On Transit and Cars

Personal Preface

I grew up in the suburbs, for the most part. My parents both owned cars to get to work. Through elementary and middle school I took the school bus for my daily commute. In high school, I bused (2 years) and then drove (2 years) into the small east coast city I call home.

Through university, I had a car but mostly stuck to the town bus system (free with university creds).

After graduating, I took up a job in the Puget Sound area and drove about an hour each way from Cap Hill, Seattle. After a couple years there, I drove back to the east coast with all my stuff.

Since, I've moved to NY and ditched the car. I take the subway, mostly, but I also walk and bus and occasionally bike around.

Cars

Cars are a necessity in most of the United States - the way houses are zoned and built in the suburbs, most people can't get to work without them. So for most people here (who haven't lived in a city with good transit) it's completely alien to imagine life without them. How can you do stuff without a car?

And for most people, it really is unrealistic to switch to something like biking or carpooling to work every day. For most people, there aren't any alternatives without moving to a big city (and that, too, is an unrealistic alternative for most people).

Transit

The only way to reduce dependence on cars is a fleshed out transit system. Ways for people to get:

1. to work, friends, and other daily/weekly activities, and
2. to other parts of the country/world

Without transit infra providing those options to people, they'll be car dependent with the current layout of society.

Saving the World

Well. All the socialists turned out to be right on this one, it seems. Transit is very good for connectedness and that's a good thing for the folks who want to organize the largest growing social class (ie. the proletariat).

And the socialists are also the ones trying to, y'know, stop the billionaires from ravaging the earth for private profit into mankind's doom. So, y'know, reducing the:

1. unhealthy car dependence
2. corresponding emissions and energy consumption. Electrics use fossil fuels too, think for 5 fucking seconds about how energy is produced in the US, please I fucking beg of you, please.
3. corresponding wasted space dedicated to parking and concrete roads in the West, that prevent walkability and encourage more and more unhealthy development.

Those are all priorities, if you consider yourself a socialist in the US (or, y'know, care about the future of our shared planet). We can't tackle this problem individually; giving up your car and losing your job isn't going to solve anything for anyone. We have to figure out how to reduce car dependency of our society. Therefore we need to figure out societal level solutions to reducing car dependence. That requires our government and industry, ie. the people who effectually control the development of infrastructure, to prioritize efforts to reduce car dependence.

That may leave you with the following line of questioning:

How do we get the millionaire senators to prioritize this? How do we get the house of representatives to care? Even if we elect one good DSA candidate in my area, how do we go about doing a national-level infrastructure re-prioritization? Could we do a referendum, somehow, is that something that can cover something like this? Who do I talk to about that?

You can go on-and-on thinking about electoralism and the modern US legislative system. There's an infinite amount you can think about. A slightly more helpful line, I think, is:

Why do all these rich parasitic old dudes control all of the decisions in our society? Why do they prioritize the zoning for their McMansions that are as far away from the poors as possible? Why can't we put the scientists who are specialists in energy and the earth and locomotives in charge of that sorta decision making?

Because those are all great questions. Why can't we?

I'd like to try.

TODO

There's a lot more to talk about here.

I'd like to touch on transit and infrastructure in other countries. Showing things like the massive expansion of China's rail system, the incredible rail systems being build all over Asia and Europe, some of the very bike friendly cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

There's also the concept of housing and how suburban dreams and aspirations drive how the isolating architecture of modern cities is built. There aren't even malls for the kids to hang out in anymore, there's nowhere they can go without spending money to be there. It's... sad. Walkability is so great for community and socialization, it's a wonderful experience being around many people whenever I leave my apartment.

A lot of that development has also been driven by car lobbies, shutting down public transit systems that used to function in order to sell more cars.

And I'm sure there's a bunch I don't know about yet.

TODO: other transit folks/links/tweets/resources

index tags: Cars, Trains, Buses, Transit

category tags: Personal Writings