4 ms·

>it's not productive to pretend most people secretly hate cars Actually, I think that's exactly what we should do. Most people don't have a strong opinion on

>it's not productive to pretend most people secretly hate cars Actually, I think that's exactly what we should do. Most people don't have a strong opinion on cars. They originally bought cars due to marketing. If we talk about how great cars are, most people will agree. If we talk about how terrible cars are, most people will agree. Don't worry about what people think. Just keep talking about the benefits of walkable carefree cities, and that will become the new popular opinion.

bpodgursky 4y ago
> Just keep talking about the benefits of walkable carefree cities If you don't worry about what people think, you're never going to understand and address the actual reasons people buy cars. When someone buys a car because it's miserable trying to get 2+ kids to school on public transit, you're not going to talk them into not being miserable! They are making choices informed based on their own life experiences that it would be smart to understand and emphasize with, if you want to drive meaningful change.
- epistasis 4y ago
  > When someone buys a car because it's miserable trying to get 2+ kids to school on public transit, you're not going to talk them into not being miserable! This is because we plan for the only possible route by car. We prioritize making car access fast in every single aspect of planning, and never once even consider public transit during the planning process, and hope that underfunded transit systems can somehow work around the cars. A far better system would be to have children be able to walk to school rather than hop in a vehicle. Or school buses, which used to be common in the US to get around the car dependency.
- jeltz 4y ago
  Where I live almost everyone walks their kids to school. Many people having to drive their kids to school or use public transport is a sign of bad urban planning.
- jackvalentine 4y ago
  > When someone buys a car because it's miserable trying to get 2+ kids to school on public transit, you're not going to talk them into not being miserable! I saw a case recently where a woman crashed her car outside her child’s school in London, injuring some children. All very sad and especially compounded by the school only accepting enrolments within 1km of the school due to demand. 1km! And she still drove to pick up the kids!
- spicymaki 4y ago
  > When someone buys a car because it's miserable trying to get 2+ kids to school on public transit That is dumb, in the US, school buses exist even in the suburbs. You most likely already fun them with taxpayer money for public school. I have even taken school buses for private school.
  - bpodgursky 4y ago
    Many urban areas do not have school busses. I'm not making up anecdotes, here's a recent one from SF: https://abc7news.com/sfmta-parking-tickets-near-chase-center-mission-bay-sf-san-francisco/11547434/ https://abc7news.com/sfmta-parking-tickets-near-chase-center... Does it sound like she just needs someone to tell her why public transit is great? Or like she has actual challenges using public transit that you don't understand.
    - spicymaki 4y ago
      Point taken. Where I grew-up they had school busses up to middle school. Then you needed to take public buses. They then gave us a special pass that allowed us to travel during school hours for free. I am not sure that public transit is the problem per-se here, but really the city infrastructure.
IshKebab 4y ago
> The originally bought cars due to marketing. That's exactly the sort of wishful delusion that the comment you are replying to was warning about!
dionidium 4y ago
There's no evidence this is true and boatloads of evidence that it isn't. For one thing, when people can afford cars, they buy them. And if you've ever spent a lot of time around people who can't afford a car, "affording a car" is one of the main reasons they'll tell you they want more money. And if they do come into money, a car will be the first thing they purchase. Obviously, you can't divorce people's individual choices from the environment in which they're made (and ours is a particularly car-dependent society), but given the constraints as they actually exist, the fact is that people like owning a car.
- oblio 4y ago
  A car is social status and a car is freedom. The same car is not a liability to the extent it should be, considering it's reducing our life expectancy through emissions and tire and road wear particulates, it's burning our planet through inefficient resource usage and it's literally killing people. People should be able to do whatever they need without a car, within reasonable time frames and reliably (taking 3 buses for 2 hours for a 15 minute car ride is not reasonable) and in parallel to that cars should be taxed like in Norway, they should be a luxury item. Any time you need a car you should first think: do I really? Can I rent one? Etc.
  - dionidium 4y ago
    Make no mistake: I think we should properly price the externalities, we should mostly get cars out of the densest urban centers, we should require speed governors and geofencing in all new vehicles, and we should drastically increase the costs on drivers of injuring pedestrians and cyclists (coupled almost certainly with entirely new (and much more expensive) insurance products). I'm not a huge fan of cars. (More accurately, I'm not a big fan of drivers. Cars are very useful. The 25th percentile driver is a loud, dangerous menace.)
- californical 4y ago
  But, do they only like owning a car because existing without one *sucks*? I don’t know that I buy the idea that people inherently want to own cars, just that our urban design makes life really hard to go without one
refurb 4y ago
A valuable anecdote - I lived in a city with amazing public transit - cheap and plentiful. What do people who can afford do with their money? Buy cars. People act like cars are a forced choice, while completely ignoring the fact that even with the option of great public transit, people still choose cars.
jjav 4y ago
> They originally bought cars due to marketing. That seems like a wild claim. Everyone I know (and myself) bought cars for the need to get from here to there and back in a pragmatic way.

