zlacker

>>amathe+(OP)
Can someone explain where this recent flurry (last 2 years or so) of anti-car evangelism has come from?

I can't help but feel that many people who now work remote and therefore don't need to commute suddenly are all for moving to mass transportation...that other people will use to get to work.

>>Workac+l9
I'd agree that the evangelism emphasizes “anti-“ cars rather than “pro-“ alternatives. If it were the latter, I'd see far more constructive suggestions on how to better adopt and improve alternatives to cars — rail, buses, motorcycles, ebikes, bikes, or walking — especially in the neighborhoods most dependent on cars now — suburbs, exurbs, and rural — where a huge fraction of the US lives still and, oddly enough, may grow faster than cities for years to come, especially if remote work continues to rise and insanely high urban real estate prices don't fall.

>>randcr+jg
Indeed. I'll only consider a proposal legitimate if it's of the form "let's leave cars alone and make public transit better", not "let's make cars worse to drive".

>>joseph+8G
I fear the implication is that "we tried to make public transit better, and there's only so much we can do, so the next step is to make cars exceedingly expensive."

>>bombca+xw1
There's also the problem that by making public transport better, you're necessarily making driving worse. Like taking money from the roads budget and giving it to the trains budget. Or taking a slice of road away from cars and making a bike lane.

>>dukeyu+lz1
Presenting it as a zero-sum game is part of the problem! It doesn't have to be cars or bikes or trains.

You could take from the hotel tax to pay for trains, or build bike paths that go alongside or orthogonal to roads.

If you go to people and say "cars or trains, pick one" of course cars will win every single time. You want to say "here's a solution to a problem that doesn't make your life worse". Which is why many of the newest suburbs and developments have the best bike/walking options - they're being considered from the start.

>>bombca+nE1
There is only so much physical space for transit infrastructure. In many cases, unless you're going to cut down people's homes or businesses, you will be trading off from one mode to another. Exceptions are things like unused green spaces under subway tracks (looking at you, Caltrans) and things like that.

There's also the social design component: making driving uncomfortable increases the relative comfort of public transit, meaning people would be more likely to choose the latter over the former, improving the chances of a critical mass of public transit utilization.