"Bit of a walk" is a nice way of saying it but in reality it means you are very limited with things like shopping. You're kind of stuck with the nearest walkable grocer. If you're luck enough to live by a cheap ones like Trader Joes, they are ridiculously crowded so you're paying in a different form. Or you can try your luck with Bodegas but they're often sell expired food, are overpriced and rarely have anything fresh . Then you're stuck with how much you can carry or try to use one of those granny pushers. Kids could be very difficult to wrangle as well and there are plenty of unpleasant things you have to explain to them or ignore. It's very dehumanizing
My point is that having a car is nice and I want people to have nice things. They don't belong everywhere, like NY. But overall I don't understand this push to public transportation for the sake of public transportation.
Then you maybe haven't spent too long thinking about it.
Climate change is a big one.
Microplastics from tire wear.
Asthma rates in children.
Obesity rates.
Etc etc etc.
Car centric design makes us poorer, fatter, less healthy. It makes our cities and towns poorer, less resilient, and uglier. I can go on.
It'd be better to make sure that people can still access the things they want conveniently while minimizing the harms. I think it's a good thing to improve and promote public transportation by making them the more attractive option rather than just punish drivers and restrict their options until they have no choice but to settle for something less than what they have.
It doesn’t, it does the opposite. It pushes everything further away which means you no longer have the freedom to not have a car. It, quite literally, redesigns our cities to become dependent on them.
It’s like heroin. Sure, it feels good, but at what cost? How do we stop now?
Give people something better and they'll line up to take it. The problem is that doing that requires a major public investment. It's a lot harder to say "We're going to spend billions to make public transport worth taking even for people who already own cars" than it is to say "We're going to punish people for using cars and take their money and make many people's lives worse, but mostly just the poorest people so you probably don't have to worry and in fact you'll have fewer cars on the road when you drive them"
The auto industry had no problems spending a fortune bribing politicians in order to make cars more attractive to people by redesigning our cities around them and hurting anyone who didn't own a car. We need to be ready to spend the money to undo what they did.
Yes, and the way you do this is you siphon off funds given to car users and instead invest them in public infrastructure.
The reality is car users don't actually pay the price for anything, the costs are externalized. For example, we've spent over 25 Trillion on the interstate highway system alone. The gas tax and car sales tax doesn't even make a dent in this. Car users are paying cents on the dollar for what they're doing.
Another example, the average parking spot costs 7,000 dollars a year to maintain. But we have free parking everywhere. That cost is externalized, and paid for by you and me. And then, of course, carbon.
It's not so much a punishment, but rather a small nudge towards a fair distribution. If car users had to pay what it actually cost, they would be in an uproar. They've been on the welfare of everyone for a long time now. We're only asking them to pay closer to their own fair share. Keep in mind - they're still not paying what they should.
Yes, society should help those in wheelchairs, but shouldn't we aim to give everyone use of their legs?
If you could also live your life without a car, that would be better for you. Yes, you, personally. In fact everyone who drives.
You might not know what an analogy is. If cars actually were legs that wouldn't have even been an analogy would it?
> If you could also live your life without a car, that would be better for you. Yes, you, personally. In fact everyone who drives.
If people could live without cars (which is to say that they were able to do everything they can do currently with cars, but without them) then yes, everyone would be better off because they'd still have all the benefits having a car gets them (the ability to quickly get to where they need to go with the things they need) without any of the downsides (costs, maintenance, pollution, giant parking lots etc)
The exact same thing is true for legs though. If we could all live without legs and not miss them because we floated around or something, we'd also have all the benefits with none of the downsides (no leg diseases/injuries, no knee replacements, shorter pants, etc) but that isn't terribly helpful because right now most people in the US can't live without a car or their legs.
No matter how much we might wish we didn't need our legs, as long as people still have and need their legs, we should probably design our cities to accommodate those legs. Even once we have a working alternative for legs, we should probably still design our cities to accommodate legs until the majority of people have been able to transition to not having legs.
