Comment by ButlerianJihad | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ButlerianJihad | Hacker News Reader

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“Choose to drive”? What an elitist perspective we have.

Populations either have personal vehicles or they don’t. For many of my neighbors, “choosing to drive” is an absurd economic proposition. This choice involves paying for the car, the gas, the maintenance, and the insurance, at the very least. Maintaining your privilege, avoiding tickets and accidents, all a delicate urban ballet.

Cars are often assets that will save and even help you earn money, but it is a very interesting thing when the upper classes are incentivized to give up vehicle ownership, or eschew driving. When cars are not saving money & time, they become liabilities, and a millstone around your neck. Some people feel relieved to get rid of them.

Many people love cars and love driving, but car culture was foisted on the unwilling public by the military-industrial complex. You drive cars and have highways because of war. Now your soccer mom drives a toddler munching tank to her jobs. Think about it.

For many people, choosing to be Taylor Swift would be easier than “choosing to drive”. It’s either public transit, or bike/walk/stay home.

Public transit is mostly about the middle 80%. If it's useful for them, they are willing to pay to keep it that way one way or another. If it's not, they won't pay, and the service will be bad for those who have no other options.

Helsinki just completed a 10 km light rail line that cost ~€400 million, including some major bridges. That's maybe €10k per current and future resident in the areas connected by it to the city center. Spending that much for an option to have good public transit only makes sense if most of those people are going to use the line.

Yeah and cars are expensive, in real estate as well. A car needs like 20m2 minimum for a parking spot and the bit of road to get to it, if you build something like a garage. That m2 isn't really cheaper than living space, and that's half the size of a small apartment.

So most places either build less dense, or accept that wherever you go, there might not be parking spaces nearby. Which if you have public transport, often means its easier to park in some low cost P+R and take the subway.

I'm fairly convinced its within the means of almost every human (say like 5 of the 8 billion people) to drive a car. That includes people in African countries with like $1000 GDP per capita. Sure it will be genuniely awful, 30+ years old, held together by duct tape, society might want to stop you from owning something so horrible, or make it not worth it, but the economic bar for something that drives is so low, that people will scrap working or easy to fix cars.

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