[Taters91]

I'd argue that cars are not more convenient in dense cities like New York. You have to find parking, you have to navigate traffic (pedestrian, car, and e-bike), and then you have to find gas stations. With public transportation, you don't need any of that. The only inconvenience is that sometimes where you're going is a bit of a walk. Car insurance is expensive, because cars cause a lot of damage and are easy to get damaged.

[bko]

Right, because New York is not car-centric (bike lanes, very dense, few gas stations)

"Bit of a walk" is a nice way of saying it but in reality it means you are very limited with things like shopping. You're kind of stuck with the nearest walkable grocer. If you're luck enough to live by a cheap ones like Trader Joes, they are ridiculously crowded so you're paying in a different form. Or you can try your luck with Bodegas but they're often sell expired food, are overpriced and rarely have anything fresh . Then you're stuck with how much you can carry or try to use one of those granny pushers. Kids could be very difficult to wrangle as well and there are plenty of unpleasant things you have to explain to them or ignore. It's very dehumanizing

My point is that having a car is nice and I want people to have nice things. They don't belong everywhere, like NY. But overall I don't understand this push to public transportation for the sake of public transportation.

[wpm]

> ut overall I don't understand this push to public transportation for the sake of public transportation.

Then you maybe haven't spent too long thinking about it.

Climate change is a big one.

Microplastics from tire wear.

Asthma rates in children.

Obesity rates.

Etc etc etc.

Car centric design makes us poorer, fatter, less healthy. It makes our cities and towns poorer, less resilient, and uglier. I can go on.

[autoexec]

> I'd argue that cars are not more convenient in dense cities like New York.

I'd argue that if you were correct people would have already been using alternatives and there'd have been no need to punish people for driving. When you give people a better option they take it.

NYC could have improved alternatives to make them more attractive, but they choose to make driving worse instead forcing people who can't afford it to use less convenient ways to get around.

[mitthrowaway2]

People were using alternatives, but you still need to penalize driving because it's a multiagent system. Here's why.

The convenience of driving depends on traffic. If you're the only car on the road then it's very convenient. In gridlock, it's very inconvenient (but also takes the convenience of buses down with it).

So you reach some equilibrium of traffic levels where the marginal person opts for walking / subway rather than driving in all that traffic. But if you could magically reduce traffic, then driving becomes the better option and people take it.

If you want to sustain an equilibrium of lower traffic, you need to add a penalty to driving to stabilize the convenience of being the marginal driver in that equilibrium.

There are knock-on benefits to doing so, including that it makes alternatives to driving such as busses more effective.

[ARandumGuy]

Humans are not perfectly rational actors, and will often make the "wrong" decision when better options are available. Especially when a given decision may not be bad individually, but adds up when a bunch of people make the same decision. In these cases, you have to not only incentivize the behavior you want, but disincentivize the behavior you don't want.