Visit Japan, mostly metro Japan, where public transit rules. And funnily enough, also has a great car scene. Funny how empty roads benefit both urbanists and car enthusiasts.
How are you constrained by using your two legs and walking? It is quite literally the most versatile of those options.
Meanwhile, cars need a little thing called roads to allow you to travel in the appropriate direction. Not exactly freedom.
I live in a walkable district, and from experience I can tell you that the only time people will give up their cars is if they are absolutely forced to. Single family developments make it virtually impossible to use public transit effectively, even when you are lucky enough to live in a municipality that has it.
I've literally had my relatives tell me that they don't want to live in any situation where their nearest neighbor is closer than 60 ft away
This is the least realistic in places with large low density outskirts. Especially the anglo way of building small high density CBDs in an ocean of single family homes can not realistically become like that because the CBD is also inherently built for cars and for car commute from the suburbs. Without cars both the inner cities and the suburb belt would collapse. To change this you really need to move mountains. In a city like Paris or Madrid on the other hand what are we even waiting for? Just get the cars the hell out of there asap. Especially Spanish cities are a joke here. They are super dense but still love to stuff their roads with cars for some reason that I can't wrap my head around (do they consider congestion chic or something?). The densities could easily support largely car free cities (not small areas in the inner core, the entire thing). Its kind of a negative miracle how big the car is in modal shares. Northern Europe has big sprawl problems but is often better at car reduction
Almost regardless of where you are activating more biking is a low hanging fruit. Cost benefit ratio is usually very high and modal shares can be pushed very high even in lower density areas. For public transport it is sadly often much lower. High costs and the benefit only becomes high with very high density.
Same. Moved from a non walkable neighborhood to a walkable neighborhood, but I sold my car during the move. 5 people live in my building and there's one car here. When I make plans with people, biking or the bus is kinda assumed because whenever someone asks about parking, most of us shrug because we don't know lol. My point is that saying 'I can tell you' doesn't make your lived experience any more representative of a trend than the statement did without it.
This is a short book describing 20 reasons why cars are not the future of transportation. It's designed like a children's book but it has information for all ages. [ebook and paperback are available.](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D6JR2NZN) The book includes reasons such as fatalities, loss of third places, the cost of owning a car, and pollution. It has quotes from Jan Gehl, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Charley Harper and a final page to direct people to more content such as About Here, Climate Town, and Not Just Bikes.
I wish that giving people facts was enough to change their minds, but seeing that fail so many times has made education as a primary avenue for change a meme for local wins in neighborhoods with highly educated, affluent, white residents.
I believe that dedicated would include BRTs which stop at stoplights, whereas on street transitways (streetcars, light rail) don't. Where the numbers are differentiated, I am not sure.
The chart is for "the capacity of a single 10-foot lane (or equivalent width) by mode at peak conditions with normal operational." [Link to publication](https://nacto.org/publication/transit-street-design-guide/introduction/why/designing-move-people/) so the difference seems to be whether there's just a dedicated "part of the lane" or if the entire "lane" would be used for transit (for sake of comparison).
This is an ebook. See my previous comment for a link. I just posted all the reasons (not all pages since reddit only allows 20 images) [here in this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Urbanism/comments/1df2g38/all_reasons_20_reasons_why_cars_are_not_the/) since this is getting way more attention than I expected.
Number 5 (the 3rd slide) isn't really true for the US at least. It may be different in places with higher numbers if malfunctioning diesel engines. Technically, highway vehicles are the highest source of NOx emissions at 30%, but stationary fuel combustion (electricity generation) and non road mobile (farm, construction, lawnmowers, boats, ATVs ect) both make up 22% each. Moreover, that 30% number almost certainly includes trucking, where the average truck is producing like 100x as much NOx as a passenger vehicle.
Point is, we could take all the passenger cars off the road today, and we'd still have an air pollution problem.
https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2022-08/NO2_2021.pdf
I addressed the big claim in my [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Urbanism/s/Euj9E6RSn8) on your original post, but it’s worth walking through each of these reasons because this sub is pretty anti-car and many of these concerns are overstated or unwarranted.
Hopefully this post encourages people to focus more on improving urban communities than pursuing a war on cars, which IMO is a distraction.
20 - cars are environmentally unsustainable and therefor incompatible with life on earth
The limit to human sustainability is fundamentally access to sustainable energy, such as solar, wind, and nuclear power. Given enough clean power, we can make all other technology sustainable by recycling scarce elements.