bpodgursky 4y ago

> Just keep talking about the benefits of walkable carefree cities If you don't worry about what people think, you're never going to understand and address the actual reasons people buy cars. When someone buys a car because it's miserable trying to get 2+ kids to school on public transit, you're not going to talk them into not being miserable! They are making choices informed based on their own life experiences that it would be smart to understand and emphasize with, if you want to drive meaningful change.

epistasis 4y ago
> When someone buys a car because it's miserable trying to get 2+ kids to school on public transit, you're not going to talk them into not being miserable! This is because we plan for the only possible route by car. We prioritize making car access fast in every single aspect of planning, and never once even consider public transit during the planning process, and hope that underfunded transit systems can somehow work around the cars. A far better system would be to have children be able to walk to school rather than hop in a vehicle. Or school buses, which used to be common in the US to get around the car dependency.
jeltz 4y ago
Where I live almost everyone walks their kids to school. Many people having to drive their kids to school or use public transport is a sign of bad urban planning.
jackvalentine 4y ago
> When someone buys a car because it's miserable trying to get 2+ kids to school on public transit, you're not going to talk them into not being miserable! I saw a case recently where a woman crashed her car outside her child’s school in London, injuring some children. All very sad and especially compounded by the school only accepting enrolments within 1km of the school due to demand. 1km! And she still drove to pick up the kids!
spicymaki 4y ago
> When someone buys a car because it's miserable trying to get 2+ kids to school on public transit That is dumb, in the US, school buses exist even in the suburbs. You most likely already fun them with taxpayer money for public school. I have even taken school buses for private school.
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  Many urban areas do not have school busses. I'm not making up anecdotes, here's a recent one from SF: https://abc7news.com/sfmta-parking-tickets-near-chase-center-mission-bay-sf-san-francisco/11547434/ https://abc7news.com/sfmta-parking-tickets-near-chase-center... Does it sound like she just needs someone to tell her why public transit is great? Or like she has actual challenges using public transit that you don't understand.
  - spicymaki 4y ago
    Point taken. Where I grew-up they had school busses up to middle school. Then you needed to take public buses. They then gave us a special pass that allowed us to travel during school hours for free. I am not sure that public transit is the problem per-se here, but really the city infrastructure.

IshKebab 4y ago

> The originally bought cars due to marketing. That's exactly the sort of wishful delusion that the comment you are replying to was warning about!

dionidium 4y ago

There's no evidence this is true and boatloads of evidence that it isn't. For one thing, when people can afford cars, they buy them. And if you've ever spent a lot of time around people who can't afford a car, "affording a car" is one of the main reasons they'll tell you they want more money. And if they do come into money, a car will be the first thing they purchase. Obviously, you can't divorce people's individual choices from the environment in which they're made (and ours is a particularly car-dependent society), but given the constraints as they actually exist, the fact is that people like owning a car.

oblio 4y ago
A car is social status and a car is freedom. The same car is not a liability to the extent it should be, considering it's reducing our life expectancy through emissions and tire and road wear particulates, it's burning our planet through inefficient resource usage and it's literally killing people. People should be able to do whatever they need without a car, within reasonable time frames and reliably (taking 3 buses for 2 hours for a 15 minute car ride is not reasonable) and in parallel to that cars should be taxed like in Norway, they should be a luxury item. Any time you need a car you should first think: do I really? Can I rent one? Etc.
- dionidium 4y ago
  Make no mistake: I think we should properly price the externalities, we should mostly get cars out of the densest urban centers, we should require speed governors and geofencing in all new vehicles, and we should drastically increase the costs on drivers of injuring pedestrians and cyclists (coupled almost certainly with entirely new (and much more expensive) insurance products). I'm not a huge fan of cars. (More accurately, I'm not a big fan of drivers. Cars are very useful. The 25th percentile driver is a loud, dangerous menace.)
californical 4y ago
But, do they only like owning a car because existing without one *sucks*? I don’t know that I buy the idea that people inherently want to own cars, just that our urban design makes life really hard to go without one

refurb 4y ago

A valuable anecdote - I lived in a city with amazing public transit - cheap and plentiful. What do people who can afford do with their money? Buy cars. People act like cars are a forced choice, while completely ignoring the fact that even with the option of great public transit, people still choose cars.

jjav 4y ago

> They originally bought cars due to marketing. That seems like a wild claim. Everyone I know (and myself) bought cars for the need to get from here to there and back in a pragmatic way.