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It may be the story's catchy title or the implying "solutions" of it, but i feel compelled to play devils advocate here, and defend the car. Cars improve the l

It may be the story's catchy title or the implying "solutions" of it, but i feel compelled to play devils advocate here, and defend the car. Cars improve the lives of drivers with increased range movement, more time independent movement (start your journey when it suits you, not when a timetable allows you to) and allow for more freight to be carried. When cars are criticized for bringing down the quality of life it is mostly an issue in urban environments. People in rural or suburban areas rely heavily on cars. The car may even have saved the quality of life in rural areas (ie stopped/slowed down the flight from those areas into cities) while it's what makes the existance of modern suburbia possible. It therefor provides cheaper housing and a broader choice of how you want to live (Not everybody needs five starbucks and a movie theatre in the neighbourhood). They also slowed the population increase of cities. Adding costs to drivers in urban areas mean higher burdens for people that have to commute by car, since suburban/rural areas are too thinly populated to allow for efficient public transportation. The quality of life argument often tends to demonize technological progress and romanticizes the past. The funny thing is, that this romance is only possible because technologies provided us with spare time. So did motorization. People who lived back then, would have always opted for the new technologies. That being said, cars do decrease urban quality of life in certain ways. But it is important to not let generalization allow for bad policies. Light Rail for instance is alwas proposed, while it costs more than individual motorized traffic and while rail tracks usually decrease nearby quality of life more than any road could. I'd propose simpler measures: 1) stop providing free parking. Allow the parking space usage to be priced at what the value of that land would have provided in real property taxes, if it had been tilled with a house. There's an interesting book about the "cost of free parking" by an UCLA Professor http://www.uctc.net/papers/351.pdf http://www.uctc.net/papers/351.pdf 2) get rid of cab driving restrictions to dramatically lower cab fair prices. cities with limited amounts of cab driving licenses have higher fair costs. A NY cab medallion is considered a better investment than gold http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-31/ny-cab-medallions-worth-more-than-gold-chart-of-the-day.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-31/ny-cab-medallions-w... 3) If property owners where to decide, they'd propably opt more likely for narrowing the streets and expanding sidewalks as it would increase their properties value. BID (business improvement districts) often do this. Enable more owners to make those decisions. 4) start with yourself and ditch your car if you don't need it. Do you really need more range? Do you really need to be able to start your journey every minute and not just every 10 minutes. And do you always need to be able to haul up to 4 fridges? And thus do 5) car sharing. i'm a very satisfied user of http://www.car2go.com/ http://www.car2go.com/ and similar services. 6) if there's a growing need for light-rail, chances are, this need could have already been eliminated by using more buses for public transport.

onemoreact 15y ago
The problem with buses for transport is they use the same infrastructure as cars. So, as congestion increases they become less viable. Light rail really solves 2 problems, it can transport more people than an equivalent investment in roads and it increases property values by decreasing the need for parking spaces while increasing mobility. PS: Roads are really expensive if you compare road infrastructure costs to miles driven you need a ~3$ / gallon gas tax to break even. Anything less than that and your just subsidizing cars which does not lower costs it just hides them.
- woodpanel 15y ago
  As I said, "If there's a growing need for light-rail, chances are" buses being the better solution. I'm not arguing against light-rail in general. But most of the times light-rail is considered as solution in political debates, buses would do a better job. Cheaper prices allow for even more transportation capacities than light-rail. Light-rail is a good option when bus-capacities can't be increased anymore. "The problem with buses for transport is they use the same infrastructure as cars" IMHO this is to be considered as advantage over light-rail. There is no additional infrastructure to be built or maintained.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    In theory this could be solved politically, but when I'm looking for housing options, I tend to ignore bus and look only at rail, because it's the only thing I can be reasonably sure will still be there in a few years. Buses get rerouted all the time, so I can't assume that my convenient directly-on-the-line-to-work bus route will still exist in 5 years, but I can fairly safely assume that BART will still be on the same route in 5 years, because the cost of moving rails and building stations makes it much more stable (light rail isn't as expensive to reroute as BART, but still too expensive to do normally). From what I've read, developers think similarly: they're willing to invest capital in housing developments near rail-transit lines, but not on the basis of bus lines, because they need to be able to assume that the transit situation will be stable for long enough to pay off their investment. In other words, the flexibility of buses is precisely the problem, because it means residents/developers/employers can't rely on them in making plans.

onemoreact 15y ago

The problem with buses for transport is they use the same infrastructure as cars. So, as congestion increases they become less viable. Light rail really solves 2 problems, it can transport more people than an equivalent investment in roads and it increases property values by decreasing the need for parking spaces while increasing mobility. PS: Roads are really expensive if you compare road infrastructure costs to miles driven you need a ~3$ / gallon gas tax to break even. Anything less than that and your just subsidizing cars which does not lower costs it just hides them.

woodpanel 15y ago
As I said, "If there's a growing need for light-rail, chances are" buses being the better solution. I'm not arguing against light-rail in general. But most of the times light-rail is considered as solution in political debates, buses would do a better job. Cheaper prices allow for even more transportation capacities than light-rail. Light-rail is a good option when bus-capacities can't be increased anymore. "The problem with buses for transport is they use the same infrastructure as cars" IMHO this is to be considered as advantage over light-rail. There is no additional infrastructure to be built or maintained.
- _delirium 15y ago
  In theory this could be solved politically, but when I'm looking for housing options, I tend to ignore bus and look only at rail, because it's the only thing I can be reasonably sure will still be there in a few years. Buses get rerouted all the time, so I can't assume that my convenient directly-on-the-line-to-work bus route will still exist in 5 years, but I can fairly safely assume that BART will still be on the same route in 5 years, because the cost of moving rails and building stations makes it much more stable (light rail isn't as expensive to reroute as BART, but still too expensive to do normally). From what I've read, developers think similarly: they're willing to invest capital in housing developments near rail-transit lines, but not on the basis of bus lines, because they need to be able to assume that the transit situation will be stable for long enough to pay off their investment. In other words, the flexibility of buses is precisely the problem, because it means residents/developers/employers can't rely on them in making plans.