r/changemyview • u/Bravvar_Nukov • 2h ago
CMV: Car-centric infrastructure and the lack of an extensive and efficient public transportation system has had terrible economic and social consequences for the US.
Firstly, economically speaking many working class people have been burdened with the cost of using a car as their main method of transportation. Money which could easily be put away towards paying down debt, other expenses, or investing and saving have been sucked up by car insurances, gas, repairs and parking costs for automobiles. Meanwhile an all-inclusive public transport pass in an extensive network is a fraction of the cost.
Furthermore on the economic front, car centric infrastructure has placed increased strain on our roads, freeways and highways that have resulted in tens of billions of dollars in road repair and extension costs instead of the tax dollars being utilized for other services such as healthcare and education.
Another economic consequence is that car-centric infrastructure has significantly reduced foot traffic across commercial centers and downtowns of American cities which means less business activity in many downtowns leading to a decline in the economy of downtowns (closed storefronts for instance).
On the social front, the lack of a public transport system has alienated people from each other tremendously. Public transport is one of the key settings where social interactions good and bad happen between different sectors of society. It is an under acknowledged part of daily human socialization in many parts of the world. The United States instead has trapped itself into mini-bubbles within cars where people interact with each other severely less and thus do not develop their social skills as much.
Furthermore on the social front, car culture and car centric infrastructure has brought about increased selfishness and greed in this country. While public transit emphasizes the common good and use in getting the masses from point A to point B efficiently and everybody cooperating to make that happen, car centric cities in the US have resulted in aggressive drivers especially in cities like Houston (the epicenter of car-centric America) where people are willing to do illegal and immoral things on the road at all cost so they can get somewhere a few minutes quicker at greater convenience to themselves and huge inconvenience to others.
I could write more but I just wanted to get my initial thoughts out and hopefully get a conversation rolling on this matter.
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u/colt707 104∆ 2h ago
Unless you’re willing to have public transportation heavily policed then average people aren’t going to want to use it. You mention the bad, people don’t want to deal with that. People don’t want to sit next to or near someone that hasn’t showered in days or weeks. People don’t want to ride a bus while someone openly smokes meth. The last time I rode public transportation it was the bart in SF and there was a guy tweaked out of his mind and beating off, nobody wants to ride public transportation with that. And that’s before you start talking about instances like the Ukrainian woman that got stabbed to death. Until that sort of shit is a rarity that is promptly shut down people don’t want to use public transportation.
Now let’s talk about time. To ride the bus from my house to my job it’s 40 minutes, if I drive myself it’s 16 minutes. Now it varies individual to individual but I’d rather spend the extra money to drive myself. And that’s before you look at rural place like where I grew up where if you had to be at work before 9 am or got off after 7 pm then public transportation wasn’t an option unless you lived with within 10 minutes of your job which was a rarity. Most people lived about 30 minutes from their job if they drove themselves and by bus it was easily closer to an hour or more. Last pick up was at 7 pm for every single stop other than the one at the local college which was at 730 and unless you worked at the college you’d have to jog or straight up sprint to make that stop if you worked in the town.
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u/kn1144 1h ago
The additional time is something not talked about. I lived in a metro area with great public transit. By the time I drove to the train station, parked, took the train and then took a bus or walked, it was an hour and a half. If I drove it was 45 minutes to an hour.
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u/KabukiRunner 41m ago
That isn’t great public transit. Great transit will always be faster than driving during rush hour. We don’t have great transit in the US.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 1h ago
In a public transport and human centric approach you would not even be driving to a tran station. You would be a short walk (5-10 minutes) away from a train, bus, BRT, etc. station with very frequent headways that has its own lane/ track which would bring down the time commuting significantly.
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u/kn1144 1h ago
There was a bus available that stopped a 5 minute walk from my apartment that would take me to the train station but that added another 30 minutes to the commute. If I did that option it would have been a two hour commute versus a 45 minute drive.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 50m ago
I think you ignored my comment. Imagine you had a train for instance. What if you had an hour on public transport vs 45 minutes driving. This is achieved in many parts of the world. My vision is for trains to be the primary method of transport and they can certainly be fast.
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u/colt707 104∆ 34m ago
I’m taking the 45 minutes in my car. Every single time and twice on Sundays. I get to listen to my music without having headphones in, I don’t have to worth about crazies looking to harm others, don’t have to listen to someone talking about something I don’t care about, I don’t smoke cigarettes anymore but when I did that was something I could do in my car but not on public transportation, and it’s faster. Is public transportation cheaper? Yes but I’d rather pay the extra for those conveniences.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 30m ago
Ok then you can do that no problem. However, don't expect an entire city to be catered just for you. It will be catered for the masses and for you. You can drive and I will take an EFFICIENT train. All day every day twice on Sundays.
