Absolutely both are needed. I struggle to understand how people think a rural area with 5 minute drives between homes could be connected to a public transit network that is timely and not astronomically expensive.

Tiny cars is the only solution

But what if one day five years from now you need to move 20 refrigerators at midnight and all the trains suddenly break down?

/s

But then how can we turn trillions of dollars by shackling people to an expensive automobile along with its repairs and insurance costs? How can we further exploit by forcing the use of these vehicles, thus requiring the purchase of their fuels and the use of asphalt companies to pave endless highways and streets? The public yearns to be exploited- no, it needs to be.

I swear this sub is the same thing repeated in different variations over and over

pragmatically we should do both. we know no matter how much we scream or wish it that cars are not going to go away but we can expand transit and we should move as many autos and such to electric.

Ah, I see that Moo Deng has infiltrated the fediverse, welcome queen

Two things can be true.

We should reduce our dependence on cars. Also, our vehicles should be Electric. Ine dos not preclude the other and so saying we shouldn't do one because of the other is a fallacy.

During WWII they invented the concept of gross domestic product to quantify a country's ability to wage war. The higher the GDP, the bigger the military it could support.

GDP is a measure of how much economic activity there is. If I pay you and then you pay someone else and then that person pays me the same amount we've increased the GDP without actually doing anything. So the US, knowing this was their key performance indicator, set about increasing GDP.

So they make everyone buy a car, then gas, then service, then insurance instead of building rail infrastructure. The same goes for child care: If you make it so both parents have to work and pay someone else to watch their kids that's a much bigger boost to GDP than one or even both parents being able to stay home and raise their kids. Having everyone in a suburb have to buy their own lawnmower and trimmer and grill and stove and washer/dryer and dishwasher also boosts GDP way more than sharing things.

Plus there's the fact that cars require a lot of the same technologies and factories as a lot of war materiel. If we were ever to be in another global conflict we'd need to build all the guns and trucks and uniforms at home, and without a strong car industry we'd have to start a lot of that from scratch.

But we've got the biggest GDP in the world so I guess that's something.

Hehe cute hippo

Look, I'm not about to take transportation advice from a river mammal that enjoys showering its neighbours with faeces using its helicopter tail.

That being said, he's not wrong.

Yeah, the Public Transit situation in the USA needs a total overhaul; cities are too hostile towards foot and bike traffic. By addressing the capacity needed to transport people to their destinations and altering city planning, cars will become an option instead of a necessity. I’d love for the US to get more into trains like Europe has; that would help bridge the distance for people needing to travel cross country. I’d be able to travel more as a car free person.