> What's depressing is visiting developing countries and seeing them start to ape the worst of American car life.
What a patronizing take. Cars are freedom - you can go where you like, when you like, with whom you like, and you can do it without dealing with crowded, noisy, sometimes dangerous buses/trams/subways. It's as true in the developing world as it is here.
As for such things happening in Colombia, it turns out that Colombians like the same things as Americans - they just previously didn't have the money to afford them.
Like, what's the alternative? Developing economies go from grinding poverty to bicycle-centric urban planning utopia by... top-down fiat? How do you propose to stop Colombians from voting with their wallets when they choose to eat at chain restaurants, shop at big box stores and then take the freeway back to their air-conditioned 2000 sq ft houses in the suburbs? "Sorry Mr. Middle Class Colombian, I know you really like McDonalds... but trust us, we're saving you from your own bad choices."
This is, of course, the inability to visualize a different life that I referred to in my original post. There are many alternatives to car-oriented life, as cities that grew before cars plainly evidence. Those are the cities that people want to spend their vacations in.
Instead of building shopping malls with parking lots, Colombia could relax zoning to allow chain restaurants and McDonalds near housing, and build dedicated bike lanes to get to them. Instead of building suburbs and freeways, it could build more public space like open pedestrian plazas to give people a feeling of space, and metros/bus rapid transit to make it easy to get around. Colombians who want to live a quiet suburban-style life can still do that in a rural home, which could be connected by rail when traveling to a city is required - but their choice to live a suburban life should not require those of us in cities to give up our space for wide roads to fit their cars and endless free car storage, at the expense of our way of life.
These options aren't the only alternatives Colombians could have, nor are they a fantasy - they exist today in places like Europe and parts of Asia.
Cars are not a requirement for human flourishing. We only designed our lives to make them that way.
It's worth mentioning most European cities didn't skip cars entirely. Amsterdam in the 70s was as much a traffic sewer as Detroit. They just realized they fucked up in the 80s and spent 30+ years correcting course.
Most rebuilt postwar European cities were built for cars. Then the people realized that sucked, often quicker cuz their legs y built environments accommodated cars poorly, and instead we got effective metro systems instead.
They never built the sprawling suburbia that much of the US has now though. Public transit remains viable in places built for humans even if it gets colonized by cars for a few decades. Low density suburbs with winding roads doesn't allow for non car transportation to be viable.
Exactly, cities like Rotterdamn and Berlin were flattened in WWII. They're still much better to live in without a car than any American city except NYC and maybe Montreal.
The excuse that postwar development is the reason for car dependency in north america doesn't hold water.
Sometimes I imagine an alien visiting Earth (America) for the first time and assuming cars enslaved humanity to force us to build convenient paths for them and harvest their food and bring it to convenient locations. I don’t see a practical difference.
By that logic dogs would probably win since you have to literally pick theirs up twice a day with your (admittedly covered) hand instead of scooping it just once in the morning.
Bike is the true freedom vehicle, especially ebike. You don't meed a license, don't need to register it, can park easily, can have a beer and drive after, can cover long distance with electric assist, can charge at home. Netherlands managed to combine it with trains between cities to cover long distances and surprise, even there car infra is very good and people can use a car when they really need it. Problem with US infra isn't that it's designed for cars, it's that it is designed for cars ONLY. You don't have freedom to not drive a car if you don't want compared to NL/Switzerland amd even Germany at some degree (German public infra is not so good). By any measure infra in NL, Switzerland, Barcelona and other similar regions is more pro-freedom since anyone can choose any method of transport and arrive+- comfortable to destination, be that car, motorcycle, train/bus /tram or bike
Only for the wealthy, and the car is the most expensive form of transportation that only the relatively wealthy have access to. For everyone else not wealthy enough to own a car the over investment in car infrastructure has made life worse and made them less free, as the under investment in transportation alternatives limits their access and ability to travel.
BBC's new season of race around the world featured Canada this year, and contestants were staggered at the lack of public transportation options, forced into illegally hitchhiking rides to finish the race. Such is the dearth of transportation options for people who do not own a car.