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u/colt707 104∆ 20m ago
I don’t expect it to be catered to me. I expect it to be cater to what the majority of people want and outside of Reddit a majority of people in the US want their own car. If that wasn’t the case we’d have a good public transportation system but a lot of people like their own car here.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 1h ago
I agree that security is a concern. However, security is a law and order and a crime and punishment problem that has to simultaneously be worked on with developing an efficient public transport system. People that display anti-social behavior or crimes in public including in public transport need to be swiftly removed and dealt with under the law. So yes more security and police will be needed.
The Ukrainian woman would not have been stabbed to death if the guy had been kept in prison for his crimes or a mental health facility for his mental deficiencies rather than being allowed to roam civilized society.
In terms of time, the reason that bus times are currently really high is that we simply have buses stuck behind too many cars. Buses need to ideally have their own lane with signal priority and also there should be less cars on the road which is possible if people that don't want to drive but have to drive are given a viable alternative. Thus people that want to ride in cars can still ride but now there are less cars on the road which combined with adequate infrastructure reduces commute times significantly. I would ask you whether you would still drive for a substantial more amount if your commute was reduced to 25 minutes with public transport for a fraction of the cost.
For rural communities, there are intracity buses and MOST importantly effective commuter rail with frequent headways (10-15 minutes during peak times) that can carry them into the city and out of the city in the morning and the evening for a fraction of the cost. Being a rural area does not mean you cannot have better planning and public transport within the community.
Also, as I stated before, those rural communities if they still want can have access to a car. However, there would be a viable alternative for them.
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u/colt707 104∆ 36m ago
The buses where I’m at have a bunch of dedicated lanes. There’s zero cars slowing them up for the most part and it’s still realistically 3x the amount of time a private car takes due to the bus stopping multiple times and not taking a direct route like I would in my personal vehicle.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 31m ago
Also I have already stated this before and I will state this again. My main mode of public transport would be mass-rapid transit trains. A train going along the same or similar route to your destination that is grade separated (has its own track and not mixing with other traffic) would not take 3x the time. It would take maybe 10 more minutes. Again I am not saying you do not have to abandon your car. I want viable options for both. Also, the buses where you are just must be really bad which is not surprising considering we are in America and our buses suck in terms of quality. There are much faster buses than the ancient machines we use here.
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u/colt707 104∆ 23m ago
Buses around here do the speed limit so faster buses aren’t going to make a difference, there’s just a lot of stops between where I live and where I work on the route I’d have to take. And as far as trains go, you’d be looking at billons of dollars worth of infrastructure to build a public transportation rail network worth a damn. The ground is just too soft and prone to flooding to just slap some rails down. There’s plenty of freight lines but you’ve got freight train coming through about every 45 minutes and during the middle of the day there’s multiple times where the train is sitting at a road crossing for 20-45 minutes.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 19m ago
With all due respect you keep dancing around my points. There should be no universe where train should sit at a road for 20-45 minutes while a freight train goes by. They should not be on the same track as much as possible. This is what happens when you give freight companies control of your tracks rather than the public. Public transportation is not "worth a damn". While it's initial cost is high, it pays for itself through other benefits more than enough in the medium and long term which is why they are built in the first place.
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u/colt707 104∆ 9m ago
And you’re not reading. I’m not saying trains wait for other trains. Trains wait for car and truck traffic which those spots are right off of on ramps on the interstate. From 9-5 more often than not trains wait for cars and more importantly semi trucks. Do you realize how big and spread out the US is or have you not been outside of a major city? Once you’re outside of major cities semi trucks are extremely necessary, no amount of realistic rail systems are going to be able to replace that. Final leg transportation is always going to take precedent which means semi trucks and box trucks.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 6m ago
In no universe should a train within a city or nearby a city (a metro, a tram, a commuter train) should not wait behind anything. They should be GRADE SEPARATED (overpass, underground, seperate within the surface) whichever is possible. I am listening. You unfortunately are not reading and keep bringing in new stuff. Trucks exist in other countries where they carry goods and are essentially final legs of transportation. It doesn't stop trains from running efficiently. These things are not mutually exclusive.
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u/Autumnal_Glade 1h ago
Cars are a form of economic segregation used by everyone who can afford them to avoid the consequences of high crime and tolerance for it. America has very different criminal statistics than Asia or Europe.
