8 ms·

I don't fully know if this is the best way to approximate the original posit, which is basically people in the US have to drive super far. However, even in your

• alex_young 6y ago
  Fair enough. I do know that much of Europe is something less than urban by this measure, and they seem to get by fine with a lot fewer cars, and the cars they have are almost always much smaller than ours. Perhaps this is one of those self perpetuating problems.
  • waterheater 6y ago
    I could go into a lengthy explanation on this point, but it boils down to a difference in culture primarily rooted in (1) available space and (2) historical land usage. And what you're referring to is not a problem, because it is objectively useful to have a large truck in the middle of nowhere. I enjoy being able to move lots of things at once without asking another person for help. Also, have you ever had a tract of land in a rural part of the USA? It's quite nice. Europeans have a tendency to think they're superior to Americans, but that's just classist crap that needs to stop. The USA has cool things, and so do Germans and Austrians and Belgians and the French and so on. Why divide ourselves?
    • seibelj 6y ago
      I agree - the media constantly posts these “other countries look at USA in bewilderment” articles as if anyone in the US should care what others think. I’m constantly amazed that Europe has insanely high taxes, low growth, and tiny innovation yet no one every speaks of my bewilderment. Everyone has cool stuff, but there are bad things to say about every country in addition to good things.
      • ggm 6y ago
        as if anyone in the US should care what others think. American exceptionalism in one phrase.
        • kortilla 6y ago
          Germans don’t care what New Yorkers think about Germany. A news article about Americans taking pity on Germany would never land in Der Spiegel but we don’t call that German exceptionalism.
          • bobthepanda 6y ago
            Germans may not care specifically about New Yorkers' every thought about their country but they do compare their results internationally. Here's a Der Spiegel article about how the German PISA results are good but could be better: https://www.spiegel.de/lebenundlernen/schule/pisa-studie-der-oecd-deutschland-landet-im-oberen-mittelfeld-a-1299249.html https://www.spiegel.de/lebenundlernen/schule/pisa-studie-der...
          • corty 6y ago
            Oh, there is plenty of German exceptionalism, it usually takes the form of moral, political or ethical snobbiness. Germany views itself as an exceptionally moral and civilized nation nowadays and strives to export that lesson from the past. Not only the Nazi past, mind you, the saying "Am Deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen" -German habit shall heal the world- is far older. Germans know they might be smaller or average in most things, but morally and ethically, we are Übermenschen...
        • AniseAbyss 6y ago
          If only it went both ways.
      • pertymcpert 6y ago
        Maybe try living there? I have in both. Life is definitely better in Western Europe.
    • alex_young 6y ago
      Actually I’m speaking from personal experience with rural life in several places in the US and in Europe. While I agree that each has their advantages and disadvantages, transportation is something many places in Europe have something to show us IMHO. A small village would typically have a train station where you can quickly travel to a populated area and urban cores are often nearly completely restricted from cars excepting deliveries making for walkable daily life. It’s true that having a personal vehicle is more convenient, but in my opinion that is a bit of a tragedy of the commons. If everyone decides to have one then we all pay the price in needing one to get anywhere. I’m really not sure where class figures into these two different models honestly.
      • waterheater 6y ago
        I've also seen rural US and Europe. Trains work well when you have enough people to care to use the infrastructure. But if not, you might try buses. I saw a rural village in Hungary (~80 people) which has a bus stop to the nearest town. That's very nice, but the village center is a mile walk from the bus stop on the highway. My point is that a train may not automatically work. (Some rural communities in the USA do have similar bus routes.) I'm curious: what is your example of a small European village with a train line? I'm asking because I just picked a random American town on the map: Spencer, Iowa. ~11k people, and it's about a two hour drive (~100 miles) in all directions to a larger city. A two hour drive is a decent drive, but it's not much overall, especially if you're comfortable driving. It's quite hard to find a similar scenario in Europe: these vast, sparsely-populated tracts of land. And that's my primary point: Europe's population is distributed more uniformly and densely than the USA. A blanket claim about how x transportation mode must be used in the USA ignores the stark regional variations. Sure, in certain large cities, widespread car ownership may lead to a tragedy of the commons scenario, but it's on a per-city basis. The vast majority of cities in the USA will never encounter this problem because their "commons" are just so big, all cows still find a spot to graze. The cities that do encounter large traffic jams eventually build public transportation infrastructure to reduce the burden on roadways. Playing out the maximal scenarios, I'd much rather live in a world where everyone drives cars than everyone rides trains. A mix of both is even better. Walkable downtowns are great, and cities of all sizes should have them.
    • pertymcpert 6y ago
      It's not classist at all. Stop being so defensive about constructive criticism. It's defeatist and the US should welcome good suggestions about how to make life better. Good god the "cool stuff" that the US has in no way shape or form compensates for the poor lives that the majority of the country leads.
