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Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

economist.com

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Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#201

Post by hgomersall »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #182
hgomersall wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point... If you reject car ownership and the associated commute etc, you structure your life around that. You get a job and a house that are compatible with that philosophy. As a couple, neither of you would have a job that requires you to commute such distances.

Couldn't think of a better argument for why most people do not reject cars. Restricting your employment options to a small, say cyclable area around where you live can be extremely limiting for your employment opportunities, especially if you have a partner that also works. Especially considering the point another commenter said that oftentimes central business districts where the best jobs are can be prohibitively e…

But that's precisely the point. Many people (and arguably the young people in the OP), value life over "employment opportunities". That's the philosophy behind why many of us reject cars in our daily lives. Those hours of commuting I don't have to do I spend with my children. Equally, the commuting I do do is free exercise.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#202

Post by throwaway894345 »

mcv wrote: post #176
fleddr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US anti-car narrative often refers to the Netherlands as some kind of beacon of proper public infrastructure, whilst not knowing a damn thing about it. First, let's establish that the Netherlands is a car country. We have 11 million cars on a population of 17 million. On a typical day, 1 million people use public transport. Cars are the norm, not trains or bicycles. Public transport is rarely faster, not even in…

> We have 11 million cars on a population of 17 million. Yeah, but we have 23 million bikes. It's true that our public transport has been neglected. The privatisation of the 1990s was a bad idea in my opinion, and public transport should be run for the public good, not for profit. Like roads, it's part of the nation's infrastructure. And better public transport means less people on the road, which means less traffic…

All of that is true but it doesn’t seem to refute the parent’s claim that the American anti-car rhetoric envisions a nation where cycling and taking public transit to work is the norm because the Dutch have figured out how to make cycling and public transit faster than driving.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#203

Post by BrandonS113 »

imiric wrote: post #156
BrandonS113 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to spend a few months in Holland for work. We we left with the problem of what do do on the weekends. You can't rent bikes if you are not Dutch, and visiting the lovely villages and other places Holland is full of is a time consuming exercise in futility unless one has a car. A train is great for Rotterdam-Hague-Amsterdam, not so good for visiting the Bosch museum in 's-Hertogenbosch. Holland has a great road s…

> You can't rent bikes if you are not Dutch Huh? There's a bike rental place on practically every other corner in most Dutch cities, and most of their profit is from tourists. You only need to show some ID and leave a deposit. Dutch people usually have a cheap old bike, or use the public OV bikes, for which you do need to register and get a card, but even that is possible as a foreigner, it just takes some days to pr…

One needs iDEAL for many things in Holland, and needs to be a resident for that. My colleague tried to get a personal OV-chipkaart, https://www.ov-chipkaart.nl/en/apply-for-personal-ov-chipcar..., needed for bikes, he went though the process, and got nowhere. It was 2 years ago, so may have changed. But he said it stranded on need for a local bank account.

I know you can get anywhere by public transport, much better than where I live. But going though tram-train-train (+even bus or a 3rd train) to visit some village that is less than an hour away by car, will multiply the transport time.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#204

Post by dagw »

mcv wrote: post #155

My parents wanted to pay for my driver's license when I turned 18, but I didn't want one. (I wanted a good electric guitar instead, though it's been stolen since.) Lived most of my life without a car, and so did my brother. Worked fine. I only got a driver's license when I got married and my wife insisted, because she didn't want to the only one driving the kids around. (She mostly insists that she drives, though.) I…

In a well-designed city, most people don't really need a car.

For me a car isn't for getting around the city or getting to work (I much prefer walking/biking/taking public transport for that), but getting away from the city. To get to my favourite walking trail by the sea or the local ski slope is a 30 minute drive or 1.5+ hours by public transport. Getting to the slightly larger ski resort is a 90 minute drive or almost 4 hours by public transport. Getting to a national park I like visiting is a 2.5 hour drive and virtually impossible to get to by public transport. With public transport I can vacation in most major cities in Europe. With a car I can vacation in tiny beautiful out of the way places I never would have even thought of visiting before I got car.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#205

Post by davidMC1982 »

hgomersall wrote: post #161
davidMC1982 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because his partner works 60km in the opposite direction?

