[tfrutuoso]

That's very elitist. Not everyone lives in large cities with whole mass transit systems or works the usual 9-5. Even in large urban areas it's tricky to get around past a certain time. I remember working unexpected shifts and later staring at closed metro stations, having to walk in the rain to get home. No thanks. Also, some people like cars. Deal with it, i'm not ditching for an e-bike or whatever. An electric motorcycle actually sounds nice though, if not for the battery weight.

[jpatt]

Globally, your stance is very elitist. Only about 18% of the world has a car.

https://www.pd.com.au/blogs/how-many-cars-in-the-world/

North America is already auto-dependent and EVs are an important piece of the puzzle for that region. Their point is that EVs won’t possibly work resource or cost-wise when that 82% inevitably gets richer and asks, “what about me?”

[thehappypm]

I wouldn’t say elitist. I think different environments have different needs.

The US, for example, has roughly 1/4th the population density of the E.U., 1/0th of India’s and Japan’s, 1/5th China’s.

Maybe Europe and Japan can urbanize and get connected via HSR, but, the US is much sparser. Suburban houses with yards make a lot more sense; cramming into the cities and relying on public transportation just feels stupid to a lot of people.

[TheGRS]

I haven't ever put "living in a city" together with "elitist". Living in the suburbs away from the cacophony of the city, a 5 minute drive away from all your favorite chain stores and malls seems much more elitist to me.

[estebank]

You've identified a problem: public transport in some places sucks. But then veered away from the obvious solution: invest in it to make it not suck.

[zzzeek]

throwing money at urban problems does not necessarily have a great track record, and NYCTA has had lots of issues with corruption when they do have money to spend. Id be pretty skeptical that giving them a lot of money would mean you can hop on a train in 5 minutes at 2 am, it wouldnt even be cost effective to run that many trains at odd hours. Cars are terrific for this use case, however.

NYC cops have like a billion dollar budget and while they are great at protecting businesses in wealthy areas they are not very popular in lower income areas as they are both blase and overly brutal at the same time, their huge budget not having helped that aspect very much.

[JAlexoid]

NYC is one of the safest places in the US...

and even with fairly poor mass transit system - it's still is incredibly good by American standards.

I moved from NYC an hour north, to be more isolated than the "impersonal big cities". I barely know any of my neighbors - because there are no sidewalks and everyone is forced to drive for anything.

Car dependence kills people, kills communities and reduces your QoL.

[zzzeek]

You should move back to the city, then. I moved out because I had enough of the crowds and awful mass transit and I'm good with it. The NYC cops were absolutely awful for us as well.

[hot_gril]

NYC mass transit is poor? I've never lived there, but during my extended visits, it seemed like I could get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time.

[JAlexoid]

Relative to less dense global cities - yes, it's poor.

In American terms - it's probably one of the better ones.

[estebank]

Somehow the argument against more money for infrastructure is never levied against freeway expansions.

[jodrellblank]

Haha, but it is though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds-v2-qyCc8

"Throwing Good Money After Bad Car Infrastructure - Wonderland Road" - on the road widening project of Wonderland Road in Toronto.

[ryukafalz]

It is in urbanist circles; it's not by mass media and by the elected officials who can actually do something about it.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

throwing money at the NYC subway seems to have a generally great track record (albeit one featuring less efficiency than throwing money at other global subway systems). NYC could not function without it.

[NovemberWhiskey]

The 7 line extension cost over $3 billion dollars in 2023 terms to build 1.5 miles of track from Times Sq to Hudson Yards and build one new station there. I defy anyone to conclude this represented good value.

[KennyBlanken]

The NYC transit system costs $20BN/year to operate, serves a population of almost 9M people and pre pandemic had nearly 10 million passenger trips a day; currently 5M.

Montana spends $1BN/year on roadways and receives another $3BN/year in federal funding and serves a population of 1M people.

The NYC subways system moves five times the population of Montana every day and costs half as much per capita.