Trade offs. Everyone has a different situation, but for most people in the world $5000 in a car would enable so many different things they can do that it is worth it (or would be worth it if they could find that $5000 in the first place - for many if they had a car they could earn more than $5000 to pay for it, but lacking the $5000 to get the car in the first place they can't earn enough to buy it)
Here in backwaters of eastern europe, cars are freedom for everybody. If you're poor and live in backcountry... Get a car for €500 and go wherever you want. If you're poor in the city, you can do the same. Just find a makeshift parking spot. E.g. convert an unused lawn into a parking lot with your neighbours.
As someone living in a country with (purportedly) excellent public transport: public transport costs are more expensive than even our nearly 10 dollars a gallon petrol.
Oh this is talking about straight up prices for the trains. Unless you live near the hubs and need to go to another public transport hub you can easily expect your journey to take 2-3 times the time it'd take if you took a car.
Public transit costs money too. Also, if you drive with your family or friends, public transit gets more expensive. But it uses +/- same amount of gas.
Of course there's maintenance and insurance. But, for example, my yearly insurance is €80. With minimum wage of ~ €700-800. It's not exactly a deal breaker if that allows you to live in countryside and avoid obscene rents in big cities.
Freedom? Cars as freedom is such a misconception. They are highly regulated. They take up so much space that they are difficult to store and require subsidized storage everywhere one goes. They create massive amounts of pollution both in particulates and noise, causing health problems to those that have to live near them. Cities are not noisy--cars are noisy. They certainly have their use but the negative externalities are exceptional and are not paid for by the users of the cars.
I don’t own a car, and looking around at all of the people who do, I can’t imagine making all of their sacrifices.
The total cost of owning a car sets you back enough to impact all other aspects of your life. Cars are inconvenient to store, maintain, and keep from getting damaged or stolen, which seems to be a constant source of anxiety. Keep driving for long enough and they’re likely to maim or kill you eventually. And in the end, they’re not even that convenient - people behind wheel seem to always be pissed. No wonder, I’d be pissed too if I had to spend 20 minutes looking for a spot to park my stinky mobile death trap. You can keep your freedom.
Whiles there are downsides to a car, they are small compared to the masssivr upside of being about to go where you feel like it. If you live in one of the few places where there is great transit you may not realize how bad it is for most of us who have to wait for a bus that comes every half and hour, and then drives a slow winding route that is barely faster than walking.
err, yes. Cars are very expensive, but for most they work to get you to a much larger number of places quickly. Time is very important to travel, cars get to a lot of places very fast. We spend a lot of money, but in return we can get a lot of places and do a lot of things that we cannot without.
People fail to realize the car less dream begins to fall apart as soon as you have something niche you enjoy.
If your goal is to simply eat, great, public transit enables this easily with many choices.
If your goal is to eat at a very specific restaurant, 4 miles away, this would take you less than 10 minutes by car, but could easily be 30 to 40 no car, with at least one transfer.
And I don't know, I'm not old by any means, but I've definitely noticed the value of time now. Saving an hour round trip is very valuable (and one of the reasons remote work is so popular).
> If your goal is to eat at a very specific restaurant, 4 miles away, this would take you less than 10 minutes by car, but could easily be 30 to 40 no car, with at least one transfer.
Just tried this out in my city, 6km away to a random point in a dense-ish environment (ie. not out in the suburbs):
* 19 minutes by bike
* 22 minutes by train
* 22 minutes by car
Note that this is a completely unfair comparison. The bike can likely be parked right outside, with the train walking is factored in. For the car this assumes there's parking near where I am, near the destination and that it takes no time at all to find a spot.
The only way to achieve the comparison you've made is to build exactly the kind of car-centric environment being criticized here. Bulldoze the neighboring stores to build car parks. Bulldoze entire neighborhoods to build urban freeways. Rip up tram and train tracks. Defund public transportation. The end result is that maybe your very specific restaurant only takes 10 minutes to get to, but the nearest 30 restauraunts are in a 4 mile radius rather than within walkable distance.
