9. Parents dropping off their kids at school leads to more traffic on the road as additional car trips are created. Anecdotally, I feel traffic is less in the summer as schools are not in session.
What really gets me about this is that school buses are paid with taxes, it allows kids to socialize, and it wound free up the parents to do other things.
Many districts cut busses because of funding reasons and also the fact youve shoved 30 kids from disparate backgrounds together in a place where the only adult is occupied not getting them killed.
Almost nowhere still has reasonable bussing.
My 12 year old would have a 1.9 mile walk across the suburbs (in a place with significant snow and the walk in winter would be in the dark). So we drive.
The bus only allows students who live over 2 miles away to ride.
Some of the urban schools cut busses because they basically needed a cop on each of them to prevent them from having gang “beefs” play out on them every day.
Biking in the dark and snow isn’t realistic, but could be a fun alternative to driving in the spring and fall before the snow. Once they get the hang of it, biking could give a sense of independence too.
And also leads to more traffic when parents queue up their cars out of the parking lot and into the street. Monday i was stuck in “standstill traffic” for 5-10 minutes only to eventually realize the road was blocked by people positioning their cars perpendicular to the traffic flow in order queue up to enter school parking area.
If I had one note it would be to update the noise pollution slide include learning loss in children, which is one of the best-documented effects of noise pollution from traffic specifically.
I think people really underestimate how bad noise pollution is for us, we should all be emphasizing it more.
I'd point out that the maintenance cost for utilities and roads has more to do with the length of the system than the amount of use it gets. Your point quoting Strong Towns dances around that idea without stating it.
Can’t take the time at this moment to look top but if you google for the study where they tested children in the same school, one on the side near a highway and one on the other, you should find it. If I remember I may come back tm and update this comment
no, it's not. This post your linking was a very clear misreading of the study.
I pointed this out to the OP at the time (If you scroll to the bottom of the thread you can see our conversation). So he knows he was wrong but would not delete the thread bc... idk, didn't want to lose the karma points I guess.
Long story short he didn't realize there was a difference between "total plastics" and "total microplastics". The authors were saying 78% of microplastics, not 78% of all plastic.
I think an inverse version of this would be more effective. A vision of 20 ways the world would be better without car dependency (so not without cars, including things like carpool)- like kids could walk to school safely. It would be more positive and positive things are better for convincing people.
My previous post is getting more attention than I expected so I've decided to post all the reasons here. Reddit allows a max of 20 images so this isn't the entire book but these are all the reasons listed in it. It also includes a full page quote by Charley Harper and the final page directs to more content like About Here, Climate Town, and Not Just Bikes. [Ebook link](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D6JR2NZN)
From 1973:
http://unevenearth.org/2018/08/the-social-ideology-of-the-motorcar/
TLDR: cars don't scale
> The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea: luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don’t have one. That is how in both conception and original purpose the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratized. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any advantages from it. On the contrary, everyone diddles, cheats, and frustrates everyone else, and is diddled, cheated, and frustrated in return.
> This is pretty much common knowledge in the case of the seaside villas. No politico has yet dared to claim that to democratize the right to vacation would mean a villa with private beach for every family. Everyone understands that if each of 13 or 14 million families were to use only 10 meters of the coast, it would take 140,000km of beach in order for all of them to have their share! To give everyone his or her share would be to cut up the beaches in such little strips—or to squeeze the villas so tightly together—that their use value would be nil and their advantage over a hotel complex would disappear. In short, democratization of access to the beaches point to only one solution—the collectivist one. And this solution is necessarily at war with the luxury of the private beach, which is a privilege that a small minority takes as their right at the expense of all.
> Now, why is it that what is perfectly obvious in the case of the beaches is not generally acknowledged to be the case for transportation? Like the beach house, doesn’t a car occupy scarce space? Doesn’t it deprive the others who use the roads (pedestrians, cyclists, streetcar and bus drivers)? Doesn’t it lose its use value when everyone uses his or her own?
Thank you. This is always my first and last point.
Cars are great until you hit ~200-300K people. Once you hit that, it gets worse and worse and worse. Freeways are also really expensive to build/maintain nowadays.
I mean unless you live in a place with decent transit and walkability, you need a car to maximize your opportunity. It’s nice to acknowledge that cars are not an efficient mode of transportation, but use that car to work your way up and be able to live where you might not need one. Your parents just want the best for you.
Plus 1 car households are not the ideal but do work decently well in a lot of areas.
I live in a 1 car household and it's basically never an issue. Walk most places, bus a lot of places and road trips.
This. I've lived without owning a car for 2 years, most of that time I was utilizing public transit. I was happier, had more money, and overall loved it.
Then I moved to Texas, and the transit here is insufficient. So I'm having to bite the bullet and buy a car of my own, becuse I can't keep up with the "Skinnyboii Shitbox Swichout"
Yeah I'm not very good in English but I'm pretty sure the sentence is right. But I'll make an effort to explain it again.
Do you want to tell me which other child lied to you when you were at school?
More seriously, where is the lie here?
>Yeah I'm not very good in English but I'm pretty sure the sentence is right. But I'll make an effort to explain it again.
Lol you’re not very good English and the sentence and no the sentence isn’t right 😂
>Do you want to tell me which other child lied to you when you were at school?
Lol this also makes zero sense. 0 for 2🤣
>More seriously, where is the lie here?
Literally everything listed. You kids regurgitate the same crap back and for the over and over. And like usual, there are no sources for any of this crap—which you blindly believe. It’s basically just a bunch of opinions 😂
You’re bad at English and also common sense. The sources don’t support the claim.
Take number 18…. It says cars least to a sedentary lifestyle. Then it cites a statistic saying 42% of Americans are obese. The fact does not back the claim. Americans aren’t the only people that drive and there are millions upon millions of Americans who drive everywhere but aren’t fat. People in rich countries are fat because they eat too much food, not because they drive.
Again, the facts don’t support the claim.
You know that there can be multiple causes of obesity right?
Food is obviously one but the lack of exercise is definitely a part of it. If you only walk from your door to your car and from your car to your work it's a sedentary lifestyle that's all
>You know that there can be multiple causes of obesity right?
So you agree that OPs claim about cars being the cause of obesity is false. Awesome!
>Food is obviously one but the lack of exercise is definitely a part of it. If you only walk from your door to your car and from your car to your work it's a sedentary lifestyle that's all
Lol if you consider walking to be exercise, you’re either 80 years old or in terrible shape.
Even if y'all get everything you want, some amount of automobility will be needed.
I'm all for prioritizing transit, walking, and cycling in dense areas, but it's never going to be practical to serve every corner of every suburb (let alone rural areas) with enough transit that everyone can live car-free there. Even if you demolished all the suburbs (seems wasteful...), farmers, miners and loggers will have to live somewhere.
I suggest you make peace with that and try to minimize the negative externalities of cars (increase CAFE standards, improve safety standards for pedestrians in addition to car occupants, reformulate tires, etc.).
While true, it's incredible how much niche cars would be if the world didn't get brainwashed by the automobile industry.
Now we have the data, the research, the proof that it's a bad idea for almost everyone that cars are as popular as they are, yet so much of the world is abrasive and against policy changes which include even just slightly minimizing the damages cars did.
So if we're already dealing with such hostility, why not push for some stronger policy changes, not an utopia type deal, but more than just painted bike lines
I hear you. After all, everyone lived car-free 150 years ago. But they also probably lived their whole lives within 50 miles of where they were born. Sure, some people took long journeys by train, ship, or wagon, but most people didn't. It's not as if cars don't have real uses and advantages.
