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The difference is that people actually need to get around, and not in the "addicted to nicotine" kind of way either. Being anti smoking worked because there wa

The difference is that people actually need to get around, and not in the "addicted to nicotine" kind of way either. Being anti smoking worked because there was no need for a replacement, but we can't feasibly just remove cars workout replacing them with something, some other mode of transportation. Until that other mode exists, and is workable in the specific area, being anti-car doesn't make sense..

jcims 5y ago
>replacing them with something (costing hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars and 2-20 years to build) NYC has the highest transit use of any city in the US and they would still have to nearly double capacity to get rid of cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_transit_ridership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_...
- lwansbrough 5y ago
  Easy, get rid of cars. Makes room for more busses.
  - masklinn 5y ago
    Can’t work, it has to be the other way around or there is no transition path: first convert a subset of car infrastructure to make alternatives more approachable / desirable, then iterate on that to reduce the space given to cars further. That is essentially what the netherlands have been doing for decades.
    - lwansbrough 5y ago
      Well, the first step IMO is to eliminate single family zoning in favour of mixed use zoning and legalize middle housing, that should cut down the need for cars substantially in most North American cities. Then anyone who still needs a car can be inconvenienced by stricter regulations.
      - masklinn 5y ago
        Sure i was kinda assuming that anyway, but it’s nowhere near sufficient as demonstrated by… pretty much everywhere outside of NA.
      - jcims 5y ago
        This is one of those things that would meet the criteria of the article. Don't fight traffic, create opportunities for people to open stores and restaurants inside housing development.
- fouc 5y ago
  There's a well known effect, called induced demand, where building more roads cause traffic to increase. Doing the reverse will decrease traffic, then transit won't have to scale up nearly as much as we might assume.
noduerme 5y ago
> Being anti smoking worked Really? About 30% of adults still smoke where I live, and all the teens and 20-somethings use vape pens. What's the definition of "worked" in this context?
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  It's down to 14% in the UK, falling from 45% in the seventies.
- pedrosorio 5y ago
  In the US, 14% of adults smoke. In California it’s under 12%. Among households with an income above $100k it’s 7% [0]. If you belong to a certain demographic that is prevalent in this forum (upper middle class in California), the above is pretty much true. I can’t think of any person I regularly interact with who smokes. Globally, it’s a matter of time. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/adult_data/cig_smoking/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/adul...
  - noduerme 5y ago
    I looked up the official rate where I live (18.1%), but I find it hard to believe, since virtually everyone I know smokes, at least casually. And the few who don't smoke, vape. Why do you care? Everyone knows the risks by now. It's never going away. You should find better things to do with your time than trying to control other people's behavior. Also, I'm originally from Cali and I make over $100k a year, but I'm hardly a unicorn since all my California friends bum cigarettes from me whenever I see them, even though they all "quit" years ago. California is just a miserable habitat where you can't enjoy a beer and a smoke at the same time unless you belong to a private club. And they all lie on the surveys.
    - pedrosorio 5y ago
      Why do I care? I grew up in Portugal with asthma at a time when indoor smoking was allowed and prevalent. The progress in the past few decades has been amazing for my quality of life and that of all other people (specially children with smoking parents) who were regularly subjected to 2nd hand smoke from a young age through no fault of their own. EDIT: also it’s unclear to me how you got the message that I was “trying to control other people’s behavior” from my first comment
lucideer 5y ago
> we can't feasibly just remove cars workout replacing them with something This isn't really true though. Firstly just as "banning smoking" hasn't really meant banning smoking—people still smoke—being anti-car doesn't mean eliminating car ownership. In a pro-car world, if I'm a developer building a shopping centre one of my primary considerations is parking. Immediately I need maybe over triple the area of land to build, or significant increase in investment if I'm going underground. Both of these options limit me severely in where I can build: I'll go for an area with cheaper land value, and larger land areas available. Access is further down my list of concerns. In an anti-car world, I build my shopping centre where people live. Many can walk there. There's a greater array of existing public transport already servicing it (and density means such services are likely to be improved w/out the need for lobbying). Some cycle there. Proximity means visits are more likely to be shorter & more frequent: this increases turnover of parking spaces for the much-smaller number of people who do still need to drive. There are countless other similar examples of problems that solve themselves when car infrastructure is removed from the equation. Yes we need other solutions in some cases, but just removing cars is enough of a "solution" in itself in many cases. What people don't realise about cars is that car infrastructure already causes so many problems we've just internalised and accepted as norms. An anti-car approach benefits from those problems being solved implicitly.
- etripe 5y ago
  While you largely have a point, I think you're perhaps a little too optimistic about the big picture, especially when factoring in timelines. Simply saying no to cars doesn't solve the problem of transporting goods of any kind, e.g. a family load of food shopping for the week, furniture or building materials when doing a house renovation. And while covid has nudged employment towards a more decentralised model, some countries (the US comes to mind, especially in rural areas or AFAIK cities like LA) don't really have a public transport alternative, for instance.
  - ArekDymalski 5y ago
    >family load of food shopping for the week I think that shopping for the week is a result of car ownership, not the other way. I grew up in a family without a car and buying fresh stuff from the local shop everyday was normal. I think I developed the habit of weekly shopping when I turned 25 and started more demanding job. In case of furniture/moving - that's something that could be done be services. Etc.
pizza234 5y ago
> The difference is that people actually need to get around This is really context-dependent. Some cities/countries do have efficient enough public transport, and/or they're flat enough to make bikes usable. In such contexts, using a bike is a realistic choice (like mine). This goes even for families with children (in some countries, parents who don't want to depend on cars use cargo bikes). I know that in some countries/cultures, people will use the car even to avoid a 5 minutes walk (I know it for a fact; I'm familiar with that), with the result of massive traffic and pollution.
- noduerme 5y ago
  Mass traffic isn't really the result of a 5-minute drive to McDonald's. It's the result of people only being able to afford single-family houses 1-2 hours away from their workplaces, and either having no commuter trains to get them there, or having city jobs that require driving in a car. For instance, in LA a lot of Uber drivers commute in from an hour away. Contractors, roofers, plumbers, all commute in. People who live in the city may actually get to work by biking or walking, but they aren't the vast majority stuck in traffic on the highways in and out every day. The problem really is the sprawling nature of the economy which necessitates spending hours in a car, not that people are so lazy they can't walk for five minutes.
  - thefr0g 5y ago
    > It's the result of people only being able to afford single-family houses 1-2 hours away from their workplaces Idk how this works in the USA but shurely if you can afford a single family house you could easily rent an apartment near to where you actually work?
    - jen20 5y ago
      To quickly disabuse you of that notion: it absolutely does not work like that.
    - noduerme 5y ago
      In the US, workers in the service industry in large cities generally can't afford rent within walking or biking distance of where they work. In most cities public transit to and from the outlying areas is slow and bad simply because of the size. The greater LA metro area is about 3/4 the size of the Netherlands, and many people need to commute all the way across it every day. Contractors who need space for tools and equipment and make $100-200k per year can't live in an apartment with their kids and can't afford houses in the city. A family of four making $100k/year could barely get a small 2 bedroom apartment in near-ish suburbs and they would still need multiple vehicles for work. Once you get 90 minutes from the city center, you can afford a 3-bedroom house and two cars. It's the only rational choice. But once you're out there, you need a car even to get to the nearest train station.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
johnisgood 5y ago
> Being anti smoking worked because there was no need for a replacement Assuming it is true, is vaping a part of "smoking", among other replacements such as nicotine gums and whatnot? I read a couple of books on addiction. All of them say that you do need to find a replacement, a healthier one.
rainonmoon 5y ago
> there was no need for a replacement Spoken like someone who's never smoked!

