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Comment by estebank | Hacker News Reader

Traffic will get worse until taking alternative means transportation is faster and then teach equilibrium. Even if you love driving, if driving takes an hour and the train 45 minutes, most people will just take the train, until traffic speed lowers enough that a balance is reached. If there's no alternative (like in many American cities), the traffic will just continue worsening indefinitely (or at least until people give up on the area and move somewhere else that is more livable). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_parado...

Obligatory Not Just Bikes video: https://youtu.be/CHZwOAIect4?si=BR9sFwxYDJSAWYLG

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> Traffic will get worse until taking alternative means transportation is faster

Alternate modes of transportation don't even have to be faster, it just can't be substantially worse. I'd gladly add an extra 10-15 to my travel time if I can spend that trip relaxing in a comfortable and well-maintained train and not have to deal with traffic, other drivers, parking, etc.

People will still want cars, and in many cases still need them, but a huge percentage of our driving could be eliminated as long as public transportation was made the more attractive option.

> Alternate modes of transportation don't even have to be faster, it just can't be substantially worse.

Or perhaps (also?) at least consistent.

While there are trips that can be 'too long', I think what a lot of people hate a lot (maybe even most) is variability. If a trip is (e.g.) 43 minutes for >95% of the time, then they'll probably accept it. But if sometimes it is 30 minutes, sometimes 43, sometimes 57, and everything in between, then it's hard to plan your life around that.

I wonder if trip length variability is probably not as important as frequency. Being on a bus that takes a little longer than usual is mildly annoying, particularly if you know that the backup to your missed connection is only another 5-10 minutes out. However, if the bus that you'd usually catch only has service on the hour, which means that you're waiting 20 minutes for your connection, and also, if anything happens on that first leg, your wait is likely to be closer to an hour for the next one... You just drive. (This is by design.)

But then, with driving, traffic presents you with similar dilemma, along with the added "fun" of much higher injury/fatality rates, the direct expenses of gas and insurance and maintenance and repairs, and the chances of people pulled over by a cop with a bad attitude.

To my mind, very little is as important as the ability to get up and move when you see fit. Cars actually suck for this without a lot of support and a lot of Americans' hard-earned money being sunk into resources and infrastructure that just sits there the vast majority of the time. I'd rather empty busses and trains I can count on to be there (and be safe) versus my experience with owning my personal vehicle (dangerous and expensive).

Maybe. That variability is frustrating, but it exists terribly with driving as well. Rush hours, wrecks, construction, etc all can significantly impact driving times, too.

My personal observation is that it's somewhat about control. With public transport, I have no control over the delays; If there's a delay, there's more or less nothing I can do about it. If driving, I can maybe choose an alternate route, and even if I can't do that, at least I am in control of the vehicle and _I_ am the one making the decisions.

A related behaviour I've observed is how some drivers prefer to be moving very slowly rather than being in stop-and-go traffic, even if both end up getting you to the same destination.

I suppose there's a mental framing aspect to feeling "in control." When I am in traffic behind the wheel of my car, I feel utterly stuck. Practically, I can do nothing but drive the vehicle and maybe listen to a podcast. When in a bus or train, I can read a book, play a video game, or answer emails/texts on my phone. If I'm on a really long journey, I can take out my laptop, connect it my phone's hotspot, and work on a project.

Although, admittedly, waiting on a delayed train or bus in inclement weather can be pretty lousy. Having sheltered bus stops or indoor spaces (like a cafe) near stops/stations can make that experience much more comfortable.

Ironically I had the exact opposite experience on BART. Sure, occasionally "police activity" or a "major medical emergency" (splat) or maybe just equipment failure would lead to an extra long train trip. But 95% of the time, it would take me under 60 minutes door to door. If I took a car, it might take 30 minutes, or it might take 90 minutes, and there was really no way of knowing which until I got to the bay bridge.

I hate driving. I never had one when i lived in London. I did not have one in Manchester until I had a child. I rented a car if I needed (e.g. for a holiday) or took a taxi. Whenever I have a choice I use public transport or have someone else drive.

Other places I have lived in I need a car, but a small hatchback is fine, and the next time I plan to get a smaller one - cheaper to run, easier to park, better for the environment and the roads.