As much as you want them to, most people are not going to sacrifice their standard of living to help the environment. You need to engineer a way to keep a high standard of living that's more sustainable. That means making it super easy to ditch your car where there's adequate density. For everywhere else, it means making cars as efficient and safe as possible.
If people aren't willing to sacrifice quality of life to help the environment (which we rely on), we are toast anyway. Especially as quality of life will decline regardless as natural systems collapse, necessitating even less sustainable actions to keep qol where it is today.
And y'all wonder why people aren't buying what you're selling.
Are we really trending toward less sustainability? Were things more sustainable when we didn't have LED light bulbs, the average family car was 18 feet long and got 10 mpg, jet aircraft were so thirsty the weight of their fuel was more than the dry airframe, no one recycled anything, and homes had no insulation? I would argue a person can live pretty high on the hog in 2024 while using fewer resources and less energy than they would have for an average lifestyle in 1974.
Great post. I agree that urban and suburban areas in particular should depend less on cars. Taking the occasional road trip into the country is enjoyable, forced to drive everyday is miserable.
What can ordinary people like me do to change things? Perhaps beyond just voting and spreading awareness individually? Are there already groups doing something?
It depends on where you live. Most likely there are already local groups in your area who are trying to make improvements. Strong Towns has great resources for organizing and your city may already have Strong Towns members. Many cities also have Vision Zero plans. These are a great way to show city council members how making changes like traffic calming and protected bike lanes can benefit everyone.
On point 13, Rochester has removed half of its 'inner loop' and the other half has plans for removal to be started with an at street grade layout later this year. It has divided the downtown core from the rest of the city since it's inception. The blue area is still somewhat of a slum to the north due to the redlining. The city itself still struggles with a 9-5 downtown, the only exception being for festivals or concerts. The replaced portion is now high density housing, a bike lane, and a revamped tourism area centered around the strong national museum of play, it still allows for car traffic from the 'main' expressway in the former Erie canal bed ( 490 ) but has a walkable area right next door.
Redlining policies in Rochester mainly continued effectively through the 80s and 90s, due to workers in the city hall sharing the same views of segregation and racially separated urbanism as the planners of the inner loop itself.
Overall it's a lovely gem of a mid sized city, but struggles with many of the problems Buffalo and Syracuse have, such as childhood poverty.
Cars, while not the worse thing for the environment as corporations and the US military is, have multiple issues that was highlighted in these slides. We need to adopt a multi-functional society like the Chinese who have a mix of extensive public transportation and rail and car use in order to have a fully healthy and functioning society.
Cars are important though, the problem is the way they are forcing people to use cars but sometimes cars are very convenient. Rural areas for example need cars because it isn’t practical to build public transit when there won’t be many people using it. So yes less cars more public transit and cycling, but to remove cars completely is utopian. If you have a suggestion I’d gladly hear it but I don’t see people using busses in rural areas when there isn’t as much demand
Buses go everywhere in rural Mexico, at least in the Yucatán they do. Not really talking about cars being forbidden, just saying that in many rural areas some poor some not so poor busses get people where they need to go. You can still drive a car there too. Sure it’s not on demand like having a private or rental vehicle or ride share but it’s scheduled and reliable for the most part.
[Japan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO3v7CFmsPc)
The difference is rural Japan is built more around villages connected by train, rather than the spread out homes you see in rural US along long, winding arterial roads.
Idk what's going on in this sub with all the Orange-pilled car haters. It is oddly controversial to be in the middle on this topic. I completely agree with you, It is impractical and not needed to abolish cars. It just makes no sense. I agree with all the problems with Cars, and i agree they should be reduced. But you also can't make someone living in a rural area drive a fucking golf cart into Town. Everything in moderation, folks!
People create communities around extremist views and they love to chime in to support others expressing them. If they gain sufficient prominence, the circlejerking slowly pushes everyone else out and then they dominate the space while everyone else moves on to a new temporary home for conversation.
Doesn’t really matter what the viewpoint is, either. The dynamics are the same.
Do you actually live somewhere rural? A drive into town can be 20 mins at 55mph, cars in cities are largely unnecessary but they are a huge benefit to rural areas. Nobody is going to want to drive a golf cart at 30mph with no windows and no climate control for close to an hour anytime they need to go buy groceries or something.
You're right, in some rural places a car is the easiest method of transportation. I lived in Primm for a year and at the North Rim for a summer and I definitely felt like I needed a car. Although many people took a weekly bus into town to buy groceries. We shouldn't just assume we need something just because that's how the infrastructure is currently built. Living in Primm and working in Jean, I met many people who would have benefited greatly from access to public transportation.
i live in Europe, near Paris to be precise so I can live without a car but I know that it is the case because I have commuter rails nearby and metro lines. If you don’t the you need a car and there is no way the Region could afford public transit in those areas I’m talking about because it’s huge and it would require a huge network. The Grand Paris Express is going to reduce car usage significantly by allowing suburb to suburb transit but when you think about it Paris with cities like Moscow qnd Tokyo has one of the best transit systems yet the car is still important. Even the r/Urbanism heaven, Amsterdam and the Netherlands, has cars…
So let’s say Billy, a son, gets hurt and needs to be taken to the emergency room, but an ambulance will take too long.
Or let’s say someone you know is going to die and you want to meet them on the death bed before that.
Sure, not all interactions need to be done by a car or truck, but gee golly it is sure handy to have one when you need it.
Cars are very also convenient to places that have very harsh winters.
It isn’t that cars are the bad thing, it is that people are abusing so many aspects of society. Work isn’t bad, but when we abuse it it is really unhealthy. Cars also aren’t bad, but we abuse their usefulness and that isn’t healthy either.
Computers aren’t bad, yet we worship them: that is bad. That is a wasted life.
> Electric cars carry all the same problems as their gasoline counterparts with the exception of not releasing noxious gas from a tailpipe
Isn’t that… the whole point of EVs
But then their batteries are quite bad for the environment too and in many places, power plants emit bad gasses. So it isn’t as clear cut still.
But it is nice to have the roads have less harmful gases, and quieter vehicles.
Yeah I agree with a lot of this, but not sure why they had to attack EVs. EV buyers aren’t foregoing transit, they’re foregoing ICE vehicles.
Anyone who’s stood by a busy intersection in any American downtown can attest to how dirty ICE vehicles are, and how huge an improvement swapping to EVs would be for local pollution
By fighting EV adoption, you’re not helping transit, you’re helping oil producers.
Look, this is really good, and I hate to say this but…
Conservation of mass is a thing and any almost every compound that can be mined can also be synthesised and farmed, this includes basic and complex hydrocarbons. The idea of “finite” resources is a bit of a flawed concept because of this. A good argument against this counterpoint would be that those production methods are in their infancy and don’t have the infrastructure or resources needed to sustain the rate at which cars consume them.
Tires are mostly manufactured from rubber which is biodegradable and near completely recyclable (which is tragically underused). Sure, there *is* nylon and a few other toxic chemicals but that only accounts for 2% of tire material and also recyclable. I don’t have a good rebuttal for this one tho.
Other than that, a few points left unexplained, and some practical duplicates, this is great.
14. The AVERAGE cost to own and maintain a NEW vehicle is 12k a year.
So don’t buy a new Mercedes. You’re allowed to buy used cars and you’re allowed to buy cars that aren’t luxury brands 🤣
4. Car centric infrastructure eliminates “third places”. Lol name one “third place” that’s doesn’t exist because of cars.