Do go on about how subways are a waste of money.

[NovemberWhiskey]

Subways are not a waste of money: throwing money at the NYC subway system under the current set of parameters is a waste of money.

P.S. you're also comparing apples and oranges; you're only looking at the MTA operating budget; not the operating + capital budget which the Montana numbers represent.

[tmnvix]

It was probably good value for anyone that owned any surrounding property.

Ideally the increase in property value should be captured by the public who made the investment - self funding effectively. But that's just the old LVT argument.

[reocha]

Cops and public transport are two completely different things.

[cbozeman]

Public transit does not work in a place like Montana or Wyoming. Sorry. Too large, too sparsely populated.

Same reason it won't work for most of Texas either. It's fine in Dallas or Austin, parts of Fort Worth... it doesn't scale to Lubbock or New Braunfels.

A lot of people have no interest in living in your concrete jungle... myself included.

[estebank]

> urban areas, defined as densely developed residential, commercial, and other nonresidential areas, now account for 80.0% of the U.S. population

> (as of 2018) 31% of the U.S. population lives in urban core counties

Improving public transportation in cities, makes those cities better for those who live and/or work in them. In downtown SF I counted the number of people in cars backed up in a single city block. The traffic looked miserable. It was ~30 people, less than a single bus' ridership that passed by. The only way reducing the supremacy of cars in cities affects people who don't live in "concrete jungles" is that they either have to pay for the externalities of their chosen transportation mode when they visit cities, or "park and ride" from the periphery into the the city proper.

No one wants someone in a Montana ranch to take the bus. That's either a misunderstanding or a purposeful straw man.

[hot_gril]

I'm pretty convinced that if they expanded or reduced the roads in SF or other dense cities, the traffic would be the same. The traffic reaches an equilibrium with the alternatives. I used to ride BART from Berkeley to SF every day, and it was consistently slower than the driving route despite being a straight shot.

About the externalities, you already pay a lot to cross the more popular bridges into SF by car, you probably pay for parking, gasoline is taxed heavily, and the police don't really protect your car from break-ins. Yet some people want to drive for one reason or another.

Disclaimer: Everything above based on pre-2020 SF cause I left for good.

[FredPret]

Yes but the bus in SF isn't a place where the people in those cars would like to be. For anyone who has ever been on a bus, and who has the money to never get on a bus again, buses are a non-starter.

[estebank]

> For anyone who has ever been on a bus, and who has the money to never get on a bus again, buses are a non-starter.

Feel free to elaborate, because that's not a universal position.

[FredPret]

You ever been on a bus with a raving lunatic?

Wiled away the hours as the bus chugs along circuitously to a point that is not quite at your destination?

Tried to carry heavy shopping on a bus?

Walked to a bus stop through bad weather?

Taken one mode of transport that was delayed, making you miss the next leg?

Waited forever for a bus that never comes?

Public transport sucks balls. In the world's densest, biggest cities, you can make it kind-of-tolerable by throwing a ton of tax money at it, but it will never hold a candle to the most basic of cars / bikes / mopeds.

[Muromec]

I though you are talking about a village with 200 residents, so I had to look it up and oops, it's quarter million city? You gotta be kidding.

[ponector]

Yes, that is funny to read. European cities with population less than 100k could have public transport and bicycle infrastructure while much bigger American city could not.

[bluGill]

There are American cities of less than 100k people that have public transport and bicycle infrastructure. However nobody knows about them.

[JAlexoid]

No one is asking you to live there or not have a vehicle.

What makes it a problem is the financially unsustainable suburban sprawl(single family zoning laws or covenants with the same effect) and people's expectations of car owners being catered to primarily.

I mean... why else would high density cities like Atlanta and DFW have massive X+Y lane interstates cut through the city? In so many places in the US it's straight up impossible to walk 1000ft.

[moojd]

> No one is asking you to live there or not have a vehicle.

