Personal Finance

3773 readers

34 users here now

Learn about budgeting, saving, getting out of debt, credit, investing, and retirement planning. Join our community, read the PF Wiki, and get on top of your finances!

Note: This community is not region centric, so if you are posting anything specific to a certain region, kindly specify that in the title (something like [USA], [EU], [AUS] etc.)

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

128

Americans can no longer afford their cars (www.newsweek.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

66 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I don't think high speed rail is the issue here. We have a good network of airports, so I can get between major cities pretty easily. High speed rail is a good idea since it'll cut down on emissions and costs longer term, but it's not going to end car dependency.

What the US needs is a ground up commitment to improving transit. There are a lot of low cost ways to drive people toward transit, which means more political will to improve what we have. For example:

restrict roads that go through city centers - cars should be forced to go around on highways
switch intersections to be pedestrian-first - e.g. Dutch raised intersections
make dedicated bus lanes, and use techniques to encourage cars to use other routes

There are a ton of projects I'd love my region to do, but they're of little value if people don't use them. We need city planners to make an active effort to push cars out of the city.