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A third of Americans don't drive. So why is our transportation so car-centric?
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because we hate poor people
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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And car makers sucessfully managed to lobby for it in the last 100 years.
Even the Netherlands was turned into a car centric country after WW2, it's just that people fought back against car centric design starting in the 1970s because they realised how bad it is for everyone.
The USA helped rebuild a lot of countries after WWII through the Marshall Plan, which is probably partly why so many ended up with car-centric infrastructure.
I mean why are we still asking why? We know why. The American dream involved a house and a car. The great American road trip. The lack of high speed rail. All of that got us here. The real question is what’s keeping us stuck here? And the answer is politics. Solve the oligarchy issue and you might be able to take on the projects we’re need to do away with car centric culture. Get people in office that value infrastructure over military might, and will stop subsidizing car and gas companies. A small thing any of us can do is, when job searching, require companies to justify why a job must be in office instead of remote and unless it makes sense, don’t accept in office requirements. That last one is arguable more difficult if you’re in desperate need of a job, but in other conditions, try it.
A third of Americans don't drive. So why is our transportation so car-centric?
A critical disconnect between policy and reality.
I drive as well, and I hate it every time. I drive because I "have too".
If there was quality rail, subway, tram, and regional bus service that was within a five minute walk I would choose it any day.
There something about being chauffeured around that so much more relaxing and stress free.
Unfortunately, the car centric argument always seems to be more public transit would take away from people desire to drive, but on the contrary it would make driving less stressful. Less cars "in your way" or on the road and local streets.
Commuting is all about avoiding crowds. I love driving, I just hate traffic. It's so mainstream so all the joy is gone.
Trains are amazing when it's not packed. You can look outside, have some drink, use your phone without getting motion sick.
Busses are pretty wild, not my favourite. If you see a bus in Belgium, do not play a dare with them. You will die.
E-bike is amazing if you have a road without cars. Which is what I do now. 28,7 km a day. Decent exercise too. The off road part is pretty fun. Bit of a game to be honest.
Honest question; how is an E-Bike decent exercise? I've never used one before.
It says I burn 450 calories a day for 28,7 km. So when I ordered the bike, I started going to work with a manual bike just to get used to it.
The difference is clear. My knees hurt for 2 weeks, my quads were lightly sore the whole time. When I arrived, my back would be wet from sweat.
But I would be a lot slower, I'd be taking a lot of breaks between pedalling. The hills would take a lot of energy, like it's a squatting set.
When doing cardio, it's important to be consistent.
The bike I'm using, never tried any other e-bike, is the R&M Multicharger2 GT Rohloff.
I'm always on the automatic mode. With the system that it has, it adjusts how much power it assists with.
The bike weighs like 30 kg.
Going up hill is very easy, it automatically shifts to a lot of assistance. Then it stops doing so.
Braking doesn't feel like a pain in the ass anymore, so it's a lot safer for pedestrians. On a manual bike you'd hate braking because getting started is a huge waste of energy. With this thing, you just shoot ahead quickly and then it stops assisting until you get in higher gears.
You can handle the bike quite well, as you can use your pedalling to adjust the speed. You can easily go at walking speed and you easily can go to max assisted speed or in-between.
It's a lot easier to choose your own speed than my wife's la souris scooter.
For the burning calories part, I asked yesterday le chat mistral why. It said that because it helps you stay at top speed for the whole ride, you take no breaks, it just keeps you consistently into the same burning mode.
I often go at 26 to 29 km per hour. It only assists to 25 km per hour. If it's a flat road, it will minimally assist. The bike is 30 kg, I'm 90 kg. It's still a good workout. When I get tired, I can keep pedalling, I just go to 25 km per hour at minimal assistance. Until I can go faster again.
With a manual bike I would have to really just lower the gears and rest up for a while, dramatically lowering my intensity and speed.
Hope this helps
OMG I'm such an idiot. I thought e-bike was like an e-scooter. Thank you so much for clearing that up!
Nah, like for an e-motorbike there's like 5 KW needed as battery and it lasts like 60 km. (The vehicle weighs like 120 kg) and goes usually like 75 km/h.
While my e-bike only has a 0,75 KW battery and lasts 90-100 km.
The pedalling lowers the amount of energy needed by quite a bit.
That and speed. Higher speed - higher energy usage. Not only does e-bikes go 25km/h (compared to ev motorbikes 75km/h), but also, like you mentioned, part of that is supplied from your muscles.
All in all, ev motorbikes are just glorified scooter as of now.
Yeah they need some improvements, but they are far less subsidised so it makes sense in my area at least.
@k0e3 @Wanpieserino depends on the type, but in Europe it's only legally an ebike if the battery only assists pedalling - no throttle, no working if you're not pedalling - and cuts out after 15.5mph/25kph (anything more is a motorbike). So it takes the edge off hills, helps at junctions etc, but you're still going to have to work while on it. https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/fitness-and-training/electric-bike-fitness
Also it takes away that initial "ugh I can't be bothered, I'll drive" so you end up cycling more in general.
5 minutes is small even for many transit centric countries. Try 10.
Becau$e
$$$
Just because people don't drive, doesn't mean they're not traveling by car.
Is a bus a car?
No, it's public transport. Unless you want to use a wider definition that includes train cars as well.
You mean like New York where everywhere is clogged with taxis? Rather than people driving themselves, somebody else is.
Taxis are immensely more efficient space wise than individual people owning cars.
The average car is parked 97% of the time. If we took taxis away from NYC and didn’t compensate with public transport , they’d probably have to replace central park with a massive parking lot. Not kidding.
They are, my only point was no drivers license doesn't equal not traveling by car
I think this perception is a little inversed or skewed IMO. The congestion is caused by individual cars which block the transit and taxi routes.
The Transit is needed, otherwise more cars need to be added to the road. With increased transite, more cars are removed from the road.
From what I have seen based on the congestion charges implemented in NYC as a example, it's dropped the number of personal vehicles commuting into the city at any given day. This in turn has dropped the congestion, while in turn dropping taxi commuting times.
Things like congestion charges are a artificial incentive to carpool, take transit, or split the cost of a cab. This decreases the amount of cars while keeping the amount of commuters roughly the same.
Now you could argue with more of the road now "open" or "free", what stops more taxis from being added to take advantage of a increase in demand for quicker travel.
Of course transit is needed. I prefer it. I was only commenting on why we are still carcentric even if people don't have drivers licenses, people still use uber and taxis (car centric) instead of a bus or subway. Either routes and service are not enough, or people are uses to immediate needs serviced and don't want to wait at a busstop
New York is more than like midtown manhattan. I would not describe it as "clogged with taxis".
Also there's like 3.5 million subway riders per day in NYC.
So I don't know what point you're trying to make.
The article of "1/3 people don't have drivers licenses so why are we so car centric". People still use cars (as taxis) without a drivers license. Having no license does not mean you solely rely on transit.
I'm pretty confident that most people moving around NYC are not taking a taxi on the daily. I'm guessing you don't live here.
You missed the point of what I was meaning. The article was eluding to people without licenses should mean leas reliance on cars. But Uber exists, taxis exist, car pool exist. Just because a person doesn't have a license does not equal not traveling by car.