9 ms·

The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom

71 points by electricant 1y ago

gizmov21 1y ago
[flagged]
tengbretson 1y ago
> In the early 20th century, streets were shared spaces: places where people walked, gathered, played. That's an interesting way to look at compressed horse shit with streams of human waste running over the top of it. Bear in mind the invention of sidewalks predates the automobile by thousands of years.
- poszlem 1y ago
  Yeah, no offense to the author, but this feels like a textbook case of the 'noble savage' meme, just applied to the more primitive versions of western countries and it makes the whole piece sound really naive.
outime 1y ago
It's interesting how people's positions can be so different. As a European who has lived in two (european) countries with good and affordable transport, I've always been a happy public transport user... until a couple of years ago, that is. Much of the transport is now filled with unpleasant people, dirt, delays, etc which paired with the insane prices of housing in the "walkable" parts of cities, has made me 100% invested in the myth of motorized freedom.
- mattigames 1y ago
  And who do you think is most interested in such decay of public transportation?
  - outime 1y ago
    I'd say the decline is happening (in my experience) in most public services, not just transport. But anyway, I'm purposely staying away from discussing politics here since it's pointless, so I'll just share my experience as a public transport end-user, and the rest can fill in the gaps with their perspectives.
  - ang_cire 1y ago
    No one is "interested" in making public transit worse, the issue is that people in power are not users of it and so are not invested in it, and civic and national pride is generally dead in the West, being replaced with vapid nationalism, so there's no drive (no pun intended) to invest in public works projects.
    - dkiebd 1y ago
      The way I understand your comment, it implies that a) users of public transportation should be invested in it, whilst it’s more likely that they use it because they have no alternative, and that b) civic and national pride results in higher demand for public transportation. I don’t think those are universal truths.
      - ang_cire 1y ago
        You don't think that people who use services care more about the service than non-users? Whether they're forced into using it or not, the fact they do absolutely makes them more invested in it being good. Civic and national pride makes citizens (which includes politicians and the wealthy) more likely to care about the actual state of their country. That's what national pride means, as opposed to nationalism, where they are proud without reason. Is public transit guaranteed to be one of those reasons they feel pride or shame? Not at all, but support for it is certainly more likely to come from that than a bunch of nationalists who don't actually feel any shame at failings of the country, of which public transit is currently.
      - bluGill 1y ago
        When users of transit are few there is not enough people to care. often the only users are those least likely to be usefuly involved. so you can't get a useful advocate. Even when transit gets support it is from people wanting to feel good about helping the poor - but would never use it themselves and so they want something with no care for quality. They often make alliences with those whose intersts are not for good transit and don't care that the compromise is bad for transit.
- wouldbecouldbe 1y ago
  I have the same experience, but I wonder if I just got older and more spoiled or if non-car traffic really got worse
  - AllegedAlec 1y ago
    It has gotten significantly worse to the point where I stopped taking it. Prices on public transport are now also so high I'm better off taking the car on most trips. Also it it me or are "just have walkable/bikeable cities people" more obnoxious than vegan speed cyclists
- dietr1ch 1y ago
  My motorized freedom dreams got stuck in increasingly worse traffic. Nowadays I dream of a "bikeable" commute and grocery shopping and whatever works best between public transport and driving on the weekends.
  - nradov 1y ago
    My area is fairly "bikeable" but I seldom ride my bike for errands because I can't be sure that it will still be there when I get out of the store. The local authorities do almost nothing to prevent bike theft. Sure, cars can also be stolen. But modern cars are now fairly theft resistant and police at least take it seriously as a crime.
    - tim333 1y ago
      I ebike and the combination of an old rusty bike plus a large lock seems to stop thieves, even though I leave it on the street 247. I take the battery in though. And have a funky diy paint job. Also even if it was stolen it cost less than any of a years tax on the car, one service on the car, one replacement shock on the car etc.
    - dietr1ch 1y ago
      My way of shopping with my bike is either taking my obviously pricey bike, which I can just walk into the supermarket without anyone thinking it could be left outside, or just take my old 25kg bike that's kind of not worth stealing and lock it somewhat close to the entrance just in case.
- nradov 1y ago
  European countries only have good and affordable transport in the first and second tier cities. I usually spend a few weeks per year in Europe, often in smaller cities or rural areas, and the only public transport you'll find is some occasional bus service at inconvenient times. In those places everyone drives everywhere. Or they just sit around and home and don't go anywhere.
  - outime 1y ago
    Yeah, I agree. I've just happened to live in two capitals, so I've had access to top-tier public transport. But even in the capitals, a simple 10-minute drive can turn into a 50-minute journey on public transport (this is a literal common example of mine, not an exaggeration!). So even then, you have to consider how much your time is worth.
    - antonymoose 1y ago
      I lived in a lower-tier American city (Charleston, SC) for 15 years, and this was my experience with public transportation. I had commute options of a 7 mile drive @ 30 minutes due to congestion, a 7 mile bike ride @ 35 minutes no congestion thanks to bike lanes, or approximately 2 hours bus ride on an unreliable system with no good drop off points and no guarantees in a timely arrival or space for a bicycle to complete the 2 mile walk to my office. These numbers are also one way, not round trip. In other words, I could not use the service in any honest sense. Perhaps a nice future is a hybrid model of public transportation plus personal transport via bicycles and scooters, especially with battery powered options becoming so robust.
  - mojuba 1y ago
