Is There 'A Hill You're Prepared To Die On' ?

[DGuller]

I personally didn't have a car until I was 26, and I was the first driver in my family.  Is it possible to live without a car?  It definitely was in all the places I lived in, hence why we didn't have a car.  It is, however, very limiting, and dense living isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Your quality of life is definitely lower without personal transportation even in a place with very functional public transportation.  I don't think it has anything to do with brainwashing, it's just a reality.

[Zanza]

I did not have a car for most of my adult life, only briefly when I lived in the US (not possible with public transport to get from where I lived to where I worked) and once briefly in Germany. In other places and countries I lived, I did not need a car and relied on public transport. Even once in the US, when I lived near Manhattan.

Then I was promoted and got a company car. Was nice, but not really necessary. A toy of sorts.

The Covid came and I did not like public transport anymore, even drove to other countries for vacation where I would have used air travel in the past. Driving to Italy is actually quite nice.

Then I got a child and feel like a car is an utter necessity to drive to daycare, buy groceries or travel to family and friends, which I would earlier have done by train or so.

So I think it is highly situational whether you "need" a car or not.

[Barrister]

The Covid came and I did not like public transport anymore, even drove to other countries for vacation where I would have used air travel in the past. Driving to Italy is actually quite nice.

Then I got a child and feel like a car is an utter necessity to drive to daycare, buy groceries or travel to family and friends, which I would earlier have done by train or so.

So I think it is highly situational whether you "need" a car or not.

One of the many costs of Covid-19 has been the terrible toll it has done on public transit.  I know Edmonton's ridership is way, way down.  I mentioned it took the train one day a couple weeks ago - the number of people on the train were well down from the pre-pandemic levels.  Whether this is due to increased working from hom, or more people taking private vehicles, I can't say.

This is an aside but me and Mrs B have taken four trips to Europe.  On each trip we rented a car and drove around.  On each trip various Euros expressed shock and surprise that we'd do so.  But each time I found it was a very nice way to see the countries we visited.  If we went to an urban area we'd promptly just park the car for the duration and take public transit around, but it's a great way to travel between cities.

Absolutely - I give examples of why I need a car.  I'm not saying we need to run around and force people at gunpoint to buy cars whether they want to or not.  But in some (many?) situations private ownership of cars is needed.

[Zanza]

It's the great triumph of the car industry to have made lobbyists out of its customers.

I think that suggests too much agency of the car companies. Customers love cars because they fulfill some deep seated human desires, namely having personal space, being very convenient,very often still being the fastest or most versatile mode of transport, etc.

That's why customers desire cars. Not some nefarious scheme by the auto industry.

[Tamas]

My family (as in, my grandparents and father at least), switched from horse, ox, and the carriages/tools drawn by them straight to cars and combustion/electricity operated agricultural machinery. There was no phase of bringing produce in from their fields to home via bus.

There was no middle class aspiration in play, but rather the desire to greatly improve the efficiency of their existing way of life. To think it's some sort of aspirational choice not to organise your life around public transport seems to me a view point stuck smack in the middle of the city centre like in case of Sheilbh and Tyr.

[DGuller]

In my country, there was no campaign by Lada or Zaporozhets to turn drivers into lobbyists either.  They had 10 year wait lists to fulfill as it is, and the state would've probably preferred to direct more steel to missiles rather than personal automobiles.  Strangely enough, people still wanted to own cars. 

[Maladict]

Apparently I was the first to decline a company car, they're still scratching their heads over it and periodically ask if I've reconsidered. 
I'll take the longer bike-train-bike option, even with the goddamn freezing exposed platforms. I should not have considered that town as a place to work for that reason alone, lesson learned.

[Jacob]

Yeah of course there are many cases where a car are orders of magnitude more convenient than public transit (or biking or walking), especially, of course, where public transit is shitty or underdeveloped.

Given that, it seems pretty logical to me to put resources into making public transit and other car alternatives more convenient. The smaller the delta, the more people will use non-car transit and the better for the environment.

Sure, some folks are never going to be in a situation where they'll give up their car - maybe because it doesn't make sense to develop sufficient alternative (f.x. because they live in a low density area and need to get around a lot) or because they just love cars and loathe the alternatives. That's fine, IMO. But it still makes sense to make car alternatives as accessible and convenient as possible. What any given individual does doesn't really matter - Tamas can drive to the big box store or whatever - but if we can shift and additional 10% or 25% or whatever % of trips from cars to car alternatives that's a significant improvement and one we should try to achieve.

[Oexmelin]

-I feel like I get this attitude frequently from progressive academics - that you're just not willing to be creative enough, and not that you actually have any answers (this comes up during, say, 'defund the police' type arguments).  I have specific transportation needs that I do not see how they could be met solely by public transportation, and just to be told that "The world without car has become unthinkable" doesn't actually answer any questions.