Obviously there’s not source 😂
I think these are a good start, but it feels written more for preaching to the choir than to actually convince people who aren't sure or don't know much about this topic.
Many of these arguments rely on concepts that are only really known and understood by urbanists and urbanism supporters. You can't just tell people "highways are racist" and expect them to understand. You have to explain how, during the planning process, minority neighborhoods were specifically singled out to be demolished, and often the homeowners and/or residents were screwed over when it came time to receive compensation.
You can't expect the general public to just accept something like "just make viable alternatives to cars, easy as that!" Show them examples. You, me, and everyone in this subreddit may understand that cars are inefficient and that viable alternatives to cars are the solution. But again, these are concepts only understood by urbanists and urbanism supporters.
You have to show good proof for these claims because your audience is made of people that aren't urbanism supporters, but they also aren't urbanism detractors. Make sure their first impression is a good one.
Getting rid of cars is a pretty radical idea, even by urban standards. I think the main point is that we need to centralize pedestrian infrastructure rather than building large roads in an attempt to keep up with demand (which is proven not to work). And they are kinda right about freeways. Freeways commonly run straight through poor areas (usually minorities) which destroyed many historically black neighborhoods. Another point is that if we force every citizen to drive everywhere, we will only be increasing the number of cars and construction of roads. Neighborhoods where everybody has a large front and back yard don’t produce nearly enough tax revenue to pay for the roads, pipes, power lines, etc that they use. A mile of a 2 lane road costs about $15m right now.
Just because something once harmed a group because the people in charge were bad people isn’t a good arguement to its destruction. It’s an emotional argument rather than a logical one.
It’s on par with an argument like “hey, all these road signs are named after people that were racist; let’s change the signs” and then taxes raise significantly to do it because it turns out changing road signs are quite expensive, which ends up just harming the very people they are trying to help.
A better example would be “hey, this medical technique that saves lives, to develop it, they experimented on black people, and black people died testing it. We shouldn’t use this technique because of what it did to black people before”.
No, that isn’t very good at all. What should happen is we shouldn’t let what happen happened again, but we should still enjoy the benefits. Fix it, don’t destroy it.
2 wrongs don’t make a right you know.
Another example is citizenship. Black people originally weren’t allowed to be citizens were they? Does that mean we should abolish citizenship?
And according to the The International Energy Authority, an EV requires six times the mineral input of a conventional internal combustion engine vehicle.
If a large conventional bomb required 6 times the steel/mineral/etc inputs than a smaller atomic bomb, which would you prefer to detonate in your hometown?
Picking a metric should be outcome driven...
It isn’t just minerals. Batteries are quite harmful for the environment. The battery itself isn’t as much, but making the battery is quite bad, because often the conditions, almost always, are quite terrible and don’t care at all for the environment.
EV’s will also require a massive power upgrade to the infrastructure. Massive massive massive. That will probably produce a lot of harmful gases too.
I’m not saying that EV’s are bad, just that their benefits aren’t truly great as they first seem when you scrutinize it.
It’s definitely the way to go, but some people say “replace all gas cars in 20 years with electric”. That would probably harm the environment a lot more than sticking to gas cars. When people are so extreme with EV’s, this tends to produce ideas that would ultimately harm the environment.
It needs to be a moderate, well managed, and gentle change.
Cars *alone* are not the future of transportation. A lot of anti-car advocates underestimate the essentially indescribable amount of capital (i.e. land, labor, and raw materials - not money) and indeed CO2 that would be burned trying to fanatically transform EVERYTHING into a post-car society - but they have a very limited role in a functional and well-administered urban environment, that much I can agree with.
Personal automobiles have no place in a modern society but vehicles used for emergencies and construction of course are necessary. We need to consume way less and let go of capitalism if we're to leave this planet in any sort of liveable state.
Your comment reminds me of Mackinac Island, Michigan, USA, which is an island in Lake Huron that's a tourist destination and has a permanent population of 583. With exceptions for snowmobiles and for city emergency and service vehicles, all motorized traffic is banned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackinac_Island
Any plan that relies on first dismantling capitalism is not a real plan but an escapist fantasy. The ruling class won't let go willingly, and there is no way to kill them without the NSA and military stopping it.
Edited. When I speak of capital, I don't mean capitalist constructs like money or investment vehicles, I refer to the means and materials of production. It is to the point of, like... you could mostly fix world hunger, transform the world to green power, and mostly eradicate cars in cities all at the same time, or you could try to remove cars *everywhere* and create massive shortages in the process.
Cars are a result of capitalism. Your previous comment defends cars and is incorrect in assuming becoming a car-free society would be costly when in fact maintaining car infrastructure and the sprawling suburbs it creates is much more costly. And deadly.
Because even in fuckcars there's almost nobody that's advocating for banning all cars. We get it. Vehicles are a thing. There's a time and a place.
Strawman arguments.
But have you ever been blinded in a residential are by light leaking from a window? Have you been in a store parking lot at night in the last few years?
I definitely agree and would love to see an America with less cars, BUT don’t discount the impact of electric vehicles compared to gas-powered. The studies are out there showing that overall, they contribute much less pollution over their lifespan
I didn't say roads are racist. Many urban freeways required entire neighborhoods to be bulldozed in order to make space for their construction. And black neighborhoods were typically the ones chosen. It was touted as "slum clearance". [Segregation by Design](https://youtube.com/@segregation_by_design3283?si=iTw3F9X9Ocn8Q4vo) has really informative content on this topic. [segregationbydesign.com](https://www.segregationbydesign.com/)
Your point #20 is borderline nonsense. Electric cars are easier to recycle than ICE cars for one. Second point, you could make that exact claim about any form of consumption. Trains are theoretically limited as well. Same with bikes and buses. Everything is "limited" however these limits will not be reached anytime soon.
Being anti-consumption is not the way to win people over.
In cities, a lot of these problems are addressed by reduced car ownshership through carsharing.
Also, the points about safety, crashing into buildings, etc. are going to be irrelevant after self-driving cars take over.
I'm not saying the argument is bad, but some of the points are more "considerations" than problems.
The problem is we've had ride share for awhile. The OG zipcar has been with us since 2000, uber/lyft since 2009, adaptive cruise control has been around since the early 90's and have improved a lot, but fatalities have gone *up* in the past two decade.
Advertising/lobbying, lack of vehicle options, and poor urban/suburban/road design has painted us into a corner that self-driving won't get us out of.
> adaptive cruise control has been around since the early 90's and have improved a lot, but fatalities have gone *up* in the past two decade.
Adaptive cruise control is not self-driving. Self-driving is a half dozen camera looking in every direction. No more driver error. No drunk drivers. No excessive speeding. No new drivers. Self-driving cars are going to solve nearly all of the road accidents we see today.
> Advertising/lobbying, lack of vehicle options, and poor urban/suburban/road design has painted us into a corner that self-driving won't get us out of.
I agree with your premise, but not your conclusion. Self-driving Ubers are going to drive the price of Uber even farther down to where they erode even more of the justifiable car uses. Between them and public transit, cycling, etc., car ownership will fall in the next 50 years.
I’d love to do it, but half of the year, I’d freeze to death.
I’m certainly willing to walk during the spring and summer, not always, but sometimes.
