Can society move away from car based infrastructure?

[Ifreann]

What do you mean, 'justify'? Why is it unjustified to run a bus service between small rural communities?

Bunch of reasons, mainly though it'd cost a lot of money and be very time inefficient. Public transport is wonderful for suburbs and urban areas, but when you live a place that's a couple hours from civilization it just won't work. I'm only 20-30 minutes away from the city and even here the bus line is spotty, in a place with less people that's even further away it just wouldn't make sense to have a bus go out that far. Rural folks will always need personal vehicles for a variety of reasons.

So what if it costs money? Why is it a problem to spend money on useful services?

[Cookies]

Cars are cars, have they ruined society? Uhm, not really, you can say that about a lot of things, like how about fast food, or the internet, or oil, blah blah blah, I don't think cars are really that bad, they will keep existing, and honestly, they're not really a big concern. Some places operate differently or maybe even prefer not having them.

Also yes, transportation outside of cars isn't a bad thing, but in some areas, uhhhh, I'd prefer not to go on public transportation.

[Sakamaki Izayoi]

Cars are cars, have they ruined society? Uhm, not really, you can say that about a lot of things, like how about fast food, or the internet, or oil, blah blah blah, I don't think cars are really that bad, they will keep existing, and honestly, they're not really a big concern. Some places operate differently or maybe even prefer not having them.

Also yes, transportation outside of cars isn't a bad thing, but in some areas, uhhhh, I'd prefer not to go on public transportation.

I think the point was less about cars being harmful, it being more of a hook to get you here, and more about how transportation needing restructuring.

[Juansonia]

Answer to topic question: Yes

Answer to prompt: No, there are also other problems

Country of choice: I live in the United States

Current main transportation method: As a teenage minor, my school-home commute sometimes takes the form of bicycling or school-bussing, and I walk on days where I live close to the school. My parents drive when I switch between their houses.

How would it change(or how would it not): Without cars, I'd need to fit more shit on my bike(panniers? Trailer? Front basket?). My rear basket is already just enough for my schoolbag. Currently, both of my parents live in (opposite sides of) a prewar suburban town, and sidewalks and foot/bike paths are enough to move between the two in under forty minutes. If I want to go to the city, there are two train lines, each of which runs on a hourly-ish frequency during non-peak hours on weekdays. I know that my living situation will change in a manner that will make me car-dependant.

What are the benefits: The benefits of car reduction are an increase in quality of life in urban areas, increased safety of urban and suburban areas, and reduced crowdedness in urban areas.

What are the down sides: Car reduction isn't viable in remote areas, and it isn't that viable in rural areas and (some) suburban areas. Also, it would inconvenience some people (including me after my father moves).

My own thoughts: It'd be best to disincentivise car use in urban areas (possibly banning them from some neighborhoods) and to redevelop suburban areas so they come closer to prioritising alternatives. As far as rural areas, the best we can hope is that more trains between cities have stops that help rural communities.

[Indecent Anime Empire]

What do you mean, 'justify'? Why is it unjustified to run a bus service between small rural communities?

Bunch of reasons, mainly though it'd cost a lot of money and be very time inefficient. Public transport is wonderful for suburbs and urban areas, but when you live a place that's a couple hours from civilization it just won't work. I'm only 20-30 minutes away from the city and even here the bus line is spotty, in a place with less people that's even further away it just wouldn't make sense to have a bus go out that far. Rural folks will always need personal vehicles for a variety of reasons.

Busses are not the only mode of public trans and a large portion of public trans is rail way outside of the us. Buses are for inner city, trams are for intermediate, high speed railways are for larger distance and for intercontinental you need planes tbh. Every one of these would need its own tracks, own schedule and own staff, each propped up by its own source of funding, resources and effective communication between cities, states/provinces, and countries. It is effort, so much so that you wonder why so much effort was out into creating more space for cars than the people driving them. cars are more expensive in the long run because of poor individual maintenance, accidents, inability to be reused and people honestly suck at driving. If you could take a 30 minute commute on train or a 2 hour drive which would you prefer? if it also took you 20 minutes to take a bus there and 5 to walk to the bus stop is that going to make you want to drive yourself there more? Having been a driver longer than I have been in school I can tell you it sucks to sit in traffic, to get into an accident, to have to pay for insurance, and not to be able to enjoy previous architecture that has been lost to us because everything is now been turned into a parking lot or turned into a metal box (aka Walmart or any other local store) because the time it took you to walk inside was the only time you would walk near the place. Cars aren't the worst thing in the world but instead of focusing on those I chose to push the prompt of public transit to look at it through another lenses.

