Cars seem to live in a special category in peoples minds where the costs simply do not exist, and thus the problems can be solved by simply throwing infinitely more resources and space at the problems.
Cars are inherently spatially inefficient, which makes them a terrible form of transport for cities. That is the hard mathematical reality that so many people avoid reckoning with.
Think of the space taken up by 1000 people on a single metro train, vs 1000 people in nearly 1000 cars. Think of 1000 people on bikes vs 1000 people in cars.
It's so obvious that this is a terrible way of moving people about, and we see this in congestion, in longer commutes in spite of cars traveling at higher speeds, sprawling patterns of urban development, road deaths (the biggest cause of death of children in most western countries), noise, pollution, sprawl, inactivity and social isolation.
Only ideology (car brain) prevents people from seeing it as the problem it is.
Public transport is far, far more cost effective than car infrastructure. And that's just direct costs - not even including the cost of sprawl (which makes all other infrastructure more expensive), road deaths and injuries, noise, pollution, storage costs for vehicles, the health costs of inactivity and social isolation, etc etc.
> build good transit for the busiest part of the city (downtown) and build large parking lots around the terminals
This is a terrible idea because the numbers simply do not stack up. A typical metro train can carry roughly 1000 people. A large car park might fill half of a single train. At a station with good frequency, a train will leave the station roughly every 5 minutes.
A much better idea is to run good regular public transport to the station, build bike paths to the station and quality bike parking at the station, and build more housing at/near the station instead of a big parking lot.
Parking lots near stations make sense only at the farthest out place. They are for farmers coming into town for that big once a month trip, and hobby farmers driving from their "acrage" to their day job. The vast majority of people should be taking transit from their door to where they are going.
Note that I said "place" not station - stations should be your highest demand places since they are so easy to get to. That real estate should be far too valuable to stores too waste on a parking lot. That parking lot should have a shuttle to the station, not be a station itself.
Remember once somebody has got into a car they have paid most of the costs of having a car. They will always be asking why not drive all the way instead of stopping part way. Your goal should be every family sells a car because they don't need two (they still keep a "truck" for towing the boat or whatever they think they need it for, they just don't use it for most trips and don't need a backup vehicle)
It reinforces ego. It's a common malady. An optional one (which isn't to say it's always easy to ditch given constant and insistent if irrational social reinforcement).
Good example of how ideology (and motivated reasoning) really clouds people's thinking.
Personal liberty and free markets are in direct conflict with each other. Free markets require private property, which requires enforcement through violent aggression (or the threat thereof).
Free markets and private property might be justified for any number of (other) reasons, but "personal liberty" isn't one of them.
I'm gonna ignore the first part because I've found on the internet people don't agree on what "free markets" mean.
For the second part you don't need a business to be free. As a simple counterexample: I wouldn't say that human ancestors hunting and gathering in the savannah weren't free (they had literally no governmental limits) and it would take an absurd stretch to say they owned a business.
You're misunderstanding or strawmanning. You don't need a business to be free, obviously, and no not everyone that's free has a business (???). But that's different from being forbidden from making one.
The concept of a business can only exist within the context of a myriad of laws (property law, contract law, etc) all of which require violent enforcement or the threat thereof, ie reduction in personal liberty.
> You can't have free markets without personal liberty
I literally just explained why the exact opposite is true. Not a proactive conversation if you’re not going to engage at all with what I said and just talk past it.
Uh huh honey. Newsflash: Most people are doing their jobs because they have to to get by, and don’t have the choice to work on socially-useful-but-not-lucrative stuff.
What are you talking about? It will have overwhelmingly strongly positive effects, while also raising revenue to fund stuff like more transit. Congestion charging is great and every city should do it!
Sure, but imagine how that would have to work. What percentage of housing is publicly owned? Can I buy publicly owned housing? For what price? If I want to sell my house, how much can I sell it for?
How do they price housing? If there an area if the country that's a great place to live but it's all full if renters and owners, how do I move there if I get a job there? Look at how hard it is for people to get into rent controlled places in NYC.
If I'm born into an are with very little employment opportunity, it seems like my chances for upward mobility are extremely hampered.
Cars are inherently spatially inefficient, which makes them a terrible form of transport for cities. That is the hard mathematical reality that so many people avoid reckoning with.
Think of the space taken up by 1000 people on a single metro train, vs 1000 people in nearly 1000 cars. Think of 1000 people on bikes vs 1000 people in cars.
It's so obvious that this is a terrible way of moving people about, and we see this in congestion, in longer commutes in spite of cars traveling at higher speeds, sprawling patterns of urban development, road deaths (the biggest cause of death of children in most western countries), noise, pollution, sprawl, inactivity and social isolation.
Only ideology (car brain) prevents people from seeing it as the problem it is.