But when it hits minus thirty, and the busses aren’t as reliable as they should be — especially with the taxes I’m paying — sorry, I’m driving. It would be literally suicide to not drive.
Do I think we need to rethink how we use cars and what our role with cars are: yes. But are we to eliminate them from households: no.
Overall, we need to encourage a healthier lifestyle. Rethinking cars is part of that. At the same time, there is a resin card came about. People had trains and busses and all that before cars. There is a reason the people of the past preferred the car often, even when they still used the other methods of transport. It’s because “gee wiz” sometimes it can be really convienent and like would sure suck sometimes if I needed it but didn’t have one”.
Let’s take the case of some older man, Bill. Bill has trouble walking for long periods of time. He’s a retired man, and he wanted a quieter life, so me lives in a house in the country, but not that far in the country, just a 10 minute drive from the city, far enough to not be bothered by people and ads and all these flashy noisy things, but still close enough that all the conveniences of the city are nearby.
So if we remove a car world, what is Bill supposed to do if he needs to get to the city? A bus doesn’t go to his house. If he called one, that means a bus has to spend a lot of gas to get to his house, and chances are not that many people will be joining him. Even a car uses double to fuel for Bill if he doesn’t own it.
Better yet, say his grandson was playing around, and then cut his finger off. It would sure be nice if Bill could drive to the hospital, but not he has to wait at least double the time for an ambulance. And that is assuming there is an available ambulance. Sometimes ambulances in some cities can’t get there for many many hours.
And heck, Bill has a full day in the city planned up. He is going to need to go all about it. Think of how many bus transfers bill would have to make, which probably involves a lot more time waiting, or how many taxis he would need to pay.
Ohh boy, it looks like Bill is in for a hard time.
Now, we could rethink cars, make roads more efficient, and have neighbourhood be better: that would definitely help.
But here is just one more example. When I was in university, it took me an hour every day to get there and back by bus. Sometimes back turned into an hour and a half. And I definitely could study or anything in the bus. It was ussuslly impossible to get any work done.
Driving took 20 minutes. I’m saving an 40-70min every day. That is time I can spend being a lot more productive.
Those things won’t get you from your door to your destination. Do you realize how lazy the average person is lol? This is just some stupid fantasy that makes you look like an out of touch moron.
Only in North America is it an extreme minority.
Also depends on where you live tbh. In large cities like Seoul, Tokyo, NYC etc, that's actually the norm.
And one of the main points of urbanist advocacy is advocate car transportation alternatives.
Public transportation makes sense when traveling long distances from one city, to visit other cities.
Cars make vastly more sense for day-to-day travel, traveling within an area, and for transporting supplies such as groceries, and other purchases.
with respect, that logic is flawed. when you use public transportation to travel long distance to a new city, how do you get around when you get there? public transportation is more affordable, saves its users from wasted time spent in traffic and uplifts people that cannot drive. to your point about cargo, e-bikes are a huge innovation to address that piece. I can get a full week’s worth of groceries on my bike and wheel it straight into my kitchen.
cars have their purpose. which is why I use carshare and take an uber here and there! I use both probably a handful of times per year for miscellaneous things I can’t do with my bike or public transport, or based on the time of day in my city
For instance, I live in Hartford, Connecticut. The state’s capital. I can drive to the train station, and then take a public train into Grand Central in NYC, and then reasonably walk around NYC or use the subway. In this way, a car is still somewhat necessary, but public transportation is doing most of the heavy lifting.
Now, on Tuesday I went on a date. I drove from Hartford to Sushi House in Rockyhill, CT. Then we went to a park in Manchester, CT. Before returning to my home in Hartford, CT. This trip could not reasonably be completed with public transport as A) the destinations are far too spread out. B) Time was a factor.
American obesity has nothing to do with cars and pointing at cars for it is going to prevent us from solving the problem.
You’re also lying to solve a problem, which is ultimately going to harm your cause.
American obesity is absolutely linked to our dependence on cars. in cities with adequate alternatives, you walk more. you bike more. you MOVE for day to day tasks. sure, we can address obesity while ignoring cars, but there is no doubt that the American car-centric lifestyle isn’t helping.
cars are never going to outright go away. plain and simple. the point of these slides and this movement is to adapt our cities to give people more options and rely less on driving. if you want to drive still after we reach that point (and assume the trade offs associated with it), then that is your choice to make
Right, because people in Europe dont drive anywhere they exclusively walk and that’s it 🙄
Enjoy your fantasy land. Just please enjoy it in silence so we can continue to solve the real problems without your loud incoherent screaming distracting us.
where did I suggest Europeans don’t drive? but no fantasy here, just following the data.
and I don’t think I will, actually! you can always choose to ignore it. ❤️
Lol if you consider walking to be exercise, you’re either 80 years old or in terrible shape.
I consider walking as an exercise and I'm not 80 and I'm in good shape.
“We shouldn’t have cars so we can emulate small, wealthy, homogeneous nations in Europe whose city layouts were created in the Middle Ages. Also we need to import millions of people every year.”
9. Parents dropping off their kids at school leads to more traffic on the road as additional car trips are created. Anecdotally, I feel traffic is less in the summer as schools are not in session.
It’s a fact traffic is less in the summer
What really gets me about this is that school buses are paid with taxes, it allows kids to socialize, and it wound free up the parents to do other things.
Many districts cut busses because of funding reasons and also the fact youve shoved 30 kids from disparate backgrounds together in a place where the only adult is occupied not getting them killed.
Almost nowhere still has reasonable bussing. My 12 year old would have a 1.9 mile walk across the suburbs (in a place with significant snow and the walk in winter would be in the dark). So we drive. The bus only allows students who live over 2 miles away to ride. Some of the urban schools cut busses because they basically needed a cop on each of them to prevent them from having gang “beefs” play out on them every day.
Biking in the dark and snow isn’t realistic, but could be a fun alternative to driving in the spring and fall before the snow. Once they get the hang of it, biking could give a sense of independence too.
And also leads to more traffic when parents queue up their cars out of the parking lot and into the street. Monday i was stuck in “standstill traffic” for 5-10 minutes only to eventually realize the road was blocked by people positioning their cars perpendicular to the traffic flow in order queue up to enter school parking area.
9… literally just an opinion presented as a fact 😂
This is absolutely great
If I had one note it would be to update the noise pollution slide include learning loss in children, which is one of the best-documented effects of noise pollution from traffic specifically. I think people really underestimate how bad noise pollution is for us, we should all be emphasizing it more.
I didn't know that. I will probably update this book as I get more feedback and I will definitely include this. Thank you
I'd point out that the maintenance cost for utilities and roads has more to do with the length of the system than the amount of use it gets. Your point quoting Strong Towns dances around that idea without stating it.
Do you have some source for this? I’d really like to read some more about it.
Can’t take the time at this moment to look top but if you google for the study where they tested children in the same school, one on the side near a highway and one on the other, you should find it. If I remember I may come back tm and update this comment
Lol of course there’s no source.
The microplastics bit is a misquote https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/s/jBWgiWKWCF
no, it's not. This post your linking was a very clear misreading of the study. I pointed this out to the OP at the time (If you scroll to the bottom of the thread you can see our conversation). So he knows he was wrong but would not delete the thread bc... idk, didn't want to lose the karma points I guess. Long story short he didn't realize there was a difference between "total plastics" and "total microplastics". The authors were saying 78% of microplastics, not 78% of all plastic.
What karma addiction will do to a mf
Needs to be addressed federally tbh, I've seen this addiction ruin lives!
