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It sounds like you're working with a base assumption that increasing usage of cars is bad. My base assumption is that moving people around is good. Freedom of

It sounds like you're working with a base assumption that increasing usage of cars is bad. My base assumption is that moving people around is good. Freedom of movement and time-efficient movement. The car reigns supreme over trains, planes, and buses in those terms. > the net impact was a slight time savings for suburban commuters for about six months, after which traffic was worse than before because more people were driving. By the sound of it, more people were able to get where they were going because of the the Big Dig. > Getting those people onto trains would be far more effective and cheaper A breakdown of the numbers here would be great, but I'm not sure how much more time either of us want to spend lol. I like trains, but I'm cautious about them because they generally can't take people directly to an end destination the way an independent vehicle can. The US has also generally failed to use rail in a way that could replace cars in a meaningful way, despite rail having a decades-long head-start over the automobile. > Similarly, delivery and garbage trucks aren’t affected at all by calming measures I was under the (perhaps mistaken) impression that you wanted to remove or replace roads in cities to make way for alternative transportation. That's based on the statement in your original comment: > Outside of freeways, we shouldn’t dedicate millions of dollars in public space to private car drivers, I was not referring to traffic calming measures when I said that would be a logistical nightmare. I more meant that private cars share common infrastructure with a number of critical services; reducing their share of public space would harm those other services.

acdha 2y ago
Look, I grew up in California suburbs where car culture is the only culture, but I’ve also looked at the data enough to know that the status quo isn’t working. It’s clear that cars do not scale even if you spend amounts of money we can’t sustain, they have significant negative impacts on people who live near busy roads, and the planet isn’t exactly getting any cooler. More to the point of the article, we know that every year forty thousand Americans are killed by unsafe operation of vehicles and at least hundreds of thousands are injured, usually with permanent life altering impacts. Experts estimate that there is close to a trillion dollar annual gap between what drivers pay and the cost to society for the status quo: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/01/18/why-car-insurance-in-america-is-actually-too-cheap https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/01/18/why-car-i... So the question from my perspective is how we improve quality of life for everyone while reducing costs for everyone, and that means less car trips which also improves the car trips which are necessary. For example, emergency vehicles are most commonly blocked by private cars. If we care about improvement there, getting more people to walk, bike, or take transit helps everyone because a fire truck or ambulance isn’t routinely stuck in traffic. The same applies to safety for children, the ability for the blind or elderly to function independently, ease of delivery, etc.: every single part of urban life improves if there isn’t the assumption that everyone in the city needs ~120 square feet of space to move themselves around, and the heavy equipment is reserved for the small percentage of trips which actually need it.
- Alupis 2y ago
  > Look, I grew up in California suburbs where car culture is the only culture, but I’ve also looked at the data enough to know that the status quo isn’t working. Then you would also be 100% aware your desire for people to walk and take public transit is entirely at odds with reality. It does not work in suburbs or rural areas. The only place these ideas work in reality is in dense urban areas...
  - acdha 2y ago
    First, you’ll note that I specified urban a lot. Transit definitely doesn’t work for everyone but it’ll work where the majority of the population is. Second, transit not working in most American suburbs is an artificial choice. Transit works well in the railroad suburb I live in now but the white flight-era suburbs were intentionally designed not to work for transit or pedestrian access and while later designs might have been less intentional about it, low density is a challenge. That low density is also what makes them financially unstable and is creating challenges for an aging population, so I wouldn’t treat it as evidence of strong demand rather than people picking the most heavily subsidized option. California has had a huge boom in ADU construction when it was streamlined, revealing a great deal of market demand for density which was previously stymied.
    - Alupis 2y ago
      When you work 40+ miles away from your house - no, suburban (and urban) public transit simply do not work. It is a fiction public transit can solve transportation problems in the US.
- LeftHandPath 2y ago
  Interesting perspective. Enjoyed the discussion.

acdha 2y ago

Look, I grew up in California suburbs where car culture is the only culture, but I’ve also looked at the data enough to know that the status quo isn’t working. It’s clear that cars do not scale even if you spend amounts of money we can’t sustain, they have significant negative impacts on people who live near busy roads, and the planet isn’t exactly getting any cooler. More to the point of the article, we know that every year forty thousand Americans are killed by unsafe operation of vehicles and at least hundreds of thousands are injured, usually with permanent life altering impacts. Experts estimate that there is close to a trillion dollar annual gap between what drivers pay and the cost to society for the status quo: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/01/18/why-car-insurance-in-america-is-actually-too-cheap https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/01/18/why-car-i... So the question from my perspective is how we improve quality of life for everyone while reducing costs for everyone, and that means less car trips which also improves the car trips which are necessary. For example, emergency vehicles are most commonly blocked by private cars. If we care about improvement there, getting more people to walk, bike, or take transit helps everyone because a fire truck or ambulance isn’t routinely stuck in traffic. The same applies to safety for children, the ability for the blind or elderly to function independently, ease of delivery, etc.: every single part of urban life improves if there isn’t the assumption that everyone in the city needs ~120 square feet of space to move themselves around, and the heavy equipment is reserved for the small percentage of trips which actually need it.

Alupis 2y ago
> Look, I grew up in California suburbs where car culture is the only culture, but I’ve also looked at the data enough to know that the status quo isn’t working. Then you would also be 100% aware your desire for people to walk and take public transit is entirely at odds with reality. It does not work in suburbs or rural areas. The only place these ideas work in reality is in dense urban areas...
- acdha 2y ago
  First, you’ll note that I specified urban a lot. Transit definitely doesn’t work for everyone but it’ll work where the majority of the population is. Second, transit not working in most American suburbs is an artificial choice. Transit works well in the railroad suburb I live in now but the white flight-era suburbs were intentionally designed not to work for transit or pedestrian access and while later designs might have been less intentional about it, low density is a challenge. That low density is also what makes them financially unstable and is creating challenges for an aging population, so I wouldn’t treat it as evidence of strong demand rather than people picking the most heavily subsidized option. California has had a huge boom in ADU construction when it was streamlined, revealing a great deal of market demand for density which was previously stymied.
  - Alupis 2y ago
    When you work 40+ miles away from your house - no, suburban (and urban) public transit simply do not work. It is a fiction public transit can solve transportation problems in the US.
LeftHandPath 2y ago
Interesting perspective. Enjoyed the discussion.