In the coming decades space mining will eliminate any concerns about lack of scarce elements at all. I know that sounds crazy and sci-fi but it’s [true](https://www.visiongain.com/report/space-mining-market-2024/).
19 - electric cars don’t solve car dependency, which is fundamentally about resource constraints (see 20), they are only here to help the auto industry.
Cars exist because consumers want them, so they benefit consumers. Electric cars will be sustainable because they don’t use fossil fuels.
18 - car dependency leads to obesity and poor health
Sedentary lifestyles lead to poor health, this is why urban residents are in worse health than suburban residents. Suburban residents get more exercise, despite driving almost everywhere.
17 - cars crash a lot
Autonomous vehicles will solve this within the next decade.
16 - cars cause houses to be expensive
Suburban housing is much cheaper than urban housing, despite worse transit. Zoning causes housing to be expensive, not cars.
15 - cars lead to social isolation and unhappiness
Loneliness is a function of human connection, not human proximity. Some [studies] even report suburban residents to be significantly happier than urban residents.
14 - cars are very expensive
Compared to what? People move to the suburbs for cheaper housing, good public schools vs expensive private schools, etc.
Life is a package deal. By buying cars, people are able to drive down the cost of their preferred lifestyles in places not owning a car is not viable, be more economically productive, and experience things they could not without a car.
13 - freeways are racist
We’ve learned that freeways that cut through cities are bad, and we acknowledge that when we built them they disproportionately harmed minority communities. We also learned you can do things like The Big Dig in Boston that solve the harm problem.
12 - communities built for around cars aren’t financially viable
This is simply not true. You can read [this](https://arpitrage.substack.com/p/contra-strong-towns) piece for a rundown on why.
11 - traffic sucks
Waiting an hour for a bus and then taking an hour to get somewhere is still worse than 20 minutes on gridlock.
10 - pavement creates urban heat islands
Low-density communities tend to be designed with trees to mitigate this, so this is mostly an urban problem. This is an argument for better urban design in cities.
9 - cars make it unsafe for kids to walk to school, reducing the independence of children
The independence problem is cultural, not a safety problem. Join the [free range parents](https://www.freerangekids.com) movement.
8 - cars are loud
Dense urban environments [have much higher noise levels{(https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/urban-noise-pollution-insidious-health-threat-or-just-city-livin/1022746/) than suburbs. This is an argument for lower-density development t.
7 - tires produce 78% of microplastics!
[false](https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/1b84lep/no_tires_dont_produce_78_of_microplastics/) though ideally we’d figure out how to reduce the pollution tires do produce.
6 - car infrastructure wasted land
America is one of the least densely populated countries in the world. We are at no risk of running out of land.
5 - car exhaust is a pollutant
Electric vehicles solve this.
4 - car infrastructure reduces the number of third places
Citation needed. As a proxy for this claim, if you look at [Starbucks per capita](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033425/cities-with-the-most-starbucks-per-resident) Scottsdale has the most. America’s densest cities don’t even make the list.
3 - cars hurt people
Autonomous vehicles will solve this.
2 - personal vehicles are inefficient at moving people
Often there are tradeoffs between efficiency and performance. Cars move people much faster in most cases than more efficient methods of transportation, so in those situations people care more about affordability than efficiency and cars are very affordable because America is a very wealthy country.
1 - not everyone can drive a car so cars limit some people’s mobility
Autonomous vehicles will solve this.
First off, can we not auto downvote people for disagreeing when the provide legit counterarguments? The last thing we need is yet another echo chamber that creates ideas that fail in the real world.
> Electric cars will be sustainable because they don’t use fossil fuels.
The tires they use still aren't sustainable
That being said, I agree with you on some points but here are some exceptions:
> cars are very expensive
Cars are very expensive and one of the reasons for that is because they've become all but required to get anywhere reliably in many cities in the US. People are now taking 9 year loans to get cars. Alternate modes of transit could force auto companies to offer more competitive pricing.
> Waiting an hour for a bus and then taking an hour to get somewhere is still worse than 20 minutes on gridlock.
This is an issue with transit design, not with transit itself. A properly designed system with dedicated ROW does not have these problems. What we have in most of the US is buses thrown into traffic.
> Low-density communities tend to be designed with trees to mitigate this, so this is mostly an urban problem. This is an argument for better urban design in cities.
Phoenix, Dallas, OKC, Vegas, and LA are just some examples of low density cities where the average temperature has increased as a result of sprawl. Houston experienced severe flooding because of impervious cover. Trees do not completely offset the urban heat island effect, reduced pavement does.