[The United Penguin Commonwealth]

Make 10 min walk cities and have trains connecting cities, cities will be spread out and there will be more nature in between

Yah no. The cities aren’t going anywhere. They’re not spread out in Europe or the north east. And I don’t think there’s any modern metropolis that’s a 10 min walk to all of it.

I think what he means is a city where as many everyday places as possible are within ten minutes on foot.

[Adamede]

Bunch of reasons, mainly though it'd cost a lot of money and be very time inefficient. Public transport is wonderful for suburbs and urban areas, but when you live a place that's a couple hours from civilization it just won't work. I'm only 20-30 minutes away from the city and even here the bus line is spotty, in a place with less people that's even further away it just wouldn't make sense to have a bus go out that far. Rural folks will always need personal vehicles for a variety of reasons.

So what if it costs money? Why is it a problem to spend money on useful services?

Because there comes a point were efficiency has to be taken into consideration, and fact of the matter is that there’s better and more efficient ways that governments can spend money than running bus routes to every house in rural areas.

[Adamede]

Have you ever lived in a rural area? There’s simply not enough people out there to justify running public transits in areas like rural Wyoming or Kentucky or the like, especially not with great regularity.

What do you mean, 'justify'? Why is it unjustified to run a bus service between small rural communities?

Running costs are an obvious one. Tell me how would a bus route in a rural region that services the entire population even work?

[Adamede]

What do you mean, 'justify'? Why is it unjustified to run a bus service between small rural communities?

I think he's talking about how many governments ignore rural transportation services. I don't think that invalidates the idea of public transportation in rural areas but hey, thats my interpretation.

No I’m saying that having city level public transportation in rural regions is simply impossible. The population is simply to spread out to have anything more than a train station or bus stop in the town itself, in which case msot rural individuos are still going to need a car to access.

[Adamede]

Bunch of reasons, mainly though it'd cost a lot of money and be very time inefficient. Public transport is wonderful for suburbs and urban areas, but when you live a place that's a couple hours from civilization it just won't work. I'm only 20-30 minutes away from the city and even here the bus line is spotty, in a place with less people that's even further away it just wouldn't make sense to have a bus go out that far. Rural folks will always need personal vehicles for a variety of reasons.

Busses are not the only mode of public trans and a large portion of public trans is rail way outside of the us. Buses are for inner city, trams are for intermediate, high speed railways are for larger distance and for intercontinental you need planes tbh. Every one of these would need its own tracks, own schedule and own staff, each propped up by its own source of funding, resources and effective communication between cities, states/provinces, and countries. It is effort, so much so that you wonder why so much effort was out into creating more space for cars than the people driving them. cars are more expensive in the long run because of poor individual maintenance, accidents, inability to be reused and people honestly suck at driving. If you could take a 30 minute commute on train or a 2 hour drive which would you prefer? if it also took you 20 minutes to take a bus there and 5 to walk to the bus stop is that going to make you want to drive yourself there more? Having been a driver longer than I have been in school I can tell you it sucks to sit in traffic, to get into an accident, to have to pay for insurance, and not to be able to enjoy previous architecture that has been lost to us because everything is now been turned into a parking lot or turned into a metal box (aka Walmart or any other local store) because the time it took you to walk inside was the only time you would walk near the place. Cars aren't the worst thing in the world but instead of focusing on those I chose to push the prompt of public transit to look at it through another lenses.

Still going to need a car to get from your house to the train station. Again my point isn’t that rural areas shouldn’t have any form of public transportation but that simply put cars will still be a necessity for the rural population in any realistic scenario even with public transportation servicing rural areas.

[Ifreann]

So what if it costs money? Why is it a problem to spend money on useful services?

Because there comes a point were efficiency has to be taken into consideration, and fact of the matter is that there’s better and more efficient ways that governments can spend money than running bus routes to every house in rural areas.