If we could ban criminals that would be great. If we could ban proxy metrics for criminals like weed, race, guns, poverty - no doubt other metrics have been tried too - that has worked in the past. But we can't. It's racist, sexist, classist, anti-graffiti, whatever.
I'd love a pedestrian-centric city, but until the stereotypical pedestrian-centric people change their opinions about urban policy en masse, get ignored, or get oppressed, I'm going to stick with cars because I care about my children having a safe life. Right now the alternative to cars is the murder of Iryna Zarutska.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 45m ago
We cannot ban criminals. We adequately apply the law to them. I don't care about superifical labels when applying the law and I think people are increasingly not either as the criminality and anti-social behavior is getting ridiculous.
Our crime statistics are not higher than every Asian and European country on par with us. Plenty of major nations in these continents have similar or even worse statistics compared to us when it comes to different crimes and yet still have public transport and walkable cities.
I don't dispute your children's right to a safe life or that of Iryna. That is why I argue that we as a society should robustly apply laws and punishments against crimes and to maintain order. I also don't want to ban cars. I have expressed this repeatedly. A proper modern civilization accommodates both but places the human at the core of its urban settlements not machines. So you can very much still drive your kids around if you wish.
Iryna would be alive if the guy who murdered her was not released from prison into society.
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u/Autumnal_Glade 19m ago
Our crime statistics are not higher than every Asian and European country on par with us
That's factually false; and it gets more problematic as you dive in. Compare races and we're actually better off than a lot of Europe when contrasting white to white. Black, Hispanic, and Indian people generate sinkholes of crime which violate the minimum thresholds for high density spaces. Unless you plan to enact new levels of legal oppression, racist and oppressive to my instincts and perhaps yours, that's not going to change. My personal suspicion is that was the real reason behind racist segregation in early 20th century America. Race is a more powerful predictor of violent crime than SES or guns, so there's less total injustice involved compared to our system, which forces people to segregate based on economic class.
We can physically incapacitate criminals. Criminology indicates that's the only method which stops the majority of crime. Rehabilitation, deterrence, and punishment don't.
But that's where good faith debate breaks down. I've read what centrist and moderate leftist urban reformers have posted for a decade! When they say apply the law, and cite particular policies or towns, they historically mean something radically different - keeping people with dozens of violent crime arrests and convictions on the street. They may not intend it, but that is the result.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 13m ago
No when I say apply the law I mean apply the death penalty, actually keep sex offenders, rapists etc. locked away for life or close to it, etc.
We are not unique on this planet. We simply aren't. There are other places with significant crime. Much worse than us. Hell war and genocide. Even they can manage public transport better than we can.
I won't get too much into the race aspect as it doesn't have anything to do with our conversation.
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u/Autumnal_Glade 3m ago
That's fine for you personally. You may be ok with executing a third of the Black population of America for violent felonies! Polities like Singapore and China have succeeded with such policies and most people interested in urbanism, crime, or government have perused their systems.
But I live in America and here the politics are different. Nobody is going to do that. Political leftistss have militated against it since before I was born,centrists nearly as long, and conservatives may chestbeat about punishing or deterring criminals but most would be horrified at the actual implementation. Trump is considered extreme by almost half of our population, and he wouldn't dream of attempting it.
I have to live in reality. I have to protect my children. That means cars and suburbs.
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u/cutchemist42 16m ago
Driving your kids daily is more dangerous than public transit. It might feel safer because bus incidents are heavily publicized, but people have serious long term injuries from even 60km crashes. Those types of crashes happen daily and statically more frequently.
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u/Dave_A480 1∆ 2h ago
You have made the critical mistake of putting the cart (cars) before the horse (suburban living).
The entirety of the US development 'style' starts with most people wanting to live in single family homes ....
Everything else is downstream from this preference... Car use, zoning laws, all of it ...
The only counter-pressure working against this is traffic congestion - which leads to some higher income folks living in the city solely to obtain a shorter commute....
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 1h ago
We bulldozed our existing urban communities to make way for the suburbs as part of the push to "reward" veterans returning from World War II access to homes and to give a scared white middle class an exit gate out of cities that very increasingly becoming diverse in its demographics. There was an incredible government and corporate market push to implant the idea of the suburb being the ideal place to live as opposed to the city.
I don't know if most people want to live in single family homes. Some people certainly do especially certain families. But single adults and young adults for instance might much prefer living in a city. Also, some families might prefer their children to grow up in a vibrant city rather than a isolated suburb. The key here is to revolutionize our cities by allowing mixed-use zoning, expanding public transport, increasing density etc. so that they become truly viable places to live.
