The thing is, you need the infrastructure investment first.
That’s not how that works, in practice. Governments only speculatively build roads; transit projects get cancelled unless they can show existing demand (and then still get cancelled anyway).
In order to change this, driving must be made painful first so that the public forces the government to change.
It sucks because it’s a dumb way to do it, but IMO the best we can do is aggressively support development/density, infrastructure be damned, to deliberately cause that problem. That actually has a chance of succeeding because developers are politically powerful.
driving must be made painful first so that the public forces the government to change.
But that’s not how it works in practice either. Driving is already painful, it’s been painful for years. Traffic jams, constant road construction, it’s awful. Yet, people still drive. They’ve had more than enough opportunity to demand government change, but they haven’t. At least not the kind of change that results in more biking, more walking and more public transit use. No, instead they’ve demanded the government build more roads, which of course we know only makes things worse due to induced demand.
Making driving even more painful isn’t going to force people to get the government to change towards less car centric transportation, it’s going to result in an even more pissed off populace voting into power the next firebrand populist who promises they will build more roads to fix the congestion problem.
Maybe the disagreement is because I’m speaking from a more urban, rather than suburban, perspective. In my area, they can’t build more roads, or even widen them, because the space just doesn’t exist anymore and because the property owners won’t stand for it. That’s the goal: build the area up enough that there can’t be more roads, forcing the only choice to be to use the existing space more efficiently.
You’re right, finding the best approach probably does depend on whether you’re dealing with a relatively densely populated urban area, or a suburban/rural area.
I wouldn’t consider those to be the same category.
Rural areas are car-dependent relatively legitimately and not worth trying to fix because, by definition, both their impact and the amount of people who would benefit are negligible. Focus on the 80% of the problem that is feasible to fix and ignore the “but whatabout my rural lifestyle” concern trolls completely.
Suburban areas are literally a scam perpetuated entirely by government policy (in the sense that, in the absence of regulation, people do not build that way) and should be abolished.
I guess that’s the other reason my perspective differs about “transit before density”: I think trying to “fix” the suburbs (as opposed to destroying them by abolishing zoning restrictions and thus causing them to become fully urban “naturally”) is a fool’s errand.
I wouldn’t consider those to be the same category.
I shouldn’t have implied that they were. I was just trying to distinguish both from urban areas, not necessarily trying to imply that they were the same. They are different.
Suburban areas are literally a scam perpetuated entirely by government policy (in the sense that, in the absence of regulation, people do not build that way) and should be abolished.
But that government policy is not arbitrary, it didn’t just happen for no reason. It exists to protect the value of detached, single family homes, which is important to the owners of those homes who see their home as an important investment. Indeed, for most people, the majority of their wealth is in their home. For that and other cultural reasons, people still want detached single family homes, and an area can’t be both relatively low density, single family homes and higher density multifamily and mixed used development simultaneously. It’s not physically possible, it has to be one or the other. I really don’t think that making car dependency more painful is just magically going to change people’s preferences, especially if no investment is made FIRST to ensure that better alternatives are available. People ain’t moving into higher density areas with non-car infrastructure if those areas don’t exist. You gotta build the shit first.
It exists to protect the value of detached, single family homes, which is important to the owners of those homes who see their home as an important investment.
Right: it subsidizes relatively-wealthy suburban welfare queens to “protect” them from having to compete fairly for the land on the free market. The question should not be “how do we protect homeowners;” it should be “why should they be entitled to this privilege?” That goes double when that privilege comes at the expense of people who live in denser housing, people who want to live in denser housing but can’t because restrictive zoning creates shortages and drives the price up, population health because sedentary lifestyles make people sicker, making poverty and homelessness worse, making climate change worse, and last(?) but not least, financial solvency of the suburb itself because single-family houses on large lots simply don’t generate enough tax revenue per unit area to pay for the services and infrastructure they use.
We literally cannot afford these subsidies – both in terms of suburban governments themselves and of society at large – and the people benefiting from them don’t deserve them anyway. It’s not just unjust, it’s insane and suicidal.
The “preferences” of greedy, myopic takers must be disregarded in the face of reality, regardless of how politically difficult it is.
The “preferences” of greedy, myopic takers must be disregarded in the face of reality, regardless of how politically difficult it is.
