I literally had this conversation at lunch today. We were talking about EVs and someone said the batteries are bad for the environment and I said, “yup! We’d be better getting a nice electric transit system to replace roads and cars.” I feel like most people know we’d be better off with a good transit system but rich people 80 years ago solidified our lives.

Thank you for the more practical take.

Carrot will likely work better than stick anyway. Instead of shaming people for using what seems to be the best and only way of getting to the city, show them what a nice pedestrian area looks like, remind them what it’s like to watch videos or play games while in transit, and get them to really consider the gargantuan size of classic American parking lots.

When finished, we’ll have people voluntarily voting at city council meetings to block cars from downtown, and revamp the long distance train station going to the next city.

Cars kill more people than drugs, and "drugs are bad, m'kay"

Nearly every single small town was built on a backbone of rail. They could at the very least put back what was stolen.

I hate to be the one to break this to you, but people travelled in the country before cars were invented

This comm is literally called fuckcars

Personally, I’m not a fan of government policies that ban things, because a ban is a blunt instrument that often leads to perverse results. Instead, I think that government should internalize economic extenalities, and let the individual incentives work. People who live out in the countryside get massive tax subsidies in the form of all those roads on which only they drive, for the most part.

So, fine, if cars are the only practical transportation, then the people who want to live out there need to pay for their roads with their own money.

(That is the long way to say that I don’t think personal cars out in the countryside are all that practical.)

It turns out that you can do rural spaces bad too. Rural sprawl!

https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/Settlement-patterns

In reality, the industrial revolution and especially the Green Revolution have ended the rural economy and, with that, the rural society. These places will remain unsustainable, nonviable, slowly dying as people try to move away for better lives or as they remain stuck, dependent on some corrupt local politicians and leaders.

It's a simple matter: once a couple of people with lots of cool machines and work vast tracts of land, the rest of the people in the area become useless.

Rural spaces are, currently, in a transient situation.

If the industrial economy collapses, then, yes, rural spaces will be great again.

I'm not trying to promote some false dichotomy, this is the economy and the people stuck in rural places are usually worse off - and that's for a reason. They will never be better off in this context, it is not happening.

So, instead of trying to prop up a dying place, help the people migrate. End the subsidized fantasy and end the sunk cost loop.

The automobiles, parking and highways vicious cycle has proven to be an indictment of capitalism and the corruption of the US. i don't think going electric for all our cas is going to be enough, and were seeing climate migration not only to the US but northward within the US.

The movie Mad Max (and its sequels) was inspired by somone observing car obsession tendencies among Australians and positing how fuel would be prioritized above its utility. Our obsession is worse here in the States, and for our love of cars and failure to change for sake of the world may see a similar apocalypse, though with fewer working vehicles and a lot more cannibalism.

I hope I'm wrong, of couse.

Its why the term "petrosexual" exists