I tried to find the tweet, but it was succinctly put ~"it's said people in Los Angeles love their cars, but people in LA have no choice but to own a car, it's not love, it is necessity".
In every city that has made a concerted effort to accommodate all modes of transport, driving as a percentage has gone down. "build it and they will come" is better suited to transport than it ever was to SaaS.
It is easy to conclude that people don't "want" to drive.
"81% of Americans agree with the sentiment that their car reflects who they are...59% consider themselves as someone who is passionate about cars, trucks, motorcycles, or other vehicles" [1]
78% of Americans personally enjoy driving moderately to greatly [2]
> Wrong.
> In every city that has made a concerted effort to accommodate all modes of transport
These are strong claims without citation. Your subsequent comments in this thread reveal a fairly extreme and inflexible viewpoint on cars which you advance through many logical fallacies (straw men, false dilemma, and hasty generalizations). In other words, I don't think you're evaluating this issue in good faith or rationally. So, I'm not going to engage beyond this comment.
The main point of my initial comment was to point out that this "walk-able utopia" goal is not shared by a great number of people and contravening both the will of the majority and the current state is an exercise in futility and thus a waste of a society's time and resources.
[1] https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/american-attitudes-on...
[2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/234416/driverless-cars-tough-se...
LA is also cherry picked to be one of the worst places for cars. It’s legendary for its traffic.
Writing in from the PNW where I wouldn’t trade my car, and the freedom it gives me and my friends and my dogs to travel, for anything.
"people in los angeles love their cars"
and the top result was
"People in Los Angeles Are Getting Rid Of Their Cars"
Hypothetically, if one person had to die every time you used your car (for your dogs to travel or whatever) would you stop using your car? How about if it were one person for every 1000 journeys. What if every single journey you made in your car had a very small and undeniable contribution to the deaths of people you live around, would you stop then?
Are you a vegan? Hypothetically, how many people have to die due to the greenhouse gasses emitted due to your meat consumption? Have you ever served somebody an egg that didn't have a fully cooked yolk? Do you consume any single-use plastics? Do you use a compost toilet?
We could go on and on.
doesn't need a survey or study. Are you disputing the perception that Los Angeles is a car-centric city?
> Are you a vegan?
Yes.
This is the part that needs a study or survey to back it up.
If we're just throwing around anecdotes, I've both driven a car and taken the bus in a city that was known for its mass transit, and the mass transit sucked compared to being in a car.
> Yes.
And how about the rest? I'm just making sure we're being consistent, and that you optimize all your life choices to avoid any possibility of harming someone, no matter how remote or indirect.
Los Angeles is famed for its motordom.
Tell me, where are you from that that needs explaining? It's fascinating to meet someone from such a remote tribe.
I've lived in Sacramento, San Diego and Seattle. I've taken mass transit and driven a car in all of those cities.
In my experience, in every city, the mass transit sucked. Access to anything not on a bus line is effectively inaccessible without a car. The busses smell like urine. They don't show up on time. Mentally ill people harass me and my dog on a regular enough basis where it's more trouble than it's worth.
I love my car. I don't see it as a thing I'm forced to use, it's something I chose when given the option between it and a bus. It's a safe, climate controlled vehicle which is available at any minute of the day that I want it to be.
I think what you're trying to say is "people will always choose a private air-conditioned car", but I'm saying car use is artificially high because other options are not feasible. Where it is safe and comfortable (i.e. away from cars) to make most of one's journeys (under 5 or 10 miles) by other means, people choose non-car options at a higher rate than people in LA (or Sac etc) are choosing.
You are being obtuse by asking for journal references where they're not needed (this isn't a conference, it's a conversation in the comment section on a website).
I'm asking for you to back up the claim that people in LA hate their cars, not that cars aren't the most popular form of transport there. People hate _traffic_, not their cars. I live somewhere with low traffic. Best of both worlds.
Sure, it would be great to have better public transit options in LA. But I'd wager (because we're going off of our theory of mind intuition, and not polls) that people would prefer their cars to bus transport, even in LA.
If it was a hellscape dominated by 26 lane highways and hours of traffic to get anywhere like many parts of the US, I never would've bothered moving there.
This is such a neighbourhood from the early 1920s not too far from where I grew up. Take a stroll through it with Street View. It is perfectly walkable.
https://goo.gl/maps/kKqhtNbKDy6oycSi9
The lots are smallish compared to the American standard, though. This is a crowded continent.
But the GP spoke of single-use zoning, a slightly different cudgel. I understand the abstract appeal of dividing up a map into neatly-separated areas, a la SimCity, but that just doesn't accomodate real life.
Apparently a whole lot of Americans _don't_ want to transport themselves by car.
It's almost a tautology to say that if you want to have a particular kind of nice neighborhood you'll have to include those uses in your planning.
I think that most people want to be able to get from A to B in comfort, and are not necessarily married to one particular mode of transport.
If the only way to get anywhere is by car, then of course people want to transport themselves by car. If you offer other competitive options, people will sometimes take those options instead.
I think the minority are questioning the strangeness of this supposition. Least of all because the government has a hand in it.
Neighbourhoods are where people live, yet built for and around cars?
It may be single variable but I think a reasonable person might want to question that at least on some way.
https://theconversation.com/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-cycl...
The group that talks about systemic racism is perpetuating it.
It takes very little empathy to realise that driving a car is a huge technical barrier compared to a wheelchair/scooter/just walking slower. There is no reason you need to be healthy to avoid car use... except one. That motorists will kill you if you don't quickly get of out their way. I've seen large parts of my local area become completely inaccessible to the less-abled because of fast roads, so can it with the "I'm thinking or the sick!". You're not.
Or to just go look at which cities are not color-coded into mansions and slums, and notice those cities are ones where the poor do not need to maintain their own expensive machinery for basic tasks. Because ... again, I don't believe I need to explain that. It's a deliberate choice you're making to not understand it.
Society (cities) would quickly re-orientate themselves so work wasn't so far away from home. So shops weren't on the outskirts of town.
Your argument is predicated on cars existing. On cars causing the problem you suggest they solve.
The standard social hierarchy is: walk everywhere -> bike everywhere -> go by motorbike everywhere -> drive a car everywhere.
As others point out, Americans like and want to transport themselves by car. Let's accept this, work with it, and build around it instead of lusting after a minority defined Utopia.