[Schroedingersat]

Using transit, walking, or cycling is promoting 'other policies that have an outsized impact beyond shallow lifestyle choices' because these modes all hage network effects. It becomes vastly easier for city planners to override idiotic traffic engineers with once a comparatively tiny threshold of people are using them. There is also a network effect in knowledge and experience. If you learn all the safe byways and tracks then it becomes immensely easier for anyone nearby who knows you to start walking, if twenty of you in an area start cycling then your local mechanic might be afford to stay in business and run an outreach event.

[throwaway894345]

> Using transit, walking, or cycling is promoting 'other policies that have an outsized impact beyond shallow lifestyle choices' because these modes all hage network effects.

I see your point, but this isn't viable. Too many people live too far away from their workplaces, shopping centers, etc (not to mention unpleasant weather) for walking/cycling and we don't have adequate public transit networks (nor can we build them in time to meet our public transit goals). Moreover, EVs are coming in very quickly and will largely wipe out our personal transportation carbon footprint (especially as the grid transitions to clean energy) such that there's very little to be gained (environmentally speaking) from a transition to walking, cycling, and public transit (I say this as someone who wants America to be more walkable, but not at the expense of the environment). Not only is it technically unviable to build out the transit networks and otherwise reorganize our society away from cars, but it's politically unviable--apart from urban progressives, there's very little political will for public transit (many of the people who say they support increased public transit networks aren't actually going to avail themselves of them until they really become more convenient than cars for their specific transit needs).

[Schroedingersat]

> Moreover, EVs are coming in very quickly and will largely wipe out our personal transportation carbon footprint (especially as the grid transitions to clean energy) such that there's very little to be gained

EVs still cause massive inefficiency in infrastructure and living. They require obscene amounts of energy to make and run (just less obscene than similarly oversized ICEs). They cause local and global pollution. And they compete for resources with other, much better solutions. Direct emissions are only a tiny part of the ravages cars cause on the climate and environment. The only upside is they are so inefficient they might induce the public to buy grid storage directly.

> Not only is it technically unviable to build out the transit networks and otherwise reorganize our society away from cars,

Places like istanbul or toronto prove that it can be done in less time than an EV transition will take (and in toronto's case in the face of massive political opposition). The costs are commensurable with the subsidies and infrastructure required for moving from ice to ev.

Getting the political will starts with not concern trolling with lies every time it comes up.

[throwaway894345]

> EVs still cause massive inefficiency in infrastructure and living. They require obscene amounts of energy to make and run (just less obscene than similarly oversized ICEs).

Maybe, but there's no sense in optimizing for those things in the midst of a climate crisis. Yes, if we could flip a switch and everyone could start cycling, that would help the climate crisis enormously, but there is no such switch and in reality it would be completely reorganizing our society which is not a viable project in the timeframe the climate demands.

> They cause local and global pollution.

They cause less pollution per passenger mile than the average diesel bus.

> The only upside is they are so inefficient they might induce the public to buy grid storage directly.

They are strictly more efficient than the status quo, and especially where it counts: miles traveled per unit carbon emission. This is the overriding concern.

> Places like istanbul or toronto prove that it can be done in less time than an EV transition will take (and in toronto's case in the face of massive political opposition).

Istanbul and Toronto are more densely populated than almost anywhere in the United States. Of course public transit investment works there. Moreover, they're individual small places--we're talking about public transit infrastructure for the entirety of the United States--there aren't enough public transit infrastructure firms in the world to get that done, and developing experienced people to do that work takes decades and considerable expense.

> Getting the political will starts with not concern trolling with lies every time it comes up.

I would say that smugness and self-righteousness from the anti-car people is the biggest obstacle to political will. I don't think the people bringing a dose of reality to the anti-car party are doing any meaningful harm.

[Schroedingersat]

> Maybe, but there's no sense in optimizing for those things in the midst of a climate crisis. Yes, if we could flip a switch and everyone could start cycling, that would help the climate crisis enormously, but there is no such switch and in reality it would be completely reorganizing our society which is not a viable project in the timeframe the climate demands.

Those things are the climate crisis. Tailpipe emissions are only one part of the ravages that car dependent suburbia puts on the climate.

There is also a trivial switch to start the transition for >50% of the population. Put some paint and barnicles on the roads and end euclidean zoning.

> They are strictly more efficient than the status quo, and especially where it counts: miles traveled per unit carbon emission. This is the overriding concern.

The overriding concern is units of carbon emission. Halving the per km but doubling the miles travelled doesn't net you anything.

> Istanbul and Toronto are more densely populated than almost anywhere in the United States. Of course public transit investment works there. Moreover, they're individual small places--we're talking about public transit infrastructure for the entirety of the United States--there aren't enough public transit infrastructure firms in the world to get that done, and developing experienced people to do that work takes decades and considerable expense.

Low density is a symptom, not a cause. If you don't legally mandate low density, take the lion's share of infrastructure to enable it, and gesture to traffic making things unlivable any time anyone tries to build an apartment then you get density hy default.

More of the people live in the higher density areas definitionally. Stop forcing them to spread out and let the others who actually need to be spread out use EVs (or ICEs as there are so few of themit doesn't matter). More money has been gifted to Elon Musk for luxury vehicles in california alone than would be required to build out a world class transit system for San Francisco and LA from scratch, at his promis of a ridiculous boondoggle, high speed rail was cancelled.

> I don't think the people bringing a dose of reality to the anti-car party are doing any meaningful harm.

"We can't do the one thing that works because of those other people objecting to it" while objecting to it is obvious disingenuous lies and self righteous smugness to boot. You are the opposition you gesture vaguely to, and the solution to the political problem is to stop being the political problem.