    And then there are third-tier historical medieval towns that are 100% walkable and you again don't need a car. My ideal city of the future is a small walkable town with everything within a 15-20 minute walk, possibly a part of a conglomerate of towns that run trains or buses between them. I currently live in one such historical town in Southern Europe that's protected by Unesco. The streets are so narrow that not only there's no public transport, all non-resident and non-delivery traffic is prohibited and there's no Uber even. And yet you have everything you need for life and work within a 15-20 minute walk max. More for remote work, obviously. An ideal city of the future doesn't need to be medieval but maybe we should go back to a city planning concept that is made for humans and not cars. And you know, narrow pedestrian streets are totally fine, they are cute!
- mattlondon 1y ago
  Even in large cities like London there are huge areas where public transport is a joke. Yes it's fine in the very tourist center, but get out further from the center where normal people with families actually live and what is a 5-8 minute drive to a large grocery store becomes a mammoth 50-60 minute journey each way. I personally don't want to spend 15% of my waking day going to and from the shops and paying huge prices for public transport (and also struggle back carrying heavy bags) when I can pay pennies in electricity to drive there and back in a small fraction of the time. I can leave, do my shop, drive back (with heavy bags being carried by the car not my fingers!) and unpack and be sat down again and half way through a TV episode before I'd even have got there by public transport. And this is London where we have "good" public transport.
  - mitthrowaway2 1y ago
    It sounds like your public transport isn't actually good.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      No place in the world has good public transit then. Which is realistic I guess: fix your own area instead of looking down on others who are worse.
      - mitthrowaway2 1y ago
        I've been to cities large and small in Japan that had better transit than what you describe in London. That's probably why they have so much ridership.
        bluGill 1y ago
        I did not describe London... mode share even in tokyo is only 51% - they have a lot of work they can do. That 51% is likely just going to work, cities rarely collect data for other trips but those matter and are places to work on.
- nialv7 1y ago
  I don't get it. If you've been enjoying public transportation for so long, then why is your reaction to it getting worse not: OK, we need to fix it so it's as good as it was. Instead you are just saying: OK, I have the resources to fix the problem for myself, so I don't give a F.
  - zmnd 1y ago
    How do you fix the mentioned problem of "filled with unpleasant people" with money?
    - UtopiaPunk 1y ago
      Do you think the unpleasantness of people has gotten worse over time? If so, what caused that to happen?
      - zmnd 1y ago
        Not my quote, just pointing out that not everything can be solved with money. But yes, I think it got worse over time.
    - const_cast 1y ago
      Usually when people get older and start complaining about new "unpleasant people" the issue isn't that new unpleasant people exist. Rather, its that the older person has not adapted and is stuck. They become "get off my lawn" types
      - zmnd 1y ago
        It’s easy to dismiss a problem by just saying that someone is just an “older person” who “didn’t adapt”.
        const_cast 1y ago
        It is, but it's also just something I see time and time and time again. Every generation complains about how the world is going to shit and the yougins ain't got no respect and whatever particular segment of brown people at that time don't belong in their country. I would have some sympathy if this wasn't, like, the millionth time this has happened.
- dfxm12 1y ago
  Look one layer deeper and likely the issues are classist. Of course you didn't mention where you were, but, in the places I've lived, it goes down like this: the people who are wealthy enough to not need to use use public transit have more sway in terms of voting/persuading politicians, and push for policies that directly benefit them, even if it's to the detriment of the city overall. Thus: more resources go towards those places with insane house prices, leaving everyone and everything else behind. The problem isn't public transit, it's the wealthy.
  - dse1982 1y ago
    Right on point.
dkiebd 1y ago
[flagged]
- mattigames 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - DaSHacka 1y ago
    Oh but that's different, because they agree with it
- lm28469 1y ago
  [flagged]
throwaway22032 1y ago
"That's just like, your opinion, man." The car is clearly not the best way to navigate a dense city. It is impractical to have, say, tower block apartments and also have a car for each resident. It is unreasonable to build enough parking for peak time around every destination that anyone might want to go to. On the flip side - not everyone wants to live in a dense city, and people's opinions on this change throughout their lives. It was profit maximising and also a lot of fun for me to live in the inner city in my early to mid 20's. Now that I can afford to not maximally push my career I prefer the outer parts of the city / more rural areas, and that's where the car shines.
- tonyedgecombe 1y ago
  > On the flip side - not everyone wants to live in a dense city, and people's opinions on this change throughout their lives. If you look at the cost of living in an urban area it’s clear there is a lot of demand. Rural is cheaper because most people don’t want a long commute.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    Urban living isn't even possiple without a high cost of living. Building a single story builing is massively cheaper than going up - unless land costs are extreemely high.
  - throwaway22032 1y ago
    This is to some extent a kind of tautology, though. There is more money available to chase housing in urban areas because it's where most of the jobs are due to network effects, so if you are a labourer you gravitate towards that (as you say, it's a commute thing). It's not necessarily intrinsically more desirable. If you gave the average person 5 million quid I don't think they would choose to live in Central London.
TrackerFF 1y ago
(I live in Norway) When I lived in a major city, I went 10 years without owning a car. Should I for whatever reason need a car, I could rent one. But other than that, public transportation, walking, and biking for me. Hell, I often preferred public transportation over a car. But as soon as I moved back home, a rural area, a car has more or less become a life necessity. I simply can't imagine living out in rural nowhere without a car, it would be such a hassle. Where I live a bus goes 3 times a day to the neighboring towns, that's it. It really depends on where you live, and what your logistical situation looks like.
- jweir 1y ago
  I spent 17 years without a car - first Berkeley then Brooklyn. It was a huge boost in financial freedom and stability - nothing worse than a major repair on something you depend on. But most of the US this is impossible by design. Where I grew up you might live right next to a grocery store- but it is a mile walk because of the wall and road design. Nuts.
- mitthrowaway2 1y ago
