I never understood the anti-car thing for American leftists. I am probably as left as they come (barring gun stuff) and even I can’t see how we ditch cars anytime within my lifetime. What is the plan build every suburbia into a mini metropolis? Or just pay for the houses and raise suburbia to the ground. There is just too much suburban sprawl, you would need so many frigging busses to service that. And we’re not even talking about Rural america.
It’s not a matter of “can we do this in our lifetimes” it’s “we shouldn’t have gotten to this point to begin with, how do we get out of it?” The answer is “not easily” but a component of it is moving away from traditional American car culture. It’s sort of like saying “I’m as leftist as anyone but I don’t see how we’d move away from capitalism as an institution - too much of America’s infrastructure is tied up in the private sector.” You gradually move away from things and figure out alternatives over time. A good place to start is the cities themselves - they’re clogged with vehicles and they don’t need to be. Invest in urban public transit infrastructure and then move outwards. Will there be places that always have cars, like in the most rural parts of the country? Probably. But you tackle the problem first in places it can be solved and accept compromises over time as needed.
The city closest to me has public transportation, most of the people in the city utilize it. All of those plates are mostly people in suburbs coming into work in the city… it’s ridiculously obvious because half the plates are out of state.
They needed to move outwards like a decade ago, and no one has ever pitched a plan for it. We need those compromises now.
I never understood the anti-car thing for American leftists. I am probably as left as they come (barring gun stuff) and even I can’t see how we ditch cars anytime within my lifetime. What is the plan build every suburbia into a mini metropolis? Or just pay for the houses and raise suburbia to the ground. There is just too much suburban sprawl, you would need so many frigging busses to service that. And we’re not even talking about Rural america.
It’s not a matter of “can we do this in our lifetimes” it’s “we shouldn’t have gotten to this point to begin with, how do we get out of it?” The answer is “not easily” but a component of it is moving away from traditional American car culture. It’s sort of like saying “I’m as leftist as anyone but I don’t see how we’d move away from capitalism as an institution - too much of America’s infrastructure is tied up in the private sector.” You gradually move away from things and figure out alternatives over time. A good place to start is the cities themselves - they’re clogged with vehicles and they don’t need to be. Invest in urban public transit infrastructure and then move outwards. Will there be places that always have cars, like in the most rural parts of the country? Probably. But you tackle the problem first in places it can be solved and accept compromises over time as needed.
The city closest to me has public transportation, most of the people in the city utilize it. All of those plates are mostly people in suburbs coming into work in the city… it’s ridiculously obvious because half the plates are out of state.
They needed to move outwards like a decade ago, and no one has ever pitched a plan for it. We need those compromises now.