Several of the most upvoted comments in this very thread are advocating banning vehicles.

[KennyBlanken]

> Public transit does not work in a place like Montana or Wyoming. Sorry. Too large, too sparsely populated.

And individual car ownership only works in those places because of the massive federal welfare they receive in the form of multi-billion-dollar federal highway grants.

The federal government spends over $1800 per person per year on roadways in Montana.

[cbozeman]

And you don't eat without them.

A lot of so-called "smart people" on this website seem to forget where all their food is grown.

It isn't in Times Square.

[lotsoweiners]

To be fair $1200 of that was to plan the potlucks and the Christmas party.

[bluGill]

Public transit would work in a lot more places than you give it credit for. Sure Wyoming isn't dense enough, but that is because nobody lives there. If your town has 10,000 or more people public transit could work and would be cheaper than cars. However it requires a large investment to make it work. (the town of 10,000 can't work alone - it needs all the other towns in an hour drive to also have transit and a network of transit between them)

[ahoy]

It doesn't matter if everyone in lubbock drives cars, thats obviously not what this thread of discussion is about and you know it. It matters if everyone in Austin/Dallas/Houston is forced to drive cars. Quit being dense on purpose.

[smileysteve]

Unless you consider that most areas (urban and rural) in both Texas and Montana were founded before the car existed; that the ebike has higher speed, higher carrying capacity, and lower costs of ownership.

If you add that in with legacy residents complaining of population booms and losing "the old ways", or nostalgia for self reliance, then Montana fits in perfectly. (Ps I rode in the ~1 uber in Missoula in 2018, and the hotel I stayed in Bozeman in 2022 had free bikes - and many bike lanes, and a nice bike trail)

[parl_match]

> Not everyone lives in large cities with whole mass transit systems or works the usual 9-5.

Have you been to the suburbs of Japan? Or France? Towns created before cars were invented. Lots of single family homes, and a smattering of small vehicles used for work.

It can work, but we've built huge car-required cities and towns and lifestyles and it's a sunk cost fallacy. And it feels "normal" to us, but it's not. It's bad for the environment, and it's bad for us.

Hours spent in a car is directly related to obesity. Exhaust fumes and tire particulate matter is directly related to asthma and cancer. Your car is killing you.

[hot_gril]

Right, I'm not sure exactly what it is, but car ownership in the US seems to have been subsidized. You should be allowed to have a car if you want and not be taxed unfairly for it, but it shouldn't be that almost every job basically requires one. And to get there, I don't think we have to ban things or restrict people's lives, just build new cities less around cars and let people choose that life if they want.

[ryukafalz]

> just build new cities less around cars and let people choose that life if they want.

New cities aren't a good solution, they almost never work out. That's effectively ceding everything that's already been built to the automobile and telling people "if you don't like it, uproot your life and go somewhere else."

I would rather see the places that were originally built without cars in mind return to prioritizing walking, cycling, and transit. Let the exurbs be the exurbs, sure, but let's have our old cities and inner ring suburbs not cater to cars so much. They weren't built for cars in the first place.

[parl_match]

> just build new cities less around cars and let people choose that life if they want

We should modify existing cities with better transit and make them hostile to cars, and then offer excellent car transfer points. If you want to use the city, use the train.

[ska]

> No thanks. Also, some people like cars. Deal with it, i'm not ditching for an e-bike or whatever.

I don't think it's really about taking away peoples choices, just mostly about policy impacts.

Currently car ownership and sub/exurban housing are subsidized in various direct and indirect ways. If policies changed and other things were emphasized instead, you could still choose to live in the same way, it would just be more expensive.

[slothtrop]

> I don't think it's really about taking away peoples choices

OP of this comment tree is explicit that it is about taking away choice. But I think it should suffice to make the alternatives more attractive. People are open to renewables, but not a drastic reduction in their quality of life. We should not demand a reduction or stagnation in quality-of-life for developing countries either as it's inhumane. Ostensibly they would be just as interested in pursuing renewable tech if it can help them grow.

