Tough to drive less when the world around you discourages anything other than cars lol. DOT needs to do more than just warn congress.
DOT is half the problem, department of TRANSPORTATION but they only really care about roads or cars. It was also DOTs that ripped out peoples homes to pave highways into city centers. They caused a signifcant amount of this problem and they should be responsible for creating some solutions.
DOT is trying to fix things, at least somewhat, but can’t build transit unless Congress allocates money. Also m, they can only implement political priorities: what happens without “Amtrak Joe”?
DOT can advise that towns and cities change zoning to encourage denser population centers and transit-oriented development, but they can’t actually do anything about it. That’s all under local government
I think it’s a start. I’ve seen more and more from the feds and local governments about the infrastructure/walkability issue. It moves at a snail’s pace but that’s the government in general. My guess is that if you can align the people making federal policy to allocate federal money for public transit projects and high speed trains and such, you can incentivize local governments to use more dense mixed-use zoning laws and drum up local support for public transit projects where people aren’t stuck in a car all day.
I lived in Nashville when Barry proposed and mulled over their now doomed spoke and hub suburban train project between bang sessions with her security detail at the graveyard. It was frustrating that local businesses bitched and moaned and doomed the city to be another shitty Atlanta, so we have to understand the hurdles and the politics involved. Fortunately I have some faith that Buttigieg does but it’s admittedly frustrating when everything related to climate change is already too little too late and it’s moving so slowly to the point that we are only in the early stages.
So many cultural things have to change too. Penalizing big truck and SUV manufacturers is a start. Nobody needs one of those damn things.
The worst part is we already have an example that works to significantly reduce vehicle trips & miles: mandate hybird/remote work. Mandate that all jobs that can be performed remotely allow a minimum of 60% of hours to be worked remotely, and suddenly everybody that goes to the office to use a computer now has the legal right to instead stay home and do the same thing from a computer for 3 days a week, and now there are ~60% fewer vehicles in every rush hour traffic jam
That would be ideal, but my husband’s office job just fired a bunch of people for resisting the end of work from home. The company’s argument was “people aren’t getting work done.” Even though it was all getting done. Companies in general aren’t going to give up their ability to own their employees without a fight.
I guess what I’m saying is this won’t happen until the government forces the issue. IF the government forces the issue.
But you are 100% right. We saved so much on gas and car maintenance when work from home was a thing, and we started seeing a huge amount of lichens in our area that were once pretty rare during covid. Apparently that one species grows a lot more when air pollution is low.
Yeah remote work is really a benefit that’s not uniformly available and in some cases seems to be entirely limited to senior level roles.
The good news is it’s very popular with employees and can help make up for other deficiencies the company might have. For example, the place. I work at now has more employees at the main office than they have desks, so they’re able to save on expensive real estate by not expanding the building. Additionally the company I work at is located in a very small unincorporated town (basically it’s headquartered exactly where it was founded) and while it has larger cities within reasonable commuting distance, by being entirely hybrid/remote they pull talent from a much larger distance for lower level roles and from anywhere in the country for more senior roles as needed, so they’re not limited to just the local talent which tends to lack the specialization that a company of this scale would need
Are you sure decoupling (alone) has the desired effect here? Given the ‘Suburban Dream’, society might sprawl even better, because there would be less constraints then.
In my understanding, suburbia might become cultural (ie. people don’t arrange themselves with the sprawl longer, they embrace and dream of it) once a certain threshold of sprawl or its countermeasures is achieved.
Does it matter though if they don’t have to drive as much anymore? Isn’t it still better
Short term yes
lol fuck this personal responsibility shit, fuck over rich people than we will talk. I do support public transit.
So as a society, how do we
- Encourage you to want to move somewhere walkable and with transit
- Build more of those places
There’s no reason this needs to be an imposition on you. If done right, it can make your life much better
I think we’re all lucky you’re not one of the rich people.
so how the hell am i supposed to get anywhere in this suburban hell hole im stuck in then? the government itself created this damn infrastructure and now we’re all just stuck here.