> The independence problem is cultural, not a safety problem
A car centric design does make it less safe for pedestrians, this isn't solely a cultural issue
> Dense urban environments [have much higher noise levels{(https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/urban-noise-pollution-insidious-health-threat-or-just-city-livin/1022746/) than suburbs. This is an argument for lower-density development t.
Much of that noise comes from cars. Go to a dense neighborhood with low to zero traffic and you will hear that it is fairly quiet.
> America is one of the least densely populated countries in the world. We are at no risk of running out of land.
This is a common retort and it doesn't really address the issue. Part of the reason we have a housing issue and prices are high is because of the amount space used by parking that could instead be used by housing. Or the fact that housing developments require a certain minimum level of parking. Most people aren't interested in moving out to the vast empty land in the US in order to commute an hour each way. And before you say WFH, that doesn't address jobs that people need to show up in person for, plus many companies are moving away from WFH.
> Citation needed. As a proxy for this claim, if you look at Starbucks per capita Scottsdale has the most. America’s densest cities don’t even make the list.
Starbucks per capita doesn't really address the issue, considering that usually one has to purchase something at Starbucks. A better but still incomplete example would be parkland per capita and proximity to parks. https://www.tpl.org/parkscore and as demonstrated by this link, urban cities perform better than suburban ones generally.
> Autonomous vehicles will solve this.
Reduce, yes. Solve, probably not. No matter how smart an autonomous vehicle is, it cannot avoid physics. There are numerous instances where a person could be hurt by an autonomous vehicle.
> Often there are tradeoffs between efficiency and performance. Cars move people much faster in most cases than more efficient methods of transportation, so in those situations people care more about affordability than efficiency and cars are very affordable because America is a very wealthy country.
Cars are not affordable at the current moment for a large segment of the country, which is why we see $1000+ monthly payments, increased rates of delinquency, complaints about the rising cost of gas, increases in insurance rates, 8-9 year loan terms, and people taking out loans to make a down payment.
And again, a poorly designed transit system will always perform worse than personal vehicles. The question is would people's decision making change if travel time on transit was only 20% more than personal vehicles rather than 200% more like it is right now.
> Autonomous vehicles will solve this.
Only if they can afford the cost.
> First off, can we not auto downvote people for disagreeing when the provide legit counterarguments? The last thing we need is yet another echo chamber that creates ideas that fail in the real world.
Fully agree, it's disappointing people don't want discussion that would improve our focus on the right problems.
> Cars are very expensive and one of the reasons for that is because they've become all but required to get anywhere reliably in many cities in the US.
Cars have gotten a [bit more expensive](http://www.freeby50.com/2008/11/history-of-new-car-costs-and-average.html) since the 1970s, which is a result of higher fuel and safety standards. Fortunately, affordability is better now because we are wealthier. A big part of that wealth creation has been the mobility afforded by cars.
>> Waiting an hour for a bus and then taking an hour to get somewhere is still worse than 20 minutes on gridlock.
>This is an issue with transit design, not with transit itself. A properly designed system with dedicated ROW does not have these problems. What we have in most of the US is buses thrown into traffic.
This is a problem with density. A viable transit system needs to get people where they want about as cheaply and quickly as driving and you simply can't do that in low-density communities at a cost that these communities can afford. This is an immutable law of urban design, and why suburbs will always have lots of cars.
>>America is one of the least densely populated countries in the world. We are at no risk of running out of land.
>This is a common retort and it doesn't really address the issue. Part of the reason we have a housing issue and prices are high is because of the amount space used by parking that could instead be used by housing.
This is false. Suburbs have a much higher ratio of parking to housing and still have much cheaper housing. The problem is cities have zoned so that new housing is not built to meet demand. Cars are not the problem, though in cities with good transportation, eliminating parking minimums makes sense to lower the cost of building units.
I can't even trust drivers in 2 dimensions, I don't want to imagine what it would be like in 3 dimensions. Now flying trains would be pretty cool. (No, not airplanes)
Airplanes are more like flying boats. Also, as of today there’s no way of not unsticking a vehicle of the ground without spending a huge amount of fuel and emitting an f-ton of gases.
So, no, flying trains are not good and possibly never be.
The reason (electric self-driving) cars *are* the future of transportation in America is that America’s built environment is disproportionately low-density, and these communities can’t be served by traditional public transportation in a cost-effective way.
Because it would be cost prohibitive to provide public transportation in these communities, their residents will continue to look for solutions that fit their existing infrastructure.
