I totally get you. From my (communist) perspective, what we need is a complete overhaul and rethinking of how we designed our cities and mobility in those cities. I don’t live in the US, and I have ~okay public transportation… the problem with public transportation is if you have a family, and you have to do the shopping for all of them, it’s easier to take the car and that’s the mindset people operate with here. Especially as women still largely do the grocery shopping in the household, they don’t want to (or can’t) lug around kilos and kilos of bags. In some cases it’s even much faster to take the car, because public transport can’t get you everywhere quickly. If you live in a rural area, and you work a full-time job, shopping would take you three hours or more on public transport. And buses, at peak hours (when people do the shopping), are so full it’s almost impossible to carry bags on them. In this instance, when we consider all these aspects, the car becomes a very attractive option.
The problem of the cars themselves is on the manufacturer. They are the ones that are still making and selling SUVs, thus people will buy them. If there’s no supply, there can be no fulfilling of the demand. There’s another problem, again created by car manufacturers, that small cars are seen as “emasculating” for men, and many women prefer SUVs because they feel safer in them (from what I know SUVs are not actually safer).
There’s also of course the problem of shopping malls, concentrated shopping areas which force people to take the car. I have 2 shopping malls within 10 minutes of driving, and just one small (and more expensive) grocery store within walking distance here. People will naturally take the car to go to the shopping mall, because there’s more stuff available and it’s cheaper.
In the end, I think the act as seen in the OP is inner-class warfare, working people making other working peoples’ day worse because they made (what they think is) the wrong purchasing decision earlier in life. They should deflate the tires of (or do even worse to) cars that have not been sold yet, in dealerships and factories.
I don’t understand why some folks think people can just elect to not buy a car in a cities designed around car usage with weak public transport infrastructure especially in the US. You can live without a car with relative ease if you are for example a student but when you have a family to look after it becomes much more difficult.
I totally get you. From my (communist) perspective, what we need is a complete overhaul and rethinking of how we designed our cities and mobility in those cities. I don’t live in the US, and I have ~okay public transportation… the problem with public transportation is if you have a family, and you have to do the shopping for all of them, it’s easier to take the car and that’s the mindset people operate with here. Especially as women still largely do the grocery shopping in the household, they don’t want to (or can’t) lug around kilos and kilos of bags. In some cases it’s even much faster to take the car, because public transport can’t get you everywhere quickly. If you live in a rural area, and you work a full-time job, shopping would take you three hours or more on public transport. And buses, at peak hours (when people do the shopping), are so full it’s almost impossible to carry bags on them. In this instance, when we consider all these aspects, the car becomes a very attractive option.
The problem of the cars themselves is on the manufacturer. They are the ones that are still making and selling SUVs, thus people will buy them. If there’s no supply, there can be no fulfilling of the demand. There’s another problem, again created by car manufacturers, that small cars are seen as “emasculating” for men, and many women prefer SUVs because they feel safer in them (from what I know SUVs are not actually safer).
There’s also of course the problem of shopping malls, concentrated shopping areas which force people to take the car. I have 2 shopping malls within 10 minutes of driving, and just one small (and more expensive) grocery store within walking distance here. People will naturally take the car to go to the shopping mall, because there’s more stuff available and it’s cheaper.
In the end, I think the act as seen in the OP is inner-class warfare, working people making other working peoples’ day worse because they made (what they think is) the wrong purchasing decision earlier in life. They should deflate the tires of (or do even worse to) cars that have not been sold yet, in dealerships and factories.
I don’t understand why some folks think people can just elect to not buy a car in a cities designed around car usage with weak public transport infrastructure especially in the US. You can live without a car with relative ease if you are for example a student but when you have a family to look after it becomes much more difficult.