WASHINGTON—In a trend that is reducing the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels by curtailing the total number of cars on the road, a study released Thursday by the Transportation Department found that more Americans than ever are commuting to work splattered on the grill of a Ford F-150. “Increasingly, U.S.…
I can’t believe gas prices are only $3/gallon. That needs to be at least $20/gallon to make any dent in this climate catastrophe
Where’s the party that is running on a platform of gradually increasing the gas prices to $99/gallon and beyond?
Yes, punish us poor people who have no other option than to commute instead of the mega-corporstions. Good thinking.
Car dependency punishes poor people. The solution is viable alternatives, for which having fewer cars is often very beneficial.
Raising the gas prices 10x overnight won’t create those alternatives overnight, nor will it put petrol companies out of business because they pass the cost on to consumers who are mostly forced to buy gas at whatever the current price is with no other viable transportation method.
Infrastructure takes time. Sadly the US govt isn’t even at the starting line for any meaningful public transit system in most cities.
If gas prices went up 10x overnight, some higher earners could switch to working from home (a positive result), but other industries such as retail don’t really get that luxury… Contributing to more wealth inequality
You do realize the post here said gradually, right? Why are you strawmaning them and saying overnight?
No shit, I’m not saying that.
Yes, but that alternative infrastructure needs to be in place before you can start really discouraging cars with, for example, high gas prices. Raising gas prices to that extent right now in most places outside of a few major cities would just cause people not to be able to get to work.
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In my Australian city they keep restricting more and more free parking areas near town, pushing the problem out into nearby residential areas when it’s still free, merely a few more minutes walk away.
All the while, not improving any bus services.
The cognitive disconnection is amazing.
Then again, the people running the city council will all have dedicated parking spaces just outside their offices.
So…
@heatofignition @mondoman712
Nah. Public policy isn’t a neat project plan you can accomplish in chronological order. The measurement of good policy isn’t whether or not there are zero negative impacts on lower income folks.
The status quo is bad. Do what’s possible. If you can raise gas prices do it. If you can increase transit do it. Each improvement will virtuously reinforce other improvements.
#transit
@owen @heatofignition @mondoman712 Put enough good quality alternatives in, and you can get modal shift without resorting to punative measures.
If walking, cycling, or catching a train to a given destination is faster and easier than driving, then that’s what many people will do.
But those alternatives — fast metro systems, frequent busses, light rail, barrier-protected and off-street cycling paths — need to be in place first.
@ajsadauskas @heatofignition @mondoman712
You can obviously do whatever policy advocacy you want. IMO it’s not actually possible to make walking, biking and transit more convenient and less costly than driving without increasing the cost of driving. Higher gas prices and better transit reinforces each other.
Meanwhile the existing pollution and car dependency creates real harm every day it persists.
@ajsadauskas @heatofignition @mondoman712
It seems pretty obvious to me that we’re not mitigating harm to low income or marginalized folks by making it cheap for middle class folks to pollute and cause traffic violence, despite whatever benefits people might get from low gas prices.
@ajsadauskas @heatofignition @mondoman712
I can’t speak to Australian demographics but in the US the lowest decile of income is 9 times more likely to not own a car. So they don’t get any benefits from low gas prices but they still have to pay the costs of pollution, traffic violence and a political economy that hates transit because driving is so cheap and easy for the middle class.
So because you think alternatives that don’t exist should you would raise gas prices and obscene amount and put people on the streets?
I live in a small rural town where everybody commutes to their factory job and is already barely scraping by. What do you think all those people should do to stave off being homeless when they can’t afford to drive?
I think the alternatives should be good enough that raising gas prices isn’t a problem.
Please tell me your plan to collect all of the people spread across half of a state who commute to a central location.
Mobility enables poor people. Not all poor people live in an idealistic 15-minute city.
I don’t think rural living makes sense if you’re also commuting. Small towns can have good transport links to other nearby towns but I don’t think it makes sense to support those who decide they want to live beyond the practical reach of public services just for the sake of it.
I understand that you’re doing a thought experiment about futuristic utopias but I am talking about the current situation right now and a comment that started this chain.
People live in rural areas whether you think they should or not and raising gas prices to reduce car travel disproportionately affects those people.
Now, if there was some way for poor people to get fuel credits or something so that they’re empowered with mobility maybe that would work.
We also should probably not make farming any harder than it already is.
It’s not a utopia, it’s perfectly possible if we work towards it.
And I said
Specifically to exclude farmers
In 2020 according to statistics 82.66% of all americans lived in cities, not spread across half the state. Urban areas and country side should be developed differently of course.
And as everyone knows, all those 82% are commuting to the same place
TIL cities cant have central mass transport
There are other places in the world who do this much better than the US. How about instead of assuming it’s impossible because you haven’t seen it you consider that it is, in fact, possible but the image has been designed to make it appear impossible by those benefiting from it not being done.
Also, choosing to live away from work is a choice. Suburbia is a choice, and actually one that costs more money in taxes than it makes over time, requiring it to continue to expand or admit it doesn’t work. You can choose to live closer, or even choose to bike to a bus stop/train station/whatever that is positioned reasonably if things weren’t designed around making car and gas company executives rich.
Uh no in fact it’s absolutely not a fucking choice for most people.
Yes it is. It always is. There may be a premium, but there’s a cost to car ownership and usage as well, but also more importantly there’s taxes we all pay to keep rural or suburban life possible. Suburbs actually take more on taxes than they produce. The problem is that cost is socialized, which is fine if more costs were socialized.
Suburbia? Thanks for showing you have no idea what I’m talking about.
Communism. They should do a communism.
You have bikes and busses. Everyone does.
Of course the increase tax on carbon would directly fund giving poor people free bus tickets and bicycle maintenance
Bikes and buses are great if you go from one central location to another central location.
Do you know how long bus routes are in rural counties? Imagine the logistics of trying to collect all the adults that want to get to work.
we do pretty much this in my country
I would love to see this.
I live in a city that has ‘good’ transit by North American standards. It’s 25km from my house to the office, and takes about half an hour to drive. If I were to take the supposedly ‘good’ transit, it would take 2 hours each way. That would mean that both my spouse and I would leave home before our kids even wake up, so they would have to manage getting themselves out of bed, fed, and off to school with no parent in the house, we would get home far too late to take them to any extracurricular activities, never mind making sure they eat healthy home cooked meals. I could move closer to the office, but then my COL would increase by 2-3X, meaning that all the good stuff I can afford for them now would become too expensive.
So sure, I have transit, but it’s fucking useless.
So let’s tax carbon so more people are forced to take busses and trains and it gets better for everyone
To get to my job it would require several miles of biking followed by an hour bus trip. We don’t just “all have” the ability to take busses and bikes everywhere. Plus during none of that time do I have access to a bike lane, so I’d be just praying I don’t get run over by some dick head
We’re trying that in Canada right now, and it’s making a lot of people very angry.
Those people are ignorant and wrong, but they’re loud enough that even parties on the left are saying “maybe we should try something else.”
It is really interesting to think about how we built our entire society around gas being insanely cheap. You can buy a gallon of it for $3, which is as much as you would pay for a large cup of coffee in most places, something which we have essentially an infinite supply of.
World yearly oil consumption (2021): 35,442,913,090 barrels (42 US gal)
World coffee production (2022): 175.35 million (60kg bags)
It’s not even close. lol
You are correct that it’s not close, but also you need gas in the gallons, and you need coffee in the tablespoons