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Cars aren't the solution to the future of transportation. Walkable cities and quality public transit between them is.
by ErikVandeWater 4y ago
Cars aren't the solution to the future of transportation. Walkable cities and quality public transit between them is.
- missedthecue 4y agoGreat idea but not going to work. Even in Japan, ~70% of households own a car. They serve a vital component of transportation that is not easily substituted for.
- socialismisok 4y agoJapan has a car to household ratio of 1.06, compared to America's 1.88 average per household. South Korea has even fewer. Let's set the first goal at one car per household, and supplement everything beyond that with transit and electric bikes.
- sbaiddn 4y agoOne car per family is doable, even in the US. We did it for a while and then got ourselves a Golf. Even after we moved to the suburbs, and the Golf was in the shop (deer) for a month (supply chain), it wasnt so bad. The secret? My other car is a 7 seater SUV with a 3.3L V6 that can tow 5000 lb. Its big enough that it can do anything I might need it to do. Getting the golf, ironically, lowered our fuel consumption because the golf can do 70% of what we'd use the SUV for. But, because of that remaining 30%, I'm keeping the SUV. So its not obvious that simply lowering average numbers of cars per household improves anything. Btw, replacing my Golf with an F150 hybrid would probably lower my fuel usage.
- missedthecue 4y agoUS is clearly the outlier in automobile dependency, no argument there.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 4y agoWhat does car per household have to do with anything? I can have 12 cars and never drive, one car and be on the road 24/7.
- socialismisok 4y agoA drop in the average to one car per household implies a significant reduction in the number of cars on the road. Right now, it's not uncommon to have two family members commute by car every day. Yes, there will always be outliers, but I care about the average case.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 4y agoif you don't care about outliers, then don't quote data that does. Outliers are everything, and without them being stripped the data is meaningless. I would venture to say there is a higher correlation between wealth to cars, than driving to cars. I would futher venture that if you have 4+ cars, you do less driving than the average person who only has one car per household. I have 17 Tesla's that i rent out on Eturo. I work remotely in downtown chicago and i literally never drive.
- socialismisok 4y agoYou are arguing with a strawman. I don't care about any individual. Your business might own 17 cars, fine. But like, the world in which the average cars per household is 1.0 is one where there are a lot fewer cars on the road. I'm not sure why that's controversial to you?
- afarrell 4y agoWhat are the means by which a team of 150 can make progress over two years towards that goal? Such a team can work on improving EC technology. It cannot meaningfully make progress on reconfiguring a city like Houston or Los Angeles or San Francisco.
- adrianN 4y agoWere I live there is a dire need for planners in city offices that do the paper work for opening bike lanes and improving public transport. I think there are only a dozen or two for the whole city. 150 people doing that absolutely would make a difference.
- afarrell 4y agoI stand corrected. It would be good to make things like this more widely known.
- socialismisok 4y agoLook at Google's Environmental Insight Explorer. I'm sure that's less than 150 people and it's doing incredible work to help cities with legislation, transportation, and energy. https://insights.sustainability.google/ https://insights.sustainability.google/
- SyzygistSix 4y agoElectric bikes are more akin to scooters and mopeds. A quick look at Asian cities and comparing them to Copenhagen and Amsterdam shows the difference between the two. Riding old-fashioned bicycles would do most Americans some much needed good.
- socialismisok 4y agoElectric bikes still require pedaling and have been demonstrated to be aerobic exercise. If Americans rode e bikes everywhere, we'd have a huge improvement in health.
- _huayra_ 4y agoWhy not both? Many folks on here have hobbies that just are not public-transit friendly, e.g. windsurfing for me. However, I would love it if I didn't have to drive between my urban area and an adjacent one because of the dearth of public transit options (besides the even worse option of teensy flights).
- Fezzik 4y agoOwnership and use are two totally different things though. I lived with a wealthy family in Hamburg and they owned 2 cars and a vacation home in Southern Germany… and they seldom drove except to the house in the South (sometimes) and, maybe, once a month for a big grocery run. The kids rode bikes to school, the couple took the U-Bahn to work. I saw the same things in Spain and Switzerland. Obviously these are just anecdotes, but the fact is that the super-majority of developed countries do a much better job at creating infrastructure to avoid car-use than the US. I would wager Japan is similar. I quick google search tells me the average Japanese car owner drives about 3,700 miles vs the average American driving over 13,000 miles a year.
