I live in a US city, and I still don't understand why this is the case. It completely baffles me why people would prefer to sit behind the wheel in stop-and-go city traffic, deal with pedestrians, cyclists, traffic lights, one-way streets, and parking, instead of designing and developing the city so everything they need is a short walk or at worst a quick transit ride away. It just seems like madness, like people are deliberately making their lives significantly worse, and they see the effects of that decision literally every day.
Because sleep deprivation is a major ailment. Nothing says good life like the neighbor above having a late night party, the heavy traffic starting about five am or the shrieks of the late night ambulances.
Cramped living. Been there done that, hated it. I love the silence at night. Having a big living room and a little garden. Being able to actually look up the sky and see stars.
I do like trains, but they can't get everywhere. I take a bus to work everyday but they don't operate 24h a day and not frequently enough.
I'm the most excited about self driving buses. Even in predefined routes on special self driving lanes. Then its just a train carriage on a road :)
Sure, but you've made the choice to live in a place with low enough density that you have a lot of indoor and outdoor space and enough distance from neighbors that you get a lot of quiet.
I live in a place where you don't get any of that that (unless you have $2M+ to spend on a house and land, which still doesn't fix the noise problem), and yet people still object to modest density increases and investment in public transit.
And in this case, I'd expect an increase in density to mean prices will drop, therefore enabling people to own more space at a lower price. This does mean more vertical building, so you lose private outdoor space, but that's really the only downside vs. the status quo.
> "I'm the most excited about self driving buses."
Agreed. Self-driving cars may be a sham "solution" to American's transportation woes....however self-driving busses should be considered as a very practical mass transit alternative to rail since the road infrastructure is already built. I've heard they are testing this out in Las Vegas:
