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Population density is misleading. Vast majority live in urban and suburban areas. Urban areas can handle things just fine without cars (and really they need to
by ericmay 4y ago
Population density is misleading. Vast majority live in urban and suburban areas. Urban areas can handle things just fine without cars (and really they need to stop catering to car transit, remove highways that go through downtowns, and eliminate parking options), suburbs just need to have zoning fixed so there are things like convenience stores or a local doctors office in your neighborhood. If you live in a rural area and want to drive a car everywhere that's perfectly fine, but we need to move away from focusing on what a small percentage of people do and focus on serving most people instead.
Suburbanites will certainly oppose this as well, but eventually economic physics will force them to change their habits regardless of what they want.
> We can barely maintain our existing infrastructure in too many cases, let alone rebuild it all.
Right, which is why doubling down on cars is bananas. We already can't afford to maintain all of these roads, let alone build new ones or expand. Fortunately, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit. Repurposing existing highways to initially allow for bus rapid transit alongside personal automobile transit, for example, can help. We probably need a nationwide moratorium on new road construction for 20-50 years to really get things back in a good state.
- ackfoobar 4y ago> We already can't afford to maintain all of these roads and water treatment, and sewage system I can't help linking a NJB video when this topic comes up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI "the replacement cost of all infrastructure in Lafayette, something that you would expect to happen over about one generation, was about $32 billion. ... Yet the existing tax base was much less than that." --- I don't think it can change though, given that majority of the US lives in the suburbs. They can vote to stop you from changing their precious lifestyle. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33258087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33258087
- ericmay 4y agoYea... and I'm going to go ahead and state water and sewage treatment are way, way more important than adding another 5-lane highway so someone can live 40 miles away from where they work. For me again it's just a question of whether we will manage the change or whether it'll just be a big disaster.