jcims 5y ago

>replacing them with something (costing hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars and 2-20 years to build) NYC has the highest transit use of any city in the US and they would still have to nearly double capacity to get rid of cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_transit_ridership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_...

lwansbrough 5y ago
Easy, get rid of cars. Makes room for more busses.
- masklinn 5y ago
  Can’t work, it has to be the other way around or there is no transition path: first convert a subset of car infrastructure to make alternatives more approachable / desirable, then iterate on that to reduce the space given to cars further. That is essentially what the netherlands have been doing for decades.
  - lwansbrough 5y ago
    Well, the first step IMO is to eliminate single family zoning in favour of mixed use zoning and legalize middle housing, that should cut down the need for cars substantially in most North American cities. Then anyone who still needs a car can be inconvenienced by stricter regulations.
    - masklinn 5y ago
      Sure i was kinda assuming that anyway, but it’s nowhere near sufficient as demonstrated by… pretty much everywhere outside of NA.
    - jcims 5y ago
      This is one of those things that would meet the criteria of the article. Don't fight traffic, create opportunities for people to open stores and restaurants inside housing development.
fouc 5y ago
There's a well known effect, called induced demand, where building more roads cause traffic to increase. Doing the reverse will decrease traffic, then transit won't have to scale up nearly as much as we might assume.

noduerme 5y ago

> Being anti smoking worked Really? About 30% of adults still smoke where I live, and all the teens and 20-somethings use vape pens. What's the definition of "worked" in this context?

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
It's down to 14% in the UK, falling from 45% in the seventies.
pedrosorio 5y ago
In the US, 14% of adults smoke. In California it’s under 12%. Among households with an income above $100k it’s 7% [0]. If you belong to a certain demographic that is prevalent in this forum (upper middle class in California), the above is pretty much true. I can’t think of any person I regularly interact with who smokes. Globally, it’s a matter of time. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/adult_data/cig_smoking/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/adul...
- noduerme 5y ago
  I looked up the official rate where I live (18.1%), but I find it hard to believe, since virtually everyone I know smokes, at least casually. And the few who don't smoke, vape. Why do you care? Everyone knows the risks by now. It's never going away. You should find better things to do with your time than trying to control other people's behavior. Also, I'm originally from Cali and I make over $100k a year, but I'm hardly a unicorn since all my California friends bum cigarettes from me whenever I see them, even though they all "quit" years ago. California is just a miserable habitat where you can't enjoy a beer and a smoke at the same time unless you belong to a private club. And they all lie on the surveys.
  - pedrosorio 5y ago
    Why do I care? I grew up in Portugal with asthma at a time when indoor smoking was allowed and prevalent. The progress in the past few decades has been amazing for my quality of life and that of all other people (specially children with smoking parents) who were regularly subjected to 2nd hand smoke from a young age through no fault of their own. EDIT: also it’s unclear to me how you got the message that I was “trying to control other people’s behavior” from my first comment

