Originally Posted by
Mobile 155
I have known others that have as well. Still I contend the choice to do so was made with the same amount of thought that someone makes in a job choice or the purchase of a car. None of the people I have met assumed the rest of society is fooled into buying a car or intimidated out of riding the bus by the auto industry.
For 8 years all in my friends and I rode motorcycles. Not once in that 8 years did any of us think we were better informed than our neighbors or fellow workers. Nor were we interested in riding a bus then either. And while our fuel costs were less than our pick up driving friends none of us took a cut in pay. And I am not now about to advocate that my doctor be paid minimum wage after medical school.
The guy that got me back into cycling was car free for years. His car freeness did cost him money when his job moved. He survived and eventually got a better job and no longer is car free. If asked today what he preferred he is happier today.
It's a different thing to choose to LCF in an economy where most people drive than one where most people take transit and/or bike. In some ways it's better and in some ways worse; but overall the costs of everyone driving and all the infrastructure that goes with that have to get passed on in prices, rents, and other expenses.
People think the government is taxing the rich and big corporations to pay for the roads and highways, but they are passing the costs back down to us, assuming they're not voluntarily losing money. So we would all do ourselves a favor by reducing our collective transportation costs by reducing the total percentage of people who own and drive their own vehicles, but as long as people like you keep managing to convince others that they're better off paying more so the economy will be bigger, most will go on failing to understand that less overhead is better if you can get the same value out of a less expensive thing.
Now you will say that being able to drive your own car everywhere holds more value than taking transit and/or biking, but it ultimately doesn't because of all the land-waste and time-waste caused by sprawl and congestion. People also don't want to work more hours to drive when they could get the same standard of living with less money by not driving.
Really, can you imagine that if you gave people the choice to reverse environmental/climate problems without lowering their quality of life by replacing driving with transit and bike riding that they would turn that down? The only reason they don't is because they are afraid it won't work and they'll end up losing money and/or quality of life without getting what they opted for. They are right, too, because as I explained the transit and infrastructure projects would be funded at levels that would pay everyone involved to own a car and drive, and the overall stimulus would keep many other people employed at those levels too.
So we are stuck with the automotive system until we outlaw it or somehow all choose to reject it and go LCF voluntarily. As long as that doesn't happen, though, no amount of investment in alternatives will work because the money will just end up recirculating into the automotive economy, which people will inevitably utilize instead of transit because the transit will be kept inadequate to deter most people from choosing it.