  If the only road that goes past your house is a bicycle path, a bicycle will be the most convenient. If the only road that goes past your house is a railroad, then a train will be the most convenient. If the only road that goes past your house is a motorway, then a car will be the most convenient. But the transport infrastructure isn't an immutable property of the land, it's collectively-planned-and-built infrastructure. So the most convenient mode of transportation will settle into an equilibrium as the initial investment begets convenience, begetting more people choosing that method, begetting more investment and planning of towns and cities to accommodate that transportation method.
  - lstodd 1y ago
    Where I lived all this summer the only transport infrastructure that was available for the last 80 years since the reservoir dam was completed was an old diesel tractor and an equally old motorboat with an evil 2T outboard, or a 3 km walk to a pier that was being visited by a 1957-built ferry twice a day, if it did not break down. Then there are two to four months in a year when there is no transport except a single emergency services hoverboat while the ice settles or melts. Depending if it didn't break down, there isn't any emergency elsewhere, and a host of lesser things, like hovercraft travel isn't exactly cheap or fuel-efficient. And then snowmobiles in winter. But also cars, if you're not afraid enough to test the ice thickness by driving on it. That is an immutable property of the land.
p_ing 1y ago
I’m curious to see how the author would react when it is two miles one-way to the crappy grocery store and eight miles to the good one. And there is a bus shows up about once every four hours. While cities can do a lot to improve the non-car experience, there’s a whole world outside those cities which would become inaccessible without a car. These are generally the “affordable” places to live in order to work in the city. Focus on improving where you live, I do, but when you live in a city, recognize that improvements need to take into account those who don’t live there. The city is where they work, go to school, shop, and often interact with government functions. Getting rid of dumb laws I can totally get behind as someone who walks daily.
- adrianN 1y ago
  Car dominance is cemented by decades of car centric planning which made cars indispensable in some areas. That is a well known fact, but planning can be changed. If you prioritize other forms of transport in a few decades cars can be a lot less important.
  - p_ing 1y ago
    The place I live in was founded in the 1880s and incorporated a few years before the Model T debuted. Prior to the 1880s, Native Americans resided here. How is that car centric planning? And exactly how can one afford to live in a city where rent is $2500+ for a two bedroom or $1m+ for a SFH? That’s not going to happen on a McSalary. Those folks instead commute 1+ hours from affordable urban or more likely rural areas.
    - 1over137 1y ago
      Being founded in 1880s doesn’t mean that all the planning since hasn’t been all auto-centric.
      - p_ing 1y ago
        Except the dirt roads then were as wide as the paved roads are now with the same grid-style layout. Feel free to keep arguing how things radically changed just for cars. But they didn't.
azlev 1y ago
I still think the future is working from home.
poisonborz 1y ago
You only need to move a bit towards suburbia/countryside to create your deep disbelief in public transport. Cars are everywhere, for a reason. Public transport is great in theory only. With actual human societies - maybe the western ones, that is, except China/Japan - it just doesn't work. Corruption, laziness, bureaucracy, lack of proper planning and security makes the creation and maintenance of these projects unsustainable and so much worse compared to personal transport. This only isn't true for million+ metropolises due to physical constrains. You may frown at the traffic jams with SUVs having a single driver, but building additional highways is easily doable around the world, while any sort of mass transit infrastructure projects seem to take decades, billions, while still end up underwhelming - if not instantly, then after the machinery ages or maintainers change.
- ivan_gammel 1y ago
  > Public transport is great in theory only I never felt the need to have a car in most of Europe, so didn’t even bother to get a driving license. Urban population is 75% on average, so reaching rural or uninhabited areas is almost an edge case (at least for me). So it is not theoretical, it works great, even if it is not reaching the perfection of Japan. Looking at two of my favorite cities, Berlin and Moscow, I find that they are spending reasonably on expanding networks (and the most recent highway project in Berlin — extension of A100 — was very expensive and stupid, looking at the traffic jams there).
- trymas 1y ago
  LA is a transportation utopia then? Just one more lane, bro.
jader201 1y ago
> In the early 2000s, sitting for a driver’s license was seen as a near-universal rite of passage. By 2020, Generation Z teens were significantly less likely to get their licenses and later, when they do, it's driven by necessity rather than aspiration. I feel like this is a naive take, and making some assumptions that may not be true. I feel like this has less to do with preferring other modes of transportation over driving, as much as it has to do with not wanting/needing to go anywhere, particularly outside of the city. You can do most things without even needing to leave home, especially when you’re young. You don’t need to meet in person with your friends to socialize. You can text, use social media, play only games, etc. My young adult children both have licenses, but they have found it hard to get their friends to want to hang out. They’d rather stay home and stay on their devices.
neuroelectron 1y ago
Right, the personal drone is much faster.
m-schuetz 1y ago
I've lost a lot of enthusiasm about close-range public transport. In Vienna, bicycles get you nearly every twice as fast as public transport, and mostly about as fast as cars, depending on your destination. Bikes are about four times cheaper as public transport too. Public transport ist great to connect cities, and perhaps districts. Beyound that, it quickly hits diminishing returns. It's prohibitly expensive to connect at a city block level, and even more expensive to connect rural towns. And Austria recently started doing very odd things. We are now building train stations in the middle of nowhere, not connected to any town. They are not meant to become new city centers, they are meant to be accessed via cars. They are useless for car-free people, and people with cars almost exclusively continue to commute the entire way by car. In any case, the Netherlands is where I really got a sense of true mobility-freedom. You can get absolutely everywhere cheaply, safely and comfortably by bicycle. I've never before experienced such relaxing commutes as cycling along rivers and through meadows to work, then taking a detour through woods and parks on the way back home.
- whyenot 1y ago