lucideer 5y ago

> we can't feasibly just remove cars workout replacing them with something This isn't really true though. Firstly just as "banning smoking" hasn't really meant banning smoking—people still smoke—being anti-car doesn't mean eliminating car ownership. In a pro-car world, if I'm a developer building a shopping centre one of my primary considerations is parking. Immediately I need maybe over triple the area of land to build, or significant increase in investment if I'm going underground. Both of these options limit me severely in where I can build: I'll go for an area with cheaper land value, and larger land areas available. Access is further down my list of concerns. In an anti-car world, I build my shopping centre where people live. Many can walk there. There's a greater array of existing public transport already servicing it (and density means such services are likely to be improved w/out the need for lobbying). Some cycle there. Proximity means visits are more likely to be shorter & more frequent: this increases turnover of parking spaces for the much-smaller number of people who do still need to drive. There are countless other similar examples of problems that solve themselves when car infrastructure is removed from the equation. Yes we need other solutions in some cases, but just removing cars is enough of a "solution" in itself in many cases. What people don't realise about cars is that car infrastructure already causes so many problems we've just internalised and accepted as norms. An anti-car approach benefits from those problems being solved implicitly.

etripe 5y ago
While you largely have a point, I think you're perhaps a little too optimistic about the big picture, especially when factoring in timelines. Simply saying no to cars doesn't solve the problem of transporting goods of any kind, e.g. a family load of food shopping for the week, furniture or building materials when doing a house renovation. And while covid has nudged employment towards a more decentralised model, some countries (the US comes to mind, especially in rural areas or AFAIK cities like LA) don't really have a public transport alternative, for instance.
- ArekDymalski 5y ago
  >family load of food shopping for the week I think that shopping for the week is a result of car ownership, not the other way. I grew up in a family without a car and buying fresh stuff from the local shop everyday was normal. I think I developed the habit of weekly shopping when I turned 25 and started more demanding job. In case of furniture/moving - that's something that could be done be services. Etc.

pizza234 5y ago

> The difference is that people actually need to get around This is really context-dependent. Some cities/countries do have efficient enough public transport, and/or they're flat enough to make bikes usable. In such contexts, using a bike is a realistic choice (like mine). This goes even for families with children (in some countries, parents who don't want to depend on cars use cargo bikes). I know that in some countries/cultures, people will use the car even to avoid a 5 minutes walk (I know it for a fact; I'm familiar with that), with the result of massive traffic and pollution.

noduerme 5y ago
Mass traffic isn't really the result of a 5-minute drive to McDonald's. It's the result of people only being able to afford single-family houses 1-2 hours away from their workplaces, and either having no commuter trains to get them there, or having city jobs that require driving in a car. For instance, in LA a lot of Uber drivers commute in from an hour away. Contractors, roofers, plumbers, all commute in. People who live in the city may actually get to work by biking or walking, but they aren't the vast majority stuck in traffic on the highways in and out every day. The problem really is the sprawling nature of the economy which necessitates spending hours in a car, not that people are so lazy they can't walk for five minutes.
- thefr0g 5y ago
  > It's the result of people only being able to afford single-family houses 1-2 hours away from their workplaces Idk how this works in the USA but shurely if you can afford a single family house you could easily rent an apartment near to where you actually work?
  - jen20 5y ago
    To quickly disabuse you of that notion: it absolutely does not work like that.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    In the US, workers in the service industry in large cities generally can't afford rent within walking or biking distance of where they work. In most cities public transit to and from the outlying areas is slow and bad simply because of the size. The greater LA metro area is about 3/4 the size of the Netherlands, and many people need to commute all the way across it every day. Contractors who need space for tools and equipment and make $100-200k per year can't live in an apartment with their kids and can't afford houses in the city. A family of four making $100k/year could barely get a small 2 bedroom apartment in near-ish suburbs and they would still need multiple vehicles for work. Once you get 90 minutes from the city center, you can afford a 3-bedroom house and two cars. It's the only rational choice. But once you're out there, you need a car even to get to the nearest train station.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

johnisgood 5y ago

> Being anti smoking worked because there was no need for a replacement Assuming it is true, is vaping a part of "smoking", among other replacements such as nicotine gums and whatnot? I read a couple of books on addiction. All of them say that you do need to find a replacement, a healthier one.

rainonmoon 5y ago

> there was no need for a replacement Spoken like someone who's never smoked!