You could say the same about almost every government expenditure. Theoretically there is one most efficient thing to spend money on, but very obviously it would be absurd to spend all of a society's money on only that. So where's the cut off? Exactly how efficient must a measure be for money to actually be spent on it? How are we even calculating efficiency here?

And even if we have solid answers to those questions, which I rather suspect we don't, I ask again, who cares? I don't think we're talking about impoverished nations with more moths than money in the national coffers. We're talking about large, industrialised, wealthy nations. If it is in some way inefficient to provide small rural communities with the option of public transport instead of always needing to use their personal vehicles, I would think that a nation with a budget in the trillions of dollars can afford some inefficiency here and there. Why should we want maximum "efficiency" in all things at all times? Do we want to live in a human society where we do good because it is good, or in a machine society where our lives are just expenditures on a balance sheet?

---

What do you mean, 'justify'? Why is it unjustified to run a bus service between small rural communities?

Running costs are an obvious one.

Seems perfectly justifiable to spend money on making people's lives better and at least potentially more environmentally friendly.

Tell me how would a bus route in a rural region that services the entire population even work?

You set out bus stops and have buses drive from one to the next in a specified order. Same way they work everywhere. We are talking about people who would otherwise use a car to get around, I think it's safe to assume that they have access to the existing road network.

[Indecent Anime Empire]

Still going to need a car to get from your house to the train station. Again my point isn’t that rural areas shouldn’t have any form of public transportation but that simply put cars will still be a necessity for the rural population in any realistic scenario even with public transportation servicing rural areas.

I want to point out that yes cars will exist, the utter extermination of them is impossible. They are needed by those who work in very specialized places. But no you don't need a car per individual nor do you need to drive to a bus stop, (who goes to a bus station? have you ever been on a bus?) there is one closer than 10 minute walks in most major cities, most rural areas have greyhound stops and even in between there are ways to avoid the use of a car. You also have to imagine, no realistic scenario has a timeline where people don't want a vehicle for recreation either way. ATVs and dirtbikes are all ways people get around without the needed hassle of using your car.

There also seems to be a fundamental missing point that makes this all unrealistic but that fact that in this scenario you are not only receiving the funding to REDO THE ENTIRE INFRASTRUCTURE to accommodate for everything but there's also no way that you can't come up with even a single scenario where we achieve minimal car usage. Even as quoted above, electronic trams leading to bus stops, making rounds at different train stations, or bullet train railways on a planned format would achieve this goal. That's only possible when you factor in you are redoing everything. If for not that then there's no way and you would be right.

Current infrastructure is car made, by cars, for cars and it will be until it's entirely redone.

[Fractalnavel]

Because there comes a point were efficiency has to be taken into consideration, and fact of the matter is that there’s better and more efficient ways that governments can spend money than running bus routes to every house in rural areas.

You could say the same about almost every government expenditure. Theoretically there is one most efficient thing to spend money on, but very obviously it would be absurd to spend all of a society's money on only that. So where's the cut off? Exactly how efficient must a measure be for money to actually be spent on it? How are we even calculating efficiency here?

And even if we have solid answers to those questions, which I rather suspect we don't, I ask again, who cares? I don't think we're talking about impoverished nations with more moths than money in the national coffers. We're talking about large, industrialised, wealthy nations. If it is in some way inefficient to provide small rural communities with the option of public transport instead of always needing to use their personal vehicles, I would think that a nation with a budget in the trillions of dollars can afford some inefficiency here and there. Why should we want maximum "efficiency" in all things at all times? Do we want to live in a human society where we do good because it is good, or in a machine society where our lives are just expenditures on a balance sheet?

---

Running costs are an obvious one.

Seems perfectly justifiable to spend money on making people's lives better and at least potentially more environmentally friendly.

Tell me how would a bus route in a rural region that services the entire population even work?

You set out bus stops and have buses drive from one to the next in a specified order. Same way they work everywhere. We are talking about people who would otherwise use a car to get around, I think it's safe to assume that they have access to the existing road network.

Probably not physically possible to have routes that get rural people where they need to be in a timely manner, unless you have so many vehicles that you end up back at the current situation. That's a space-time argument, not cost.

That's ok, different transportation for different contexts is what we're looking for, not one-size-fits-all in any direction.

As for 'already ruined': not sure what that means, but things change, and time is long, and earth abides...

