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Comment by pompino | Hacker News Reader

Improving public transportation is a far superior solution than forcing people to buy EV cars by outlawing gas engines. For the median income in the US, or person working minimum wage - all of this is pie-in-the-sky elite talk. EVs are essentially for rick folks to feel better about themselves.

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Class warfare aside, public transport will transition to EVs as well and there is a lot of promise in self driving vehicles smaller than a bus making public transport cheaper, more flexible, and more attractive.

In the end people will buy EVs because they are cheaper and better. Governments are just trying to set goals and promote action against climate change.

There is no benefit to public transport when EV companies gets our tax money to build their charger network, or offering thousands of dollars of tax credit to rich folks to buy EVs.

>In the end people will buy EVs because they are cheaper and better.

I'm hoping people switch from EVs to public transit. Personally, I'm more interested in how the government can expand public transit in general so that the need for EV cars is eliminated or substantially reduced in the first place.

The easiest way to get people to switch to public transport is to make it suck less. Short of forcing people to use it that's kind of the only way. It also contributes to CO2 emissions so it has to go electric and improvements in EVs also helps there.

I can see your preference for public transport, but it's already heavily subsidised and only used by a minority of people in most places. Subsidies for EVs, which aim to reduce emissions from cars, which are extremely popular, seems quite equitable.

I don't think further subsidy of public transport is going to materially increase its use, it has to improve beyond incremental availability. As I said automated vehicles are a much more promising avenue for drastically increasing public transport use.

"Need" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

I live in London, UK. We have lots of public transport. About half of my journeys can be done via public transport, about half of them can't.

By can't, I mean that they are significantly slower, would require taxis on one or both ends, or simply are not possible due to one end being semi rural or rural.

The half that can't represent far more mileage, emissions, etc. They also frankly are most if not all of the fun ones.

Public transport works if you live a solely metropolitan life. If you do anything else, it just doesn't scale at all.

This is of course ignoring the fact that in my own car I don't have to experience feral beings.

You can't solve everything at once, progress is incremental, and there are several case studies to the contrary.

https://www.centreforcities.org/case-study-library/case-stud...

That’s why we are pushing to convert the ICEV fleet to EVs.

Public transit is NEVER a good solution. It's at most a miserable workaround for inability to use personal cars.

Personal cars (EV or otherwise) incur a huge carbon tax to manufacture, are difficult to recycle, and are idle during most of the day. You're welcome to your opinion.

You can say that pretty much about any personal items -- laptop, phone, clothes, shoes, even your house. Manufacturing them cause harm to the environment and they're idle most of the time. Some of your clothes may stay unused for years, or forever. Yet nobody advocates for sharing them. That's because they are personal, reflect the owner's personality, and they're there when you need them.

Why is car different? I love train and tram (not so much bus) and would love to see them doing well, but I understand why people love car, and not only in less dense countries. Do you know that car ownership in Netherlands is on the rise? [0]. One of the reasons cited being people preferring cars as they get older.

If you want to advocate for public transportation, make sure you understand why people love cars, and strive to make public transportation suck less, primarily with flexible schedule, quicker, and more readily available.

[0] - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358798695_The_wides...

>You can say that pretty much about any personal items -- laptop, phone, clothes, shoes, even your house. Manufacturing them cause harm to the environment and they're idle most of the time. Some of your clothes may stay unused for years, or forever. Yet nobody advocates for sharing them. That's because they are personal, reflect the owner's personality, and they're there when you need them.

This is just false. T shirts and shoes do not cause the same level of harm to the environment as manufacturing a car. It seems to me you don't understand what goes into mining, refining, processing all of the parts that go into making a car. You also don't seem to understand how progress happens - incrementally - by tackling the big-ticket items first. Good luck with your anti-public transport argument, you haven't convinced me.

I wasn't trying to convince you. I was telling you that your arguments didn't make sense, and that people love car for valid reasons. Address their need and they will use public transportation.

You chose to shame people who don't share your opinions instead. Pity.

good luck with your anti-car argument, you havnt convinced me.

War against car usage is war against middle class. Upper and upper-middle class will not suffer - they can afford what ever it costs and will keep their fancy parking places and if it leads to less traffic, they win even more. If you make all the fancy CEOs to use public transport then I'm in. Otherwise it is another form of disguised oppression.

Do you know what else is idle during most of the day? All the vehicles used for public transport or worse, they drive around empty. I'm a big fan of good public transport and were I live it is fairly good and I use it a lot, but it is not even near as good as would be using my own car - I have to normally double or even triple my commute time when I use public transport. I can afford it (for common good) as I'm working normally from home but if I had to do it daily then it would become unbearable.

One full bus offsets about ten empty busses if you just look at carbon per passenger mile compared to cars. If you also consider space use the numbers are even better. Not to mention trains.

Middle-class?! The only people purchasing personal EVs are rich people; giving them tax subsidies doesn't seem like the best use of my taxes. You think people making minimum wage are driving around in fancy EVs?

>If you make all the fancy CEOs to use public transport then I'm in.

Why would anyone (CEO or otherwise) not prefer a comfortable, safe and clean public transit option? Also, If I was a CEO I'd be supporting expansion of public transit to include my business locations. Making commuting easier/cheaper to work is a great way to attract talent. I don't have a public transit option where I live, and I would love to get on a comfy bus or light-rail each morning and bang out some emails on my way to work. It seems to me that you don't seem to fundamentally believe public transit can be improved, or maybe you're not sure how it can be. It most certainly can be improved, and cities have shown how it can be done in their own microcosm.

<< Why would anyone (CEO or otherwise) not prefer a comfortable, safe and clean public transit option?

And this is probably where the 'should' meets reality as it were primarily, because public transit in most metros is 2 out of 3 at best. I am being generous and I use Chicago's Metra every so often.

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