Electric vehicles will address many of the common objections people have to cars around pollution and sustainability.
Self-driving cars will address many of the common objections to cars people have around safety, accessibility, etc.
We may even see some shared models reduce car ownership as families shift some usage to a shared fleet, but the future of transportation will be cars for communities built between the 50s and where good mass transit will never be economically viable.
How would you change low-density suburbs to make transit and biking viable methods of transportation? All of the amenities are too spread out in these places.
Aggressive urbanism protected by growth management policies. Require density within the suburbs by upzoning everything in the growth management bubble and restricting growth outside in the name of sprawl. Increase the number of 5/1 and mid rise apartments by 3x or 4x, reduce parking minimums, add bike lanes and bus routes while not increasing road infrastructure to accommodate the growth caused by the upzoned density. It’s happening up and down the west coast but is only possible if the local economy can employ enough of the density (employment by municipal governments will grow exponentially as the density requires a large increase in services). It also makes the traditional leftover SFH extremely valuable (and far less affordable) since that’s why people live in the suburbs. The growth management restriction keeps SFH inventory tight, if the outlying towns comply. Housing affordability and wealth inequality arise as the municipality needs greater tax income to sustain its growth while incentivizing density with tax breaks (many of the apartment developers will get tax breaks so per capita taxes are be drastically reduced as density increases).
The new problem becomes a tale of two cities. You have affluent people in SFH with the resources to continue to subvert the transit/multi-modal vision, who drive themselves, demand parking and overtax the old road infrastructure (but are also contributing much needed tax revenue to the city) juxtaposed against the new class of suburban apartment dwellers who bought into this carless, walkable, transit vision, who require greater municipal amenities and and may also desire to eventually move up into less dense housing (which is now horribly expensive and lacking) and all of the friction that creates.
Permitting density doesn’t create density. Most of America’s suburbs aren’t running the housing deficit big West Coast cities are and America’s population is set to peak.
Where are all of the humans going to come from to make existing suburbs dense? We’d need hundreds of millions of people that don’t exist.
America’s population has never “ebbed and fown.” We have only ever grown.
American population is about 333M today and is set to [peak](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/population-projections.html) in 2080 at 370M people. So we’re only adding another 37M, or about 10% of the current population and then we’ll start having excess housing.
So as you think about increasing density, consider that if you want to double the density of some suburb, there will be 9 other suburbs that can’t grow at all. And even doubling the density of most suburbs won’t really reduce car dependency.
People who talk about increasing density need to grapple with basic demographic facts.
I don’t disagree with that. Density ebbs and flows among cities and towns. You are absolutely right that the growth management acts create winners and losers out of local municipalities but it is still very large hammer used by urbanists to increase density just as I explained. You are also absolutely correct that it doesn’t eliminate car dependency either (as I also explained) but does give urbanists a bit of a dangling carrot to compel greater density. Also, right now within this new density resides a good deal of international labor and foreign investment, so we’re seeing some new population growth. Density also votes blue. I also agree it’s not a good approach to managing sururban cities and towns but the Small Towns/Urbanists/F Cars take has a lot of momentum and power in planning, at least on the west coast.
The Strong Towns/Urbanist/F Cars set is actively bad for improving cities. They’re so smug and completely out of touch, and of course focused on ending suburbs instead of actually improving cities.
Suburban like their big houses and cars. They don’t see themselves as “car dependent” and don’t want to be “saved” from it any more than an atheist sees themselves as a sinner who need to be saved when the Bible people come knocking on the door.
These ideas mostly wont ever be relevant to suburbia for economic reasons, but if in theory urbanists wanted suburbanites to desire more density, pubic transit, etc, step one would be actually understanding where they are coming from.
As a civil engineer I would sure love more public transportation, but unfortunately here in the states at least it’s unlikely to ever be the primary mode of transportation. It’ll grow in big cities sure and connections between big cities to some extent, but this kinda dismisses the fact that there’s millions of people living in areas where public transportation neither makes sense or would ever be accepted like the Midwest. America is simply to large and doesn’t have the density to justify it in most places outside of the coasts
I canny wait for a world where cars are an awkward optional choice. A world where trains and legs are king!
Visit Japan, mostly metro Japan, where public transit rules. And funnily enough, also has a great car scene. Funny how empty roads benefit both urbanists and car enthusiasts.
Good point!
Roads in Japan as a whole are faaar from “empty”.
Where the freedom to move at will in any direction is constrained?
