this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
95 points (85.2% liked)

Fuck Cars

9596 readers
331 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

My original question was "How do we disincentivize the purchase of pickup trucks/SUVs" but then I thought it would be better to approach the larger problem of car dependency and car ownership. One option is, of course, to create public transit infrastructure and improve it where it already exist. This, however, doesn't change the fact that some will still choose to drive. What would be the best ways to discourage people from owning personal cars?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Katana314 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That’s not necessarily possible. Good public transit and bikable neighborhoods are made possible by the low land usage. Low land usage requires having fewer roads and smaller parking lots. Those, in turn, require fewer people to be driving.

The midway transitionary option is buses. But buses are only convenient if they don’t have much traffic to battle. We need fewer people driving.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

There are options available. More heavy subsidation for buses comes to mind. Subsidize it enough it's practically free, and expand their routes. Add more priority lanes for buses. That much is doable today. Then we have a bit of infrastructure so we're not just pulling the rug out from under people. From there, slowly introduce things to discourage car driving. Gas taxes, more strict emissions requirements, more expensive registration, harder license exams, etc.

[–] Katana314 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You may not have read the second paragraph. People won’t even ride free buses when they don’t arrive and are slower than walking.

Money alone does not solve the issue. You can’t engineer a faster engine for a bus that’s stuck in traffic. Even adding more buses to the route does not help.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

It doesn't matter if they're riding them right now. Get that infrastructure in place before you pull the rug out. When the rug is pulled, they'll ride. Yes, it's a bit of throwing money at the problem, but it doesn't leave people fucked in the interim period. Do what you can to get infrastructure in place BEFORE tackling cars.