[Theodores Tomfooleries]

Here in my car,
I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors
It's the only way to live
in cars
. . .
Here in my car,
I can only receive
I can listen to you
It keeps me stable for days
in cars
. . .
Here in my car,
Where the image breaks down
Won't you visit me please,
If I open my door
in cars?
. . .
Here in my car,
I know I've started to think
About leaving tonight
Although nothing seems right
in cars
. . .

[Indecent Anime Empire]

[As for 'already ruined': not sure what that means, but things change, and time is long, and earth abides

I just mean that culturally we are moving away from humanity and more towards a less caring populace. Buildings suck cause you just drive by them. When you walk you take in what you see, it’s why buildings don’t have many features today other than the logo and name.

This also goes along with how things move, people move where things are, if things can move no matter where you are, then you can achieve greater success in areas previously thought to have hit a limit or cap such as population, economic output and income, etc.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Bunch of reasons, mainly though it'd cost a lot of money and be very time inefficient. Public transport is wonderful for suburbs and urban areas, but when you live a place that's a couple hours from civilization it just won't work. I'm only 20-30 minutes away from the city and even here the bus line is spotty, in a place with less people that's even further away it just wouldn't make sense to have a bus go out that far. Rural folks will always need personal vehicles for a variety of reasons.

Busses are not the only mode of public trans and a large portion of public trans is rail way outside of the us. Buses are for inner city, trams are for intermediate, high speed railways are for larger distance and for intercontinental you need planes tbh. Every one of these would need its own tracks, own schedule and own staff, each propped up by its own source of funding, resources and effective communication between cities, states/provinces, and countries. It is effort, so much so that you wonder why so much effort was out into creating more space for cars than the people driving them. cars are more expensive in the long run because of poor individual maintenance, accidents, inability to be reused and people honestly suck at driving. If you could take a 30 minute commute on train or a 2 hour drive which would you prefer? if it also took you 20 minutes to take a bus there and 5 to walk to the bus stop is that going to make you want to drive yourself there more? Having been a driver longer than I have been in school I can tell you it sucks to sit in traffic, to get into an accident, to have to pay for insurance, and not to be able to enjoy previous architecture that has been lost to us because everything is now been turned into a parking lot or turned into a metal box (aka Walmart or any other local store) because the time it took you to walk inside was the only time you would walk near the place. Cars aren't the worst thing in the world but instead of focusing on those I chose to push the prompt of public transit to look at it through another lenses.

I, personally, would still drive most of the time. Unless I'm going on a date or out with friends then I'm probably going to need a truck for whatever it is I'm doing, can't exactly take a bunch of greenhouse supplies or lumber with me onto a passenger train.

[Benuty]

Perhaps the greatest irony within the U.S is that people will drive across states because flying has become a nightmare, and then proceed to take some of the most efficient public transportation in the world, and spend a few days to a week doing what they can't do safely in their own home communities: Walk. It's no wonder Disney World is referred to as the most magical place on earth.

[Loeje]

Even though I'm critical of car-dependent infrastructure and would like America to return to the way things used to be built pre-WW2, cars are still cool. They definitely haven't ruined society. Society is doing mostly fine, and a lot of its problems have nothing to do with cars. Otherwise, places like Germany would have no problems.

[Benuty]

Bunch of reasons, mainly though it'd cost a lot of money and be very time inefficient. Public transport is wonderful for suburbs and urban areas, but when you live a place that's a couple hours from civilization it just won't work. I'm only 20-30 minutes away from the city and even here the bus line is spotty, in a place with less people that's even further away it just wouldn't make sense to have a bus go out that far. Rural folks will always need personal vehicles for a variety of reasons.

So what if it costs money? Why is it a problem to spend money on useful services?

Applying the insane troll logic Ted Turner used when buying up most of Montana: to make people suffer (not saying WRA is using this but some Americans certainly do). Case in point Ted Turner is legally trying to restrict Americans from using the public roads that crisscross his property. He has a level of wealth that many communities which were bulldozed through to make rooms for highways wish they had.

[Indecent Anime Empire]

Even though I'm critical of car-dependent infrastructure and would like America to return to the way things used to be built pre-WW2, cars are still cool. They definitely haven't ruined society. Society is doing mostly fine, and a lot of its problems have nothing to do with cars. Otherwise, places like Germany would have no problems.