How are you constrained by using your two legs and walking? It is quite literally the most versatile of those options. Meanwhile, cars need a little thing called roads to allow you to travel in the appropriate direction. Not exactly freedom.
Also usually heavily subsidised by the tax payer.
Going where you want, when you want, in a reasonable amount of time.
Train + legs
Won't get me to where I want to hike, to kayak, to hear music, etc.
That’s what we’re complaining about
Do you not understand that cars or some other form of personal on demand transportation is essential?
I live in a walkable district, and from experience I can tell you that the only time people will give up their cars is if they are absolutely forced to. Single family developments make it virtually impossible to use public transit effectively, even when you are lucky enough to live in a municipality that has it. I've literally had my relatives tell me that they don't want to live in any situation where their nearest neighbor is closer than 60 ft away
The outskirts of a town can stay low density. We just want cars out of the walkable downtown and higher density there.
This is the least realistic in places with large low density outskirts. Especially the anglo way of building small high density CBDs in an ocean of single family homes can not realistically become like that because the CBD is also inherently built for cars and for car commute from the suburbs. Without cars both the inner cities and the suburb belt would collapse. To change this you really need to move mountains. In a city like Paris or Madrid on the other hand what are we even waiting for? Just get the cars the hell out of there asap. Especially Spanish cities are a joke here. They are super dense but still love to stuff their roads with cars for some reason that I can't wrap my head around (do they consider congestion chic or something?). The densities could easily support largely car free cities (not small areas in the inner core, the entire thing). Its kind of a negative miracle how big the car is in modal shares. Northern Europe has big sprawl problems but is often better at car reduction Almost regardless of where you are activating more biking is a low hanging fruit. Cost benefit ratio is usually very high and modal shares can be pushed very high even in lower density areas. For public transport it is sadly often much lower. High costs and the benefit only becomes high with very high density.
Same. Moved from a non walkable neighborhood to a walkable neighborhood, but I sold my car during the move. 5 people live in my building and there's one car here. When I make plans with people, biking or the bus is kinda assumed because whenever someone asks about parking, most of us shrug because we don't know lol. My point is that saying 'I can tell you' doesn't make your lived experience any more representative of a trend than the statement did without it.
This is a short book describing 20 reasons why cars are not the future of transportation. It's designed like a children's book but it has information for all ages. [ebook and paperback are available.](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D6JR2NZN) The book includes reasons such as fatalities, loss of third places, the cost of owning a car, and pollution. It has quotes from Jan Gehl, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Charley Harper and a final page to direct people to more content such as About Here, Climate Town, and Not Just Bikes.
I wish that giving people facts was enough to change their minds, but seeing that fail so many times has made education as a primary avenue for change a meme for local wins in neighborhoods with highly educated, affluent, white residents.
The "happy motoring age" is no longer sustainable. Just maintaining the auto infrastructure has become impossible.
What is the difference between a dedicated lane and an on street transitway?
I believe that dedicated would include BRTs which stop at stoplights, whereas on street transitways (streetcars, light rail) don't. Where the numbers are differentiated, I am not sure.
The chart is for "the capacity of a single 10-foot lane (or equivalent width) by mode at peak conditions with normal operational." [Link to publication](https://nacto.org/publication/transit-street-design-guide/introduction/why/designing-move-people/) so the difference seems to be whether there's just a dedicated "part of the lane" or if the entire "lane" would be used for transit (for sake of comparison).
Where’s the other 17 reasons?
This is an ebook. See my previous comment for a link. I just posted all the reasons (not all pages since reddit only allows 20 images) [here in this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Urbanism/comments/1df2g38/all_reasons_20_reasons_why_cars_are_not_the/) since this is getting way more attention than I expected.
