Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
With me I can see both sides of the coin where you might not like it, but yet still like it at the same time. Weird huh? ;0)
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Debate About a Plan to Eliminate Private Vehicles
- Thread starter Brickjectivity
- Start date
I really try not to hate cars. I try to view it practically. I actually plan to learn how to drive so I can drive myself (and my cat and belongings) back to California. There's cars I admire and dreamed of having since I was a kid ('66 or '67 Corvette Stingray for me). So it's not about hating cars. There's ways to make it work for everyone but the US doesn't seem to want to put in the work.
Vans are generally not a problem. It's these huge boxy raised vehicles where the grill is at the same height or taller than the average person.
In the US is depends on where you live. Public Transport is not that widely available in a lot of rural environments. I live between 2 big cities as so I could easily live without a Car; however, Public Transport is not reliable, costly and more dangerous (crime). Scheduling appointments would be challenging especially if everyone is doing it. The daily use of the NYC transit system is 3.6 million. NYC has 8.8 million people; NJ has 9.29 million people and CT has 3.6million people. If all these people had to use it daily it would not be able to handle it.
I use public transport to go to NYC periodically. Round Trip for 1 person by train is $19.50. In the City if I want to use the subway its 2.90 a ride. Usually, I walk a lot in the city but will take a subway ride at least once per trip at the most twice. At times I will need to take a Cab to make a specific appointment which is charged by distance.
My last trip going into the City I was delayed 8 minutes, and I had to stand the last leg in a crowded train and on the return trip my second leg had the train canceled and I had to wait 1 hr for another train.
In my opinion Public Transport would need major upgrades in my area before enacting and would have to be created in a lot of the rural areas of the US.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Oh the monster truck look.
an anarchist
Your local anarchist.
When I used to follow "conspiracy theory" websites years ago, the websites were saying that a plan by the Deep State was to eliminate private driving and car ownership all together. We gonna transfer to a society where AI drives all the cars. The reasoning is thought to be because to take away the citizens right/ability to drive makes them all the more easy to rule. All drives at that point will be monitored by the Internet of Things.
I don't follow the sites anymore, but I do believe that we will eventually have no more private driving.
I don't follow the sites anymore, but I do believe that we will eventually have no more private driving.
Yes. It's about the height of the grill and also the ability of the person to see over the hood, which is greatly reduced in large SUVs (imagine a Denali which is a gigantic tank of a car, or a Hummer).
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
It's been a huge eye opener on how towns were built in the past compared to the ones today.
In the past people had walked back and forth so towns were built to accommodate that, and now since people are driving, towns are now no longer accommodating to people who still like to walk and commute physically.
I'm seeing in my area at least there have been efforts to accommodate physical commuters like wider sidewalks and bike lanes alongside roads, but it's still incredibly hostile when those accommodations are missing.
I do transportation planning professionally. A few thoughts here:
Sounds like she's talking about certain voluntary transportation demand management measures (I only watched the first 2 minutes). I think programs like that are reasonable: the benefit-cost ratio means less burden to taxpayers by accepting, and it's entirely voluntary. Nobody is forced to give up their license.
I think a program like that in the US wouldn't have much uptake, mainly because of how auto-centric most of the country is. (Also, there's probably the makings of an ADA case: if you give free transit to people who turn over their driver's license, then people who can't get a license for medical reasons are excluded from the free transit deal... but that's probably a side issue here).
Before I saw the video, I assumed that they were going in another direction with this: subscription fees for driving. Lots of industries are trying to replicate the SaaS ("software as a service") model to turn what used to be a periodic purchase into an ongoing revenue stream.
Auto manufacturers have already been playing around with this to a degree (e.g. an annual subscription fee to enable heated seats), but I'm sure they're looking for ways to "SaaS-ize" the car itself. This would probably involve some form of lease instead of having drivers purchase and own their cars outright.
It's also an end run around the "right to repair" controversy facing the auto industry: if you don't actually own the car, then you don't have a right to repair.
Kathryn
It was on fire when I laid down on it.
