Tangentially related to the, as usual, insanely biased/political Vox pure propaganda piece, it's kind of interesting to note how fast society went from "there's no war on cars, you stupid conspiracy theorist" to just fully, openly, calling for replacement of cars, being fully open in their hate of cars. It's a pattern to remember - how they gaslight you at first about their position until they've made enough inroads to more securely support their true intentions.
Where do you live that you ever heard anyone call a war on cars a conspiracy theory or a reality? I wasn't aware that I apparently needed to pick a side in yet another cultural fight.
There's no war on cars, but a war between two ton polluting children killers and sensible city design, public transport, good urbanism, healthier living.
I distinctly remember some other comment a while ago showing how the Reddit hive mind drastically changed positions around certain covid topics (I think about masking?).
It's fascinating how groups can be so adamant about their positions one instant, and then switch positions later on with zero repercussions. We need more accoutability.
I don't hear this rhetoric in the general public. At best, high gas prices bumped a few people on the edge to buy a Prius instead of a Corolla. Now that those prices seem to be going down, the rhetoric will taper off and people will go back to buying SUVs.
One thing that I do expect is driving some of the rhetoric is that cars have just gotten ferociously expensive for everybody not a homeowner in the 'burbs. So, we've kind of gone back to cars being a whopping chunk of your income like the 60s and 70s while we've dismantled most of the nearby jobs and local infrastructure that meant you needed a car less. It will be interesting to see if this is enough impetus to finally change the status quo.
Excellent point. We are watching the same thing transpire right now with the white replacement conspiracy and the LGBTQETC groomer conspiracy. Six months ago, we watched this happen with the "the vaccine isn't really a vaccine conspiracy". This pattern is so old at this point, it's almost boring. When the talking heads all start telling you "No, X isn't really happening", "Why X is a baseless conspiracy", dollars to the donuts the narrative flips within 12 months.
I walk 5 minutes to the nearest bus station, there in the worst case, in public holiday I may have to wait 30 mins at most, but because the bus hours are public, I can leave my house at the last moment.
10-15 mins with the bus, or 8 if there are no car jamming the road, I'm at a train station.
This train station have a train line that bring me in the middle of Paris in 13 minutes.
It's burning the world, and it's a luxury we can afford now because we don't pay(monetarly speaking) the price for it.
I would vote to restrict further the cars.
As soon as you take every cost the car make, it's not worth it anymore.
And I'm not speaking only about money, but the external cost generated due to the car:
It reduce biking and walking by taking up space on the road, and being dangerous for both.
It pollute the air and reduce our lifespans.
It make a tons of noise, which also reduce lifespan.
This isn't particularly unusual. I live in a house (with a garden) in Liverpool and don't have a car. I cycle the 2.5 miles to work, and there are frequent buses and trains to move around more broadly.
There are certainly times it would be more convenient to have a car, and most people around here do. I've just never got around to it (though I do have a licence, and hire one maybe once a year for a trip to somewhere awkward).
If you live near the middle of London, on the other hand, a car is positively unusual: the public transport is ubiquitous, often faster than sitting in traffic, and much cheaper than parking. That's not true of most places in Europe, though.
The car will beat it in a lot of situations if you add up the time to get to and from train stations or if you want to arrive at your destination at any time when the train isn’t arriving
It's not hard to use that waiting/traveling time productively though (which might include zoning out etc.).
Much harder to use driving time productively. Self driving cars will obviously change that equation, and I expect will make cars more attractive for many uses.
So I’m a big anti-car advocate but walking to a bus, taking the bus to a train, and taking the train to Paris (and maybe taking the metro around Paris?) and of course going all the way back sounds like a thing a car person would bemoan as a failure. Must be nice to get to Paris so easily I’ll admit.
Personally, if I have to take more than 2 modalities of transit to get where I have to go then I just use a car (taxi).
Maybe the French are a bit different, but in America no one would want that. The idea that you’re beholden to the others schedule (or multiple others!) and it could be late or off or whatever or if you miss it you’re screwed is exactly what Americans fear most about communal transit. The American independent mindset would kill that.
My commute time is fairly long, it's 76 minutes, and is about the same time in car.
The thing is, public transit for me is more reliable, as I don't rely on specific hours, at peak hours you get your bus/train every 10-15 minutes at most and there is a metro every 3 minutes.