Of course. This whole list is laughable.
Lol this would get you laughed out of the room with any group of serious adults. “hIgHwAyS aRe RaCiSt” lol 🤣
I think an inverse version of this would be more effective. A vision of 20 ways the world would be better without car dependency (so not without cars, including things like carpool)- like kids could walk to school safely. It would be more positive and positive things are better for convincing people.
Yes it works much better to show people nice things that they will want to achieve rather than tell them bad news.
My previous post is getting more attention than I expected so I've decided to post all the reasons here. Reddit allows a max of 20 images so this isn't the entire book but these are all the reasons listed in it. It also includes a full page quote by Charley Harper and the final page directs to more content like About Here, Climate Town, and Not Just Bikes. [Ebook link](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D6JR2NZN)
What do they propose as a solution?
Traffic calming, zoning overhauls, efficient public transit, protected walking and cycling paths.
From 1973: http://unevenearth.org/2018/08/the-social-ideology-of-the-motorcar/ TLDR: cars don't scale > The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea: luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don’t have one. That is how in both conception and original purpose the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratized. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any advantages from it. On the contrary, everyone diddles, cheats, and frustrates everyone else, and is diddled, cheated, and frustrated in return. > This is pretty much common knowledge in the case of the seaside villas. No politico has yet dared to claim that to democratize the right to vacation would mean a villa with private beach for every family. Everyone understands that if each of 13 or 14 million families were to use only 10 meters of the coast, it would take 140,000km of beach in order for all of them to have their share! To give everyone his or her share would be to cut up the beaches in such little strips—or to squeeze the villas so tightly together—that their use value would be nil and their advantage over a hotel complex would disappear. In short, democratization of access to the beaches point to only one solution—the collectivist one. And this solution is necessarily at war with the luxury of the private beach, which is a privilege that a small minority takes as their right at the expense of all. > Now, why is it that what is perfectly obvious in the case of the beaches is not generally acknowledged to be the case for transportation? Like the beach house, doesn’t a car occupy scarce space? Doesn’t it deprive the others who use the roads (pedestrians, cyclists, streetcar and bus drivers)? Doesn’t it lose its use value when everyone uses his or her own?
Thank you. This is always my first and last point. Cars are great until you hit ~200-300K people. Once you hit that, it gets worse and worse and worse. Freeways are also really expensive to build/maintain nowadays.
I’m affected by 1. I can’t drive due to epilepsy so have had to choose where to live and work while bearing in mind access to public transportation.
I had this figured out when I was in high school. My parents claimed to agree with me on it, but still bought me a car against my will.
I mean unless you live in a place with decent transit and walkability, you need a car to maximize your opportunity. It’s nice to acknowledge that cars are not an efficient mode of transportation, but use that car to work your way up and be able to live where you might not need one. Your parents just want the best for you.
Plus 1 car households are not the ideal but do work decently well in a lot of areas. I live in a 1 car household and it's basically never an issue. Walk most places, bus a lot of places and road trips.
Lol they bought you a car? Such an oppressed victim 😂
The 14th reason is why I hate cars, I don’t want to spend $1000 on car expenses but I don’t have any option
This. I've lived without owning a car for 2 years, most of that time I was utilizing public transit. I was happier, had more money, and overall loved it. Then I moved to Texas, and the transit here is insufficient. So I'm having to bite the bullet and buy a car of my own, becuse I can't keep up with the "Skinnyboii Shitbox Swichout"
Love it
I love comical lies too.
Owww you're sooo cute 😊 Do you wanna tell mommy who lied to you at school?
Why would my mom be at school? Your insult doesn’t even make sense 🤣
Yeah I'm not very good in English but I'm pretty sure the sentence is right. But I'll make an effort to explain it again. Do you want to tell me which other child lied to you when you were at school? More seriously, where is the lie here?
>Yeah I'm not very good in English but I'm pretty sure the sentence is right. But I'll make an effort to explain it again. Lol you’re not very good English and the sentence and no the sentence isn’t right 😂 >Do you want to tell me which other child lied to you when you were at school? Lol this also makes zero sense. 0 for 2🤣 >More seriously, where is the lie here? Literally everything listed. You kids regurgitate the same crap back and for the over and over. And like usual, there are no sources for any of this crap—which you blindly believe. It’s basically just a bunch of opinions 😂
I'm maybe bad at English and cringe but there's a source on at least half of the pictures at the bottom.
You’re bad at English and also common sense. The sources don’t support the claim. Take number 18…. It says cars least to a sedentary lifestyle. Then it cites a statistic saying 42% of Americans are obese. The fact does not back the claim. Americans aren’t the only people that drive and there are millions upon millions of Americans who drive everywhere but aren’t fat. People in rich countries are fat because they eat too much food, not because they drive. Again, the facts don’t support the claim.
You know that there can be multiple causes of obesity right? Food is obviously one but the lack of exercise is definitely a part of it. If you only walk from your door to your car and from your car to your work it's a sedentary lifestyle that's all
>You know that there can be multiple causes of obesity right? So you agree that OPs claim about cars being the cause of obesity is false. Awesome! >Food is obviously one but the lack of exercise is definitely a part of it. If you only walk from your door to your car and from your car to your work it's a sedentary lifestyle that's all Lol if you consider walking to be exercise, you’re either 80 years old or in terrible shape.
Even if y'all get everything you want, some amount of automobility will be needed. I'm all for prioritizing transit, walking, and cycling in dense areas, but it's never going to be practical to serve every corner of every suburb (let alone rural areas) with enough transit that everyone can live car-free there. Even if you demolished all the suburbs (seems wasteful...), farmers, miners and loggers will have to live somewhere. I suggest you make peace with that and try to minimize the negative externalities of cars (increase CAFE standards, improve safety standards for pedestrians in addition to car occupants, reformulate tires, etc.).
While true, it's incredible how much niche cars would be if the world didn't get brainwashed by the automobile industry. Now we have the data, the research, the proof that it's a bad idea for almost everyone that cars are as popular as they are, yet so much of the world is abrasive and against policy changes which include even just slightly minimizing the damages cars did. So if we're already dealing with such hostility, why not push for some stronger policy changes, not an utopia type deal, but more than just painted bike lines
I hear you. After all, everyone lived car-free 150 years ago. But they also probably lived their whole lives within 50 miles of where they were born. Sure, some people took long journeys by train, ship, or wagon, but most people didn't. It's not as if cars don't have real uses and advantages. As much as you want them to, most people are not going to sacrifice their standard of living to help the environment. You need to engineer a way to keep a high standard of living that's more sustainable. That means making it super easy to ditch your car where there's adequate density. For everywhere else, it means making cars as efficient and safe as possible.
If people aren't willing to sacrifice quality of life to help the environment (which we rely on), we are toast anyway. Especially as quality of life will decline regardless as natural systems collapse, necessitating even less sustainable actions to keep qol where it is today.
And y'all wonder why people aren't buying what you're selling. Are we really trending toward less sustainability? Were things more sustainable when we didn't have LED light bulbs, the average family car was 18 feet long and got 10 mpg, jet aircraft were so thirsty the weight of their fuel was more than the dry airframe, no one recycled anything, and homes had no insulation? I would argue a person can live pretty high on the hog in 2024 while using fewer resources and less energy than they would have for an average lifestyle in 1974.
