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Comment by dotcoma | Hacker News Reader

How about: Cars aren’t the only answer ?

Also cars, do not have to be today's cars. Like, the market fucked us all over with this SUV craze. It should be first priority to reverse this madness. Nobody needs to drive around in a 5ton tank. Second, inner city driving should be done in even smaller cars. You do not need a full sized car, designed for seating 5, just for commuting or to go shopping.

Inner city driving should be restricted to service vehicles only. The inner city should be dense enough that shopping is easily done by foot or by bike, and things further away are covered by a tram or bus line within walking distance

The joy of being in a full packed bus with the shopping goods and sweaty people without any kind of air-conditioning.

Shopping would optimally happen by foot or by bike. Somewhat impossible with US zoning laws, but in a decent mixed use neighborhood a grocery store would be a <5 minutes walk from home, with actual sidewalks and no highways in between.

And overcrowded buses happen in underfunded bus systems with not enough capacity or on peak times. Consider increasing the frequency or upgrading to a tram line if your buses are always full

Yes, visiting France, it's amazing to me how local laws have resulted in shopping that's accessible by most via bike/walk/tram (ie, car not needed). I saw dozens of these folks doing that as an activity with their kids on the weekend (of course, French have lots more vacation too so they can afford to combine exercise + commerce).

The captured regulatory system in the US benefits corporations first, and people last.

Try to enjoy that wonderful experience in rural France, without a car.

I had such joy during two years, close to the French Alps.

Tourist visits isn't the same as living deeply into the country.

Yeah in rural areas it's hard to justify building public transport. Villages can still have grocery stores though. But we were talking about cities here

I wasn't, as my point was about every kind of place, and plus there are plenty of cities on rural areas that are cities only on paper.

As a non-driving cyclist, the size of cars is one of my biggest complaints about them and almost certainly is a major contributor to queues of slow moving traffic belching out fumes.

This is my view. Restructure society around less transport.

That would only work in big cities.

Like paid permits to travel to a city nearby and visas for inter-state travelling?

Sounds so 2022.

I'm not sure why everyone defaults to dystopia.

Just move things around so people don't have to sit in traffic or commute for 4 hours a day.

The solution has always been electric trains. Make transport public, add more public transportation. That's the pill nobody wants to swallow.

It's not a technology problem, it's a political one. American auto lobbies destroyed public transport, it's not a secret.

Here is france a lot of busses use a LNG/fuel mix. Regional trains have room where you can put a bike.

Take a quarter of what is being spent on domestics cars, and allocate it on public transport, instead of subsidizing oil. Unfortunately, making something for the community so it can be collective, is immediately seen as a socialist or communist measure in the US, so it will probably take a revolution.

Americans will continue to be one the largest emitter per capita, and will lose the fight on the environment, while countries like china are already building a lot of nuclear power plants.

Well, you need to replace fossil fuel with electricity/hydrogen for public transport as well. The question is still valid?

Public transport is already more efficient from the get go [1], so less work has to be done to meet emmission targets. It is also probably easier to electrify a countries rail/bus network as opposed to a full population's personal vehicles. Steel on steel also releases less dangerous pollutants like car tyres. [2]

Public transport also comes with many other benefits over cars (quieter cities, less deaths from collisions, fitter population).

For super low population density locations cars will probably remain the only possible solution, but for most of the population we really need to implement a movement away from car dependence.

[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... Page 3

[2] https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/pollution-tyre-wear-...

There’s a difference between politically defined emission targets and the reality of fossil fuel usage regardless of public transport efficiency.

Yes, but if public transport is more efficient then there are less emmisssions to reduce in the first place.

Not only that, for infrastructure reasons public transport outside dense cities is non existent, and paying for taxis for every routes outside the main ones makes it out of budget for many persons.

A single taxi ride can pay for quite a few liters of fuel.

Indeed lets go back to keeping horses and only the wealthy ones being able to go around dry in chariots, and servants to transport goods by whatever means they have.

Servants ARE transporting goods for us. It’s called Doordash, Uber Eats, or Foodora, Glovo, JustEat in Europe etc.

For proper servants they need to be happy with food and housing, otherwise they are only exploited employees for the salaries they get.

Hey that is what happens when people feel like not joining a union and adopt an each for itself strategy.

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