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The stupid idea is believing public transit always implies longer and worse. In most of the world where residential areas don't need highway-sized roads and yo

The stupid idea is believing public transit always implies longer and worse. In most of the world where residential areas don't need highway-sized roads and you don't need 2 acres of parking lots for a grocery store, you can just walk for most activities. Destinations are closed enough to your house that you can walk to the park or the bar. For activities that require hauling such as your groceries bikes tend to be enough. And for the people that do require a vehicle such as a work truck, there's so much less traffic on the road that it actually benefits them as well. The issue is the US is stuck in a local minimum that is way worse than what's possible. They need cars because they build for cars because they need cars. In reality you could _not_ need cars, because you don't build for cars, because you don't need cars.

andrewmcwatters 2y ago
The stupid idea is believing it isn't. You can do the math in any major metro. The buses aren't driving faster than private vehicles. Worse yet, they have no privileges and actually obey traffic laws compared to normal traffic. For all the years that treehugger readers and their like have espoused the benefits of no cars, it's like they can't do grade school arithmetic. No, it will always take longer to walk to public transportation, wait for the scheduled arrival, and walk to your destination in any existing metro if you don't give them extreme speed limit advantages that also put pedestrians at risk. Go for it, be my guest, show me a single major metro in this American West as described by the article where you can alter the transit system to make things faster than driving your own private vehicle. Oh you can't? It's because it's not possible. Oh, just build neighborhoods to not rely on cars from the start? Yeah, OK. Boy, isn't everyone just dying to not only finally own a house, but then own one where you can't drive anywhere and you're subject to the only grocery story in your area, along with everything else you're limited to walking to. What a wet dream for lack of competition. Stupid idea. The dumber idea is then these people say, "Well, not everyone needs to own a single-family home." Hey, and while we're all at it, why don't all of us just own nothing, rely on public transportation, and rent forever. Or better yet, if we're all homeless, we can just have the government pay for everything. No one talks about these things because they're pointless and add nothing to the conversation. Worse yet, these people don't even give examples of where their supposed utopia already exists where there isn't an order of magnitude fewer housing units that you can actually own, businesses, or anything else meaningful you want to go to or have in your area. The supposed answer is always denser housing, renting, and you not owning your own vehicle. Wow what a great standard of living! Sign me up!
- eddd-ddde 2y ago
  Your comment is just very angrily agreeing with me. Please note the main point of my comment, the US is _stuck_, they dug themselves into a pit where the only option is to dig deeper. That's the whole point! > The buses aren't driving faster than private vehicles. Worse yet, they have no privileges and actually obey traffic laws compared to normal traffic. That's because you build public transit that way, it doesn't have to. > Boy, isn't everyone just dying to not only finally own a house, but then own one where you can't drive anywhere and you're subject to the only grocery story in your area. You don't need a car, that doesn't mean it's illegal to own a car and drive to the next neighborhood. But since everyone around you doesn't need to get in the road for every little thing there's much less traffic. > What a wet dream for lack of competition. Lack of competition... because not having 50 parking spots per grocery store is _obviously_ anti-capitalist... > Hey, and while we're all at it, why don't all of us just own nothing, rely on public transportation, and rent forever. I don't know how you turned my comment into an argument against private property. > Worse yet, these people don't even give examples of where their supposed utopia already exists where there isn't an order of magnitude fewer housing units that you can actually own, businesses, or anything else meaningful you want to go to or have in your area. Again, I don't know how this is related to home ownership at all. You can still buy properties... And there are examples all around Europe. > The supposed answer is always denser housing, renting, and you not owning your own vehicle. Wow what a great standard of living! Sign me up! Again with the property ownership thing... Just buy your car, you can still drive to the corner store if you really want to, they'll just make fun of you.

andrewmcwatters 2y ago

The stupid idea is believing it isn't. You can do the math in any major metro. The buses aren't driving faster than private vehicles. Worse yet, they have no privileges and actually obey traffic laws compared to normal traffic. For all the years that treehugger readers and their like have espoused the benefits of no cars, it's like they can't do grade school arithmetic. No, it will always take longer to walk to public transportation, wait for the scheduled arrival, and walk to your destination in any existing metro if you don't give them extreme speed limit advantages that also put pedestrians at risk. Go for it, be my guest, show me a single major metro in this American West as described by the article where you can alter the transit system to make things faster than driving your own private vehicle. Oh you can't? It's because it's not possible. Oh, just build neighborhoods to not rely on cars from the start? Yeah, OK. Boy, isn't everyone just dying to not only finally own a house, but then own one where you can't drive anywhere and you're subject to the only grocery story in your area, along with everything else you're limited to walking to. What a wet dream for lack of competition. Stupid idea. The dumber idea is then these people say, "Well, not everyone needs to own a single-family home." Hey, and while we're all at it, why don't all of us just own nothing, rely on public transportation, and rent forever. Or better yet, if we're all homeless, we can just have the government pay for everything. No one talks about these things because they're pointless and add nothing to the conversation. Worse yet, these people don't even give examples of where their supposed utopia already exists where there isn't an order of magnitude fewer housing units that you can actually own, businesses, or anything else meaningful you want to go to or have in your area. The supposed answer is always denser housing, renting, and you not owning your own vehicle. Wow what a great standard of living! Sign me up!

eddd-ddde 2y ago
Your comment is just very angrily agreeing with me. Please note the main point of my comment, the US is _stuck_, they dug themselves into a pit where the only option is to dig deeper. That's the whole point! > The buses aren't driving faster than private vehicles. Worse yet, they have no privileges and actually obey traffic laws compared to normal traffic. That's because you build public transit that way, it doesn't have to. > Boy, isn't everyone just dying to not only finally own a house, but then own one where you can't drive anywhere and you're subject to the only grocery story in your area. You don't need a car, that doesn't mean it's illegal to own a car and drive to the next neighborhood. But since everyone around you doesn't need to get in the road for every little thing there's much less traffic. > What a wet dream for lack of competition. Lack of competition... because not having 50 parking spots per grocery store is _obviously_ anti-capitalist... > Hey, and while we're all at it, why don't all of us just own nothing, rely on public transportation, and rent forever. I don't know how you turned my comment into an argument against private property. > Worse yet, these people don't even give examples of where their supposed utopia already exists where there isn't an order of magnitude fewer housing units that you can actually own, businesses, or anything else meaningful you want to go to or have in your area. Again, I don't know how this is related to home ownership at all. You can still buy properties... And there are examples all around Europe. > The supposed answer is always denser housing, renting, and you not owning your own vehicle. Wow what a great standard of living! Sign me up! Again with the property ownership thing... Just buy your car, you can still drive to the corner store if you really want to, they'll just make fun of you.