[HonestOp001]

The converse is how helpful cars are. It allows people to have the ability commute from areas they live at to where they work. It brings down the cost of living by expanding the commute availability circle, instead of driving up land values for the desirable areas.

[neves]

The dispute isn't between walking and cars, or between stone age and modernity. Just that individual cars have a terrible externalities.

Impressive how public transport does not enter the mind of Americans.

[marinmania]

I feel like its often people talking past each other.

I currently live in NYC and am very congestion pricing. Cars are a major negative to most people in the city.

But I have also lived in rural parts of America. Yes, it is annoying you can't walk to a corner store, but cars are not that big of a deal. You can bike or run in the streets without concern that cars will come by. And housing is so cheap it makes it so worth it.

[oceanplexian]

If public transit even remotely resembled anything in China or Japan, Americans would ditch their cars in a heartbeat. But every train ride I've been on to Manhattan is like commuting through an open sewer while being harassed by strangers doing an obnoxious dance with a bluetooth speaker in my face, dodging puddles of urine, and wondering if today's the day I'll be thrown off the platform.

Of course people would rather commute in a gas guzzling SUV. I don't even know how it's controversial. It must be a form of Stockholm syndrome to think that this would be attractive to any normally adjusted human being.

[mplanchard]

I’ve taken the train a lot in and around NYC, including a ton of subway trips. While the experience you’re describing is certainly not so rare as to be nonexistent, it’s also far from the norm. The large, large majority of subway rides I’ve taken (99% at least) were complete non-events. Perhaps you’re unlucky?

[gottorf]

A few points.

1. A <1% risk of loss, if catastrophic (e.g. thrown off the platform into an oncoming train), is unacceptable to bear, when there exist alternatives.

1b. Of course, people get in car accidents all the time. However, rightly or wrongly, people feel more in control when they're driving compared to when they're using public transit (or similarly, taking a commercial flight), which makes them feel better about it. And there is some element of sense here: accidents do not occur evenly among the population, because some drivers are better and more alert than others.

2. If you're traveling with small children, the various (however rare it may be) unpleasantries of NYC public transit become an order of magnitude more unpleasant.

3. There certainly is an element of Stockholm syndrome among NYC transit users, in that other very large cities around the world with ridership comparable to NYC have very little antisocial dysfunction, but in NYC it often gets waved away as "part and parcel of living in a big city".

[biorach]

> A <1% risk of loss, if catastrophic (e.g. thrown off the platform into an oncoming train),

how common is it for people to be thrown off the platform into an oncoming train in NY?

[gottorf]

Not common. From what I've read, each year, 50-80 people are killed on the tracks (either by hitting trains or touching the third rail), with only a handful being caused by somebody else pushing them onto the tracks.

[jghn]

Anyone claiming more concern about being thrown into an oncoming train than being in a serious car accident is either being disingenuous or deluded. The solution isn't to just excuse it because they feel in control. The solution is to solve their delusions.

[mancerayder]

That imagery isn't the norm, but there are dozens of annoying behaviors, smells and experiences on the subway that make the daily grind an RPG dice roll in terms of if it's not a new story you'll be telling.

[rangestransform]

I would run into showtimers multiple times per week on the L, but seldom on other lines

[antisthenes]

> It brings down the cost of living by expanding the commute availability circle

It does this by sweeping a lot of negative externalities under the carpet of society. There's no magic here.

[kmeisthax]

Expanding the commute availability circle does not increase the supply of housing, because people build sparser neighborhoods with larger lawns. If you want to increase the supply of housing, you need higher density, not longer distance.

What longer distance does is make the closer areas more valuable, because people will pay $$$ for a shorter commute. And for those who can't afford the closer housing, they get to pay $$ on a car and gas instead.

Cars are only helpful in exactly two scenarios:

1. You live in a remote rural area where any sort of transit infrastructure is comically infeasible. 99% of the people posting here do not quality for this.

2. You live in a city so maliciously planned out that living without a car is unthinkable and that any other option to get to where you're going is not available.

I use the word "malicious" because the gutting of American cities' transit infrastructure was a deliberate act by American car companies giving their competition the mafia bust-out treatment.

[tilne]

> Expanding the commute availability circle does not increase the supply of housing, because people build sparser neighborhoods with larger lawns.

This is not true. It is true in some circumstances, but definitely not in all. The fact that it’s presented as absolute fact hurts the point you’re trying to make imo.

[Tade0]

In my region of the world they enable having any sort of housing at all. Plenty of people don't have the credit score to buy anything livable within city limits, so they resort to buying apartments in the suburbs and small, adjacent cities.

Public transport hasn't caught up because these places developed too fast and even though their inhabitants live and pay taxes there, the businesses they work for don't, so the tax base is all the lower due to that.

[tristan957]

Your point is valid, but the lack of affordable housing in your city is most likely due to the lifestyles that cars allow us to live. Single family homes and parking lots as far as the eye can see.

[Tade0]

Nope. More like commie blocks as far as the eye can see, as it's in eastern EU.

I moved out BTW, because I figured that being able to afford at most a 1-bedroom, 55m2 apartment as a software engineer is a deal I'm not willing to take.

Real estate has been going up in price all over the world in the past decade and it doesn't matter if it's apartment blocks or detached homes.

My new place is a city 40% the size and far from there, but my friends by and large drove until they qualified. Typically less than 30km, but that's already a 1h commute by car.