How to quit cars

That isn’t the case in America, where riding the bus absolutely has a low social status. So I think making public transit more of a prestige product (safe, clean, well-designed, etc.) would help break that and make it more socially acceptable for middle and upper class people.

The ultimate misery, when trains fell behind and youd spend an hour or more on a completely packed, sweltering platform watching train after train fully stuffed shoulder to shoulder pass through not stopping since each train is full, until one comes where you yourself have to shove yourself and your bags into the doorway and hope the doors can close so you can just get home. Never again. I suspect anti car people just don't see these things as that big of a deal. They're young. It's all exciting to them, I guess. I didn't have a car at all back then either, the city / commuter life seemed perfect to me for many years until I began to realize I hated these things.

Forget about the crime, mental illness, and homeless issues, just being shoved among "regular" people every day, all averting gazes and attempting to cope with dense crowding among people you don't know, by the time I was older I had become a strict remote worker, and when I had a kid we were out of there at last.

I have an EV now and getting to drive is like the best part of my day. I live very far from dense cities. A lot of people genuinely like to live this way and the posts here talking about the "car industrial complex" somehow coercing us all into some way we wouldn't otherwise prefer should consider that a lot of people really don't like crowds.

Saying driving is better is like saying littering is more convenient than picking up your trash.

A lot of useful work that could be done is building better stuff, physically improving the local infrastructure and environment. That requires tradesmen doing hands-on labor. Giant portions of our labor pool wouldn't be caught dead doing that kind of work. That's why we have a flood of bullshit jobs where people shuffle paper in air-conditioned offices, float around to conferences, stay at business hotels, etc...

Appealing to their moral side seems... perhaps necessary, because it seems a vocal minority simply do not want multi-family housing in their neighborhood at all. Look at the pushback by NIMBYs at city meetings across the US when anything like somewhat dense housing is proposed: right off the bat, I have literally never heard of any community collectively saying, "this sounds reasonable." I would be happy to be proven wrong.

Instead, it's pushback after pushback, claiming everything from character of the neighborhood to shadows from a tall building (even if the building is only 5 stories high, and most buildings in the neighborhood are 3 stories tall).

There's also conspicuously rare talk from those NIMBYs claiming what they do want. Instead, at the start of a project, it's always vague, "well not THAT many units!" or "well the traffic will get SO much worse!"

I've never seen specifics like, "We need 30 units or less in this proposal because of reason X and Y." Instead, it's just negotiation trying to get it as low as possible. Basically, trying to pull up the ladder as much as possible to minimize people moving to the area to folks who can afford a fairly expensive single family home.

Any single family home is fairly expensive now it seems these days, across the USA, relatively to the area it's in.

It's depressing, and I'm not sure how to get people to change those attitudes.

One thought: have people attend these meetings who are not yet residents of the neighborhoods, but would consider it if they could move into one of these developments. Of course, NIMBYs would likely be outraged that folks from outside of their neighborhood are levying their opinion... even though the NIMBYs themselves are not vocalizing considering the opinions of people who want to move to the area.

I think an interesting thing to remember about perceived safety, statistical safety, and actual safety, is that they are all different things -- you can't just look at stats to determine actual safety.

E.g., I was involved in a couple of incidents involving attacks in SF that I am sure were not reflected in the stats. (As well as numerous thefts, though that's not a safety issue per se.)

Convenience is a big part of it, sure, but even Americans will use transit when it works for them, even if it is not faster (it is almost NEVER faster than driving a car unless you do strange restrictions or include a very-high-speed segment).

But you only need a few bad experiences on transit to put you off it when you have other options.

Spending time around degenerates degrades your life. It changes how you see people around you. It makes you see other people as threats first and people second.

Trauma is real too. Seeing someone nod out from being on drugs, or fights, or whatever else, puts you on edge.

All smelled of fresh paint and wet concrete. All were built with the intent to be walkable, and all are wonderful places to live. I never felt the need for a car once. What matters is not the age but the intent of the designers.

34% of kids ride a school bus to school, and that's basically transit designed for the middle class.

Are we? When you zoom in on things like road maintenance backlogs and auto loan delinquencies, it kind of seems like we are not rich enough but have been pretending to be.

I now live in the Seattle suburbs, Redmond — very close to the same distance from the work site as in Copenhagen — and there is no way I could realistically rely on public transit to hit appointments unless I left an hour or two early—and, in bad weather, many hours early. I can’t imagine doing what I do without a car.

