4 ms·

Owning a car is massively expensive at a personal level… Purchase cost, depreciation, fuel, maintenance, space to store it. Minimum a few hundred $/month for a

Owning a car is massively expensive at a personal level… Purchase cost, depreciation, fuel, maintenance, space to store it. Minimum a few hundred $/month for an “asset” that sits idle most of the day. Owning cars is massively expensive at a societal level… Storage space - so much asphalt for parking (both at destinations and at home). Pollution - production/raw materials, emissions during use, eventually disposal. Injuries to drivers, pedestrians, animals. All that money could go to education, health care, recreation, etc. I’m not saying ban cars. But align incentives towards fewer cars and less driving. Many cities are already making some progress - DC, NYC, Seattle, Portland are all adding transit alternatives at a rapid rate and seeing reduced car usage. But then Houston and some others are doing the opposite and continuing to sprawl and pave everything. Edit - And yes, some people live in rural areas and need cars (trains and buses don’t scale in rural areas). But, the suburban sprawl we have today? We can do better. Less single-use, single-family zoning. More bike lanes and walking paths (preferably both separated from cars). More light commercial/retail. Just thinking about my own neighborhood (Reston VA), there is an intersection 0.5 mile down the road that should (IMO) have a corner market and a cafe. There are thousands of residents who could walk there for milk, eggs, or a snack. Instead, they all have to drive to the strip mall 2 miles down the road. A little planning in advance would have made a difference here, but with current zoning, we’re stuck with what we have - you couldn’t buy a corner lot and build a shop if you wanted.

danny_codes 4y ago
I don't know about the rural-need-car argument. In Switzerland even little villages have rail connections. Imo it's about planning and values. America just doesn't value spending on general welfare. We'd prefer to have wealth hoarded behind closed gates it seems.
- dinkumthinkum 4y ago
  What’s the regather size difference between Switzerland and the US?
  - danny_codes 4y ago
    You can take China as a more size equivalent example if you like. Land size doesn't really matter though, it's where you decide to build (aka, density and land use).
- eldaisfish 4y ago
  This confuses many things in an attempt to reach an incorrect conclusion. The USA is massive - on the same scale as continental Europe. Every village in Switzerland has a rail connection. How about every village in Poland? Russia? Belarus?
  - freejazz 4y ago
    >How about every village in Poland? Russia? Belarus? Seems like you are making their point
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  Do you know how big Texas is? Texas is almost twice as big as Germany. Switzerland is 11% the size of Germany.
  - danny_codes 4y ago
    Size doesn't really matter. It's where and how you develop. Take Dallas for example. You drive for 2 hours at full highway speed, and you're still in Dallas. Why? Because it's built for cars and around cheap, suburban growth. Let's say instead Dallas was built around rail. You'd see a completely different development pattern. Shopping, business, and recreation would be concentrated around metro/rail stops. Dallas would be a city instead of a blob of suburbs. People would live near rail, facilitating their easy transport to recreation, shops, and their jobs. The absolute size of your area isn't really relevant, it's where you allocate the population. Suburbia is the worst allocation. Texas is in for a painful correction once they figure that out. Though more likely it'll just de-populate/be abandoned once the infrastructure maintenance bills come due in 30 year and other cities built out sane rail-based density.
    - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
      Dallas metro population: 6.488m. Switzerland population: 8.6m.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  Uh, even my state (VA) is 3x the size of Switzerland. And we’re dwarfed by all the larger states west of the Mississippi.
  - 8note 4y ago
    So what?
    - drstewart 4y ago
      So what? Why don't rural Canadian indigenous villages have rail service, since Canada and other non-US countries love the general welfare so much?
      - danny_codes 4y ago
        Most of Canada has the same planning problems as the US. Namely, car-dependency. Toronto and Montreal are exceptions, but most of the country follows the same development pattern as the us. But I think you're thinking about this wrong. Sprawl and transport policy are intimately related. If we do car-dependent development, you get a development pattern that requires cars. Then of course you look at the population distribution and say, it's hard to serve this with trains. But if you started with trains, the development pattern would mirror the transit, and you'd say, wow, trains really solved the problem. America unfortunately went down the car path and faces a painful correction back to sanity. As we move towards transit and factor in car-driving externalities into the cost of driving, communities that can t feasibly be serviced with rail will die out, as is natural. But that doesn't mean small villages won't exist. They will just be forced to exist where it is reasonable, instead of in unsustainable locations as they do today.
        drstewart 4y ago
        Just to be clear, Canada does not value spending on the general welfare then? How about Australia? New Zealand? >communities that can t feasibly be serviced with rail will die out, as is natural. "Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make"