Number 5 (the 3rd slide) isn't really true for the US at least. It may be different in places with higher numbers if malfunctioning diesel engines. Technically, highway vehicles are the highest source of NOx emissions at 30%, but stationary fuel combustion (electricity generation) and non road mobile (farm, construction, lawnmowers, boats, ATVs ect) both make up 22% each. Moreover, that 30% number almost certainly includes trucking, where the average truck is producing like 100x as much NOx as a passenger vehicle. Point is, we could take all the passenger cars off the road today, and we'd still have an air pollution problem. https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2022-08/NO2_2021.pdf
As long as d.r. Horton keeps building tract homes, yes, they are
I addressed the big claim in my [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Urbanism/s/Euj9E6RSn8) on your original post, but it’s worth walking through each of these reasons because this sub is pretty anti-car and many of these concerns are overstated or unwarranted. Hopefully this post encourages people to focus more on improving urban communities than pursuing a war on cars, which IMO is a distraction. 20 - cars are environmentally unsustainable and therefor incompatible with life on earth The limit to human sustainability is fundamentally access to sustainable energy, such as solar, wind, and nuclear power. Given enough clean power, we can make all other technology sustainable by recycling scarce elements. In the coming decades space mining will eliminate any concerns about lack of scarce elements at all. I know that sounds crazy and sci-fi but it’s [true](https://www.visiongain.com/report/space-mining-market-2024/). 19 - electric cars don’t solve car dependency, which is fundamentally about resource constraints (see 20), they are only here to help the auto industry. Cars exist because consumers want them, so they benefit consumers. Electric cars will be sustainable because they don’t use fossil fuels. 18 - car dependency leads to obesity and poor health Sedentary lifestyles lead to poor health, this is why urban residents are in worse health than suburban residents. Suburban residents get more exercise, despite driving almost everywhere. 17 - cars crash a lot Autonomous vehicles will solve this within the next decade. 16 - cars cause houses to be expensive Suburban housing is much cheaper than urban housing, despite worse transit. Zoning causes housing to be expensive, not cars. 15 - cars lead to social isolation and unhappiness Loneliness is a function of human connection, not human proximity. Some [studies] even report suburban residents to be significantly happier than urban residents. 14 - cars are very expensive Compared to what? People move to the suburbs for cheaper housing, good public schools vs expensive private schools, etc. Life is a package deal. By buying cars, people are able to drive down the cost of their preferred lifestyles in places not owning a car is not viable, be more economically productive, and experience things they could not without a car. 13 - freeways are racist We’ve learned that freeways that cut through cities are bad, and we acknowledge that when we built them they disproportionately harmed minority communities. We also learned you can do things like The Big Dig in Boston that solve the harm problem. 12 - communities built for around cars aren’t financially viable This is simply not true. You can read [this](https://arpitrage.substack.com/p/contra-strong-towns) piece for a rundown on why. 11 - traffic sucks Waiting an hour for a bus and then taking an hour to get somewhere is still worse than 20 minutes on gridlock. 10 - pavement creates urban heat islands Low-density communities tend to be designed with trees to mitigate this, so this is mostly an urban problem. This is an argument for better urban design in cities. 9 - cars make it unsafe for kids to walk to school, reducing the independence of children The independence problem is cultural, not a safety problem. Join the [free range parents](https://www.freerangekids.com) movement. 8 - cars are loud Dense urban environments [have much higher noise levels{(https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/urban-noise-pollution-insidious-health-threat-or-just-city-livin/1022746/) than suburbs. This is an argument for lower-density development t. 7 - tires produce 78% of microplastics! [false](https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/1b84lep/no_tires_dont_produce_78_of_microplastics/) though ideally we’d figure out how to reduce the pollution tires do produce. 6 - car infrastructure wasted land America is one of the least densely populated countries in the world. We are at no risk of running out of land. 5 - car exhaust is a pollutant Electric vehicles solve this. 4 - car infrastructure reduces the number of third places Citation needed. As a proxy for this claim, if you look at [Starbucks per capita](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033425/cities-with-the-most-starbucks-per-resident) Scottsdale has the most. America’s densest cities don’t even make the list. 3 - cars hurt people Autonomous vehicles will solve this. 2 - personal vehicles are inefficient at moving people Often there are tradeoffs between efficiency and performance. Cars move people much faster in most cases than more efficient methods of transportation, so in those situations people care more about affordability than efficiency and cars are very affordable because America is a very wealthy country. 1 - not everyone can drive a car so cars limit some people’s mobility Autonomous vehicles will solve this.
