3 ms·

Pretty key point right here: it takes a lot of infrastructure spending over a long time to build a city. Can't just snap your fingers and change how that money

Pretty key point right here: it takes a lot of infrastructure spending over a long time to build a city. Can't just snap your fingers and change how that money got spent. Plenty of the pedestrian-friendly cities with good trains and all got built up during times when there weren't any automobiles. They're nice to look at and great to live in. But it's not possible to transform Salt Lake city or San Antonio into New York City with the snap of a finger. Takes capital, takes time, and people need to live their lives in the meanwhile. Transit around here is good in some bits, bad in others. House prices are about double, maybe more, if the house is walking distance to good transit. And transit isn't free. Better economics to own an inexpensive car and drive it. For a lot of people, money's tight and need to put food on the table for the family.

avianlyric 5y ago
> Pretty key point right here: it takes a lot of infrastructure spending over a long time to build a city. Can't just snap your fingers and change how that money got spent. Your not wrong, it’s take the Neatherlands 30-50 years to transition from a car centric culture that would make even an American blush, to the cycle centric one they have today. But as with trees, the best time plant one was ten years ago, the second best time is now. If we keep using the excuse that you can’t build people friendly infrastructure, because there’s no other people friendly infrastructure for it to work with. Then you’ll never build people friendly infrastructure, and you’ll be forever stuck in a car dominated hell scape, where a 30 min drive to do anything is an inescapable reality.