[ska]

> is explicit that it is about taking away choice.

But it's a conversation and I am rejecting that framing. Suburbs/Exurbs as practiced in US today aren't some kind of quality of life maximizing end game. They are a natural result of a ton of policy interactions and subsidies, and the focus on it clearly has +ves and -ves. And of course it's always nice if you can get someone else to partially pay for your lifestyle, but that's inherently got downsides.

I think that it lacks imagination to think that we can't structure things differently and have equivalent or better quality of life overall. Will fewer people choose to live in suburbs? Sure - that's how incentives work.

I don't think "banning cars" makes any sense. But if we stop basing policy at multiple levels centered around them, and stop subsidizing car-centered living, I suspect we'll collectively do a lot less driving, which doesn't seem like a bad outcome, and more likely to have +ve impact than the fantasy that EVs are a drop in replacement for ICEs, no other changes needed.

[slothtrop]

> Suburbs/Exurbs as practiced in US today aren't some kind of quality of life maximizing end game

Notwithstanding that the middle-class overwhelmingly prefers living in the suburbs. "quiet", "safe", etc.

> I think that it lacks imagination to think that we can't structure things differently and have equivalent or better quality of life overall.

No one's saying that. I fully support zoning reform. If one's imagination leads to such bright ideas as "ban cars" however, it will have more detractors.

> if we stop basing policy at multiple levels centered around them, and stop subsidizing car-centered living, I suspect we'll collectively do a lot less driving

That is possible and I support it also.

[ska]

> Notwithstanding that the middle-class overwhelmingly prefers living in the suburbs. "quiet", "safe", etc.

Right, but they currently believe those things for reasons that are inexorably connected to those same policy choices.

However, there is no reason to assume that if those policies change, peoples impressions and preferences won't change too. Quite the opposite, actually - that's just how incentives (and the related PR) work.

[slothtrop]

> Right, but they currently believe those things for reasons that are inexorably connected to those same policy choices.

Only in the chicken-and-egg sense that policy choices make suburbia prioritized, but I don't think it's enough to say that special policies are what wholly render suburbia quiet and safe (to the extent that if you were to enact the policy change you want, suburbia will still be regarded as such).

[JAlexoid]

Suburban sprawl is both ecologically and financially unsustainable, with city dwellers subsidizing suburban living.

[treis]

This is a widely believed factoid on the internets but is not supported by the numbers. Roads have always been a relatively small percentage of government spending and has been going down over time. The big ticket items for local & state governments are criminal justice, education, health, and in many areas pensions for retirees.

This site has a good graph half way down showing the relative growth in spending by area:

https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative....

[JAlexoid]

Roads aren't the only expense, just like you said.

[david-gpu]

Which adds salt to the wound because car traffic in denser areas is largely caused by the surrounding suburbs, as the locals can get to places by walking and transit, and often don't even have a car.

[slothtrop]

Trivially resolved through zoning reform. Rhetoric surrounding "banning cars" will not deter sprawl or achieve anything of note, it will just be considered fringe fanaticism.

> unsustainable

The global population growth rate is going to stall, and by extension, cities will cease to grow. Sustainability is a moot point.

[JAlexoid]

> Rhetoric surrounding "banning cars"

Which I never engaged in. Banning cars is nonsense and is counter productive.

> The global population growth rate is going to stall

If we give every person a car to drive every day, today - that's enough to make it unsustainable. That's the whole point. We don't even have to have any growth in population.

[slothtrop]

> If we give every person a car to drive every day, today - that's enough to make it unsustainable.

Leaving aside that we aren't, sustainability necessarily implies perpetual increase. This hypothetical doesn't make sense. If the demand were there to supply everyone with a vehicle, we would, the materials are there. That would of course result in environmental encroachment, but not indefinitely. Plus vehicles on the road will all be EV in the coming decades.

