WASHINGTON—In a trend that is reducing the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels by curtailing the total number of cars on the road, a study released Thursday by the Transportation Department found that more Americans than ever are commuting to work splattered on the grill of a Ford F-150. “Increasingly, U.S.…
@owen @heatofignition @mondoman712 The answer is definitely not never.
I’m all for increasing the cost of driving, including fuel excises. And taxes on cars. And potentially congestion taxes.
But most people — at least in the mainland capitals — should be within comfortable walking distance of a public transport service that runs every 10 minutes first.
That’s not currently the case.
Price mechanisms aren’t as effective as they could be at changing behaviour if there are no viable alternatives in place.
So my answer is ideally petrol prices should be increased at the same time as decent bus services are rolled out across the capital cities.
And I think where public transport services are already at a decent standard, or as services are improved, we should be rolling out more localised disincentives to driving, such as pedestrianising streets.
We should be doing that right now.
@ajsadauskas @heatofignition @mondoman712
Right, it sounds like we’re mostly on the same page. If you scroll back up and read my original reply, I’m pushing back on multiple people communicating a hard line in the sand, no additional car ownership costs before there’s some vague level of transit service.
That is a lot different than asking our policymakers to coordinate transportation changes, which you seem to be saying now. Here’s the original post:
https://lemmy.world/comment/8058778
@ajsadauskas @heatofignition @mondoman712
Saying alternatives *need* to be in place *before* you can discourage car ownership is a lot different than asking policymakers to coordinate transportation changes.
@ajsadauskas @heatofignition @mondoman712
Its an important distinction because people have a delusional perception of what’s already available. Every city has a bus system. People can use 20 minute bus service! And I guarantee if middle class folks start riding those buses, the service will improve.
And additionally there are places that will never have transit. We can’t hope people will eventually just stop living in rural areas and then after that, finally, we’ll raise fuel taxes.
@owen @heatofignition @mondoman712 I think we’re broadly on the same page. It’s definitely not a hard line in the sand at my end.
I tend to view transport and urban planning policy as being deeply connected. There’s a number of tools in that policy toolkit that should ideally be used together to reduce car dependency. And pricing is one of them.
And I get the impression that for a number of pragmatic reasons, there might be some differences in what good policy looks like in the US versus Australia.
As an aside, country areas are an interesting side case. I think in many country areas, it is possible to get much better services than currently exist, but that’s a different discussion.