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Imagine how different the US would be if it was Big Public Transportation that lobbied to have towns and cities designed around them, rather than the car indust

by ljm 5y ago

Imagine how different the US would be if it was Big Public Transportation that lobbied to have towns and cities designed around them, rather than the car industry. Walking, cycling, buses, trams, trains, etc. etc. You'd still have cars but they wouldn't be a basic need for survival like they're often treated as, because you can't get anywhere without one. Because it was basically 100 years ago when the car industry sought to dismantle that infrastructure, and succeeded.

asdff 5y ago
To be fair it wasn't some conspiracy. The reason why people began using the car 100 years ago was that the car was becoming widely available and it was super convenient even in the days when roads were caked in horse manure. Even in the peak of the streetcar era, the private car was the best way around town, and as more people bought more cars, it continued to dominate as the streetcar would be bogged down in traffic just like a bus today. Intercity passenger rail also didn't stand much of a chance against the convenience and speed of the jet age.
- ljm 5y ago
  There was _a_ conspiracy, or at least Wikipedia refers to it as such: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp.... That is to say, there's enough there to suggest that this wasn't the free market answering solely to consumer demand.
  - TMWNN 5y ago
    The article explains why there actually was no conspiracy.[1] [1] No, kids, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? isn't real history
    - romwell 5y ago
      I mean, is it really a conspiracy if open and unashamed corruption was the modus operandi at the time. When there's funding for highways but not rails, the results are unsurprising. The benefits of public transit are a positive externality[1][2]. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Positive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Positive [2]Real history is way worse
  - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
    Regardless of whether or not there was a conspiracy, I think the last 100 years of private vehicle ownership in the US have shown that solely due to the convenience, it would have happened anyway.
    - the8472 5y ago
      A bad equilibrium is still an equilibrium. That is not evidence that there aren't better ones.
    - ljm 5y ago
      I don't think that follows, because you have to prove that car ownership would have increased the same way without any intervention by car manufacturers. You're treating it as a foregone conclusion. If you follow the same 100 year trajectory in other countries, then you will see an uptick in car ownership for sure, and infrastructure adapts to support this (highways/freeways/motorways), but it's not nearly as drastic as it is stateside. Of course, the US is a large place and even its states are larger than other countries. And it hasn't existed in its modern form for more than a couple of centuries whereas the civil infra on the other continents has been around for at least a full millennium and most likely longer than that (e.g. Roman roads in the UK that would date back well over 1000 years). So the US got the luxury of a blank slate and, well... see what you got from that. At the same time...car manufacturers had the perfect opportunity to seize so they could sell more cars and thus have civil infrastructure designed around the fact that everyone has a car. If someone at that point in time had more money than Henry Ford they could have dumped it into trams and trains and the landscape would have been significantly changed.
      - TMWNN 5y ago
        >If you follow the same 100 year trajectory in other countries, then you will see an uptick in car ownership for sure, and infrastructure adapts to support this (highways/freeways/motorways), but it's not nearly as drastic as it is stateside. As the Wikipedia article you cited elsewhere discusses, streetcar systems outside the US went out of business at the same time as those in the US for the same reasons.

by ljm 5y ago

asdff 5y ago

To be fair it wasn't some conspiracy. The reason why people began using the car 100 years ago was that the car was becoming widely available and it was super convenient even in the days when roads were caked in horse manure. Even in the peak of the streetcar era, the private car was the best way around town, and as more people bought more cars, it continued to dominate as the streetcar would be bogged down in traffic just like a bus today. Intercity passenger rail also didn't stand much of a chance against the convenience and speed of the jet age.

ljm 5y ago
There was _a_ conspiracy, or at least Wikipedia refers to it as such: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp.... That is to say, there's enough there to suggest that this wasn't the free market answering solely to consumer demand.
- TMWNN 5y ago
  The article explains why there actually was no conspiracy.[1] [1] No, kids, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? isn't real history
  - romwell 5y ago
    I mean, is it really a conspiracy if open and unashamed corruption was the modus operandi at the time. When there's funding for highways but not rails, the results are unsurprising. The benefits of public transit are a positive externality[1][2]. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Positive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Positive [2]Real history is way worse
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
  Regardless of whether or not there was a conspiracy, I think the last 100 years of private vehicle ownership in the US have shown that solely due to the convenience, it would have happened anyway.
  - the8472 5y ago
    A bad equilibrium is still an equilibrium. That is not evidence that there aren't better ones.
  - ljm 5y ago
    I don't think that follows, because you have to prove that car ownership would have increased the same way without any intervention by car manufacturers. You're treating it as a foregone conclusion. If you follow the same 100 year trajectory in other countries, then you will see an uptick in car ownership for sure, and infrastructure adapts to support this (highways/freeways/motorways), but it's not nearly as drastic as it is stateside. Of course, the US is a large place and even its states are larger than other countries. And it hasn't existed in its modern form for more than a couple of centuries whereas the civil infra on the other continents has been around for at least a full millennium and most likely longer than that (e.g. Roman roads in the UK that would date back well over 1000 years). So the US got the luxury of a blank slate and, well... see what you got from that. At the same time...car manufacturers had the perfect opportunity to seize so they could sell more cars and thus have civil infrastructure designed around the fact that everyone has a car. If someone at that point in time had more money than Henry Ford they could have dumped it into trams and trains and the landscape would have been significantly changed.
    - TMWNN 5y ago
      >If you follow the same 100 year trajectory in other countries, then you will see an uptick in car ownership for sure, and infrastructure adapts to support this (highways/freeways/motorways), but it's not nearly as drastic as it is stateside. As the Wikipedia article you cited elsewhere discusses, streetcar systems outside the US went out of business at the same time as those in the US for the same reasons.