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.
People want good public transportation, and they recognize that they aren't going to get it in a car-centric society
The key change of the last few years has been very successful and very high profile car-free / car-light policies, most notably in Paris.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...
Additionally the cost to own a newly acquired new or used car has substantially increased over the past few years.
edits: infrastructure, private
Much of our housing shortage is directly due to parking minimums and its resulting tacit ban on high-density housing.
As for someone that's been "anti-car" for quite some time, I'm not sure why it's suddenly exploded. But I think lots of people enjoyed the cities more with less traffic during covid, and realized the streets can be made for the people, not metal boxes on wheels.
One other factor is global increase in house/rental prices. Seeing your local government prioritize parking instead of housing, or NIMBYs blocking new development, has angered lots of people and they're now taking action. Or cities spending billions on adding yet another lane to their 26 lane wide highway while the public transportation is famished.
Also, with people feeling the rising cost of living etc, it's easy for people to look for ways to remove what is a huge chunk of their spending: their car.
Additionally, lots of great contents the later years. Strongtowns, NotJustBikes etc is orange pilling lots of people that have already started to be curious about these issue. Driven by memes from fuckcars etc, it's become a movement.
what you get is people parking on the sidewalk
what you get is people leaving garbage bins out all week to "protect" their spot
what you get is legit road-rage level violence over people blocking driveways or protecting spots or leaving cars parked too long
people have cars, they need a place to put them, even in fantasyland
Can't say why the movement picked up exactly, just like everything, there are cycles, and after decades of building highways all over our cities and realizing how bad the situation got and how it never really "solved" traffic, there's just a return to a different way of planning cities.
I'd imagine the spike in car prices over the past couple of years contributes as well. A car is an expensive investment that eats a huge part of your income just so you can participate in society, and I'm sure plenty of people feel the pain of this.
The solve for is one or more of these:
1. Make cars cheaper, but various market and regulatory forces seem to be conspiring against that
2. Make cities cheaper so you can move to good transit, but housing isn't in great supply there
3. Make public transit better and broader so more people can use it, but this faces opposition from people in the suburbs and exurbs who have car-centric assumptions baked into their lifestyle
1 is a multilayered problem with a lot of entrenched interests, so it's hard to solve. 2 and 3 are persuasion issues first and foremost, and the persuasion battle can be a lot more localized. So it doesn't surprise me that people are fighting those battles.
EDIT: Napkin math plus some searching said it's about $9,000 a year to own and operate a car on average. $750/month to participate in society. That's 8 annual fares for Pittsburgh's public transit, by way of comparison.
Theories all mention urban population growth putting people closer to stuff and friends who are available to run errands since it’s not a one hour one way trip from ruralandia. Taxi/ride share, delivery services, increased investment in walkable neighborhoods… it’s all really happening?
Old numbers I read a while ago. I imagine wfh has made more people realize the same only occasional need for a car.
Similarly drop off in youth participation in contact sports like football was gaining steam before covid. A contraction in college and pro participation is probable in 10+ years.
Especially as AI generated content gets to be able to simulate unique sports with photorealistic visuals; most viewers are at home already.
Propping up the status quo culture of the last 50 years is not really an obligation of future generations.
"If this harmful, expensive thing isn't free, a few people will steal it."
"Better make it free forever then, and force all of society to pay for it, whether they use it or not."
I got into running after college and lived in a borough where things were walkable and some decent landmarks were no more than two miles away. Things felt close, and accessible. I went home for Thanksgiving once and realized that, while there were plenty of things that were kind of in range (grocery store ~2.5mi, shopping mall ~3mi, mini-golf ~1.5mi), the fact that it all ran through that highway made everything feel far, and it was never feasible to do anything but drive.
And I'm not even sure the solve needs "make my hometown area dense"! But if you had protected bike lanes on the highway and made everyone slow down a bit to let pedestrians through, that could be a massive improvement for everyone.
Now that people are working from home, it might not be necessary for suburban families to have two cars. I would know, I've been one-car for over four years now I think. Additions like walking paths and bike lanes and better bus access can make a huge difference and can save thousands of dollars a year on vehicle costs.
My sister and I watched day-time game shows on days when we were stuck inside during the Summer months as kids in the mid 1970s. Even as kids we knew when watching The Price is Right that the first digit in the price of a new car was a "3".
(Oh, forgot to mention the price of a new car was also only four digits.)
I know, I know, that was nearly five decades ago....
Monthly parking in Manhattan is $1000/month. If you want a car, you gotta pay for the space it takes up. We could be using that space for better things.
People parking on the sidewalk? Great! Tow them and fine them, and now the city has another source of revenue.
Pittsburgh used to have a vibrant rail and trolley system. Most American cities that were established before cars did. It's absolutely workable, it's just a question of priorities.