If there are issue on a line, there are apps that will route you away from it.
And the other big thing is, these 76 minutes are not lost, you can do something in this time, for me it's reading a lot on the net.
Now, if you want to do this commute in car, well it won't be good for your mental health, then the traffic will vary a lot, and can add 30-45mins at worst on your commute.
I commute about an hour into Manhattan, NYC, supposedly one of the few places in the US with decent public transit. It’s 50:50 odds that that hour is not only completely lost but spent in complete misery standing up and holding a tight pole on a swaying and swerving bus or train.
In isolation I would much prefer to drive in, traffic and all. But it costs too much, and I know that’s not a realistically scalable solution for many reasons. But that I even wish I could is representative of just how much I hate NYC’s public transit system.
Now I’m not a transit hater. I loved Seoul’s and Tokyo’s for example. But to get NYC’s transit, let alone any other American city’s transit to that level is completely impossible due to cultural and social reasons. And no - cars have little to do with those reasons.
Sentence 1 is relatively uncontroversial. Sentence 2 doesn't follow from it however. If you mean "if everyone wants large private blocks of land for their houses, and wants to be able to travel with minimal effort/inconvenience, they'll almost certainly need access to a car", then sure.
At this point it seems most internet dwellers under the age of 35 subscribe to the sentiments of /r/FuckCars [0] but just yelling about the problem on Reddit and Vox isn't going to accomplish much. You basically need cities redesigned, which is going to take a long time. For those who are so passionate about the problem their best bet is probably to get involved in local politics or urban development than pointing out how Elon's tunnel project is dumb for the 100th time.
Or simply as you age, move out of places designed for cars and to places designed for walkability. It's an easy solution if you have a skill set that's in demand and command a high wage.
Shitty suburbs will slowly become abandoned as high skilled workers are leeched away by decent living conditions (i.e. not sitting in a car for 90 minutes a day, 5 days a week)
As a counterpoint, at least for the WFH crowd, it's far easier to afford a space that accommodates 1-2 comfortable home offices in the suburbs than it is in a walkable urban environment.
Not to mention the other conveniences rarely afforded to urban apartment dwellers...
Point being - I'm not sure I see the suburbs disappearing just because car-centric development is suboptimal.
This doesn’t need to be zero sum. In cities like San Francisco, you can improve the already existing (but terrible) public transportation option with “politics”, as well as let Waymo and other self driving ride shares provide a competing option. SF is already dense enough for this.
Initially I agreed with the headline but the content of the article was almost entirely not what I was thinking.
To me, cars are getting a lot better recently. Parking cameras and all the different warning systems like lane changes or rear end warnings are really useful. It's much easier to park a large SUV in a tight parking spot than it used to be, and cars seem to be getting safer as well.
Almost none of this is due to CarPlay or Android Auto, though, which are the main ways Silicon Valley is affecting transportation. CarPlay seems fundamentally limited - it's nice to listen to Spotify or podcasts in your car, it's nice to have integrated maps, but no other apps seem to be mattering much, and even interacting with a touch screen isn't a great experience because it's so distracting. If anything more of the interaction with CarPlay should be via scroll wheels, which some cars do support.
The stuff this article refers to - public transportation, Uber, self driving cars - none of that is really making any difference right now. Maybe it'll get better someday. 90% of Americans have cars, 5% commute on public transit, most Americans never use Uber. Cars really are improving with technology though.
Yes cars are improving with technology but that improving technology almost never comes from Silicon Valley startups. Note: I am not aware of any car-improving technology started in SV but I put "almost" just in case.
Silicon Valley is just straight up wrong apparently. What a blanket-ass statement. How about a little more resolution in that statement so my mind doesn't fog trying to parse it.
I’ve lived in a lot of places, and have experienced the “utopia” of hyper-dense, public transit-based living that is so often romanticized here on HN. It has some advantages, but I’d never go back to it. I love having a car. To me, a car is freedom, comfort, and privacy. It makes transit not just tolerable, but pleasurable. It’s a home away from home. There are lots of places where cars are truly optional. I often wonder why the anti-car brigade doesn’t just move to those places, rather than try in vain to convince suburbanites to disavow one of the best parts of suburban living.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 87.5 ms ] threadNo conspiracy about it.
> All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident
(source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32538563)
I distinctly remember some other comment a while ago showing how the Reddit hive mind drastically changed positions around certain covid topics (I think about masking?).