      • autokad 6y ago
        I think the country needs less people telling them how they should live.
      • waterheater 6y ago
        >It's not classist at all. Stop being so defensive about constructive criticism. If a train is the best solution for a USA community, by all means, make it happen! However, trains are optimal in the USA in far fewer scenarios than either automobiles, buses, or airplanes.
    • bobthepanda 6y ago
      (2) - most "historical" land use differences that can be attributed to the automobile are recent, because the US did not even fully embrace the automobile until after the war. New Urbanism started because architects realized that postwar zoning codes made constructing a traditional New England town center illegal. And most rural towns today even have dead or dying Main Streets caused by the huge shift towards automobile dependent big box stores. This sounds like the rhetoric around gun rights, where any amount of regulation on guns becomes an absolute seizure of the right to have any gun. No one is talking about an absolute zero automobile society; even societies that deprioritize the car still have cars available, just not as the first choice. Cars don't have to be dominant to be available and usable.
      • waterheater 6y ago
        >most "historical" land use differences that can be attributed to the automobile are recent, because the US did not even fully embrace the automobile until after the war No disrepsect, but did any country? Trains were used extensively, but the double-whammy of automobiles and airplanes did do a number on the attractiveness of trains. >And most rural towns today even have dead or dying Main Streets caused by the huge shift towards automobile dependent big box stores. Mmm. I feel that's a case of "correlation != causation." - The decades-long export of jobs (avoidable or not) depleted available capital in the community. With little money and work, supporting businesses (mostly those in town centers) greatly struggled, and many folded. - Big box stores use economies of scale to undercut Main Street prices, which further accelerates the collapse of small business. Dollar General is an interesting example, where they (in my view) have tried to fill the gaps these collapses left. - Big box stores are inherently large, so good luck finding a tract of land big enough in a rural downtown. If a rural community has a bus line, I'd wager good money that the Walmart has a stop. >This sounds like the rhetoric around gun rights, where any amount of regulation on guns becomes an absolute seizure of the right to have any gun. Gun rights are constitutionally protected, whereas no law says "the right to own vehicles, being necessary for the operation of a free society, shall not be infringed." Some people really, really love the law if it makes them feel more secure (and that's okay). Also, bear (heh) in mind gun rhetoric in today's age is manufactured for political purposes. >Cars don't have to be dominant to be available and usable. Agreed. If cars are less optimal than other transportation modes, people will chose otherwise. But in the vast majority of the USA, except for commuting, cars enable more liberty than trains at lower levels of efficiency. Not the worst thing, in my opinion.
  • austincheney 6y ago
    That is result of 4x fuel prices more than anything else.
    • hutzlibu 6y ago
      True, but big SUVs are more and more common (and also the bitching about it).
    • readarticle 6y ago
      And significantly lower incomes in ruralish areas where public transportation infrastructure is rubbish, vast swathes of Europe are still impressively poor. There are plenty of personal vehicles in rural southern Germany, SUVs and all, to the point I’d go so far as to call it the norm. Not the case in the Balkans, though.
• arrrg 6y ago
  So you need exceptions for those people. Something that has to be considered during implementation, but not a general showstopper. Sometimes in those discussions I’m extremely confused. It’s as though the concept of an exception doesn’t exist and any counter example prevents some policy suggestion, no matter how minor.
  • jayparth 6y ago
    Administering a policy with a ton of loopholes and exceptions almost always becomes a rotting, horrible thing. Look at tax codes. You need exceptions for 90 million people? How does that get enforced, generally? Even though no one has mentioned a specific policy that we can have a concrete discussion about, I see the abstract problem.
    • jiofih 6y ago
      I don’t know. It sounds like you’re just annoyed at the thought of some regulation getting in the way of you and your car, and will come up with random arguments against it.
      • yostrovs 6y ago
        Well, when you decided it's your business to judge what car I should be buying, based on your perception of my needs and wants, it did feel a bit annoying.
      • salamander014 6y ago
        Just because 90 million is a minority doesn't make 90 million insignificant. This is a difficult problem to solve. Recognizing that first and foremost will bring you down the path of: 1. We need a solution for actual urban populations 2. We also need a solution for the 90 million that don't fall under solution 1 3. and finally, we shouldn't be forcing people to buy specific cars. Not saying EV are bad, just that the market needs to start being more competetive, and automakers need to care more. People tend to follow the crowd, if lawmakers were serious about the environment, automakers would have a harder time continuing selling new cars every year(waste), and even more so non electric vehicles. I think there will still be a niche market for ICE vehicles for a very long time, but people who are not "car people" would very easily be driving EVs if they were more popular. Most won't notice the difference.