It’s really hard for someone who hasn’t lived it to really understand what it means to be able to walk to the shop. Then compare to when that’s not physically possible.

Around the world governments "nationalize" what they allow themselves to, and at each level they nationalize the most salient and notable industry that's not too small to be small potatoes. In the U.S. the federal government doesn't allow itself to nationalize anything, the States do allow themselves but they can't bring themselves to hurt their industry as they compete with other States, but cities don't see themselves as competing with other cities, and cities allow themselves (and the States allow them to) to nationalize public transportation.

Take Argentina where a strong national government has at times nationalized steel production, oil production, etc., but they wouldn't deign to bother with nationalizing bus service -- it's like it's beneath them -- and so Buenos Aires has one of the most fantastic privately operated public bus systems in the world. You never have to wait more than a few minutes for a bus during business hours. But in the U.S. you're lucky if buses run more often than every 30 minutes at rush hour.

Do you want Americans to not drive their cars so much? Fine, it's easy: allow private companies to operate all public bus services, and also to operate small buses without set routes (a sort of Uber of buses). If you insist on the cities running public transportation then you can be sure that the public transportation system will never ever be good enough that Americans will be happy to relinquish their cars.

It's that simple.

And no, trains won't cut it. Laying tracks down is unbelievably expensive, will never pay for itself, and you can't ever change them afterwards, and you won't be able to place them where people can use them because that would be way too disruptive unless you make it subways, and that's even more unbelievably expensive.

But, the only alternative considered is private individual/family transport.

Why is private mass transport not more widely available given that it can solve a lot of these problems?

Having an Uber for buses which does smart scheduling based on current demand, possibly involving transfers so that frequent local routes connect with each other without long delays, should be possible.

Of course, prices will fall when things scale. So, the government can be involved as a facilitator but operations are mostly run by companies which can pay a fee to the government rent necessary infrastructure.

You still have the problem of higher prices for odd hours/locations but sharing costs ahould make it cheaper than uber.

Tiny remote communities rarely make enough for transport entities to care. For instance, without vehicles, in the village I live in, we’d probably be connected via bus to the nearby town, where you can do some shopping from a dollar store and get something to eat at restaurants, but to be connected to the various cities? They may have daily shuttles, but the population (<300) may not make this worth it. And as established in the thread public transport sucks and would make running errands impossible.

This doesn’t even compare to the truly remote individuals who live in the country miles out.

Honestly I feel like people who live in cities really lose their sense of scale for how large the US really is and how small a large percentage of communities are. I mean almost 1/3rd of the US population is crammed into less than 1% of the total surface of the USA. Using the 333 most populace cities in the USA gives an average population density of ~3,150/square mile. Out in the country where I live, we’re maybe 50/sqm, and further out that can drop to .25/sqm or lower.

Not to mention the fact that the reason public school buses work is because for the better part of the year the destinations are ironed out and rarely change. Little Æ is going from home to school and back 90% of the time. That simply doesn’t reflect an adult’s lifestyle, because while every child in a given area goes to a single school, jobs are much less localized. Not to mention errands, hobbies, visiting friends.

A bus schedule simply cannot replace the flexibility of a car to a large percentage of America.

That quite a straw man, my friend!

A bus that runs twice per day, with a fixed number of passengers, all of which go to the same destination... that's not really the kind of service that can get you free of private cars!

You are plainly, objectively, and hilariously wrong

NYC is beautiful, walkable, full of life, and you sure can find a job there. Same with the Boston area.

I've lived in both walkable and car-dependent areas for years. I am one of the people who grew up in a car-dependent small city who couldn't imagine not owning a car 10 years ago.

Now that I've lived in both, sure, there might be tradeoffs living in a walkable neighborhood, but if you build a neighborhood with the amenities you need, walking for most things is simply amazing. Having a car is useful for getting out, but it now becomes a "once in awhile" thing, almost a luxury, if you have a nice market and some restaurants nearby. And then you can do things like ZipCar or other options for the rare times you need to drive.

But if anything, Europe is too car centric as well. The consumer upper middle class and child bearing families still seek out suburbs unfortunately.

I always talk about this but live in a utopian dystopian socialist modernist neighborhood complex from the 1960’s. There is a health clinic downstairs, schools, library, market-shops, park areas all 5 minute elevator ride down. Most residents still have cars unfortunately - the parking area is packed with them.

