4 ms·

Cars are freedom. Build more freeways, and use tolls to pay for them.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Cars are freedom I've never understood this. How is being locked into an oft debt-financed mass-manufactured vehicle, whose maintenance is dependant on parts manufacturers and the petrochemical industry, and whose use gives police the right to pull you over for anything, an icon of freedom?
- closeparen 9y ago
  Cars are freedom, not self-reliance. They represent the pinnacle of a vast international ecosystem of design, engineering, resource extraction, labor, finance, etc. No doubt about that. They represent two of the most important accomplishments of human civilization: decoupling of transportation from physical exertion, and decoupling of human comfort from the weather. As an "engineer," it gives me the warm-fuzzies just thinking about that, in the same way it does that we put a man on the moon. "Cars are freedom" has little to do with their use in commuting to work, though that's probably the vast majority of their actual use. There's some cognitive dissonance here: the gridlocked commute to the 9-5 at the cube farm could not be more strongly opposed to the "cars are freedom" symbolism. It's the fact that you can go anywhere, not just where your body's own power will take you, not just where central planners have seen fit to draw routes. It's the fact that you can do so at any time, not just when central planners see fit to schedule service, during the hours they think people ought to be out and about, or with enough advance notice to get an affordable ticket (i.e. air travel). It's about the weekend jaunt to national park across the state, the cross country road trip, or even the more mundane grocery run after work, the spontaneity of it, not having to plan or spend massive amounts of physical exertion. Sure, you can get that with a walkable neighborhood too, but it's always going to be more limited.
- dxhdr 9y ago
  > locked into an oft debt-financed mass-manufactured vehicle You can buy a used vehicle for a few thousand dollars. > whose maintenance is dependant on parts manufacturers and the petrochemical industry No different than maintenance of any other consumer good. > whose use gives police the right to pull you over for anything Police can already stop you for any reason. What cars give you is the ability to go anywhere, at any time, on your own schedule, without consulting with anyone or anything. Might not be your definition of freedom but surely it's understandable.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  The world before cars was completely awful. Especially in rural areas where the majority of the population lived. It wasn't uncommon for people to live their entire lives only ever travelling a few miles from their home. Most people were forced to obtain goods from country stores. These had a very small selection of items and set monopoly prices with ridiculous markups. They also required haggling over everything and let their customers go into great debt with them. These went away with the car because people could travel much greater distances to competing stores. The car massively improved the standard of living. Cities weren't much better. Streets were completely covered in horse shit. Horses were also much more expensive and difficult to maintain than cars. The car made that kind of freedom of transportation affordable to average people. Sure there were trains. But you still have to travel too and from the train station which wasn't convenient. And the train is a monopoly as well.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    I don't think there are likely to be many here who would argue that automotive transport offers no benefits. But going all in on it, the way the US has since World War II, incurs its own manifold disadvantages. Identifying those disadvantages, and looking for means of ameliorating and eliminating them without losing the benefits of greater mobility for people and cargo, isn't the same as saying that we should just turn back the clock to a time when only trains went faster than horses.
tehlike 9y ago
Tolls? Why would i pay for tolls when i am already paying taxes to supposedly fund such things. There is only so much freeway you can build. People would still want to live in places eith good school etc, and you cant fix that problem with more highways.
Smaug123 9y ago
That viewpoint simply baffles me. As a European who is in the Bay Area for a few weeks, I find the roads in the Bay Area to be really, really depressing. I also find them harder to use than the European variants: * the Bay Area freeways don't seem to have consistent rules about when a lane is going to appear or disappear or peel off from the main freeway (so I constantly end up in the wrong lane; please, please correct me if I'm wrong!); * the very frequent merge/exits mean that there's not really a taboo on undertaking, which doubles the amount of awareness I need to maintain (as well as "everyone overtaking me", I also need to track "everyone undertaking me" too, which isn't true in the UK). The rule "stick to the rightmost lane which lets you maintain the speed you want to maintain" simply doesn't work for me because that lane regularly peels off to become a different road, and it's less effective anyway given that everyone undertakes all the time. On motorways in the UK, it's rarer for lanes to split off from the main road, and it's signalled much further in advance so you reliably have time to change lanes comfortably when you get caught in the wrong one. I infinitely prefer public transport where it exists; if that means taking a taxi for the last short bit of the ride, so be it. Personal preference, but I just can't fathom how anyone could prefer cars over a well-run public transport system. (Of course, there are times when you just need a car or a van - hauling personal freight, for instance. But the vast, vast majority of traffic doesn't fall into that category: in the UK, over the past four years or so, I've needed a car about five times in total.)
- throwanem 9y ago
  Same - I actually state my preference for public transit over driving in my résumé, and Baltimore's system is surprisingly good - not on the same scale of comprehensiveness as NYC's, but then we're a much smaller town, too. I don't understand the car preference either; although for years I did consulting work that involved site visits, and racking up 200 miles a day in the car was not uncommon, even at the time I regarded that more as a penance than a privilege. Latterly I feel that I've done just about a lifetime's worth of driving, and any further is a waste of time tolerable only in the rare case when no other alternative can be found. "Undertaking"? This is not a term with which I'm familiar; based on context, it seems to mean dropping back to change lanes behind a car, by contrast with "overtaking", to accelerate and pass in order to change lanes ahead. Is that a correct understanding?
minikites 9y ago
I agree with the following quote: A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very seriously later on. For example, consider motorized transport. A walking man formerly could go where he pleased, go at his own pace without observing any traffic regulations, and was independent of technological support-systems. When motor vehicles were introduced they appeared to increase man’s freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didn’t want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel much faster and farther than a walking man. But the introduction of motorized transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly man’s freedom of locomotion. When automobiles became numerous, it became necessary to regulate their use extensively. In a car, especially in densely populated areas, one cannot just go where one likes at one’s own pace one’s movement is governed by the flow of traffic and by various traffic laws. One is tied down by various obligations: license requirements, driver test, renewing registration, insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on purchase price. Moreover, the use of motorized transport is no longer optional. Since the introduction of motorized transport the arrangement of our cities has changed in such a way that the majority of people no longer live within walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas and recreational opportunities, so that they HAVE TO depend on the automobile for transportation. Or else they must use public transportation, in which case they have even less control over their own movement than when driving a car. Even the walker’s freedom is now greatly restricted. In the city he continually has to stop to wait for traffic lights that are designed mainly to serve auto traffic. In the country, motor traffic makes it dangerous and unpleasant to walk along the highway. (Note this important point that we have just illustrated with the case of motorized transport: When a new item of technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not as he chooses, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional. In many cases the new technology changes society in such a way that people eventually find themselves FORCED to use it.)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- throwanem 9y ago
  I started writing a reply to this, but it got out of hand and before I knew it, I was wrestling with an essay: https://aaron-m.com/2017/07/09/on-kaczynski https://aaron-m.com/2017/07/09/on-kaczynski (Hardly the first time that's happened to me on Hacker News! But now I have a proper place to put them.)
jnwatson 9y ago
Yeah, I used to think that way. I grew up in the suburbs of the concrete jungle that is Houston, Texas. It now has a 26 lane highway running west of the city. The problem is that building more roads doesn't help. Expanding major arteries encourages people to move further out, which makes it worse. Additionally, we've used up all the easy and inexpensive places to build roads. Northern Virginia is actually doing a decent job of encouraging high-density housing in mixed-use environments with access to mass transit. It seems odd that S.V. is so backwards in this way.
greglindahl 9y ago
Silicon Valley built a ton of freeways, and it's basically impossible to build any more of them. It's far, far, far cheaper to electrify Caltrain and build level boarding, plus a BRT up El Camino.

