They used to be. And then people decided carriages were more convenient than walking. And then people decided cars were more convenient than carriages.
And then people demanded lots of paved raceways for their cars, which filled up, and made things dangerous for everybody, and worthwhile places far apart, and most of the drivers angry and miserable. Now, the world is on fire, mental health and social cohesion has gone to shit, and all those paved raceways are falling apart because nobody can afford to fix them.
But, yeah, the first part of that story is cute.
That sounds like an exaggeration.
Aye, it does sound that way until you start digging into it. The traffic congestion, the road rage, and the rising rate of traffic fatalities are just obvious.
Think about it more, and work-from-home is still a big fight after the pandemic because people hate commuting. It’s pretty obvious when looking around out on the road; driving does not make drivers happy on the whole. The world is literally on fire; we had weeks of air-quality alerts around here because of record-breaking Canadian wildfires. Driving everywhere cuts off interactions with other people, the “weak ties” in a community that we now know are essential to countering the loneliness epidemic. In fact, the opioid epidemic is related, because opioids simulate the same brain receptors as social connectedness. And, of course, American infrastructure consistently gets failing grades because we don’t maintain it. We would, but state and municipal budgets are straining under the burden.
I’m short, there’s tons of justification to “fuck cars”, if you look. There’s lots more than what I’ve mentioned here.
So, is the community against all cars? Or just the ones for cities? I went to LA last month to see my brother and we went to this nice area that had blocked the street off permanently and all the restaurants and businesses had taken over the road. I. Fucking. Loved. It. All the extra space was great. So in city life, I completely get it.
That being said… I am a car person. I have an MR2 turbo I love to death. I have a lifted F250 (I grew up on a farm in a small shithole town in SC. I know I’m considered bad here but eh, the Kia Sorento isn’t going to pull the dump trailer or the tractor and the lift is because I’m 8 at heart and still smile driving it around) and a heavily modified Jeep Cherokee I play off-road with. Plus my daily Honda Civic. Cars have souls and driving is a sense of freedom I am addicted to. I can promise you 100% of “grown ups” (age is subjective here) with loud cars isn’t to impress anyone else, it’s for us. I won’t even drive my MR2 at certain times to make sure I don’t disturb anyone and when I’m around a populated area, I shift at low RPM and keep the noise down a lot, but away from everyone in bum fuck rural America, that exhaust note is all for me.
I get you hate cars, I even agree for the most part. But does that mean ALL cars? Am I bad here?
Personal vehicles have a place, and a lot of people really enjoy the hobby of it. But at least what I’m against is how they’ve completely and utterly, fully enveloped our modern Life, paving over the places we have to live in the process. The auto industry has made people addicted to the concept that every place has to be accessable and beholdent to the automobile, making it inaccessible and very unpleasant for anyone who doesn’t buy into that system (pedestrians, disabled people, cyclists etc). It’s honestly a violation of personal freedom that many people can not perform their day-to-day basic functions of socializing, gathering food and working without paying into the micro transactional hell that of the Auto/Oil industry.
Being able to go somewhere and visit worry people without dribble feeding that piggy industry with my hard earned money into gas/electricity is freeing and should be the default. If someone wants to blast down a country road listening to the purr of the engine, power to them. Forcing everyone through deliberately exclusionary infrastructural planning to pilot a few Tons of metal plastic and combustion engines just to perform basic tasks? Fuck off.
(Edit: my bad language is not directed at you, but at the industry, you sound chill)
Nah man, I completely get it. Like I said above, I live in a rural shithole in SC and transportation is like 1/4rd or more of a lot of people’s income. Its easy to say “JuSt bUy SoMeThInG oLdER, yOU DoNt NeEd AnyTHiNg NiCe” but Im a technician at heart and full understand the depth of knowledge you need to properly maintain and repair an old car. If you are super duper lucky, you’ll have an uncle or brother to help you but most people are at the mercy of the shops around them and I personally have been F’d in the A because of ignorance or compliance and I know in some rather silly and not on purpose detail how a vehicle works. Public transportation doesn’t seem to be a possibility in our neck of the woods but doesn’t mean being a slave to car manufacturers is the only solution. I love the freedom, I even drive for a living now and still love it, but I’m not foolish enough to think I am not the outlier.
In my mind yes, because of environmental concerns.
…so we’re getting sidedrives then?
So everyone should walk everywhere? Not even bikes or scooters?
Oh how nice you can rub it in you can walk great distances without pain, have that sort of time in your day, can afford to live so close to work, assume a bathroom is going to be available or having to carry anything heavy in any of those photos. The world is against those with disabilities and poverty.
If you want people to abandon cars, make the alternatives better. Unfortunately I never see that happening, I only see attempts to make car travel worse. I hate public transport with a passion, because it is so bad. When I was commuting, it took an hour each way to go 13 miles, but if I tried to take public transport, it would have taken two hours each way, including 2 miles of walking on a state highway with no shoulder and no sidewalks. Would have had to take a bus to the light rail, and change trains at least once. This light rail shared the same road that cars use, so it was subject to all of the same traffic issues that cars suffered.
Due to induced demand and other factors, constricting automobile traffic improves public transit and makes getting around by transit and taking a car better in the long run.
Yes, in the short term it would seem negative (30 minutes by car vs. 2hr becomes 1hr vs. 2hr), but more people using transit would spur investment into transit. This would start with better allocation of bus routes to more directly go to desired destinations. In the medium term it would be making other areas easier to use alternatives such as walking and bike paths along state routes like the one you’d take. In the long term it would make good sense to invest in build commuter rail lines into and out of the city, which would be better funded by fares, private and government investment. All of this would reduce traffic from cars in the city as well, without needing to increase the roadway maintenance budget from having bigger roads.
The other thing is that if the light-rail road became pedestrian only, it would have right-of-way through the entire route and wouldn’t have to wait for the cars. Pedestrians wouldn’t block a moving LRV (or they would at their peril).
This light rail shared the same road that cars use, so it was subject to all of the same traffic issues that cars suffered.
so make the cars go somewhere else. make more public transit that comes more often. make sure everything that people need to live is within walking distance (i am not saying to confine people to one area, only to make it possible to live in that one area). make more trains, bike paths. and plaxes you can safely walk.
so make the cars go somewhere else
Your first suggestion Is what I hate about the car hating crowd. Remove that from your agenda. Make your alternatives better than a car without screwing over the car drivers. You will make more people accept your changes that way. Light rail in San Jose is a disaster, it does not go to useful places, and it gets there slowly. It should have been a subway so it could be independent of surface traffic.
No. Making the cars go somewhere else is the most important thing. It wouldn’t screw over car drivers, because car drivers wouldn’t need cars to get everywhere. If there are fewer cars, then all other traffic is faster. Even if a train only moves at the speed that a car would have moved at, it still moves more people. The same goes for buses and trams. Bicycles and walking will still be slower than it’s possible for cars to be, but since they take up less space, they will be faster in practice. Also, without cars, everyone will be far safer, the air will be far cleaner, and cities will be far quieter. Then, when cars are gone, you won’t need parking lots. The parking lots can be turned into something useful, whether it’s housing, stores, parks, or literally anything that isn’t an asphalt slab.
![[meme] Pedestrians shouldn't be relegated to the sidelines](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/6b416d86-6a93-45bc-9275-c7c1d7a52943.webp){kind=link}