[notatoad]

nothing about living in a city or riding a bike instead of driving a car is "elitist".

elitism is using a vehicle that has an average annual ownership cost of $12000 and takes up a parking space everywhere you want to go.

[riversflow]

> average annual ownership cost of $12000

Lots of people buy luxury cars, driving up that figure, so it hardly matters when we are talking about marginal utility for someone, shall we say, disadvantaged. Which I’m guessing you’ve never been?

My annual cost of ownership on my car is like $2500. I can sleep in my car too, and store clothes and food securely in it. Oh and get on demand heat & A/C access.

If you don’t have much, having a car is a lot.

[notatoad]

>Which I’m guessing you’ve never been?

i've been poor enough that i couldn't afford a car, so any "poor people need cars, not bikes and transit" argument feels a bit hollow to me.

and the immediate assumption that i'm talking from a place of privilege rather than experience is pretty rude, tbh.

[jodrellblank]

In "tell me you're American without telling me you're American" we have "building urban sprawl and car dependency is great because you might lose your job to at-will employment and your home to medical bills and have no social safety nets and resort to living in your car and /then/ wouldn't it be shitty if you didn't have one?". Like, maybe there's a different ... way things could be?

It can go with the thread on Signal where $338k/year was not much money, but the cost of SMS messages and cellular phonecalls was outrageously expensive.

[riversflow]

I never said urban sprawl was good, get outta here with that. Things could be different, but they aren’t. And it’s not like any of those things you mentioned are likely to change rapidly either. I speak to the present day reality, which is that cars serve a lot of people as a capital asset and they don’t have to cost 12k/year.

[cvoss]

I don't think GP claimed living in a city or riding a bike was elitist. I think the claim was that imposing solutions that only work in cities as if they work for everybody is elitist. And, speaking for myself now, it's important to remember that, in many contexts, living in the city is a luxury that many cannot afford without greatly diminishing their current standard of living. Outside the city, housing is cheap. You have to be very wealthy or else give up a lot to move into a city.

[jodrellblank]

[edit: retracted]

[NovemberWhiskey]

You should check the definition of urban that's being used there - it's not what you'd call "cities".

[bobajeff]

I also don't live in a city with useable mass transit either. Bus routes take far longer to get to a place than by car and there are no train or subway lines nearby. Every place I've ever lived you needed a car to get around.

That said, I would love it if I could get around this place without the need of a car. I would love it if my shopping centers were beautiful walkable areas with little shops I could get to on foot.

Traffic sucks, driving sucks and my shopping center is a bunch of big box retail and grocery stores that spread out around neverending road construction far away from where I live.

I don't think things will ever get better either but eventually this common design pattern will severely screw us all over.

[bobbylarrybobby]

The $20k car is not elitist but the $2k ebike is? Interesting.

[epistasis]

It's always hilarious to me when people driving $60k vehicles ask me how much the ebike cost and say "that's expensive". The ebike costs less than they pay in insurance a year, much less maintenance, gas, etc.

Some people have weird ideas about cars being "for regular people" while any money spent on a bicycle is a luxury.

[riversflow]

I’ve driven a $3k car for almost 15 years. It has needed 3 sets of tires, 2 sets of front struts, a brake job, new power steering lines and a timing belt. I did all of that work, less the tires, myself. I spend about $1000 a year on insurance and registration.

The utility I get out of the car, in absolute terms, is incomparable to my ~$1500 bicycle(that I purchased for utility and even commuted on for several years). I have slept in my car many times. My car has snacks, spare clothes and shoes, a blanket, a pillow, towels, pen and paper, bags for groceries, kick scooters, folding chairs, spare chargers and cables, amongst other things.

Regular people need to bring things they own with them and take them back home. Bikes are trash for that. When I’m on my bike, my credit card serves the function of space.

