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This might be true now, but it wasn't when all these massive highways, roads and stroads were built. US cities weren't destroyed because the people that lived t

This might be true now, but it wasn't when all these massive highways, roads and stroads were built. US cities weren't destroyed because the people that lived there voted on it. For the most part you had a bureaucratic elite come in over the top and simply create laws and change the regulation.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
> US cities weren't destroyed US cities were not destroyed, and this is just misinformation, or hyperbole at best. In fact virtually all cities benefited from car infrastructure, since it brings people and things to the city, lets people efficiently get around, and so on. It helps the economic value of a city and also improves quality of life. If this wasn't true, there would have been a response with a broad political base. But there hasn't been. At best, a tiny minority of residents gets upset about roads and organizes into activist groups that make such claims. But the majority of the public enjoys and utilizes driving infrastructure.
- oblio 2y ago
  They enjoy it when it's not in their neighborhood. Notice the cul de sacs everyone loves.
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    Man I wrote a long comment and that's a point I didn't address. Of course non of those cul-de-sacs pay their own taxes, they are all subsidized by the often poorer people who live in denser neighborhoods.
- bluecalm 2y ago
  Yeah and more and more people are fat and die or get sick from air pollution. Truly a win for car based infrastructure. Your argument doesn't work because people are terrible at making good choices as individuals. Public enjoys smoking too, especially when pushed by advertising. Yet we somehow managed to push back on it a bit and people are now die less frequently from lung cancer and you can now breath in many cases you couldn't before. Driving is like smoking only much worse.
  - rootusrootus 2y ago
    > Driving is like smoking only much worse. That is a weird comparison. Smoking has no objective upsides, unless you count pleasure or the stimulant effect of nicotine. Driving, on the other hand, has a huge utilitarian aspect that is impossible to ignore. There are many things you cannot accomplish using public transit, and many of the counter arguments are transparently made by young healthy individuals with a lot of stamina, plenty of spare time, and no children. And probably no house. That may seem like utopia to some folks but it completely ignores reality, so the argument is dead on arrival.
    - bluecalm 2y ago
      Driving bigger cars which are often only bigger outside has very little utility or even negative one if you don't count pleasure people get from driving dangerously. Minivans beat SUVs in almost all use cases and are safer for others as well but here we are. I am not saying cars don't have utility but the problem is that you can buy a more dangerous, more polluting, bigger one and not pay the costs you incur on others. It's like smokers blowing the smoke into other people faces and then disposing of the cigarette butt on the street without paying anything. Just make drivers pay the costs they incur on others and then let people choose. Right now it's a giant subsidy for driving at every step.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  > US cities were not destroyed, and this is just misinformation, or hyperbole at best. The damage US policies did to US cities is worse then what allied bombers ever did to Europe. > In fact virtually all cities benefited from car infrastructure, since it brings people and things to the city First of all, car infrastructure is literally the single most inefficient way to get people to a city. In order to do it you need to basically destroy half of the city and give gigantic amount of space to roads and parking. To the point where in the US, much of the things people used to go to the city for is just gone. And the few people that do get to the city, is LITERALLY the expense of the people who actually live there. But fuck them I guess. All the people who were