That’s exactly right. I lived in San Francisco for 10 years and there were a shocking number of trips where the public transit route was one missed transfer or minor traffic incident away from taking longer than walking.

I always tell people I want them to get rid of a car - most people live in a family situation where there is more than one driver. If there was a good transit system they could keep one car (to tow the boat or whatever it is that transit can't do), and save a large pile of money.

As you say, better can mean a little slower, but not a lot slower. Creating a better transit system is expensive, but still cheaper than cars.

> but still cheaper than cars

Overall for society yes, but in most places where transit is widely used, it is quite costly. E.g. a season ticket between Reading and London is 512UKP/mo. For the individual traveler it may not be cheaper especially if they already need to own a car to go to Tesco etc.

That price is much higher than I expected. About $650 US dollars if I did the conversion right.

I have a truck I almost never drive (the fuel gauge is broke so I fill it 2x year just to ensure I never run out). Between taxes, insurance, fuel, and maintenance I'm still spending $100/month just to keep it in my driveway - that is about as low as you can possibly get for a car.

That trip it is about 40 miles (plus distance to/from the stations, but lets assume you live next to the station and are going to the other station). At 20mpg, going to/from work every day you are using a bit over $200 of gas per month (In Europe fuel prices are a lot higher than the US, I don't know must how but $600 would not surprise me)

Of course realistic if you are driving that much you are not going to be able to keep a paid off car on the road for very long, plus you have maintenance. Between payments when the car isn't paid off and maintenance you are probably averaging $200/month - for the cheapest car. (you can lease new cars for $900/month).

I'm already at $500/month to drive a car, and I'm assuming the cheapest reasonable prices. Realistically people making that trip every day are likely to have more expensive cars. And of course I used US prices while UK prices would be very different.

Cars are expensive, and so even when you pick a transit trip much more expensive than I think is reasonable cars still come up expensive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of...

Meanwhile, when I was living in Munich a few years back, an annual pass covering the whole city was like 500 EUR. For the year.

That plus a bike made for great urban transportation.

This. Currently, going to the office means 1,5 hours by train (or more if there are delays or trains are cancelled, which isn't uncommon in Germany) or 30-40 minutes by car. I'm not risking a 2 hour commute unless I absolutely have no other choice. Unfortunately, the company I work for doesn't let me do full remote.

it almost feels like the njb video was specifically a reaction to this, the exact misunderstandings this article has are what he's responding to.

I didn't see the video (I find NJB annoying so I rarely watch his stuff), but it is a common misconception in the transit world that induced demand is a bad thing. Cities should be inducing demand for getting around. The only question is what demand - build a great transit system and you will induce demand for more transit and places to live close to transit. Have a bad transit system and you will induce demand for more roads.

> Cities should be inducing demand for getting around.

This is mentioned in the latest NJB video, "More Lanes are (Still) a Bad Thing":

> The difference for induced demand for cars, and induced for other modes of travel, is that cars are a extremely space inefficient. You can absorb a lot more induced travel demand on a subway line, tram line, or bicycle path, than you can in a car lane.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHZwOAIect4&t=15m54s

The Oh The Urbanity! channel has a good video on this, "What People Get Wrong About Induced Demand":

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wlld3Z9wRc

Cars have (AFAICT) the lowest hourly through-put of any transportation mode:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_per_hour_per_direct...

It sounds more like people use "induced demand" with negative connotations when referring to "induced driving demand" rather than truly meaning that any source of induced demand is bad. i.e. it's just a conventional shorthand?

I have only seen induced demand used with clearly negative connotations in my life. This article (and a couple others) are the rare exception and they are only using it in context of explaining why it isn't bad (as opposed to using it in a neutral form)

the vast majority of urbanists are referring to induced driving demand when they bring up the topic. njb is definitely a jaded man, can see why it'd potentially be offputting.

> the traffic will just continue worsening indefinitely (or at least until people give up on the area and move somewhere else that is more livable).

While it's incredibly hard to believe, it is true. If you look at population statistics for Philadelphia up to the 1980s, it fell to 4/5ths its peak in less than a couple decades.