Like Disneyland? Of course nobody could live there. But actual walkable neighborhoods tend to be prohibitively expensive because they're extremely desirable.

Those are caused mainly by cars. Take away the cars and there’s a lot more space and fresh air for everyone.

Even when cars are prioritized, traffic makes even the smallest errands a problem eventually; roads simply don't scale.

And cars are by far the loudest thing about cities at almost all times. They make the very air hostile with pollution and heat. And, worst of all:

> I simply hop in my vehicle and can be anywhere I want in 3-15 minutes

You do this at the direct expense of everyone else in your city. You make the streets unwalkable and the city unlivable. You are insulated from the sounds and dangers that you are creating around you. (I'm just using you as an example, I don't actually blame you for taking the only option you've been given.)

Italy isn't perfect and I could talk about that country's problems a lot, but in terms of transportation, it was more a "right tool for the job" place than here, where we'd walk to many things, ride bikes to others, take the train occasionally, city busses some, and yes, use the car too for some stuff.

Living in such places is eye-opening!

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=55

And private school attendance is mostly higher income families:

https://www.educationnext.org/who-goes-private-school-long-t...

Unfortunately public transportation resources are limited, but prioritizing the vast majority of lower income public school routes over the vast minority of higher income private school routes makes sense

It's not even just cultural differences and needs. It's the lack of questioning in decisions and groupthink.

Tax per acre used to be a metric that was used in urban planning decisions. That was mostly thrown away when people started to want cars. A primary metric then became level of service. LOS was a way to measure traffic volume but didn't necessarily mean increased net economic output, although it was nearly used as one. It doesn't paint the picture correctly for municipal urban planning in a financial sense.

For sustained economic vitality in a very simplistic form, the infrastructure and municipal services costs should be subtracted from the amount of tax revenue gained from the land. Basically, is this land making the city money or is it costing the city money. This info can be used to adjust taxes, plan better built environments, amongst other things.

If that was regularly being measured throughout the last 100 years and acted upon, I imagine much of the car dependent areas of the world would look a lot different. If you talk to urban planners today about this (which I have), many still don't use it at all.

Ever heard of gloves?

- remove 90% of street parking

- make the remaining 10% incredibly expensive and time limited to short durations which makes it so that spots are always available for someone that actually needs it for something like moving

- cut down every other road to be impassable by cars or extremely limited

- add wide, safe, protected biking/scooter lanes + bike parking in all the freed up space

- lower speed limits everywhere to cut down on noise and increase safety

That's an implementation detail of a very old and underinvested system.

In contrast with Vancouver's automated skytrain, waits for trains are typically 2-4 minutes.

Better things are possible

This is, of course, the inability to visualize a different life that I referred to in my original post. There are many alternatives to car-oriented life, as cities that grew before cars plainly evidence. Those are the cities that people want to spend their vacations in.

Instead of building shopping malls with parking lots, Colombia could relax zoning to allow chain restaurants and McDonalds near housing, and build dedicated bike lanes to get to them. Instead of building suburbs and freeways, it could build more public space like open pedestrian plazas to give people a feeling of space, and metros/bus rapid transit to make it easy to get around. Colombians who want to live a quiet suburban-style life can still do that in a rural home, which could be connected by rail when traveling to a city is required - but their choice to live a suburban life should not require those of us in cities to give up our space for wide roads to fit their cars and endless free car storage, at the expense of our way of life.

These options aren't the only alternatives Colombians could have, nor are they a fantasy - they exist today in places like Europe and parts of Asia.

Cars are not a requirement for human flourishing. We only designed our lives to make them that way.

> without dealing with crowded, noisy, sometimes dangerous buses

Yes because cars are neither noisy or dangerous nor do the occupy any space in cities.

> Like, what's the alternative?

There are alternatives to building very car centric infrastructure.

> How do you propose to stop Colombians

He didn't.

Only for the wealthy, and the car is the most expensive form of transportation that only the relatively wealthy have access to. For everyone else not wealthy enough to own a car the over investment in car infrastructure has made life worse and made them less free, as the under investment in transportation alternatives limits their access and ability to travel.

BBC's new season of race around the world featured Canada this year, and contestants were staggered at the lack of public transportation options, forced into illegally hitchhiking rides to finish the race. Such is the dearth of transportation options for people who do not own a car.

