I think at some point you are going to have to accept the fact that no, cars are not going to go away in the US. You can crow all you want about how much better mass transportation is but you're arguing for the benefit of society to the detriment to the individual, something that will never fly in the American ethos.
Biven that all the near-term technological improvements like AR systems, electric/non-internal-combustion engines and size coming down (Smart Car and equivalents have been gaining traction in the US for some time), combined with the basic geography of most of the US outside of cities, combined with the politics, combined with things like national security (why we built the international highway system in the first place), all predict a future where no, rail lines stuffed with humans who then take rideshares to their final destination are not going to be our reality.
I'll also tack on that progressives' constant attempts to belittle car owners does a very poor job convincing anyone that mass transit should be or even can be our future. When you sneeringly tell, say, a middle-aged mother who has relied on cars her whole life and continues to rely on cars now, that she's just made arbitrary choices to need a car and she could eliminate the need for one easily, she's going to laugh at you, as she should. Unless you want to expand the definition of "choice" to be "anything that is not an involuntary biological function" it's just naively facile to say something like that, but these threads are full of people ready and able to tell their fellow Americans how they should live. That's just not going to effect any change at all.
People are downvoting you, but I see this as a very valid argument. When you live within an environment where the only realistic choice is to run your own car then you are correct.
So you design a world where the car is necessary, you gut public transport, making a car more necessary, and use road design to make walking practically impossible.
Then you get angry at progressives.
Highways engineers, town planners, and policy makers are directly responsible for your reliance on the car through the encouragement of urban sprawl.
You're largely correct, but it is also true that the car ownership centric choices made on infrastructure and city growth turned out not to work so well either.
The best near to mid term developments probably involve cars still being quite central to many Americans lifestyle, while simultaneously becoming a bit more expensive and less convenient (e.g. less subsidized infrastructure, less central to urban planning). Simultaneously (some?) urban centers can become significantly less reliant on car ownership. Everyone can (and should) make their own choices, but we can work on having those choices less distorted by the policy objectives that have emphasized car (and for that matter home) ownership over other alternatives.
> you're arguing for the benefit of society to the detriment to the individual
Isn't that just a marketing challenge? Seems like going carless can be presented as a benefit, with many pros over cons, if the infrastructure begins to get built out.
With driverless smart-cars (which, I know, might be as much of an impossible nerdgasm pipe dream as flying cars):
* You no longer have to pay for insurance on a car that spends 90% of its time idle in your garage, nor gas, nor maintenance - except for the fees built into "hiring" the car, which is directly proportional to your use of it.
* No more car payments, either. No longer are you taking an instant 25% hit as soon as you drive a 2017 Hyundai Sombrero or whatever off the lot.
* For a lot of people, losing their car is financially crippling. If you wreck your car that you depend on driving to work in, most times insurance doesn't pay out enough to replace it with an equivalent car. Often, it doesn't pay out enough to replace it with any car.
* Tired of figuring out who in your four-driver family gets to use the car this weekend? Now your husband, Tiffany and Timmy can all get to their football game, football game, and football game on Saturday.
* Tired of spending three hours a day chauffeuring your kids to school and extra-curricular activities? Not anymore.
The bicycle infrastructure that is mentioned in the parent comment would go a lot further to helping many Americans towards a more active lifestyle (and do so in a fairly cost-effective way). Combining ridesharing with mass transit isn't changing the fact that someone would be sitting down for an hour or more of their day that they could have spent moving under their own power. The change that the parent comment is advocating for would aim to get people off their butts and using their legs.
Biven that all the near-term technological improvements like AR systems, electric/non-internal-combustion engines and size coming down (Smart Car and equivalents have been gaining traction in the US for some time), combined with the basic geography of most of the US outside of cities, combined with the politics, combined with things like national security (why we built the international highway system in the first place), all predict a future where no, rail lines stuffed with humans who then take rideshares to their final destination are not going to be our reality.
I'll also tack on that progressives' constant attempts to belittle car owners does a very poor job convincing anyone that mass transit should be or even can be our future. When you sneeringly tell, say, a middle-aged mother who has relied on cars her whole life and continues to rely on cars now, that she's just made arbitrary choices to need a car and she could eliminate the need for one easily, she's going to laugh at you, as she should. Unless you want to expand the definition of "choice" to be "anything that is not an involuntary biological function" it's just naively facile to say something like that, but these threads are full of people ready and able to tell their fellow Americans how they should live. That's just not going to effect any change at all.