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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

#261

Post by EL_Loco »

speeder wrote: post #130
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…

That is not a car country. São Paulo has more car than population, and has so many cars that their area summed is bigger than the area of all streets in the city. It is so many cars that sometimes walking 1 hour to your workplace is faster than a car route where you can spend 2, 3 hours to go to a neighborhood next to yours during rush hour. So many cars that the city became also the city with most helicopters, becau…

I just checked the Detran and IBGE's numbers. There aren't more cars than people in São Paulo. It's a traffic hell, for sure, but still less cars than people.

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

#262

Post by nextaccountic »

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…

> > We have 11 million cars on a population of 17 million.

> Yeah, but we have 23 million bikes.

> (...)

> The number of bike trips and car trips aren't that far apart (25% and 32%).

Wow, that's a good point. But, is the number of bike trips compared to car trips growing, shrinking, or staying the same?

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

#263

Post by [deleted] »

_vbnz wrote: post #208
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…

[deleted]

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

#264

Post by xyzelement »

I think this is explainable at the margins by the lack of positive peer pressure to live a rich life, of which the car is just a symptom.

Case in point, a kid who (a) wants to have a job (b) wants to hook up and (c) wants to go to parties / events still wants a car. What changes is that whereas in the 80s/90s, a kid who sat in his basement pulling his pud would would be considered a loser and have pressure to not be like that. Today it's totally acceptable. So there are simply more kids who aren't even trying to have an out-of-basement life, so they don't need cars.

I think it's not that relevant. The kids who are going to grow up with more power (financial and social) are the ones that want cars today.

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

#265

Post by iso1631 »

jcranmer wrote: post #217
kensai wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends where you live. Good public transit is unfortunately the exception in many places and not the rule. Cars are still needed in many use cases.

> Good public transit is unfortunately the exception in many places and not the rule. This is a fixable problem. The biggest issue is... > Cars are still needed in many use cases. ... the people who say this and, as a result, block any attempt to improve public transit whatsoever. Even worse, some are apt to frame it a "war on cars" because they're spending money on transportation that's not going to cars.

My village has about 300 people in it, so call it 300 return trips per day.

Those trips might be east to the small city. Or west to the mid-sized down. There's a bus in those directions, about once every 2 hours, last one at 6pm so useless for evening activities, or commuting further on the train. It's just gone past my front door now, it's rare to see more than 2 or 3 passengers on board other than at college time.

My options for going further - to London or Manchester 1) bus to the station, train to london, tube across london, then return on tube, train, and get a taxi back from the station 2) drive to the station in the morning, park, drive back in the evening (last train arrives about midnight) 3) drive the entire journey, under 3 hours so about the same amount of time

Same if I go to Manchester and Birmingham, but the drive is about half the time of public transport.

They might be south towards the big village. Or north to another big town. There's no bus services there.

Now you might say "just put on more public transport". My wife drives to work at a hospital 25 miles away. I suspect you could meet the entire daily demand from my village in that direction with a single minibus. The route doesn't pass any other major settlements, it's south-west down the lanes. How frequently would a bus need to run to be useful? Every hour? How early would it start? How late would it run? How many people would it take on each journey, and how much would it cost to run? How much pollution would it cause? What benefits would there be?

Public transport doesn't work below a certain density. If you want to depopulate the country and put everyone in tower blocks in the city - leaving the country for the rich - then just be honest about it.

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

#266

Post by nirimda »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #191
rexpress wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>First, let's establish that the Netherlands is a car country...On a typical day, 1 million people use public transport. Cars are the norm, not trains or bicycles. Anyone visiting a Dutch city can see what a distortion this comment is. The sheer volume of bike traffic on largely safe infrastructure is phenomenal. Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock. Life may be good for Dut…

How is that a distortion? It seems like you’re violently agreeing with the parent that many people bike to work but far, far fewer than the majority (which is essentially what the American anti-car rhetoric suggests). > Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock. There are 10 million employed Dutch (Statista) of whom 65% drive (Statista), so an additional half a million would be a…

I think the problem is that American anti-car rhetoric doesn't speak with one voice. There are people who know what they're talking about, who are mostly saying "If we follow some of the Dutch practices, we can get a city where people can get to a local destination by bike safely. But we should also take note that even in the Netherlands, the need to engineer roads for bike safety is something they continually forget". But there's others who say "The US is a hell-hole, Americans are evil and dumb, cars are evil, they will destroy the earth, we must all copy the enlightened Europeans who are good and wise people".

