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>shitty environmental health People would lose essentially nothing by stepping down from SUVs/crossovers to compact sedans/hatchbacks. We could start there. Th

>shitty environmental health People would lose essentially nothing by stepping down from SUVs/crossovers to compact sedans/hatchbacks. We could start there. There's also the issue of average age: driving an older car is a classic case of negative externality. Driver saves money, everyone else suffers for their worse emissions and fuel efficiency. These are both excellent targets for tighter regulation. My argument here is that policy should be at least net-neutral on quality of life. If you "simply wip[e] out parking" and don't do anything else, I claim that's bad policy because it reduces quality of life. If you wipe out parking AND deploy electric buses or whatever such that people's lives at least don't get worse, then I'm with you. >There would also be a significantly reduced strain on pretty much every social institution there is. Except, of course, the transit agency, which has to actually have the funding and the competence to step up its game to not only stay neutral under increased demand, but also improve enough that drivers' quality-of-life is flat. Local services are also funded by local economic activity, which generally requires that people have viable transportation. > before the cultural reorganization into self-sufficient neighborhoods. Which do you think is better for consumers: a whole bunch of hyper-local monopolies, or citywide competition and economies of scale? Economics provides very little support for the former.

ethanbond 10y ago
Sure. Now go ahead and try to regulate those, like many have been trying for literally decades. We've gotten better, but it's still not enough and our cities/suburbs still suffer from the non-environmental side effects of designing cities around cars. Such as, you know, having to purchase a car to be mobile. I would really like a large scale holistic solution, but again, we've been having this debate for decades and we haven't moved fast enough. If we continue to build our cities for cars, then we will continue to need cars. Reducing parking in cities is one decision that could have large scale effects and that doesn't require a dictatorship or nationwide collective epiphany to institute. And yes, higher prices hurt consumers, as in they damage the one facet of an entire human being that's responsible for purchasing things. But there are many other facets of a human being that would be much better off with fewer cars around them, and I dare say that many of those facets are more important to preserve than ease of consumption. The human race survived for many thousands of years with nothing even resembling an automobile, and now after 100 years you're positing that we simply cannot go on without them?
- superuser2 10y ago
  >Reducing parking in cities is one decision that could have large scale effects and that doesn't require a dictatorship or nationwide collective epiphany to institute. Making cities worse is likely to have the effect of driving people out of them. You do in fact need a collective epiphany (or a Constitutional amendment to shut down freedom of movement) to get people to accept that they simply need to live worse lives in the short and medium terms so that their children can live better ones. If you make that happen, then maybe we can pay off the national debt too.
  - ethanbond 10y ago
    What are you talking about? Removing, say, 10% of parking spots per year for 8 years wouldn't require any of that. It would result in the same frustration that people already have and already cope with: "it sucks to park in the city." It's clear this isn't going anywhere, have a good weekend!
    - barrkel 10y ago
      People would vote out politicians that put in place such obvious frustration-increasing measures. IMO the "solution" is necessarily holistic and incremental. Create a fast intra-city link, and you've effectively increased the density of the two areas joined by the link. If you think about space in terms of time required to go from point A to point B using a given subset of transport methods[1], fast point-to-point links warp space and cause it to overlap. Density is the lifeblood of cities, just as lack of density is what hollows out cities. Increased density means employees and consumers can live closer to businesses and entertainment. Increase the density enough, and private transport isn't required as much. Anti-car policies aren't going to increase this time-to-destination-as-a-measure-of-space density much. In fact, without something to replace them, they will decrease effective density. [1] See e.g. https://petertrotman.com/special/london-underground-travel-time-map/map.html https://petertrotman.com/special/london-underground-travel-t...
      - ethanbond 10y ago
tbihl 10y ago
I suspect that the driver of a new car will never recover in gas savings the negative impact of harvesting resources and building an additional vehicle.

ethanbond 10y ago

Sure. Now go ahead and try to regulate those, like many have been trying for literally decades. We've gotten better, but it's still not enough and our cities/suburbs still suffer from the non-environmental side effects of designing cities around cars. Such as, you know, having to purchase a car to be mobile. I would really like a large scale holistic solution, but again, we've been having this debate for decades and we haven't moved fast enough. If we continue to build our cities for cars, then we will continue to need cars. Reducing parking in cities is one decision that could have large scale effects and that doesn't require a dictatorship or nationwide collective epiphany to institute. And yes, higher prices hurt consumers, as in they damage the one facet of an entire human being that's responsible for purchasing things. But there are many other facets of a human being that would be much better off with fewer cars around them, and I dare say that many of those facets are more important to preserve than ease of consumption. The human race survived for many thousands of years with nothing even resembling an automobile, and now after 100 years you're positing that we simply cannot go on without them?

superuser2 10y ago
>Reducing parking in cities is one decision that could have large scale effects and that doesn't require a dictatorship or nationwide collective epiphany to institute. Making cities worse is likely to have the effect of driving people out of them. You do in fact need a collective epiphany (or a Constitutional amendment to shut down freedom of movement) to get people to accept that they simply need to live worse lives in the short and medium terms so that their children can live better ones. If you make that happen, then maybe we can pay off the national debt too.
- ethanbond 10y ago
  What are you talking about? Removing, say, 10% of parking spots per year for 8 years wouldn't require any of that. It would result in the same frustration that people already have and already cope with: "it sucks to park in the city." It's clear this isn't going anywhere, have a good weekend!
  - barrkel 10y ago
    People would vote out politicians that put in place such obvious frustration-increasing measures. IMO the "solution" is necessarily holistic and incremental. Create a fast intra-city link, and you've effectively increased the density of the two areas joined by the link. If you think about space in terms of time required to go from point A to point B using a given subset of transport methods[1], fast point-to-point links warp space and cause it to overlap. Density is the lifeblood of cities, just as lack of density is what hollows out cities. Increased density means employees and consumers can live closer to businesses and entertainment. Increase the density enough, and private transport isn't required as much. Anti-car policies aren't going to increase this time-to-destination-as-a-measure-of-space density much. In fact, without something to replace them, they will decrease effective density. [1] See e.g. https://petertrotman.com/special/london-underground-travel-time-map/map.html https://petertrotman.com/special/london-underground-travel-t...
    - ethanbond 10y ago

tbihl 10y ago

I suspect that the driver of a new car will never recover in gas savings the negative impact of harvesting resources and building an additional vehicle.