this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
120 points (96.9% liked)
Asklemmy
43984 readers
1114 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The specific numbers dont matter.
If you take 1 million cars with an average useage time of 1 hour a day and reduce that by 10 minutes thats roughly the same as taking 1 in 6 cars off the road from an emisions standpoint.
Make it 500,000 cars and reduce it by only 5 minutes its roughly the same as 41,000 cars worth of emissions that werent pumped out of exhaust pipes.
No it doesnt solve everything. Yes a well designed public transport system would be a much bigger environmental benefit. But its something that could be done with current tech and without massive infrastructure overhauls with a real tangible benefit for the environment and society.
The numbers do matter because the numbers are literally your entire argument. You're arguing building for cars is more effective, you cannot make arguments about effectiveness without numbers. Alternative transport methods can be done with current tech since alternative transport methods literally existed before cars. There are plenty of examples of places that aren't car-centric, and most major car-centric cities weren't originally built around cars. I honestly have no idea how you could have thought that's a remotely reasonable argument? It's utter nonsense.
Even if your massive infrastructure overhaul argument was valid^1^, we're literally talking about a hypothetical scenario where you can pump absurd amounts of money into a project.
^1.^ ^It's^ ^not,^ ^just^ ^build^ ^other^ ^infrastructure^ ^instead^ ^of^ ^more^ ^roads.^ ^From^ ^a^ ^strictly^ ^capitalist^ ^perspective^ ^it^ ^pays^ ^for^ ^itself^ ^when^ ^more^ ^space^ ^can^ ^be^ ^used^ ^for^ ^taxable^ ^business^ ^instead^ ^of^ ^the^ ^dead^ ^weight^ ^of^ ^parking,^ ^and^ ^those^ ^businesses^ ^are^ ^more^ ^accessible^ ^to^ ^foot^ ^traffic^ ^making^ ^them^ ^more^ ^profitable^ ^and^ ^therefore^ ^generating^ ^more^ ^taxes.^ ^Not^ ^to^ ^mention^ ^the^ ^maintenance^ ^costs.^