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Comment by bayindirh | Hacker News Reader

> Cars are the problem, point it out.

Umm, no. In my case, cars are not the problem. They're the result. My city lacks decent and efficient transport from my home to places I go (office, university, etc.), and the lack of transportation is valid for many people, so we get cars.

If the same transportation infrastructure present in Barcelona, Amsterdam, Stockholm or London was present in my city, I'd just take the options and maximize my walk too. I may again have a car for trips, etc. but, it'd be used much less certainly.

So, I dislike the traffic, pollution, noise, parking problems and all, and I want to be a part of the solution, OTOH I have to live, have to show up for work, have to go to shopping and take all that stuff home.

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> My city lacks decent and efficient transport from my home to places I go

Because cars.

Yes, cars are also the result. It’s a self-sustaining cycle that takes active intervention that appears suboptimal in short-term analysis to break out of.

> Because cars.

Again nope, much more complicated than that. My city is not flat. It's the opposite. Also bad city planning, wrong population projections and, wrong prioritization of city investments play a big role too.

We're late in building underground. Some of the most populated parts of the city has great elevation changes, so underground is not feasible, etc. etc.

You have not specified where your city is, but if it’s in the US then

> Also bad city planning, wrong population projections and, wrong prioritization of city investments play a big role too.

These are usually the consequence of a car-centric culture when it’s not racism (it’s commonly both, with the car centric culture and the racism making an alliance in the 40s and 50s).

The US destroyed many neighbourhoods and city centers to make room for cars and car infrastructures (e.g. huge through highways).

Cars spread pollution in many mysterious ways, take the tires for example" According to a 2017 study, about 550 tons of airborne particles from tires are produced annually. Further a study released in July pointed to tires and brake pads as the source of about 550,000 tons of ocean microplastic emissions annually.5 Oct 2020 - Microplastic pollution has polluted the entire planet, from Arctic snow and Alpine soils to the deepest oceans. The particles can harbour toxic chemicals and harmful microbes and are known to harm some marine creatures. People are also known to consume them via food and water, and to breathe them, But the impact on human health is not yet known.

Earlier work suggested microplastic particles could be blown across the world, but the new study is the first to quantify the effect. The scientists concentrated on fine tyre and brake dust as there is better data on how these are produced than tiny microplastics from other sources, such as plastic bottles and packaging.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/14/car-tyre...

> about 550 tons of airborne particles from tires are produced annually...

So busses, semis, trucks and other rubber tired vehicles are also a no go.

> tires and brake pads as the source of about 550,000 tons of ocean microplastic emissions annually.5 Oct 2020

This adds other wheeled vehicles which use friction based braking into the equation.

I intentionally exaggerate the tone of my comment, but it shows a much bigger problem: All kinds of transportation has some serious impact on the environment. So just taking ICEs or cars out of the equation doesn't solve the problems magically.

We need a much bigger vision and a set of solutions which addresses these problems.

Except in cases where the transportation is highly specialized and optimized (e.g. a pipeline) you are going to have a hell of a time finding an example of human activity where the minimum environmental impact is not on the order of mass * distance.

OTOH, environmental impact, regardless of its distance to humans, never stays isolated to the place where it's happening.

It always affects distant places, human population or not.

I live in Philadelphia, often times when the roads are in need of repair (read: all the time) parts of the subsurface get revealed. Often time there are old trolley tracks, that are still in the ground, which were simply paved over for a road and cars.

Cities were recreated over the course of the last 100 years to support car travel over any other means.

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