I've lived in Chile the past twelve years. I often say I feel like a time traveller. I feel like I'm from the not too distant future. Chile feels like what California felt like growing up in the 70s and 80s, only with smart phones. People here throw trash wherever ... just like we did in California in the 70s and 80s. People here love their cars, and think of them as a status symbol and an extension of their identity ... just like we did in California in the 70s and 80s. Before I came to Chile I lived in Los Angeles and had to commute each day for over an hour each way. I also lived in Amsterdam and had to commute by bike each day for 20 minutes. I never owned a car the entire time I lived there. I was much better off mentally, physically, and economically in Amsterdam for this reason alone. I was freer too. A lot has changed in Chile since I arrived, especially in car ownership, and car-centric growth. I would not say that it's natural or the obviously best choice to prefer a car-centric future. The future Chile is creating for itself is not the one I would choose. There are alternatives.

> Like, what's the alternative?

Building the infrastructure for cars is a choice. Prioritizing cars over other modes of transportation is a choice. So make different choices.

I live in a small town. It's just six square blocks, but is densely populated with multi-story condos, and lots of shops and restaurants. But the streets are filled with cars. Cars are double parked on the sidewalks, and traffic moves at a snail's pace. It's loud, dirty, and unsafe. We could easily close the streets to cars, encourage people to take mass transit (we have collectivos and busetas) by making it expensive to park outside of the town center, require the numerous gated communities nearby to incorporate more amenities, like markets and pharmacies, to discourage trips by car, make it safer to bike by building ciclovias, and so on. But we don't, because we choose not to, sadly.

Cars are a straight jacket, a two-ton $10k deadweight, you have to drag them everywhere with you, you can't go anywhere without them, you always have to return to where you left them, you have to baby them with concentration - they can't even go in a straight line without your constant guidance and if they could you legally can't let them; you get in one and you are trapped to the roads (no shortcuts down small walkable alleys or through parks), trapped in the flow of traffic (no pausing by a shop window and popping inside for a look), you're charged by the minute by the cost of gasoline, seatbelted into a fixed position for the duration, with an explosive airbag charge constantly pointed at your face because of the high chance you or other people can't safely control them, they're your responsibility when you aren't near them (they stop you from drinking alcohol with friends for example, or for parking irresponsibly), they're amazingly complex and costly systems to maintain, costly to insure. And you pay enormous amounts of tax to maintain the road network which needs to sprawl everywhere at enormous expense.

What's "freedom" about that?

American cities weren't designed for cars, they were bulldozed for cars. Car companies illegally bought up streetcar companies and sent the streetcars for scrap. Cars were killing so many pedestrians that car companies came up with the term "Jaywalker" to mean "country bumpkin walker" and propagandised it into blaming pedestrians for car drivers hitting them. Car companies are pushing SUVs in advertising because SUVs have a legal loophole about being 'light trucks' where they don't have to meet as strict safety and efficiency regulations so they are more profitable; it isn't that "Americans like SUVs", it's that "Americans are being told to want SUVs" so they do.

They stop you dealing with crowded, noisy buses and trams by being crowded, noisy traffic offloading that problem to everyone outside your soundproofed cage.

Walking is freedom - you can go where you like, when you like, with whom you like, and you can do it without dealing with crowded, noisy, sometimes dangerous buses/trams/subways, or rush hour or full car parks or car park fees or tailbacks. And without spending money or needing to be rich, without being confined to a car, without having responsibility of the safety of your passengers and all others around you, without having your attention constantly on controlling a car, without having to divert to a car park, look for a car park, or return to the same car park before you can go anywhere else, without being stuck in traffic, without being stuck to roadways. Walking with metros and trams and trains is freedom with a boost - optional, convenient, power assisted walking. (Bikes can be fun, but designing a city around requiring a bike sucks in the same way that designing a city around requiring a car sucks; design the city around not needing My Personal Metal Transport Vehicle(tm) and then add a little bit of that back in as necessary/helpful/fun).

> "How do you propose to stop Colombians from voting with their wallets when they choose to eat at chain restaurants, shop at big box stores and then take the freeway back to their air-conditioned 2000 sq ft houses in the suburbs?"