> Cars are freedom I've never understood this. How is being locked into an oft debt-financed mass-manufactured vehicle, whose maintenance is dependant on parts manufacturers and the petrochemical industry, and whose use gives police the right to pull you over for anything, an icon of freedom?

closeparen 9y ago
Cars are freedom, not self-reliance. They represent the pinnacle of a vast international ecosystem of design, engineering, resource extraction, labor, finance, etc. No doubt about that. They represent two of the most important accomplishments of human civilization: decoupling of transportation from physical exertion, and decoupling of human comfort from the weather. As an "engineer," it gives me the warm-fuzzies just thinking about that, in the same way it does that we put a man on the moon. "Cars are freedom" has little to do with their use in commuting to work, though that's probably the vast majority of their actual use. There's some cognitive dissonance here: the gridlocked commute to the 9-5 at the cube farm could not be more strongly opposed to the "cars are freedom" symbolism. It's the fact that you can go anywhere, not just where your body's own power will take you, not just where central planners have seen fit to draw routes. It's the fact that you can do so at any time, not just when central planners see fit to schedule service, during the hours they think people ought to be out and about, or with enough advance notice to get an affordable ticket (i.e. air travel). It's about the weekend jaunt to national park across the state, the cross country road trip, or even the more mundane grocery run after work, the spontaneity of it, not having to plan or spend massive amounts of physical exertion. Sure, you can get that with a walkable neighborhood too, but it's always going to be more limited.
dxhdr 9y ago
> locked into an oft debt-financed mass-manufactured vehicle You can buy a used vehicle for a few thousand dollars. > whose maintenance is dependant on parts manufacturers and the petrochemical industry No different than maintenance of any other consumer good. > whose use gives police the right to pull you over for anything Police can already stop you for any reason. What cars give you is the ability to go anywhere, at any time, on your own schedule, without consulting with anyone or anything. Might not be your definition of freedom but surely it's understandable.
Houshalter 9y ago
The world before cars was completely awful. Especially in rural areas where the majority of the population lived. It wasn't uncommon for people to live their entire lives only ever travelling a few miles from their home. Most people were forced to obtain goods from country stores. These had a very small selection of items and set monopoly prices with ridiculous markups. They also required haggling over everything and let their customers go into great debt with them. These went away with the car because people could travel much greater distances to competing stores. The car massively improved the standard of living. Cities weren't much better. Streets were completely covered in horse shit. Horses were also much more expensive and difficult to maintain than cars. The car made that kind of freedom of transportation affordable to average people. Sure there were trains. But you still have to travel too and from the train station which wasn't convenient. And the train is a monopoly as well.
- throwanem 9y ago
  I don't think there are likely to be many here who would argue that automotive transport offers no benefits. But going all in on it, the way the US has since World War II, incurs its own manifold disadvantages. Identifying those disadvantages, and looking for means of ameliorating and eliminating them without losing the benefits of greater mobility for people and cargo, isn't the same as saying that we should just turn back the clock to a time when only trains went faster than horses.

tehlike 9y ago

Tolls? Why would i pay for tolls when i am already paying taxes to supposedly fund such things. There is only so much freeway you can build. People would still want to live in places eith good school etc, and you cant fix that problem with more highways.