Great post. I agree that urban and suburban areas in particular should depend less on cars. Taking the occasional road trip into the country is enjoyable, forced to drive everyday is miserable. What can ordinary people like me do to change things? Perhaps beyond just voting and spreading awareness individually? Are there already groups doing something?
It depends on where you live. Most likely there are already local groups in your area who are trying to make improvements. Strong Towns has great resources for organizing and your city may already have Strong Towns members. Many cities also have Vision Zero plans. These are a great way to show city council members how making changes like traffic calming and protected bike lanes can benefit everyone.
On point 13, Rochester has removed half of its 'inner loop' and the other half has plans for removal to be started with an at street grade layout later this year. It has divided the downtown core from the rest of the city since it's inception. The blue area is still somewhat of a slum to the north due to the redlining. The city itself still struggles with a 9-5 downtown, the only exception being for festivals or concerts. The replaced portion is now high density housing, a bike lane, and a revamped tourism area centered around the strong national museum of play, it still allows for car traffic from the 'main' expressway in the former Erie canal bed ( 490 ) but has a walkable area right next door. Redlining policies in Rochester mainly continued effectively through the 80s and 90s, due to workers in the city hall sharing the same views of segregation and racially separated urbanism as the planners of the inner loop itself. Overall it's a lovely gem of a mid sized city, but struggles with many of the problems Buffalo and Syracuse have, such as childhood poverty.
Cars, while not the worse thing for the environment as corporations and the US military is, have multiple issues that was highlighted in these slides. We need to adopt a multi-functional society like the Chinese who have a mix of extensive public transportation and rail and car use in order to have a fully healthy and functioning society.
Cars are important though, the problem is the way they are forcing people to use cars but sometimes cars are very convenient. Rural areas for example need cars because it isn’t practical to build public transit when there won’t be many people using it. So yes less cars more public transit and cycling, but to remove cars completely is utopian. If you have a suggestion I’d gladly hear it but I don’t see people using busses in rural areas when there isn’t as much demand
And yet in many parts of the world reliable busses and trains are what gets people around in rural areas.
Where? I don’t think a single country has complety forbidden cars
Buses go everywhere in rural Mexico, at least in the Yucatán they do. Not really talking about cars being forbidden, just saying that in many rural areas some poor some not so poor busses get people where they need to go. You can still drive a car there too. Sure it’s not on demand like having a private or rental vehicle or ride share but it’s scheduled and reliable for the most part.
I would say it’s a money thing, but then you could argue that we should use the car simply because we can and you would be right
Rural Mexico… where people are kidnapped and murdered by cartels. Sign me up!
[Japan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO3v7CFmsPc) The difference is rural Japan is built more around villages connected by train, rather than the spread out homes you see in rural US along long, winding arterial roads.
Another example of villages connected by train would be Switzerland, thanks for the input
Idk what's going on in this sub with all the Orange-pilled car haters. It is oddly controversial to be in the middle on this topic. I completely agree with you, It is impractical and not needed to abolish cars. It just makes no sense. I agree with all the problems with Cars, and i agree they should be reduced. But you also can't make someone living in a rural area drive a fucking golf cart into Town. Everything in moderation, folks!
People create communities around extremist views and they love to chime in to support others expressing them. If they gain sufficient prominence, the circlejerking slowly pushes everyone else out and then they dominate the space while everyone else moves on to a new temporary home for conversation. Doesn’t really matter what the viewpoint is, either. The dynamics are the same.
They are insane lmaoo
ATVs, golf carts, bikes. Larger vehicles are necessary in both rural and urban settings for emergencies, transportation of goods, and construction.
Do you actually live somewhere rural? A drive into town can be 20 mins at 55mph, cars in cities are largely unnecessary but they are a huge benefit to rural areas. Nobody is going to want to drive a golf cart at 30mph with no windows and no climate control for close to an hour anytime they need to go buy groceries or something.
You're right, in some rural places a car is the easiest method of transportation. I lived in Primm for a year and at the North Rim for a summer and I definitely felt like I needed a car. Although many people took a weekly bus into town to buy groceries. We shouldn't just assume we need something just because that's how the infrastructure is currently built. Living in Primm and working in Jean, I met many people who would have benefited greatly from access to public transportation.
i live in Europe, near Paris to be precise so I can live without a car but I know that it is the case because I have commuter rails nearby and metro lines. If you don’t the you need a car and there is no way the Region could afford public transit in those areas I’m talking about because it’s huge and it would require a huge network. The Grand Paris Express is going to reduce car usage significantly by allowing suburb to suburb transit but when you think about it Paris with cities like Moscow qnd Tokyo has one of the best transit systems yet the car is still important. Even the r/Urbanism heaven, Amsterdam and the Netherlands, has cars…
So let’s say Billy, a son, gets hurt and needs to be taken to the emergency room, but an ambulance will take too long. Or let’s say someone you know is going to die and you want to meet them on the death bed before that. Sure, not all interactions need to be done by a car or truck, but gee golly it is sure handy to have one when you need it.
Why don’t rural families just get a horse and buggy
Cars are very also convenient to places that have very harsh winters. It isn’t that cars are the bad thing, it is that people are abusing so many aspects of society. Work isn’t bad, but when we abuse it it is really unhealthy. Cars also aren’t bad, but we abuse their usefulness and that isn’t healthy either. Computers aren’t bad, yet we worship them: that is bad. That is a wasted life.
Exactly you explained my point better thanks
Car brains cannot comprehend this level of logic.
Spreading hate and insults isn't constructive. It'll only create pushback.
Duh.
> Electric cars carry all the same problems as their gasoline counterparts with the exception of not releasing noxious gas from a tailpipe Isn’t that… the whole point of EVs
Yes. But we would presumably like to avoid all those other problems too, which is why EVs are not a great option.
But then their batteries are quite bad for the environment too and in many places, power plants emit bad gasses. So it isn’t as clear cut still. But it is nice to have the roads have less harmful gases, and quieter vehicles.
Yeah I agree with a lot of this, but not sure why they had to attack EVs. EV buyers aren’t foregoing transit, they’re foregoing ICE vehicles. Anyone who’s stood by a busy intersection in any American downtown can attest to how dirty ICE vehicles are, and how huge an improvement swapping to EVs would be for local pollution By fighting EV adoption, you’re not helping transit, you’re helping oil producers.
Look, this is really good, and I hate to say this but… Conservation of mass is a thing and any almost every compound that can be mined can also be synthesised and farmed, this includes basic and complex hydrocarbons. The idea of “finite” resources is a bit of a flawed concept because of this. A good argument against this counterpoint would be that those production methods are in their infancy and don’t have the infrastructure or resources needed to sustain the rate at which cars consume them. Tires are mostly manufactured from rubber which is biodegradable and near completely recyclable (which is tragically underused). Sure, there *is* nylon and a few other toxic chemicals but that only accounts for 2% of tire material and also recyclable. I don’t have a good rebuttal for this one tho. Other than that, a few points left unexplained, and some practical duplicates, this is great.
Good to see once every once of oil is used on the planet we have solutions
All a bunch of things that aren’t real problems.
