LogFAQs > #972686994

Muscles posted...

It doesn't matter how much personal transportation improves, it'll never be as convenient or give as much freedom as a personal vehicle.

That "freedom" loses a lot of its lustre when you realize the true cost associated with it. When cities are designed so overwhelmingly for cars, you have to drive everywhere. You don't have the freedom to not own a car, unless you can rely on somebody who does (which still isn't all that free). It means cities need to have higher taxes. It means cities spend all their efforts courting developers willing to build new car-centric suburbs instead of maintaining any sort of historical character to set themselves apart (often bankrupting themselves in the process because that's basically a ponzi scheme). It means poorer-quality infrastructure all around. It means bulldozing acres upon acres of high-value downtown real estate to make room for all the cars that sit and do nothing all day. It means higher housing prices and more homelessness because land that could be housing ends up being used to widen roads. It means small businesses struggling because they depend so heavily on foot traffic. It means orders of magnitude more pedestrian injuries and deaths despite the fact that so many fewer people try to walk anywhere because it's so miserable. It means air pollution, noise, stress, and traffic that will inexorably get worse no matter how many more lanes you add.

But hey, at least you can leave when you want instead of 5-10 minutes earlier or later, and if you're lucky you might only have to circle the block for 10 minutes to find a parking spot closer than the transit stop would be. I guess that's pretty nifty.

Are there merits to personal cars? Sure. But designing cities such that personal cars are the default mode of everyday transportation is utterly asinine. Cities need viable alternatives to driving. It's an inescapable law that traffic will only get worse until a faster alternative exists. If you don't make faster alternatives, you're just going to spend the rest of your life in traffic.

Instead of fondly remembering how liberating it felt to get your driver's license, try getting mad at how imprisoned you felt for the first 16 years of your life, and ask why your community decided to inflict that on you. Being unable (or even unwilling) to drive doesn't have to limit you. That it does is a failure.