To be clear, what I’m not saying is that everyone should sell their car today and just walk or cycle ten miles every day. People are always going to do what’s most convenient for them, and attempting to blame individuals for that is moronic and counter-productive.
The energy should be squarely aimed at restoring other options so that people aren’t forced to buy a $20,000 object that depreciates to nearly nothing, plus gas and insurance, just to live their normal daily lives. There will always be some areas where cars are necessary to some degree; I myself grew up twenty miles outside of a town of 4000 people. You need a car there. But there are millions of people who live in areas that used to be perfectly livable without cars, well-serviced by local and regional transit, and filled with walkable local businesses until the infrastructure was literally ripped up. A lot of those bones are still there, and that’s where the focus should be.
To be clear, what I’m not saying is that everyone should sell their car today and just walk or cycle ten miles every day. People are always going to do what’s most convenient for them, and attempting to blame individuals for that is moronic and counter-productive.
The energy should be squarely aimed at restoring other options so that people aren’t forced to buy a $20,000 object that depreciates to nearly nothing, plus gas and insurance, just to live their normal daily lives. There will always be some areas where cars are necessary to some degree; I myself grew up twenty miles outside of a town of 4000 people. You need a car there. But there are millions of people who live in areas that used to be perfectly livable without cars, well-serviced by local and regional transit, and filled with walkable local businesses until the infrastructure was literally ripped up. A lot of those bones are still there, and that’s where the focus should be.