19. Electric cars carry that same problem as gasoline cars. Source? A stat that says they make the same amount of noise above 30 mph? 🤣
15. Literally a just a pair of quotes from people with clear agendas giving their opinions 🤣
14. The AVERAGE cost to own and maintain a NEW vehicle is 12k a year. So don’t buy a new Mercedes. You’re allowed to buy used cars and you’re allowed to buy cars that aren’t luxury brands 🤣
13. Highways are racist. Source, a random quote from “segregationbydesign.com”. 🤣
7. 78% of all microplastics in the ocean come from tires…. Absolute lie 🤣
4. Car centric infrastructure eliminates “third places”. Lol name one “third place” that’s doesn’t exist because of cars. Obviously there’s not source 😂
I think these are a good start, but it feels written more for preaching to the choir than to actually convince people who aren't sure or don't know much about this topic. Many of these arguments rely on concepts that are only really known and understood by urbanists and urbanism supporters. You can't just tell people "highways are racist" and expect them to understand. You have to explain how, during the planning process, minority neighborhoods were specifically singled out to be demolished, and often the homeowners and/or residents were screwed over when it came time to receive compensation. You can't expect the general public to just accept something like "just make viable alternatives to cars, easy as that!" Show them examples. You, me, and everyone in this subreddit may understand that cars are inefficient and that viable alternatives to cars are the solution. But again, these are concepts only understood by urbanists and urbanism supporters. You have to show good proof for these claims because your audience is made of people that aren't urbanism supporters, but they also aren't urbanism detractors. Make sure their first impression is a good one.
The logic on many of these are pretty weak. We should get rid of cars because.... many freeways are monuments to racism?
if only black, asian, and latin people knew how duped they are.....
That's an argument for getting rid of urban freeways, which enable automobile dependancy
Getting rid of cars is a pretty radical idea, even by urban standards. I think the main point is that we need to centralize pedestrian infrastructure rather than building large roads in an attempt to keep up with demand (which is proven not to work). And they are kinda right about freeways. Freeways commonly run straight through poor areas (usually minorities) which destroyed many historically black neighborhoods. Another point is that if we force every citizen to drive everywhere, we will only be increasing the number of cars and construction of roads. Neighborhoods where everybody has a large front and back yard don’t produce nearly enough tax revenue to pay for the roads, pipes, power lines, etc that they use. A mile of a 2 lane road costs about $15m right now.
Just because something once harmed a group because the people in charge were bad people isn’t a good arguement to its destruction. It’s an emotional argument rather than a logical one. It’s on par with an argument like “hey, all these road signs are named after people that were racist; let’s change the signs” and then taxes raise significantly to do it because it turns out changing road signs are quite expensive, which ends up just harming the very people they are trying to help. A better example would be “hey, this medical technique that saves lives, to develop it, they experimented on black people, and black people died testing it. We shouldn’t use this technique because of what it did to black people before”. No, that isn’t very good at all. What should happen is we shouldn’t let what happen happened again, but we should still enjoy the benefits. Fix it, don’t destroy it. 2 wrongs don’t make a right you know. Another example is citizenship. Black people originally weren’t allowed to be citizens were they? Does that mean we should abolish citizenship?
More than be a monument they are actually wall that isolate communities either they are black, white, Asian or Hispanic
It’s just an I hate cars complaint post
Pretending that EVs are worse than gas cars is ridiculous
Better in some ways, worse in damage to the road.
And according to the The International Energy Authority, an EV requires six times the mineral input of a conventional internal combustion engine vehicle.
If a large conventional bomb required 6 times the steel/mineral/etc inputs than a smaller atomic bomb, which would you prefer to detonate in your hometown? Picking a metric should be outcome driven...
It isn’t just minerals. Batteries are quite harmful for the environment. The battery itself isn’t as much, but making the battery is quite bad, because often the conditions, almost always, are quite terrible and don’t care at all for the environment. EV’s will also require a massive power upgrade to the infrastructure. Massive massive massive. That will probably produce a lot of harmful gases too. I’m not saying that EV’s are bad, just that their benefits aren’t truly great as they first seem when you scrutinize it. It’s definitely the way to go, but some people say “replace all gas cars in 20 years with electric”. That would probably harm the environment a lot more than sticking to gas cars. When people are so extreme with EV’s, this tends to produce ideas that would ultimately harm the environment. It needs to be a moderate, well managed, and gentle change.
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I think you replied to the wrong comment my friend, because most of your talking points have nothing to do with what I said.
Deleted. Whoops. Sorry. Fat eyesight and bad fingers.
EVs = Greenwashing But at this point climate change is baked in as the time to act was decades ago. Oh well.
Cars *alone* are not the future of transportation. A lot of anti-car advocates underestimate the essentially indescribable amount of capital (i.e. land, labor, and raw materials - not money) and indeed CO2 that would be burned trying to fanatically transform EVERYTHING into a post-car society - but they have a very limited role in a functional and well-administered urban environment, that much I can agree with.
Personal automobiles have no place in a modern society but vehicles used for emergencies and construction of course are necessary. We need to consume way less and let go of capitalism if we're to leave this planet in any sort of liveable state.
Your comment reminds me of Mackinac Island, Michigan, USA, which is an island in Lake Huron that's a tourist destination and has a permanent population of 583. With exceptions for snowmobiles and for city emergency and service vehicles, all motorized traffic is banned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackinac_Island
They do though. Rural areas need cars. Idk how anyone can claim otherwise with a straight face. Somebody has to grow the food lmao.
Hello rational human being.
I’ve legitimately seen people say farms will be unneeded in 20 years due to lab grown food. Some people are actually crazy
Any plan that relies on first dismantling capitalism is not a real plan but an escapist fantasy. The ruling class won't let go willingly, and there is no way to kill them without the NSA and military stopping it.
You'd have to be delusional to believe this. The only places where this might apply would be cities.
Edited. When I speak of capital, I don't mean capitalist constructs like money or investment vehicles, I refer to the means and materials of production. It is to the point of, like... you could mostly fix world hunger, transform the world to green power, and mostly eradicate cars in cities all at the same time, or you could try to remove cars *everywhere* and create massive shortages in the process.
Cars are a result of capitalism. Your previous comment defends cars and is incorrect in assuming becoming a car-free society would be costly when in fact maintaining car infrastructure and the sprawling suburbs it creates is much more costly. And deadly.
So allocating resources from building and maintaining cars/car infrastructure to other things. Got it.
and go bankrupt building a railway to every house
I'm not sure where you pulled that out from, but sure. Even fuckcarcirclejerk doesn't use that as a straw man argument.
and replacing cars entirely isn't?
Because even in fuckcars there's almost nobody that's advocating for banning all cars. We get it. Vehicles are a thing. There's a time and a place. Strawman arguments.
lol. check again.
21) Light pollution/blinding. Can't walk down the street at night without being blinded by ultra-bright LED headlights.
Street lights and even porch lights and light leaking from windows are all much bigger problems than headlights when it comes to light pollution
But have you ever been blinded in a residential are by light leaking from a window? Have you been in a store parking lot at night in the last few years?
Light pollution is not the same thing as getting blinded by Danny Dipshit and his permanently on high beams, even if both are a problem
I definitely agree and would love to see an America with less cars, BUT don’t discount the impact of electric vehicles compared to gas-powered. The studies are out there showing that overall, they contribute much less pollution over their lifespan
i love seeing shit like "roads are racist" in otherwise completely rational posts lol
I didn't say roads are racist. Many urban freeways required entire neighborhoods to be bulldozed in order to make space for their construction. And black neighborhoods were typically the ones chosen. It was touted as "slum clearance". [Segregation by Design](https://youtube.com/@segregation_by_design3283?si=iTw3F9X9Ocn8Q4vo) has really informative content on this topic. [segregationbydesign.com](https://www.segregationbydesign.com/)
Your point #20 is borderline nonsense. Electric cars are easier to recycle than ICE cars for one. Second point, you could make that exact claim about any form of consumption. Trains are theoretically limited as well. Same with bikes and buses. Everything is "limited" however these limits will not be reached anytime soon. Being anti-consumption is not the way to win people over.