Driving from river-to-river, or from city-to-suburbs or vice versa was a nightmare, according to everyone older than me. Driving "through" or "to" the center city's impassable traffic grid was hopeless. Then, in 1984, they took advantage of the government buying all the bankrupt railroads and used that property to create a below-ground highway Vine-Street Expressway for river-to-river traffic and connected Penn Railroads Center-city terminal with Reading's system through an underground commuter tunnel and turned Reading's terminal into the Convention Center instead of a giant mess off railroad track interlockings leading into Reading Terminal making traffic even worse. If not for that, I have no doubt it would be 3/5ths the peak population. I could write a 50-page paper on all the things it fixed and I was only 2 when it was all built.

The induced demand memes always show the crazy west coast mega highways.

Meanwhile east coasters have roughly the same HOV-less, 2-3 lane highway infra in the suburbs that we had 50 years ago when the population in some areas was 1/2 of what it is today. Worse yet, we also have roughly the same transit infra we did then too.

You can tax cars/roads, you can make trains free, but at the end of the day.. you need to build SOMETHING. If you want your economy to grow as your population grows, you need to grow your infra. It's a sorry state in the NYC metro area because we are not.

You can't just keep slicing up the existing infra pie differently, you need to grow the pie. Otherwise you are just reallocating winners & losers, and unlikely to make the overall situation any better.

Thinking we will simply increase the pain of driving until the existing state of trains is tolerable is idiotic, but I see plenty of this in the alt-transit movement. Make trains great, make them awesome, make me want to take them.. make me regret having to drive when I do!!

> You can't just keep slicing up the existing infra pie differently, you need to grow the pie.

Converting 1 out of every 4 or 8 lanes on dense cities to be bus only would decrease the number of cars that can be physically on the road, but increase the throughput of people, as buses do scale much better than single occupancy cars.

Well, as long as you have actual buses running on that strip, with trips that aren't much slower than cars, with ticket prices that are smaller than the cost of a car, and going from and to the places people want to go.

In my experience, governing bodies that use terms like "induced demand" have a high probability on failing to provide those details. But will still want to take the capacity down.

Yup. I live on a street that was recently de-car'd.

They didn't add a bus, light rail, trolley, or anything. They kept all the parking. But they painted cute little two way bike lanes. It's a regular pedestrian promenade. Surely increases the value of my condo.

Nor did they allocate reasonable pickup/dropoff taxi zones or delivery loading/unloading, so its a giant mess of double parking and people improvising.

Also makes literally zero trips for me faster, and most of them slower. And all the traffic has spilled over onto adjacent streets creating worse traffic.

Painting new lines is always cheaper and easier than actually building infrastructure, and the politician who decided on the new lines can say he's Doing Something™. Even if it's just virtue signaling and doesn't actually help, it's enough to fool voters.

Right, so my 3 block radius has added about 3000 new units in the last 5 years (great) and all we've done to improve transit is.. remove a road (not great).

Agreed, we absolutely should put in real express bus lanes, and enforce them vigorously.

But even this is "building" for a very low bar/definition of building. You need to actually create new bus routes, paint lanes, put up new signage, add cameras for enforcement, coordinate with NYPD to ticket, etc.

Even this simple example of "building" is something the city seems paralyzed and unable to accomplish outside of what.. 14th st?

We don't NEED to build something. Maybe NYC is big enough and people need to consider going elsewhere with better policies. We need to stop this narrative that growth must continue indefinitely.

Those people don't cease to exist if they're not in NYC, you realize?

If they're not there, they're probably somewhere more sprawly, that uses more energy and cuts more space out of the environment.

Then why do the policies of NYC not match that perspective? I wish everyone would move to NYC personally but there doesn't seem to be any movement to improve the city itself. I don't think you have to build more roads or trains to build more and taller in NYC itself instead of pushing the problem outward.

Because NIMBYism is part of the cultural momentum within America as a whole.

There's a lot of well-intentioned regulations that had the cumulative effect of making it really hard to build things, and people have gotten used to this. Many even feel entitled to randomly stop new construction for whatever reason they feel like, and many planning boards are all too happy to go along with them.

The people who suffer most from not enough new housing, after all, are potential residents, and potential residents can't vote.

But the parent wants to build roads in the same place? I get the NIMBYism but building roads and trains is going to have the same exact problem from NIMBYists.

This guy gets it

A lot of NIMBYs seem to lack object permanence.

If dastardly "newcomers" have to move elsewhere, they chalk that up as a victory for degrowth, as if those people poof out of existence as soon as they leave the metro area.