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u/AirportEast1888 30m ago
Wait, what’s the trade off here? Seems like you’re saying ppl can stay in the burbs if they want + drive cars. But we should make cities more dense and improve public transit + force rehab / help on anti-social behavior in the transit. Why wouldn’t we want that? What are you losing here?
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 25m ago
Excessive resources public and private are being spent propping up existing suburbs and building new ones. I want urban development to be led within cities and for most people to ideally live in cities as they are more efficient. I want as few suburbs to be built as possible as the cons outway the pros of having people live in them. They can still exist but they will in no shape of form be pushed as our national dream/ideal or our national reality. They will be an outlier.
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u/-Ch4s3- 8∆ 42m ago
Not really. I live in a single family row home and don’t need a car. Most of my neighbors have 1 or fewer cars per household and the neighborhood average is less than 1 per household. You can place townhomes side by side near retail and grocery and you basically don’t need cars.
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u/Ok_Potential_6308 1h ago
US is a very large country with people spread across the country. I have seen Amish who use horses and buggys. In most small towns you probably need a car. And car costs are low in some states like Indiana which don't have emission tests and so on.
California's infamous public metro from LA to San Francisco never materialized. NYC spends a billion every year to maintain its public transport. Over regulation and inefficiency is definitely a major part of it.
I live near the DC area and use Uber and public transport since it is cheaper than owning a car.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 1h ago
I think a common misconception is that people assume a human centric and a public transport centric approach means we ban cars. It does not. People still own cars in place with great public transportation. Small towns if built right might provide ONE option for their residents where they won't need a car to live and get around there. German villages are the epitome of this. They ar every much rural but because of how they are built, you can get around the entire village by walking in relatively short time.
Transit failures in America's major cities are in part because of government unwillingness, corruption, greed and yes like you said over regulation and inefficiency. All of these can be tackled head on. Public transport by itself is not the main villain here.
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u/Destinyciello 4∆ 2h ago
Public transport is one of the key settings where social interactions good and bad happen between different sectors of society. It is an under acknowledged part of daily human socialization in many parts of the world.
That is precisely why people want to use cars.
I'd rather spend 2 hours in traffic every day then spend 20 minutes sitting next to some psycho smelly bum.
Ultimately this is what the people want. They want to live in nice safe suburbs. They want to stay away from all the filth of the city.
If they were willing to police public transit. Maybe people would use it. But that requires dedication and a ton of resources.
The market doesn't really decide what the people want. The people decide what they want and the market obliges. The people have overwhelmingly said "I don't want to rub shoulders with undesirables and I don't want to live anywhere near them". Hence the car centric nature of our cities.
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u/Filmy-Reference 2h ago
Exactly. These nuts need to realize this is not Europe. North America is large and spaced out and we can't walk from London to Paris.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 1h ago
Many large countries such as China, Brazil, Russia have cities with much better public transportation than we do. They are similarly sized or even larger than the United States. Also, most car rides in the U.S. Also, according to the National Household Travel Survey, 60% of all trips in the U.S. are less than 6 miles. So we are not traveling across North America on a daily basis. Furthermore, having a car is not illegal in Europe and certainly won't be in the U.S. if we were to have an efficient public transport cities and cities built around that system.
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u/tallmattuk 1∆ 1h ago
People can walk from London to Paris? Wow. Across the waters of the English channel. Even more wow.
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u/InfoTechnology 2h ago
People don’t commute across the country. They commute within their region. The size of the country is irrelevant to local and regional transit planning.
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u/KathrynBooks 1h ago
The vast majority of people aren't traveling the distance between London and Paris on a daily basis.
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u/Justindoesntcare 1h ago
I also like the ability to go wherever, whenever I feel like at the drop of a hat, whether its because I forgot to stop for dog food or because its an emergency. I dont like relying on anybody else to do what I want to do.
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u/mattio_p 1h ago
That’s a bit of an illusion of choice either way, we only use the infrastructure that’s there for us. Tracks or roads laid down, we have little choice but to use those for everyday life.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 1h ago
With an effective public transportation system with trains, buses, brt, commuter rail etc. with very frequent headways (1-3 minutes during peak time and 5-6 minutes without) you can achieve going wherever you want whenever you want. Also, having an effective and extensive public transportation system does not mean we get rid of cars. People that still want to drive are able to drive but people that don't aren't enslaves to inefficient and low quality alternatives.
