[ozborn]

Electric cars are not at all "counterproductive" for long term solutions to climate change. They are one piece in the big picture of fixing climate change, drawdown.org ranks electric vehicles as #26 on their solution list. (https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank)

Also, by your qualifying "long term" I assume you think they are fine short and even intermediate term? Given the urgency of the climate crisis, short and intermediate term matters - a lot.

I agree with you that public transportation and the "elimination of the suburban commuter lifestyle" (hard to define, but giving you the most charitable interpretation here) is very important. However, we don't have to choose one or the other, the decision as to which car to buy is typically an individual decision and I would think it correlates well with support for greener public transportation. Additionally, I fine it hard to believe that even in the long term there will be no need electric cars in more distant areas. Finally, development of electric cars and their infrastructure will also support electric public buses used for public transportation.

I'm glad Singapore is pursuing public transportation (a no-brainer in a city state) but the claim that it is not a "proper solution" isn't helpful and worse, it assumes that there is a solution. There isn't. There are MANY solutions which will be implemented at different speeds, with different levels of effectiveness and by many different organizations and individuals.

In general, it is better to encourage any useful efforts on this front rather than arguing that solution X isn't "proper" or less effective than solution Y.

[thatfrenchguy]

> Electric cars are not at all "counterproductive" for long term solutions to climate change. They are one piece in the big picture of fixing climate change, drawdown.org ranks electric vehicles as #26 on their solution list. (https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank)

That thing is literally written by Americans who are 95% likely of living in a car suburb. Of course I’d also put electric cars as a necessity if I were them, they don’t want to change their lifestyle (which, you know, is why we’re in this in the first place).

[augstein]

So serious question: What should they do?

Some solutions come to mind, but they would obviously only work for a fraction of the people currently living in suburbs:

- Work remotely

- Move closer to the city

- Connect suburbs to viable public transportation solutions

[AnthonyMouse]

> Connect suburbs to viable public transportation solutions

This is the thing that can't work. Public transit inherently requires density. Otherwise you have a bus that only comes twice a day and is still mostly empty because there aren't enough people per unit area to fill it.

Expecting commuter rail to eliminate cars in Spokane or Colorado Springs is delusional. It only works at all in major cities and even most of the cities in the US don't have enough density to make it really efficient -- and are prohibited by zoning laws from building at the density necessary to make that happen.

More to the point, even if we fixed the zoning today, it would take many years to actually build the density required to make it work, and until then people are still buying cars. And electric cars are better for the climate than gasoline.

[asdff]

It's way better to ride an ebike to the commuter rail station than a tesla to work. Build excellent bike networks for the suburbs. It's as cheap as sidewalk and/or paint.

[DoctorOetker]

I want to know AnthonyMouse's response to your argument: the treshold density in walking distance versus the treshold density in cycling distance will scale quadratically with the distance (since area is quadratic function of the radius), an electric bike that extends your range twice, will result in a 4 times higher "effective population density" for public transport to make sense.

Edit: just adding that any environmentally responsible form of personal transport doubles range, also results in quadratically (so four times) fewer stations and stops to be built, and linearly (so only half) the total length of rail or road to be laid and maintained

[AnthonyMouse]

> the treshold density in walking distance versus the treshold density in cycling distance will scale quadratically with the distance (since area is quadratic function of the radius), an electric bike that extends your range twice, will result in a 4 times higher "effective population density" for public transport to make sense.

That's exactly the problem you're working against. A bicycle doubles the radius from walking, but a car at 70MPH on the highway multiplies it by 20 or more, so you get hundreds of times the area and consequent sprawl. And ebikes at those speeds are fatally dangerous, so they can't be a replacement.

The thing that can actually be competitive is trains that can go as fast as cars, but then you need the density to fill them.

[thatfrenchguy]

If you build the rail, density will come. Bikes are also cool.

[JetSpiegel]

> density will come

Unless the NIMBY blocks high-rises.

[bazooka_penguin]

Restructuring communities around bus hubs doesnt sound like an awful idea to be honest. Even if everyone had a car, since it's the suburbs, it would probably cut down on day to day traffic and allow people to have more affordable housing.