- nicbou 4y agoYep. I own a car and a fuel tank ladts 2-3 months. Berlin has great public transportation and is quite bikeable.
- personalidea 4y agoI would like to add to that, that this is not true for the country side. At least in Germany. Public transport is pretty much non existent there, e.g. (anecdotal) a part of my family lives in a village with ~4000 inhabitants. To get to the next bigger city there is one bus that goes in the morning and one that goes back in the afternoon. That is it. If you want to go to dinner or visit someone after that, you need a car or go by bike 15km one way.
- midoridensha 4y agoTons of people in Japan own cars and don't drive them very much; they're for weekend trips to the mountains, going to Costco, etc., not for going to work every day. 1/3 of the population lives in the greater Tokyo metro area, and there simply isn't very much parking anywhere in the city. But single-family houses usually have a tiny garage underneath.
- lm28469 4y ago> Even in Japan, ~70% of households own a car. I'd recommend looking up the average japanese car vs the average american car
- cscurmudgeon 4y agoWalkable cities imply high density cities. Unfortunately, that will never happen. E.g., in the SF Bay Area NIMBYism is rampant and the density is laughable for such a vital geographic area. If walkable cities are not possible in the hyper-progressive futuristic Bay Area, where is it possible in the US? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-states-legislation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-st...
- Etheryte 4y agoWalkable cities are already a reality in many countries in Europe. It's not rocket science and it doesn't mean you need high density. See Denmark, Netherlands etc for a few examples. Humane cities are a matter of choice, just because it doesn't exist in the US doesn't mean it's impossible.
- voidfunc 4y agoYou need to stop playing Sim City, walkable cities are a fantasy in the US. You need broad political support to basically redesign every city outside NYC and some parts of SF, Seattle, and Boston. It will never happen.
- munk-a 4y agoThere is a constant stubborn push back of "it's impossible" while time after time different parts of the world have proven it is in fact possible. The biggest impediment to walkable cities in the US is the broken political system that makes bipartisan efforts exceedingly rare. If a politician of one party advocates for it everyone on the other side needs to throw out bullshit arguments as to why it's dumb.
- bilkow 4y agoI'd even argue that the only reason it currently is hard to do it in many parts of the world is just because people believe it's impossible. You need general population support to make changes.
- bombcar 4y agoI've noticed a great increase in the /r/fuckcars sentiments (probably can be traced back to some popular YouTubers or something) - setting "cars vs public transit" as the fight is only going to result in public transit losing, and hard. Cars are just too insanely cheap and convenient at what they do.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoBecause 20% of your taxes goes to funding roads and 50% of your city is pavement. Some people would prefer it to be different.
- bpodgursky 4y ago> 20% of your taxes goes to funding roads This is just nonsense. It's something like $600 per capita [1] on tax revenue of $23,000 or so per capita [2], for 2.6%. [1] https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/highway-and-road-expenditures https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative... [2] https://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/per_capita https://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/per_capita
- dagurp 4y agoI wouldn't dismiss this as only the view of the extremists at fuckcars. There's plenty of other subreddits that aren't anti-car but share the sentiment that more density and proper public transport is crucial.
- bombcar 4y agoThere's a wide gap between "we should design cities better and include public transportation" and "electric cars are evil and all cars should be banned". Even in the 'best case scenario' of the US entirely mobilizing to electrify and nationalize all rail lines we'd be looking at a minimum 10 year maybe much more effort, and during that time reducing the amount of gas usage is good, whether it be by hybrids or electric cars or something else.
- anonporridge 4y agoAn underrated negative of heavy car culture, is that it is likely one of the key reasons Americans are so fat and unhealthy relative to most other western countries. Cars are death machines, not just because of the high energy collisions, but because they kill us slowly with inactivity and obesity.
- silisili 4y agoI agree that walking is good for you...but...our diet is much, much, much more to blame than our cars. A couple cans of coke are more calories than you'll spend walking through a city.
- SyzygistSix 4y agoThere is no one solution. Phrasing the prolem that way makes no sense. Cars, trucks, and independent wheeled vehicles will have a place for a long time to come. Electrifying cars and trucks is a huge improvement. Summoning the political and social will to replace car-centric infrastructure is a different problem, one even so-called progressives are not interested in adopting, at least for themselves.