What happened in Amsterdam in the 1960s is the Jokinen Plan[1] proposed to demolish some working class neighbourhoods and run a six-lane highway into the city center, assuming that Dutch people would want to live in the suburbs and drive to the city like Americans do. Instead the people voted against it, and it turns out that making safe and convenient pedestrian and bike routes separate from car roads makes walking and biking safer and more pleasant, and so more people walk and bike for journeys instead of driving, which reduces car traffic and fumes and the need for big wide roads, which makes walking and biking even more pleasant. They didn't ban cars by fiat - surprise, lots of people don't want to drive for every single journey. (Possibly because driving is inconvenient, effortful, boring, and it's uncomfortable to be trapped in a fixed position for an hour looking at concrete and car-butts and road signs).

[0] https://i.imgur.com/hzDCcSg.jpeg - this is a "freeway" because you don't pay a toll to drive on it. And because of all the freedom these people are enjoying.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokinen_Plan

If your goal is to simply eat, great, public transit enables this easily with many choices.

If your goal is to eat at a very specific restaurant, 4 miles away, this would take you less than 10 minutes by car, but could easily be 30 to 40 no car, with at least one transfer.

And I don't know, I'm not old by any means, but I've definitely noticed the value of time now. Saving an hour round trip is very valuable (and one of the reasons remote work is so popular).

I don't know how many people are begging to have their urban landscapes and culture bulldozed so people can park their cars on it, and I don't know how many people would be excited by the prospect of watching the infrastructure of their cities slowly crumble because the tax base is spread extremely thin and serviced in the most expensive way possible. Maybe that's just me though idk

Everyone seems to like American style fast-food chains though. No matter where you are in EU at least, it doesn't have anything to do how you get there, there's plenty of Dunkin Doughnuts, McDonald's, KFC, etc..

It seems like many people would opt for this form of social isolation, an illusion that they are removed from the society that is what actually makes our civilization function. But perhaps this "freedom" of fully isolated mobility for the individual is damaging, both to this individual as well as to the fabric of society as a whole.

Maybe "freedom" to be isolated isn't actually good for us, despite how much many of us seem to want it? Maybe like junk food, or social media, or gatcha games, or many other technological marvels of the last century or so, we have a predisposition for addiction to it, but can fail to notice the damage it is doing to us as we embrace it.

If we focused on building a world where personal vehicles at least weren't required, perhaps we would see what we've been doing to ourselves.

For what it's worth, walkability demands a massive housing price premium in the US, so it is obvious that many people do desire it - just as some people clearly desire the freedom to be apart from their fellow humans.

The same way it is unreasonable to think that less car centric cities would solve all our issues, it's just silly to equate "non car-centric environment" to "dystopian cities where people die on the street whenever there is a bit of cold".

These are very odd things to say. A domestic refrigerator and cupboard holds a week's worth of food easily, you don't need 3/4 acres for that. Temperature management is easier not harder in a larger building. As is good roofing. The idea that when someone else says "the store is nearby" they mean "there is literally only 1 store that I can possibly reach" is also a creative worst-case reading.

IDK, this feels more like a dump of ignorant projected fears than a serious criticism.

But the car adds to that.

We try to minimize our car usage - we have one car for our family of 6; I ride an electric scooter to work etc. Not having a car at all though would be basically impossible unless we decided to cut out the kids sport and traveling to visit family.

Point is, you're right, it doesn't take that much density to make getting around without a car viable for many trips.

Many major and minor cities all across North America were not designed for the car, as much as they may seem so today. They were designed for the streetcar, with commercial blocks strung out along those streetcar corridors.

In older bigger cities these streetcar corridors densified and became commercial districts, while in younger ones they were on the precipice before the car and rigid zoning stopped the transition.

These corridors remain as valuable arteries awaiting a return to their original designs. Simple and affordable upgrades like bus rapid transit, small apartment buildings and bike lanes could once again transition them into being powerful parts of a transportation network that does not rely on car ownership.

I live in Amsterdam which is arguably a few decades ahead in this process. It is both true that something can be done but also that we are nowhere close to actually closing this issue.

I don't mean to discourage people from switching where and when they can (or give anybody an excuse not to). There are tangible quality of life benefits that can be obtained each step along the way. So if car usage drops, say, from 90% to 60% thats hugely important.

But structural changes in the layout of urban environments are a wicked problem that will keep people busy (and procrastinating) for a long time.

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/07/23/the-leakage-pr...

