I visited London in 2000 and was amazed how well the Tube worked there. At the time I could buy a 1-week pass for around $10US and get everywhere in the city. That’s great if you’re not going anywhere, but the US is a lot more spread out and many of us don’t have a choice about getting jobs in other cities, so it does change the dynamic quite a bit. The other problem is that our transit systems are just not efficient. I can get most places on a bus, but it takes twice as long. I already only have a few hours between the time I get home and when I go to bed, so it feels like quite a sacrifice to give up yet another 90+ minutes of what free time I have. If I worked in the same city and it only took 10-15 minutes to get anywhere via mass transit then yeah, I would have a very different outlook on things.
So yeah, #1 I’m in agreement with to some degree, with caveats for particular situations. For the people where mass transit is suitable, what we have is a disaster through poor planning, poor execution, and outright corruption, and it could be immensely better.
#2… Well maybe. I drove a car for 25 years but now drive an SUV because quite frankly I work on a lot of projects and am constantly grabbing wood or metal supplies. Wednesday I’ll be making a couple trips to get some hand-me-down computers for my department which are actually a nice upgrade for what I’ll be replacing. Meanwhile I’m also building a new utility trailer this Summer (and again has required picking up a lot of materials) to make it easier to haul those things that don’t fit in the SUV. No this doesn’t apply for most people, but some of us do actually use these vehicles for their intended purpose. I didn’t just go buy the largest obnoxious thing I could find, I picked one that fits in the garage but carries the majority of what I need.
#3… god yes! If you want that sort of off-road vehicle then keep it off road! Otherwise if you want to prove how small your dick is, steroids are cheaper.
#4… I work in a college town, I see kids at every light holding up traffic. Or weaving through traffic on the highway because causing an accident is worth getting one more car ahead.
I see a lot of people who ride bikes or walk around town, and there has been some efforts to add or improve the bike lanes. There have also been some spectacular failures at this, like taking one of the more major streets in town, cutting it down to a single lane so the other lane can be used for bikes with no separation but painted lines, and then gasping in amazement when the number of accidents increases. They did learn though, and now they’re moving bike lanes to raised paths so there’s some hope. We have a long ways to go to make infrastructure more friendly to other modes of transportation, but it would also help if employers started accepting the fact that a large number of jobs can be work-from-home so they would quit forcing everyone to drive without reason. Maybe some day we’ll get there.
