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Don't understand this obsession with car as a way of life. There are far better solutions already. Build cities that encourages public transport.

snarf21 6y ago
People hate public transportation for the same reasons they hate traffic jams. Cars are freedom and control. It doesn't matter that driving 10 minutes to the store is the same as waiting 10 minutes for the subway. And once I'm at the store, I can go wherever, I'm not stuck by the physical nature of the public infrastructure. I will say that cities should just not allow cars in most areas. If you really want to leverage the benefits and efficiencies of cities, you have to go all in.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  > I can go wherever, I'm not stuck by the physical nature of the public infrastructure. Yes you are. Cars are completely reliant on roads, a fact which is all too easily forgotten by drivers.
qball 6y ago
>There are far better solutions already. No, there really aren't. If mass transit was actually better, it would have condemned the car (and the horse-driven carriage before it) to being nothing more than a passing fad; "corruption to kill the streetcar" alone isn't enough of an excuse for why people overwhelmingly prefer private vehicles when given the choice. Cars return so much time by themselves that every single downside (environmental degradation aside) is worth it from a utilitarian standpoint. Let's take the biggest disadvantage of mass transit, which is its massive speed disadvantage compared to private transport (you must also account for the maximum speed that you can travel to get to it, and the maximum speed between the closest drop-off point and your destination- increasing the speed of one leg has limited value if you're still waiting half an hour for and on the bus, which in the opposite direction is why park-and-ride isn't as effective in practice as it is in theory). Assume that, with mass transit, a daily round-trip commute is extended by 20 minutes (this is being very generous to public transit). Assuming 260 working days in a year, that's 3.5 days of your life spent on nothing but waiting to get to your destination, or more precisely, ~11 working days. 11 working days is a lot of time when you consider that even European legally-mandated vacation time is only 2-3 times that (in the US, the average vacation time after 1 year of employment is 10 days). Across 40 years of career, that's 440 working days or 1.75 working years. Oh, and that's only covering the time it takes you to get to work. If you're going somewhere for fun afterwards, or going shopping, that'll be another +20 minutes (again, being generous) to your commute, and you best be home by 11 or you aren't getting home (most mass transit shuts down very early at night) unless you call a taxi ($$$). And if you want to buy more than 2 bags of groceries or some small furniture, even free shipping is still being passed on to you ($$$), driving prices even higher. Now, to be fair to the bus, rents get lower if you have fewer parking lots (commutes don't get shorter, of course- more people in an area dependent on public transit means its service gets worse). Except what actually happens is that that effect isn't enough to offset the fact that under such a regime, people will try to live as close to work as possible (to minimize the inefficiency described above or even eliminate it completely- hence why all the rich live in European city centers), which means rents don't actually go down, meaning the property owner captures the value that the commons used to provide in terms of driving infrastructure. Is it really any surprise that the class of people wealthy enough to be property owners (or afford usurious Bay Area rents), who would sacrifice the least (if not directly benefit) from a decrease in cars, are also the ones advocating the loudest for public transit?

snarf21 6y ago

People hate public transportation for the same reasons they hate traffic jams. Cars are freedom and control. It doesn't matter that driving 10 minutes to the store is the same as waiting 10 minutes for the subway. And once I'm at the store, I can go wherever, I'm not stuck by the physical nature of the public infrastructure. I will say that cities should just not allow cars in most areas. If you really want to leverage the benefits and efficiencies of cities, you have to go all in.

globular-toast 6y ago
> I can go wherever, I'm not stuck by the physical nature of the public infrastructure. Yes you are. Cars are completely reliant on roads, a fact which is all too easily forgotten by drivers.

qball 6y ago

>There are far better solutions already. No, there really aren't. If mass transit was actually better, it would have condemned the car (and the horse-driven carriage before it) to being nothing more than a passing fad; "corruption to kill the streetcar" alone isn't enough of an excuse for why people overwhelmingly prefer private vehicles when given the choice. Cars return so much time by themselves that every single downside (environmental degradation aside) is worth it from a utilitarian standpoint. Let's take the biggest disadvantage of mass transit, which is its massive speed disadvantage compared to private transport (you must also account for the maximum speed that you can travel to get to it, and the maximum speed between the closest drop-off point and your destination- increasing the speed of one leg has limited value if you're still waiting half an hour for and on the bus, which in the opposite direction is why park-and-ride isn't as effective in practice as it is in theory). Assume that, with mass transit, a daily round-trip commute is extended by 20 minutes (this is being very generous to public transit). Assuming 260 working days in a year, that's 3.5 days of your life spent on nothing but waiting to get to your destination, or more precisely, ~11 working days. 11 working days is a lot of time when you consider that even European legally-mandated vacation time is only 2-3 times that (in the US, the average vacation time after 1 year of employment is 10 days). Across 40 years of career, that's 440 working days or 1.75 working years. Oh, and that's only covering the time it takes you to get to work. If you're going somewhere for fun afterwards, or going shopping, that'll be another +20 minutes (again, being generous) to your commute, and you best be home by 11 or you aren't getting home (most mass transit shuts down very early at night) unless you call a taxi ($$$). And if you want to buy more than 2 bags of groceries or some small furniture, even free shipping is still being passed on to you ($$$), driving prices even higher. Now, to be fair to the bus, rents get lower if you have fewer parking lots (commutes don't get shorter, of course- more people in an area dependent on public transit means its service gets worse). Except what actually happens is that that effect isn't enough to offset the fact that under such a regime, people will try to live as close to work as possible (to minimize the inefficiency described above or even eliminate it completely- hence why all the rich live in European city centers), which means rents don't actually go down, meaning the property owner captures the value that the commons used to provide in terms of driving infrastructure. Is it really any surprise that the class of people wealthy enough to be property owners (or afford usurious Bay Area rents), who would sacrifice the least (if not directly benefit) from a decrease in cars, are also the ones advocating the loudest for public transit?