> part immaturity
Explain please?
> degrowth mindset
Not inherently. For many it's just a question of where people want the growth to be, and which modes of transit get priority.
I live about 30 minutes from Pittsburgh in an area that could be called rural (or at least a rural-feeling part of a suburb), and 80% of where I need to travel more or less happens on a straight line of road that follows the Ohio River. There's no inherent reason why that must be a highway instead of a railway.
I have bus stops that are about a mile and three miles away; if one of those was also a train station it would vastly cut down on the amount of driving I'd have to do. I'd enjoy that greatly!
Suburbs are awash with parking. Maybe we should require parking to be "behind" stores instead of in front.
If you can get a beater for $1k and some insurance, you're basically down to gas (when the beater dies, you get another one or fix it).
IIRC now they end up with some sort of restricted license that can't do much beyond go to school and insurance is through the roof.
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.
New Yorkers know that working class people have to commute into Manhattan and often save hours driving instead of taking the train. The pro bike keyboard warriors should go to Manhattan during the work day and ask a worker at any downtown Manhattan restaurant how they get there.
Lately on youtube videos from Strongtowns and notjustbikes are going more viral but there are a lot of different videos out there that are anti car. This all leads to more interest in the topic.
Remote work may have been a factor as well I am not sure. I still get the weird look amongst friends for using the bus but it is becoming a little less (I do own and love cars too).
Edit: "Are teens really not driving anymore?
Not as much, certainly. The trend has been developing for a while now. In 2013, National Geographic noted a Michigan study showing that the percentage of 19-year-olds with a license had fallen from 87 percent in 1983 to 70 percent in 2010 — and that the percentage of 17-year-old drivers fell from 69 to 43 percent during the same time period. And The Wall Street Journal in 2019 reported that while nearly half of 16-year-olds were driving in the 1980s, just a quarter were by 2017. The Washington Post, drawing on data from the Federal Highway Administration, suggests the number remained at about 25 percent in 2020. "
And buying cars can be a stressful process, it's not like you can just walk down the street and pick up another $1k beater whenever you want. Car buying often involves arranging rides and childcare for car shopping, and being forced to settle with whatever's out there when you need it.
Yes, you can undercut $9k if you find a cheap car and some luck, or if you know how to work on it yourself, or if you live in an area where salt doesn't destroy your car, if you don't have kids so you can go subcompact, etc. But in my experience, when you buy a cheaper, more high-mileage car, you're not saving a ton vs buying a similarly equipped lower-mileage car. It's more a matter of when you're spending the money.
It is true that some people use suburban malls as urban replacements. Teenagers use it for hanging out with friends, seniors use it for walking, and some sit and daydream. But the mall is not a real replacement for urbanism.
In the past he railed against car usage: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/04/18/get-rich-with-bik... , https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/07/27/rent-vs-buy/ , https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2017/10/24/get-rich-with-con...
what is this? around here if the rust can accelerate to 88 mph it's fully considered fine and nobody cares
and I agree the spend is probably worth it (or I wouldn't be waiting for Toyota to start making the damn Sienna again) but the reality is millions of poor people drive clunkers and make it work somehow.
Because what everyone needs is a SUV that weighs 9000 pounds and can accelerate to 60 MPH in 3.5 seconds.
I wasn't able to find anything like "average car payment for low-income Americans", but this link shows that average car payments are pretty evenly spread across the credit score spectrum, with rates inching up as you go down, probably because of higher interest rates. No idea if credit score is a proxy for wealth though.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/15/cars/car-loan-interest-rates-...
A ton of concerning stuff here, most notably that two-thirds of these loans have 5.5-7 year terms now, compared to 30% in 2004. The article it links to shows that for 2023 Q1, the average term is 70 months, down payment is $4k, APR is 11.1% (!!!!), so that the monthly payment is $551 even as down payment increases and amount borrowed decreases.
Again, I don't want to say you're wrong: you can find cheap cars, people survive with clunkers. And the most frustrating part about searching this is that I haven't been able to separate the rich people buying Escalades from the poor people buying entry-level vans, so I don't have a sense of demographic makeup here.
But all of the trendlines are pointing towards car payments being bigger than ever and terms longer than ever. Mash that up with higher interest rates and some lingering supply constraints and it's not a healthy market right now, which is why it doesn't surprise me that people are yearning for a different solution that doesn't involve a heavy reliance on cars.
> Malls can kick you out for loitering or if they don't like how you look.
That is probably a huge advantage in most people's eyes.
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.
In my area, the lot is full, but the buses are fairly empty, as there is not enough parking to support the bus station.
I agree about zoning for density. That’s not the problem in this case.
There’s nothing wrong with individually owned vehicles in rural areas. Work with that, instead of fighting it.