Except that cars have influenced the way we build towns and cities: separate everything by non-walkable, non-busable distances because the basic assumption is that everyone has a car.

Public transit "sucks" for a number of reasons, many of them car-related: (-) buses have to share roads with cars, so they have to put up with the congestion they are trying to solve, (-) money that would have been spent on public transit is being spent on road expansions to "solve traffic", and others.

> cars are the worst solution except for all the others.

This doesn't explain cities that have successful public transit systems...

We wouldn't have built our offices and homes so far from each other if the expectation was to walk/bike/bus everywhere.

Unfortunately this is a chicken-and-egg problem, where things may need to get worse temporarily for things to get better.

Which public transit system enables the median earner to own a 2,400sqft single family detached house on a quarter acre in a socioeconomically homogeneous school district?

No system of any kind allows that. With public transit, you pay for it in personal discomfort and rigidness of schedule. With personal automobiles, you simply externalise the negativities – but there's still a huge cost, only no longer paid by the individual.

> the median earner to own a 2,400sqft single family detached house on a quarter acre in a socioeconomically homogeneous school district

Why would that be the goal?

> This doesn't explain cities that have successful public transit systems...

Do these cities simply have terrible private transit options?

I don’t know anyone who would prefer to take public transport except in cities with poor car infrastructure.

I do know lots of people who would rather walk or bike to work.

You have to explicitly optimise the city for public transit. Quite a lot of European cities do that.

> You have to explicitly optimise the city for public transit. Quite a lot of European cities do that.

Even in those cities very few enjoy taking public transport - and would drive if they had free parking, didn’t have to pay tolls, didn’t think it was terrible for the environment, etc

This is not true, driving in european cities is stressful (narrow streets with irregular layout, high density of pedestrians/cyclists, not enough parking places). The public transit, when done right, is way more convenient.

> would drive if they had free parking, didn’t have to pay tolls, didn’t think it was terrible for the environment, etc

So basically your argument is that people would drive if it weren't terrible in every way? By that logic, people would eat plutonium... if only it were more available, tasted good, and didn't kill you.

That would still make things worse, because cars need roadspace. Getting rid of the road space for cars and making public transit good enough is a pretty good solution.

To go along with what chiefofgxbxl wrote, this circumstance need not be the case. It is possible to reallocate more of our limited road space to more efficient ways of moving people instead of concentrating on simply moving cars. This has the effect of bringing transport on par with, or ahead of, driving alone.

Where I live, my commute to work by bus is only 7 minutes slower than doing the same commute driving myself alone. And for those 7 minutes, I do not have to pay any attention except once to remember to get off at the appropriate stop for a transfer. (I could avoid the transfer by walking but I'm not that motivated.) And I am not concerned with not being able to rush out for an emergency because my employer, or my county if my employer did not offer this benefit, will call me a taxi if I need to leave in a hurry and arrived to work without driving myself.

Because the bulk of my transport needs are now handled, I can also see what the transport network can do for me in other areas. As of two years ago, my family moved to a place in our city where we need not own a car, so we sold our last one. If we desire one for a few hours or a day, there are services (far cheaper than the few hundred dollars per month required to maintain one for our exclusive use) that will provide one upon request. They even take care of fuel.

We can make these choices to wean from cars; we choose not to. And at what cost to ourselves, our neighbors, and our planet?

>Distance between homes and offices is the problem; cars are the worst solution except for all the others.

Cars and their associated infrastructure (roads, parking) cause and/or enable the distance.

I live in a town with good transit that borders a major city with excellent transit, and it's shocking how much people fight everything that would make our town better. Bike lanes, bus lanes, and increased density are routinely rejected because they would make life harder for car drivers.

This image rebuts pretty much all pro car arguments:

https://ggwash.org/view/36573/to-a-pedestrian-a-roads-a-tiny...

I feel like my neighbors would say "yeah that's how it's supposed to be, get a car if you want to be safe"

The underlying message is that they don’t want to be near people who can’t afford cars and the accompanying expenses.

Which is a valid reason, as the data clearly shows the benefits of growing up in neighborhoods with high income earners, and the disadvantages of growing up in neighborhoods with low income earners:

https://opportunityatlas.org/

> the data clearly shows the benefits of growing up in neighborhoods with high income earners, and the disadvantages of growing up in neighborhoods with low income earners

Of course being in a wealthy area is better than being in a poor area. But does the existence of such areas benefit society? What would it look like if more neighborhoods were mixed income and public resources were shared equitably?

Sacrificing individual benefit for societal benefit is always the questions. We’re always making decisions about which tribe to benefit at the expense of another tribe such as individual, family, religious, geographic, racial, socioeconomic, nation state, present, future, etc.

An imbalance will cause discord and disorder. Hopefully you catch yourself on the right side of it. Prioritizing cars is very much a “me and my immediate family” above all else move, and that can be an easy choice when you don’t see others as belonging to your tribe, or vice versa.

What are you going to do? Get rid of all roads?

Roads are still necessary for delivery, garbage disposal, emergency services (fire engine, ambulances, police cars) and construction equipment. The picture is extreme to the point that it fails to deliver it's message.

To me, the picture shows the trade off of prioritizing cars vs walking/biking. You can’t have both.

Fewer cars means fewer lanes are needed. I’ve seen intersections 9 or 10 lanes wide in US cities. How can any senior citizen walk across 9 lanes of traffic, especially at night. One or two lanes is sufficient for all infrastructure like waste removal or emergency services.

But the root of the problem is insufficiently dense living. People have to make a choice to sacrifice their expansive living quarters (such as in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Manhattan, London, etc), otherwise the whole public transit and de-prioritizing motor vehicles doesn’t work.

As I explained in other comments, obviously people do want their space. But is that a luxury they can afford? They’re future generations can afford in terms of infrastructure debt repayments and environmental damage? Health damage from over reliance on cars? I guess we’ll see...but I’m betting not.

There's a lot between what the US has today and eliminating roads. To start, we should have fewer motor vehicle lanes, wider sidewalks, lower speed limits, more protected bike lanes, intersections designed to minimize crossing distance for pedestrians, and centerline hardening for left turns.

You really hit it on the head. Public transit where I live is a nightmare.

It would involve me driving my car something like 15 minutes to the nearest train station and paying for parking (an amenity that is free at my employer's office). Then I'd have to take something like two different trains, followed by two bus rides which would drop me off at a location that is about 3/4th of a mile away from the office. The walk is then along a route that is not pedestrian friendly in any way because it partially along the major access ramps on/off a tollway.

So yeah. :(

As one of your sibling comments points out, it's only this way because of the prevalence of cars. If we didn't place so much emphasis on making it easy to drive everywhere, we'd see far more housing and offices adjacent to transit hubs.

except that a lot of business isn't in an office. You will never make a meat packing plant, distribution center, mushroom farm, or many other types of work fit in a walkable city. A lot of this is really knowledge worker privilege for people who can exist in dense zoning. A tremendous amount of businesses simply cannot be built close to housing.

The existence of things that don't work well in high density isn't a good argument against density.

while living close to work is ideal I've always vastly preferred public transport to driving, because I could use time on the train for reading or anything else really, so it wasn't really a waste of time.

Driving you need to pay attention and navigating traffic and worst of all stand in a smog filled traffic jam on a highway, which is absolutely awful.