Car friendly infrastructure widens the technological and class divide. They create a base state where you are required to own and maintain an expensive piece of equipment in order to be an equal member of society. You are required to have parking for those cars, both at home and at your work.
Forcing people to pay thousands of dollars per year to participate in society is highly repressive.
Great, so if we can't all have something, none of us should have it! Forget the fact that the vast majority of families own and benefit from personal transportation, the important thing is that we're all equal, even if the equal case is on average worse for everyone, right?
>Forcing people to pay thousands of dollars per year to participate in society is highly repressive
Is it also repressive to "force" people to hold down jobs to participate in society? To "force" people to commute to work? What about the fact that some people have the luxury of working from home? Should we make that illegal as well?
I do not understand how people can be so focused on equality as to totally ignore the average, greater good. The nature of modern civilization is such that some degree of inequality is inevitable if one optimizes for median welfare.
This is entirely the opposite of what the car-free movement is trying to accomplish.
Car-free is strictly concerned dense urban areas, where private automobiles pretty strictly work against the common good. They are noisy, dangerous, polluting, and fail to create efficient transportation networks. In such places, there is very good reason to believe that car-free would improve quality of life and median welfare for residents.
Obviously car-free is not a realistic option in suburban, semi-urban, and rural areas. No one who is advocating car-free is suggesting we do it there.
Any increase in equality that comes along with it (honestly I'm skeptical it would make much of a difference) would be purely incidental.
That may mean people who live in sub-urban and rural areas have to stop at the fringe and catch a bus, walk, or pedal the last leg of their journey, but it doesn't mean they need to give up their cars for transport outside those dense urban areas.
"Equality" is perhaps a poor choice of words here. I will say that for people on the cusp—mainly young and poor people—having a car break down can spiral into a really bad situation or even homelessness. When you can't afford to fix your car and your car is required to get to your job, the situation can become untenable quickly.
Yes.
> To "force" people to commute to work?
Yes.
> What about the fact that some people have the luxury of working from home? Should we make that illegal as well?
No, that reduces traffic making places more livable.
This is a false dichotomy. I didn't suggest "Everyone must give up cars", only that the world should not be designed to FORCE everyone to drive cars.
> Is it also repressive to "force" people to hold down jobs to participate in society?
Hyperbole much? The two concepts aren't even remotely related.
> I do not understand how people can be so focused on equality as to totally ignore the average, greater good.
As if requiring cars is the greater good? It has been demonstrated in many many places that designing infrastructure which enables people to move around safely and reliably without the use of cars improves the quality of life for everyone.
I just can't get over how dystopian this comment is. Aside from being untrue, it is just horribly wrong headed and borderline evil. Essentially you are suggesting we cement the bottom quartile of society into eternal poverty.
Not only is this cruel, it is ultimately terrible for society as a whole as the poor and homeless become increasingly desperate, and turn to crime and drugs; becoming an ever-increasing burden on society.
Regardless, your arguments that public good doesn't matter also nullifies the OP comments argument of widening the class divide by claiming class divides don't matter and should not be ameliorated.
You're right. We should charge them thousands of dollars per month so they can live downtown and walk everywhere instead. Problem solved!
(Just kidding, you can't afford to. Enjoy your hike! Maybe in 30 years they'll get public transit working where you need it. You'll promptly get priced right out again, but at least you'll know your taxes went to a good cause!)
It's not like people buy cars because they want to waste money. A car is an absolutely massive increase in QOL, especially for the majority of Americans who dont live in city centers and who don't want to live in city centers.
When you build cities which requires cars to get around then owning a car is almost essential. When a city is built around other forms of transportation, not so much. All the insurmountable problems like rain and sun happen in the places where bikes are common, it turns out people are just fine without their cars when the infrastructure is good enough.
The big problem with car friendly infrastructure is it takes up so much space, it makes almost every other form of transportation more dangerous and slower.
My intuition says the effect size is going to be a multiple of what it costs to maintain a cheap car.
Probably one of the biggest reasons is real estate increases in the denser areas as parking infrastructure gets phased out. Parking is a massive waste of land.
My guess: real estate costs go down short-term if you add a bunch of supply by getting rid of parking, and then they go right back up, plus some, once the market equilibrates.
Meanwhile, I'll continue to enjoy having 5x the space at half the cost as when I lived in the city, with 5 grocery stores 10 minutes away instead of 2 grocery stores 30 minutes away. Not to mention parks, trees, and nature trails for running.
Similarly, increasing range has had little to no positive effect on housing prices. Look at the insane real estate prices in the California Bay Area or LA which are both very car-first locations.