Red Lined, unable to invest and impoverished, and then when their houses lost value, getting paid nothing and torn down. And those places now had a horrible highway threw the city, making the land on both sides be worth even less. But at least the subburban white people can still drive to the office tower. > It helps the economic value of a city US cities were much more valuable before the drive to build highways. And in Europe, cities that didn't build massive highways tend to be much more valuable. And many of the worst example of urban decay are those cities with the most complete highway programs. Your assertion simply not backup by any data, there is tons of research on this. Gigantic amount of property value was lost. Countless beautiful old building that could still produce economic value to this day (and for the next 100 years) were ripped down to build parking lots. And the worst part is, despite the dilapidated state of the cities, the cities were still producing more taxes, subsidizing the suburbs. Literally destroying cities, pulling all the wealth out of it, to subsidize the subburban infrastructure. > If this wasn't true, there would have been a response with a broad political base. Please do yourself a favor and actually read up on the history of how these things happened. > At best, a tiny minority of residents gets upset about roads and organizes into activist groups that make such claims. But the majority of the public enjoys and utilizes driving infrastructure. People back then didn't all understand the long term effect of these policies. And hidden subsidizes were used to hide the actual cost. You act like the US in the 50/60 was some perfectly democratic society where if its impossible to even imagine that one group of people would support policy to exploit another group of people that was much less able to fight back politically. Must be nice to live in a imaginary world all the time. If you didn't get it in school, if it doesn't fit the narrative it didn't exist. > But the majority of the public enjoys and utilizes driving infrastructure. People for the most part don't enjoy it. 'Road rage' is literally an incredibly common thing. People are sad by the terrible state of roads. The Netherlands and other European countries consistently outrank the US in driver satisfaction index. And that is only looking at drivers. And many people have had people die, many people had accidents, many people had cars drive into their homes. Many people have lung issues. The list goes on an on and on. The reality is people don't have another option, and most people today in the US have never even thought about or considered any other kind of system. You can't say 'see after we invested countless billions in System A and gave it every advantage over decades and decades and abused System B for just as long', people use System A more. That's prove that system A is better. Its an idiotic line of argument and its truly sad to see that even on HN people make those kind of basic mistakes. In the Netherlands people actually have options, trains, trams, bikes, cars. And turns out, yes some people like driving. And driver satisfaction is much higher there then it is in the US. But many people clearly use bikes and trains. And just FYI, the investment that was put into bike infrastructure in the last 40 years is a absolute drop in the bucket compared to 100+ years of road investment. If you actually gave all the modes the same amount of city space, and the same amount of investment, and actually prioritized by both energy efficiency and and people threwput, things would be far more tilted then it even is in the Netherlands.
rootusrootus 2y ago
> This might be true now, but it wasn't when all these massive highways, roads and stroads were built. I guess that depends a bit on how far back still includes 'now'. Portland is the nearest big(ish) city to me, and they absolutely killed road expansion about 40 years ago; that is when most of the freeways and major arterials in the area were being built out. There have been a few small extensions built since, a bit of widening now and then, but they are the exception and they take many years to get buy-in.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