[rckclmbr]

I agree that an ebike isn't a replacement for a car in all circumstances. However, it is a replacement for a 2nd car. We have kids, groceries, vacations, beach trips, etc and have to have a car for. My wife usually has the car

I use the ebike every day to commute, and for lots of groceries or coffee runs. I've ridden that (or my road bike) ~40k miles over the last 5 years. For the "emergencies" that I do need a 2nd car, I uber. I think I've done it 5 times in the last 5 years.

In terms of dollars saved, at this point an ebike almost costs me nothing. I just use miles traveled * .55 for cost savings over a car.

In terms of co2 saved, I don't know but I consider it a win.

In terms of life enjoyment, I'd MUCH rather be on my ebike than stuck in a box.

[epistasis]

So you are not driving a $60k vehicle, living a life of luxury?

I regularly bring things with me on my ebike because it has plenty of room to strap stuff on, and baskets that are handy for throwing stuff into it. I have a cheap bike trailer for moving bigger things that would require, say, a trunk.

You were not the type of person who I am complaining about, but bikes are a great money saving device for most people, and should not be viewed as luxury items.

[cbozeman]

I can't carry four other people on my ebike, along with stuffing a minimum of one duffle bag per person, and usually being able to squeeze two in, along with a cooler for drinks, snacks, and sandwiches.

My Telluride can do that though.

Even if I could somehow fit all that shit onto an ebike, I wonder how long it and I would be able to make it before we give trying to go the 125 miles from Fort Worth to Possum Kingdom Lake...

This site infuriates me sometimes at the complete and utter lack of understanding of most of the United States.

[epistasis]

As somebody who has lived in many parts of the United States, your comment is infuriating to me.

My family of four gets around great on bicycles, including when two of those members could not yet cycle themselves.

You simply buy a bike that allows easy carrying of little people and all your baggage. Instead of some silly road bike or mountain bike that is meant for sport.

You don't see me making up complaints about the impossibility of transporting a finally by car because a Lotus can't fit them all.

Or how a car can't go from SF to Hawaii. Why would you ever buy a car if it can't support that vacation, right?

These are ridiculous complaints not connected to reality or towards actually looking at the high value that various modes of transport can provide.

[webdood90]

> This site infuriates me sometimes at the complete and utter lack of understanding of most of the United States

Most of the US in what capacity? Square miles? Because the majority of the population lives in Cities.

I love reading comments like yours. All throughout this thread you've vehemently argued that your perspective is the right one.

It's a reminder to me that close minded people like you actually exist! You're not here to discuss, you're here to argue. That's pretty unfortunate.

[dang]

You broke the site guidelines egregiously here. I've already scolded the other user in a different context, but it's not ok to break the rules regardless of how wrong/provocative another comment is or you feel it is.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

[webdood90]

I'll do better next time, thanks for the call out.

[lotsoweiners]

Saying the majority lives in cities is pretty BS though. They aren’t all living in walkable downtowns like Manhattan but rather are living in places like Houston, Phoenix, or Denver that have a few sq miles of what many would consider walkability, very spotty public transportation, and weather for part of the year that keeps all but the insane from wanting to walk to their destination.

[InSteady]

Oh how the goalposts doth shift. We are talking about ebiking, not walking. Those of us who are mindful of ecology, climate, and urbanism know lack of walkability is a problem. It doesn't have to be, but it is. It is another issue worth addressing at the policy and funding level.

If people can walk for some of their trips 50-80% of the year and ebike for most of the rest, that is a huge win even if not everyone can adapt to the 'unbearable' sacrifices that go along with that kind of change. "But not literally everyone can do it so it's a terrible suggestion and you are an elitist." Ok cool.

[itsoktocry]

>The ebike costs less than they pay in insurance a year, much less maintenance, gas, etc.

Let me just get on my eBike and cruise the streets in the 4+ months we have snow, and 6+ months it's cold.

We don't all live in California.

[epistasis]

You don't even address a single aspect of my comment.

Why is my cheaper bike a "luxury" while it allows me to save tons of money in insurance and gas, while the elitist in a super expensive car considers a very practical piece of gear a luxury?

