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> Driving is a choice, and provided that drivers pay all the costs associated with making that choice, there’s little reason to object to that. I mean, kind of

• apsec112 10y ago
  A good question, but in other situations, we don't object to middle-class people being required to pay the full cost of things they pretty much must buy. Food and water are mandatory to live, and in the 21st century US, electricity, phone, and Internet are all but mandatory to live a normal life. Yet nobody objects to ordinary citizens having to pay water or power or phone bills, rather than the bulk of the cost being subsidized from tax revenues.
  • flukus 10y ago
    We do subsidize those things to an extent though. Farmers get a lot of subsidies and the infrastructure (roads, rail) to deliver the food is part subsidized. Water, electricy and internet infrastructure are often built by government or with government funds (and that's not a bad thing). Are there any private dams?
  • mathgeek 10y ago
    > Yet nobody objects to ordinary citizens having to pay water or power or phone bills, rather than the bulk of the cost being subsidized from tax revenues. All of those things are also subsidized, to some extent. Water is the classic example, but the government subsidizes both fossil-fuel and clean energy, as well as the companies proving phone/cable/internet. The difference here is that you're paying your taxes on your vehicle and the gas, the latter of which is essentially a use tax on driving.
  • bobwaycott 10y ago
    Certain kinds of food are insanely subsidized. As are utilities. We carve out many things that nobody pays a full cost for.
  • vacri 10y ago
    Roads are required for the 'last mile' delivery of food and other goods to shops. There is a clear benefit to the smooth running of society if government subsidises roads.
  • frogpelt 10y ago
    By your definition of subsidy, everything is subsidized. Why don't we stop subsidizing education too?
• Clubber 10y ago
  I live about 10 or so miles from work. I live in a hot state. If I rode a bike or walked to work, I would stink and everyone near me would forget about the planet while experiencing their olfactory assault. I'd probably get out of meetings, but I wouldn't make any friends.
  • apsec112 10y ago
    Very likely, the major reason you live so far from work is that it's illegal to build densely, and it's illegal to build houses, stores, and offices within reasonable walking distance of each other. Of course, most people don't realize that - they just look for houses near their work and don't find any, or the handful they do find are super-expensive, so they live far away and commute. But the underlying reason why these houses are super-expensive or nonexistent is that it's illegal to build more of them.
    • gydfi 10y ago
      Or people don't like living on top of one another. Give me a nice half-acre and a self-driving car to get me where I need to go.
      • emiliobumachar 10y ago
        No one is proposing forbidding your nice half-acre, just allowing the rest of us to live on top of one another if we so choose.
        • ant6n 10y ago
          More likely next to one another. Also, it would be nice if those half-acre folks were forced to pay the true cost of their decadence. Right now there's a tendency that denser areas get extra-punished with taxes, even though services are theoretically cheaper to provide.
          • emiliobumachar 10y ago
• ButMyFavThing 10y ago
  You: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQSRPMFDTSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQSRPMFDTSs
• obstinate 10y ago
  I'm curious about your situation. There's almost no place you can work in Houston where there isn't a $1000 or less 2br rental within a couple of miles. This is just from checking zillow.
  • zaque1213 10y ago
    You may be correct.If we felt that renting was the best option for us we would rent. But it's not necessarily the best option when you are trying to start a family. Also in our situation we are currently paying less on a house note than we were when we rented.
    • obstinate 10y ago
      I would guess the issue is more about how much living space you want than the desire to rent or buy. Buying is almost never more expensive than renting the equivalent dwelling, so if I can find $1000/mo rentals in an area, I can almost certainly find condos that could be bought for an equivalent monthly cost. Unless you plan to move about frequently, but then that would also argue for renting.
• bagacrap 10y ago
  Carpool? Drive a smaller, more fuel efficient vehicle? I grew up in Houston so I know it is one of the tougher places to survive without a car, but this is part of the author's point. If it's too expensive for the common man to use cars then city organizers or your employer might be forced to take steps to make it possible not to drive.
  • zaque1213 10y ago
    I like the idea of carpooling and would be happy to if / when I find someone who works near me. We moved recently and I don't know the neighbors well enough yet to ask. I drive a fairly fuel efficient car. Only fill up every week and a half. That's pretty good I think in my situation. I'd be happy if Houston made it easier not to drive! Maybe I'll try to find activists working toward that end.
  • Pamar 10y ago
    I wonder if a building over a given size (e.g, 8 apartments) couldn't include one or two "pooled" cars as part of the provided services. Cars will be parked inside the building when not in use, people living in the building will get an app to book car usage and to open it, landlord will take care of car maintenance, collective insurance, etc. The app could also assist in sharing the "renting" cost if, for example, I take it to drive to my office but I also make a little detour to drop a fellow tenant to his or her workplace (and maybe take them back, too). Sort like the corporate car pool offered by alphabet but restricted to tenants. Would this work out economically? How low should the hourly/rate be to make this convenient for the landlord and the tenants?
• TulliusCicero 10y ago
  It's a chicken and egg problem. People drive because they have to. And because they have to drive, they support policies that favor driving at the expense of other modes, even in major urban areas where that makes no sense. The problem is not in how most people make their individual transportation choices; people are generally pretty rational and predictable there, with good policy you can alter behavior. The problem is that our policies and regulations generally favor cars, and there's so much cultural momentum there that it's very hard to change.
  • 7952 10y ago
    Whe you make driving essential walking and cycling become a luxiury.
    • TulliusCicero 10y ago
      Yes, exactly. Which is probably part of why Americans are so overweight, on average. It's a lot easier to get people to exercise if they just do it as part of their normal daily errands; relatively few people have the self-discipline to go to the gym consistently all their lives.
      • prodigal_erik 10y ago
        Weight is lost in the kitchen rather than the gym. It takes nearly an hour on a bike to burn off one big mac, so it's very easy to overeat so much that you can't make up for it.
        • TulliusCicero 10y ago
          Diet is more important, but exercise is still very useful, and not solely for weight loss, it improves general health too.