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Comment by scottious | Hacker News Reader

I agree. This is one reason why I want gas prices to go to $10/gallon. It will hurt, but maybe we'll start having some serious conversations about our awful transportation system and city design

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It'd also be nice because cyclist deaths in the US closely mirror gas prices. When gas prices drop, people drive more, and injure/kill more cyclists.

Sadly commuters are the least price sensitive, any gas price which would be enough to convince people to stop using gas would justify buying an electric car. There's also not really an alternative in most American cities as the density prevents public transport.

The low density though is a policy choice, not a geographical constraint. The US is low density because zoning laws criminalized denser housing and mandated excessive parking spaces.

Many smaller municipalities wouldn't be able to afford a drastic uptick in EV usage either, they would be much better off focusing on any kind of public transit to reduce the number of vehicles on the road.

Calgary (Canada) as a similar population density to most US cities and its light rail system has some of the highest per-capita ridership rate in North America, so it absolutely can be done. We just need to stop enforcing car-centric design with our zoning laws and parking mandates.

It's also crazy how slow countries have been to build solar panel roofs on car parks, this should have been done so long ago with the budget that car infrastructure gets.

> There's also not really an alternative in most American cities as the density prevents public transport

I think buses might have something to say about that

Even buses require you to have a minimum density to be in some way economical. There's also a shortage of bus drivers as it's an underpaid job dealing with awful people.

That's what how we got fuel economy regulations in the 1970s. But it didn't really usher in a golden age of public transport. Probably would just help Tesla and BYD.

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