I can mostly agree with this, and again I’ll restate that the title was just a hyperbole. cars have benefits but they have been made a priority in society rather than a tool for the people they transport. So which country needs it the most, a regal of the entire transportation infrastructure in your opinion?

[Fractalnavel]

[As for 'already ruined': not sure what that means, but things change, and time is long, and earth abides

I just mean that culturally we are moving away from humanity and more towards a less caring populace. Buildings suck cause you just drive by them. When you walk you take in what you see, it’s why buildings don’t have many features today other than the logo and name.

This also goes along with how things move, people move where things are, if things can move no matter where you are, then you can achieve greater success in areas previously thought to have hit a limit or cap such as population, economic output and income, etc.

Ok, I see. Makes me think of some of the 'town square' or walkable outdoor areas in some cities. That's good for some things, perhaps not for others.

Augmenting transportation with delivery systems would help, yes. At least those could be optimized without having to work around human occupancy, but there would be a cloud of delivery drones (or tubes, or whatever) instead of passenger cars.

Part of the problem that is being addressed here does come from population growth, but that seems to be a taboo subject for some.

There are some drawbacks to having groups of people that are happier staying in one place more of the time: they become more isolated from other groups. Some of this could add a richness of diversity as separate customs may arise and flourish, but there's a dark side to that sort of thing. There are claims of modern tech 'atomizing' individuals, but that can happen at all scales.

A mitigating factor might be global communications tech, but that seems to have veered into siloing as much as it breaks barriers.

Faster cheaper more common long distance travel would be neat. The air transport system leaves a lot to be desired.

[Duvniask]

Because there comes a point were efficiency has to be taken into consideration, and fact of the matter is that there’s better and more efficient ways that governments can spend money than running bus routes to every house in rural areas.

You could say the same about almost every government expenditure. Theoretically there is one most efficient thing to spend money on, but very obviously it would be absurd to spend all of a society's money on only that.

What are you talking about? Seriously this makes no sense at all. Think about how absurd this statement is in light of how our society cannot exist without a multitude of factors coming together to enable it.

This "theoretically one most efficient thing to spend money on" is completely made up in your own head.

So where's the cut off? Exactly how efficient must a measure be for money to actually be spent on it? How are we even calculating efficiency here?

These are strangely incredulous questions. What exactly do you expect? In the real world, public projects are assessed according to available resources, opportunity costs and the degree to which they meet socially desirable goals. People will simply do the best they can with that information. Asking for a precise cutoff to when a project is "efficient" is like asking for a precise cutoff to the amount of nanoseconds you think it's okay to stay awake in a single day - the answer would be arbitrary, and surely you wouldn't think the lack of a clear answer means you should never sleep!

[Indecent Anime Empire]

There are dome drawbacks to having groups of people that are happier staying in one place more of the time: they become more isolated from other groups. Some of this could add a richness of diversity as separate customs may arise and flourish, but there's a dark side to that sort of thing. There are claims of modern tech 'atomizing' individuals, but that can happen at all scales.

A mitigating factor might be global communications tech, but that seems to have veered into siloing as much as it breaks barriers.

Faster cheaper more common long distance travel would be neat. The air transport system leaves a lot to be desired.

Here I agree as well as there are always exceptions and issues that arise as problems are solved. I for one think that not everything can be solved by public transit. Much of the way people do or people are comes from the nature of social interaction and it is lacking. Culture can not be sustained via the internet which is why fads come and go so quickly. An example is furries or video games. There will always be something that out competes it or smaller groups form from the larger prior.

With public trans you create an environment that will sustain due to the physical carving of new points of interest that must accommodate for more foot traffic, dining space, visual arts and more. The Romans were an excellent example of ups and downs to walkable space, very open and communicative areas that made life a more fulfilling experience, thus centerpieces or grand entrance ways were a necessity. That said, included in this are high chances of infectious disease spreading if not thoroughly cleaned but covid opened some people’s eyes to how unhygienic people can be.

Im getting off topic, I appreciate the understanding.

[Ifreann]

You could say the same about almost every government expenditure. Theoretically there is one most efficient thing to spend money on, but very obviously it would be absurd to spend all of a society's money on only that.

