/Addison (not in your picture) it wasn't too bad.
Commuting to a normal office job downtown in Chicago, the EL is very easy and a no brainer for most. Where a car comes in handy is if you have kids, i'm not even sure how one survives in the city with kid(s) and no car, unless they have no choice. Just getting kids out the door to daycare is a bitch, I couldn't imagine having to haul them on a bus or train with a stroller or diapers or wipes or whatever other shit school is asking for, forget about summer months, it would be a hard no for me in the winter.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Doady

Transit can mean the difference between 3 or 4 cars vs. 1 or 2 cars per house. It's cars or no cars. Choice riders is often defined as drivers leaving their car at home, but whether or not to buy that second or third or fourth car is an important choice too that is often overlooked. But that's the danger when we look at a transit-oriented city as something fundamentally different than a car-oriented city. It is not, as Toronto and its suburbs illustrate well.

Yes it's very true that there isn't a strict binary between transit oriented cities and car oriented cities with every metro area needing to be placed into one strict category or the other. It's very much a spectrum with some metro areas close to one end or the other with others at various points in between. I'd consider Toronto to be very much in the middle. Probably more on the transit side just in the context of NA, while being more on the car side in the context of the world.

[Doady]

Oops, I meant to say it's not about car vs. no cars, but I forgot the "not". But Nouvellecosse still understood my meaning. Thanks for that. Hopefully no one was confused, sorry about that. From 3-4 cars to 1-2 cars per household, it's not two extremes, but it's still major progress.

I say again, living in the sprawling outer suburbs of Toronto, I still had to endure buses passing me by with "Sorry... buses full" message because of too high ridership, now to the point that the buses are now being replaced by LRT.

Car-oriented urban form can still mean a transit-oriented city. Even half-hearted effort to increase walkability can make the transit ridership get so out of control. Even the middle ground is enough, but first we need to recognize it is just a middle ground, not one extreme vs another. We don't need to be anti-car to get people onto transit, we just need to be pro-transit. It's not about starting to exclude the car, it's more about no longer excluding transit and walking. More inclusion rather than more exclusion.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

Where a car comes in handy is if you have kids, i'm not even sure how one survives in the city with kid(s) and no car, unless they have no choice. Just getting kids out the door to daycare is a bitch, I couldn't imagine having to haul them on a bus or train with a stroller or diapers or wipes or whatever other shit school is asking for, forget about summer months, it would be a hard no for me in the winter.

One of the best decisions I've ever made in my parenting career is to be EXTREMELY conscious in how I've decided where to live such that my children's daycare/school are within easy walking distance (<5 min.) of home.

Once you eliminate that daily driving chore from your life, the rest could theoretically be filled by some combination of biking/transit/ride share/car share.

That said, we still own a car because, yeah, it does make life with children a lot easier at times. And our city neighborhood is kinda the perfect balance between hardcore auto-hostile urbanism and full-blown auto-centric suburbia. Creamy middles!

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

Where a car comes in handy is if you have kids, i'm not even sure how one survives in the city with kid(s) and no car, unless they have no choice. Just getting kids out the door to daycare is a bitch, I couldn't imagine having to haul them on a bus or train with a stroller or diapers or wipes or whatever other shit school is asking for, forget about summer months, it would be a hard no for me in the winter.

Well, so far we're doing fine with no car, we rented a car a few times very early on to go to some pediatrician appointments since my wife couldn't walk too well for a bit after her C-section but other than that, the stroller works just fine. My wife is staying home with our daughter for now and at least the near-term future, but if we were to put her in daycare, we'd pick one of the several within a 5 minute walking radius...

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

You know what's better? Being able to post to SSP on your commute .

You know what's even better than working while you're commuting to work? Halfway through your commute saying F this I'm out and going to the beach! or to Las Vegas, or wherever I damn well please on a moment's notice.

Not that I do that too often, but I always like to have the option. So in addition to mobility, speed and efficiency, you can add spontaneity to the mix .

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Cars are no doubt insanely expensive on their lifecycle costs, especially if you buy a larger, nicer vehicle. But they also create immense value as they are vastly faster and more comfortable forms of transportation for the vast majority of situations, even globally where public transit is far better than it is in North America. Their only biggest disadvantage is that you are required to focus on driving vs. being able to do other tasks when travelling.

purchasing a car, even when you live in a fairly urban neighborhood in Canada / the US, is one of the single largest quality of life items you can buy, and I'm not going to debate that. It can suck to operate them in certain unique situations and in the peak of rush hour right downtown, but generally they allow just such an insane degree of additional mobility for someone it's not funny.

Somebody gets it

This is why a single car garage can go for upwards of a million dollars in SF or Manhattan.

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Well, so far we're doing fine with no car, we rented a car a few times very early on to go to some pediatrician appointments since my wife couldn't walk too well for a bit after her C-section but other than that, the stroller works just fine. My wife is staying home with our daughter for now and at least the near-term future, but if we were to put her in daycare, we'd pick one of the several within a 5 minute walking radius...