  I think bicycles work very well in a dense and flat city where people respect traffic laws. I am highly skeptical that they are the answer everywhere. Take for example San Francisco with all of its steep hills, or Rio where you have both hills and low adherence to traffic laws. How about Mexico City with its at time horrendous air pollution. In the United States, where many cities didn't really mature until after the automobile, you have low density to deal with, for example in Houston or San Jose. How about for someone who is older? Bicycles may be great if you are in your 30s, but what about for someone in their 70s? Bicycling is a great solution for some people in some cities, but it's not going to work as well everywhere or for everyone. Public transit, cars, walking, etc. will all have to continue being part of the mix.
  - m-schuetz 1y ago
    At least San Jose has huge potential for biking inftastructure. I've lived there for a month, and taking the riverside cycling path (Guadalupe) to Santa Clara was amazing. Yeah, San Francisco is less suited. New York could also be amazing. I agree that it's not a solution for everyone, but good cycle infrastructure takes a lot of pressure from public transport.
dfxm12 1y ago
In addition to what we see in the article, we've started to see the enshittification with monthly subscriptions to unlock more power or heated seats. The more this happens, the less likely I am to buy a car. A car is not freedom. It's a requirement, a loan, a monthly payment, an unexpected repair bill waiting to happen, and increasingly, a subscription fee.
poszlem 1y ago
Your argument makes sense if you’re talking about dense urban centers, but it doesn’t reflect the reality of millions of people who live outside of them. If you had to walk 4 miles to school every day, you would understand why a car means freedom. If the closest grocery store was 15 miles away, you would understand why a car means freedom. If you ever had to drive through a snowstorm just to get to work, you would understand why a car means freedom. If you had to take your sick child or elderly parent to the hospital in the middle of the night, you would understand why a car means freedom. If you had to balance two jobs in towns unreachable by public transit, you would understand why a car means freedom. For millions of people, a car isn’t a trap or a luxur. It’s survival, opportunity, and dignity. Cities may be able to rethink their dependence on cars, but for everyone else, the car is still the bridge to basic participation in life.
poulpy123 1y ago
Even in Europe as soon as you spend time outside the big cities and that you don't have heavy/bug stuff to move around, the car is pretty much mandatory (except maybe the Netherlands/Belgium?). I also noticed that the gen z is less interested in having a car, but as far as I can see it's more a shift of attitude about independence and a lot also because it's more expensive now to have a car.
- ivan_gammel 1y ago
  > the car is pretty much mandatory It depends. My favorite destinations on German Baltic coast have enough bus and local train coverage to get in nearly every interesting location. You only need to know the schedule and plan accordingly, and it’s not bad experience traveling like that.
metalman 1y ago
personal transportation is never going away, and insisting on what the title says will cause violence in a lot of places does it have to be a smoke and CO² spewing 6500lb machine going 100mph,no, there are 1.4 billion cars, with billions more personal vehicles, throw in bikes and boats, airplanes, and it's one for every two people, unless you are on the moon, and then there are three cars, but no people, my point bieng, the title is realy just trolling/click bait/virtue signaling,politics, there is no realistic possibility of eliminating cars. personaly my life has been split, between living with cars/vans/trucks/etc, and walking/biking/bussing/trains and I cant imagine giving up ANY mode of transport
tim333 1y ago
In central London where I live car use has definitely been falling largely due to public policy blocking off streets and removing parking and will take another step when they pedestrianise Oxford Street and lower Regent Street (https://youtu.be/NvJ6R-YHD1w https://youtu.be/NvJ6R-YHD1w). I think it's largely nicer as a result - more walking and cycling.
AnimalMuppet 1y ago
I am 63. As I look at my future, "freedom" and "walking" look more and more distant from each other. My wife has a handicapped tag. Freedom for her doesn't look like walking. My mother in law is over 80, and she had polio. One leg is not fully functional. Freedom for her doesn't look like walking. My son-in-law has something that looks a lot like long covid (not diagnosed, so I can't say with certainty). Freedom for him doesn't look like walking. Yeah, I know, everyone I mentioned is an exception. But the point is, there are a lot of exceptions. Not just rural people (who have too far to go), but also the old, the temporarily or permanently ill, the handicapped. If you live long enough, you will probably become one. So, it's fine to want a car-less future, but recognize that it's just less cars, not no cars. Some of us legitimately need them for our freedom.
- ivan_gammel 1y ago
  Electric wheelchairs are compatible with public transport and accessible taxi. If you have disabilities that prevent you from walking, it doesn’t automatically mean that you need a car (which still won’t get you anywhere by the way).
- mitthrowaway2 1y ago
  I think transit would serve these people much better too. Driving independently is for people who are fit enough with reflexes, judgement, and eyesight. Level boarding means you can get your wheelchair into a train much more easily than having your grandchildren lift you into a car passenger seat. Having a bus driver drive for you means you can get around even when you no longer pass your eye exam. Being able to access restrooms at stations is much better for the elderly than having to hold it through a traffic jam. At some point you may not be able to safely drive yourself, and it will be much better if your other options are safe, comfortable, quick, and convenient, and don't leave you dependent on your children or spouse to drive you around. One could certainly argue "but it's not convenient in my area; the train doesn't have level boarding, the bus comes too infrequently and gets stuck in the same traffic jams, the stations don't have bathrooms". That's a symptom of low investment, which is a symptom of low ridership, which is a symptom of car dependency, and so on.
GillianBates 1y ago
[flagged]
wakawaka28 1y ago
More anti-car propaganda. Cars are in fact the ultimate form of mobility. Citizens being able to travel long distances with cargo quickly, privately, and in an affordable way is a nightmare for wannabe totalitarians.
electricant 1y ago
Author here. Having read the comments let me clarify that I'm not advocating for a world devoid of cars. I'd like that cars could be an option not a must. I totally see that cars are here to stay especially where really needed. But who decides when they are really needed? The owner of course! However, I think that we could perhaps shape our lives for walking/cycling and incentivize public transport whenever possible.

