4 ms·

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

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
- dionidium 4y ago
  You can make an urban design in which the tradeoffs of car ownership tip toward non-ownership, but it is very difficult to make a modern city in which car ownership confers no benefit. Even in a place like NYC, where I've lived, you really cannot beat point-to-point for convenience and speed. That doesn't mean every route in NYC is best served by driving. The subway is great! But there will always be situations in which the easiest thing by far would be to drive point-to-point, if you have access to a car. Urbanists who tell people there is no benefit to car ownership in dense urban areas are performing a sort of gaslighting. Everybody basically knows that's not true. The argument, instead, is that you can create a city in which the cost/benefit analysis changes. This is subtle, but I think the difference matters. You can adjust how people think of the tradeoffs, but you cannot really make them believe cars aren't still useful in those environments.
  - jeltz 4y ago
    While I would not say there are no benefits from owning a car point-to-point speed is pretty bad for cars in many European cities due to having too find parking. On many trips I would say the fastest mode of travel is electric scooter.
tomjakubowski 4y ago
I like having a car for the occasional long voyage, but I don't want to have to rely on it for everyday trips, because I enjoy walking and living and working in walkable places. I think that's a pretty common position. My dream would be living in a car free zone, with parking and inter-zone road and rail connections on the exterior, like a superblock. Walking a while or taking a short train to get to my car would be a worthwhile trade off.

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

dionidium 4y ago
You can make an urban design in which the tradeoffs of car ownership tip toward non-ownership, but it is very difficult to make a modern city in which car ownership confers no benefit. Even in a place like NYC, where I've lived, you really cannot beat point-to-point for convenience and speed. That doesn't mean every route in NYC is best served by driving. The subway is great! But there will always be situations in which the easiest thing by far would be to drive point-to-point, if you have access to a car. Urbanists who tell people there is no benefit to car ownership in dense urban areas are performing a sort of gaslighting. Everybody basically knows that's not true. The argument, instead, is that you can create a city in which the cost/benefit analysis changes. This is subtle, but I think the difference matters. You can adjust how people think of the tradeoffs, but you cannot really make them believe cars aren't still useful in those environments.
- jeltz 4y ago
  While I would not say there are no benefits from owning a car point-to-point speed is pretty bad for cars in many European cities due to having too find parking. On many trips I would say the fastest mode of travel is electric scooter.

tomjakubowski 4y ago

I like having a car for the occasional long voyage, but I don't want to have to rely on it for everyday trips, because I enjoy walking and living and working in walkable places. I think that's a pretty common position. My dream would be living in a car free zone, with parking and inter-zone road and rail connections on the exterior, like a superblock. Walking a while or taking a short train to get to my car would be a worthwhile trade off.