In addition to what we see in the article, we've started to see the enshittification with monthly subscriptions to unlock more power or heated seats. The more this happens, the less likely I am to buy a car. A car is not freedom. It's a requirement, a loan, a monthly payment, an unexpected repair bill waiting to happen, and increasingly, a subscription fee.
The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom
41–50 of 122 posts
Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one is "interested" in making public transit worse, the issue is that people in power are not users of it and so are not invested in it, and civic and national pride is generally dead in the West, being replaced with vapid nationalism, so there's no drive (no pun intended) to invest in public works projects.
The London Mayor some years ago, Ken Livingstone, was a huge proponent of public trasport and used it extensively. The current Mayor, whilst still a proponent, likely does not use it. A quick glance at the social media that he recieves will tell you why - it would not be safe. He needs to travel with close protection officers. The reason? He is Muslim, and Britain has become a very racist country indeed. Well, maybe…
Nobody is worrying about the native English. If they were, they wouldn't have immigrated there.
Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
European countries only have good and affordable transport in the first and second tier cities. I usually spend a few weeks per year in Europe, often in smaller cities or rural areas, and the only public transport you'll find is some occasional bus service at inconvenient times. In those places everyone drives everywhere. Or they just sit around and home and don't go anywhere.
And then there are third-tier historical medieval towns that are 100% walkable and you again don't need a car. My ideal city of the future is a small walkable town with everything within a 15-20 minute walk, possibly a part of a conglomerate of towns that run trains or buses between them. I currently live in one such historical town in Southern Europe that's protected by Unesco. The streets are so narrow that not onl…
> third-tier historical medieval towns that are 100% walkable
Very many people, including me, want to live in a glorious walkable bijou old-town stone apartment, except they can't afford to because they stopped building them like that in about 1756 and the only jobs within walking distance of the old town are in hospitality and those do not pay the salaries to buy one of the treasured old town apartments from under an AirBnB host.
And if it's a really small, non-tourist town in the middle of nowhere, it may not even have the hospitality sector. So, yes, that bijou property may indeed only cost 50,000 euros, and yes, you can walk to the boulangerie or the confitería or whatever but you're probably going to need a car to get out of your tiny town and go to work or basically anywhere else.
Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom
#44Your argument makes sense if you’re talking about dense urban centers, but it doesn’t reflect the reality of millions of people who live outside of them. If you had to walk 4 miles to school every day, you would understand why a car means freedom. If the closest grocery store was 15 miles away, you would understand why a car means freedom. If you ever had to drive through a snowstorm just to get to work, you would understand why a car means freedom. If you had to take your sick child or elderly parent to the hospital in the middle of the night, you would understand why a car means freedom. If you had to balance two jobs in towns unreachable by public transit, you would understand why a car means freedom.
For millions of people, a car isn’t a trap or a luxur. It’s survival, opportunity, and dignity. Cities may be able to rethink their dependence on cars, but for everyone else, the car is still the bridge to basic participation in life.
Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Car dominance is cemented by decades of car centric planning which made cars indispensable in some areas. That is a well known fact, but planning can be changed. If you prioritize other forms of transport in a few decades cars can be a lot less important.
The place I live in was founded in the 1880s and incorporated a few years before the Model T debuted. Prior to the 1880s, Native Americans resided here. How is that car centric planning? And exactly how can one afford to live in a city where rent is $2500+ for a two bedroom or $1m+ for a SFH? That’s not going to happen on a McSalary. Those folks instead commute 1+ hours from affordable urban or more likely rural area…
I’m pretty sure that in the 1880s it was less than eight miles to the nearest shop and people didn’t need to commute dozens of miles per day to get to work.
Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom
#46> In the early 20th century, streets were shared spaces: places where people walked, gathered, played. That's an interesting way to look at compressed horse shit with streams of human waste running over the top of it. Bear in mind the invention of sidewalks predates the automobile by thousands of years.
Yeah, no offense to the author, but this feels like a textbook case of the 'noble savage' meme, just applied to the more primitive versions of western countries and it makes the whole piece sound really naive.
Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
European countries only have good and affordable transport in the first and second tier cities. I usually spend a few weeks per year in Europe, often in smaller cities or rural areas, and the only public transport you'll find is some occasional bus service at inconvenient times. In those places everyone drives everywhere. Or they just sit around and home and don't go anywhere.
And then there are third-tier historical medieval towns that are 100% walkable and you again don't need a car. My ideal city of the future is a small walkable town with everything within a 15-20 minute walk, possibly a part of a conglomerate of towns that run trains or buses between them. I currently live in one such historical town in Southern Europe that's protected by Unesco. The streets are so narrow that not onl…
You only have everything you need for work in such a city if your "work" is limited to small offices, restaurants, and retail shops. So you're excluding everything related to manufacturing, agriculture, resource extraction, logistics, military, etc. You know, all of that stuff that keeps modern industrial civilization operating and allows quaint medieval towns to continue existing at all. If you like where you live that's great, but it's hardly ideal and certainly not scalable.
Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom
#48It's interesting how people's positions can be so different. As a European who has lived in two (european) countries with good and affordable transport, I've always been a happy public transport user... until a couple of years ago, that is. Much of the transport is now filled with unpleasant people, dirt, delays, etc which paired with the insane prices of housing in the "walkable" parts of cities, has made me 100% in…
I don't get it. If you've been enjoying public transportation for so long, then why is your reaction to it getting worse not: OK, we need to fix it so it's as good as it was.
Instead you are just saying: OK, I have the resources to fix the problem for myself, so I don't give a F.
Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom
#49It's interesting how people's positions can be so different. As a European who has lived in two (european) countries with good and affordable transport, I've always been a happy public transport user... until a couple of years ago, that is. Much of the transport is now filled with unpleasant people, dirt, delays, etc which paired with the insane prices of housing in the "walkable" parts of cities, has made me 100% in…
Look one layer deeper and likely the issues are classist. Of course you didn't mention where you were, but, in the places I've lived, it goes down like this: the people who are wealthy enough to not need to use use public transit have more sway in terms of voting/persuading politicians, and push for policies that directly benefit them, even if it's to the detriment of the city overall.
Thus: more resources go towards those places with insane house prices, leaving everyone and everything else behind. The problem isn't public transit, it's the wealthy.
Re: The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
European countries only have good and affordable transport in the first and second tier cities. I usually spend a few weeks per year in Europe, often in smaller cities or rural areas, and the only public transport you'll find is some occasional bus service at inconvenient times. In those places everyone drives everywhere. Or they just sit around and home and don't go anywhere.
Yeah, I agree. I've just happened to live in two capitals, so I've had access to top-tier public transport. But even in the capitals, a simple 10-minute drive can turn into a 50-minute journey on public transport (this is a literal common example of mine, not an exaggeration!). So even then, you have to consider how much your time is worth.
I lived in a lower-tier American city (Charleston, SC) for 15 years, and this was my experience with public transportation. I had commute options of a 7 mile drive @ 30 minutes due to congestion, a 7 mile bike ride @ 35 minutes no congestion thanks to bike lanes, or approximately 2 hours bus ride on an unreliable system with no good drop off points and no guarantees in a timely arrival or space for a bicycle to complete the 2 mile walk to my office. These numbers are also one way, not round trip.
In other words, I could not use the service in any honest sense.
Perhaps a nice future is a hybrid model of public transportation plus personal transport via bicycles and scooters, especially with battery powered options becoming so robust.