The Case Against Single-Family Housing

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by Hemlock140

Of course, with the pandemic, employers (like mine) are recommending that if you cannot telecommute that you drive to work alone for safety. I don't know how long people will be afraid to take public transportation again, but if the first eastside link opens on time in 2023 I think people will still be hesitant.

Following CDC recommendations, sad to say.

The CDC qualified its recommendations after a bunch of city transportation and public-transit officials and advocates went ballistic in response to the original recommendation (here's my report on the contretemps in my weekly Next City column).

Studies from France and Japan suggests that our fears of riding mass transit as a source of COVID are overblown. Which doesn't mean that the operators are wrong to worry, by the way. The reason for the difference: Public transit vehicles are usually well ventilated, and if the riders are following the usual protocols regarding masks and social distancing while riding, they will not be exposed to COVID for long enough and in large enough quantities for the infection to stick (COVID is one of those viruses that have a hard time actually infecting any given individual [the vulnerable aside] but wreak havoc when they do).

In the two countries above, no COVID clusters have been traced or traceable to mass transit sources.

I reported on this development in that column too. This Atlantic article by two people who pushed back against the CDC's recommendations goes deeper into the issue:

Fear of Public Transit Got Ahead of the Evidence | The Atlantic

I've been riding SEPTA regularly ever since the stay-at-home orders went into effect here in Pennsylvania. I wear a mask and carry hand sanitizer when I do. (SEPTA, following state guidelines, requires riders to wear masks when riding. I'd estimate that about 20 percent of riders don't.)

[Veritas Vincit]

It would seem really difficult to trace a cluster to public transit given that the people we interact with on transit are strangers and therefore no-one who got Corona would be able to name any of the people standing next to them in the subway as 'contacts'.


There's gonna be a lot of special pleading from transit advocates, but I doubt the public buys it. People know from first hand experience and instinct that people easily catch whatever bug is going around on transit every winter.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by Veritas Vincit

It would seem really difficult to trace a cluster to public transit given that the people we interact with on transit are strangers and therefore no-one who got Corona would be able to name any of the people standing next to them in the subway as 'contacts'.


There's gonna be a lot of special pleading from transit advocates, but I doubt the public buys it. People know from first hand experience and instinct that people easily catch whatever bug is going around on transit every winter.

However, those coronaviruses work their way into your body more easily than COVID-19 does.

COVID-19 is unusually virulent, true, but given where it needs to get to in order to do its thing (deep inside your respiratory system, as opposed to the "rhinovirus" family of coronaviruses, which are so called because all they need to do is get into your nose), it actually has to jump more hurdles than the coronavirus that causes the common cold does. That's why so many people catch colds but so few die from them. Conversely, there are probably lots of people out there who have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 but didn't get infected*, but those who get infected get a really serious illness.

I haven't studied the popularization of the research closely, but it seems that to come down with COVID-19, you need to inhale a lot more SARS-CoV-2 than you'd have to inhale rhinovirus in order to catch a cold. (The vulnerable groups are vulnerable because their own bodies' defenses are weakened, meaning more of the virus makes it past the hurdles.) And doing so outdoors is much harder than was first thought. Meanwhile, indoors, it seems to depend on several factors, including how air circulates within a space, how much virus is suspended in that air, and length of time one spends in the indoor environment.

ISTR reading about a restaurant, half of whose patrons got infected and half of whose patrons didn't on a night when a carrier was dining there. IIRC, the carrier was seated on the side of the restaurant where the air conditioning ductwork was located. The diners seated on that side of the room all came down with COVID-19, while those on the other side of the room did not.

Which brings us to why What You Think You Know About COVID-19 and Public Transit May Be Wrong.

Most public transit vehicles get air infusions from outside them on an ongoing basis, when their doors open to pick up and discharge riders or through their air conditioning systems, which bring in air from outside and not just recirculate it. The piston action of subway trains in tunnels also forces air ahead of them and sucks it behind them. Most mass transit riders spend 30 minutes or less riding any single vehicle, which is less time than most diners spend eating a meal in a restaurant, as well.

These factors combined will likely reduce the amount of SARS-CoV-2 any one rider is exposed to during the trip. Add to that extra cleaning and disinfection and social distancing and the amount falls even further.

The reason the vehicle operators get the disease is because they're spending their entire workday on the same vehicle. That means more exposure to more of the virus.

Hong Kong also has no reported COVID clusters arising from mass transit. And that's one of the most densely populated cities on the planet, with a mass transit system that carries millions daily and still carried hundreds of thousands after the pandemic hit.

*I happen to know one such individual personally. He lives with his parents in a single-family house on a quarter-acre lot in a Philadelphia suburb. His mother came down with the disease (I don't know how she contracted it). She quarantined herself in one room of the house. No other family member came down with it. Were this a rhinovirus, they would all have been sneezing within a day or two of the first person catching a cold.

[Hemlock140]

Originally Posted by Veritas Vincit

It would seem really difficult to trace a cluster to public transit given that the people we interact with on transit are strangers and therefore no-one who got Corona would be able to name any of the people standing next to them in the subway as 'contacts'.


There's gonna be a lot of special pleading from transit advocates, but I doubt the public buys it. People know from first hand experience and instinct that people easily catch whatever bug is going around on transit every winter.

I used to take the bus from Issaquah, WA to Seattle. In the morning it was on the 5:20am and there were a few empty seats but almost always had someone sit next to me. In the afternoon, any bus after my usual time (2:40pm) would be standing room only by the time it got 1/3 of the way, with people so close they were touching. That was every day for about 8 years, and yes, I picked up several colds that way. If all of those people resume taking the bus there is no way to keep social distancing, especially since the number of buses/routes has been reduced and apparently they cannot afford to increase again even if ridership goes back up.

[verybadgnome]

Originally Posted by RocketSci

Your example makes a good case against single-family housing - parcels can include back houses, garage apartments, etc that can be separated by more than a wall given a large enough lot size. Many newer areas forbid anything but 1 sfh on a lot.

Except for one problem and that my neighborhood is the exception. We have large lots, small homes and alleyways in back while the majority of the housing stock added in the last 50 years is larger homes on smaller lots and no rear access. That means it is pretty much unfeasible to go from one unit to two units on these lots, you would have to go to higher densities for it to make economic sense. That could happen long term in more expensive coastal areas but for the bulk of the U.S. this won't happen in the short/medium term.

Even if you could provide access to a second unit on a parcel our city has impervious coverage limitations (45%) which will disallow this.