Americans do not care about biklanes or modifying their cities in that way, they want driverless cars and more large multilane highways/roads so that's what we will get.
Americans don't like walking/biking and love cars.
It's not really learned helplessness it's just what the vast majority of our country wants.
Remember the majority voters voted someone in who specifically campaigned on getting out of any climate change agreements and to bring back coal mining.
Roads cost $200b a year and that doesn’t include the individual cost of owning a vehicle, fuel, insurance and maintenance. It also ignores the opportunity cost in having parking lots and land taken up by highways instead of being more economically productive in even small cities.
Yes, I was never against that. I initially argued/asked where do you get the money to implement it if the city is broke? And until that is solved decades from now maybe, how should people get to work without their cars?
Colorado is shipping a regional rail project in the front range. Service will start in ‘29 and the district is voting on new sales tax to fund the expansions.
It’s a very solvable problem. We’re also not talking about removing car infrastructure just funding a small amount of reasonable local transit. You can get quite far with Bus Rapid Transit, bike facilities, etc. The goal is to reduce the vehicle miles traveled in cars in general. Right now it’s very hard for any individual to make that choice because the transit infrastructure sucks.
The sales tax comes out to $0.03 more on a $100 purchase. I don’t think this argument about providing these types of social services really holds that much water. That obviously depends on the actual tax amount but in the case of Front Range Passenger Rail it’s safe to say that the value provided by having a train outweighs the mill-levy.
I don’t know anything about your country’s situation so I can’t speak to it specifically. The US spends $200bn/year on roads and then there is the massive socialized cost of owning a car. Providing alternative options pretty clearly outweighs the social cost.
Taking regional rail to avoid a car trip would already pay back the sales tax I will pay many times over.
> US/Colorado money
CO is quite constrained in taxes compared to other states. Any tax increase must be voted on and have the spending already determined. This sounds nice in theory, in practice people hate new taxes intrinsically even when services are horrifically deteriorated.
Americans don't like walking/biking and love cars.
It's not really learned helplessness it's just what the vast majority of our country wants.
Remember the majority voters voted someone in who specifically campaigned on getting out of any climate change agreements and to bring back coal mining.