danny_codes 4y ago

I don't know about the rural-need-car argument. In Switzerland even little villages have rail connections. Imo it's about planning and values. America just doesn't value spending on general welfare. We'd prefer to have wealth hoarded behind closed gates it seems.

dinkumthinkum 4y ago
What’s the regather size difference between Switzerland and the US?
- danny_codes 4y ago
  You can take China as a more size equivalent example if you like. Land size doesn't really matter though, it's where you decide to build (aka, density and land use).
eldaisfish 4y ago
This confuses many things in an attempt to reach an incorrect conclusion. The USA is massive - on the same scale as continental Europe. Every village in Switzerland has a rail connection. How about every village in Poland? Russia? Belarus?
- freejazz 4y ago
  >How about every village in Poland? Russia? Belarus? Seems like you are making their point
rad_gruchalski 4y ago
Do you know how big Texas is? Texas is almost twice as big as Germany. Switzerland is 11% the size of Germany.
- danny_codes 4y ago
  Size doesn't really matter. It's where and how you develop. Take Dallas for example. You drive for 2 hours at full highway speed, and you're still in Dallas. Why? Because it's built for cars and around cheap, suburban growth. Let's say instead Dallas was built around rail. You'd see a completely different development pattern. Shopping, business, and recreation would be concentrated around metro/rail stops. Dallas would be a city instead of a blob of suburbs. People would live near rail, facilitating their easy transport to recreation, shops, and their jobs. The absolute size of your area isn't really relevant, it's where you allocate the population. Suburbia is the worst allocation. Texas is in for a painful correction once they figure that out. Though more likely it'll just de-populate/be abandoned once the infrastructure maintenance bills come due in 30 year and other cities built out sane rail-based density.
  - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
    Dallas metro population: 6.488m. Switzerland population: 8.6m.
alistairSH 4y ago
Uh, even my state (VA) is 3x the size of Switzerland. And we’re dwarfed by all the larger states west of the Mississippi.
- 8note 4y ago
  So what?
  - drstewart 4y ago
    So what? Why don't rural Canadian indigenous villages have rail service, since Canada and other non-US countries love the general welfare so much?
    - danny_codes 4y ago
      Most of Canada has the same planning problems as the US. Namely, car-dependency. Toronto and Montreal are exceptions, but most of the country follows the same development pattern as the us. But I think you're thinking about this wrong. Sprawl and transport policy are intimately related. If we do car-dependent development, you get a development pattern that requires cars. Then of course you look at the population distribution and say, it's hard to serve this with trains. But if you started with trains, the development pattern would mirror the transit, and you'd say, wow, trains really solved the problem. America unfortunately went down the car path and faces a painful correction back to sanity. As we move towards transit and factor in car-driving externalities into the cost of driving, communities that can t feasibly be serviced with rail will die out, as is natural. But that doesn't mean small villages won't exist. They will just be forced to exist where it is reasonable, instead of in unsustainable locations as they do today.
      - drstewart 4y ago
        Just to be clear, Canada does not value spending on the general welfare then? How about Australia? New Zealand? >communities that can t feasibly be serviced with rail will die out, as is natural. "Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make"