Right now most people in the US don't have an option to replace their legs with something else that works just as well for them, just like they don't have an option to replace their cars with something that works just as well for them. We should probably fix that situation before we start punishing people for having legs and/or cars.
Yes, I do know what an analogy is.
It doesn't work because cutting off your legs is bad, obviously. But reducing dependence on cars is good for people who drive cars. It, quite literally, makes driving better. Less traffic, more parking, less accidents, less deaths, cleaner air.
> No matter how much we might wish we didn't need our legs, as long as people still have and need their legs, we should probably design our cities to accommodate those legs.
Our cities ARE still designed for cars. Moving away from car design is slow and painful. It took 100 years to get into this mess. There's no reason to lose our heads because of a fee, a fee mind you that still does not get anywhere close to covering the true cost of cars.
> Right now most people in the US don't have an option to replace their legs with something else that works just as well for them
You know where they do? New York City! Feel free to live in whatever suburban hellscape you like. This entire comment and ideology simply does not apply to New York City. There, car drivers are a small minority.
The claim was: "The only inconvenience [of not having a car and only using public transportation in a dense city] is that sometimes where you're going is a bit of a walk."
This was refuted with examples of other sources of inconvenience like: "Bit of a walk" is a nice way of saying it but in reality it means you are very limited with things like shopping. You're kind of stuck with the nearest walkable grocer." which was followed by "My point is that having a car is nice and I want people to have nice things." and that pushing public transportation for the sake of public transportation (ignoring the limitations it would bring to people's lives) doesn't make sense, which brought us to "lose your freedoms because it's better for you and less ugly"
Having a car means being able to go where you want, when you want, how you want. It means you can shop at stores that are out of walking range. It means you can pile your two Mastiffs into a car to take them to the vet. It means you can go to visit a loved one at times when public transportation doesn't run, travel to places it doesn't reach, and avoid adding large amounts of travel time (either waiting or walking) to your trips.
Giving up cars would very obviously mean a huge loss in people's freedom, and introduce large impositions on their time. That's a hard sell when the argument is just "it'll be better for your health, less harmful to the environment, and cities will look prettier"
Public health and environmental concerns are good things to address, but cars solve a lot of problems too, including many that public transportation doesn't solve, and public transportation introduces other problems that cars don't have. If you care about encouraging the use of public transportation it'd be very worthwhile to acknowledge those things and take them into account.
Figure out how to filter microplastics from our food and water
Figure out what's causing asthma in children
Not sure how obesity is related. Maybe improve the food supply?
A lot of these are solved with electric cars which are increasingly more competitive.
Why force people to regress towards a worse product rather than address these technical issues?
Physically impossible to have them pollute less than methods of mass transportation. Mathematically, even. Just divide the number of people carried per pollution caused by cars vs trains, bikes, or even buses. There's nothing you can do to make cars competitive.
> Figure out how to filter microplastics from our food and water
"Just figure it out", ok. But even then, an ounce of prevention is worth the pound of a cure.
> Figure out what's causing asthma in children
A little random but ok. I'm guessing grinding up rubber and metal particles into the air right next to where said children live isn't the best for their lungs.
> Not sure how obesity is related. Maybe improve the food supply?
1. Wake up
2. Walk 30 feet to your car
3. Sit as you drive to work
4. Spend 8 hours at your desk
5. Walk 30 feet to your car
6. Sleep
7. Why am I fat?! Maybe improve the food supply?!
> A lot of these are solved with electric cars which are increasingly more competitive.
Virtually none are, an electric car is still a car, see point 1.
> Why force people to regress towards a worse product rather than address these technical issues?
Highly dependent on your definition of worse; I'd argue the sort of streets and environments you can find in the Netherlands [1][2][3] are way better than in the US.
Not everything is a technical issue that can simply be solved by better engineering.