I think you're missing the point... If you reject car ownership and the associated commute etc, you structure your life around that. You get a job and a house that are compatible with that philosophy. As a couple, neither of you would have a job that requires you to commute such distances.

That only holds true when your basic needs to survive are met such that you're able to entertain a philosophy such as "reject car ownership". I suspect most people are going to abandon such a philosophy as soon as "putting food on the table" is no longer possible.

Conflicting ideas such as these crop up all the time. For instance, "commuting in a car is dead time, at least I can read/work on the train". A reasonable position at face value, but entirely useless to the person who finishes work at 17:00 and must pick the kids up from school at 17:30. The 30 mins car ride may be "dead time", but the 60 mins by public transport obviously doesn't work for them.

I would guess that the "rejecting car ownership" types probably have this as a subset of a broader philosophy where they've somewhat rejected wealth in favour of something else, or already have the economic freedom to make such a choice.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#206

Post by WeylandYutani »

yourusername wrote: post #68
wffurr wrote: post #10

There's 138 trains per day between Amsterdam and The Hague. It's faster to take the train than to drive on that trip. Driving in either city in an exercise in frustration. Why would anyone in a rich country with a high functioning rail system like The Netherlands want to drive? I don't know how many rich countries that describes, but I lived happily for years in Boston in the USA without a car. I have one now but onl…

>There's 138 trains per day between Amsterdam and The Hague. It's faster to take the train than to drive on that trip If you're going from the Hague central station to Amsterdam central station, sure. Now plan a more typical commute from say the Hague Wateringen to the over Amstel industrial estate (It takes two times as as driving) Play around with real life scenarios. Say you're going from Amsterdam Osdorp to your…

They did research on this: people actually ENJOY being stuck in traffic. So it doesn't really matter if mass transit is fast, cheap, reliable.

You have to make owning a car impossible. Take away parking spaces, block roads into the city, increase taxation.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#207

Post by victorvosk »

I always liked cars as a kid. Faster the better. But Tesla kind of broke everything. A super car for 150k and its only going to get cheaper and faster as time goes by. There is no longer any parity. EV's don't have roaring engines, outside of the cringe fake engine noises some are adding. There is nothing to be excited about when your future 30k 4 door sedan can do 200mph, 0-60 in 3 seconds.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#208

Post by _vbnz »

gumballindie wrote: post #66

“rich world” cant afford a car. cant afford a house.

It means the capitalists and landowners are rich, meanwhile we "will own nothing".

Marx predicted it perfectly:

> You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#209

Post by mcv »

yourusername wrote: post #106
mcv wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It takes two times as as driving That really depends on the amount of traffic jam you end up in. It's true that not every route has a direct train connection, and there are definitely trips where cars are faster, but during rush hour around big cities, cars become a lot less reliable. On top of that, cars are only fast if you have access to parking on each end of the trip. Otherwise you still need to park somewhere…

>That really depends on the amount of traffic jam you end up in. And on the ammount of leaves/snow/rain/wind/heat/strikes impeding rail traffic. Terrible traffic jams happen but let's not pretend the NS doesn't have a long list of excuses to run less or no trains or massively delayed trains. I can't count the number of times NS announced that they would stop running trains because of some weather where i had no issue…

No, I agree. Trains have gotten unreasonably unreliable too. They didn't always have this much trouble with leaves, rain and cold, as far as I recall. I think trains everywhere, and not just in Pennsylvania, suffer from being run for profit on narrow safety/reliability margins.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#210

Post by rootusrootus »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #59
benjaminwootton wrote: post #20

The young are falling out of love with home ownership, cars, dating, drinking etc. I suspect a lack of money is the common factor.

I don’t think that car ownership is related to poverty or absence of disposable income. In fact, a well off person in a well functioning city has little if any reason to own a car and can get away without one. Subreddits like r/solarpunk, r/fuckcars, r/notjustbikes, along with the push for 15 minute cities are a testament that young people dont want to be in the grip of petrol companies or owning a car as they are no…

> Subreddits like r/solarpunk, r/fuckcars, r/notjustbikes, along with the push for 15 minute cities are a testament

... that the Internet is dominated by the small niche of loud people who think other people want to hear their opinion. That's it. Anybody who is not deep inside the Reddit (and HN, for that matter) bubble can quickly appreciate how dissimilar the viewpoints on Reddit are from the real world.

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