That's great, but the reality is having a car makes life significantly easier with a kid. Daycare / Preschool requires some level of research other than "what's closest to my house" in my opinion. We chose a daycare that is exactly 1 mile from our house, the point being i'm not sure how you even make that work without a car.

I don't see being car-less as some badge of honor as others do here.

[Innsertnamehere]

What always blows me away is when I go hang out with friends in Toronto and drive, many travel further on public transit from 6 miles away than I do driving from 35 miles away. It just highlights the pure efficiency of cars, especially in uncongested, off-peak situations. And Toronto has "good" public transit.

When I lived in Toronto it was the same thing - driving from one end of downtown to the other would take 15-20 minutes, and would be 40 minutes on the streetcar. Worst case scenario it would approach 45-50 minutes to drive at 5pm, but for the other 22 hours a day it was a fraction of the time. We would often drive through downtown to restaurants in another neighbourhood we liked which was a 15 minute drive but 25 minute subway ride, and we lived on the subway and the restaurants were right off the subway. It was just faster (and cheaper with 2 people) to drive and pay for parking, even with a direct subway connection.

[Crawford]

I'd don't think I've ever driven in Toronto without being frustrated at the extreme level of congestion. There are very few major thru-streets or highways, and they're always packed. It might be faster than transit, but that isn't saying much.

Parking in Toronto seems pretty easy, however. Even downtown.

But I don't think Toronto is particularly driver-friendly, at least for North American standards. It's fairly transit oriented for the North American context. I believe third highest share of transit riders, after NY and Montreal?

[niwell]

Our car sits unused the vast majority of the time and is mostly used to go out of town or when we need to take the dog somewhere. Occasionally my wife will use it to go to appts during off-peak hours. Also have to contend with parking as we don't have a parking pad or garage, and it can get extremely difficult to find a spots in our area, particularly on weekends.

To get to a friends house in the East End the other day (had the dog) we had to drive took close to an hour - I've done it in 35 on transit and slightly less cycling. If you're on the subway it's almost always faster, and parking is a nightmare especially with CafeTO street patios set up (as it should be). Plus have to contend with the fact we can't hang out for a few extra drinks if we want. Long distance or trips to the suburbs are the only time it seems to make sense to me. Another friend equidistant but in the opposite direction towards the suburbs takes 20 mins for instance.

There are certainly reasons we have a car, but driving in Toronto sucks and I avoid it whenever possible. I actually preferred using carshare but having to travel out of town a lot made it harder. Cycling is probably the fastest within the "Old City" - yesterday I cycled somewhere my wife drove and was home over 10 mins before she was. About 7km away.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I'd don't think I've ever driven in Toronto without being frustrated at the extreme level of congestion. There are very few major thru-streets or highways, and they're always packed. It might be faster than transit, but that isn't saying much.

Parking in Toronto seems pretty easy, however. Even downtown.

But I don't think Toronto is particularly driver-friendly, at least for North American standards. It's fairly transit oriented for the North American context. I believe third highest share of transit riders, after NY and Montreal?

It's not, and that's what shows how much more efficient driving often is. Toronto is absolutely terrible to drive in and even then it's still usually the best mode of transport in most situations.

Cycling is actually the best for downtown, yes, because you don't have to deal with congestion, but even that has limits, particularly if the trip is more than 3 miles / 5km or so. It's a great option for similar reasons cars are great option - cycling can occur at your schedule no matter the time of day, and the trip can easily be adjusted as required for your needs. It's especially great as it's an extremely reliable form of transportation as there isn't such thing as congestion on a bike. If it takes 15 minutes to bike somewhere, it takes 15 minutes to bike somewhere at all times of day, 100% of the time.

Driving during peak periods can absolutely be frustrating though, I get why people avoid it. That's the one time of day other options are usually better.

Transit is the frustrating one, often taking 30+ minutes with an unpredictable amount of delay atop of it for relatively short trips. Even when I lived downtown Toronto without a car I only took it maybe one day a week because I hated it so much. I would often prefer to cycle through a snow storm than get stuck on a streetcar, it was so painful. Just not my thing I guess.. Commuter trains are the only form I don't mind taking as the average speeds are actually decent enough that it's approaching car's efficiency.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

That's great, but the reality is having a car makes life significantly easier with a kid. Daycare / Preschool requires some level of research other than "what's closest to my house" in my opinion. We chose a daycare that is exactly 1 mile from our house, the point being i'm not sure how you even make that work without a car.

I don't see being car-less as some badge of honor as others do here.

My orbit is pretty upper-middle class and I don't really know anyone with kids who uses their car daily in NYC, if they even have one. My neighbor might use his SUV to commute to work, but I haven't confirmed it yet. If he does then it must be a reverse commute to the burbs. But I often see his wife on the subway platform with their youngest kid since we have similar commuting schedules.

[Crawford]

I think NYC might be the exception, though. It's really the only U.S.-Canadian city where high(er) income households with kids typically don't have vehicles (at least not in the core and core-adjacent neighborhoods).

The kid-oriented infrastructure (daycares, parks, schools, doctors offices, etc.) assumes almost everyone is arriving by transit, foot or bike.