>The only way to achieve the comparison you've made is to build exactly the kind of car-centric environment being criticized here.
Or simply live 10 minutes walking from the nearest subway station? The issue is you need to have both sides of the trip essentially on top of a public transit station. Even the cities with great public transit systems will have plenty of areas where the closest station is half a mile away.
The route I picked included ~12 minutes of walking for the train ride. It would likely take around the same mount if not more walking to use a car park.
Cycling is literally the fastest way to most places within 10km in my city. Trains are second, and cars are the slowest. If your city designed for cars to be the fastest way to get anywhere, there's your problem.
People fail to realize that bike heaven NL still has car infra and people can rent/own a car when they need it. The difference is priority: in that place you'll likely get faster to destination with bus/train/bike because infra is optimised in this way and as we know, people will use the most convenient method
I've lived in Chile the past twelve years. I often say I feel like a time traveller. I feel like I'm from the not too distant future. Chile feels like what California felt like growing up in the 70s and 80s, only with smart phones. People here throw trash wherever ... just like we did in California in the 70s and 80s. People here love their cars, and think of them as a status symbol and an extension of their identity ... just like we did in California in the 70s and 80s. Before I came to Chile I lived in Los Angeles and had to commute each day for over an hour each way. I also lived in Amsterdam and had to commute by bike each day for 20 minutes. I never owned a car the entire time I lived there. I was much better off mentally, physically, and economically in Amsterdam for this reason alone. I was freer too. A lot has changed in Chile since I arrived, especially in car ownership, and car-centric growth. I would not say that it's natural or the obviously best choice to prefer a car-centric future. The future Chile is creating for itself is not the one I would choose. There are alternatives.
> Like, what's the alternative?
Building the infrastructure for cars is a choice. Prioritizing cars over other modes of transportation is a choice. So make different choices.
I live in a small town. It's just six square blocks, but is densely populated with multi-story condos, and lots of shops and restaurants. But the streets are filled with cars. Cars are double parked on the sidewalks, and traffic moves at a snail's pace. It's loud, dirty, and unsafe. We could easily close the streets to cars, encourage people to take mass transit (we have collectivos and busetas) by making it expensive to park outside of the town center, require the numerous gated communities nearby to incorporate more amenities, like markets and pharmacies, to discourage trips by car, make it safer to bike by building ciclovias, and so on. But we don't, because we choose not to, sadly.
These are markets that are being developed actively by car companies. This is not a natural evolution or a so far unmet need for freedom but a political and economical campaign to sell more cars to people in "emerging markets".
> What a patronizing take. Cars are freedom - you can go where you like, when you like, with whom you like, and you can do it without dealing with crowded, noisy, sometimes dangerous buses/trams/subways. It's as true in the developing world as it is here.
It seems like many people would opt for this form of social isolation, an illusion that they are removed from the society that is what actually makes our civilization function. But perhaps this "freedom" of fully isolated mobility for the individual is damaging, both to this individual as well as to the fabric of society as a whole.
Maybe "freedom" to be isolated isn't actually good for us, despite how much many of us seem to want it? Maybe like junk food, or social media, or gatcha games, or many other technological marvels of the last century or so, we have a predisposition for addiction to it, but can fail to notice the damage it is doing to us as we embrace it.
If we focused on building a world where personal vehicles at least weren't required, perhaps we would see what we've been doing to ourselves.
For what it's worth, walkability demands a massive housing price premium in the US, so it is obvious that many people do desire it - just as some people clearly desire the freedom to be apart from their fellow humans.
I don't know how Colombian's feel about it, but to me all of that is pretty god damned miserable. Everyone wants what they didn't have before, so it wouldn't particularly surprise me if that alone is compelling enough.
I don't know how many people are begging to have their urban landscapes and culture bulldozed so people can park their cars on it, and I don't know how many people would be excited by the prospect of watching the infrastructure of their cities slowly crumble because the tax base is spread extremely thin and serviced in the most expensive way possible. Maybe that's just me though idk
Everyone seems to like American style fast-food chains though. No matter where you are in EU at least, it doesn't have anything to do how you get there, there's plenty of Dunkin Doughnuts, McDonald's, KFC, etc..
