Here is my reasonable argument against EVs. EVs only really solve the emissions part of the equation. They dont solve the massive amounts of paved surface, private ownership of thousands of pounds of steel and plastic, they still use massive amounts of energy to move that steel and plastic and building cities for cars is largely ineffecient and expensive to maintain.
We could do a lot more for the environment than EVs. Id rather see their subsidies go to things like electrified transit, cycling infrastructure or walkability improvements.
Realistically, your choices aren’t “EVs or mass transit”, your choice is “EVs or Gas cars”.
Incidentally, your gripes apply to high density population areas, where busloads of people want to go from the same point A to the same point B at the same time, and cars do not make sense. That flips when you get to a more distributed population, where a hypothetical bus would run its route empty or with 2 or 3 passengers most of the time, in which case the car is actually “greener” because it’s not making empty trips and it uses less energy to move 2-3 people.
The only reason people in urban centers do not have transit is because governments neglected to build it. If they can build a 6 lane highway through your city, they could build transit.
We shouldnt use rural and spread out areas as an excuse to not build our cities and denser areas better and service them with transit.
Sure, but be aware that your messaging isn’t so targeted. The messaging is “fuck cars” not “our dense cities need to be more walkable and transit”. In this very thread it’s “we shouldn’t do anything for EVs, cars aren’t the answer anyway, we need to be ditching cars”.
Yes and i agree with that sentiment. 20 years down the line we will realize our cities are just as unwalkable and unable to be served by transit if we build them to exclussively serve the car. We should build cities so walking, cycling, transit and driving are all realistic options. For most north American cities we only prioiritize the car.
Sure, and I’ve seen some good projects, and less than good projects.
In my city, they took a street and closed it and redid it as pedestrians only. Worked great, more foot traffic going from any establishment to any other, and car people only had to walk an extra block or two to get to things.
There’s a section where they made a highly walkable environment from scratch, with car access basically through entering a big mostly underground parking deck, so the surface was reasonably car free.
On the flip side, the city loved these efforts so much they mandated mixed use zoning for all new construction. And the three big projects I’ve seen play out under this new scheme all followed the same recipe:
Proposal with 90% residential, and 10% “retail/commercial”
The proposal is phased, with hyper detailed residential plans and a vague box for the “retail/commercial” phase “to come later”
The residential is built, and then the company withdraws their plan for further development.
One that did go in for the true mixed use early on suffered because no commercial tenant would tolerate streetside only parking (which was effectively part of the deal, given how the regulations were written parking lots/decks were not viable for these “walkable neighborhoods” when they could just have a parking lot or deck nearby by setting up their business somewhere else)
They could reduce the amount of paved surface, since adoption of EVs would allow some parking to be moved underground as they don’t generate fumes like ICEs do. Still should be treated as a stopgap solution as we move away from car-dependemce, though.
Question is what is the population density where you live?
If it’s over 1,500 people a square mile, I get it. Cars suck and they screw things up for you while making relatively little sense. Any mass transit can be reasonably highly utilized with that volume of people. Meanwhile out-of-towners with their cars really screw with your day to day life.
But for places that are, say, 200 people a square mile, cars are about the only way things can work. So hardcore “we shouldn’t have cars” rhetoric is going to alienate a whole bunch of people, for good reason.
The vast majority of people who are anti car are anti car centric urban environments. Noboby is expecting a small town of 300 people to build a tram, we are expecting places with congested highways to build transit instead of “adding one more lane to solve traffic forever”
Interestingly, I lived in a small town of 3,000 people and up until the 1950s it had a trolley to the nearest small city, which then had trains that took you to the big city, and from there you could go anywhere.
But now the trolley sits in the town square as a monument, mocking everyone as they drive by.
Sure, and I can believe it, but the rhetoric is not so well targeted or scoped.
“we move away from car-[dependence], though.”
Is not going to be seen with the implied nuance by a large chunk of potential audience, and as stated may create opponents out of folks that really wouldn’t care at all either way.
They wouldn’t care if they knew you only were talking about cities they don’t go to.
But they do care and fight you because they think you mean their life. This means they vote against your interests because they think their interests are threatened, even if they aren’t.