I am not for degrowth though. I am for densification. Make the city larger and more compact instead of bussing and training more people in from the sprawl. Build more and taller and for more people than what is being done.

> We don't NEED to build something.

How do you make cities denser, larger, and more compact without.. building things?

I was replying to your desire for more roads and transit into the metro. Upscaling the existing low density closer in the city itself would be far cheaper if the barriers were removed.

You can also tax cars until demand decreases. The obvious challenge is that presently people commute into the city because they can't afford to live in the city or perhaps most aptly cannot afford what they would consider a reasonable lifestyle there.

Even if you phase it in you risk simply forcing people to move into the city exacerbating existing housing prices. It feels like you need a very very substantial increase in housing prior to increase in taxes. For instance in cities that have excessive single family housing bulldozing houses to build substantial apartments then phasing in taxes.

The alternative is probably pretty ugly because people have a seemingly very high tolerance for bad traffic. They will keep moving to the city and keep driving until driving in the city is beyond untenable.

We could also just stop subsidizing as much as we currently do. We hand out so much public land in the form of free street parking, making the roads larger unwieldy to walk in, and bikes have to worry about getting doored.

I'm not suggesting we get rid of all street parking, but it's currently at absurd levels. It would be great if some of those subsidies went to something else that lessened the need to own a car in the first place.

You're downvoted, but it's a very reasonable point. I'm not sure why you can park a car on the street for hours for free, but not, say, a picnictable with a BBQ, a folding tablesaw, a telescope, a pop-up bookstore, a film projector, and so on.

> I'm not sure why you can park a car on the street for hours for free, but not, say, a picnictable with a BBQ, a folding tablesaw, a telescope, a pop-up bookstore, a film projector, and so on.

You don't have to pay to do those other things either. You might not be able to because of safety reasons (e.g. a BBQ in some places) but the "for free" isn't relevant.

Before car occupied road, it is possible.

The short answer is because public parking is in the public interest. Same as bike parking or sidewalks. Think how much space we could save if we got rid of sidewalks! (/s of course)

You grandparent is arguing that there is a desirable level of street parking that is below current levels of street parking. They don't claim that all street parking is bad.

The difference is that car parking is an enormously larger handout. Bike parking probably takes a tenth as much space per "vehicle".

> I'm not sure why you can park a car on the street for hours for free, but not, say, a picnictable with a BBQ, a folding tablesaw, a telescope, a pop-up bookstore, a film projector, and so on.

I mean, the traditional answer is pretty clear. Roads are public transportation infrastructure. Parking cars (and bikes and scooters) is allowed, because cars move the public around. All these other things are not transportation for the public. People think of parking spots along the streets as "landed property", but they're not, they're more like the overhead bins in a bus or plane.

But also, from a practical sense, no one cares about public transportation anymore, so you actually can now park random crap in the street, anytime you'd like?

At least in Michigan, restaurants routinely do the "park a picnic table with a BBQ on the side of the road" thing all the time (see https://www.giffelswebster.com/dining-platforms-and-parklets...) -- many of which still persist since COVID assistance ended.

And residential/commercial construction workers routinely do get to block off street parking for a tablesaw or any other construction usage at job sites all the time.

We also subsidize the auto companies (and companies related to the auto industry). Sometimes directly, sometimes by being lax on safety or privacy or efficiency standards, or by giving them loopholes (hello, truck-only product offerings). We could just... stop that. Taxing cars hits the public. Phasing out these subsidies hits companies that probably need to be smaller to begin with. Someone's going to get hurt, let's choose the ones with some fat to cut.

It's the same. Taxing companies or people results in more cost to customers.

It's like thinking that people pay income tax but companies pay employment tax. Companies would happily pay you the employment tax, as they've already budgeted paying that much for you anyway. Thinking this is some free money that doesn't affect people is incorrect.

> You can also tax cars until demand decreases.

I think punishing drivers is a bad idea. It'd be much better to provide alternatives to driving that are attractive enough that people choose to use them because it actually benefits them to do so. Not many people are looking for their city to hurt them until they have no choice but to make do with things that are worse and less convenient for them. Give people a better option and they'll flock to it naturally. I've spent enough time in places with amazing public transportation that I know it can be the preferred option for 80-90% of my needs. That's what we should strive for.

