[bbv-if]

They were reusing bottles not because they were so conscious of the environment but because the country was dirt poor and could not afford producing enough new bottles. And believe me, Warsaw's buses and trams are much more comfortable and less overcrowded than they used to be ever before.

[abraxas]

I am a middle aged Varsovian. I know exactly how they used to function and how they function today. It's a mixed bag. The transit vehicles are more comfortable but less frequent on many routes and often get bogged down in car traffic which used to never happen in the eighties.

[bbv-if]

... because most people could not afford cars back then, could they?

[asjw]

And you think it's bad I guess...

But people don't need cars, they mostly need a way to commute, possibly for cheap

Would you say that the policies that San Francisco is implementing now, banning cars from the city centre, are a consequence of the city being dirty poor?

[Nasrudith]

Aside from poverty it indicates something about the government - that they didn't value the time of their workers and took it for granted. Essentially the same economic flaw as slavery which is rather telling.

[vkou]

Requiring car ownership to survive is not valuing the time of your workers.

The full cost of owning a car (Purchase price, insurance, maintenance, gas, replacement of tires, filters, storage, parking) in the US is ~2 years of post-tax wages for the average person, every 15 years. That's 4,000 hours at work, or ~266 hours/year.

That is a gross disregard of the value of human time - all because we can't figure out how to properly plan our communities. You drive to work, where you spend the first hour of your day, and much of the second hour, working to pay for the car that drove you to work. It's madness.

[abraxas]

I have no idea how you came to the conclusion that car based commute is inherently quicker than public transit based commute. Especially in the aggregate.