> "What a patronizing take. Cars are freedom - you can go where you like, when you like, with whom you like, and you can do it without dealing with crowded, noisy, sometimes dangerous buses/trams/subways. It's as true in the developing world as it is here."
Cars are a straight jacket, a two-ton $10k deadweight, you have to drag them everywhere with you, you can't go anywhere without them, you always have to return to where you left them, you have to baby them with concentration - they can't even go in a straight line without your constant guidance and if they could you legally can't let them; you get in one and you are trapped to the roads (no shortcuts down small walkable alleys or through parks), trapped in the flow of traffic (no pausing by a shop window and popping inside for a look), you're charged by the minute by the cost of gasoline, seatbelted into a fixed position for the duration, with an explosive airbag charge constantly pointed at your face because of the high chance you or other people can't safely control them, they're your responsibility when you aren't near them (they stop you from drinking alcohol with friends for example, or for parking irresponsibly), they're amazingly complex and costly systems to maintain, costly to insure. And you pay enormous amounts of tax to maintain the road network which needs to sprawl everywhere at enormous expense.
What's "freedom" about that?
American cities weren't designed for cars, they were bulldozed for cars. Car companies illegally bought up streetcar companies and sent the streetcars for scrap. Cars were killing so many pedestrians that car companies came up with the term "Jaywalker" to mean "country bumpkin walker" and propagandised it into blaming pedestrians for car drivers hitting them. Car companies are pushing SUVs in advertising because SUVs have a legal loophole about being 'light trucks' where they don't have to meet as strict safety and efficiency regulations so they are more profitable; it isn't that "Americans like SUVs", it's that "Americans are being told to want SUVs" so they do.
They stop you dealing with crowded, noisy buses and trams by being crowded, noisy traffic offloading that problem to everyone outside your soundproofed cage.
Walking is freedom - you can go where you like, when you like, with whom you like, and you can do it without dealing with crowded, noisy, sometimes dangerous buses/trams/subways, or rush hour or full car parks or car park fees or tailbacks. And without spending money or needing to be rich, without being confined to a car, without having responsibility of the safety of your passengers and all others around you, without having your attention constantly on controlling a car, without having to divert to a car park, look for a car park, or return to the same car park before you can go anywhere else, without being stuck in traffic, without being stuck to roadways. Walking with metros and trams and trains is freedom with a boost - optional, convenient, power assisted walking. (Bikes can be fun, but designing a city around requiring a bike sucks in the same way that designing a city around requiring a car sucks; design the city around not needing My Personal Metal Transport Vehicle(tm) and then add a little bit of that back in as necessary/helpful/fun).
> "How do you propose to stop Colombians from voting with their wallets when they choose to eat at chain restaurants, shop at big box stores and then take the freeway back to their air-conditioned 2000 sq ft houses in the suburbs?"
What happened in Amsterdam in the 1960s is the Jokinen Plan[1] proposed to demolish some working class neighbourhoods and run a six-lane highway into the city center, assuming that Dutch people would want to live in the suburbs and drive to the city like Americans do. Instead the people voted against it, and it turns out that making safe and convenient pedestrian and bike routes separate from car roads makes walking and biking safer and more pleasant, and so more people walk and bike for journeys instead of driving, which reduces car traffic and fumes and the need for big wide roads, which makes walking and biking even more pleasant. They didn't ban cars by fiat - surprise, lots of people don't want to drive for every single journey. (Possibly because driving is inconvenient, effortful, boring, and it's uncomfortable to be trapped in a fixed position for an hour looking at concrete and car-butts and road signs).
[0] https://i.imgur.com/hzDCcSg.jpeg - this is a "freeway" because you don't pay a toll to drive on it. And because of all the freedom these people are enjoying.
Shall we take my recent trip to London where it was too far to walk and too far and inconvenient for me to drive?[1] Or when I got to London (by train) I then couldn't drive around because I didn't have my freedom-car and instead used the quicker and cheaper underground train? Or where I couldn't ask my coworkers for a lift because none of them bring cars into London because cars are too expensive and inconvenient? Or where freedom-taxis were less convenient to organise and wait for and slower and several times more expensive than the underground?