Thank goodness that I live in an area that has wider sidewalks and bike lanes already - in fact, it's a bicycle hub of sorts and I appreciate that. But after this year, I can see why some people can't or won't walk places. I understand! Look, we need both options I believe. Like I said, I can't imagine not having a vehicle.
PureX
Veteran Member
More beneficial OVERALL. But the problems are in the immediate details.
Transportation is a modern necessity, meaning that the oligarchs will want very much to get control over it so they can use it to further price-gouge us all economically. Just as they are already doing with communications, energy, housing, health care, and education. And most of us are all already stretched to the point of being one misfortune away from irrecoverable economic disaster.
So however we intend to minimize motor vehicle use, we damn well better get control over this boundlessly greedy capitalist oligarchy, first. Or they're just going to use this as yet another way of destroying people's lives for ever greater profits to themselves.
Transportation is a modern necessity, meaning that the oligarchs will want very much to get control over it so they can use it to further price-gouge us all economically. Just as they are already doing with communications, energy, housing, health care, and education. And most of us are all already stretched to the point of being one misfortune away from irrecoverable economic disaster.
So however we intend to minimize motor vehicle use, we damn well better get control over this boundlessly greedy capitalist oligarchy, first. Or they're just going to use this as yet another way of destroying people's lives for ever greater profits to themselves.
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In a lot of the US (and Canada), the built form of those old walkable areas would be illegal for a new build.
Things like setback requirements, building height restrictions, and zoning land use restrictions make for an urban built form where, if you choose to walk, you'll be walking much longer distances for basic daily tasks.
PureX
Veteran Member
There's no profit to be gained from people walking. Walking doesn't cost anything unless the capitalists can somehow figure out how to capitalize on it. But driving! Well, that costs us money in all kinds of ways. Driving is the second most expensive thing we pay to do, after obtaining shelter. So the people that control the government's decisions and actions have no interest in enticing or enabling anyone to walk.
Heyo
Veteran Member
Would it be better overall? Yes, public transport uses less carbon than individual cars.
Having said that, I don't see it happening on a big scale soon. Public transport is fairly good in cities and between cities, but it sucks in rural areas. I couldn't live here without a car. Car sharing also doesn't work here because a central parking space would be prohibitively far away with so few people having to share a car.
That may change when self-driving cars are advanced enough and allowed on the road. (And it wouldn't have to be so much advanced as a generally self-driving car, as it only needs to manage the ways between the central parking spot and the homes of the sharers.)
Self-driving taxis could also help.
By the way, shoes are overrated, I do fine without.
An alternative possibility is the phasing out of private motor vehicles over a certain length, width and horsepower, and requiring them to run on electricity or hydrogen. (You might like to add that list.)
anotherneil
Well-Known Member
No. There's no reason for doing this. Let the free market do that if that's where it wants to go.
Heyo
Veteran Member
There is no such thing as a free market, all markets are regulated by restrictions and incentives (subsidies).
Tomef
Well-Known Member
I need a car where I live, although I don't use it much any more, hardly at all. Mostly I walk to the shops and buy no more than I can carry, or cycle. If I move back to living in a city, I'd prefer to rent a car when I need one.
Some cities are well adapted to getting around on foot, by bike or public transport. I visited Gothenburg a few years ago, and the tram system there was v. good. Trams came along every few minutes, were clean and quiet, and it was easy to figure out which tram to get to go where etc. If more places were like that, personally I think getting rid of private vehicles would be a great idea.
I visited the US (Texas) years ago. What was strange for me was hardly seeing anyone on the street, and the drive-through everything. Drive-through banks?!? That, to me, seemed more like encouraging people to be wasteful and lazy, way beyond mere convenience. Better urban planning, an awareness that simply endlessly consuming fossil fuels is not sustainable, promotion of information about health and lifestyle etc would have positive benefits beyond traffic reduction, I think.
I worry about what will happen in big cities when self-driving cars get good enough (and when the laws change to allow them to operate without a driver on board). When that happens, there's suddenly going to be a cross-elasticity between driving and paid parking.
If you, say, drive into Manhattan or downtown Toronto for lunch, parking will probably cost on the order of $10-20/h. If your autonomous electric car costs a buck an hour or less to run, the economically rational decision would be to get your car to just drive around instead of paying to park it.