71 points by electricant 1y ago

[flagged]

> In the early 20th century, streets were shared spaces: places where people walked, gathered, played. That's an interesting way to look at compressed horse shit with streams of human waste running over the top of it. Bear in mind the invention of sidewalks predates the automobile by thousands of years.

poszlem 1y ago
Yeah, no offense to the author, but this feels like a textbook case of the 'noble savage' meme, just applied to the more primitive versions of western countries and it makes the whole piece sound really naive.

outime 1y ago

It's interesting how people's positions can be so different. As a European who has lived in two (european) countries with good and affordable transport, I've always been a happy public transport user... until a couple of years ago, that is. Much of the transport is now filled with unpleasant people, dirt, delays, etc which paired with the insane prices of housing in the "walkable" parts of cities, has made me 100% invested in the myth of motorized freedom.

mattigames 1y ago
And who do you think is most interested in such decay of public transportation?
- outime 1y ago
  I'd say the decline is happening (in my experience) in most public services, not just transport. But anyway, I'm purposely staying away from discussing politics here since it's pointless, so I'll just share my experience as a public transport end-user, and the rest can fill in the gaps with their perspectives.
- ang_cire 1y ago
  No one is "interested" in making public transit worse, the issue is that people in power are not users of it and so are not invested in it, and civic and national pride is generally dead in the West, being replaced with vapid nationalism, so there's no drive (no pun intended) to invest in public works projects.
  - dkiebd 1y ago
    The way I understand your comment, it implies that a) users of public transportation should be invested in it, whilst it’s more likely that they use it because they have no alternative, and that b) civic and national pride results in higher demand for public transportation. I don’t think those are universal truths.
    - ang_cire 1y ago
      You don't think that people who use services care more about the service than non-users? Whether they're forced into using it or not, the fact they do absolutely makes them more invested in it being good. Civic and national pride makes citizens (which includes politicians and the wealthy) more likely to care about the actual state of their country. That's what national pride means, as opposed to nationalism, where they are proud without reason. Is public transit guaranteed to be one of those reasons they feel pride or shame? Not at all, but support for it is certainly more likely to come from that than a bunch of nationalists who don't actually feel any shame at failings of the country, of which public transit is currently.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      When users of transit are few there is not enough people to care. often the only users are those least likely to be usefuly involved. so you can't get a useful advocate. Even when transit gets support it is from people wanting to feel good about helping the poor - but would never use it themselves and so they want something with no care for quality. They often make alliences with those whose intersts are not for good transit and don't care that the compromise is bad for transit.
wouldbecouldbe 1y ago
I have the same experience, but I wonder if I just got older and more spoiled or if non-car traffic really got worse
- AllegedAlec 1y ago
  It has gotten significantly worse to the point where I stopped taking it. Prices on public transport are now also so high I'm better off taking the car on most trips. Also it it me or are "just have walkable/bikeable cities people" more obnoxious than vegan speed cyclists
dietr1ch 1y ago
My motorized freedom dreams got stuck in increasingly worse traffic. Nowadays I dream of a "bikeable" commute and grocery shopping and whatever works best between public transport and driving on the weekends.
- nradov 1y ago
  My area is fairly "bikeable" but I seldom ride my bike for errands because I can't be sure that it will still be there when I get out of the store. The local authorities do almost nothing to prevent bike theft. Sure, cars can also be stolen. But modern cars are now fairly theft resistant and police at least take it seriously as a crime.
  - tim333 1y ago
    I ebike and the combination of an old rusty bike plus a large lock seems to stop thieves, even though I leave it on the street 247. I take the battery in though. And have a funky diy paint job. Also even if it was stolen it cost less than any of a years tax on the car, one service on the car, one replacement shock on the car etc.
  - dietr1ch 1y ago
    My way of shopping with my bike is either taking my obviously pricey bike, which I can just walk into the supermarket without anyone thinking it could be left outside, or just take my old 25kg bike that's kind of not worth stealing and lock it somewhat close to the entrance just in case.
nradov 1y ago
European countries only have good and affordable transport in the first and second tier cities. I usually spend a few weeks per year in Europe, often in smaller cities or rural areas, and the only public transport you'll find is some occasional bus service at inconvenient times. In those places everyone drives everywhere. Or they just sit around and home and don't go anywhere.
- outime 1y ago
  Yeah, I agree. I've just happened to live in two capitals, so I've had access to top-tier public transport. But even in the capitals, a simple 10-minute drive can turn into a 50-minute journey on public transport (this is a literal common example of mine, not an exaggeration!). So even then, you have to consider how much your time is worth.
  - antonymoose 1y ago
    I lived in a lower-tier American city (Charleston, SC) for 15 years, and this was my experience with public transportation. I had commute options of a 7 mile drive @ 30 minutes due to congestion, a 7 mile bike ride @ 35 minutes no congestion thanks to bike lanes, or approximately 2 hours bus ride on an unreliable system with no good drop off points and no guarantees in a timely arrival or space for a bicycle to complete the 2 mile walk to my office. These numbers are also one way, not round trip. In other words, I could not use the service in any honest sense. Perhaps a nice future is a hybrid model of public transportation plus personal transport via bicycles and scooters, especially with battery powered options becoming so robust.
- mojuba 1y ago
  And then there are third-tier historical medieval towns that are 100% walkable and you again don't need a car. My ideal city of the future is a small walkable town with everything within a 15-20 minute walk, possibly a part of a conglomerate of towns that run trains or buses between them. I currently live in one such historical town in Southern Europe that's protected by Unesco. The streets are so narrow that not only there's no public transport, all non-resident and non-delivery traffic is prohibited and there's no Uber even. And yet you have everything you need for life and work within a 15-20 minute walk max. More for remote work, obviously. An ideal city of the future doesn't need to be medieval but maybe we should go back to a city planning concept that is made for humans and not cars. And you know, narrow pedestrian streets are totally fine, they are cute!
mattlondon 1y ago
Even in large cities like London there are huge areas where public transport is a joke. Yes it's fine in the very tourist center, but get out further from the center where normal people with families actually live and what is a 5-8 minute drive to a large grocery store becomes a mammoth 50-60 minute journey each way. I personally don't want to spend 15% of my waking day going to and from the shops and paying huge prices for public transport (and also struggle back carrying heavy bags) when I can pay pennies in electricity to drive there and back in a small fraction of the time. I can leave, do my shop, drive back (with heavy bags being carried by the car not my fingers!) and unpack and be sat down again and half way through a TV episode before I'd even have got there by public transport. And this is London where we have "good" public transport.
- mitthrowaway2 1y ago
  It sounds like your public transport isn't actually good.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    No place in the world has good public transit then. Which is realistic I guess: fix your own area instead of looking down on others who are worse.
    - mitthrowaway2 1y ago
      I've been to cities large and small in Japan that had better transit than what you describe in London. That's probably why they have so much ridership.
      - bluGill 1y ago
        I did not describe London... mode share even in tokyo is only 51% - they have a lot of work they can do. That 51% is likely just going to work, cities rarely collect data for other trips but those matter and are places to work on.
nialv7 1y ago
I don't get it. If you've been enjoying public transportation for so long, then why is your reaction to it getting worse not: OK, we need to fix it so it's as good as it was. Instead you are just saying: OK, I have the resources to fix the problem for myself, so I don't give a F.
- zmnd 1y ago
  How do you fix the mentioned problem of "filled with unpleasant people" with money?
  - UtopiaPunk 1y ago
    Do you think the unpleasantness of people has gotten worse over time? If so, what caused that to happen?
    - zmnd 1y ago
      Not my quote, just pointing out that not everything can be solved with money. But yes, I think it got worse over time.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    Usually when people get older and start complaining about new "unpleasant people" the issue isn't that new unpleasant people exist. Rather, its that the older person has not adapted and is stuck. They become "get off my lawn" types
    - zmnd 1y ago
      It’s easy to dismiss a problem by just saying that someone is just an “older person” who “didn’t adapt”.
      - const_cast 1y ago
        It is, but it's also just something I see time and time and time again. Every generation complains about how the world is going to shit and the yougins ain't got no respect and whatever particular segment of brown people at that time don't belong in their country. I would have some sympathy if this wasn't, like, the millionth time this has happened.
dfxm12 1y ago
Look one layer deeper and likely the issues are classist. Of course you didn't mention where you were, but, in the places I've lived, it goes down like this: the people who are wealthy enough to not need to use use public transit have more sway in terms of voting/persuading politicians, and push for policies that directly benefit them, even if it's to the detriment of the city overall. Thus: more resources go towards those places with insane house prices, leaving everyone and everything else behind. The problem isn't public transit, it's the wealthy.
- dse1982 1y ago
  Right on point.

