> Why do people pretend there are situations they can't live without a car,
Because 95% of Americans truly can't live without a car.
If you banned cars today, I could never get to work, never see my family, my child could never attend school, we could never get groceries, and within two weeks we would all become broke and homeless. This situation described 94% of the people in my city (population around 1 million)
> even a lot of people in your city do it.
Yep. ~3% of the population of my city take public bus transit instead of the public car transit everyone else uses. The bus folks spend 2+ more hours commuting every day, and have access to only about 15% of the MSA (by population), or 10% of the MSA (by land). They also pay higher rent than everyone else, for this privilege. And the cost to provide this service to them, has a TCO higher than just providing them a 'free' car in the first place.
(And, to clarify, I don't even consider this a bad thing. I get it, for kids, or elderly folks, disabled people, people who just don't want a car or whatever. It's good that the general public makes sure everyone has transportation, and it's good to spend tax money to ensure this happens. But it is by no means more "efficient" or "greener" than driving is)
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Could we "fix" this? Sure! If everyone was a super wealthy millionaire, like in Manhattan, it would be no problem. Build a whole bunch of luxury condo buildings, make everyone live in them, ban all existing public car transportation and make everyone take some LRT train/bus that only goes to the few places you allowed, is often late or broken or screwed up in some way (at the same rate that MTA is, for example). Soft-ban parenting and children while you are at it, everyone will be so busy paying off their rent they won't be able to afford kids anyway. Force everyone to re-wire their whole lives to live in your box.
And we have that in my city too. About 3% of people here are wealthy enough that they can judiciously rewire their entire life to support "car-free" living. They are hyper wealthy, so they can afford to live in the heart of downtown, in a glass condo, living right on top of their satellite office, where they pretend "banning cars is so amazing and eco-friendly" as they pay to get their shopping delivered (by a poor person in a car), get their groceries delivered (by a poor person in a car), eat at restaurants (staffed by poor people driving in via cars), and drink at bars (staffed by poor people driving in via cars).
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This is why most Americans are looking to renewable energy and EV vehicles. It's realistically the only shot non-wealthy Americans have at living any sort of sustainable lifestyle. The financial pollution from cities is just too much to handle, and has no functional workaround for real people.
> Because 95% of Americans truly can't live without a car.
I'm calling bullshit on this. Way more than 5% of Americans are already living without cars. You don't have a great read on how many people actually get around. Most cities of any size have buses, and people actually do take those buses.
Also, the median household income in Manhattan is ~$70k/year. I have no idea where you're getting this idea that everyone who lives here must be "super wealthy millionaires", but it's not remotely true.
You're making the typical false claim that rich people can afford to not drive and poor people are dependent on cars, when it's actually precisely the opposite; richer people are more likely to have cars, whereas poor people are more likely to not have them, and be dependent on public transportation. The poor people aren't driving into Manhattan each day for work, that's for damn sure! They can't afford the $60/day parking cost! And this is true in all cities, not just NYC.
> You don't have a great read on how many people actually get around.
I'm reading the numbers direct from my local bus authority. I'm sure transit ridership in Manhattan is higher (since they actually have a real subway system and such). But of course, most Americans don't have any access to LRT / subways, so...
> You're making the typical false claim that rich people can afford to not drive and poor people are dependent on cars.
Because it's mostly true? Especially for all the Americans who don't live in Manhattan, the literal wealthiest place in the nation.
I know this is going to sound odd, but most Americans don't live in NYC. Hell, most NY metro residents themselves don't even live in NYC (only about ~43% of them do, according to the census estimates)
Approximately 8.6% of US households do not own a single car, as of 2017. Only 76.4% of commuters commute via single-occupancy vehicles; another 8.9% commute via carpool. These statistics are nationwide. Your claim that "95% of Americans truly can't live without a car" is contradicted by the fact that more than 5% do not own a car in the first place.
It's true that living in, say, Rantoul, Illinois is going to be difficult without a car. But the list of cities that have at least some form of bus service does go down to some pretty small cities (<100,000), and most of the country anyways lives in large cities or their suburbs, where transit is viable.
You were talking about all Americans, and now you're talking about just your one city. Your one city isn't representative of all of America.
How are you defining wealthiest place in the nation? There are many cities with much higher median incomes than Manhattan. The median income of Palo Alto, for example, is $137,000/yr, which is about double Manhattan's. And there's plenty more cities like Palo Alto across the country with high congregations of wealth. And Manhattan, of course, isn't a city in its own right; the median income across all of NYC is only $50k/yr. Manhattan is much more diverse class-wise than you seem to realize. I think you're conflating all of Manhattan with just a few of the most tony neighborhoods. Here's another source; no county in NYC comes close to the list of top-earning counties in the country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_countie...
Please, show some figures supporting your claims about Manhattan.
And it's literally not true that rich people tend to drive the most and poor people the least. Here's a source (one of many) on that: https://nhts.ornl.gov/briefs/PovertyBrief.pdf Here's a quote from the abstract: "Households in poverty are limited to a shorter radius of travel compared to higher income households. They have the lowest
rates of single occupancy vehicle use and the highest usage of less costly travel modes: carpool, transit, bike and walk. Households in poverty have lower vehicle ownership rates, which has led to an increased use of alternative modes of
transportation and higher vehicle occupancy rates."
"And we have that in my city too. About 3% of people here are wealthy enough that they can judiciously rewire their entire life to support "car-free" living."
Because 95% of Americans truly can't live without a car.
If you banned cars today, I could never get to work, never see my family, my child could never attend school, we could never get groceries, and within two weeks we would all become broke and homeless. This situation described 94% of the people in my city (population around 1 million)
> even a lot of people in your city do it.
Yep. ~3% of the population of my city take public bus transit instead of the public car transit everyone else uses. The bus folks spend 2+ more hours commuting every day, and have access to only about 15% of the MSA (by population), or 10% of the MSA (by land). They also pay higher rent than everyone else, for this privilege. And the cost to provide this service to them, has a TCO higher than just providing them a 'free' car in the first place.
(And, to clarify, I don't even consider this a bad thing. I get it, for kids, or elderly folks, disabled people, people who just don't want a car or whatever. It's good that the general public makes sure everyone has transportation, and it's good to spend tax money to ensure this happens. But it is by no means more "efficient" or "greener" than driving is)
--------
Could we "fix" this? Sure! If everyone was a super wealthy millionaire, like in Manhattan, it would be no problem. Build a whole bunch of luxury condo buildings, make everyone live in them, ban all existing public car transportation and make everyone take some LRT train/bus that only goes to the few places you allowed, is often late or broken or screwed up in some way (at the same rate that MTA is, for example). Soft-ban parenting and children while you are at it, everyone will be so busy paying off their rent they won't be able to afford kids anyway. Force everyone to re-wire their whole lives to live in your box.
And we have that in my city too. About 3% of people here are wealthy enough that they can judiciously rewire their entire life to support "car-free" living. They are hyper wealthy, so they can afford to live in the heart of downtown, in a glass condo, living right on top of their satellite office, where they pretend "banning cars is so amazing and eco-friendly" as they pay to get their shopping delivered (by a poor person in a car), get their groceries delivered (by a poor person in a car), eat at restaurants (staffed by poor people driving in via cars), and drink at bars (staffed by poor people driving in via cars).
-----
This is why most Americans are looking to renewable energy and EV vehicles. It's realistically the only shot non-wealthy Americans have at living any sort of sustainable lifestyle. The financial pollution from cities is just too much to handle, and has no functional workaround for real people.