It’s an older article, but the point stands!

  • yimby
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    10 months ago

    Hi and welcome! Our take is a little bit more nuanced than that, if I may be bold enough to speak on behalf of the community. We understand that most people don’t have a choice but to own and drive a car for most of your everyday needs: here we call that car dependence. The sane among us recognize that most people didn’t necessarily choose this way of living, and most acknowledge that those who enjoy it have that right.

    We do recognize that car dependence has a lot of negative impacts on society: from climate to economy to health to geopolitics and more (there’s whole books on the subject). And we’re a growing group of people who strive to build a better world than the one we inherited. What that means is taking action to reduce car dependence and instead promote alternatives like public transit, walkable towns, and cities built for people (not for cars). It’s a multifacted issue, far beyond the (incendiary) name implies. This discussion is about trains and how safe they are compared to cars, which kill over 50 thousand people a year in the United States, and injure millions more. It doesn’t have to be this way.

    Wouldn’t it be great to not have to drive 30 miles each day? That’s the kind of future we’re trying to build for the growing number of people who desire that. Accomplishing that is difficult and takes time and political action that many in this community are trying to build.