For one, large arterials were placed where the most marginalized in society lived so that they couldn't protest. Historically black neighborhoods and poor white neighborhoods were flattened to accommodate large arterials.

The other is sprawl. Newer arterials, built after the problematic era, started out as state highways designed for transport. Once interstates were built, due to height and FAR limits in residential and commercial zones, new development sprawled out, sometimes onto these state highways which now had interstate alternatives. Naturally it was mostly low cost housing or commercial real estate as those are the most likely uses that would work adjacent to a large arterial.

What’s the percentage of cars on the road you see moving big stuff that could not be moved by other means? (Aka not people).

That's mostly a chicken-egg problem, if more people rode the bus there would be way more frequent stops and more nearby ones.

Or closer to NA have a look at Vancouver. From a high level looking at the whole region, it's about as devoted to cars as everywhere else in North America, though if you peek down to the neighbourhood level you can see some incredible successes in moving people away from car use. In the near downtown West End area for example, some 45% of the population walks to work.

Horses

> What utility do cars provide?

They don't shit on the street.

We are not talking about perfection being the enemy of the good. The congestion of the daily car commute is as real as anywhere.

Ultimately its a question of finding accelerating solutions (the way). The article I commended on focuses too much on a certain value set (the will).

There are good things being invented. Tiny electric cars for example, that in principle could halve the car density. But remember the paradox that more space will simply lead to more traffic.

Ultimately the entire distribution of work, residential and utility/shopping areas must change. This is not shapped so much by individual preferrences around mobility as it is about real eastate and transport economics, incentives for developers, manufacturers and financiers, interplay with local government tax strategies etc.

Its a wicked problem. Being clear about the challenges can only be good. Blind faith doesnt always carry the day.

The city I live in is modest in size, 250k-300k depending on who you ask. It will never be a walkable city. Throughout much of the year, that's asking to die of heatstroke or something. It will never have a subway. Hell, there's only one or two buildings that are more than 5 stories tall. It is hundreds of miles away from any city of comparable size. My in-laws live in a township of about 6000 an hour away.

Are we supposed to give up cars? I have a 6 minute ride to work in the morning if I hit the stop lights wrong. Why would I ride the piss-stinking bus, when it'd add 20 minutes of irritation to my day?

It's not a car-industrial complex that is an obstacle to your imagined utopia. It's that there are people like myself who don't want to make our lives more difficult so that yours gets better. I'd be shocked if there's a non-coastal city or town anywhere in North America that supports your vision.

Uber is not the answer really as is, but some form of fewer cars used more often with much less parking needed — that would be an improvement.

If we can then get rid of half the parking lots and fill them in with a mix of medium-density mixed-use development and green space, that could set us up for enough walking/biking/transit contexts that we can take the next step away from car dependency.

Old cars are a Prius for interstate trips, and an early 2000s Outback for camping/interstate trips where we need to bring more things with. Prius got severely damaged in our parking lot and I used the insurance payout to help with a down payment on a Crosstrek, which will eventually replace the Outback as well.

I feel bad for taking up the (free) parking space, but the cost of ownership of the Outback when infrequently used is something like a $40 insurance premium every six months. That's another benefit of not driving much -- low mileage and safe driver insurance discounts.

Apart from Uber or hitching a ride from a friend, there's no good transportation option to our airport but I get your point. I think in most cases, given the option between a walkable (to work and restaurants) neighborhood and no car (and no good public transit), and suburbia with a car, most people would choose suburbia. Ease of getting groceries, ease of access to recreation, etc. What's really missing is the transit investment.

Saying something like "New York" immediately invalidates the rest of your comment as New York (City) is one of the few areas with meaningful public transit.

We worship cars here. Cars are like Freedom Jesus. If you do anything to mess with cars you are a filthy communist who should die according to the general public.

If I worked in Boston/Cambridge, I could (and sometimes do) take the train in a similar manner though it takes me 90-120 minutes each way depending upon destination.

There are literally several plot points in mad men where he drives drunk back from the city.

And every time I've touristed in Europe it's been great wandering around without a car (the times I've driven the backcountry with a car have been fun, too).

But all the people I've worked with when in Europe have a car (sure, it might be small) and drive when it makes sense, which is often.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-17/a-pew-sur...

