I mostly just want the option to not need one. I like cars, I want a project car someday (I really want a little bitty miata, they’re so cute 🥹) but cars should be optional to function in society in a basic way
You should be able to take a bus, take light rail, ride a bike, walk to the store, etc.
Cars have their place. But most people don’t really need them for most things. Shorter trips are common for people, which can be handled by bike or ebike. Longer journeys can be handled by bus or rail.
Unless you are moving furniture, heavy equipment, or going to a remote location, I’m sure a bike or bus can get you there most of the time, if you live in a good city. Cars enable sprawl, which is a vicious cycle of longer commutes, less transit, and ugh … Power centers.
Shorter trips can be handled by bike by people young and able enough to use them. And I would only take an ebike into a city where I could take it inside in order not to get it stolen.
For using bus or train for longer journeys you need an existing, reliable working and affordable service, which basically only exists inside cities. Once you need to get outside the centers, or want to get from the country into the city, you are basically f-ed.
Personally I want to make personal cars prohibitevely expensive to maintain inside cities and as uncomfortable as possible.
It doesn’t cost you anything to (at least) wish a safe and functional infrastructure for other means of transportation", like public transport and cycling.
You don’t necessarily need to make others’ choices “prohibitively expensive” or “uncomfortable”. 💁
Personal cars in a city is a huge risk for everyone and it costs me and everybody else a lot. I don’t think that wanting to live in a city for people and not cars is unreasonable.
I mean, it’s really the same thing. In a reasonably designed and managed city where motorists pay their fair share via pigouvian taxes, car ownership would be quite expensive and a lot of hassle.
Obviously, a carbon tax on all gasoline. But this would also significantly increase the cost of manufacturing cars in general, since they are giant hunks of metal shipped all over the world. Then add pigouvian taxes for road noise and air quality degradation due to tire particulate matter. All emergency services which respond to motorists should be paid for by motorists. Since sidewalks and bike lanes are car infrastructure, these should be paid for by motorists - in addition to the construction and maintenance of the roads they drive on. There should be no parking mandates, and all public parking in dense areas should be paid parking. Since land is expensive in dense areas, private parking would also typically be paid parking. Since the point of highways is to efficiently transport goods and people, they would be tolled to ensure clear roadways during rush hour. So costs would go up a lot.
Meanwhile, an urban area designed for people is pleasant to be in, which precludes convenience for motorists. Being able to simply cross the street without fear requires physically forcing cars to slow down via things like narrower car lanes and raised pedestrian crossings. To allow for a pleasant and efficient experience for people, road space would need to be reclaimed for pedestrians, cyclists, and dedicated transit lanes. Especially pedestrian-heavy streets would be closed entirely to car traffic. Since a sensible city considers how its infrastructure dollars are spent vs citizens served, the city would decommission or retrofit most non-dense areas. People living in non-dense areas would need to pay a premium to cover the increased per-person infrastructure cost.
So as an auto owner, you would need to first find a place to live that has parking. This place would be expensive, because it would be a poor use of valuable urban land, since it contains a parking spot and is likely not very densely built. Owning the car, you would pay extra in your registration, gas, and tires for pigouvian taxes due to the externalities you impose on others. Pulling out of the driveway, you are immediately slowed to a crawl because pedestrians, cyclists, and transit all have priority over you as you try to move through the city. You are unable to safely drive faster than 20mph. You feel on edge the whole time you are driving because you are acutely aware of the large metal box you are operating in close proximity to many vulnerable humans. You drive somewhere else in the city and must hunt for parking, and then pay for it. It takes longer to drive and park than it does to take transit, because transit is efficient and prioritized.