dkiebd 1y ago

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mattigames 1y ago
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- DaSHacka 1y ago
  Oh but that's different, because they agree with it
lm28469 1y ago
[flagged]

throwaway22032 1y ago

"That's just like, your opinion, man." The car is clearly not the best way to navigate a dense city. It is impractical to have, say, tower block apartments and also have a car for each resident. It is unreasonable to build enough parking for peak time around every destination that anyone might want to go to. On the flip side - not everyone wants to live in a dense city, and people's opinions on this change throughout their lives. It was profit maximising and also a lot of fun for me to live in the inner city in my early to mid 20's. Now that I can afford to not maximally push my career I prefer the outer parts of the city / more rural areas, and that's where the car shines.

tonyedgecombe 1y ago
> On the flip side - not everyone wants to live in a dense city, and people's opinions on this change throughout their lives. If you look at the cost of living in an urban area it’s clear there is a lot of demand. Rural is cheaper because most people don’t want a long commute.
- bluGill 1y ago
  Urban living isn't even possiple without a high cost of living. Building a single story builing is massively cheaper than going up - unless land costs are extreemely high.
- throwaway22032 1y ago
  This is to some extent a kind of tautology, though. There is more money available to chase housing in urban areas because it's where most of the jobs are due to network effects, so if you are a labourer you gravitate towards that (as you say, it's a commute thing). It's not necessarily intrinsically more desirable. If you gave the average person 5 million quid I don't think they would choose to live in Central London.

TrackerFF 1y ago

(I live in Norway) When I lived in a major city, I went 10 years without owning a car. Should I for whatever reason need a car, I could rent one. But other than that, public transportation, walking, and biking for me. Hell, I often preferred public transportation over a car. But as soon as I moved back home, a rural area, a car has more or less become a life necessity. I simply can't imagine living out in rural nowhere without a car, it would be such a hassle. Where I live a bus goes 3 times a day to the neighboring towns, that's it. It really depends on where you live, and what your logistical situation looks like.