I agree. The issue with taxing drivers is it assume the driver is mostly culpable. But the infrastructure decisions that force the majority of people to commute by car weren't made by them. You got things like the big boss and his managers all like to live close to each other and close to work. So they commute 5 minutes to the office in Sunnyvale. While the secretary is commuting from Vacaville. Placing a Pigouvian tax on the secretary is kinda a jerk move.

I suggested that housing be substantially expanded FIRST and then phase in increased taxes on cars in the city thereafter. Basically first make it possible for the secretary to have an opportunity to move close to Sunnyvale then years later if its still important to live in Vacaville they can pay increasing taxes representing the actual collective cost.

I suspect you'll run into similar difficulties convincing people to allow their single family homes to be bulldozed and give up their privacy, their equity, and their lawns/gardens so that they can move in with strangers. If you can't offer people a housing situation that's better for them than what they have you'll not get many people signing up to make their lives worse. Try to strong arm them into it and you'll get resistance and resentment.

I think we have the ability to give people better, less isolated, housing options that many would find preferable to cookie cutter houses in labyrinth-like subdivisions that cut them off from the rest of the city unless they can drive, but those options will have to minimize the downsides of living in close proximity to many others and come with additional benefits that more than make up for what you're asking people to give up.

The bulldozer comes after the sale of your newly more valuable property. WA just passed a law essentially ending single family home zoning. fourplexes can be build in any city of 75k, sixplexes near transit or if 2 are "affordable".

https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2023-05-08/washingto...

Separately some areas like shoreline have decided to allow upzoning near transit. 4 neighbors got together and sold realizing a 75% premium over home value.

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/neighbors-selling-homes-as-...

Charging someone a small fraction of what their choice costs isn't hurting them its actually bringing the economic consequences of their actions into scope of their decision so they can make intelligent decisions whether or not to bear them instead of forcing everyone to bear them while people make the entirely rational choice to impose overall cost to society as a whole.

For example charging smokers more for health insurance.

> Charging someone a small fraction of what their choice costs isn't hurting them its actually bringing the economic consequences of their actions into scope of their decision so they can make intelligent decisions whether or not to bear them

If it isn't hurting them then it isn't incentivizing them to change their behavior, and any tax painful enough to drive wealthier people to change is going to disproportionately impact the poorer people who can least afford it and who are also more likely have the least opportunity/ability to change.

Charging smokers more for health insurance wouldn't be any better if we'd structured our entire society around forcing people to smoke in order to function and while many were still left with no other viable alternatives besides smoking. People generations before we were born allowed the auto industry to shape our cities in ways that made their products essential to our day to day lives and it doesn't do much good to punish people today.

For most people, the entire idea that it's "their decision" to drive cars is questionable at best. Many people would already prefer for things to be different. Give people an alternative solution that meets their needs and actually improves their situation and there'll be no need for flagellation.

> You can also tax cars until demand decreases.

No you can't. If you try you will find yourself voted out of office and replaced with someone who immediately removes those taxes - and everything else you were doing to make alternatives better.

If you want to make people not drive you need to start with a better option. Start building great transit. Great transit isn't possible without quantity, so build a lot of it. Make it fast and frequent. Once people have a good (not always better, but it needs to be good) we can talk about how to get the stragglers still driving out of their cars. However very few places in the world have this problem and so it isn't worth talking about.

>You can also tax cars until demand decreases

Ideas like this disproportionately affects poor people and minorities. Sure, you've reduced traffic, but now only the Right Kind Of People can afford to drive. Not a great look.

Driving is, in fact, a luxury. Only the right kind of people can vacation in Vail and I don’t see anyone flipping out about that.

> Driving is, in fact, a luxury.

Yes, being able to get to the only grocery store several miles away is a luxury. Driving 45 minutes to work because there's no jobs in walking distance other than fast food is a luxury. Going to the only doctor that takes your insurance/medicaid on the other side of town is a luxury.

You're either not from the US or you're so privileged that you cannot conceive the kind of life anyone less fortunate than you leads. Our entire society is built around the assumption that everyone drives. If you don't, then fuck you, get a car you bum. It's your own fault you're suffering. Get some bootstraps and buy a car already, you're just lazy.