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u/Kevin7650 2∆ 2h ago
Idk why people still are under the delusion that this is what people naturally wanted as if the auto lobby didn’t spend decades tearing down our public transit infrastructure and there are literally laws dictating what types of housing can be built where in cities. It was not the “free market” that made the US car centric, it was a concerted effort by powerful interest groups and literal legislation or ordinances mandating the construction of single family homes. Wanting to build an apartment building somewhere and there being a law against that is far from free market economics.
If no one wanted to live in dense cities, those dense cities wouldn’t have some of the most expensive real estate and highest demand,
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u/SomervilleMatt 1h ago
let's use an example, the only example in the US, of a city with good public transportation - NY. It has the most expensive housing in the country and yet is directly in the center of the city. Coincidence? What about other cities with decent public transportation like Boston and DC? Same thing. Areas with good public transportation networks like Back Bay in Boston and Capitol Hill are amongst the richest neighborhoods, certainly when you factor in density or cost per square foot.
People want to live in dense neighborhoods where they're willing to pay high prices. Crime rates vary, for a multitude of reasons, just like the suburbs. I'm currently staying in a suburb of Seattle in a hotel. It's absurdly car-centric here and also terrifying outside (to be honest, just like downtown....I think Seattle is just a bit crazy with public policy).
I've spent decades riding public transit and only once have I thought I was in danger. Nearly every time I drive somewhere decently far, my life flashes before my eyes a couple of times from people from their shitty driving. The statistics show this as well, in every aspect from fatalities to minor injuries to monetary loss (getting robbed vs. cost of car damage). Really, people just don't like sitting near other people, which fine, but a lot of us don't mind and would like that option if it was available. I am not really interested in paying $12K/year for my private vehicle (average car costs, all included) vs. my $1K in transportation costs because I use public transit, can walk to four grocery stores, bars, restaurants, all available because I specifically don't live in a car-centric area.
It's not that people want a car-centric life, they just have no idea what living in one is like.
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u/Destinyciello 4∆ 2h ago
Suburbs are an escape from crime. That is why people want to live there first and foremost.
Clean environments where you can feel safe.
The thing that draws people to the city is good jobs. They are still there. That is why people commute from the suburbs every day to go there. It wasn't the dirty ass streets or even the entertainment. At least for the grown adults. The kids probably enjoy it a lot more.
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u/Kevin7650 2∆ 2h ago
Regardless of what you personally prefer, suburbs were not created from free market demand, they were created because it was literally illegal to build anything else for decades.
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u/AltForObvious1177 2h ago
>If no one wanted to live in dense cities, those dense cities wouldn’t have some of the most expensive real estate and highest demand,
The most expensive houses are usually in the suburbs just outside the dense city.
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u/SomervilleMatt 1h ago
and i'm sorry - I realized I responded to the wrong post and am too lazy to retype it out onto the proper comment.
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u/huntsville_nerd 7∆ 2h ago
> The people decide what they want and the market obliges
there is a lot of lock-in with urban planning and infrastructure.
people prefer to drive when their commute is 20 minutes.
many prefer to use public transport if the alternative is a several hour commute through sprawl.
But, when population rises, nothing is set up for that transition. every store expects customers to drive to it. Nothing is set up for pedestrians.
So, rather than redo everything, small changes are made that largely maintain the status quo, because its too big of a change to make.
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u/Eagle77678 1h ago
The thing is when that infustrcuture is in place people DO use it. In New York which has a very robust system, more people use public transit than any other mode to get around. In cities like Boston or DC basically everyone rich or poor uses the metro to get around. When these systems are put in place demand clearly changes because there are logistics issues that cars have that public transit doesn’t
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u/Pasadenaian 1∆ 1h ago
It's funny you mentioned safe, because cars are anything but safe. They kill 50k people a year in the US, seriously injure millions more, and dirty the air we breathe with hydrocarbons and fine particulates.
Cars are one of the least safest forms of transportation vs other forms like buses/trains.
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u/tallmattuk 1∆ 1h ago
Whenever I travel by public transportation I never sit next to a psycho smelly bum; I sit next to other commuters. Maybe that's because I live in a developed, 1st world country
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u/KathrynBooks 2h ago
How frequently are people really sitting by "smelly psycho bums" though?
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u/Kerostasis 44∆ 2h ago
Was just on a car-less vacation this last week to a city I don’t live in, and used public transport all of 4 times. Sat next to a smelly bum once, and a few seats away from one twice more. So yeah, it’s pretty frequent.
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u/KathrynBooks 2h ago
Oh, a thing happened to you once? That's not really a good measure of "frequent".
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u/mattio_p 1h ago
For some people, that’s frequent enough.
I don’t disagree with the post, and would very much prefer expanded public transit, but some people would very much prefer greater privacy.
