What if we could eliminate the need for cars in many areas by creating infrastructure that's vastly more efficient, cheaper, safer, and healthier to use? We already have a lot of this technology (bikes/trains/buses/trams + relevant infrastructure). Building this would be expensive and create a lot of pollution. Does that mean we shouldn't try?
> What if we could eliminate the need for cars in many areas by creating infrastructure that's vastly more efficient, cheaper, safer, and healthier to use?
Yes, that would be so great. Many neighborhoods in the US could accomodate it too. Roads are wide, there's absolutely space for different kinds of road use, side by side. And a lot of neighborhoods predate car travel, everything before the 30s or so, we know, as a historical fact, that they can totally be liveable without a car, if only it was safe for other road users to do so.
> Does that mean we shouldn't try?
Absolutely. The investment in safe road infrastructure, providing transportation options, has so many benefits.
You're making so many baseless and incorrect assumptions about my value system and thought process that it's very hard to assume you're arguing in good faith. You're welcome to try again without making assumptions about my beliefs or capacity for imagination.
I think it is impossible to put the personal vehicle genie back into the lamp. Any future climate solution cannot involve decreasing the quality of life for the typical american (or western person, i'm using american as a catch-all term).
EV is the compromise already.
But I already do that and considering current gas prices in Germany an EV is cheaper to operate. It's the next small step that short sighted humans are willing to take. I would rather take it than not.
Demanding that we stop driving cars would require a land value tax to encourage densification of downtown. Considering how many people are against letting people live in the place they want to live that's not an option. A car is effectively a tool to undermine the rent seeking done by land owners. If you can just drive away from the oppressor his power diminishes by how far you can get away from him. That's the true source of sprawl.
Those things change in small steps one generation at a time. Our best bet right now is to find carbon solutions that are compatible with the current set of values.
>"pie in the sky"
I think that's where we disagree. I don't think it is at all. Much of the US city infrastructure is build before the 30s. These neighborhoods could accommodate biking, walking, (and yes, together with cars)... much more easily. They don't, it's because every single road is completely dedicated to multi-lane car traffic. It's basically unsafe for others.
Slowing traffic down (top speeds mainly), would really only take bollards and paint. That is just a mental change; basically accept we need to share the road safely. It's unreal to me that such a small, almost insignificant shift, triggers such intense resistance.
But this is an unpopular idea among anti-car people because it's insufficiently punitive toward drivers. Specifically, they often advocate for fewer, lower throughput highways even though that only pushes traffic out into the side streets, endangering pedestrians. (This isn't a straw man, I've had that debate with people in my own city about removing a major thoroughfare, essentially to spite drivers).
Please not. But maybe underground, then yes, sure why not.
> removing a major thoroughfare, essentially to spite drivers)
I don't really know the particular situation. I hope it was not out of spite! That'd be sad. (I do understand fwiw - how it can come across like that). I do think a city should never accommodate high speed traffic, only maybe on an interstate or a truly segregated roadway. A lot of these high-speed corridors are through residential areas, it's just plain dangerous, noisy, polluting. There's a reason nobody wants to live next to a high speed road, and if they do, it requires a lot of empty buffer space (huge front yards, basically) to make it tolerable.
> lower throughput highways
Again, not knowing the particular situation, since this can be very context dependent, and maybe we have radically different examples in mind, so ymmv, fwiw, etc... Just as an example: in my town, a recent a high throughput highway was reduced from 4 to 2 lanes. That did not reduce throughput. It did decrease top speeds, no more mad max style passing and jostling, and fewer accidents. Basically, cars now toddle along in single file, at a civilized clip, but no longer that accordion of rushing and breaking from light to light anymore. It also is so much safer for people crossing the road, or biking. It took decades to make this happen. When trying to get these, most drivers at these public planning meeting could just not imagine that removing lanes has any kind of net good. After two years now of this conversion, which is positive is so many ways (it does not even inconvenience drivers, only curbs their worst impulses), every other similar proposal still face this same kind of opposition. This mindset is completely ingrained to such a degree that it almost seems monomaniacal.
I think the parent is arguing against this premise.
You argue from a value system, in which cars for personal transportation, are an axiomatic condition. Not only that, cars, no matter their size, going as fast as geometry allows it, are an inherent fixture.
Solutions like EVs are a solution to carbon emissions, but only within this value system.
I can think of plenty of other solutions, all of them old-skool tech. Driving more frugal cars with high mpg (which will be lighter, smaller), would be a low-tech solution that anyone can implement today. However, since this is not in your value system, it does not occur to you. Since your value system is the dominant one, American car manufacturers no longer even want to put this solution up for sale. Not requiring people to commute, is another low-tech way we can curb carbon emission. Taxing cars by weight is a low-tech bureaucratic solution. A true forest of automated speed cameras to push top speeds down, and thus fuel consumption down, yet another one. Zoning which allows amenities in walking and biking distance is another, and infrastructure making walking and biking be safe, not having to worry about getting run over by 3-ton EVs, would be yet another low tech solution.
None of the above curb quality of life. But rather, they exist in a world that cannot be imagined.
> EVs involve much less "magic" to solve than any anti-car alternative.
This quote is a perfect encapsulation of your solipsism. You cannot even imagine these other solutions, and if you do, they appear magic. While this "magic"is the reality on the ground in so much other parts of the world. Even within the US, they exist.
EVs will not be a solution to curb carbon emissions. It is because EVs fundamentally do not address the root causes of why we have these emissions in the first place. The wasteful use of energy on personal transportation, caused by overly heavy, overly fast vehicles, having to drive over overly long distances, for even the most basic daily needs.