It's fascinating how groups can be so adamant about their positions one instant, and then switch positions later on with zero repercussions. We need more accoutability.
I don't hear this rhetoric in the general public. At best, high gas prices bumped a few people on the edge to buy a Prius instead of a Corolla. Now that those prices seem to be going down, the rhetoric will taper off and people will go back to buying SUVs.
One thing that I do expect is driving some of the rhetoric is that cars have just gotten ferociously expensive for everybody not a homeowner in the 'burbs. So, we've kind of gone back to cars being a whopping chunk of your income like the 60s and 70s while we've dismantled most of the nearby jobs and local infrastructure that meant you needed a car less. It will be interesting to see if this is enough impetus to finally change the status quo.
If you want private land (house, yard), you will always need a private car.
I live in an house.
I walk 5 minutes to the nearest bus station, there in the worst case, in public holiday I may have to wait 30 mins at most, but because the bus hours are public, I can leave my house at the last moment.
10-15 mins with the bus, or 8 if there are no car jamming the road, I'm at a train station.
This train station have a train line that bring me in the middle of Paris in 13 minutes.
I could totally lives without it.
Almost all of my needs can be covered at feet distance, or with public transit.
I would vote to restrict further the cars.
As soon as you take every cost the car make, it's not worth it anymore. And I'm not speaking only about money, but the external cost generated due to the car: It reduce biking and walking by taking up space on the road, and being dangerous for both. It pollute the air and reduce our lifespans. It make a tons of noise, which also reduce lifespan.
There are certainly times it would be more convenient to have a car, and most people around here do. I've just never got around to it (though I do have a licence, and hire one maybe once a year for a trip to somewhere awkward).
If you live near the middle of London, on the other hand, a car is positively unusual: the public transport is ubiquitous, often faster than sitting in traffic, and much cheaper than parking. That's not true of most places in Europe, though.
In practice, in Paris, at commute hours the car is often slower than using public transit.
Middle school 20mins away on feet.
High school is 25mins away in bus.
Personally, if I have to take more than 2 modalities of transit to get where I have to go then I just use a car (taxi).
Maybe the French are a bit different, but in America no one would want that. The idea that you’re beholden to the others schedule (or multiple others!) and it could be late or off or whatever or if you miss it you’re screwed is exactly what Americans fear most about communal transit. The American independent mindset would kill that.
If there are issue on a line, there are apps that will route you away from it.
And the other big thing is, these 76 minutes are not lost, you can do something in this time, for me it's reading a lot on the net.
Now, if you want to do this commute in car, well it won't be good for your mental health, then the traffic will vary a lot, and can add 30-45mins at worst on your commute.
In isolation I would much prefer to drive in, traffic and all. But it costs too much, and I know that’s not a realistically scalable solution for many reasons. But that I even wish I could is representative of just how much I hate NYC’s public transit system.
Now I’m not a transit hater. I loved Seoul’s and Tokyo’s for example. But to get NYC’s transit, let alone any other American city’s transit to that level is completely impossible due to cultural and social reasons. And no - cars have little to do with those reasons.
https://new.mta.info/coronavirus/ridership
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/
Shitty suburbs will slowly become abandoned as high skilled workers are leeched away by decent living conditions (i.e. not sitting in a car for 90 minutes a day, 5 days a week)
Not to mention the other conveniences rarely afforded to urban apartment dwellers...
Point being - I'm not sure I see the suburbs disappearing just because car-centric development is suboptimal.
To me, cars are getting a lot better recently. Parking cameras and all the different warning systems like lane changes or rear end warnings are really useful. It's much easier to park a large SUV in a tight parking spot than it used to be, and cars seem to be getting safer as well.
Almost none of this is due to CarPlay or Android Auto, though, which are the main ways Silicon Valley is affecting transportation. CarPlay seems fundamentally limited - it's nice to listen to Spotify or podcasts in your car, it's nice to have integrated maps, but no other apps seem to be mattering much, and even interacting with a touch screen isn't a great experience because it's so distracting. If anything more of the interaction with CarPlay should be via scroll wheels, which some cars do support.
The stuff this article refers to - public transportation, Uber, self driving cars - none of that is really making any difference right now. Maybe it'll get better someday. 90% of Americans have cars, 5% commute on public transit, most Americans never use Uber. Cars really are improving with technology though.