I never said they could be solely met by public transportation. Obviously, any transition away from what has been a core feature of living in the industrialized world is going to be difficult, and require multiple steps, and will never get entirely rid of motor transportation. But I do think this sort of argument by caricature ("you want to get rid of all the cars!") would never be brought up so quickly, and so vehemently, if it didn't touch something more than simply "getting from point A to point B".

And while I don't think a single comprehensive plan developped by one guy at Languish is feasible, it doesn't mean there aren't any elsewhere. I am not an urbanist, but I do know it would require quite a bit of urban redesign, more flexible public transportation (smaller buses, public taxis, urban trams, regional trams) a change in zoning laws to allow proximity commerce. Incentives to have daycares in close proximity to workplaces (or even within workplaces). Shopping malls have developped alongside suburbs, but there is nothing preventing their existence in cities (Toronto's Eaton Center, Montreal's subterranean city, or Le Caroussel du Louvre, for instance). Even more suburban ones often have bus transportation in the US, because that's how many of the shop employees get to their place of work...

Some changes would certainly require a change of disposition: a willingness to defer gratification in favor of delivery, for instance. It's nice to go to IKEA, but a small truck delivering goods to multiple houses is still going to be more ecologically efficient than a dozen individual families coming to IKEA in a dozen cars. But then you meet the other side of the coin: people will still desire their suburban homes, and many would rather have a distant supercenter, than a small proximity greengrocer. 

And *because* of the car, acceptable distances have become much further. Having a hockey tournament an hour away may not have happened before; now, it's seen as ordinary, perhaps even necessary. But even then, my vague impression, as I said, is that even carpooling has become foreign to our practices. Obviously, going to Legal with a lot of hockey stuff was going to  be difficult. Did you not know any other families going to Legal?

[Barrister]

Apparently I was the first to decline a company car, they're still scratching their heads over it and periodically ask if I've reconsidered. 
I'll take the longer bike-train-bike option, even with the goddamn freezing exposed platforms. I should not have considered that town as a place to work for that reason alone, lesson learned.

I get a virtually free underground parking spot as a perk of my job (although it does count as a taxable benefit so I have to pay tax on it).

When I voluntarily gave up that spot (so I didn't have to pay the tax) they similarly were scratching their heads about it - are you SURE you want to give it up?

But now I'm stuck, after a few months of Covid when it obviously wasn't going away I asked for a new parking spot, and received one.  But it's the sweetest spot imaginable, right by the parkade door.  If I give it up I'll never in my career get such a good parking spot again.

[Jacob]

A few recentish developments have made life without car ownership more convenient in a lot of places, and addresses a number of the use-cases advanced in favour of car ownership

- The rise of car sharing companies / short term rental companies. If you can - reliably and cheaply - get access to a car when you need it, then the need for owning your own vehicle decreases.

- The rise of ride-shares like Uber and Lyft can similarly takes care of a number of use-cases for car ownership.

- The recent massive increase in delivery services for all kinds of shopping.

If neighbourhoods and residential areas are designed such that there are a number of amenities easily and safely accessible by bike / walk / local public transit, where most of bulky/inconvenient purchases can be delivered in a reasonable timeframe, and where car-shares and ride-shares are readily available for situations where using a car is significantly more convenient - that seems like a pretty good strategy for reducing CO2 emissions from cars.

That scenario is obviously not one that's going to happen with a snap of the fingers, nor is it going to roll out uniformly, and neither is it going to be equally applicable in every single part of the world. But it seems worthwhile to pursue to me.

[Josquius]

I personally didn't have a car until I was 26, and I was the first driver in my family.  Is it possible to live without a car?  It definitely was in all the places I lived in, hence why we didn't have a car.  It is, however, very limiting, and dense living isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Your quality of life is definitely lower without personal transportation even in a place with very functional public transportation.  I don't think it has anything to do with brainwashing, it's just a reality.

Yeah, but that's the point a lot of people aren't getting.
This is the case purely because cities are designed for this to be the case. Maximise accessibility for drivers at the expense of non drivers. With the end result that everyone is more unhappy.
People aren't saying take away cars with things as they are and it'll magically be OK.
It's the fundamental situation where you do need a car to live life that has to be challenged. Not having a car shouldn't be massively damaging to your quality of life.

Also what you seem to be missing is that living your life with as little dependency on external factors such other people and society in general (such as public transport) as possible, is a reward and an aim on its own, for many.