Smaug123 9y ago

That viewpoint simply baffles me. As a European who is in the Bay Area for a few weeks, I find the roads in the Bay Area to be really, really depressing. I also find them harder to use than the European variants: * the Bay Area freeways don't seem to have consistent rules about when a lane is going to appear or disappear or peel off from the main freeway (so I constantly end up in the wrong lane; please, please correct me if I'm wrong!); * the very frequent merge/exits mean that there's not really a taboo on undertaking, which doubles the amount of awareness I need to maintain (as well as "everyone overtaking me", I also need to track "everyone undertaking me" too, which isn't true in the UK). The rule "stick to the rightmost lane which lets you maintain the speed you want to maintain" simply doesn't work for me because that lane regularly peels off to become a different road, and it's less effective anyway given that everyone undertakes all the time. On motorways in the UK, it's rarer for lanes to split off from the main road, and it's signalled much further in advance so you reliably have time to change lanes comfortably when you get caught in the wrong one. I infinitely prefer public transport where it exists; if that means taking a taxi for the last short bit of the ride, so be it. Personal preference, but I just can't fathom how anyone could prefer cars over a well-run public transport system. (Of course, there are times when you just need a car or a van - hauling personal freight, for instance. But the vast, vast majority of traffic doesn't fall into that category: in the UK, over the past four years or so, I've needed a car about five times in total.)

throwanem 9y ago
Same - I actually state my preference for public transit over driving in my résumé, and Baltimore's system is surprisingly good - not on the same scale of comprehensiveness as NYC's, but then we're a much smaller town, too. I don't understand the car preference either; although for years I did consulting work that involved site visits, and racking up 200 miles a day in the car was not uncommon, even at the time I regarded that more as a penance than a privilege. Latterly I feel that I've done just about a lifetime's worth of driving, and any further is a waste of time tolerable only in the rare case when no other alternative can be found. "Undertaking"? This is not a term with which I'm familiar; based on context, it seems to mean dropping back to change lanes behind a car, by contrast with "overtaking", to accelerate and pass in order to change lanes ahead. Is that a correct understanding?

minikites 9y ago

I agree with the following quote: A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very seriously later on. For example, consider motorized transport. A walking man formerly could go where he pleased, go at his own pace without observing any traffic regulations, and was independent of technological support-systems. When motor vehicles were introduced they appeared to increase man’s freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didn’t want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel much faster and farther than a walking man. But the introduction of motorized transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly man’s freedom of locomotion. When automobiles became numerous, it became necessary to regulate their use extensively. In a car, especially in densely populated areas, one cannot just go where one likes at one’s own pace one’s movement is governed by the flow of traffic and by various traffic laws. One is tied down by various obligations: license requirements, driver test, renewing registration, insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on purchase price. Moreover, the use of motorized transport is no longer optional. Since the introduction of motorized transport the arrangement of our cities has changed in such a way that the majority of people no longer live within walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas and recreational opportunities, so that they HAVE TO depend on the automobile for transportation. Or else they must use public transportation, in which case they have even less control over their own movement than when driving a car. Even the walker’s freedom is now greatly restricted. In the city he continually has to stop to wait for traffic lights that are designed mainly to serve auto traffic. In the country, motor traffic makes it dangerous and unpleasant to walk along the highway. (Note this important point that we have just illustrated with the case of motorized transport: When a new item of technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not as he chooses, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional. In many cases the new technology changes society in such a way that people eventually find themselves FORCED to use it.)

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
throwanem 9y ago
I started writing a reply to this, but it got out of hand and before I knew it, I was wrestling with an essay: https://aaron-m.com/2017/07/09/on-kaczynski https://aaron-m.com/2017/07/09/on-kaczynski (Hardly the first time that's happened to me on Hacker News! But now I have a proper place to put them.)

jnwatson 9y ago

Yeah, I used to think that way. I grew up in the suburbs of the concrete jungle that is Houston, Texas. It now has a 26 lane highway running west of the city. The problem is that building more roads doesn't help. Expanding major arteries encourages people to move further out, which makes it worse. Additionally, we've used up all the easy and inexpensive places to build roads. Northern Virginia is actually doing a decent job of encouraging high-density housing in mixed-use environments with access to mass transit. It seems odd that S.V. is so backwards in this way.

greglindahl 9y ago

Silicon Valley built a ton of freeways, and it's basically impossible to build any more of them. It's far, far, far cheaper to electrify Caltrain and build level boarding, plus a BRT up El Camino.