That’s because people think it’s important to display that they still “earn” their obscene wealth by owning such “practical” vehicles as $80K pickups and SUVs that have less practicality for 99-100% of their lives than most minivans.

Used to be that people knew the goal of being wealthy is that you don’t have to even…

Vehicles are a major and growing cause of deaths in the U.S. Never even mind more distantly related things like climate change; the design of American roads—and the size of vehicles we drive on them—is intrinsically dangerous. Also, the lack of a bench or even signage for a bus stop shows huge contempt for anyone who…

It would help if people who think that the status quo is in any way okay or worth preserving—liberals and conservatives both—would realize it’s only a matter of time until the circle of “okay” shrinks and they find themselves outside it, subject to the same kind of violence and irrational hatred they’ve long been so…

That’s what needs to change. Americans are transit-averse because so many of our transit operators are garbage; they expect nothing, so the operators get away with nothing. It’s a problem with American expectations of governmental competence generally, and it needs to change.

In the face of good transit operations, if…

I still see a good number of YF Sonatas around. For whatever reason, they seem to be hybrids in disproportion to how many of them likely were when bought new. For that reason—and for love of the current car’s looks—I bought a Sonata hybrid in 2020, and ~37k miles later, I’m still loving it. The inside sometimes even…

....Or a mandate from the public to plan and run good public transit instead of forcing everyone to spend thousands of dollars a year on a car?

Part of being successfully transit-oriented is ensuring disabled people—and the elderly and children—are able to use systems as well as anyone else. That includes things like level boarding for buses and trains, platform-edge doors (though generally that’s just rail), and—for the U.S., this is the hard part—streets…

This looks good, and I appreciate the Robocop vibe, but I think it’ll date into anonymity fairly quickly. I still like my catfish-fronted Sonata. The front has character (my hybrid has the less gaping chrome front grille), and in profile, it’s such an elegant car.

Geezus. Well, next time we’re at the grocery store at the same time, please let me know which line you’re going to pick ahead of time so my personal choice doesn’t impinge on *your* personal choice to go to line 7, where I’d slow you down and thereby be justifiably shot for making you realize I’m negatively effecting…

Also really, really tired of people saying car choice is a “personal” choice. No, no it’s not; obviously, you can hurt other people with these things, and of course, they make climate change worse, literally worsening the future prospects of every other person on the planet. There is ZERO justification for not thinking…

I mean, big oil is after all Big Oil. Nonetheless, CA’s economy remains the biggest in the U.S., and as we see with things like CARB, it has substantial pull on the national scene on these types of issues. I have my problems with California (NIMBYism and antiurbanism slowly strangling the state; a very superficial…

Man...the logic is really simple. If you want to go from A to B, you at least have to walk. If you can’t afford a car or bike, and there’s no transit, you have no other choice but to use your own two legs (or four wheels, if disabled). However, if you do own a car, you DO ultimately have a choice to walk or drive, and…

I’m sorry, but if you’re judging from the American context, you have a decidedly slanted view. It’s not even that fewer people in other countries drive—although we have from 25-50% more vehicles per capita than other developed countries—but also the fact that we drive much more. In part, that’s because even for very…

The thing is, real estate values suggest that the preference for personal transportation pods is mostly an artifact of the way we’ve built our cities. I.e., places that don’t require cars to get around have higher property values. To that, you might respond, “that’s because there’s generally more people in those…

Well, the UK famously supports train travel less than any other country in Europe. I think the difference between you there and us in the U.S. is that the UK probably subsidizes driving far less than we do.

Americans don’t realize just how incredibly expensive our transportation habits are, and our government won’t…

The thing about long car commutes in cities like London and Hong Kong is that, well, you’d be crazy to take a car into these cities, and thankfully, you don’t have to. Good transit at least gives people an option not to drive, which is largely just absent in basically every city outside NYC (which is also lacking in…

True, too, but only to a certain extent. The point of cities is supposed to be that 95% of the time, everything you need to do is within them. That U.S. cities are so poorly planned is part of the reason you need a car even for the most basic of essential things: employment. Job sprawl is as serious a problem as…

Major urban centers in Europe all have good public transportation and increasingly also have good cycling networks and pedestrian environments. I’m sure charging infra still needs a lot of work, as it does everywhere, but Europe and East Asia have a MAJOR leg up on this problem because in much of those two regions,…

Not to excuse any shortcomings in Brightline’s engineers may have in designing the system, but.....How many people have died in traffic along the same corridor in Florida in the past 6 years? Considering the insanity of Florida’s roadway designs, I’d be absolutely amazed if it wasn’t at least 89. There’s such an…

Absurd, unnecessary, and designed to stop rail projects from ever being competitive. Other countries don’t do this; we shouldn’t need to, either.