That said, I currently find myself in a suburb, and bicycling is actually okay. I can bike out of my neighborhood to reach the main streets, and there are actually pretty decent bike commuting paths once I reach them. If you're wanting to haul things like pets and lumber, recent cargo e-bikes can haul a lot. They're expensive, but they exist if that's a priority for you. I think bicycles can be a pretty decent option for people in the suburbs, at least sometimes. Plus, bikes are just fun!

That said, using my car less is a big goal for me, so I sometimes take the less convenient option. My longterm goal is to find a way to leave the suburbs and live in a city, though, so I can be much less card-dependent.

Recently there's been a surge of 5-over-1 apartment complexes replacing old businesses and houses along my suburb's main road. Great, more dense housing, that's good. The main road has painted bike lanes in the middle of town, and dedicated multi-use paths further out in each direction. For some of these complexes, they had to tear up the road and sidewalk to add safe entrances. Not only did they NOT add more multi-use paths, but they actually approved the buildings to be closer to the road than ordinances typically allow, making a multi-use path unlikely to ever be put in.

You are basically saying, "Why don't you just radically change your lifestyle?" E.g. I need to drive my dogs and partner to my parent's place (which is only across town) once a week for dinner. This is an activity all of us really enjoy. Despite being only a few miles away, the route is not safely walkable/bikeable. Which means: car, either mine or a rideshare. Rideshare service sucks here (because almost everyone drives). Huge chicken and egg problem.

Some of my hobbies involve building stuff. I can and have had wood delivered. It's an $80 charge (or more) for each delivery. That's a huge dent, and means I have to plan every material I need.

I go camping a few times a year. That would be outright impossible without a dedicated vehicle. I could rent, but again, huge cost.

But my most vital hobby revolves around spinning fire props, which involves numerous bulky large objects, heavy fuel dunks, and flammable fuel.

So yeah, pretty much all my hobbies and things I need to do for mental health revolve around car access. But that's kind of what happens when you spend your whole life in an ultra car centric suburb. I can't imagine anything else because I'd have to terraform all of suburban upstate NY to be more like Europe, and that's not happening (not that I don't want to). This is why the car debate is obnoxious: city folks with limited experience are telling folks with totally different lifestyles "have you considered... not?" and it's incredibly patronizing. I know that's not your intent, but that's how it's usually interpreted.

My one hope is for affordable FSD on-demand ride share with a variety of vehicles. Otherwise having a car (two actually) is a mandatory sunk cost for me.

I don't even think if the entire town got together and said "we want a sidewalk on the main drag with Walmart so carless folks don't have to contend with walking on the shoulder with cars doing 55 in a 45" it would go anywhere, cause there's nowhere to even put that without some huge eminent domain grab.

Here's an example: https://arpeco.fi/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/20191231_143830... Can you see those big hatches? They're almost the depth of the bus

But I stand by my point that driving or being driven directly from A to B will always be better, and most people seem to agree with me.

I also have been on a bus, whooshing by traffic, and had great commuting experiences that way. But that’s a small minority of times in my experience.

Efficient public transportation + shared cars services/rental cars can help a lot with that for people who can't leverage using a bicycle or prefer not to during bad weather.

The default assumption should be that people who benefit from auto sales are actively trying to block public transportation. It's foolish to think otherwise.

To me this is a huge part of the problem.

I've wanted to take the train many times in the US, but it also is wildly expensive here. Much faster and cheaper to take a plane in most cases.

I'd think the way to solve this is to tax driving a car appropriately, whether through parking or other methods, to encourage and subsidize train travel. If the cost comes down, I'm guessing many more people would do it.

I think in the USA, pre-existing airports have reduced demand for HSR. The US has airports in almost every city with more than 500k people, while that is definitely not true in China (even still).

Agree however that some of their subway systems are their most impressive engineering feat and prove that they could have done a better job with their HSR.

And to those who are in the small minority who don't use it, would you also ask childless couples to pay for schools? Or people never intent on flying to pay for airports?

We can both recognize that cars can be necessary in certain conditions AND ideally not a big part of our lives. I think that's reasonable and possible.

You're looking at it backward. I think almost everyone who sits in traffic or nearly gets in a crash by someone doing something stupid thinks, "Driving is awful." They've just been conditioned to think there's no alternative.

But almost everyone would say "it would be better if there was less traffic to deal with."