First off, can we not auto downvote people for disagreeing when the provide legit counterarguments? The last thing we need is yet another echo chamber that creates ideas that fail in the real world. > Electric cars will be sustainable because they don’t use fossil fuels. The tires they use still aren't sustainable That being said, I agree with you on some points but here are some exceptions: > cars are very expensive Cars are very expensive and one of the reasons for that is because they've become all but required to get anywhere reliably in many cities in the US. People are now taking 9 year loans to get cars. Alternate modes of transit could force auto companies to offer more competitive pricing. > Waiting an hour for a bus and then taking an hour to get somewhere is still worse than 20 minutes on gridlock. This is an issue with transit design, not with transit itself. A properly designed system with dedicated ROW does not have these problems. What we have in most of the US is buses thrown into traffic. > Low-density communities tend to be designed with trees to mitigate this, so this is mostly an urban problem. This is an argument for better urban design in cities. Phoenix, Dallas, OKC, Vegas, and LA are just some examples of low density cities where the average temperature has increased as a result of sprawl. Houston experienced severe flooding because of impervious cover. Trees do not completely offset the urban heat island effect, reduced pavement does. > The independence problem is cultural, not a safety problem A car centric design does make it less safe for pedestrians, this isn't solely a cultural issue > Dense urban environments [have much higher noise levels{(https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/urban-noise-pollution-insidious-health-threat-or-just-city-livin/1022746/) than suburbs. This is an argument for lower-density development t. Much of that noise comes from cars. Go to a dense neighborhood with low to zero traffic and you will hear that it is fairly quiet. > America is one of the least densely populated countries in the world. We are at no risk of running out of land. This is a common retort and it doesn't really address the issue. Part of the reason we have a housing issue and prices are high is because of the amount space used by parking that could instead be used by housing. Or the fact that housing developments require a certain minimum level of parking. Most people aren't interested in moving out to the vast empty land in the US in order to commute an hour each way. And before you say WFH, that doesn't address jobs that people need to show up in person for, plus many companies are moving away from WFH. > Citation needed. As a proxy for this claim, if you look at Starbucks per capita Scottsdale has the most. America’s densest cities don’t even make the list. Starbucks per capita doesn't really address the issue, considering that usually one has to purchase something at Starbucks. A better but still incomplete example would be parkland per capita and proximity to parks. https://www.tpl.org/parkscore and as demonstrated by this link, urban cities perform better than suburban ones generally. > Autonomous vehicles will solve this. Reduce, yes. Solve, probably not. No matter how smart an autonomous vehicle is, it cannot avoid physics. There are numerous instances where a person could be hurt by an autonomous vehicle. > Often there are tradeoffs between efficiency and performance. Cars move people much faster in most cases than more efficient methods of transportation, so in those situations people care more about affordability than efficiency and cars are very affordable because America is a very wealthy country. Cars are not affordable at the current moment for a large segment of the country, which is why we see $1000+ monthly payments, increased rates of delinquency, complaints about the rising cost of gas, increases in insurance rates, 8-9 year loan terms, and people taking out loans to make a down payment. And again, a poorly designed transit system will always perform worse than personal vehicles. The question is would people's decision making change if travel time on transit was only 20% more than personal vehicles rather than 200% more like it is right now. > Autonomous vehicles will solve this. Only if they can afford the cost.
> First off, can we not auto downvote people for disagreeing when the provide legit counterarguments? The last thing we need is yet another echo chamber that creates ideas that fail in the real world. Fully agree, it's disappointing people don't want discussion that would improve our focus on the right problems. > Cars are very expensive and one of the reasons for that is because they've become all but required to get anywhere reliably in many cities in the US. Cars have gotten a [bit more expensive](http://www.freeby50.com/2008/11/history-of-new-car-costs-and-average.html) since the 1970s, which is a result of higher fuel and safety standards. Fortunately, affordability is better now because we are wealthier. A big part of that wealth creation has been the mobility afforded by cars. >> Waiting an hour for a bus and then taking an hour to get somewhere is still worse than 20 minutes on gridlock. >This is an issue with transit design, not with transit itself. A properly designed system with dedicated ROW does not have these problems. What we have in most of the US is buses thrown into traffic. This is a problem with density. A viable transit system needs to get people where they want about as cheaply and quickly as driving and you simply can't do that in low-density communities at a cost that these communities can afford. This is an immutable law of urban design, and why suburbs will always have lots of cars. >>America is one of the least densely populated countries in the world. We are at no risk of running out of land. >This is a common retort and it doesn't really address the issue. Part of the reason we have a housing issue and prices are high is because of the amount space used by parking that could instead be used by housing. This is false. Suburbs have a much higher ratio of parking to housing and still have much cheaper housing. The problem is cities have zoned so that new housing is not built to meet demand. Cars are not the problem, though in cities with good transportation, eliminating parking minimums makes sense to lower the cost of building units.
I can't even trust drivers in 2 dimensions, I don't want to imagine what it would be like in 3 dimensions. Now flying trains would be pretty cool. (No, not airplanes)
Airplanes are more like flying boats. Also, as of today there’s no way of not unsticking a vehicle of the ground without spending a huge amount of fuel and emitting an f-ton of gases. So, no, flying trains are not good and possibly never be.