[1]: https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8?t=862
Cars are the worse product. They are extremely energy inefficient for moving a human from A to B, even if powered by electricity. They are vastly more expensive than alternatives, even if you threw caution to the wind and allowed for the cheapest possible construction. They pose astronomical externalities in the form of more and bigger roads, more and bigger road maintenance, parking, and injury and fatality through collisions.
They have utility, but the only reason they even remotely compete against bicycles and trains and scooters and buses and walking is because you’ve built 95% of the things you might ever want to go to ten miles apart.
Public transportation can be improved to be better than it is and cities can be redesigned to make using public transportation easier, but until both of those things start happening, people will resist replacing all the good things cars offer with something that is much worse for them.
When car companies wanted to sell cars, they changed the roads and cities. The more they changed the roads and cities to make cars more attractive the more cars they sold. Cars already solved a lot of the problems people had, but car companies went even further to create many new problems that only their cars would solve. Making life worse for people without cars just to increase car sales was a dick move made by a bunch of assholes. Why is everyone so willing to make life worse for people with cars to sell public transportation now?
What we have now are people selling public transportation without bothering to change the roads and cities. There is no priority on making public transportation more attractive, instead the attention is all on how to make cars more painful to use.
Nobody has worked out how to get public transportation to solve the problems that only cars do currently. Nobody has addressed the problems that cause people to avoid public transportation. The entire attitude is basically "We're going to keep punishing car drivers until they put up with something far worse than what they have now so that maybe eventually we can have something better".
All the discussion is "take away parking" and "narrow the streets" and "charge drivers more money" but nobody is saying "We've made our public transportation systems clean, safe, pleasant, and dependable" or "No one ever has to wait more than 7 minutes at a station" or "We've expanded service to new areas and put in stations every three blocks"
It's true that in an ideal world we would be far less dependent on cars, but we'll never get there without making the alternatives more attractive and until that happens, punishing drivers is only going to piss people off and rightly so. It's a dick move.
I'd argue that if you were correct people would have already been using alternatives and there'd have been no need to punish people for driving. When you give people a better option they take it.
NYC could have improved alternatives to make them more attractive, but they choose to make driving worse instead forcing people who can't afford it to use less convenient ways to get around.
The convenience of driving depends on traffic. If you're the only car on the road then it's very convenient. In gridlock, it's very inconvenient (but also takes the convenience of buses down with it).
So you reach some equilibrium of traffic levels where the marginal person opts for walking / subway rather than driving in all that traffic. But if you could magically reduce traffic, then driving becomes the better option and people take it.
If you want to sustain an equilibrium of lower traffic, you need to add a penalty to driving to stabilize the convenience of being the marginal driver in that equilibrium.
There are knock-on benefits to doing so, including that it makes alternatives to driving such as busses more effective.
Road congestion is only one factor. If you ignore all the other things that keep people from wanting to use public transportation then punishing drivers is just going to piss people off.
People want to do what works best for them. Make public transportation work best for them and they'll use it no matter how deserted the streets are. Better yet, as traffic dies down, roads and parking lots can be reclaimed and nobody will care. Start closing roads and parking lots without solving the problems public transportation has, and people will be upset.
Increased ridership (as people are pushed to alternatives from cars) also leads to increased bus frequency, which also greatly improves the experience for all riders.
So it's actually a big step towards solving some of the major problems with public transit, but of course not exclusive with other steps being taken too.
Plus, reduced car traffic directly increases comfort and safety for walking and cycling as well.
Punishing drivers until they have no choice but to accept that their lives will be worse is not a good way to promote public transportation, even if you pinkie promise that the pain will lessen over years/decades.
It's not necessary to strong arm people into using alternatives to cars if you make those alternatives genuinely better for more and more people in an increasing number of situations. As people naturally choose the path of least resistance, everything just gets better for everyone.
Even when those policies actually improve the driving experience by getting more people out of cars and reducing congestion for the remaining drivers, many drivers don't tend to compare against the counterfactual where those road users become car traffic blocking their way when evaluating the impact of those policies on their drive. They just see bike and bus lanes being prioritized and react like it's a war against cars.
