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Comment by 2OEH8eoCRo0 | Hacker News Reader

I love my car though.

Many people love their cars, I love my car too. I hate traffic though, everyone hates traffic. That’s the problem with everyone loving cars.

I love busses, bikes, and trains, so I use those as well.

Feels like I am the only person patient enough to not mind traffic. “Soul crushing” who cares? I’m effectively sitting in a room with a hifi stereo unit like a lot of people do anyhow with their free time. Driving purely on subconscious autopilot. It is on you if you can’t make that work for a bit IMO.

Crowded train is actually objectively unpleasant on the other hand. You have other peoples BO. The guy bringing in 50lbs of stuff strapped to the bike hits your knee. Another guy decides to smoke a cigarette in the train car or play with their blow torch. Everyone shoving you on the way in and out. Packed like a sardine. AC barely working. Elevators reeking of urine.

Surely that difference, therefore, is worth $9/day to you?

Especially now that your commute is substantially shorter as a bonus?

> Crowded train is actually objectively unpleasant on the other hand. You have other peoples BO. The guy bringing in 50lbs of stuff strapped to the bike hits your knee. Another guy decides to smoke a cigarette in the train car or play with their blow torch. Everyone shoving you on the way in and out. Packed like a sardine. AC barely working. Elevators reeking of urine.

None of this is actually inherent to transit or inevitable. (Where do you live that people would even consider lighting up in an indoor, public place? That sounds more like the 80s to me than today.)

Okay, keep your car. But start paying for the externalities it causes.

Yep, carbon tax on fuel. I'm for it!

Carbon taxes are for paying for the impact of carbon. The impact on everyone else from deciding to drive into Manhattan during a weekday is entirely separate.

You're right but we are also getting off topic a bit. I'm not against congestion pricing, I took offense to car culture being called a cancer is all.

Awesome! If you live in New York and you are a car lover, you now spend much less time standing in traffic. If you want to drive by day, every day, it will cost you $3285. But this means less standing in traffic, and more driving.

If you live in New York, parking is probably also $300-$400 per month, so it does double that price. But if you love your car, that must be worth it. And that's only if you're driving it in New York every single day of the year.

Then you pay for it and don't leave the externalities to the rest of us.

Ok, but should I have to pay for it?

That's such a great point! Everybody: this guy loves his car, so let's not change anything about our completely unsustainable way of life!

Hey, quick question, do you happen to like plastic bags and styrofoam cups too?

You can cut out auto foam cups without much change compared to redoing the entire country’s transportation infrastructure that was built with unprecedented federal funds.

“We built something badly but spent a lot of money doing it” is not the slam dunk argument you seem to think it is.

It's no worse a point than saying car culture is cancer. It's clearly complicated.

I love my car and I support congestion pricing. It makes my car nicer to drive and more useful when I can get places faster, when I need to.

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