It's also not self righteous or smug to say stop taking most of the infrastructure money and 90% of the communally paid for space to build a moat of death around me that is only passible if I spend a quarter of my income on a car. It's not even neutral. It's a tiny step towards equality and you're so entitled you perceive it as an attack.

EVs are here to save the car industry, not the planet.

[throwaway894345]

> Those things are the climate crisis. Tailpipe emissions are only one part of the ravages that car dependent suburbia puts on the climate.

Perhaps, but again we're not going to convert our suburbs into dense urban utopias in just a few decades even if we had the political will. But as with EVs, we can move people from natural gas residential heating to cleaner heat pumps (which become even cleaner as we transition the grid to renewables).

> There is also a trivial switch to start the transition for >50% of the population. Put some paint and barnicles on the roads and end euclidean zoning.

If you want bike lanes, go for it, but you're deluding yourself if you think that's going to meaningfully reduce transportation emissions for >50% of the US population.

> The overriding concern is units of carbon emission. Halving the per km but doubling the miles travelled doesn't net you anything.

Of course, EVs don't travel twice as far as ICE cars, and their per-mile carbon emissions of an EV is about 1/3 that of gasoline cars today (https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.html) and it only gets better as the grid transitions to clean energy sources.

> Low density is a symptom, not a cause. If you don't legally mandate low density, take the lion's share of infrastructure to enable it, and gesture to traffic making things unlivable any time anyone tries to build an apartment then you get density hy default.

Yes, zoning plays a part in density, but removing zoning restrictions isn't going to turn some exurb into Istanbul or Toronto. Density has no natural state, it's the result of interaction between dynamic social, technological, and economic forces which push people together or pull them apart. Arguing that everything would be dense enough to support public transit if only we changed our zoning laws is absurd, and I say that as someone who wants to change zoning laws.

> More of the people live in the higher density areas definitionally. Stop forcing them to spread out and let the others who actually need to be spread out use EVs (or ICEs as there are so few of themit doesn't matter).

Not definitionally, but yes, more people live in higher density areas. I'm not "forcing them to spread out"--I'm support changing zoning laws! Critically, *changing zoning laws isn't incompatible with EVs*! My position has consistently been "we should continue to invest in EVs rather than forcing everyone to change their lifestyles" (obviously this doesn't imply forcing people who are happily using public transit to adopt EVs), but it seems your position has changed from "we should force everyone to change their lifestyles" to "stop forcing public-transit-using urbanites to use EVs" (which no one was proposing).

> More money has been gifted to Elon Musk for luxury vehicles in california alone than would be required to build out a world class transit system for San Francisco and LA from scratch, at his promis of a ridiculous boondoggle, high speed rail was cancelled.

This doesn't impugn EVs. I can't speak to California specifically, but nationally it makes a lot more sense to invest in something that we know will work (EVs) than something that is politically impossible, impossibly expensive, and certain to fail to meet the required environmental timelines (getting some significant share of the country to move to areas of higher density and change their lifestyles so they can make public transit viable in the next several decades).

> It's also not self righteous or smug to say stop taking most of the infrastructure money and 90% of the communally paid for space to build a moat of death around me that is only passible if I spend a quarter of my income on a car. It's not even neutral.

I don't know how you can type that (especially "moat of death") and not realize how smug or self-righteous it sounds to people outside of the anti-car ideological bubble. I don't mean this as an attack, but to let you know how you sound to others (which is important if you want to persuade others to join your anti-car crusade!).

> It's a tiny step towards equality and you're so entitled you perceive it as an attack.

I didn't perceive an attack until your "you're so entitled", but I'm happy to overlook that. My "smug and self-righteous" wasn't an attack nor a counterattack, it's a description of how the anti-car rhetoric (and the people who espouse it) comes off to just about everyone else (you're welcome to disagree, but I think you should at least consider the possibility that I'm correct). I think there are some good points that bely much of the anti-car movement's rhetoric, but when you tell rural people to forego cars and use bikes and trains to get around it sounds like "let them eat cake" (I've lived in big cities, rural towns, and in the middle of nowhere). It's going to sound smug to just about everyone, and talking about how the US is being paved over by suburbs sounds ignorant and absurd to everyone who doesn't live on the coasts (I don't believe you've said this, but this is a common anti-car talking point).

> EVs are here to save the car industry, not the planet.

I don't think the car industry has been particularly eager to adopt EVs, but I'm sure they like the government incentives. That said, I prefer carbon pricing which would have made ICE vehicles more expensive. Unfortunately, progressives react allergically to any solution that is "market based" and conservatives react allergically to anything that is a tax, so we get government spending. It's imperfect in that society ends up bailing out the fossil fuel industries, but it's still far better than chasing an ideological pipedream.

[Schroedingersat]

Sweden and switzerland disprove all of your rhetoric about insufficient density or any argument about cold weather or hills.

Sweden has a lower population density than the USA, but has a quarter modeshare in each of transit and cycling. There are cities with population densities as low as some places in texas that still have good non-car infrastructure. Re. building transit and density in a couple of decades, that's how long it took to steamroll urban areas and replace them with highways. It can be undone in less time. And again toronto and istanbul did it, so san francisco and new york with orders of magnitude more money can do it too.

It's not an idealogical pipedream when many places have done it successfully. Just because you currently choose to restrict the designs that produce good living areas with infrastructure that is far cheaper to maintain and run to rich people, doesn't make them expensive or unattainable.

Sustainable transport and zoning are good for the budget, they're good for the environment, they're good for car drivers, they're good for residents, and they're good for the poor. Your gaslighting about calling people smug not being an attack does not change that.

The pipedream that hasn't happened is one where self driving cars work properly and don't render any high density area completely uninhabitable by humans.