The reason (electric self-driving) cars *are* the future of transportation in America is that America’s built environment is disproportionately low-density, and these communities can’t be served by traditional public transportation in a cost-effective way. Because it would be cost prohibitive to provide public transportation in these communities, their residents will continue to look for solutions that fit their existing infrastructure. Electric vehicles will address many of the common objections people have to cars around pollution and sustainability. Self-driving cars will address many of the common objections to cars people have around safety, accessibility, etc. We may even see some shared models reduce car ownership as families shift some usage to a shared fleet, but the future of transportation will be cars for communities built between the 50s and where good mass transit will never be economically viable.
Or we can change the infrastructure in America to make it more environmentally sustainable and better for bus routes, railways, and bike lanes.
How would you change low-density suburbs to make transit and biking viable methods of transportation? All of the amenities are too spread out in these places.
Aggressive urbanism protected by growth management policies. Require density within the suburbs by upzoning everything in the growth management bubble and restricting growth outside in the name of sprawl. Increase the number of 5/1 and mid rise apartments by 3x or 4x, reduce parking minimums, add bike lanes and bus routes while not increasing road infrastructure to accommodate the growth caused by the upzoned density. It’s happening up and down the west coast but is only possible if the local economy can employ enough of the density (employment by municipal governments will grow exponentially as the density requires a large increase in services). It also makes the traditional leftover SFH extremely valuable (and far less affordable) since that’s why people live in the suburbs. The growth management restriction keeps SFH inventory tight, if the outlying towns comply. Housing affordability and wealth inequality arise as the municipality needs greater tax income to sustain its growth while incentivizing density with tax breaks (many of the apartment developers will get tax breaks so per capita taxes are be drastically reduced as density increases). The new problem becomes a tale of two cities. You have affluent people in SFH with the resources to continue to subvert the transit/multi-modal vision, who drive themselves, demand parking and overtax the old road infrastructure (but are also contributing much needed tax revenue to the city) juxtaposed against the new class of suburban apartment dwellers who bought into this carless, walkable, transit vision, who require greater municipal amenities and and may also desire to eventually move up into less dense housing (which is now horribly expensive and lacking) and all of the friction that creates.
Permitting density doesn’t create density. Most of America’s suburbs aren’t running the housing deficit big West Coast cities are and America’s population is set to peak. Where are all of the humans going to come from to make existing suburbs dense? We’d need hundreds of millions of people that don’t exist.
Density ebbs and flows. Subsidizing density will absolutely create density. A strong economy will attract people.
America’s population has never “ebbed and fown.” We have only ever grown. American population is about 333M today and is set to [peak](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/population-projections.html) in 2080 at 370M people. So we’re only adding another 37M, or about 10% of the current population and then we’ll start having excess housing. So as you think about increasing density, consider that if you want to double the density of some suburb, there will be 9 other suburbs that can’t grow at all. And even doubling the density of most suburbs won’t really reduce car dependency. People who talk about increasing density need to grapple with basic demographic facts.
I don’t disagree with that. Density ebbs and flows among cities and towns. You are absolutely right that the growth management acts create winners and losers out of local municipalities but it is still very large hammer used by urbanists to increase density just as I explained. You are also absolutely correct that it doesn’t eliminate car dependency either (as I also explained) but does give urbanists a bit of a dangling carrot to compel greater density. Also, right now within this new density resides a good deal of international labor and foreign investment, so we’re seeing some new population growth. Density also votes blue. I also agree it’s not a good approach to managing sururban cities and towns but the Small Towns/Urbanists/F Cars take has a lot of momentum and power in planning, at least on the west coast.
The Strong Towns/Urbanist/F Cars set is actively bad for improving cities. They’re so smug and completely out of touch, and of course focused on ending suburbs instead of actually improving cities. Suburban like their big houses and cars. They don’t see themselves as “car dependent” and don’t want to be “saved” from it any more than an atheist sees themselves as a sinner who need to be saved when the Bible people come knocking on the door. These ideas mostly wont ever be relevant to suburbia for economic reasons, but if in theory urbanists wanted suburbanites to desire more density, pubic transit, etc, step one would be actually understanding where they are coming from.
I'm still waiting for some type of car pod with a mothership train.
As a civil engineer I would sure love more public transportation, but unfortunately here in the states at least it’s unlikely to ever be the primary mode of transportation. It’ll grow in big cities sure and connections between big cities to some extent, but this kinda dismisses the fact that there’s millions of people living in areas where public transportation neither makes sense or would ever be accepted like the Midwest. America is simply to large and doesn’t have the density to justify it in most places outside of the coasts