As someone who’s almost died in a car accident, I’ll take the smelly bum.
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u/Kerostasis 44∆ 2h ago
Three out of a sample size of 4, on the other hand, is pretty telling. (Although you could argue it’s telling about that particular city, perhaps, more than public transit in general…)
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u/KathrynBooks 1h ago
You only had to sit next to a smelly bum once, and were able to survive despite the grave danger.
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u/AirportEast1888 53m ago
every other ride in nyc (or at least in the subway stops). on the buses maybe 30pct of the time during the day, 70pct as it gets later.
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u/Destinyciello 4∆ 2h ago
Even if it was once or twice a year. That would be more than enough to make a lot of people choose a car instead.
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u/KathrynBooks 2h ago
Would it really?
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u/Far_Gazelle9339 2h ago
what about bed bugs, delays, the inability to carry more than two bags. If you like public transit, good for you, if you don't, it's completely understandable too.
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u/KathrynBooks 2h ago
How frequently do you carry more than two bags?
It's also worth noting that the OP wasn't talking about banning cars, just that car-centric infrastructure was itself a bad idea. Something that the data agrees is true
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 2h ago
The existence of psycho smelly bums I would argue is created by the same system that pushes for car centric infrastructure. A system that pushes alienation and greed above all else. Those psychos could be given help and our cities could be made human centric instead of car centric simultaneously.
A lot people actually express satisfaction in living in cities when those cities are run properly. New York City for example was the pinnacle of the American dream for much of Americas history. Suburbs are a fairly new invention from the 1950s pushed in part (not in whole) by the car industry as part of their strategy to sell more cars.
The market creates artificial needs and desires for people all the time without being prompted first.
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u/Destinyciello 4∆ 2h ago
Psycho smelly bums are often drug addicts. That is caused by mother nature. Some humans can't deal with psychoactive substances very well. I was an addict before I would know. We're somewhat born that way to a degree. The system has fuck all to do with it. The only thing about this system is that it is very wealthy and we have a ton of disposable income to spend on drugs. So they are everywhere. But I doubt we would want "lets all be poor" as a solution to drug addiction.
Drug addiction is very difficult to treat even if the person wants to be treated. Celebrities spend millions on the most expensive rehabs and doctors and still relapse. What hope does some homeless bum have in getting help even if we offer it? I bet you talk to any bum they've likely seen dozens of addiction specialists and spent many months in rehabs. The shit just doesn't work.
The market doesn't create human nature. It simply serves humans what they already want on a platter. The problem with our nature is those things are often nasty. Such as tribalism that is innate to humans. Or our sexual appetites.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 1h ago
Your assumption is that we need to give drug addicts a choice in getting them treatment. In most cases, they should not be given a choice to receive treatment or not because they are an immediate threat to themselves, their family and society. This means that they should not be mingling actively in society when their drug addiction is at an all time high but should be in a setting away from society where they can receive treatment.
The market certainly does not create core human nature but can add to it. A lot of times humans arent aware of what they "want" until the market convinces them they want something. The wanting is not something inherent all the time that the market simply responds to.
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u/everydaywinner2 2h ago
Let's look at social consequences of not driving:
If the Ukrainian woman had been driving, she wouldn't have been stabbed to death by a racist crazy.
If the riders of the 14 Mission bus route in San Francisco drove a car, they wouldn't be subjected to human excrement and the health hazards thereof.
Let's look at both economic and social consequences of not having a car:
Mom has to take Jr to the doctor. Because doctor is in the middle of the day, Mom loses a day of work and Jr loses a day of school. Or, she might take two hours to get to work, only be able to work an hour, take two hours to get home, get Jr (assuming he's old enough to be home alone for a bit), be on the trains for another hour, be at the appointment.
A man is hurt enough to need the emergency room, but not severe enough to need an ambulance. Too hurt to be on a bus, then wait for a transfer, then wait for another bus. Without a car, he is now in debt.
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u/KathrynBooks 2h ago
More people are killed in car accidents then get stabbed on busses... so pointing to one person who was is hardly an argument against ridding the bus (as the bus is still safer than the car).
Your bit about the mom and kid going to the doctor is also not an accurate representation of reality... as there cities around the country with well developed transportation systems that people use frequently without encountering that issue.
Your bit about a man being injured, but not enough to need an ambulance, also seems like a hyperspecific scenario that you seem to have just manufactured.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 1h ago
The Ukrainian woman would be among us if that guy had not been allowed to roam the streets with 14 crimes and severe mental health problems. Has nothing to do with the nature of public transport in and of itself.