[barbazoo]

There are certainly regions where the weather is impractical to commute or run errands on bikes. But often all one needs is the proper gear and some willingness to change habits.

[david-gpu]

I live in Toronto and, like many other people in cold areas, bike year round. Biking is warmer than walking, and the streets aren't exactly empty in winter either.

[KennyBlanken]

Over 80% of the US population lives in an densely populated area and RE-establishing public transit is not even remotely an insurmountable challenge logistically.

The only thing standing in the way of mass transit are congressional representatives from rural areas representing counties that have less population than one square mile of Los Angeles.

[__MatrixMan__]

No it's just physics. Carrying around an extra several thousand pounds of steel will always be a burden on more than just the one doing it.

[itsoktocry]

>Not everyone lives in large cities with whole mass transit systems or works the usual 9-5. Even in large urban areas it's tricky to get around past a certain time. I remember working unexpected shifts and later staring at closed metro stations, having to walk in the rain to get home.

These conversations are difficult to have here.

You get people from large metropolitan areas who have no clue how "the deplorables" live, making calls to "ban cars".

"I can walk around and talk to my neighbours and it's so quiet!". Yeah, I have all that where I live, and I own two cars.

[macNchz]

Having grown up in a rural place, I’d say the way infrastructure is built in America arguably serves the rural poor the worst. Totally dependent on cars to go anywhere, with effectively no choice but to spend a large portion of your income on a likely old and and unreliable vehicle, to get to a job that will happily fire you for being late if you have a problem with it. Once upon a time even quite small rural towns had actual shops, trains, even trams, that people could live nearby to, but we’ve mostly gotten rid of those.

[CalRobert]

It's pretty elitist to make me pay for your parking in my city.

[stouset]

> That's very elitist.

No, it is a fact. That it doesn’t align with the choices you’ve made in your life doesn’t change that.

> Not everyone lives in large cities with whole mass transit systems or works the usual 9-5.

Tell me you’ve never been outside the US before without telling me you’ve never been outside the US before.

Joking aside (there are plenty of other countries with transit as bad as the US), plenty of other countries have figured out how to make public transit and alternative forms of transit (bikes, scooters) widely practical. Many places have optimized themselves for car travel, and if we want any chance of a livable world 100 years from now, we need to start optimizing for a different reality.

Yes, we will never get rid of cars entirely. But we must find a way to get rid of cars for the 95%+ of trips that are part of day to day life (groceries, errands, commuting).

A car-centric lifestyle is incompatible with a livable planet. Deal with it, my kids aren’t ditching for Mars or TRAPPIST-1 or whatever.

[slothtrop]

> A car-centric lifestyle is incompatible with a livable planet.

There's no reason to believe this.

Unsustainability is only ever a result of perpetually growing demand, or demand growing faster than technological innovation. Global population growth rate is projected to stagnate in 100 years, so it's a moot point, and from a purely engineering perspective, emissions are a solved problem. The real issue is that emission are poised to rise in the short-run because demand is growing so fast in east Asia (and to a lesser extent through immigration to the West).

This is a near-term problem, unsustainability doesn't belong in the conversaiton. The question is really whether we want to weather that strain with current trajectory, or spend and implement policies to mitigate the climate effects during that period.

[cbozeman]

> A car-centric lifestyle is incompatible with a livable planet.

No it isn't. We just haven't figured it out yet. Those aren't the same thing.

[JAlexoid]

They take up a lot of space and require a lot more energy to move around. Even if we get 100% electric vehicles with all clean power generation - it's still a massive toll on the environment.

A car isn't a helicopter, they require reasonably good roads with high costs of maintenance(and a lot of other infrastructure to support roads).

Also car dependent lifestyle means that population density drops, with less walkable places than ever.

[CrispyKerosene]

It sucks, but it doesn't have to be that way. Even small towns can be sufficiently served by viable public transit options.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg