Entirely unashamed anti car propaganda, and the more the better.

[beesonthewhatnow]

Imagine coming up with the idea of privately owned cars now.

“Got a great idea for getting us all about. You can go anywhere you want, anytime. Freedom! No drawbacks at all. Apart from you’ll need to pay a huge amount of money for it. And then constantly more money to run it. Oh, and it will sit unused for most of the time. Ah, also we’re going to need to give up most of the public space in our cities for it. Plus there’s the tiny issue of the poisonous fumes that come out the back. Which are generated from burning oil. Oh, nearly forgot, they’ll kill over a million people every year”

You’d be laughed out the room.

 

[SpookyFrank]

You’d be laughed out the room.

Interesting thought experiment. Could capitalism have developed in anything like the way it has without autonomous, effort-free private transportation?

 

[Saul Goodman]

Have you ever actually met or talked to a human who doesn't own a car - and/or visited a place where it's quite straightforward to live without one?

I don't want to live somewhere where it's 'quite straightforward' to live without a car. I want to live where I live, with no neighbours and no traffic, especially big polluting buses.
I can't get my head around why anybody would want to live in a city. I prefer to wake up to the sound of birds singing, not police sirens and traffic.

A hard sell. Note how people who want to drive cars don't have to 'sell' the idea to anyone, depsite the costs to public health. It is the assumed position, the default setting, and not for reasons relating to the general public good.

A lot of things which aren't good for the planet are considered acceptable, like transporting foods half way around the planet because rich Westerners like the taste. Flying half way around the world for your jollies, etc. That's not changing any time soon.

 

[spanglechick]

Have you ever actually met or talked to a human who doesn't own a car - and/or visited a place where it's quite straightforward to live without one?

In my late twenties I got rid of my car in favour of a Vespa, and when that was written off, didn’t have motor transport for a couple of years. I lived in Balham. It was okay, but quite limiting. Getting a cab back from Sainsbury’s etc wasn’t too bad, nor was public transport into the centre, but I was supply teaching (and occasionally acting) at the time, which involved travelling to different suburban places every morning at short notice.

I tried cycling but I hated it. Just hated every aspect of it. Hated getting wet and dirty and sweaty. Lugging round a change of clothes. Living in anxiety of a puncture that would make me late of worse, strand me somewhere when all I wanted to do was go home. So I used buses and trains and tubes and walked a lot, but also had to turn down a lot of offers for jobs because I wouldn’t be able to get there within forty mins of getting the call from the agency. So in the end I bought a car again. It was gloriously easy with a car.

You can justifiably say that I should probably have stuck at cycling, because comfort isn’t actually as important as the environment. You’d be right - but knowing myself I think I’d have stubbornly just become a shut-in if the choice was that or cycling. The point isn’t really what I could or should have done. The point was that despite being an able-bodied non-car owner in a city with public transport many areas could only dream of, I wasn’t happy without a car, and after a couple of years I decided to buy one - which made me much happier.

 

[teuchter]

In my late twenties I got rid of my car in favour of a Vespa, and when that was written off, didn’t have motor transport for a couple of years. I lived in Balham. It was okay, but quite limiting. Getting a cab back from Sainsbury’s etc wasn’t too bad, nor was public transport into the centre, but I was supply teaching (and occasionally acting) at the time, which involved travelling to different suburban places every morning at short notice.

I tried cycling but I hated it. Just hated every aspect of it. Hated getting wet and dirty and sweaty. Lugging round a change of clothes. Living in anxiety of a puncture that would make me late of worse, strand me somewhere when all I wanted to do was go home. So I used buses and trains and tubes and walked a lot, but also had to turn down a lot of offers for jobs because I wouldn’t be able to get there within forty mins of getting the call from the agency. So in the end I bought a car again. It was gloriously easy with a car.

You can justifiably say that I should probably have stuck at cycling, because comfort isn’t actually as important as the environment. You’d be right - but knowing myself I think I’d have stubbornly just become a shut-in if the choice was that or cycling. The point isn’t really what I could or should have done. The point was that despite being an able-bodied non-car owner in a city with public transport many areas could only dream of, I wasn’t happy without a car, and after a couple of years I decided to buy one - which made me much happier.

And this is why I'd like to see them banned outright (for the able bodied) in London. It might make life worse for you, but better for lots of other people. And there would be more equality in who those jobs you describe would be available for.

 

[Saul Goodman]

Has anybody noticed how it's the oldies, close to or past retiring age, who are so keen on preventing others from travelling? It's like an episode of One foot in the grave

 

[mauvais]

Imagine coming up with the idea of privately owned cars now.

“Got a great idea for getting us all about. You can go anywhere you want, anytime. Freedom! No drawbacks at all. Apart from you’ll need to pay a huge amount of money for it. And then constantly more money to run it. Oh, and it will sit unused for most of the time. Ah, also we’re going to need to give up most of the public space in our cities for it. Plus there’s the tiny issue of the poisonous fumes that come out the back. Which are generated from burning oil. Oh, nearly forgot, they’ll kill over a million people every year”

You’d be laughed out the room.

You really think so? Like we live in more enlightened, socialist times or something - yeah right. We are the ideal society to popularise the car.

 

[Saul Goodman]

You really think so? Like we live in more enlightened, socialist times or something - yeah right. We are the ideal society to popularise the car.

Imagine someone coming up with the idea of Fracking now?
Got a great idea, let's pump loads of deadly chemicals into the water table... etc.

 

[teuchter]

You really think so? Like we live in more enlightened, socialist times or something - yeah right. We are the ideal society to popularise the car.

Do you know of any places in 'developed' countries where there's been a move to reduce car use/dependancy, and improve public transport, cycling and walking facilities, and where aside from any initial backlash, there has been a popular pressure to reverse those changes?

 

[teuchter]

Has anybody noticed how it's the oldies, close to or past retiring age, who are so keen on preventing others from travelling? It's like an episode of One foot in the grave

Time for you to go back to wind-up school I think, or change career altogether. You're an amateurish version of Bahnhof Strasse which is no great compliment, I can assure you.

 

[mauvais]

Do you know of any places in 'developed' countries where there's been a move to reduce car use/dependancy, and improve public transport, cycling and walking facilities, and where aside from any initial backlash, there has been a popular pressure to reverse those changes?

Is this a rhetorical question?

I'm not saying the car can't be stopped. But the idea that the modern model of individual transport would now be automatically ridiculous is false. It's based on an at least implicit idea that society until now was simply naive about the car. Nah. It is and remains consistently popular and were we to somehow lack it it would be immediately embraced again as part of our strongly individualist leanings. The economic cost argument is largely wrong - cars/motoring are individually cheap and accessible - and the vast majority are not sufficiently bothered about the rest to actually pass it up.

 

[Sue]

A lot of stuff is physically built in a way that means it doesn't work without private vehicles. A lot of work happens in business parks and industrial estates that aren't well served by general radial/hub setup of public transport networks based on urban centres.

Years ago, I worked in a business park that was on the outskirts of a large town which had terrible traffic. There was a free shuttle bus from the station/centre of town that ran extremely frequently. Once it got past a certain point, there was a bus lane so it was faster going by bus than by car. Yet many of my colleagues would still drive to work from the centre of town and then moan about the traffic.

Made absolutely no sense to me but when I asked a colleague why he didn't take the bus, he said he'd have to walk ten minutes to get to the bus stop. I pointed out that driving took him more than an extra ten minutes given the bus lanes and he looked at me like I was mad. Until you can get past attitudes like that, I've no idea what you do (apart from possibly ban/reduce car parking space for places like that that are well served by public transport).

 

[teuchter]

It's based on an at least implicit idea that society until now was simply naive about the car.

I think the negative effects are largely ignored and for many, not visible until they are removed. In urban areas at least. That's why I asked if there are places that have made the decision to limit the freedom to use individual transport, and then decided, nah, this is rubbish, let's go back to how it was before. As I understand it, the changes usually turn out to be quite popular.

The places that are tearing up tram tracks, relocating central rail stations, building superhighways into city centres and so on tend to be developing countries where public transport is associated with old regimes. In my opinion they are simply making the town planning mistakes we made post-war, and will regret it in 10-20 years time when they realise that everyone getting a car and then having perfect freedom simply doesn't work.

What happens as we come out of the Covid crisis is something I'm certainly going to be watching with intense interest, in any case.

 

[teuchter]

I've no idea what you do (apart from possibly ban/reduce car parking space for places like that that are well served by public transport).

That's what you've got to do, yes. There's a fair bit of research that shows that simply providing alternatives doesn't work. You do have to make sure you provide the alternatives, but then you have to actively discourage private car use.

 

[teuchter]

Is this a rhetorical question?

I'm not saying the car can't be stopped. But the idea that the modern model of individual transport would now be automatically ridiculous is false.

Coming back to this...

This is from the construction of the Westway. People's houses were bulldozed for it, and many people ended up living metres from a motorway. There were protests back then, of course. But would you even be able to do this at all, now?

I think, back then, many people might have thought, well, yes, shame we have to bulldoze homes, but in return we get a super modern, fast and efficient way to get in and out of town. We can speed off to the countryside with greater freedom than ever before. That would be the cost/benefit calculation.

But now, we know that's not what you get. You get a clogged motorway that blights the surrounding areas and which becomes logjammed when everyone wants to use it. (There are other negative effects which are less immediately visibly related, but I'll ignore them for now). So if you proposed something like the Westway in most European cities now, I think you'd be laughed at.

This is not quite the hypothetical scenario of us never having had cars, and then being offered them in in 2020, along with all that infrastructure, without any hindsight being available. But in a version of that hypothetical scenario where we are offered a view of a parallel universe where it did happen - I think that maybe people would think of it as ridiculous. They wouldn't just be shown the shiny car in front of their house, or the happy family holiday by the seaside. They'd be shown the massive motorway service area built where they currently go walking in woodland. They'd be shown a horribly degraded rail and bus network. They'd be shown the numbers of respiratory illnesses and the helicopters flying from RTIs to hospitals with ICUs. They'd be shown the substantial portions of their urban environments, historic or otherwise that simply would not exist, having been replaced with parking and other infrastructure. They'd be shown a life where they sit in a car for 2 or 3 hours a day just to get to work, and much of that time not even moving.

 

[Athos]

Have you ever actually met or talked to a human who doesn't own a car - and/or visited a place where it's quite straightforward to live without one?

Yes, of course. And for many people in many areas, it suits their lifestyle. For many others, it'd be a significant dimmunition of their quality of life.

 

[Saul Goodman]

Time for you to go back to wind-up school I think, or change career altogether. You're an amateurish version of Bahnhof Strasse which is no great compliment, I can assure you.

Coming from a trainee Victor Meldrew, I'll take that as a compliment. Thank you.

 

[Athos]

A hard sell. Note how people who want to drive cars don't have to 'sell' the idea to anyone, depsite the costs to public health. It is the assumed position, the default setting, and not for reasons relating to the general public good.

Private car ownership being lawful is the default, here and now.

 

[Saul Goodman]

Coming back to this...

This is from the construction of the Westway. People's houses were bulldozed for it, and many people ended up living metres from a motorway. There were protests back then, of course. But would you even be able to do this at all, now?

I think, back then, many people might have thought, well, yes, shame we have to bulldoze homes, but in return we get a super modern, fast and efficient way to get in and out of town. We can speed off to the countryside with greater freedom than ever before. That would be the cost/benefit calculation.

But now, we know that's not what you get. You get a clogged motorway that blights the surrounding areas and which becomes logjammed when everyone wants to use it. (There are other negative effects which are less immediately visibly related, but I'll ignore them for now). So if you proposed something like the Westway in most European cities now, I think you'd be laughed at.

This is not quite the hypothetical scenario of us never having had cars, and then being offered them in in 2020, along with all that infrastructure, without any hindsight being available. But in a version of that hypothetical scenario where we are offered a view of a parallel universe where it did happen - I think that maybe people would think of it as ridiculous. They wouldn't just be shown the shiny car in front of their house, or the happy family holiday by the seaside. They'd be shown the massive motorway service area built where they currently go walking in woodland. They'd be shown a horribly degraded rail and bus network. They'd be shown the numbers of respiratory illnesses and the helicopters flying from RTIs to hospitals with ICUs. They'd be shown the substantial portions of their urban environments, historic or otherwise that simply would not exist, having been replaced with parking and other infrastructure. They'd be shown a life where they sit in a car for 2 or 3 hours a day just to get to work, and much of that time not even moving.

Do you think roads were built specifically for people to get to Blackpool easier? Or is it possible that moving goods around the country with greater ease could have been the main objective?
The problem with traffic in the UK is there aren't enough roads.

 

[weltweit]

..
The problem with traffic in the UK is there aren't enough roads.

IMO the issue with roads in the UK is that everyone wants to use them at the same times! 08:00 and 17:00 - the rest of the time UK roads are pretty passable.

 

[mauvais]

Coming back to this...

This is from the construction of the Westway. People's houses were bulldozed for it, and many people ended up living metres from a motorway. There were protests back then, of course. But would you even be able to do this at all, now?

You probably wouldn't be able to build the Westway now. But would you be able to bulldoze people's houses? Yeah. HS2 is going to do it, and HS2 is not special in this respect because it's rail. New road building got harder but not impossible after obstructions in the 90s and it's arguably easier again now.

And ask yourself the inverse - can the road protest movements of the 1990s be replicated now?

 

[not-bono-ever]

cars are not just a utility for many.

 

[Saul Goodman]

IMO the issue with roads in the UK is that everyone wants to use them at the same times! 08:00 and 17:00 - the rest of the time UK roads are pretty passable.

This is, unfortunately, the case, but it's exacerbated by the fact that the UK ranks terribly on the 'motorway provision vs population' list.

 

[weltweit]

cars are not just a utility for many.

Cars are freedom for the individual and the family ..
Cars permit you to take jobs that otherwise wouldn't be possibly to take.
Cars save you loads of money compared to public transport if it even is available.
Cars permit you to live where you would like rather than being restricted to city centres.
Cars allow you to visit friends and family at a time of your choosing.
Cars let you go on holiday at home and abroad in the most flexible way possible.
Passing a driving test and getting a full driving licence is a rite of passage to adult life!

 

[mauvais]

I think the negative effects are largely ignored and for many, not visible until they are removed. In urban areas at least. That's why I asked if there are places that have made the decision to limit the freedom to use individual transport, and then decided, nah, this is rubbish, let's go back to how it was before. As I understand it, the changes usually turn out to be quite popular.

The places that are tearing up tram tracks, relocating central rail stations, building superhighways into city centres and so on tend to be developing countries where public transport is associated with old regimes. In my opinion they are simply making the town planning mistakes we made post-war, and will regret it in 10-20 years time when they realise that everyone getting a car and then having perfect freedom simply doesn't work.

What happens as we come out of the Covid crisis is something I'm certainly going to be watching with intense interest, in any case.

You're right about all of this, but if people get a binary choice, personal benefit in the form of the car versus societal benefit in the form of not having it, a load of them would (and do) select the car, thus the car is still not a ridiculous idea. I think the majority, with some exception as you get into ultra-urban. The experiences of C19 will give pause for thought in a lot of ways, but it's not change in itself, only a catalyst that would have to be used by something else.

 

[not-bono-ever]

Coming back to this...

This is from the construction of the Westway. People's houses were bulldozed for it, and many people ended up living metres from a motorway. There were protests back then, of course. But would you even be able to do this at all, now?

I think, back then, many people might have thought, well, yes, shame we have to bulldoze homes, but in return we get a super modern, fast and efficient way to get in and out of town. We can speed off to the countryside with greater freedom than ever before. That would be the cost/benefit calculation.

But now, we know that's not what you get. You get a clogged motorway that blights the surrounding areas and which becomes logjammed when everyone wants to use it. (There are other negative effects which are less immediately visibly related, but I'll ignore them for now). So if you proposed something like the Westway in most European cities now, I think you'd be laughed at.

This is not quite the hypothetical scenario of us never having had cars, and then being offered them in in 2020, along with all that infrastructure, without any hindsight being available. But in a version of that hypothetical scenario where we are offered a view of a parallel universe where it did happen - I think that maybe people would think of it as ridiculous. They wouldn't just be shown the shiny car in front of their house, or the happy family holiday by the seaside. They'd be shown the massive motorway service area built where they currently go walking in woodland. They'd be shown a horribly degraded rail and bus network. They'd be shown the numbers of respiratory illnesses and the helicopters flying from RTIs to hospitals with ICUs. They'd be shown the substantial portions of their urban environments, historic or otherwise that simply would not exist, having been replaced with parking and other infrastructure. They'd be shown a life where they sit in a car for 2 or 3 hours a day just to get to work, and much of that time not even moving.

You could apply that hypothetical to most other facts of modern life- there is no doubt that cars can have a detimental impact upon society, as does smoking, lager, doing drugs, owning a cat in a city etc.it is possible to maintain or create a balance that supports both POV. I would be over the moon to see public transportmassively boosted to include comprehensive trams/ rail/ whatever and take it on the chin as a car "enthusiast" but prohibition has never worked wherever it gets rolled out. Not all car owners have a planetary death wish.

 

[Orang Utan]

Has anybody noticed how it's the oldies, close to or past retiring age, who are so keen on preventing others from travelling? It's like an episode of One foot in the grave

We’re similar ages to you fella

 

[deeyo]

Vast majority of the people in our village don't have a private car. Lots of electric trikes and bicycles, nearby wet markets, OKish public transport if you want to go to nearby towns or into the city. Lots of ride sharing options, we usually use a WeChat ride sharing group if we want to all go into town but not take the bus. Also Uber-a-likes that include a ride share option.
Obviously coming from a very different development trajectory than the UK but brings it home that it's larger material forces shaping the options and things could be pushed in other ways. Somewhat undermined by nearly everyone being desperate to get a car if they could, mind

This post captures a lot of what this discussion could/should be about.
There were 73.4 millions cars produced in 2017 (and 23.8 mill commercial vehicles). Production has roughly doubled every 20 years since the fifties, The number of cars, buses and trucks in the world was estimated at 1.32 billion in 2016, compared to 670 million in -96 and 346 mill in -76.
About a 100 mill of these are some kind of alt fuel/advanced tech.
The western market might be saturated, with around 55-65 vehicles per 100 people in europe and 80 in the us and a yearly growth of 1-2% . Worldwide its about 18 - less than US in the 1930s (22).

The major growth is in countries like india and china, where vehicles/100 ppl 2006-2016 went from 2.6 to 14.

Since the fifties/sixties most investments in infrastructure in the west has gone into roads and 'car associated' structures, while railway upkeep have been neglected/minimized for decades. Same goes for inner city tubes/trams/etc. Shopping and living habits have changed accordingly.

Cars are immensely practical, even if theres a free bus to your work you have to drop off and pick up the kids, and if you need to bring mum on the other side of town her meds after work, a car lets you stop for groceries on the way.
Of course all jims neighbours want one. Around 1990 there was a man who used to fly his helicopter to his office every morning in the town where i lived, used to see it from my bike, i'd like one of those...

But most of the cars in the world stands unused most of the time, in parking lots outside workplaces and homes. When in use they mostly transport 1 or 2 persons and no cargo.

This is not sustainable. But, like the almost identical statistics for meat consumption, individual choices on ethical/health basis matters little except (possibly) for said individuals. Demands for 'bans' might feel necessary, but are politically extremely unlikely if not impossible almost everywhere in the world.
Its very possible that this kind of problems cant be solved under the 'current world order' and might bring an end to modern western style capitalism. The question is what comes in its stead? What do we want it to be? And where to put your own little lever to change the direction of the wheel of history...

 

[Saul Goodman]

This is an interesting article. It's a little out of date, so the figures will likely be much worse, but it clearly shows that rather than fewer cars, more motorways is the answer.

https://www.racfoundation.org/assets/rac_foundation/content/downloadables/roads%20and%20reality%20-%20bayliss%20-%20what%20pattern%20of%20motorway%20network%20is%20needed%20-%20051208%20-%20background%20paper%206.pdf

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Not all car owners have a planetary death wish.

Not all, but for those of us that do I fail to see why allowances for us can't be made by these neo-fascists.