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Comment by yokem55 | Hacker News Reader

You aren't wrong that government support of automotive transport is immense. But that government support comes from decades of popular electoral support for those policies from all across of the political spectrum. Why? Because cars give people more convenient and independent transportation then just about any other mode. And people push their politicians and representatives to support that kind of transportation.

If you want to undo the car centric culture and economy, you cannot just ignore the broad base of popular support it enjoys.

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> Why? Because cars give people more convenient and independent transportation then just about any other mode.

This is kind of a chicken and egg problem.

The value of a car is proportional to the extent of the road network. There is no value (for most cars) in isolation.

The original push for government investment in car-friendly infrastructure and highways was from industrialists, technocrats, and military minds. It was top-down planning, not bottom-up. After those major infrastructure investments (and divestments from commuter rail), the car was an obvious choice. Everything after that was self-reinforcing: more cars -> more roads -> more cars -> more roads. Of course if you already own a car then it is a sunk cost and you will prefer the government spend more on car infrastructure to benefit you, further perpetuating the investment cycle.

If the initial circumstances had been different (maybe progress in electrification proceeded a little faster and oil refining a little slower) then public transit and urban planning might have developed differently and the car would not be as important as it is now (practically a necessity in most of the US).

Sure, there's an element of that. But the idea that government policy has been primarily driven by what would produce the "best" outcome as far as transport options go that the population actually want is a little naive. And of course what we all want is convenience and comfort for ourselves while not having to deal with the downsides (or impossibility) of providing it for everyone.

I'm happy to accept the reality that currently we have no form of alternative transport technology that offers the same comfort & convenience of the car - but I also believe we'd've been better off in the long run if public spending hadn't been so grotesquely skewed in favour of that particular option - other technologies would have had a better chance to come to the fore (e.g. why have e-bikes/e-scooters taken so long to become popular - there's no particular reason I know of they couldn't have been a big part of our transport network 20 or 30 years ago), we could have laid out our cities so we didn't need to travel such huge distances on a regular basis (vs, e.g. occasional long-distance travel between dense hubs where most facilities and services could be accessed via walking/cycling etc.), goods transportation could've been revolutionised by dedicated automated networks etc. etc. For me the most convincing argument that exists against the size (and reach) of government power that we've become accustomed to is that so many opportunities for a better balance of transportation options have been lost to a virtually single-minded focus by the powers-that-be over the last 70 or 80 years on private cars above all else.

But we also built our society to make the car more convenient. Can’t remember the ratio but the amount of parking space available per car is absolutely insane. That means a relatively cheap access to put your giant car almost anywhere you go. Most cities are built around that idea and that makes other form of transportations almost impractical.

So yes the car is convenient but we also built many things to make it more convenient. In places where subways/rapid transit are made more convenient, there’s of course less parking and less road space and naturally % of car ownership goes down

It’s a choice. It’s not naturally always based on the merit of the car.

800 parking spots per car in the US.

Does "800 parking spots per car" pass the sniff test?

There's order of magnitude 1 car per US resident. Does it seem like there are 800 parking spots per US resident? A quarter of a trillion total parking spots?

I doubt my car parks in 800 unique places (including different street parking spots as unique) in a given year.

On the smaller end, call each space 16'x8'. That puts a little more than 2% of the entire land mass of the US as parking spaces (assuming I didn't get any of the exponents wrong).

Source? A quick Google turns up 8 as a common number, not 800.

Perhaps if you accept that freeways function as parking spots during major traffic jams...

That's originally the result of a deliberate domestic propaganda campaign, cf. "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM

If we did it once for cars we could do it again agin 'em.

> Because cars give people more convenient and independent transportation then just about any other mode.

In the US, this is true.

In most European cities, you can just walk instead, or take the metro or a tram.

It's really convenient to just walk to where you want to go, and when the grocery store is a 10 minute walk away, you don't need to fill a car with groceries. Just go more often.

Need to go further? Clean and safe public transportation is often more convenient than having to drive yourself.

I really like being able to read a book on my way to work rather than paying attention to the road and making sure i don't kill myself or someone else.

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