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I think you're right in that mass transit is the best solution to transportation from a social and environmental standpoint. But the reality is that most peopl
by vivekd 7y ago
I think you're right in that mass transit is the best solution to transportation from a social and environmental standpoint. But the reality is that most people prefer cars. It's unrealistic to force people to use the socially optimum solution rather than their prefered solution. Many governments have tried and many have failed to force people to use the socially beneficial solution over their preferred one. A good example of this is the failure of carpool lanes.
Any system that caters to humans has to account for what people want. The way to make people take transit is to make transit comparable to cars - in terms of speed, reliability etc. And to make it better now rather than holding out some promise that it will be better at some future date when enough people take transit. People will take transit now if its better now, not if it promises to be better in the future.
I mean at the end of the day we can't force or guilt people into taking our preferred solution. We have to create a solution that caters to them. People will do their part for society and the environment - recycling programs are proof of this. You just have to create a solution that's not too much of an inconvenience. People would take transit more if it was cleaner, faster and more reliable. Rather than pouring more money into it hoping it gets better, or goading more people to take it under the promise it will get better - I don't think its unreasonable to ask to make current systems more user friendly and then increase funding as service improves and ridership increases
- asdff 7y ago> It's unrealistic to force people to use the socially optimum solution rather than their prefered solution. It is perfectly realistic and has happened, like when schools were desegregated much to the dismay of white people in the south, who abandoned the democratic party as a result of it. The hard part is getting a law passed and not diluted along the way by people who refuse to accept inevitable change. Making transit comparable and better than cars is the goal of every transit agency in the world, the difficulty comes from getting people to vote for funding and approve construction projects. Los Angeles is pointed to as a slow meandering failure of a transit build out, but the only reason why it is a slow meandering failure is that the people who would benefit from transit the most do not vote, and the people who vote care about their view or have a preconceived and bigoted notion of who rides public transit, latching on to psuedoscience along the way to further their racist worldview into political action (underground subway construction was banned in LA from the 90s to a couple of years ago due to an unfounded fear of blowing up the city, for example, but the real reason was that the concerned citizens of beverly hills felt they might see more black or brown people on their stretch of sunset boulevard).
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago>> It's unrealistic to force people to use the socially optimum solution rather than their prefered solution. That sounds ...wrong? You might as well say that it's unrealistic to force people to pay taxes. If the benefits of using public transport outweigh the disadvantages, people will just have to get used to the idea. This has certainly worked in many other cases- for example, with rules about smoking indoors etc. I'm sure that smokers prefer to smoke indoors. But there's good reasons not to, and a very strong push with fines and all to not do it, so they just have to suck it up and conform. Sad face.