Roads are much cheaper and more useful. They can be used for moving freight whereas good public transport keeps freight off the lines to avoid timetabling problems caused by blockage.

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const_cast 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

They're not cheaper, that's an illusion and lie sold by the automobile and petroleum industries.

The interstates in the US alone have costed more than 25 trillion dollars. That's just the interstates, no other highways or roads.

But none of that even considers cost of using said roads. In the US, on average 15% of gross income is spent on automobile transportation.

That's a 15% tax right off the top, before your other taxes.

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baggy_trough 3 days ago | parent [-]

That spending pattern means that automobile transportation is very valuable compared to alternatives.

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const_cast 3 days ago | parent [-]

Or it means oil and automobiles are lucrative industries with huge amount of influence.

The reasoning of "we spend a lot of money so it must be good" is just bad. No, we spend a lot of money on stupid shit all the time. Both historically and currently.

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baggy_trough 3 days ago | parent [-]

I don't think people are as foolish as that when spending large amounts of their own money. There must be a good reason for it.

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const_cast 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

The reason is they have no choice. Consumers are the bottom of the totem pole.

Americans spend on average 15% of their gross income on automobile transportation. That's not including their taxes that went towards said automobiles, roads, and oil.

Nobody actually wants to do that. If you could get to work without an automobile, you would. But you can't, can you?

Automobiles are parasidic in nature. To work, they require vast amounts of space and sprawling urban design. But when you get said vast amounts of space and sprawling urban design, then automobiles are the only thing that makes sense.

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baggy_trough 3 days ago | parent [-]

That's my point. Automobiles are much better than any other alternative.

We have a car centric built environment because people have rationally decided for many valid reasons that automobiles are the best way to get around. It's not because they are "parasitic", whatever that means.

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bluGill 3 days ago | parent [-]

Mass transit can be just as good as cars for most people at far less cost. For many people transit because it can avoid congestion and go faster than cars (even on an uncontested highway) transit should be better. However transit is lacking the network needed to make it that good.

Note that a large part of why cars are better is the network exists. If you had to drive on dirt (not even gravel!) roads that became impassible when it rains you would call cars a bad way to get around. However the road network is such that you can nearly anywhere in a car.

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baggy_trough 3 days ago | parent [-]

I would just propose that the transit advocates concentrate on that goal ("Mass transit can be just as good as cars for most people at far less cost") in one small area, because in most areas in the United States, it is currently extraordinarily far from reality.

Also, they should do this without crippling cars, since that would be far easier to do than producing a compelling alternative to them as they currently exist.

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Mawr 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Also, they should do this without crippling cars,

Do you mean without continuing to give them 99% of available resources? Cars are by far the most privileged form of transportation worldwide. We bend over backwards to subsidize them as much as possible at all costs.

So of course, any attempts at clawing back at least some of that privilege are met with outrage, e.g. bike lanes.

	▲	baggy_trough 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		99% of what resources? That sounds like quite an exaggeration. I don't know if cars are subsidized more than mass transit on average. It's quite possible they are. The overwhelming majority of people find cars much more useful and enjoyable than mass transit, and politicians have to provide people with what they want to some degree. It's not a conspiracy of the oil companies.

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bluGill 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Most who look like transit advocates in reality are not . They appear to be for transit but they want something else and don't care about transit.

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birn559 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A good reason for a SUV in a city is a pretty subjective matter so I don't think that alone is a good argument.

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birn559 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Rails can and are used to transport freight. Trucks contribute a lot to bad traffic and therefore the same kind of blockage you mentioned.

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qcnguy 2 days ago | parent [-]

Rail freight is dying everywhere outside the USA, where passenger rail died instead. Mixing the two on the same lines is very difficult and causes tremendous problems, you can't even do it once passenger rail speeds get high enough. Rail freight has been uncompetitive with trucking for a long time as a result even though rail has huge subsidies and road traffic is a revenue generator for governments.

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amanaplanacanal 2 days ago | parent [-]

Is road traffic really a revenue generator for governments outside the US? In the US, it's a huge cost sink and has to be subsidized with general taxes.

	▲	qcnguy 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure. Road and fuel taxes have historically generated a surplus after the costs of maintaining the roads are subtracted. EVs are changing that because they don't pay fuel tax. So, governments are now proposing to change how vehicles are taxed to make the roads pay for themselves again. The USA is different to Europe because gas taxes are a political live wire there in a way they just aren't in Europe. Presidents win campaigns by promising to reduce the price of gas! So of course the road network is in deficit there, it's a populist move. The equivalent populism in Europe is to make public transport free instead, as the governments are more collectivist minded there, whereas in the US personal freedom is a major concern.