I know the demographics around here, so I know everyone’s just going to put “nothing lol”, but please understand what I’m asking first.
I’m physically incapable of driving a car. I stand to gain immeasurably from a world that didn’t assume everyone owned one. Having loved-ones with respiratory issues aggravated by car exhaust has made me very aware of the health issues surrounding the burning of fossil fuels, and having to navigate sidewalkless suburban stroads on a regular basis and juggle poorly funded public transit has made it very clear to me that pedestrians are second class citizens. I could go on and on about the mess cars have made of urban planning, and the number of jobs I couldn’t take because they required driving, but I digress.
In short, I hate cars just as much as the rest of you. But I’m also conscious that a lot of other people feel differently. What does widespread car ownership enable that would be difficult or impossible otherwise?
As an American I’m familiar with the cultural aura that surrounds the automobile. One of the early episodes of Mythbusters explained this pretty well while digging into the folklore surrounding a particular car-related urban legend. Cars represent freedom and self determination, two qualities highly prized in American society. You can go where you want when you want, without relying on schedules and routes mandated by public transit[1].
Looking at more tangible things, I suppose hauling a bunch of stuff from point A to point B would be hard without a car.
But what else am I missing?
Ignoring the fact you can only go where there are roads, and someone has to build and maintain those roads. ↩︎
If people use public transport instead of driving, there would need to be many many more services and it suddenly becomes a lot more convenient, even outside cities.
Even if all people outside the city centers would suddenly switch to public transport, if you wanted to bring the density anywhere near to be convenient, it would be economical suicide. Public transport is only economical in very dense population centers.
That’s true now because 1. Most people in these areas drive and 2. Roads and driving are heavily subsidised. You’re not going to have the same service in small towns as in big cities, but you could certainly provide something useful.
Of course they drive. We are “well connected” here, which means there is a bus every hour most of the day.
You’ll need roads for the buses, too, unless you have flying ones, and a bus has several thousand times the wear and tear on roads as a car. And: public transport is heavily subsided, while fuel for cars is already heavily taxed. In fact, those taxes would easily cover road building and maintenance here is those taxes would not just vanish in the common budget.
If you’re at the point of worrying about how much wear on the roads your buses are doing, it’s time to lay down some rails.
Where do you live that actually taxes fuel enough to cover the entire cost of the externalities of cars? A study shows it doesn’t in Massachusets, and this shows it doesn’t in Europe
I don’t know why they did not include all the taxes on fuel into the study. There are several different taxes, and together they are way higher than what this chart suggests.
Currently, we have prices between 2 and 3 euro per litre here, of which the vast majority is taxes of all sorts.