[meme] Simple problems require simple solutions

Nah, we should make life more liveable without cars. Cars in themselves aren’t bad, but our over-dependency on them is.

I literally had this conversation at lunch today. We were talking about EVs and someone said the batteries are bad for the environment and I said, “yup! We’d be better getting a nice electric transit system to replace roads and cars.” I feel like most people know we’d be better off with a good transit system but rich people 80 years ago solidified our lives.
- Yeah it’s brutal. We used to have electric busses in my city that ran on power lines. They didn’t take them out until the 90s. They’d come off every now and then and the driver would have to get out and put them back on with a long stick, but whatever.
  Those busses were the best. No battery, no gas. If the electricity source is clean we’re golden, baby.
  Also the seats were super squishy benches, not the hard individual seats we get now. They’d be covered in graffiti and it was awesome. However, the weren’t wheelchair accessible, but I’m sure it could be done now.
- "We should improve society somewhat"
  "Have you considered that the improvment will have drawbacks? I am very smart"
- Define "good". Can it take People to a bespoke location at the time of their choosing, door to door, with sizable cargo? If so, sweet, but I haven't seen that
Thank you for the more practical take.
Carrot will likely work better than stick anyway. Instead of shaming people for using what seems to be the best and only way of getting to the city, show them what a nice pedestrian area looks like, remind them what it’s like to watch videos or play games while in transit, and get them to really consider the gargantuan size of classic American parking lots.
When finished, we’ll have people voluntarily voting at city council meetings to block cars from downtown, and revamp the long distance train station going to the next city.
- Right, I only passed my test 5 years ago. I know how pleasant public transport is, I was on it every day for 30 years. live in a city that has a pedestrian center that I can walk to from my house. I still need to go to the tip, the supermarket, take my children to my grandparents. I'm going to Hampton court on Saturday, the south coast to pick up a boot full of my dead father in-laws belongings the weekend after and camping the weekend after that.
  How is what you suggest helping me.
  The reality is "dont do that stuff" is the real answer
Cars kill more people than drugs, and "drugs are bad, m'kay"
Cars, in of themselves, are super-expensive luxury toys to be used on race tracks. They are bad.
The over-dependency is directly correlated with production and sale of cars, but it's not just a correlation.
- You - Noooooo the invention of a machine to allow easier access across the nearly 3,000 mile long country is so terrible!!!! They should be limited like super yachts for the rich!!!! Don't innovate and make tools more efficient and safe!!!
  Also you - fucking delusional
Cars produce CO2 emissions that are ending life as we know it on earth. Cars also produce PM2.5 emissions that give little kids asthma. Cars are bad.
- Cars don’t have to be bad. Cars can run on clean energy and make our lives incredibly convenient. However, we’ve crossed the line where convenience and sustainability find balance.
  We shouldn’t ban cars, we should incentivize not using them. I drive, but I live in an area where I can take transit fairly easily so I do. My city has terrible transit, but I’m fortunate enough to live in an area where it’s one bus to downtown, so I never drive down town. By the time I find parking then walk to wherever I actually need to be, the bus would have been faster. I’m sure more people would do this if transit weren’t crap. I also ride my bike and walk when I can because I recognize this.
- Can confirm, the other night I saw a car holding a knife and approaching a child in a dark alley.

And what of people that live out in the country, far from a city? Not walkable or bikeable. Building public transport there is not viable. Cars with sustainable fuel sources are the far better solution.

Nearly every single small town was built on a backbone of rail. They could at the very least put back what was stolen.
- Rail used for freight. Do you think people were taking the train to the grocery store or the doctor’s office? Not to mention, that’s still in the city. There are people that live many miles away from the nearest public infrastructure, outside of roads and electricity.
  Then there’s the dilemma of being at the mercy of the train schedule. 1 to 2 stops a day. It’s not like public transport in metropolitan areas where there are many stops a day.
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but people travelled in the country before cars were invented
- Really? You mean when people in rural areas had to stay overnight if they went to town for supplies because the trip there took so long? And that’s before a century of planning around the convenience of cars.
- Yea, and it took 80 years and three generations to get to your destination.
This comm is literally called fuckcars
- Which explains the irrational opinions such as OP’s
Personally, I’m not a fan of government policies that ban things, because a ban is a blunt instrument that often leads to perverse results. Instead, I think that government should internalize economic extenalities, and let the individual incentives work. People who live out in the countryside get massive tax subsidies in the form of all those roads on which only they drive, for the most part.
So, fine, if cars are the only practical transportation, then the people who want to live out there need to pay for their roads with their own money.
(That is the long way to say that I don’t think personal cars out in the countryside are all that practical.)
- Do you think only private cars are using those roads? Oh dear, how do you think all the food gets to the cities?
- I don't think you realize how much of rural America is a random exit off the interstate. Which is mostly not local traffic and paid for those who travel it.
- Yes. One of the problems is the USA is government banning mixed zoning and every tyoe of home except single family home. It can only turn in suburban sprawl and car use.
It turns out that you can do rural spaces bad too. Rural sprawl!
https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/Settlement-patterns
In reality, the industrial revolution and especially the Green Revolution have ended the rural economy and, with that, the rural society. These places will remain unsustainable, nonviable, slowly dying as people try to move away for better lives or as they remain stuck, dependent on some corrupt local politicians and leaders.
It's a simple matter: once a couple of people with lots of cool machines and work vast tracts of land, the rest of the people in the area become useless.
Rural spaces are, currently, in a transient situation.
If the industrial economy collapses, then, yes, rural spaces will be great again.
I'm not trying to promote some false dichotomy, this is the economy and the people stuck in rural places are usually worse off - and that's for a reason. They will never be better off in this context, it is not happening.
So, instead of trying to prop up a dying place, help the people migrate. End the subsidized fantasy and end the sunk cost loop.
- You're not wrong at all.
  But this is basically as radical of a suggestion as banning cars lol. We'd have to have affordable housing, jobs, social services, food and resources, etc. available for those trying to migrate into cities. Most US cities don't even have those things for the people that already live there - almost always due to NIMBY regulations with some good old fashion bigotry mixed in.
  We would basically have to first see a massive change in governance trends before this could be doable.
  Of course, this is entirely ignoring the cultural challenges.
- Damn that industrial revolution
Pareto principle. Don't lose sight of 80% of cars for the 20% rural.
Edit: maybe I misread your point. All these rural drivers are using roads that they don't pay to build or maintain. They should be charged for their true cost of transportation instead of it being subsidized by wherever they drive.
You've triggered them now. Oh dear.
- Please don't make light of mental illness symptoms. Triggers are serious business, they're not a joke or an insult.