What are you talking about? Seriously this makes no sense at all. Think about how absurd this statement is in light of how our society cannot exist without a multitude of factors coming together to enable it.

This "theoretically one most efficient thing to spend money on" is completely made up in your own head.

My point is that the principle that we can't spend money on rural bus routes because it would be more efficient to spend the money on something else is an absurd principle, because when we apply that principle consistently, once we have defined "efficiency" and established how to measure it, we would find ourselves in a situation of having calculated one most efficient thing to spend money on to the exclusion of all other expenditures. I know that society couldn't possibly function if we did that. That is literally what I am trying to illustrate.

So where's the cut off? Exactly how efficient must a measure be for money to actually be spent on it? How are we even calculating efficiency here?

Incredulous questions. What exactly do you expect? In the real world, public projects are assessed according to available resources, opportunity costs and the degree to which they meet socially desirable goals. People will simply do the best they can with that information. Asking for a precise cutoff to when a project is "efficient" is like asking for a precise cutoff to the amount of nanoseconds you think it's okay to stay awake in a single day - the answer would be arbitrary, and surely you wouldn't think the lack of a clear answer means you should never sleep!

I know that the only possible answers are arbitrary. I did say in the next sentence that I rather expect that we don't have solid answers to those questions. That's kinda the larger point I'm making here. That opposition to rural bus services is not based on an objective calculation of efficiency, but a subjective feeling that it's just not worth it hiding under a veneer of objectivity.

[Duvniask]

What are you talking about? Seriously this makes no sense at all. Think about how absurd this statement is in light of how our society cannot exist without a multitude of factors coming together to enable it.

This "theoretically one most efficient thing to spend money on" is completely made up in your own head.

My point is that the principle that we can't spend money on rural bus routes because it would be more efficient to spend the money on something else is an absurd principle, because when we apply that principle consistently, once we have defined "efficiency" and established how to measure it, we would find ourselves in a situation of having calculated one most efficient thing to spend money on to the exclusion of all other expenditures. I know that society couldn't possibly function if we did that. That is literally what I am trying to illustrate.

The fact that there are better things to spend money on doesn't mean we're talking about a regression to one single outlay. Instead of thinking of efficiency as a choice between A or B individually, you should see it as a choice between different amounts and combinations of A, B, C... and if you genuinely applied that regress logic of yours, that means the "most efficient thing" would be a specific COMBINATION of factors.

To put that another way, I may ask you this: What's the most efficient way to spend your day? To spend it all on one thing? All day getting food, or all day sleeping or drinking or gaming? There may be more than one answer, but none of them will involve doing a single activity all day. Instead, the answer would be some combination of multiple activities to ensure that, you know, you can SURVIVE and LIVE DECENTLY. Same thing applies to the issue of how to spend limited government resources, and making bus routes to every hamlet in the woods just aint it, chief.

Incredulous questions. What exactly do you expect? In the real world, public projects are assessed according to available resources, opportunity costs and the degree to which they meet socially desirable goals. People will simply do the best they can with that information. Asking for a precise cutoff to when a project is "efficient" is like asking for a precise cutoff to the amount of nanoseconds you think it's okay to stay awake in a single day - the answer would be arbitrary, and surely you wouldn't think the lack of a clear answer means you should never sleep!

I know that the only possible answers are arbitrary. I did say in the next sentence that I rather expect that we don't have solid answers to those questions. That's kinda the larger point I'm making here. That opposition to rural bus services is not based on an objective calculation of efficiency, but a subjective feeling that it's just not worth it hiding under a veneer of objectivity.

And the point I'm trying to make is that the opposition is perfectly valid, even in the absence of some sort of standardized, "objective" evaluation. Like, what exactly do you think you're accomplishing by decrying efficiency concerns as invalid? Are you going to argue that we should just spend money on every single bridge to nowhere because any opposition to it can't immediately pull up some calculation that says "this is not worth the cost"? To me, what you're saying just makes me think of the hammer and nail metaphor, since you seem to think every rural residence could or should be reachable by bus or train, rather than trying to think realistically about how best to put government resources to use.

Besides, I'm sure you can find plenty of cost-benefit analyses of existing bus routes, as the practice of cost-benefit analysis should be fairly standard operating procedure in most developed countries.