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by crdb
3165 days ago
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> Treat cars as a luxury good It's subtly different. The core idea is that car ownership has externalities and the implementation of solving these externalities is to limit absolute numbers and let the market decide what use to make of the quota. Luxury ownership is just one of many uses competing. Uber recently pushed prices up a bit [1] as it bought itself a rental fleet for its subsidiary Lion City Rentals; the ROI on these cars is worth more to Uber than what a citizen is prepared to pay to own a car. A parallel might be real estate. Yes, you could run a warehouse in Wall Street, but even if you get the permits from the local planning association, you'll be outbid by the investment banks. There is even an example of "luxury" Wall Street real estate in the form of 23 Wall Street [2] which was "purposely designed to be only four stories tall" whilst surrounded by skyscrapers. It is worth noting that the Singapore government actively works to reduce demand for cars, by increasing the quality and extent of public transport, making it accessible to all, and regulating the taxi and delivery industries carefully to enable them to be cheap and easily available. A COE-type scheme introduced in a city without high quality alternatives (such as Sydney or Los Angeles) would cause the immediate fall of the government responsible and a policy reversal from the newly elected replacement. [1] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/uber-bids-co... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_Wall_Street aka the "House of Morgan" |
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Well of course. It's a huge undertaking which would have to be executed over a generation, which probably requires a level of bipartisan political maturity and commitment that NSW can't muster (talking about Sydney). It could certainly be done though, maybe not with a COE system but by some other method of gradually pushing people out of their cars and into an expanding public transport network.
I guess describing everything they could do would take a book, but a good first step would be getting rid of the ridiculous helmet laws so at least people could ride to the station if they want to, and provide japanese-style mass bike parking there. Then just slowly start increasing the tax on cars, petrol, parking and tolls while absolutely pouring money into infrastructure (not roads), stopping any further urban sprawl, and systematically rezoning towards higher density and walkability. In 25 years you could achieve a lot.
I agree though, not going to happen anytime soon. Things will have to get worse before they can get better.