If you are in the US, just try going without a car for a month. You won't last more than three days. Then come back and tell me what a luxury it is.

Now imagine how someone less fortunate than yourself, who can’t drive because they’re too young, or too old, or too poor, or too disabled is supposed to survive in a society built around the assumption that everyone drives.

Wow, you're right, that should be a central argument in the case for better public transit or something! I can't believe you're the first person ever to raise this point. Good job!

The current conversation is about cities.

I lived in SF without a car for 7 months. Getting out of the city was a pain in the neck because the weekend Caltrain schedule is terrible (going from Paris to Brussels is faster than San Francisco to Mountain View), getting groceries was inconvenient because I was in the outer sunset, where it is only residential (it hadn't occurred to me that there wouldn't be a suoermarket withing walking distance when looking for housing), and commuting downtown had a monthly delay because of some car getting stuck trying to go into the tunnel in west portal. All of those things are problems that need solving. I now still live in SF, on the other side of GGP, with a supermarket a block away, multiple restaurants and a direct bus line to downtown with a dedicated bus lane. The difference is night and day. I still use the car once a day, but never use it to commute. Cities can be improved. If you live in a suburb and work on an office park, nothing in this conversation will ever affect you, except maybe a potential future where the most radical changes to the city cause you to park on the outskirts and take transit, or pay a premium to drive in in order to go to some event or night out.

My examples were from Cincinnati, one of the major cities in the US.

Unless you live in the downtown proper, you must have a car to survive.

I live in Chicago. I have a car because I can afford that particular luxury. I also didn’t get a drivers license until I was in my 20s and most of my friends continue to not own vehicles. If we, as a society, stopped working backwards from figuring out how to get everybody into a car and instead put that effort into fixing our broken transportation infrastructure that makes assumptions about everybody having 5 figures to own a car, we would all be better off. Were subsidizing Rolexes instead of giving people Casio watches and letting the people who can afford it buy Rolexes.

Driving is a luxury in the fantasy world you want to exist. In the very real world that we have today, it is not.

I agree that cars are bad and we need public transit, but that is not the reality we are in right now. Today in the real world in most of the country, you're fucked if you don't have access to a car. Which is why we need public transit.

Not in the vast majority of North America. It's a necessity

The vast majority of America by acreage has squirrels and deer, water, or crops by sq ft. 4 in 5 citizen lives in an urban area where one could with sufficient investment live without a car.

> The vast majority of America by acreage has squirrels and deer, water, or crops by sq ft.

Very clever, you sure got me.

> 4 in 5 citizen lives in an urban area where one could with sufficient investment live without a car.

Most definitely not. Americans living in a typical suburb have no option except to drive or walk for perhaps hours (often with no sidewalks) to get basic necessities. Even within the vast majority of US cities, typically it's a minority of neighborhoods well serviced by walkable amenities and transit, and the rest are still car-dependent.

Again, walking 45+ minutes for basic errands is not a reasonable ask. Bike infrastructure is usually lacking or absent and is forbiddingly dangerous to people who aren't strong and confident bicyclists.

And the argument is that in cities, it shouldn't be.

I fully agree but that's 3-4 decades away if it's ever coming for most cities.

This isn’t actually true.

Cars are expensive, so poor people usually rely more on public transit like busses, which get stuck in traffic behind cars. Driving more is positively correlated with higher income.

Lower income people disproportionately suffer the consequences of the current car-centric system like air pollution, noise pollution, traffic violence, etc.

> Cars are expensive, so poor people usually rely more on public transit like busses

This feels like a totally theoretical idea, or one from a place very different from the US. I think a lot of posters here are from the US where having a car is almost mandatory and you'll only take the bus if you're literally too poor for a car. Most low income people in most US cities can afford cars, it's just a massive burden, but without a car they would have so much less time because transit is bad.

A tax would promote a positive long-term shift for PoC, statistically. The ones who survive their means of keeping in house, food, and job becoming significantly more expensive in the short-term, of course. Or, we could induce that positive long-term shift without (figuratively) throwing the least-able to weather the change under the bus. Somehow, I think it's possible to make cars more expensive for the rich people who shaped the current system while keeping automobiles a viable option for the less-well-off who need them in this status quo that they didn't ask for.

It’s worth pointing out that there are lots of ways to get people into and out of a city that don’t involve driving a private car.

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