From what I have read, Millenials are putting noteworthy pressure on this aspect of American culture.
Also, I gave up my car years ago. With the magic of the internet, I work online. I mostly walk everywhere and occasionally take public transit.
I think we can change this substantially.
Due to the societal and environmental effects, I think it's pretty clear roads should be in no way subsidized like they currently are. If the "suburbs" had to carry their full economic costs, they would be unaffordable.
It is a combination of population density being artificially lowered through cheap road subsidies, constant pressure to eliminate taxes, and gutting alternative transport meaning roads need to satiate all human mobility and thus need huge capacity.
The light rail lines in my state (MN) don't even make enough from fares to cover their day-to-day operating costs, much less maintenance, and of course tax payers were 100% on the hook for initial construction - with a large chunk of the money coming from automobile taxes.
So yes, I would be fine with the costs of roads coming more directly from the people using them, but then we are going to do the same with transit. Deal?
Building to support multiple modes of transportation is the freedom-loving thing to do. Want to walk? Go for it! Transit? Sure! Biking? Why not? Driving? Works for me!
Want walkable, bikeable, mass transit, etc? Live downtown. Want bigger homes, yards, quite, etc? Live in the suburbs.
But really really really, biking is not incredibly dangerous.
Since then, I haven't driven a single day. I walk, take the metro or get an Uber.
I haven't been happier. Driving was easily the worst part of my day.
Humorously, we have had occasion to put me on a bus for some reason while they walked to the destination in question. I would get ahead of them, then the bus would get stuck in traffic and they would get ahead of me. We all arrived at the spot in question within a couple of minutes of each other.
Unless you are driving quite a long distance and/or on the open highway, car travel is not as much faster than foot travel as some people seem to believe. Short local trips don't see as much gain in speed as Americans seem to imagine. I think this belief persists in part because so many people just don't walk anywhere at all. They drive everywhere, even if they are only going 1/4 mile or something silly like that.
I'm going to have to disagree on this one.
I can drive to my local Wal-Mart in about 5 minutes. It would take me 30 minutes to walk there. I can drive there. Do my shopping, wait in line, pay, cart my stuff back out to my vehicle and drive home in less than the amount of time it would take to walk there.
The average speed limit on municipal roads in Ontario is 50 km/h, which means that anywhere within 5km will take 6 minutes and, within 10km, 12 minutes.
Running 5km takes me 18 minutes, and running 10km takes me closer to 40 minutes. Humans walk at about 5km/h, which means that 5km would take about 1 hour, and 10km would be 2 hours or more, since exhaustion starts to factor in.
Car travel is unimaginably faster than walking. I don't know anybody who wants to spend 2 hours on a round-trip to a grocery store 5km away when they could do it in 10 minutes in a car.
I actually got to test this. My office was about 8km from my house. If I was to leave around my usual time, it would take me about 55-65 mins minimum to reach home.
One day I hadn't taken my car and couldn't find a cab. So I said screw it and decided to walk home.
Reached home in flat 71 minutes. Would have been faster had I taken detours that cut the distance by a kilometer or so.
Which is great for us developers, but not so much for most service industry workers.
I know there are a lot of options for basic online work that isn't developer based, but I'm not sure what is available that truly pays a decent living wage.
