[zanny]

What is more efficient than all the cars is electrified rail. That is an order of magnitude more energy efficient, more if you can manage to get near capacity high frequency trains.

A lot of our energy expenditure is lifestyle satisfying. Asia and the better cities in Europe demonstrate you can build dense cities with excellent transit as an alternative to car dependency, but the US fairly universally rejects it from both sides - white flight to suburbs and their perpetual expansion and the inability to actually build dense and transit oriented housing, hell most places use zoning codes to actively prevent its development.

We could do a lot of good for the world just stopping our out of control need to drive cars everywhere and for everything, but the willpower is very much not there, largely because of corporate interference that bred this climate that transit is for poor people and to own a car is to "succeed" in life. Its such an awful, backwards culture perpetuated by the profit motive over possibly the survival of the society.

[osigurdson]

>> We could do a lot of good for the world just stopping our out of control need to drive cars everywhere and for everything

You are absolutely right, zero emission private aircraft would be much better. Let's build a world where everyone can have that if they want instead of placing nihilistic limits on things.

[wittycardio]

Some of us prefer to live in reality

[betwixthewires]

I agree with you, but if you look at our current reality, plenty of it would've been unbelievable 100 years ago. 200 years ago and it's all magic. You have to dream a little big to innovate anything, and if it's feasible then it's a good idea, and if its not then let people try and fail.

[wittycardio]

I agree , innovation is the only way out of this mess. But progress is never a guarantee so you do as much as you can within the Current bounds of technology and change as the technology changes.

[osigurdson]

Things will get better, not worse. Just watch. Nihilists need to sit on the sidelines where they belong.

[wittycardio]

I'm not a nihilist, I believe in technological progress. It's just not a magic pill that absolves us of all responsibility.

[issa]

People always forget that it isn't a question of leaving American cities as-is and expecting everyone to give up cars. The solution starts with building walkable cities that have public transportation.

[supertrope]

Public transit boosters usually understand that pedestrian friendly street design and higher density housing is also needed. The problem is NIMBYs who resist anything but single family house zoning. Not even duplexes are ok for these people.

[zanny]

I think trying to retrofit existing single family into urbanism is kind of a lost cause. Everything is built for it, and nothing is built for urban density and transit, at some point you might as well just stake a new city in the middle of nowhere (preferably off a major interstate and rail line that has water access) and build from scratch rather than having to bulldoze everything thats already there.

The Northeast US cities have the bones of urbanism still. Their grids were often laid before the car, so you have the narrow streets, housing without setbacks, capacity for mixed use and density to justify good transit infrastructure. The problem is outside New York the cities proper all depopulated - Baltimore and Philly peaked decades ago and have seen mostly population decline since mid last century. The problem is turning these places around requires a lot of investment to rebuild the decayed urbanism that is there and they both (the whole corridor) needs more transit that what it already has to support real urbanism growth when it starts up again.

These are places that have been systemically paracitized for a long time. Taxes are higher in Boston, Philly, NYC, Baltimore, etc than anywhere else in their respective states, and the actual cities are some of the only property tax revenue positive places anywhere - all that suburban sprawl is dependent on outside money to sustain all the roads and infrastructure in ways these cities are not. But that outside money often came from these cities, and we saw huge white flight last century as wealth fled to sprawling suburbs.

None of these places can really turn around the economic sackings they have endured on their own. Even NYC has huge budget problems supporting its metro. But good luck getting the broader fed to reinvest in cities in the 21st century... there are defense contractors pocketbooks to pad, companies to bailout, and techbros to give tax exemptions to.

[issa]

100%. These things have not happened by accident or in a vacuum.

[supertrope]

The trend is net migration from north to south, and east to west. Unfortunately this means more automobile dependent cities.