That’s actually somewhat my argument for EVs. We know there are better ways to live, with lots of benefits including being more environmentally friendly, but it requires long term changes that were not good at and political will we don’t have, and a huge upfront expense. EVs are better than status quo, are needed for less densely populated areas, and are an improvement we can make now everywhere. Let’s “git r done”
Even here in the Boston area, which is arguably one of the best in the US for walkable cities and transit, where more improvements are hugely popular, where politics is solid blue and politicians are on board, transit improvements are a matter of decades. Here in the suburbs:
I’d take the train into the city but that’s the only direction it works.
I can walk to my town center and transit hub, and frequently do, but that’s not where my job is.
I can take Acela to NYC but that’s the only practical destination.
my town is getting its third commuter rail station, as a park and ride for highway commuters, but that’s many years away and those commuters still need to get to the park and ride
Aside from people whose complete life is in the city, it’s difficult to see a time we could actually give up on cars. However there’s plenty of room for hope and optimism: we can take some trips out of cars, and we can continue to take more. Cars are necessary to step forward but the goal should be to minimize the cases where cars are necessary until people don’t find them worth having
In my area, we’re widening a highway, which will cost $3-4B. We had a train project estimate that was rejected that totally would’ve replaced my commute that was estimated at ~$1B and was a prerequisite for a major company bringing more jobs here. We did the highway and not the train…
Overhauling transit just isn’t practical politically.
That said, I’m generally against subsidies and in favor of Piguovian taxes. I think we should:
eliminate subsidies to fossil fuels and EVs
increase taxes on large, heavy vehicles and gas to fully fund roads (remove road infrastructure from general taxes)
funnel money saved from the above into mass transit - our entire transit system costs $20 times the annual ridership
I think much of north america is dug so deep into car centric planning that making drivers pay the full cost would be too expensive for a significant portion of the population and workforce. I think the alternatives need to exist before the taxation because many people are constrained to their car being their only reliable way to get to work.
Making that cost more could put huge financial stress on a family whereas building the rail before the taxation could provide a cheaper alternative before the taxation even begins.
I’m thinking we’d calculate the average cost for driving a car based on a set of metrics (curb weight, miles driven, etc), then apply discounts for certain cars (older cars, EVs, etc). The bulk of the impact would be on large trucks and wealthy people. That would increase costs for shipped products (and encourage local production), which would be balanced out by better mass transit.
It should certainly be phased in to avoid a big shock, but that should be the goal. It turns out that driving for me is cheaper than taking transit because roads are so heavily subsidized. If I had to pay for my actual use, transit would look a lot more attractive.
Here is my reasonable argument against EVs. EVs only really solve the emissions part of the equation. They dont solve the massive amounts of paved surface, private ownership of thousands of pounds of steel and plastic, they still use massive amounts of energy to move that steel and plastic and building cities for cars is largely ineffecient and expensive to maintain.
We could do a lot more for the environment than EVs. Id rather see their subsidies go to things like electrified transit, cycling infrastructure or walkability improvements.
Realistically, your choices aren’t “EVs or mass transit”, your choice is “EVs or Gas cars”.
Incidentally, your gripes apply to high density population areas, where busloads of people want to go from the same point A to the same point B at the same time, and cars do not make sense. That flips when you get to a more distributed population, where a hypothetical bus would run its route empty or with 2 or 3 passengers most of the time, in which case the car is actually “greener” because it’s not making empty trips and it uses less energy to move 2-3 people.
The only reason people in urban centers do not have transit is because governments neglected to build it. If they can build a 6 lane highway through your city, they could build transit.
We shouldnt use rural and spread out areas as an excuse to not build our cities and denser areas better and service them with transit.
Sure, but be aware that your messaging isn’t so targeted. The messaging is “fuck cars” not “our dense cities need to be more walkable and transit”. In this very thread it’s “we shouldn’t do anything for EVs, cars aren’t the answer anyway, we need to be ditching cars”.
Yes and i agree with that sentiment. 20 years down the line we will realize our cities are just as unwalkable and unable to be served by transit if we build them to exclussively serve the car. We should build cities so walking, cycling, transit and driving are all realistic options. For most north American cities we only prioiritize the car.
Sure, and I’ve seen some good projects, and less than good projects.
In my city, they took a street and closed it and redid it as pedestrians only. Worked great, more foot traffic going from any establishment to any other, and car people only had to walk an extra block or two to get to things.