It is like that for so many reform proposals. Heterodox economists (MMT or gold standard or anything really) will say "we ought to consider this evidence in making our economic decisions", and their acolytes on forums like this will say "If we adopt this reform, we will be able to solve all our problems, but it's just corruption and self-interested politicians who stop us". Voting system reform people say "The US is screwed by FPTP, if we adopted proportional representation we will depolarise and have a nice consensual politics", but people who study the politics of countries that use proportional representation don't really indicate that (I think in this case there are some political scientists who get close, but only by circularly defining perfection in politics as exhibiting the consequences of proportional representation).

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

#267

Post by CydeWeys »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #191
rexpress wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>First, let's establish that the Netherlands is a car country...On a typical day, 1 million people use public transport. Cars are the norm, not trains or bicycles. Anyone visiting a Dutch city can see what a distortion this comment is. The sheer volume of bike traffic on largely safe infrastructure is phenomenal. Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock. Life may be good for Dut…

How is that a distortion? It seems like you’re violently agreeing with the parent that many people bike to work but far, far fewer than the majority (which is essentially what the American anti-car rhetoric suggests). > Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock. There are 10 million employed Dutch (Statista) of whom 65% drive (Statista), so an additional half a million would be a…

You need fine-grained statistics. It certainly isn't true that 65% of the people living or working in big dense Dutch cities like Amsterdam drive to work. That statistic more reflects how much the population of the Netherlands is spread out as a whole, not concentrated in its biggest cities as is more common in many other European countries.

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

#268

Post by chasd00 »

abeppu wrote: post #198
galangalalgol wrote: post #11

The article specifies rich, maybe beacuse, at least in the US, only the rich can afford to live in places where cars aren't strictly necessary? Some choose to live elsewhere anyway, for scenery or privacy, but the poor or even median 60% can't choose an area with a 15 minute walk to necessities. The Seattle walkability map on hn recently highlighted that fairly well I think? I also wonder if it is truly cars or just…

The article jumps from talking about teenagers to talking about people under 40. I think different factors are at play. Among teens, their basic needs are often already met by their family, teens are less likely to work than a generation ago, and a lot of their interaction is online anyway. Teen physical independence dropped for other reasons and the appeal of cars went with it. For adults I think you're right about…

In college (90s) I dated a 19 year old who didn’t have a drivers license (this was in ft. Worth tx). It blew me away, she just shrugged and said “I never really needed it”. She was ridiculously bright and had that glow that truly remarkable people do. I guess she was just ahead of the curve.

/well dating me does cause me to question her decision making ability now that I think about it heh

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

#269

Post by nextaccountic »

maxsilver wrote: post #181
hgomersall wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the question that anyone that rejects cars would ask is "why do you choose to live 60km from your work?".

Because most people don't have the luxury of choosing those things. - I don't have any meaningful control over where I'm allowed to work - I don't have any meaningful control over where my spouse is allowed to work - I only have a tiny amount of control over where I'm allowed to live (most of it prices us out, despite being above-average income) - even if I do exercise some control, it can be changed or stripped from…

> I don't have any meaningful control over where I'm allowed to work

And that's exactly why remote work should be the norm (for the professions where it is at all possible)

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

#270

Post by rootusrootus »

andrepd wrote: post #12
TillE wrote: post #4

If you live in anything like a real city and don't absolutely need a car to commute, the misery of street parking alone vastly outweighs any kind of occasional benefit. But it's nice to have a license so you can rent a car if you really want to.

It's misery to you, the driver, and misery to someone else. It's depressing to think the sheer area of land in cities that is dedicated to (free) parking. That the space of what could easily be a nice park or a playground is instead used to store a dozen cars. Not to mentioned the economic value wasted.

Where is this free parking you speak of? I live in a largely suburban city (couple million people) and the vast majority of parking lots are neither free nor taking up land which would otherwise be used by a park or playground. It's nearly all underground, or on top of buildings, or along the street, and almost none of it is free. We have lots of parks.

I'll give the benefit of the doubt and just assume a different life experience, and not just hyperbole.

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