> US cities weren't destroyed US cities were not destroyed, and this is just misinformation, or hyperbole at best. In fact virtually all cities benefited from car infrastructure, since it brings people and things to the city, lets people efficiently get around, and so on. It helps the economic value of a city and also improves quality of life. If this wasn't true, there would have been a response with a broad political base. But there hasn't been. At best, a tiny minority of residents gets upset about roads and organizes into activist groups that make such claims. But the majority of the public enjoys and utilizes driving infrastructure.

oblio 2y ago
They enjoy it when it's not in their neighborhood. Notice the cul de sacs everyone loves.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  Man I wrote a long comment and that's a point I didn't address. Of course non of those cul-de-sacs pay their own taxes, they are all subsidized by the often poorer people who live in denser neighborhoods.
bluecalm 2y ago
Yeah and more and more people are fat and die or get sick from air pollution. Truly a win for car based infrastructure. Your argument doesn't work because people are terrible at making good choices as individuals. Public enjoys smoking too, especially when pushed by advertising. Yet we somehow managed to push back on it a bit and people are now die less frequently from lung cancer and you can now breath in many cases you couldn't before. Driving is like smoking only much worse.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  > Driving is like smoking only much worse. That is a weird comparison. Smoking has no objective upsides, unless you count pleasure or the stimulant effect of nicotine. Driving, on the other hand, has a huge utilitarian aspect that is impossible to ignore. There are many things you cannot accomplish using public transit, and many of the counter arguments are transparently made by young healthy individuals with a lot of stamina, plenty of spare time, and no children. And probably no house. That may seem like utopia to some folks but it completely ignores reality, so the argument is dead on arrival.
  - bluecalm 2y ago
    Driving bigger cars which are often only bigger outside has very little utility or even negative one if you don't count pleasure people get from driving dangerously. Minivans beat SUVs in almost all use cases and are safer for others as well but here we are. I am not saying cars don't have utility but the problem is that you can buy a more dangerous, more polluting, bigger one and not pay the costs you incur on others. It's like smokers blowing the smoke into other people faces and then disposing of the cigarette butt on the street without paying anything. Just make drivers pay the costs they incur on others and then let people choose. Right now it's a giant subsidy for driving at every step.
panick21_ 2y ago
> US cities were not destroyed, and this is just misinformation, or hyperbole at best. The damage US policies did to US cities is worse then what allied bombers ever did to Europe. > In fact virtually all cities benefited from car infrastructure, since it brings people and things to the city First of all, car infrastructure is literally the single most inefficient way to get people to a city. In order to do it you need to basically destroy half of the city and give gigantic amount of space to roads and parking. To the point where in the US, much of the things people used to go to the city for is just gone. And the few people that do get to the city, is LITERALLY the expense of the people who actually live there. But fuck them I guess. All the people who were Red Lined, unable to invest and impoverished, and then when their houses lost value, getting paid nothing and torn down. And those places now had a horrible highway threw the city, making the land on both sides be worth even less. But at least the subburban white people can still drive to the office tower. > It helps the economic value of a city US cities were much more valuable before the drive to build highways. And in Europe, cities that didn't build massive highways tend to be much more valuable. And many of the worst example of urban decay are those cities with the most complete highway programs. Your assertion simply not backup by any data, there is tons of research on this. Gigantic amount of property value was lost. Countless beautiful old building that could still produce economic value to this day (and for the next 100 years) were ripped down to build parking lots. And the worst part is, despite the dilapidated state of the cities, the cities were still producing more taxes, subsidizing the suburbs. Literally destroying cities, pulling all the wealth out of it, to subsidize the subburban infrastructure. > If this wasn't true, there would have been a response with a broad political base. Please do yourself a favor and actually read up on the history of how these things happened. > At best, a tiny minority of residents gets upset about roads and organizes into activist groups that make such claims. But the majority of the public enjoys and utilizes driving infrastructure. People back then didn't all understand the long term effect of these policies. And hidden subsidizes were used to hide the actual cost. You act like the US in the 50/60 was some perfectly democratic society where if its impossible to even imagine that one group of people would support policy to exploit another group of people that was much less able to fight back politically. Must be nice to live in a imaginary world all the time. If you didn't get it in school, if it doesn't fit the narrative it didn't exist. > But the majority of the public enjoys and utilizes driving infrastructure. People for the most part don't enjoy it. 'Road rage' is literally an incredibly common thing. People are sad by the terrible state of roads. The Netherlands and other European countries consistently outrank the US in driver satisfaction index. And that is only looking at drivers. And many people have had people die, many people had accidents, many people had cars drive into their homes. Many people have lung issues. The list goes on an on and on. The reality is people don't have another option, and most people today in the US have never even thought about or considered any other kind of system. You can't say 'see after we invested countless billions in System A and gave it every advantage over decades and decades and abused System B for just as long', people use System A more. That's prove that system A is better. Its an idiotic line of argument and its truly sad to see that even on HN people make those kind of basic mistakes. In the Netherlands people actually have options, trains, trams, bikes, cars. And turns out, yes some people like driving. And driver satisfaction is much higher there then it is in the US. But many people clearly use bikes and trains. And just FYI, the investment that was put into bike infrastructure in the last 40 years is a absolute drop in the bucket compared to 100+ years of road investment. If you actually gave all the modes the same amount of city space, and the same amount of investment, and actually prioritized by both energy efficiency and and people threwput, things would be far more tilted then it even is in the Netherlands.

rootusrootus 2y ago

> This might be true now, but it wasn't when all these massive highways, roads and stroads were built. I guess that depends a bit on how far back still includes 'now'. Portland is the nearest big(ish) city to me, and they absolutely killed road expansion about 40 years ago; that is when most of the freeways and major arterials in the area were being built out. There have been a few small extensions built since, a bit of widening now and then, but they are the exception and they take many years to get buy-in.