jweir 1y ago
I spent 17 years without a car - first Berkeley then Brooklyn. It was a huge boost in financial freedom and stability - nothing worse than a major repair on something you depend on. But most of the US this is impossible by design. Where I grew up you might live right next to a grocery store- but it is a mile walk because of the wall and road design. Nuts.
mitthrowaway2 1y ago
If the only road that goes past your house is a bicycle path, a bicycle will be the most convenient. If the only road that goes past your house is a railroad, then a train will be the most convenient. If the only road that goes past your house is a motorway, then a car will be the most convenient. But the transport infrastructure isn't an immutable property of the land, it's collectively-planned-and-built infrastructure. So the most convenient mode of transportation will settle into an equilibrium as the initial investment begets convenience, begetting more people choosing that method, begetting more investment and planning of towns and cities to accommodate that transportation method.
- lstodd 1y ago
  Where I lived all this summer the only transport infrastructure that was available for the last 80 years since the reservoir dam was completed was an old diesel tractor and an equally old motorboat with an evil 2T outboard, or a 3 km walk to a pier that was being visited by a 1957-built ferry twice a day, if it did not break down. Then there are two to four months in a year when there is no transport except a single emergency services hoverboat while the ice settles or melts. Depending if it didn't break down, there isn't any emergency elsewhere, and a host of lesser things, like hovercraft travel isn't exactly cheap or fuel-efficient. And then snowmobiles in winter. But also cars, if you're not afraid enough to test the ice thickness by driving on it. That is an immutable property of the land.

p_ing 1y ago

I’m curious to see how the author would react when it is two miles one-way to the crappy grocery store and eight miles to the good one. And there is a bus shows up about once every four hours. While cities can do a lot to improve the non-car experience, there’s a whole world outside those cities which would become inaccessible without a car. These are generally the “affordable” places to live in order to work in the city. Focus on improving where you live, I do, but when you live in a city, recognize that improvements need to take into account those who don’t live there. The city is where they work, go to school, shop, and often interact with government functions. Getting rid of dumb laws I can totally get behind as someone who walks daily.

adrianN 1y ago
Car dominance is cemented by decades of car centric planning which made cars indispensable in some areas. That is a well known fact, but planning can be changed. If you prioritize other forms of transport in a few decades cars can be a lot less important.
- p_ing 1y ago
  The place I live in was founded in the 1880s and incorporated a few years before the Model T debuted. Prior to the 1880s, Native Americans resided here. How is that car centric planning? And exactly how can one afford to live in a city where rent is $2500+ for a two bedroom or $1m+ for a SFH? That’s not going to happen on a McSalary. Those folks instead commute 1+ hours from affordable urban or more likely rural areas.
  - 1over137 1y ago
    Being founded in 1880s doesn’t mean that all the planning since hasn’t been all auto-centric.
    - p_ing 1y ago
      Except the dirt roads then were as wide as the paved roads are now with the same grid-style layout. Feel free to keep arguing how things radically changed just for cars. But they didn't.

azlev 1y ago

I still think the future is working from home.

poisonborz 1y ago

You only need to move a bit towards suburbia/countryside to create your deep disbelief in public transport. Cars are everywhere, for a reason. Public transport is great in theory only. With actual human societies - maybe the western ones, that is, except China/Japan - it just doesn't work. Corruption, laziness, bureaucracy, lack of proper planning and security makes the creation and maintenance of these projects unsustainable and so much worse compared to personal transport. This only isn't true for million+ metropolises due to physical constrains. You may frown at the traffic jams with SUVs having a single driver, but building additional highways is easily doable around the world, while any sort of mass transit infrastructure projects seem to take decades, billions, while still end up underwhelming - if not instantly, then after the machinery ages or maintainers change.

ivan_gammel 1y ago
> Public transport is great in theory only I never felt the need to have a car in most of Europe, so didn’t even bother to get a driving license. Urban population is 75% on average, so reaching rural or uninhabited areas is almost an edge case (at least for me). So it is not theoretical, it works great, even if it is not reaching the perfection of Japan. Looking at two of my favorite cities, Berlin and Moscow, I find that they are spending reasonably on expanding networks (and the most recent highway project in Berlin — extension of A100 — was very expensive and stupid, looking at the traffic jams there).
trymas 1y ago
LA is a transportation utopia then? Just one more lane, bro.

jader201 1y ago

> In the early 2000s, sitting for a driver’s license was seen as a near-universal rite of passage. By 2020, Generation Z teens were significantly less likely to get their licenses and later, when they do, it's driven by necessity rather than aspiration. I feel like this is a naive take, and making some assumptions that may not be true. I feel like this has less to do with preferring other modes of transportation over driving, as much as it has to do with not wanting/needing to go anywhere, particularly outside of the city. You can do most things without even needing to leave home, especially when you’re young. You don’t need to meet in person with your friends to socialize. You can text, use social media, play only games, etc. My young adult children both have licenses, but they have found it hard to get their friends to want to hang out. They’d rather stay home and stay on their devices.

neuroelectron 1y ago

Right, the personal drone is much faster.

m-schuetz 1y ago

I've lost a lot of enthusiasm about close-range public transport. In Vienna, bicycles get you nearly every twice as fast as public transport, and mostly about as fast as cars, depending on your destination. Bikes are about four times cheaper as public transport too. Public transport ist great to connect cities, and perhaps districts. Beyound that, it quickly hits diminishing returns. It's prohibitly expensive to connect at a city block level, and even more expensive to connect rural towns. And Austria recently started doing very odd things. We are now building train stations in the middle of nowhere, not connected to any town. They are not meant to become new city centers, they are meant to be accessed via cars. They are useless for car-free people, and people with cars almost exclusively continue to commute the entire way by car. In any case, the Netherlands is where I really got a sense of true mobility-freedom. You can get absolutely everywhere cheaply, safely and comfortably by bicycle. I've never before experienced such relaxing commutes as cycling along rivers and through meadows to work, then taking a detour through woods and parks on the way back home.