So how do you imagine that transit can be improved, without drivers reacting like they're being punished?
I'd start by holding off on policies like congestion pricing, narrowing lanes, refusing to add/update roads where needed, and eliminating parking options. These things do nothing to make alternatives more attractive, even if they strong arm more people into using them.
From what I've seen of public transport options around the country, there is a ton of room for improvement that would go a long way to help without punishing drivers.
Generally buses should try to minimize wait time on busy routes, routes and schedules should be clear and consistent, transfers should be minimized and when needed there should be no wait times going from one line to another. Most importantly I wouldn't put as much emphasis on buses as I would on trains since they move way more people much faster and don't compete with cars on the road or add to street traffic.
The busses and train cars themselves should be clean, well maintained, safe, and inexpensive to ride. Offering free rides for certain routes/times is a great way to get people using them even if it requires taking a loss in the short term. I wouldn't expect a new/improved public transportation system to pay for itself for a very long time. Transforming our cities and streets is a long term investment that can't happen overnight.
Busses and train cars should be comfortable and provide storage for things like bikes, bags, and groceries (bonus points if it has a freezer). Bus stops and stations should be added where possible so more people can access them by foot with less than 15 minutes of walking. They should be well lit, and provide seating, shelters, vending machines, phone chargers, trash/recycling, and information.
Bus-only lanes can be nice, but not if it means closing off lanes that would back up regular traffic. That might mean adding lanes in some cases and reclaiming them later.
Bike lanes should be added to existing roads where possible (and not by reducing lanes from already crowded streets) and be required when building new roads. Bike lanes should be well marked and protected/separated from cars. Drivers hate bikes because they have to share the same roads. Protected bike lanes actually decrease friction between bikers and drivers.
Priority should be given to bike routes that connect and travel through useful places for foot traffic. It'd be nice if they follow bus routes so that bikers can stop for rests/drinks at the the bus stops or even take the bus for parts of their trip.
The biggest thing would be to find and improve the places that would be most likely to attract people to alternatives then prioritize those sites first. Adding bike routes in a downtown area or adding bus routes that bring people into and out of the areas that are the most congested/annoying areas to drive in.
I've lived in several places that had popular areas I'd actively avoid driving into because of the cars and/or foot traffic. I'd have loved a alternative, but most of the time my options were a bus system that would have added at least an hour to my travel time and involve long walks down non-pedestrian friendly roads on top of it, or a train system that was expensive, dirty, smelled like a bathroom, and would still require a drive to the station where parking was insanely expensive and not an overly safe place to leave your vehicle. I've also been in cities overseas with great public transportation. Clean trains that ran every few minutes, a seemingly excessive number of stations a walkable distance from each other, etc.
I know good public transportation is possible. It just needs a lot of investment and tax payers hate investing in their cities while politicians are heavily lobbied by car companies not to make the situation better. A bunch of ineffective badly planned half measures only add to taxpayer/driver outrage.
(Yes they do! I explained why a few posts above in this very thread! If you disagree, I'd appreciate if you could articulate your disagreement, rather than reiterate it!)
Even with no infrastructure upgrades, cycling becomes safer and more comfortable when more people are cycling and fewer people are driving! Transit service improves through increased ridership and less congestion, even with no attached funding increases or infrastructure projects! Taking cars off the road actually makes every method of transportation more attractive, including driving itself!
> Schedules should be clear and consistent
The #1 reason why bus schedules are not consistent is: drum roll congestion! And when it's difficult to keep a schedule, transfer waits are unavoidable. The only way to implement what you say is to either give busses dedicated lanes, or Thanos-snap cars offthe road.
> I wouldn't put as much emphasis on buses as I would on trains
I love trains too, but where are you going to run them? Trains have a large turning radius and run best with grade-separated crossings. You can tunnel the entire thing underground but that's a big project and how will you fund it? In Asia they fund it through property development but how will you do it in a city that's already been developed and had its passenger rail stripped out for highways in the 1960s?
