Did we make a cultural mistake popularizing the car?

[Aegon]

Do you think we made a mistake building around car usage, and not establishing communities with expanded public transportation and walkability? Streetcars, trains, subways... did we fuck up a century ago? I think we might have. Cars suck.

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[AFTT47]

Sort of, yes. It fit perfectly with the American dream though so I think it was inevitable.

[Belacqua]

Do you think we made a mistake building around car usage, and not establishing communities with expanded public transportation and walkability? Streetcars, trains, subways... did we fuck up a century ago? I think we might have. Cars suck.

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Absolutely yes.

Cars should be like wheelchairs -- useful for those who need them. Not glorified by people who don't.

[Fireball]

The automobile absolutely made getting places so much easier that it would be impossible for it not to be popular. The thing to remember is that some areas (in fact vast tracts of land) do not have any sort of infrastructure for personal transportation beyond having a car or truck and some federally provided road available. You live in NY City, right? Cabs are common, and you have the subway. Contrast that with many places on the west coast, where MAYBE a bus or some such can get you where you want to go. When I was in the US Navy, I went home to get my car so that I could have a better ability to get around (shore duty). I left about 5 PM on Friday. I took buses and cabs and finally had a family member pick me up about 20 miles from home at 2 AM. I should have just asked that family member to drive to Long Beach and get me, and go back home. That would have taken 3 hours, tops. It was only 55 miles!

If you are addressing the vehicle "culture", well I'll bet you money that there is probably a newspaper report somewhere detailing how two young bravos were racing their parents' buckboards and had an accident.

[Aegon]

The automobile absolutely made getting places so much easier that it would be impossible for it not to be popular. The thing to remember is that some areas (in fact vast tracts of land) do not have any sort of infrastructure for personal transportation beyond having a car or truck and some federally provided road available.  You live in NY City, right? Cabs are common, and you have the subway. Contrast that with many places on the west coast, where MAYBE a bus or some such can get you where you want to go. When I was in the US Navy, I went home to get my car so that I could have a better ability to get around (shore duty). I left about 5 PM on Friday. I took buses and cabs and finally had a family member pick me up about 20 miles from home at 2 AM. I should have just asked that family member to drive to Long Beach and get me, and go back home. That would have taken 3 hours, tops. It was only 55 miles!

If you are addressing the vehicle "culture", well I'll bet you money that there is probably a newspaper report somewhere detailing how two young bravos were racing their parents' buckboards and had an accident.

Yeah but you're using problems that exist as a result of the popularization of car usage that wouldn't otherwise exist if, for the last 100+ years, we prioritized different, more accessible means of transportation.

This is really more of a theoretical question that we can't really do much about today. Hence the History section.

[The Grand Nudger]

Cars were more accessible, from the point of view of government.  Specifically in that it didn't have to buy them. It's one of those self reinforcing kind of problems. We need to get around. We couldn't afford to get around. We all individual hauled our asses around. An entire infrastructure was formed around it, siphoning off trillions upon trillions over the decades. Now that infrastructure threatens to undo us.....but......we still need to get around, even moreso than before.

[ignoramus]

Why stop at cars! Planes, trains?
The Titanic burnt like 6 thousand tons of coal a day?

What alternatives does our planet offer to the combustion engine?
Now we may have hitech batteries but what about in the industrial age?

Everything comes back down to dirty smelly polluting coal...
I'm still waiting for my Mr Fusion to arrive from ebay for $99.99.

[Fireball]

Cars were more accessible, from the point of view of government.  Specifically in that it didn't have to buy them.  It's one of those self reinforcing kind of problems.  We need to get around.  We couldn't afford to get around.  We all individual hauled our asses around.  An entire infrastructure was formed around it, siphoning off trillions upon trillions over the decades.   Now that infrastructure threatens to undo us.....but......we still need to get around, even moreso than before.

Heh, we need to get around less if we can use UPS or some other delivery company to deliver our stuff that we used to go to the store for. That's a bit simplistic, but I remember when people used to go to (and still do go to them, to some extent) swap meets to get things they wanted on the cheap. Nowadays it's Amazon or something, and UPS delivers it. I just sold some machining equipment to someone on the other side of the continent. That equipment is pretty much obsolete, but he wanted it. Cheap shipping FTW! NFW would he or I have driven half way, for example, to effectuate a transfer. Not for $200.

I'd venture to say that at some point the internet will reduce our need to "get around", as far as informational things are concerned. But a delivery system will still be required for physical objects. It's late and I'm going to sleep soon. But I find this topic interesting. I'll pick up on it tomorrow. Don't solve it all before I get back, OK?

[onlinebiker]

Cars have some distinct advantagess.

Can you imagine some teenaged boy trying to rip off a piece of ass in the back seat of a bus????

[The Grand Nudger]

UPS uses cars to deliver to people who use their cars to pay for the goods.  Those goods (and those vehicles) were made by people who drive to work in cars in a factory that has all of it's goods delivered by cars - repeat ad infinitum.

Distributed production necessitated transport, and the realities of the distribution (not all of them still relevant) won't ever be solved by changing anything about transport.  We have to condense our productive space, imo. Less reason to transport means less transportation cost. It may have been impossible to locate our various industries nearer each other before...but that's far less the case now.