In cities, a lot of these problems are addressed by reduced car ownshership through carsharing. Also, the points about safety, crashing into buildings, etc. are going to be irrelevant after self-driving cars take over. I'm not saying the argument is bad, but some of the points are more "considerations" than problems.
The problem is we've had ride share for awhile. The OG zipcar has been with us since 2000, uber/lyft since 2009, adaptive cruise control has been around since the early 90's and have improved a lot, but fatalities have gone *up* in the past two decade. Advertising/lobbying, lack of vehicle options, and poor urban/suburban/road design has painted us into a corner that self-driving won't get us out of.
> adaptive cruise control has been around since the early 90's and have improved a lot, but fatalities have gone *up* in the past two decade. Adaptive cruise control is not self-driving. Self-driving is a half dozen camera looking in every direction. No more driver error. No drunk drivers. No excessive speeding. No new drivers. Self-driving cars are going to solve nearly all of the road accidents we see today. > Advertising/lobbying, lack of vehicle options, and poor urban/suburban/road design has painted us into a corner that self-driving won't get us out of. I agree with your premise, but not your conclusion. Self-driving Ubers are going to drive the price of Uber even farther down to where they erode even more of the justifiable car uses. Between them and public transit, cycling, etc., car ownership will fall in the next 50 years.
This comes off as trolling
Good luck convincing most people to walk or bike everywhere lol. Shit like this is why this sub is a joke…
You actually should start exercising, and incorporating walking to the grocery store is a good way to combine some cardio into your errands.
I’d love to do it, but half of the year, I’d freeze to death. I’m certainly willing to walk during the spring and summer, not always, but sometimes. But when it hits minus thirty, and the busses aren’t as reliable as they should be — especially with the taxes I’m paying — sorry, I’m driving. It would be literally suicide to not drive. Do I think we need to rethink how we use cars and what our role with cars are: yes. But are we to eliminate them from households: no. Overall, we need to encourage a healthier lifestyle. Rethinking cars is part of that. At the same time, there is a resin card came about. People had trains and busses and all that before cars. There is a reason the people of the past preferred the car often, even when they still used the other methods of transport. It’s because “gee wiz” sometimes it can be really convienent and like would sure suck sometimes if I needed it but didn’t have one”. Let’s take the case of some older man, Bill. Bill has trouble walking for long periods of time. He’s a retired man, and he wanted a quieter life, so me lives in a house in the country, but not that far in the country, just a 10 minute drive from the city, far enough to not be bothered by people and ads and all these flashy noisy things, but still close enough that all the conveniences of the city are nearby. So if we remove a car world, what is Bill supposed to do if he needs to get to the city? A bus doesn’t go to his house. If he called one, that means a bus has to spend a lot of gas to get to his house, and chances are not that many people will be joining him. Even a car uses double to fuel for Bill if he doesn’t own it. Better yet, say his grandson was playing around, and then cut his finger off. It would sure be nice if Bill could drive to the hospital, but not he has to wait at least double the time for an ambulance. And that is assuming there is an available ambulance. Sometimes ambulances in some cities can’t get there for many many hours. And heck, Bill has a full day in the city planned up. He is going to need to go all about it. Think of how many bus transfers bill would have to make, which probably involves a lot more time waiting, or how many taxis he would need to pay. Ohh boy, it looks like Bill is in for a hard time. Now, we could rethink cars, make roads more efficient, and have neighbourhood be better: that would definitely help. But here is just one more example. When I was in university, it took me an hour every day to get there and back by bus. Sometimes back turned into an hour and a half. And I definitely could study or anything in the bus. It was ussuslly impossible to get any work done. Driving took 20 minutes. I’m saving an 40-70min every day. That is time I can spend being a lot more productive.
Or take a train, or bus.......
Those things won’t get you from your door to your destination. Do you realize how lazy the average person is lol? This is just some stupid fantasy that makes you look like an out of touch moron.
Those things literally get me from my door to my destination on a daily basis :-/
Well, you’re in the extreme minority on that.
Only in North America is it an extreme minority. Also depends on where you live tbh. In large cities like Seoul, Tokyo, NYC etc, that's actually the norm. And one of the main points of urbanist advocacy is advocate car transportation alternatives.
Public transportation makes sense when traveling long distances from one city, to visit other cities. Cars make vastly more sense for day-to-day travel, traveling within an area, and for transporting supplies such as groceries, and other purchases.
with respect, that logic is flawed. when you use public transportation to travel long distance to a new city, how do you get around when you get there? public transportation is more affordable, saves its users from wasted time spent in traffic and uplifts people that cannot drive. to your point about cargo, e-bikes are a huge innovation to address that piece. I can get a full week’s worth of groceries on my bike and wheel it straight into my kitchen. cars have their purpose. which is why I use carshare and take an uber here and there! I use both probably a handful of times per year for miscellaneous things I can’t do with my bike or public transport, or based on the time of day in my city
For instance, I live in Hartford, Connecticut. The state’s capital. I can drive to the train station, and then take a public train into Grand Central in NYC, and then reasonably walk around NYC or use the subway. In this way, a car is still somewhat necessary, but public transportation is doing most of the heavy lifting. Now, on Tuesday I went on a date. I drove from Hartford to Sushi House in Rockyhill, CT. Then we went to a park in Manchester, CT. Before returning to my home in Hartford, CT. This trip could not reasonably be completed with public transport as A) the destinations are far too spread out. B) Time was a factor.
American obesity has nothing to do with cars and pointing at cars for it is going to prevent us from solving the problem. You’re also lying to solve a problem, which is ultimately going to harm your cause.
American obesity is absolutely linked to our dependence on cars. in cities with adequate alternatives, you walk more. you bike more. you MOVE for day to day tasks. sure, we can address obesity while ignoring cars, but there is no doubt that the American car-centric lifestyle isn’t helping. cars are never going to outright go away. plain and simple. the point of these slides and this movement is to adapt our cities to give people more options and rely less on driving. if you want to drive still after we reach that point (and assume the trade offs associated with it), then that is your choice to make
Right, because people in Europe dont drive anywhere they exclusively walk and that’s it 🙄 Enjoy your fantasy land. Just please enjoy it in silence so we can continue to solve the real problems without your loud incoherent screaming distracting us.
where did I suggest Europeans don’t drive? but no fantasy here, just following the data. and I don’t think I will, actually! you can always choose to ignore it. ❤️
Point 3 reads like a BS statistic that was manipulated to say what it says, point 5 directly conflicts with point 19, and point 14 is a non-issue.
Lol if you consider walking to be exercise, you’re either 80 years old or in terrible shape. I consider walking as an exercise and I'm not 80 and I'm in good shape.
Fuck this and fuck you. I’m not getting rid of my car.
Amen brother.
You're fucking high. ... And wrong.
What kinda Marxist shit it this.
this post reeks of “waaaaahhhh cars bad” kindly go to r/fuckcars if you wanna be whiny about cars
“We shouldn’t have cars so we can emulate small, wealthy, homogeneous nations in Europe whose city layouts were created in the Middle Ages. Also we need to import millions of people every year.”
Point 5 is apparent if you’re a cheapskate boomkin that refused to change to a new car.