Catch-22, don’t build Suburbia (aka don’t live in and pay for it) AND drive less. On a positive note, using public transit and sharing space has the opposite effect.
Once again, many governments refuse to build anything except suburbia. This isn’t just a simple matter of personal choice. City planning, roads, transit, density, and taxation all need to be addressed to build our cities better again.
And it took a century of constantly expanding population to build it out this way. We don’t have a century to fix it, nor do we have a quickly expanding population to drive it. We have to somehow fix things in place
There is nowhere for hours around where my partner goes to school that is even remotely walkable in a livable sense. I couldve chosen to live “downtown” but its a downtown meant to enternain the burbies, i would still have to drive to the grocery store, etc. i cannot just move until he graduates.
How about taking action against the billionaires? Private jets, industry emissions, subsidized lab grown meat etc… nah fuck the average guy who can’t defend himself…
Wait, since when was lab grown meat the enemy? I thought one of the biggest selling points of it was that it was significantly more environmentally friendly than traditional cattle ranching.
It’s a scam for people who don’t understand nutrition, are afraid of beans, and still want to die young.
We could do both by going after those and also building public transit for the average guy. Imagine if car ownership isn’t required to work or socialize? You don’t have to park it anywhere, pay for gas, maintaince and insurance, you could drink 5 beers and still go places without getting a DUI.
Suburban sprawl makes owning a car a necessity. If we’re going to significantly reduce the amount of driving Americans do, I think most people are going to have to give up on the American dream. Most people are just not going to be able to own their own, detached single family home in the suburbs.
The american dream is half the problem. Most suburban neighbourhoods cost more to maintain and repair than they generate in taxs. They are unsustainable and simple rises in taxs would need to be too steep for most of them. Many cities repair an old neighbourhood with the profits from selling land/development fees for a new neighborhood, somewhat like a pyramid scheme. The american dream was doomed from the start because it was always unsustainable, from an environmental, economical, and social view.
I’d say it’s more than half the problem. It’s just too expensive, too inefficient, and just not sustainable. It must go, and once it does, suburban sprawl will go with it. Once that goes, higher density housing and mixed use development will become the norm, and when that happens, owning a car will become not only unnecessary but impractical, for many.
Depends on where you live but making walkable/micromobility friendly cities more common is critical for sure. I’m fortunate enough that I can bike to work every day, same for groceries and general medical stuff.
Spoiler : USA Congress does not care
How a Congress that applauded a war criminal could give a #### to Climate Change -_-
high speed rail when?
ITT: a bunch of people who like having to spend half their life driving and are upset they can’t spend more
I definitely don’t like it at all, but I’m just a worthless underpaid factory schmuck so I have to live far from work because anything close is pretty much my entire paycheck just for rent…
The US really needs to find a better way to solve this issue, but since we’re all “rugged individualists” things just get built where the owners want and nothing needs to make sense for anyone… Where I currently work most people have to drive an hour each way just to get here. Logistics for deliveries are horrendous. It makes no sense to have a factory where this is, but that’s what the owner wanted…
The solution is to accept a cut in what people think of as “quality of life” but is really just a bunch of wasteful addictions. Myself and half a million other people in my province are living on little more than 13k a year. This is the level of disability allowance here. It also happens to be approximately the world’s median income level.
The world isn’t built for us, but we still manage to survive somehow. (Mostly.) Car culture doesn’t come alone, it comes with unforgivable excesses of conspicuous consumption and materialism. Eventually you won’t be able to afford it anymore, and you’ll have to live like the rest of the world. Get ahead of it and you’ll be better off in the long run.
The solution is to accept a cut in what people think of as “quality of life” but is really just a bunch of wasteful addictions.
I understand and can appreciate that kind of tactic, but it’s fucking infuriating that we have to be the ones to suffer a more miserable life when we can’t even slightly reduce not even the quality of life, but simply the massive wealth of the richest people…
Their towers get ever higher, and I have to share a garage “apartment” with 3 other people…
My ride to work is a bike most days lol, lately I’ve been skateboarding though: Way more fun than a car, also exercise!
No link to the report?
What a surprise…
