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I lived in Germany for a while and used a car twice. Both times it was a rental. Was able to take public transportation to almost every place including nation
by syops 5y ago
I lived in Germany for a while and used a car twice. Both times it was a rental. Was able to take public transportation to almost every place including national parks. The U.S. needs to make investments in public transportation. It would greatly benefit the environment, our health, and our pocketbooks. In 1995 there were 0 miles of high speed rail in China and today there are tens of thousands of miles of high speed rail. We could have made similar investments into our people and the environment but haven’t.
Cars do have a utility and car sharing programs coupled with good public transportation can obviate the need for everyone to own one. Most cars spend most of their time not being used. We collectively are a nation of people who by and large spend our lives driving a car from to go from one building to another. We have people who drive somewhere for the purpose of going on a walk.
We’d be much better off without such a car centric focus.
- rootusrootus 5y agoThe US has four times as many people as Germany but 27 times as much land. Public transit to every national park would be expensive.
- syops 5y agoIf the U.S. could shift from a car centric culture then population density would go up. Of course having bus routes to every national park is not feasible in the U.S. but we can have a robust public transportation system beyond urban centers. There is a cost to not having a good public transportation system. Overall, I think we and the world would be better off if the U.S. transitioned from a car centric culture.
- rootusrootus 5y ago> If the U.S. could shift from a car centric culture then population density would go up. That seems like a reversal of cause and effect, though.
- syops 5y agoAs I see it people in the U.S. can live in spread out cities because of cars. If cars were somehow to be made undesirable then we’d want to live in more compact spaces.
- rootusrootus 5y agoUrbanization in the US has consistently increased throughout the entire time the car has been in existence. > If cars were somehow to be made undesirable then we’d want to live in more compact spaces. Poor people, mostly. Wealthy people could continue to live where they want. Forcibly making car ownership more undesirable seems like an extremely regressive choice. I would rather see the trend towards mega-cities reverse. Not to rural, but to small & medium sized cities that are more livable, which are then connected by good transportation.
- syops 5y agoA livable city means a city that is not car centric. Such is my opinion. Far too much land and resources are used for parking spaces and those spaces are largely unused. Our cities are hostile to pedestrians as well as our law enforcement. Our car centric culture is regressive due to the large cost of car ownership, mandatory land usage for parking spaces and subsidies to pay for roads. https://www.illinoislawreview.org/print/vol-2017-no-3/the-criminalization-of-walking/ https://www.illinoislawreview.org/print/vol-2017-no-3/the-cr... https://www.fastcompany.com/40441392/see-just-how-much-of-a-citys-land-is-used-for-parking-spaces https://www.fastcompany.com/40441392/see-just-how-much-of-a-...