You can't force a top-down solution for public transit with the road system in the US. The great strength of the US road system is point-to-point transportation. Let everyone benefit from that instead of running buses that only the poorest use. Publicly funded rideshare is the way to do this. After a while, the bus routes will naturally appear in the data. This is the bottom-up way to build a bus system.

Rail does much better because it's usually only built where it can be filled, and is electrified.

And I know rideshare has a bad reputation because of Uber/Lyft. But government can create rules they must follow to accept these funds. They can either accept those rules or some other company will. Or maybe a government rideshare service is a better option. This is a classic free market vs government service question and there's many options here. But the important point is allowing everyone to use rideshare as a transportation option.

NYC crime increased 22% last year. [2]

Chicago crime increased 41% last year. [3]

[1] https://missionlocal.org/2023/01/explore-how-crime-changed-i...

[2] https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/p00071/nypd-citywide-crim...

[3] https://www.illinoispolicy.org/chicago-crime-spikes-in-2022-...

**

That said, the OP said "violent" and technically the increase was almost entirely non-violent crimes (e.g. theft).

Violent crime is more prevalent in urban areas of the US than in rural areas [2].

[1] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12281

[2] https://www.city-journal.org/article/criminal-neglect#:~:tex....

There are certainly some places with dumb laws, but I’d want to see evidence that “It’s illegal to build walkable areas in most of the US”. THAT sounds like fear mongering. Every house I have ever bought has had local ordinances requiring sidewalks.

You aren’t allowed to build sidewalks and trails on land you don’t own; I guess that is illegal in the sense that trespass is illegal. Also many areas don’t have the revenue to keep up sidewalks so they don’t build them. That sounds fiscally responsible to me even if a little sad, but is also a far cry from “illegal”.

The best we can realistically hope for is it staying relatively steady in nominal dollars whilst inflation burns up the purchasing power associated.

My sister and I watched day-time game shows on days when we were stuck inside during the Summer months as kids in the mid 1970s. Even as kids we knew when watching The Price is Right that the first digit in the price of a new car was a "3".

(Oh, forgot to mention the price of a new car was also only four digits.)

I know, I know, that was nearly five decades ago....

I got into running after college and lived in a borough where things were walkable and some decent landmarks were no more than two miles away. Things felt close, and accessible. I went home for Thanksgiving once and realized that, while there were plenty of things that were kind of in range (grocery store ~2.5mi, shopping mall ~3mi, mini-golf ~1.5mi), the fact that it all ran through that highway made everything feel far, and it was never feasible to do anything but drive.

And I'm not even sure the solve needs "make my hometown area dense"! But if you had protected bike lanes on the highway and made everyone slow down a bit to let pedestrians through, that could be a massive improvement for everyone.

Now that people are working from home, it might not be necessary for suburban families to have two cars. I would know, I've been one-car for over four years now I think. Additions like walking paths and bike lanes and better bus access can make a huge difference and can save thousands of dollars a year on vehicle costs.

what you get is people parking on the sidewalk

what you get is people leaving garbage bins out all week to "protect" their spot

what you get is legit road-rage level violence over people blocking driveways or protecting spots or leaving cars parked too long

people have cars, they need a place to put them, even in fantasyland

Suburbs are awash with parking. Maybe we should require parking to be "behind" stores instead of in front.

Because what everyone needs is a SUV that weighs 9000 pounds and can accelerate to 60 MPH in 3.5 seconds.

If you can get a beater for $1k and some insurance, you're basically down to gas (when the beater dies, you get another one or fix it).

IIRC now they end up with some sort of restricted license that can't do much beyond go to school and insurance is through the roof.

Pittsburgh used to have a vibrant rail and trolley system. Most American cities that were established before cars did. It's absolutely workable, it's just a question of priorities.

> part immaturity

Explain please?

> degrowth mindset

Not inherently. For many it's just a question of where people want the growth to be, and which modes of transit get priority.

I live about 30 minutes from Pittsburgh in an area that could be called rural (or at least a rural-feeling part of a suburb), and 80% of where I need to travel more or less happens on a straight line of road that follows the Ohio River. There's no inherent reason why that must be a highway instead of a railway.

I have bus stops that are about a mile and three miles away; if one of those was also a train station it would vastly cut down on the amount of driving I'd have to do. I'd enjoy that greatly!

In the past he railed against car usage: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/04/18/get-rich-with-bik... , https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/07/27/rent-vs-buy/ , https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2017/10/24/get-rich-with-con...