The End of Car Culture
nytimes.com
The End of Car Culture
1–10 of 78 posts
Re: The End of Car Culture
#2For urban dwellers blessed with proper public transportation and a good Walk Score, a car is a huge headache and drain on finances. They simply all need to go and be replaced with extremely efficient, clean and safe transit systems. Nobody enjoys sitting in traffic for hours a day commuting. Nobody enjoys wasting time on maintenance. Nobody enjoys the process of acquiring the vehicle.
At the very least, car sharing is a step in the right direction. Eventually as the Google car becomes reality, I hope that the # of cars on the roads is reduced to a bare minimum and we don't need to drive / pay people to drive any longer, and free up a lot of human talent to do something more productive.
Re: The End of Car Culture
#3For urban dwellers blessed with proper public transportation and a good Walk Score, a car is a huge headache and drain on finances. They simply all need to go and be replaced with extremely efficient, clean and safe transit systems. Nobody enjoys sitting in traffic for hours a day commuting. Nobody enjoys wasting time on maintenance. Nobody enjoys the process of acquiring the vehicle. At the very least, car sharing i…
>and free up a lot of human talent to do something more productive.
Or starve, as the case may be.
Re: The End of Car Culture
#4For urban dwellers blessed with proper public transportation and a good Walk Score, a car is a huge headache and drain on finances. They simply all need to go and be replaced with extremely efficient, clean and safe transit systems. Nobody enjoys sitting in traffic for hours a day commuting. Nobody enjoys wasting time on maintenance. Nobody enjoys the process of acquiring the vehicle. At the very least, car sharing i…
>and free up a lot of human talent to do something more productive. Or starve, as the case may be.
Wealth redistribution could solve that problem.
Re: The End of Car Culture
#5The end of car culture can't come soon enough.
Re: The End of Car Culture
#6For urban dwellers blessed with proper public transportation and a good Walk Score, a car is a huge headache and drain on finances. They simply all need to go and be replaced with extremely efficient, clean and safe transit systems. Nobody enjoys sitting in traffic for hours a day commuting. Nobody enjoys wasting time on maintenance. Nobody enjoys the process of acquiring the vehicle. At the very least, car sharing i…
New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia are towns with the best walk-score in America.
For various reasons, it is still much cheaper to live in the suburbs and commute into the city than to live in San Francisco. I wonder how the other walkable cities are fairing.
Perhaps when people buy homes, they tend to not buy a new car at the same time - prior to the housing crisis, many people bought lots of homes. Then the market collapsed and they lost their money, further reducing the number of new cars bought.
Oddly enough, some 2000-model-year used Hondas and Toyotas did not depreciate in value between 2010 and 2013 because the used car market heated up.
Re: The End of Car Culture
#7There is an interesting intersection between this piece, the first comment by BadassFractal, and Philip Greenspun's recent post about Denmark's bike infrastructure: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/06/17/danish-happine... :
Because a bicycle can be used safely on every segment of almost any trip it becomes much more practical to dispense with car ownership and its $9100 annual bleed (according to AAA). The 24-hour metro, excellent intracity buses, and frequent trains other parts of Denmark complement the utility of bicycles in situations involving miserable weather and/or long distances. . . .
The way that we have things set up in the U.S. contributes to our higher per-capita GDP, but it does not make us better off. For example, if you think that a trip by bicycle will be unsafe due to a lack of bike lanes and take a car, you will burn gasoline, maintenance, and depreciation on that car, thereby boosting the measured GDP compared to if you had used your muscle power (not figured into GDP). If you then sign up for a gym membership and personal training to get rid of the fat that you’ve accumulated during all of these car-instead-of-bike trips, that boosts GDP though at the end of the process you will be no thinner or fitter than if you had biked. If you get hit by a car the GDP can easily be boosted by $25,000. You will buy a new bicycle. The car will need bodywork. You may be concerned about your health and get an MRI done at one of the world’s most expensive MRI clinics. Your MRI will be read by one of the world’s highest paid radiologists. What the radiologist says will be read to you, for a GDP-boosting fee, by one of the world’s highest paid neurologists.
Re: The End of Car Culture
#8For urban dwellers blessed with proper public transportation and a good Walk Score, a car is a huge headache and drain on finances. They simply all need to go and be replaced with extremely efficient, clean and safe transit systems. Nobody enjoys sitting in traffic for hours a day commuting. Nobody enjoys wasting time on maintenance. Nobody enjoys the process of acquiring the vehicle. At the very least, car sharing i…
> Nobody enjoys sitting in traffic for hours a day commuting. Nobody enjoys wasting time on maintenance. Nobody enjoys the process of acquiring the vehicle.
Maybe not, but some of us find it vastly preferable to being crammed in with others on public transport. So don't tar everyone with your particularly preferences thanks.
Re: The End of Car Culture
#9My dads tire and wheel business is screwed. 40+ years in the business, and it has dwindled down to practically nothing.
Re: The End of Car Culture
#10One thing missed by most of these post-auto stories: transit used to be sooo boring, and no longer is.
I'm old enough to remember riding the bus before mp3 players and smart phones. Your only options were to read or to bring a CD player. Walkmans (Walkmen?) were a pain: batteries got expensive, and carrying more than 1 or 2 CDs was a pain, so you ended up listen to a few tracks over and over. Newspapers and books were good, but not as stimulating as the internet or email or Words With Friends. I still remember waiting for the train with no music, nothing to read, and nobody to talk to; it was excruciating.
Nowadays, I prefer transit to driving, even when it's a bit longer, because I can just zone out on my iPhone the whole way.