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> My issue is not with people who are anti-car, but with people who cannot understand why other people have different priorities and who make different trade-of

> My issue is not with people who are anti-car, but with people who cannot understand why other people have different priorities and who make different trade-offs. A lot to say here for why I think the number of people who can legitimately claim it is a morally neutral matter of priorities and trade-offs for them is small. For one, there are stigmas around transit and biking. Funnily enough they are contradictory: that only the poor get around with transit and biking, and that only upper class elitists get around with transit and biking. It is extremely common for people to oppose new infrastructure or denser housing on the grounds that it will either A) cause "undesirables" to come to the neighborhood and destroy property values, or B) induce gentrification. For two, for a lot of people, living car-centrically is an automatic habit because it was a deeply ingrained assumption all throughout their upbringing that you just need a car and that owning a car is an important rite of passage and social signifier in adulthood. For three, lots of people who were steeped in driving growing up are intimidated by the thought of learning to navigate a transit system or learning to ride a bike. The last and to me most important thing is that the politics of car dependency are destructive to everyone. It is a negative-sum game to widen all the highways, and increase all the parking minimums, and zone for low density, and block bike lanes. It is extremely wasteful in terms of public resources and environmental destruction and it harms everyone's quality of life. A lot of people don't really grasp the danger and unpleasantness that their car imposes on others. Seeing, smelling, hearing, tiptoeing around motor vehicle traffic are all deeply unpleasant and you have to place an enormous amount of trust in motor vehicle operators not to kill you where you stand. This is one thing that makes me not sympathetic to the "different priorities and trade-offs" argument. The internal logic is about pros and cons to one's own self, not about the pros and cons to everyone else, and motor vehicles have many properties that put this in stark relief: they are getting bigger and heavier making them safer to the driver and more deadly to whoever they hit; their horns are loud enough to cause ear damage and cause a giant fright to bystanders but are muffled inside the cabin; and of course huge, huge tracts of even walkable cities like NY are dedicated to motor vehicle traffic with many lanes while people walking, biking, scootering, dining outdoors and so on are forced to fight for scraps of space at the margin. For me living without a car is not just about the benefits it offers to me personally but also the full understanding of the harms to others I am refusing to inflict, or even run the risk of inflicting, by opting out.

wilg 4y ago
Not only do I think this is a completely legitimate point of view, I fully agree with you in terms of your policy goals: walkable neighborhoods, high density, no parking minimums, pedestrian-and-bike-focused city design. I don't want to see cars parked on the sides of the streets. No question in my mind that's the better environment to be in. Some pushback on your facts: Firstly, cars are getting significantly better as they go electric. Smell is eliminated, while noise and environmental impact will be significantly reduced - without any changes to our road infrastructure. Anti-car people tend to push back on the idea that electric cars are significantly more environmentally friendly, but they're flat-out wrong. A Tesla Model 3 is 5x more efficient than the average new gas car. Four people driving in that same Tesla emit less greenhouse gas than if they were traveling on UK rail. Cars are also are pushing forward electrification technology in other domains. Impact from mining for battery materials is improving. That mining is necessary anyway for grid storage if we're to switch to renewable energy, not to mention that EV batteries are 99%+ recyclable, so we don't have to mine this material forever, either. It's also not the case that cars are only getting safer for the passengers. Technologies like automatic emergency braking that always watch out for pedestrians and bikers is now standard, and will continue to improve as cars become more autonomous. In the US, average weight of cars is basically the same as it was in 1975, and per-capita pedestrian deaths have halved over the same period.
- sagarm 4y ago
  Car dependent suburbanites are also anti car: their neighborhoods are designed to make driving through them inconvenient, to minimize the the cost of their car dependent lifestyle on THEM. I just want exactly the same car-hostile design, with 15 mph speed limits and copious dead ends, in my neighborhood so my neighborhood streets are also safe enough for kids to play in. How can suburbanites object? The status quo is that the external costs of car dependent lifestyles are almost entirely pushed onto other people via highways slicing through the middle of cities, roads being paid for mostly via the general fund, larger vehicles protecting occupants at the cost of everyone else, sound isolated cabins protecting drivers from the noise they create and requiring louder emergency sirens...it just goes on and on. EVs are better for the environment than ICE vehicles, but the noise, air pollution via tire dust, and physical danger they present is the same. The real EV is an e-bike, but most people don't want to bike because sharing roads with cars feels too dangerous. As a result, cars on the only choice. I want 90% of my city streets to block through traffic with physical barriers, just like the suburbs. Many intersections should allow ONLY pedestrians, cyclists, transit, and service vehicles through, so the fastest and most pleasant ways from point A to point B are walking, cycling, or transit.

wilg 4y ago

Not only do I think this is a completely legitimate point of view, I fully agree with you in terms of your policy goals: walkable neighborhoods, high density, no parking minimums, pedestrian-and-bike-focused city design. I don't want to see cars parked on the sides of the streets. No question in my mind that's the better environment to be in. Some pushback on your facts: Firstly, cars are getting significantly better as they go electric. Smell is eliminated, while noise and environmental impact will be significantly reduced - without any changes to our road infrastructure. Anti-car people tend to push back on the idea that electric cars are significantly more environmentally friendly, but they're flat-out wrong. A Tesla Model 3 is 5x more efficient than the average new gas car. Four people driving in that same Tesla emit less greenhouse gas than if they were traveling on UK rail. Cars are also are pushing forward electrification technology in other domains. Impact from mining for battery materials is improving. That mining is necessary anyway for grid storage if we're to switch to renewable energy, not to mention that EV batteries are 99%+ recyclable, so we don't have to mine this material forever, either. It's also not the case that cars are only getting safer for the passengers. Technologies like automatic emergency braking that always watch out for pedestrians and bikers is now standard, and will continue to improve as cars become more autonomous. In the US, average weight of cars is basically the same as it was in 1975, and per-capita pedestrian deaths have halved over the same period.

sagarm 4y ago
Car dependent suburbanites are also anti car: their neighborhoods are designed to make driving through them inconvenient, to minimize the the cost of their car dependent lifestyle on THEM. I just want exactly the same car-hostile design, with 15 mph speed limits and copious dead ends, in my neighborhood so my neighborhood streets are also safe enough for kids to play in. How can suburbanites object? The status quo is that the external costs of car dependent lifestyles are almost entirely pushed onto other people via highways slicing through the middle of cities, roads being paid for mostly via the general fund, larger vehicles protecting occupants at the cost of everyone else, sound isolated cabins protecting drivers from the noise they create and requiring louder emergency sirens...it just goes on and on. EVs are better for the environment than ICE vehicles, but the noise, air pollution via tire dust, and physical danger they present is the same. The real EV is an e-bike, but most people don't want to bike because sharing roads with cars feels too dangerous. As a result, cars on the only choice. I want 90% of my city streets to block through traffic with physical barriers, just like the suburbs. Many intersections should allow ONLY pedestrians, cyclists, transit, and service vehicles through, so the fastest and most pleasant ways from point A to point B are walking, cycling, or transit.