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When I grow up, I want to be a car!

One thing that I find rather puzzling in the English language is the way that it distinguishes between cars, vans and SUV's. Assuming that I have understood it correctly, an SUV is not a type of a "car" but a completely separate category, a strange distinction whose reason I don't quite comprehend any more than saying that a "hatchback" would not be a type of a car. So if somewhere there is a sign that says "cars only", it doesn't mean what I'd think it means. The Finnish language make no such distinction, but pretty much anything that has four wheels and is driven around is an "auto". (On the other hand, Finnish has different words for "playing" depending on whether you play flute, chess or tag, a distinction that the English-speakers perhaps find superfluous.)

Of course, in practice for me this is a moot point, since for me a nonexistent car is the very best car in the sense that it doesn't cost anything, and it never breaks down or needs any gas or maintenance. Finding a parking spot for it is also no hassle, no matter where I go. But as enthusiastically as I bang the drum for public transit, I still have to say that the points made by Steve Dutch in his new essay "Why People Don't Use Mass Transit" should be pretty damn obvious to anybody with common sense, and it's about time to understand that any attempts to develop mass transit by denying these obvious truths are doomed to fail miserably. Even in a big city, it is just not possible to create a mass transit system that could possibly be better than owning an automobile for a large number of people and families, and it is futile to pretend otherwise.

A couple of individual important points, plus my additional comments to them:

Once someone decides to buy a car, the economic balance shifts sharply in favor of driving. The only way to shift the economic balance in favor of mass transit is to create a system where it becomes feasible for large numbers of people to give up owning a car.

This is by far the most important point that professor Dutch makes, and the basis of pretty much everything else. Once you own a car and have to pay all its fixed costs, you might as well use it as much as you can, since the marginal cost and convenience of each extra mile is so low compared to using public transit. Hence, the only feasible way to advance mass transit is to identify people who are currently at the margin so that owning a car is a slightly better deal for them than giving up the car and taking public transit instead, and making public transit more attractive for these people so that they will do this trade. It is futile to even try to convert people for whom taking a car is a many times better deal than using public transit. Attempts to promote mass transit for these people through coercion will inevitably fail.

If traveling by car really does have high indirect costs not shared by public transportation, the case for making all mass transit free is so compelling you really have to wonder why advocates of mass transit don't propose it.

The simple reason why we don't advocate this is, of course, that doing so would make buses and subways urine-drenched congregation spots for drunken bums, the homeless and other assorted underclass scum, thus driving away the middle class from the public transit the same way that they were driven out of American cities by policies that gave the streets to these undesirables. Also, the transit system must enforce merciless zero tolerance against all disturbances of social order within it, instantly throwing out all panhandlers, hygienically challenged bums, graffiti "artists", rowdy teenage gangs and basically anybody who does not behave the way the middle class would behave.

As for the proper price of a ticket, we can make an economic argument that says that an overall efficient mass transport system will necessarily operate at a loss, because the marginal cost of adding one more passenger is so low compared to the marginal benefit (for the national economy, not to the transit system itself) of doing so. In this light, I would like to point out the basic mistake that the public transit opponents tend to make. That is, counting only the costs of having mass transit, while ignoring the costs of not having mass transit. One political cartoon I once saw summarized this attitude perfectly by showing a picture of a highway full of cars with the caption "Necessary investment", and next to it, a picture of a bus with the caption "Useless subsidy".

If a mass transit system of a large metropolitan city (for example, Gotham, Opal City or Metropolis) operates at a loss of (say) a billion dollars a year, I would consider this to be money god damn well spent if this saves the city and its inhabitants a billion dollars in building and maintaining roads and parking, plus five billion dollars for many inhabitants who thus don't need to own, drive and park cars at all. Of course, it certainly doesn't follow that all inefficiency is good, but the system should be made to run as efficiently as possible, while accepting that the system will produce profit only indirectly. (Once again, the phenomenon of "seen and not seen".) As for that ticket price, perhaps the single tickets should match the average cost per passenger, but an unlimited monthly pass shouldn't cost more than a hundred bucks or so, a pittance compared to the costs of owning and maintaining a car.

Also, since a major cause of urban sprawl and congestion is the middle class moving to the suburbs, the obvious cure is to eliminate the problems that drive the middle class out.

I could not agree more with this. However, we merely need to think about the people and groups who would make this policy politically impossible, to suddenly understand a lot better why so many cities are in trouble and the connotations that the words "inner city" have in America.

