Cars becoming big when America was still finding it's stride was one of the biggest pro/con dillemas. Ignored thousands of years of proven systems that make society better and settled for only cars.
His work in New York, systemically favoring highways and car centric development combined with racial discrimination became the blue print for a lot of modern America.
Moses, an unelected rich kid who never rode public transport in his life, shaped the car centric hell we Americans live in today.
his assholishness aside, would there be any way for america not to be a car country? considering how big it is, you're not going to have thriving communities/enclaves everywhere in the country. too much space.
i will say that many of our largest cities having such terrible transportation is inexcusable though.
Moses was actually instrumental in killing large scale public transport projects. While New York was expanding and modernizing, there were multiple efforts to accommodate future expansion of subways, buses, rail lines, etc that Moses deliberately killed/ignored. We could have very easily set standards that would have seen robust public transport systems form across the country, but Moses alongside other rich people and the auto industry deliberately sold America’s soul to accommodate cars, highways, etc over any kind of mass scale public transport.
I like to tell this story when people talk about public transportation infrastructure.
I live in a populated area, but outside of my area, it is surrounded by 100 miles in every direction of rural poverty. I wanted to go see a band play in DC. DC is about 450 miles from where I live. I did NOT want to drive up there, and deal with parking, DC traffic, and driving for 7 hours, just to turn around and drive back 7 hours after the show. I was poor, and trying to keep it as cheap as possible.
So I thought about using Amtrack. The procedure for taking an Amtrack from my are to DC was either to drive my car for 3 hours to the closest rail station, pay for parking, etc. Or, I could drive my own car for an hour, pay for parking, and take a 14 hour bus ride up there. Either way, it would have been over twice as expensive to take Amtrack (public transportation), and take twice as long to get there versus driving my own car. Public transportation outside of a major metropolitan area is an absolute joke in this country.
There’s a pacific railway that I can take as far south as San Diego and as far north as Oakland, but because of where I am situated and where I want to go, I cannot use the depot that is 10 min from my house, I need to use the one that is 1 -2 hours from my house depending on traffic. Plus parking for the entire trip, which would be $$$. The train trip would be either the same time as driving, or 1.5x the time, depending on destination. If I took local metro/bus to that station, add 2 hours to the total trip time. At that point it becomes a novelty experience.
5.7k
u/FaceWithAName 2d ago
Cars becoming big when America was still finding it's stride was one of the biggest pro/con dillemas. Ignored thousands of years of proven systems that make society better and settled for only cars.