Or my holiday which involved a ferry and the freedom-car was too expensive to justify bringing on the ferry and too inconvenient to park this side of the ferry, but the train/bus replacement went right to the ferry port?
Or my trip from home to train station which is walkable (if a little boringly far) and I have the freedom to go through town or through the park or through the suburbs, into shops along the way, and straight into the station whereas by car it's 10-20 minutes of stop/start traffic, no meaningful choice of route, no way to stop in anywhere along the way, the train station has almost no on-site parking and the nearby parking isn't gratis? How does car win for 'freedom' there?
Or how about that I have rarely ever driven more than two hours in a day, but if I want to go somewhere far in my car (such as London and back) I would have to commit to driving eight hours - and if I got there and felt unable (tired, ill) to drive back I would be stuck having to drive unsafely because of the freedom-car ball and chain, or arrange a hotel for the night - whereas a train or coach you don't even have to be awake the whole way, let alone concentrating on moving a two-ton vehicle at motorway speeds? Where's the 'freedom' advantage there?
By the time you are doing regular long car journeys it's eating large amounts of your time and money to the point where you are likely only doing that because you are economically trapped by house prices and job locations, rather than because you are free. Cars are good for the medium-short journey of 5-15 miles which is mostly crummy design of putting big box stores and industrial estates with no options except driving, assuming people will drive to them, and thus self-fulfilling prophecy meaning people have to drive to them. Cars are good at this, but an unthinkably expensive way to be good. Next time you see a road, count the cars in terms of $20,000-$60,000 purchase price each. Five cars to a hundred k, fifty cars to a million dollars. Economic boom or burden on the drivers?
From Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours idea, I am well on the way to being a world expert at my old commute, and trundling back and forth over the same bit of motorway for over a decade, ploughing thousands of hours of my life into pushing a pedal and turning a steering wheel, is not a skill worth developing and not any kind of 'freedom' the likes of which the Founding Fathers or the Ancient Philosophers were discussing.
There have been about 110 billion humans on Earth in all history, and over a hundred billion of them lived their entire lives without ever driving twenty minutes to Walmart, driving an hour to the next town for a coffee and a look around, driving eight hours to see Aunt Margaret once every couple of years, driving twenty hours to go skiiing, or driving a week coast to coast to burn some fossil fuels and feel important. And even today, the majority of car journeys are not people free to visit Aunt Margaret, they are people stuck in commutes or driving to stores who would generally prefer not to do that. If everyone who wanted to, could live a high quality of life close to work, how many car commuters would say "I don't want to live close to work and have more free time and less stress, I want my car commute because that's freedom"? Mostly they will say either "I can't afford to live closer to work" or "that's a horrible place to live" not "I love stop-start driving in traffic on a four lane concrete expressway".
[1] Let's it not pass unnoticed that driving is more than just distance and time; driving safely and concentrating and paying proper attention to the signs and conditions and other drivers is effortful and tiring, navigating in unfamiliar areas can be stressful, driving safely is a responsibility. How many drivers are honestly too tired, too distracted, too ill, too medicated, to be safely and responsibly making their journeys on any given day - but have no other reasonable choice but to cross fingers, pray, hope, and push through it?
What a patronizing take. Cars are freedom - you can go where you like, when you like, with whom you like, and you can do it without dealing with crowded, noisy, sometimes dangerous buses/trams/subways. It's as true in the developing world as it is here.
As for such things happening in Colombia, it turns out that Colombians like the same things as Americans - they just previously didn't have the money to afford them.
Like, what's the alternative? Developing economies go from grinding poverty to bicycle-centric urban planning utopia by... top-down fiat? How do you propose to stop Colombians from voting with their wallets when they choose to eat at chain restaurants, shop at big box stores and then take the freeway back to their air-conditioned 2000 sq ft houses in the suburbs? "Sorry Mr. Middle Class Colombian, I know you really like McDonalds... but trust us, we're saving you from your own bad choices."