an argument for car culture

Seen here:

What becomes clear is that, in policy circles, it is now impossible to express any opinion which is pro-car or in favor of roadbuilding. The only approved vision of the future involves extracting people from their cars and cramming them into some form of mass transit. This is obvious nonsense. While trains and buses are fine for very specific journeys, for the overwhelming number of journeys we make day to day, the car is either irreplaceable, or else supreme. If it’s raining, if you have luggage, if you have children, if you want to transport anything heavier than a suitcase, if you want to travel at an unusual time or anywhere remotely rural, the car or van wins hands down. And I write this as someone who really likes trains.

New roads might be better than rail in countless ways. For one thing, you can build houses alongside them. Indeed, when you take land value into account, the case for road-building becomes stronger still. High-speed rail mostly connects places where land is already expensive with other places where land is also expensive. It is centripetal, funneling people into areas which are already comparatively rich. Roads, by contrast, are centrifugal – they disperse people and their money, adding value to land that was cheap beforehand. If you can capture the increased value of newly accessible land (for instance by selling planning permission) it becomes possible for government to build roads for free while reducing the housing shortage.

Click the above link. There's an interesting tweet there.

In South Korea, a small and densely populated country, I get along fine without a car. When I was in the States recently, though, I don't think I could have done half of what I'd done had I not rented a car. Cars pollute, and roads take up space. Crash statistics for cars are pretty bad—about 30,000-40,000 deaths per year (but that number is decreasing). That said, the points made above shouldn't be ignored. This is a good discussion to have.