How do we deal with the areas with no people living in them?
I’m mostly joking, but an extreme proposal like this would probably only take effect in metropolitan areas. 80%+ of Americans live in an urban setting. Electric trains and busses in the city, electric trucks in the country.
America used to have these things called streetcar suburbs, and they’re awesome. The entire suburb is built around a tram station, it’s walking distance from everyone and it goes on to the nearby suburbs and eventually the city. Modern zoning laws make streetcar suburbs illegal to build, but a few of them still exist, and people love living in them. The rent prices in streetcar suburbs have been raised greatly due to the high demand. If we started building streetcar suburbs instead of car suburbs, everyone would be able to afford to live in one. They’re also cheaper to build in terms of land, plumbing, and utilities. The road upkeep is cheaper and the people in them are happier.
So essentially buses. That works if you live within a few miles of your destination city. But things are so spread out nowadays that there’s just no way that you could have a single system of buses or streetcar. Whatever to make use of everybody’s time.
I grew up in suburban America where even on bike it would take me 20 minutes to get to the nearest urban development or business. Let alone trying to get to the nearest city. And now with everybody so spread apart of where they work and how they get there. There’s just no feasible way to make the system for everybody.
People used to live within a few miles of where they worked, but nowadays everything has been built for cars and to undo that would be an almost impossible effort
Okay well you are entitled to your opinion I guess. I thought you were being somewhat tongue in cheek. While I support a radical reduction in car dependency the unfortunate reality is that deconstructing car based infrastructure and building what will come after is going to take more than 5 years.
Also, even in a society where the car is not the default mode of transit, there will still be occasional situations where alternates aren’t viable. A small number of electric vehicles, properly contained where they can’t murder thousands of people as they do today would not be so terrible.
![[meme] Simple problems require simple solutions](https://imgur.com/8cT1yFG.png){kind=link}
I seriously think petrol cars should be 100% banned by 2028, and that it should be illegal for petrol stations to operate.
How would people who live in suburbs or rural areas do anything? Many Americans live in these areas. I’m serious what is the plan for all of them?
America wasn’t built for public travel unfortunately.
I’m mostly joking, but an extreme proposal like this would probably only take effect in metropolitan areas. 80%+ of Americans live in an urban setting. Electric trains and busses in the city, electric trucks in the country.
America used to have these things called streetcar suburbs, and they’re awesome. The entire suburb is built around a tram station, it’s walking distance from everyone and it goes on to the nearby suburbs and eventually the city. Modern zoning laws make streetcar suburbs illegal to build, but a few of them still exist, and people love living in them. The rent prices in streetcar suburbs have been raised greatly due to the high demand. If we started building streetcar suburbs instead of car suburbs, everyone would be able to afford to live in one. They’re also cheaper to build in terms of land, plumbing, and utilities. The road upkeep is cheaper and the people in them are happier.
So essentially buses. That works if you live within a few miles of your destination city. But things are so spread out nowadays that there’s just no way that you could have a single system of buses or streetcar. Whatever to make use of everybody’s time.
I grew up in suburban America where even on bike it would take me 20 minutes to get to the nearest urban development or business. Let alone trying to get to the nearest city. And now with everybody so spread apart of where they work and how they get there. There’s just no feasible way to make the system for everybody.
People used to live within a few miles of where they worked, but nowadays everything has been built for cars and to undo that would be an almost impossible effort
We need to bulldoze places like where you grew up and build sustainable developments.
Oh ok you could have just said there’s no way to do it from the beginning
A very reasonable and realistic option.
The opposite happened already. Communities were bulldozed to build highways.
It can be rebuilt. 5 years is way optimistic but it can be done. It must be done.
Okay well you are entitled to your opinion I guess. I thought you were being somewhat tongue in cheek. While I support a radical reduction in car dependency the unfortunate reality is that deconstructing car based infrastructure and building what will come after is going to take more than 5 years.
Also, even in a society where the car is not the default mode of transit, there will still be occasional situations where alternates aren’t viable. A small number of electric vehicles, properly contained where they can’t murder thousands of people as they do today would not be so terrible.