whyenot 1y ago
I think bicycles work very well in a dense and flat city where people respect traffic laws. I am highly skeptical that they are the answer everywhere. Take for example San Francisco with all of its steep hills, or Rio where you have both hills and low adherence to traffic laws. How about Mexico City with its at time horrendous air pollution. In the United States, where many cities didn't really mature until after the automobile, you have low density to deal with, for example in Houston or San Jose. How about for someone who is older? Bicycles may be great if you are in your 30s, but what about for someone in their 70s? Bicycling is a great solution for some people in some cities, but it's not going to work as well everywhere or for everyone. Public transit, cars, walking, etc. will all have to continue being part of the mix.
- m-schuetz 1y ago
  At least San Jose has huge potential for biking inftastructure. I've lived there for a month, and taking the riverside cycling path (Guadalupe) to Santa Clara was amazing. Yeah, San Francisco is less suited. New York could also be amazing. I agree that it's not a solution for everyone, but good cycle infrastructure takes a lot of pressure from public transport.

dfxm12 1y ago

In addition to what we see in the article, we've started to see the enshittification with monthly subscriptions to unlock more power or heated seats. The more this happens, the less likely I am to buy a car. A car is not freedom. It's a requirement, a loan, a monthly payment, an unexpected repair bill waiting to happen, and increasingly, a subscription fee.

poszlem 1y ago

Your argument makes sense if you’re talking about dense urban centers, but it doesn’t reflect the reality of millions of people who live outside of them. If you had to walk 4 miles to school every day, you would understand why a car means freedom. If the closest grocery store was 15 miles away, you would understand why a car means freedom. If you ever had to drive through a snowstorm just to get to work, you would understand why a car means freedom. If you had to take your sick child or elderly parent to the hospital in the middle of the night, you would understand why a car means freedom. If you had to balance two jobs in towns unreachable by public transit, you would understand why a car means freedom. For millions of people, a car isn’t a trap or a luxur. It’s survival, opportunity, and dignity. Cities may be able to rethink their dependence on cars, but for everyone else, the car is still the bridge to basic participation in life.

poulpy123 1y ago

Even in Europe as soon as you spend time outside the big cities and that you don't have heavy/bug stuff to move around, the car is pretty much mandatory (except maybe the Netherlands/Belgium?). I also noticed that the gen z is less interested in having a car, but as far as I can see it's more a shift of attitude about independence and a lot also because it's more expensive now to have a car.

ivan_gammel 1y ago
> the car is pretty much mandatory It depends. My favorite destinations on German Baltic coast have enough bus and local train coverage to get in nearly every interesting location. You only need to know the schedule and plan accordingly, and it’s not bad experience traveling like that.

metalman 1y ago

personal transportation is never going away, and insisting on what the title says will cause violence in a lot of places does it have to be a smoke and CO² spewing 6500lb machine going 100mph,no, there are 1.4 billion cars, with billions more personal vehicles, throw in bikes and boats, airplanes, and it's one for every two people, unless you are on the moon, and then there are three cars, but no people, my point bieng, the title is realy just trolling/click bait/virtue signaling,politics, there is no realistic possibility of eliminating cars. personaly my life has been split, between living with cars/vans/trucks/etc, and walking/biking/bussing/trains and I cant imagine giving up ANY mode of transport

tim333 1y ago

In central London where I live car use has definitely been falling largely due to public policy blocking off streets and removing parking and will take another step when they pedestrianise Oxford Street and lower Regent Street (https://youtu.be/NvJ6R-YHD1w https://youtu.be/NvJ6R-YHD1w). I think it's largely nicer as a result - more walking and cycling.

AnimalMuppet 1y ago

I am 63. As I look at my future, "freedom" and "walking" look more and more distant from each other. My wife has a handicapped tag. Freedom for her doesn't look like walking. My mother in law is over 80, and she had polio. One leg is not fully functional. Freedom for her doesn't look like walking. My son-in-law has something that looks a lot like long covid (not diagnosed, so I can't say with certainty). Freedom for him doesn't look like walking. Yeah, I know, everyone I mentioned is an exception. But the point is, there are a lot of exceptions. Not just rural people (who have too far to go), but also the old, the temporarily or permanently ill, the handicapped. If you live long enough, you will probably become one. So, it's fine to want a car-less future, but recognize that it's just less cars, not no cars. Some of us legitimately need them for our freedom.

ivan_gammel 1y ago
Electric wheelchairs are compatible with public transport and accessible taxi. If you have disabilities that prevent you from walking, it doesn’t automatically mean that you need a car (which still won’t get you anywhere by the way).
mitthrowaway2 1y ago
I think transit would serve these people much better too. Driving independently is for people who are fit enough with reflexes, judgement, and eyesight. Level boarding means you can get your wheelchair into a train much more easily than having your grandchildren lift you into a car passenger seat. Having a bus driver drive for you means you can get around even when you no longer pass your eye exam. Being able to access restrooms at stations is much better for the elderly than having to hold it through a traffic jam. At some point you may not be able to safely drive yourself, and it will be much better if your other options are safe, comfortable, quick, and convenient, and don't leave you dependent on your children or spouse to drive you around. One could certainly argue "but it's not convenient in my area; the train doesn't have level boarding, the bus comes too infrequently and gets stuck in the same traffic jams, the stations don't have bathrooms". That's a symptom of low investment, which is a symptom of low ridership, which is a symptom of car dependency, and so on.

GillianBates 1y ago

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wakawaka28 1y ago

More anti-car propaganda. Cars are in fact the ultimate form of mobility. Citizens being able to travel long distances with cargo quickly, privately, and in an affordable way is a nightmare for wannabe totalitarians.

electricant 1y ago

Author here. Having read the comments let me clarify that I'm not advocating for a world devoid of cars. I'd like that cars could be an option not a must. I totally see that cars are here to stay especially where really needed. But who decides when they are really needed? The owner of course! However, I think that we could perhaps shape our lives for walking/cycling and incentivize public transport whenever possible.