Corollary: Affluent Customers Will Not Use Mass Transit. It's not that they're selfish, or that they don't care about the environment. It's not cost-effective. The higher your salary, the more wasteful mass transit is.

So true. It is about time for the public transit advocates to understand that a car is a car is a car, and therefore when you try to reduce the number of cars, the resources to make people to ditch their cars and use public transit must be targeted to wherever they produce the biggest payoff. Converting a rich man to use public transit doesn't save the environment any more than converting a poor man to use public transit, but the latter is orders of magnitude easier to do. Converting one rich man or ten poor men to use public transit, now that is an absolute no-brainer which one we should try to do for the same price.

When transporting a group, cars almost always beat mass transit. Mass transit systems that fail to recognize that the unit of travel is the group, not the individual, are doing more to promote automobiles than Detroit ever could.

Also an God-honest truth, long neglegted in many places due to short-sightedness. The Toronto Transit System offers a day pass that allows the whole family unlimited travel in buses and subways for a day. Now guys, keep your eye on the overall picture and drop the silly requirement that it has to be a family with at most two adults, and allow any group of people to travel together this way.

9 comments

>Even in a big city, it is just not possible to create a mass transit system that could possibly be better than owning an automobile for a large number of people and families, and it is futile to pretend otherwise.

Depends on how the city is planned. If you mean an average North American urban sprawl then yes, it's rather difficult.

All those highways and streets are being paid for by taxes on vehicle owners, which taxes are enormous here in California. So I don't see why roads are subsidized. It's what people want and pay for. Meanwhile the buses in my city routinely carry 3 or 4 passengers with the remaining seats empty.

Actually a group that contains small children is much much easier to transport on the bus or train. As long as the bus or train is free from urine-soaked unmedicated schizophrenics, a nursing mother will usually choose to ride public transit, because you can't breastfeed a child in a carseat comfortably, and if you are the driver you can't do it at all. It is much easier to interact with children and keep them happy when you are on a bus or train. I absolutely loathe taking children in the car. I hate how cars drag out childhood dependency. Children at a very early age can pay their own fares and hold onto their own tickets on the bus, give up seats to the elderly and move out of the way, modulate their voices in respect to other people, and otherwise act as members of society whose behavior affects other people, as opposed to remaining useless appendages of the nuclear family unit. And by nine in a safe area, or 12 in a less safe one, they can RIDE THE BUS BY THEMSELVES, freeing the parent from the thankless and loathesome task of ferrying them about.

I think the SUV/car distinction is made to avoid the mpg requirements mandated for "cars" by the government to which SUV's are exempt.

Generally the subway/buses are thought of as poor person travel. Women want to date men with cars. Moreover the subways market themselves this way. They don't/can't turn away any person, but they also feel they have to accomidate every persons needs, no matter how much it costs to convert existing infrastructure to meet the needs of disabled.

Ben is almost correct. ITs not actually MPG rates that create the difference, its emmissions standards ( thank you socialist green party fucks)

The SUV is built on a TRUCK frame, thus avoiding the emmisions standards that went into place in the 90s in the US and Canada. As a result many people found that thier cars filled with family members couldnt climb a decent hill without grinding to a halt. Hence the distinction. An SUV, as a separate class of vehicle is not required to meet CAR emmission standards, instead TRUCK emmission standards, which require higher engine output for towing.

Thats why SUVs are the dominant choice amoung families now for buying. A Car wont get a family where it wants to go anymore, thanks to GOV meddling.

Anon says:


And by nine in a safe area, or 12 in a less safe one, they can RIDE THE BUS BY THEMSELVES, freeing the parent from the thankless and loathesome task of ferrying them about.


I never found the task of ferrying my two around either thankless or loathsome.

Perhaps you are have the wrong frame of mind.

Perhaps. I am not sure what the right frame of mind is, to prefer chaffeuring giant lumps of boys who at other points in history would be considered ready to go to war, to productive activity. What is that frame of mind, exactly? I imagine Prozac helps.

May I point out too that when manufactures reduced the capacity of most cars from 6 to 5 passengers (by eliminating the middle front seat), they made it impossible for a two-child family to bring along two extra kids (one friend each), or a three-kid family to bring along any of the kids' friends. Of course, air bags made the front passenger sear off-limits to children, exascerbating the problem. So families end up with SUVs or minivans (another unnecessary categorisation).

A Car wont get a family where it wants to go anymore, thanks to GOV meddling.

Haha, bullshit. My BMW 330dAT gets me pretty much everywhere, and in America that car would cost less than most SUV pieces of shit. If your lardass doesn't fit in a proper car, don't blame the GOV.

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