On that we agree. All the more reason to invest in building out non-car infrastructure in more densely populated areas NOW, so that the ever increasing number of people who are being priced out of the suburbs have a quality, affordable alternative. I think that’s better than putting those very same people through unnecessary pain, under some misguided belief that it will cause them to push the government to do what the damn government should have just done in the first place.
That’s not how that works, in practice. Governments only speculatively build roads; transit projects get cancelled unless they can show existing demand (and then still get cancelled anyway).
In order to change this, driving must be made painful first so that the public forces the government to change.
It sucks because it’s a dumb way to do it, but IMO the best we can do is aggressively support development/density, infrastructure be damned, to deliberately cause that problem. That actually has a chance of succeeding because developers are politically powerful.
But that’s not how it works in practice either. Driving is already painful, it’s been painful for years. Traffic jams, constant road construction, it’s awful. Yet, people still drive. They’ve had more than enough opportunity to demand government change, but they haven’t. At least not the kind of change that results in more biking, more walking and more public transit use. No, instead they’ve demanded the government build more roads, which of course we know only makes things worse due to induced demand.
Making driving even more painful isn’t going to force people to get the government to change towards less car centric transportation, it’s going to result in an even more pissed off populace voting into power the next firebrand populist who promises they will build more roads to fix the congestion problem.
Maybe the disagreement is because I’m speaking from a more urban, rather than suburban, perspective. In my area, they can’t build more roads, or even widen them, because the space just doesn’t exist anymore and because the property owners won’t stand for it. That’s the goal: build the area up enough that there can’t be more roads, forcing the only choice to be to use the existing space more efficiently.
You’re right, finding the best approach probably does depend on whether you’re dealing with a relatively densely populated urban area, or a suburban/rural area.
I wouldn’t consider those to be the same category.
Rural areas are car-dependent relatively legitimately and not worth trying to fix because, by definition, both their impact and the amount of people who would benefit are negligible. Focus on the 80% of the problem that is feasible to fix and ignore the “but whatabout my rural lifestyle” concern trolls completely.
Suburban areas are literally a scam perpetuated entirely by government policy (in the sense that, in the absence of regulation, people do not build that way) and should be abolished.
I guess that’s the other reason my perspective differs about “transit before density”: I think trying to “fix” the suburbs (as opposed to destroying them by abolishing zoning restrictions and thus causing them to become fully urban “naturally”) is a fool’s errand.
I shouldn’t have implied that they were. I was just trying to distinguish both from urban areas, not necessarily trying to imply that they were the same. They are different.
But that government policy is not arbitrary, it didn’t just happen for no reason. It exists to protect the value of detached, single family homes, which is important to the owners of those homes who see their home as an important investment. Indeed, for most people, the majority of their wealth is in their home. For that and other cultural reasons, people still want detached single family homes, and an area can’t be both relatively low density, single family homes and higher density multifamily and mixed used development simultaneously. It’s not physically possible, it has to be one or the other. I really don’t think that making car dependency more painful is just magically going to change people’s preferences, especially if no investment is made FIRST to ensure that better alternatives are available. People ain’t moving into higher density areas with non-car infrastructure if those areas don’t exist. You gotta build the shit first.
Right: it subsidizes relatively-wealthy suburban welfare queens to “protect” them from having to compete fairly for the land on the free market. The question should not be “how do we protect homeowners;” it should be “why should they be entitled to this privilege?” That goes double when that privilege comes at the expense of people who live in denser housing, people who want to live in denser housing but can’t because restrictive zoning creates shortages and drives the price up, population health because sedentary lifestyles make people sicker, making poverty and homelessness worse, making climate change worse, and last(?) but not least, financial solvency of the suburb itself because single-family houses on large lots simply don’t generate enough tax revenue per unit area to pay for the services and infrastructure they use.
We literally cannot afford these subsidies – both in terms of suburban governments themselves and of society at large – and the people benefiting from them don’t deserve them anyway. It’s not just unjust, it’s insane and suicidal.
The “preferences” of greedy, myopic takers must be disregarded in the face of reality, regardless of how politically difficult it is.
On that we agree. All the more reason to invest in building out non-car infrastructure in more densely populated areas NOW, so that the ever increasing number of people who are being priced out of the suburbs have a quality, affordable alternative. I think that’s better than putting those very same people through unnecessary pain, under some misguided belief that it will cause them to push the government to do what the damn government should have just done in the first place.