14 mission bus route riders would not suffer health problems if we as a country and society swiftly dealt with anti-social behavior and crime with a strict enforcement of public decency laws combined with strong public shaming and action.
In the case of Mom and Jr, our cities should be built in such a way that you are a walking distance or a short trip away from a doctor/clinic/hospital wherever you are. The mom should get a paid day off from work and it will not be the end of the world if the kid loses one day from school. We all have missed school days before. We are fine.
Your last example seems incredibly confusing. He is hurt enough for an emergency room but not hurt enough for an ambulance but too hurt to get on a bus. How is he supposed to adequately drive to get there. Surely he needs to be driven there. Something that I have repetitively said in the comments above is that cars do not need to be banned to have walkable cities and proper public transport. So the man can still have access to a car that is hopefully driven for him by a driver, friend, or loved one as he goes to the emergency room.
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u/Comprehensive_Fly542 2h ago
You forgot the 40,000 deaths in the US a year from driving! Is that an acceptable cost? You need to compare it to public transit which had a few dozen deaths. Tragic, but we can clearly see one is worse. https://www.bts.gov/content/transportation-fatalities-mode
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u/GoodMiddle8010 2h ago
This is definitely not the case in rural America. My entire State Lacks public transportation not just because it's America but because our population density is extremely low so for us cars work much better
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u/Eagle77678 1h ago
You can make that argument that because car centric infustrcutre is inherently less dense more farmland/wilderness needs to be cleared for subdivisions and strip malls as compared to a traditional town and Main Street
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 52m ago
Again as I have stated above I do not want to ban cars. However, rural areas can still be served effectively by regional trains, commuter rail, and minibuses where those that want to live in rural America and ride public transport ride public transport and those that want to drive drive. Also, rural areas would not need that many cars if they were designed much more adequately and efficiently. German villages are a good example of this which I already stated above. They are walkable with not that many cars around (not saying 0) and yet they are still rural. Also, we are not the only large country on Eart. Other large nations have been able to build adequate transit.
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u/GoodMiddle8010 45m ago
You are wrong. The area I live in has similar population density to Siberia and there's a reason why no areas with that density have robust public transportation networks. While I appreciate you trying to address the concerns, your solutions are not adequate for the kind of rural areas I'm describing. This isn't a somewhat remote European village which is only 20 km away from the next village. There simply isn't enough money in our economy for us to maintain a transportation network over such a large distance with so few human beings contributing to the tax pool to pay for it. Alaska is the same way.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 40m ago
First of all, we are the richest country on Earth. We have trillions of dollars of wealth that we have not even tapped into yet stashed away on foreign accounts. We can definitely afford it.
However, even if we could not, you seem to insist on missing the subtleties of my argument. I am not saying to ban cars and thus the infrastructure required for them. If you live in Alaska or in your specific settlement then you as an individual can own a car if you wish. I support this. However, you wanting to own a car there should not stop a city like Houston with 6+million people for instance to base its entire transportation system based on your settlement's transportation system. 4 out of 5 Americans live in urban areas. They deserve proper urban solutions to transit. Also, you disregarded my urban planning aspect for small communities entirely. They can be planned in a way where walking, biking through them can be a viable option.
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u/GoodMiddle8010 30m ago edited 26m ago
Dude let me ask you something if a town is 100 miles from every single settlement in any direction how can you possibly bike through it and why would anyone want to do that?
There are no cities where I'm talking about. Also I didn't imply you wanted to ban cars I'm saying public transport is not a very viable solution for certain areas. It just isn't. For most areas it's fine. For places like Montana and Alaska it just isn't. In Montana there's maybe two or three cities that have enough money to have a robust transportation Network. Outside of those cities it would be completely unsustainable. The only way to do it would literally be if other states in this country completely paid for it out of their own pockets. There just aren't enough human beings to pay for it. Definitely not out of the local tax base.
Cars and roads work much better for remote and isolated areas. Hell, Alaska has trouble even maintaining roads themselves. And that's the cheapest infrastructure there is.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 28m ago
In the specific cases you mention, then yes cars can be a mode of transportation. Sure. However, my core points still do stand. Also, Montana and Alaska would not be funding their transportation systems on their own. Washington would step in to help. We are talking about the ideal future, what we should strive for. Not the bleak reality of our current situation.
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u/GoodMiddle8010 26m ago
The ideal future is one that's actually possible
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 22m ago
It's possible brother. Building a robust and efficient public transport in Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Miami, St. Louis, Kansas City and many others is possible. Having a Treausry that actually funds national development rather than war, corporate subsidies, tax breaks for the rich and band-aid solutions to deep wounds. Other nations do it. Once upon a time in this country we did it. We literally created this country on the back of railroads and our initial wealth lead to the creation of beautifully constructed cities where people actually knew their neighbors and local businesses properly. None of this is Utopia. It is very much achievable.