Caltrops is a simple solution. Banning cars seems to be where we’re having issues. So let’s start small. Ban private vehicles in dense urban cores where space is at a premium. It’s a start.

People in this thread thinking this is a serious policy proposal 🤣

The automobiles, parking and highways vicious cycle has proven to be an indictment of capitalism and the corruption of the US. i don't think going electric for all our cas is going to be enough, and were seeing climate migration not only to the US but northward within the US.
The movie Mad Max (and its sequels) was inspired by somone observing car obsession tendencies among Australians and positing how fuel would be prioritized above its utility. Our obsession is worse here in the States, and for our love of cars and failure to change for sake of the world may see a similar apocalypse, though with fewer working vehicles and a lot more cannibalism.
I hope I'm wrong, of couse.
- I completely agree but that doesn’t make immediately banning all cars a reasonable proposal. My assumption was that the meme was intended to spark discussion, which it certainly has. Though it sounds like OP is a little more serious than I thought.
I seriously think petrol cars should be 100% banned by 2028, and that it should be illegal for petrol stations to operate.
- Okay well you are entitled to your opinion I guess. I thought you were being somewhat tongue in cheek. While I support a radical reduction in car dependency the unfortunate reality is that deconstructing car based infrastructure and building what will come after is going to take more than 5 years.
  Also, even in a society where the car is not the default mode of transit, there will still be occasional situations where alternates aren’t viable. A small number of electric vehicles, properly contained where they can’t murder thousands of people as they do today would not be so terrible.
- How would people who live in suburbs or rural areas do anything? Many Americans live in these areas. I'm serious what is the plan for all of them?
  America wasn't built for public travel unfortunately.

This comment section: I'm Johnny Knoxville, welcome to gently make love to cars

Its why the term "petrosexual" exists

Explain how we'd get around with cars. Is the realistic expectation that every city is supposed to be redesigned overnight and public transportation every inch of the city.

While I agree with the sentiment, making a plan to make changes is a very important first step. I'm still a car driver who wants better public transportation, while also acknowledging its very unlikely for my area (45 mins outside Atlanta, GA). However, if we aim for it specifically, it's always a good step, even if it's not going to be instant or 5 years.
One of the biggest issues ro change are people saying "that won't happen" and just not changing the status quo. We don't need to perfectly do it in a short time, but we do need to start making steps right away, even if they take longer than we want.
- Amen! I’m an incrementalist and I’m not ashamed of it.
Overnight? No. Within 5 years? Yes.
- You know that I95 bridge that collapsed about 2 months ago? They are still working on fixing that, it will probably take a few more months to finish fixing it using the original design. If it takes us that long to build a bridge, do you still think we can design and build a nationwide public transport system in 60 months?
- Buddy, you are extremely out of touch if you think that's realistic.
Aim for the stars, reach the Moon.

Yes. But no...

I hate to be the one to break this to you, but we had thriving cities full of food before cars were invented

Lol

Cars aren't the real problem. The real problem is shipping cheap shit across the pacific. The top ten biggest ships pollute more than every car in the world combined. Also, fuck cruise ships, there is literally zero benefit to them, just a resort on a boat.

That’s a very compelling argument with teensy-weensy flaw of not being true. Not even close. The entire martitime cargo sector is estimated at 3-4% of CO2 emissions, whereas land transport is closer to 10%.
- Yup! Source I have from 2016 has it even more unbalanced than your numbers. All shipping is 1.7% vs all road transport at 11.9%. Wish I had more recent data but their claim wouldn't be true even if those top ten ships represented the entirety of ocean emissions and was tripled afterwards.