[ericmay]

How things are today can be changed…

But you’re also missing the forest for the trees. There are easy wins in public transit that can reduce car usage but we refuse to fund them. Bike lanes and street cars in urban areas for example can reduce car usage (and reduce congestion for drivers) and allow us to do more with less. I’d prefer riding a bike a mile down the road to grab groceries (or just walking) but our infrastructure makes that impossible and so I have to drive a car, taking up a limited parking spot and slowing your driving down too.

Most Americans actually live in urban environments as well. We aren’t that spread out actually.

[rockskon]

I cannot emphasize strongly enough how little public transit makes sense as a replacement for cars in most suburban and rural areas.

As in - you are asking people to sacrifice a 15 minute drive home for a 1.5 hour public transit commute with home in many cases.

Their life and their time is worth more than enough to get a car at that point.

There is also no "walking to the train or bus stop" for most people because they live spread out enough that there is no conceivable way public transit could work as a replacement for cars.

[ericmay]

In Columbus our regional transit agency COTA built parking lots out in the suburbs.

They call it park and ride. [1]

People who live in more remote areas or even not far away in the suburbs will park their car at the parking lot and hop on the bus as it heads toward areas like downtown where a lot of jobs are or to other large employment centers. Sometimes people just meet up at these locations and carpool too so you don’t have to take the bus.

They don’t have to stress about traffic, or pay for parking (parking lots are economic outflows so this is a nice side effect), and they can work or read or do any number of more productive and interesting things instead of pay attention and drive.

This is just one example where without even making any drastic changes we can reduce reliance on cars and leverage existing infrastructure better than we are today.

As cities like Columbus and other small/medium size cities modify zoning to allow for more dense development in urban corridors instead of additional vehicles on the road, turning your 15 minute commute into 45 minutes - 1 hour, we can reduce the impact of population increase on our highways and we can do so at much lower cost in all aspects with better transit (bikes, trams, bus, sidewalks).

Socializing auto-only infrastructure is not smart and it’s way too expensive not just in terms of taxpayer dollars but also in the mandatory costs of car ownership: insurance, loans with interest, data harvesting that you won’t have a say in, gas, wars to secure gas supplies, kids dying in car crashes instead of living good lives, new windshield wipers, oil changes, etc. - these are all costs we can reduce for more people. [2]

For those living in rural areas nothing really changes (frankly not much changes for suburban areas either). They’re already on the gubmint dole and receiving large road maintenance subsidies that their tax base can’t support. They’re more than welcome to spend an hour driving and paying for parking but that’s not an excuses to not build sidewalks and other basic necessities where most of us live.

[1] https://cota.com/static/2cfd967c94034d9508e7b4f8eb01fa3d/cot...

[2] https://htaindex.cnt.org/total-driving-costs/

[rockskon]

Yeah - that doesn't get rid of or replace cars. It reduces how much time they're on the road.

[ericmay]

From a transit perspective that’s basically the same thing.