Then there's the factor of just how much more pleasant to be travelling on my own instead of being a sardine in a rolling tin. I know, I know, in your magical dream land there'd be enough buses and trains for the whole population to be comfortable. Still, even if public transport would be cheaper and quicker than a car (it's a long way from either right now) I am sure I'd often choose a car for the comfort of travel.

A much more realistic utopian future for you to dream about would be the reducing of car ownership and people going around in self-driving electric cars they hire for one-offs or have subscription for. That's far more desireable, and realistic, than trying to replace cars with buses and trains.

I've heard this one from the pro car lobbyists before. Praga u did one of their rants about the war on cars (I watched a sensible person's breakdown of this).

It strikes me as particularly odd as the way I see things is completely the opposite. I love having the ability to do things and go places under my own power. Walking and cycling give this. Good reliable public transport gives this. Cars... Do not. They're a shackle which severely limit what you can do, for how long, and the ease and cost. And that's even providing you have a car. When you're young and most wanting this freedom you very often don't.

On pleasantness too I find a train journey when I can relax and do what I want infinitely more pleasurable than the stress of playing chauffeur, having to be hyper vigilant, not knowing when you will be able to stop driving (finding parking can be a nightmare), etc...

As to electric cars... It just isn't physically possible to keep our car based society as it is but swapping out petrol cars for electric cars. There aren't enough resources available on earth to economically build that many electric cars.

Agreed that rental cars is an industry that really needs a massive shakeup. It just makes so much more sense to get a car on demand than to have one sitting around waiting 99% of the time.

There was no middle class aspiration in play, but rather the desire to greatly improve the efficiency of their existing way of life. To think it's some sort of aspirational choice not to organise your life around public transport seems to me a view point stuck smack in the middle of the city centre like in case of Sheilbh and Tyr.

I don't live in a city centre nor do I come from one. A fact, coming from the car-centred wastes, which heavily built my views of cars as the devil.

I don't blame people in the 50s and 60s for seeing cars as aspirational. They were.
However times change and governments should know better and seek to support those who are moving away from this.

[Jacob]

I think that suggests too much agency of the car companies. Customers love cars because they fulfill some deep seated human desires, namely having personal space, being very convenient,very often still being the fastest or most versatile mode of transport, etc.

That's why customers desire cars. Not some nefarious scheme by the auto industry.

I guess it depends on what you consider "nefarious", but the car industry has absolutely taken an active hand in shaping the infrastructure, urban planning, and so in in North America (at the very least) to drive up dependence on cars.

National City Lines (a consortium operated by General Motors, Mac Trucks, Firestone Tyres, Standard Oil of California, and Phillips Oil) purchased 45 electric street car companies in US cities with the express motive to shut them down (which they did), for the explicit goal of undermining public transit and driving up car usage (which it did).

Car industry lobbying (primarily driven by the National Highway Users Conference) were very active in getting the National Highway Fund established. Between 1952 to 1970, the US government invested $1,845 million in highway infrastructure compared to $232 million for railways in the same period.

It is not a case of "all things being equal, cars just were more attractive and here we are". A number of very specific political decisions were taken over a period of time to shape infrastructure, city planning, economic policy, and many other areas of public policy to support the rise of cars.

Which is fine. But it means that "cars are just inherently so great" is not, IMO, a particularly compelling argument to stop us from making a new set of political decisions to shape infrastructure, city planning, economic policy and so on to lessen our dependence on cars if that is necessary to lower the risks from global warming.

[Sheilbh]

To think it's some sort of aspirational choice not to organise your life around public transport seems to me a view point stuck smack in the middle of the city centre like in case of Sheilbh and Tyr.

I think our choices are broadly shaped by society - which includes soft things of the aspirational-ness of cars but also the appeal of modernity for planners which shaped the physical environment in which people are making choices. Cars were the future once. My point is we can make different politicy decisions.

I'd say my views on this are more shaped by growing up in the Highlands and suburban England where there is no alternative.

Even the most rural counties in the UK have around 15% of households who don't have access to a car (age, poverty etc) - and at the minute they are wildly under-served and should have good alternatives. My view is if we do that we'll find other househods who actually decide they don't "need" their car.

[Oexmelin]

That's why customers desire cars. Not some nefarious scheme by the auto industry.

I don't know why people automatically resort to "brainwashing" or "nefarious schemes". Publicity is all about transforming the act of purchasing into some profoundly meaningful act of personal accomplishment, collective and individual identity. It's about creating wants, and then transforming wants into needs. The fact that most people lived perfectly well, with a much higher proximity, with a lot less intimacy, for thousands of years, suggests very strongly to me that this isn't some "human nature" expressing itself (a highly dubious proposal whenever it's trotted out), but rather, precisely, the sort of desire that inserted itself in the aspirations of a growing middle class, given astonishing force by the post war industrial prosperity.