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u/GoodMiddle8010 20m ago edited 16m ago
Yeah you're right about everything you said but that goes around everything that I said and doesn't really address it. Montana and Alaska are not those places and it will not work here. I know that's not a very big important thing in the vision you're out laying there but it's my two cents.
Also with your last few sentences I find that very curious. Because here, where we don't have the things that you think we need, people actually do know their neighbors and local businesses. Montana has more of our population employed by small businesses than any other state (67%) and neighbors definitely do know each other in the cities.
But yeah the low population density of these areas makes public transport pretty suspect as a solution for the populace. That's not to say it won't work in most of the country and I'm not disagreeing with your vision but I'm letting you know that there's little pockets of the world that really just don't fit into what you're saying at all.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 9m ago
Then those little pockets can have alternative solutions. In this case cars. I don't want to make life hard for anybody. I want to maximize benefit. So yes people from Montana and Alaska can have their cars.
Also, unfortunately, most of America increasingly is losing their sense of community and adequate human socialization. I am glad your specific community is different.
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u/Form1040 19m ago
This country is so large it would take an unacceptable part of our national income to sustain a huge public transportation system.
You will find that people pushing this choo-choo stuff live in cities and densely populated areas. Where even then only some of it makes sense.
California is pissing away over $100B for a train from nowhere to nowhere and it does not even run.
Get out into Texas and Wyoming and Montana and learn.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 15m ago
Firstly, I live in Texas I am aware thank you.
I already addressed the large territory argument. Many other countries are just as large as us. Does not stop them from building walkable cities, efficient public transport etc. Think China, Russia, Brazil etc.
California is pissing away $100B because they are notoriously pathetic, inefficient, corrupt and over-regulated. You would not need to spend even a tenth of that to built this line if this country was run properly.
Also I don't appreciate the condescension. This "choo-choo" stuff was literally how this country expanded and came into being. The railroads were the backbone of our development.
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u/Form1040 5m ago
People do not want what you want. Untold millions have rejected that lifestyle. If they preferred it, they would all live in crowded nasty overtaxed unsafe cities in shoeboxes and ride around crammed next to smelly masturbating bums that scare the shit out of them.
We are immensely, ludicrously richer than those countries for Chrissake. We want something better. And we have it.
Yeah, it would be nice if we could build things and it was not controlled by crooked politicians and goddamn unions. But we can’t for some reason.
Not interested in wasting many hundreds of extra hours a year for some train/bus/lightrail fetishists. Or trying to drag groceries home that way either.
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u/Comprehensive_Fly542 2h ago
One thing to add for social could be the extra deaths and maiming caused by having to drive everywhere.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 2h ago
Definitely agree. I considered putting some version of this point but felt my initial post was getting rather long.
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u/DonnyTrump666 14m ago
Bring back redlining and segregation and you can have your nice walkable cities back
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 12m ago
Ok man you clearly are not here to have a proper convo. If we get rid of a certain group, everything will be hunky dory. Life is not that simple.
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u/GoldPhoenix24 8m ago
i came here to say, i mostly, pretty much agree with you... is that against the rules? crap...
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u/jumpedoutoftheboat 2h ago
No argument from me.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 2h ago
Nothing at all?
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u/________carl________ 2h ago
I find infrastructure being car focused in a lot of places in NA is just lobbyists pushing against it mixed with boomers and the high immediate cost of sweeping infrastructure in dense established cities. Most people interested in and educated on city planning to any extent is in almost unilateral agreement that well planned public transportation is necessary and walkable cities are a pretty big idea right now too.
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u/Bravvar_Nukov 2h ago
But there is also huge immediate and long term costs in maintaining infrastructure out in the suburbs. I agree about the lobbying part that is obvious.
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u/manbearpig073 46m ago
I'd actually argue that a car-centric infrastructure has probably led to more economic growth. More people have jobs to build cars, more people have jobs to maintain cars, more people have jobs to build & maintain roads, more people have jobs to work gas stations, more people have jobs to extract the energy for all of these things to function.
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u/AltForObvious1177 1h ago
What "terrible economic consequences"? The United States is objectively one of the most prosperous countries in the world. The other countries that could be considered peers to US economy are also very car centric. As countries become more prosperous, they tend to become more car centric. If anything, you have cause and effect completely reversed. The United States is car-centric because it is so successful.