I’m not rural - hell, I live in a suburb of DC - but I couldn’t survive without a car where I live. I’m 5 minutes from a grocery store by car, but 30-45 by bus, not counting waiting time for the bus to arrive.
Should cars be phased out or otherwise forced to downsize? IMO, yes - over time. But do we also need to drastically overhaul our public transit and walk/bike infrastructure? Absolutely, and this should happen first.
That would be difficult. High speed transportation infrastructure such as roads for cars and public transit is expencive to operate. If you try to add high quality public transit to a place where lots of money is spent on roads for cars, you need to pay to maintain two expensive infrastruture systems at the same time. Cities cannot afford to do this while maintaining the quality of both.
I think we should stop subsidizing car ownership and use this money for more ethical forms of transportation. This will cause people to decide to use public transit where possible, the increased use of public transit will lead to more funding for public transit which will improve the quality.
This change to subsidies will be painful for people who have been benifiting from the subsidies. For example, drivers will have to pay for parking, and property taxes in low density suburbs will go up, car insurence rates will increase, and you would probably need to pay a tax for miles traveled by car. But I think its worth it, becasue it will be highly benificial for users of public transit, which tend to have lower wealth, and a net positive for society.
I agree that inexpencive low speed infrastructure like bike lanes should be implemented as soon as possible.
I find public transportation is also subsidized. Any attempt to increase fares to cover costs gets a huge amount of push-back. People already pay for parking except on private lots. There are a lot of lower income people who have to use a car to work and live who’d be hit hard by price increases.
Should cars be phased out or otherwise forced to downsize? IMO, yes - over time. But do we also need to drastically overhaul our public transit and walk/bike infrastructure? Absolutely, and this should happen first.
That’s not how it works. The presence of cars ruins the viability of everything else because the parking lots physically force destinations to be too far apart. In order for the change to be effective, you’ve got to demolish the parking and wide roads first and thereby drive an increase in other transportation modes due to necessity.
![[meme] Why do people only seem to mean cars when they talk about electric and/or autonomous vehicles?](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/8b4f07d2-ffe9-468c-a7da-0e970998b67f.png){kind=link}
I’m not rural - hell, I live in a suburb of DC - but I couldn’t survive without a car where I live. I’m 5 minutes from a grocery store by car, but 30-45 by bus, not counting waiting time for the bus to arrive.
Should cars be phased out or otherwise forced to downsize? IMO, yes - over time. But do we also need to drastically overhaul our public transit and walk/bike infrastructure? Absolutely, and this should happen first.
That would be difficult. High speed transportation infrastructure such as roads for cars and public transit is expencive to operate. If you try to add high quality public transit to a place where lots of money is spent on roads for cars, you need to pay to maintain two expensive infrastruture systems at the same time. Cities cannot afford to do this while maintaining the quality of both.
I think we should stop subsidizing car ownership and use this money for more ethical forms of transportation. This will cause people to decide to use public transit where possible, the increased use of public transit will lead to more funding for public transit which will improve the quality.
This change to subsidies will be painful for people who have been benifiting from the subsidies. For example, drivers will have to pay for parking, and property taxes in low density suburbs will go up, car insurence rates will increase, and you would probably need to pay a tax for miles traveled by car. But I think its worth it, becasue it will be highly benificial for users of public transit, which tend to have lower wealth, and a net positive for society.
I agree that inexpencive low speed infrastructure like bike lanes should be implemented as soon as possible.
I find public transportation is also subsidized. Any attempt to increase fares to cover costs gets a huge amount of push-back. People already pay for parking except on private lots. There are a lot of lower income people who have to use a car to work and live who’d be hit hard by price increases.
That’s not how it works. The presence of cars ruins the viability of everything else because the parking lots physically force destinations to be too far apart. In order for the change to be effective, you’ve got to demolish the parking and wide roads first and thereby drive an increase in other transportation modes due to necessity.