[alexawarrior3]

"Before car usage approached 100% it would have been a tremendous gain to be one of the early car owners. The environment would have been built for a smaller scale and you would have been able to traverse it rapidly. For day to day life in well-populated areas that advantage has substantially eroded."

Actually, no. The early car owners had it terrible, not only were they expensive and broke down often, the roads were often little more than mud-drenched dirt tracks, with impassable bridges and cities choked with animal and pedestrian traffic. No stoplights or traffic laws, extreme chaos and very slow going. You can read some of the early coast-to-coast stories for how challenging it was.

The excellent vehicular infrastructure we have in the USA today is due precisely to the car usage being 80%+. With the mass adoption came freeways, stoplights, graded roads, drainage, bridges, all of it.

[kettlecorn]

The problem with your argument is why would people buy cars if they were so terrible? While the infrastructure was obviously worse than today clearly they afforded tremendous advantages which motivated their adoption!

In the early days that advantage was the ability to rapidly traverse relatively developed areas with more convenience. Over time infrastructure and adoption chased each other, but now the most populated parts of the US are developed to the point that there's little way to ease congestion with more road infrastructure. The only way to grow is to sprawl into new cities.

For a long time in population centers the pattern was new car infra. -> more driving convenience -> more cars -> repeat. In cities that's running into bottlenecks.

Today people primarily buy cars out of necessity, but in areas where most people live congestion and a more sprawling environment has diminished much of the time saving advantage.

[AnimalMuppet]

It was terrible. People bought cars anyway because it was still better than walking.

In 1919, the US Army ran a truck convoy from Washington DC to San Francisco. It took them 56 (!) travel days, driving 10 1/4 hours per day. The roads were lousy in 1919. But even then, it was better than a mule train.

[kettlecorn]

People bought into cars early because they could get around quickly to more destinations, not because walking was uniquely awful.

In Philadelphia's paper in the early 1900s there was a daily column about "pleasure drive" routes and constant advertisements appealing to new drivers with destinations near the city.

That advantage of being able to "get out of the city" is still there, but it's further and further away. For day to day life the experience of walking / transit / biking in a pre-car US city or a modern US city is somewhat comparable in terms of time and enjoyment.

However US cities and suburbs, due to car-centric scale, allow more people to live on larger plots of land.

[AnimalMuppet]

Walking was uniquely awful in many situations as soon as the alternative of cars were available. Peoples' options were "get a car", "suffer what you now realize is awful", or "don't do those things". Unsurprisingly, many people chose the first option.

You think they - we - chose wrong. To put it charitably, we who disagree with you do not feel the need of your opinion on what we should want and should choose.

If you have a better way, show us the better way, and make us want it. Don't tell us the advantages we experience from having cars don't exist. We live them. Don't tell us the parts we enjoy don't exist. We experience them. Don't lecture us, entice us with something we perceive as more valuable.

[rglullis]

Cars were better than horses, not walking, and you conveniently forgot the "use the streetcar/bus" option. Why is that?

I lived in the suburbs from West Mass, I lived in downtown Boston, I lived in Manhattan. Guess where I was the most miserable?

> Don't tell us the advantages we experience from having cars don't exist.

The point is less about "cars vs no cars", but car-centric suburbia development vs higher density urban planning. Do you live in the suburbs? Have you ever considered how much your lifestyle is subsidized by those who live downtown? Would you be willing to keep your car if it meant having to pay for all its externalities and extra infrastructure costs?

> entice us with something we perceive as more valuable.

Ask anyone in Amsterdam (which was in the 70s on its way to become as car centric as most North American cities) if they would like to go back to their ways.

[throwaway22032]

> Would you be willing to keep your car if it meant having to pay for all its externalities and extra infrastructure costs?

This is such a weird line of inquiry.

Yes! It is the largest single QoL improvement I have after my house.

Almost everyone who can afford it buys a car as soon as they can. Yes, even in the UK, even in Europe. It is such a huge boon.

If cars were made more expensive I would sooner work harder to keep the car than give it up.

I don't know what sort of answer you're expecting? Why would I possibly not want a car? The only reason I can think of is if it became so expensive that just paying a personal driver was cheaper.

[kettlecorn]

I am making the case that the advantages once enjoyed by cars have been substantially reduced, for day to day life where most people live, as most people need a car.

The irony of your argument is that very few people who want more car-light or car-free cities are "forcing" anything on anyone, but the inverse is absolutely not the case.

A tremendous amount of taxes are allocated only for highways or car-centric revenue. Federal and state politics prevents cities from putting that money elsewhere. Highways were plowed through US cities and are maintained there over the objection of city residents. States intervene to prevent cities from running bus priority lanes. Cars purchases are subsidized where bikes and transit passes are not. Federal road standards, which are applied in cities, are designed for cars and not pedestrians / bikes.

A prominent example is NYC being forced by NY State to cancel congestion pricing.

The list of ways car-centric decision making is forced on dense cities is very long. Very few people are trying to "ban cars" but are instead trying to let cities too dense for cars guide their fate.

[kjkjadksj]

The biggest advantage for cars is that they lack any fixed schedule, route, or stops.

[ndileas]

On first read, I was wondering why on earth did they not use a train? I looked it up and found this from a primary source:

> The principal objectives of the expedition were to servicetest the special-purpose vehicles developed for use in the first World War, not all gf which were available in time for §uch U§e; and to determine by actual experience the possibility and the problems involved in moving an army across the continent, assuming that railroad facilities, bridges, tunnels, etc. had been damaged or destroyed by agents of an Asiatic enemy.

which makes a lot of sense. great reading: https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/resear...

[AnimalMuppet]

Another reason, not stated: The rail system melted down with the traffic load of World War 1. (Or with the government taking control, when they didn't know how to run a rail system.)

[Kon-Peki]

> In 1919, the US Army ran a truck convoy from Washington DC to San Francisco. It took them 56 (!) travel days, driving 10 1/4 hours per day.

They used the Lincoln Highway, which wasn't fully paved until the 1930s. In 1919, it was a (bad) dirt road except in cities. In 1919 there was an awful lot of space between cities, especially once you got west of Chicago (that not too far from the truth today, except you might say Omaha instead of Chicago). You can't really compare the convoy experience to walking-vs-driving in cities :)

[Gravityloss]

Many early cars were large terrifying beasts. Huge wheels, engines and very noisy. Extremely expensive too. I totally understand with mud roads and low power densities of the time that is a logical design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mL4jA59ibU

[ajb]

I always found it amusing how, in Bertha Benz's first trip in the prototype car, she had to go to a pharmacy for petrol.

[acchow]

The implication is that car ownership rose slowly from 0% to 80% despite the experience being terrible.

How can this be true?