> The busses and train cars themselves should be clean, well maintained, safe, and inexpensive to ride.
I agree! And these days I'm often opting for the car because it's cheaper than bus fare, even when I'd rather not drive. And yes, it does have to be a long-term investment, but one that will never be recouped through ticket sales. So where is the money to fund this level of service coming from? Are car-driving taxpayers who don't ride transit going to approve this much taxpayer funding? Even when those same voters are so die-hard opposed to congestion pricing?
> Bus-only lanes can be nice, but[...] adding lanes in some cases and reclaiming them later.
Are you suggesting to pave over sidewalks? Or to cut holes through buildings? I don't understand how you would add new lanes to a congested city road. I have the same question for your suggestion about bike lanes, where you suggest adding them to existing roads but not by reducing lanes. Do you propose to add elevated bikeways?
I think I don't disagree with you about how good these things are, but I must be missing something about your vision.
If taking public transportation adds an hour or more to your trip because you're waiting on a bus or train to show up, then taking badly planned routes to places you don't need to go making stops all along the way, then fewer cars are on the road aren't going to help you. Your life is still worse than it was driving directly to where you needed to be.
If public transportation isn't safe and you get assaulted using it or have to spend your trip sitting on urine soaked seats you're not going to care if there's less traffic for the bus driver to deal with or what traffic conditions richer people are enjoying.
Bikers probably see the most benefit from some fraction of the population being forced to use bad public transportation, but that won't make up for a lack of clear routes and dedicated lanes when the roads are still filled with cars who aren't looking out for you while you navigate dangerous intersections.
> The #1 reason why bus schedules are not consistent is: drum roll congestion!
From what I've seen the problem isn't always late times, although that can be an issue, it's things like routes only running on certain days, routes changing depending on the day, or the times they run changing day to day because cities don't want to spend the money to give them set schedules. The absolute best schedules are no schedules, where the bus/train runs every x minutes all day long going the same route so you can catch it anywhere on any day of the week and know where you'll end up. Navigating the transit system in some cities is such a huge chore there are people making 3rd party apps to try to make sense of it all.
> I love trains too, but where are you going to run them? Trains have a large turning radius and run best with grade-separated crossings. You can tunnel the entire thing underground but that's a big project and how will you fund it?
Funding is a major issue but it'll be worth it to get cars off the streets. Underground in some places is good, but more involved so you'd ideally have a mix of both. A lot of cities could see an improvement with just one line running back and forth from one end of town, through downtown, and to the other end, but it's going to cost a lot of money up front. The car industry put us way behind the rest of the developed world and we've got to eat the costs to catch up eventually.
> So where is the money to fund this level of service coming from? Are car-driving taxpayers who don't ride transit going to approve this much taxpayer funding?
The way things are now? It doesn't look good. I've seen several proposals to build up public transportation fail because people didn't want the tax burden. There's a lot of costs to the mess we have now though and a lot to be gained by putting in the money to improve the situation, but that means educating people so they know why it's important to make public transportation worth taking, and it means that people need to have enough faith in their government to do the job without just screwing tax payers over.
> Do you propose to add elevated bikeways?
I hadn't considered it but... maybe? We expand roads all the time already but to add lanes for more cars. Sometimes that means reducing the distance from the sidewalk to the street. Sometimes it means buying (or renting) property or taking it through eminent domain. If you're looking to redesign a city to no longer be centered around cars, those are the kinds of thing we'll need to be wiling to do. The alternative to redesigning transportation infrastructure for a future with less cars is to keep expanding highways and roads which requires the same thing but also kills property values.
If cities can be redesigned well enough and there are fewer cars on the roads property values should go up, and property owners would have better air quality, and less noise pollution. I think some people would happily put up with an easement or sell a couple yards of their property for that.
The ultimate goal is fewer car lanes, more space for everything else, but that means improving public transport while accommodating the cars we have until we can reclaim the space they no longer take up.