> Electric cars are poor, even counterproductive stand-ins for long term solutions such as public transportation and the elimination of the suburban commuter lifestyle. They hide a multitude of externalities forced on the public and not paid for directly by owners or manufacturers.
Sure, but that's the solution you get from people who've never really experienced a well designed public transportation system. It's essentially a "faster horse" solution to traffic pollution issue which doesn't address the reasons behind the insane amount of tarmac space in modern US cities.
People aren't dumb. Building a city requires decades of coordinated action by thousands to millions of people, and it only works if rich people volunteer or are coerced to give up the disproportionate amount of real estate they enjoy, and no one gets a luxurious amount of space. It's not a matter of individuals seeing the light.
It's also a matter of the government allowing a city to be built. This sounds trivial, but is actually the biggest component to the lack of affordability in SF and NYC.
There are places where a lot of people want to live, but the gov't is actively preventing housing being built there. Instead of allowing the next increment of development (SFH -> missing middle -> mid-rise apartment buildings -> high rise apartment buildings), many US cities do their best to block development wherever possible. The only developments that can make it through the process are 1) huge, 2) well-backed by capital, and 3) hugely profitable.
Public transit doesnt have to be publicly run. I mean it can be, but services like cruise in SF are not and are better than individual cars as is uber pool. Both let many people in san Francisco live without cars.
Also in san francisco, many of the ferry lines are or were run by private companies. I dont understand how one can oppose the idea of available transit.
In reality what is needed is for governments to deregulate transportation. It is actually ridiculous that the city originally demanded uber drivers have medallions to pick people up. That should be a basic right so that transit companies can start to provide cheap and reliable transit options for city dwellers. If I recall correctly, Cancun has a mostly privatized bus system that works very well.
Finally, roads are also currently publicly funded and governments already have a huge say in transit that individual citizens cant really affect. Having multiple private transit options would mean larger organizations able to stand up to the authorities.
You make some fair points here but overall your argument seems to come from a point of paranoia of the communist boogeyman.
You deride a lot of public transportation points but don’t offer an alternative. Are we to believe automotives are satisfactory by your own yardstick?
* Automotives have way higher health risks than your pathogen boogeyman. Blaming 100M deaths in 1918 on public transportation is a reach when Germ theory was only really widely accepted a mere 50 years earlier. On the other hand automotive incidents remain the top cause of death for individuals ages 15-34 in the United States
* Goverment incompetency in public works is not anymore unique to public transportation. The government still operates the roads and bridges that the automotives drive. Look no further than Boston’s big dig where a project was overrun by 10 years and several billion dollars.
* Again, government mismanagement is not something unique public transportation. Are we to pretend cronyism didn’t exist before the SJW Boogeyman?
* For your final point, why are the externalities of cars not applicable here. It’s certainly not 0 - without the obvious threat of climate change, I’d rather have alive annoying tourists than dead adults from automotive fatalities.
Your only strong point, to me, is high availability transportation. However is high availability actually needed or is it just the comfort of knowing that is actually desired. How many people actually need to be able to drive anywhere at 3am on a consistent basis - and for those that do why wouldn’t they be able to accept the economic premium of doing so?
Wow. Was a relative of yours hit by a bus full of communists?
You're making taking public transit sound like the modern equivalent of storming Omaha Beach.
All of the problems you list apply just as well to any department of transportation that is responsible for building and maintaining roads... With taxpayer money, collected not from drivers, but off the backs of working people, regardless of how much they use those roads.
Sure, but that's the solution you get from people who've never really experienced a well designed public transportation system. It's essentially a "faster horse" solution to traffic pollution issue which doesn't address the reasons behind the insane amount of tarmac space in modern US cities.