There’s a section where they made a highly walkable environment from scratch, with car access basically through entering a big mostly underground parking deck, so the surface was reasonably car free.
On the flip side, the city loved these efforts so much they mandated mixed use zoning for all new construction. And the three big projects I’ve seen play out under this new scheme all followed the same recipe:
One that did go in for the true mixed use early on suffered because no commercial tenant would tolerate streetside only parking (which was effectively part of the deal, given how the regulations were written parking lots/decks were not viable for these “walkable neighborhoods” when they could just have a parking lot or deck nearby by setting up their business somewhere else)
They could reduce the amount of paved surface, since adoption of EVs would allow some parking to be moved underground as they don’t generate fumes like ICEs do. Still should be treated as a stopgap solution as we move away from car-dependemce, though.
Question is what is the population density where you live?
If it’s over 1,500 people a square mile, I get it. Cars suck and they screw things up for you while making relatively little sense. Any mass transit can be reasonably highly utilized with that volume of people. Meanwhile out-of-towners with their cars really screw with your day to day life.
But for places that are, say, 200 people a square mile, cars are about the only way things can work. So hardcore “we shouldn’t have cars” rhetoric is going to alienate a whole bunch of people, for good reason.
The vast majority of people who are anti car are anti car centric urban environments. Noboby is expecting a small town of 300 people to build a tram, we are expecting places with congested highways to build transit instead of “adding one more lane to solve traffic forever”
Interestingly, I lived in a small town of 3,000 people and up until the 1950s it had a trolley to the nearest small city, which then had trains that took you to the big city, and from there you could go anywhere.
But now the trolley sits in the town square as a monument, mocking everyone as they drive by.
Sure, and I can believe it, but the rhetoric is not so well targeted or scoped.
“we move away from car-[dependence], though.”
Is not going to be seen with the implied nuance by a large chunk of potential audience, and as stated may create opponents out of folks that really wouldn’t care at all either way.
We shouldn’t change our statement if they wouldn’t care at all either way.
They wouldn’t care if they knew you only were talking about cities they don’t go to.
But they do care and fight you because they think you mean their life. This means they vote against your interests because they think their interests are threatened, even if they aren’t.
That’s actually somewhat my argument for EVs. We know there are better ways to live, with lots of benefits including being more environmentally friendly, but it requires long term changes that were not good at and political will we don’t have, and a huge upfront expense. EVs are better than status quo, are needed for less densely populated areas, and are an improvement we can make now everywhere. Let’s “git r done”
Even here in the Boston area, which is arguably one of the best in the US for walkable cities and transit, where more improvements are hugely popular, where politics is solid blue and politicians are on board, transit improvements are a matter of decades. Here in the suburbs:
Aside from people whose complete life is in the city, it’s difficult to see a time we could actually give up on cars. However there’s plenty of room for hope and optimism: we can take some trips out of cars, and we can continue to take more. Cars are necessary to step forward but the goal should be to minimize the cases where cars are necessary until people don’t find them worth having
Oh, I agree with you.
In my area, we’re widening a highway, which will cost $3-4B. We had a train project estimate that was rejected that totally would’ve replaced my commute that was estimated at ~$1B and was a prerequisite for a major company bringing more jobs here. We did the highway and not the train…
Overhauling transit just isn’t practical politically.
That said, I’m generally against subsidies and in favor of Piguovian taxes. I think we should:
I think much of north america is dug so deep into car centric planning that making drivers pay the full cost would be too expensive for a significant portion of the population and workforce. I think the alternatives need to exist before the taxation because many people are constrained to their car being their only reliable way to get to work.
Making that cost more could put huge financial stress on a family whereas building the rail before the taxation could provide a cheaper alternative before the taxation even begins.
I’m thinking we’d calculate the average cost for driving a car based on a set of metrics (curb weight, miles driven, etc), then apply discounts for certain cars (older cars, EVs, etc). The bulk of the impact would be on large trucks and wealthy people. That would increase costs for shipped products (and encourage local production), which would be balanced out by better mass transit.
It should certainly be phased in to avoid a big shock, but that should be the goal. It turns out that driving for me is cheaper than taking transit because roads are so heavily subsidized. If I had to pay for my actual use, transit would look a lot more attractive.