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Comment by arnie001 | Hacker News Reader

As an Indian living in the United States, I hope the development choices made in India skip some of the unsustainable choices made by other countries. Car ownership should be discouraged to a higher degree than what it is today, and we should focus a lot more on efficient carpooling solutions. Things like bikeshare, etc however may never be a realistic solution in most urban cities.

One other thing is most places in Mumbai for example don't have strict zoning practices. I do think that this has some unintentional benefits like lower travel time for commuting by colocating housing and offices.

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As a Indian, convincing people not to buy cars is going to be very hard, if not impossible. Cars represent social status, and they are a big step forward in comfort when traveling. Even if the public transport system improves drastically, the comfort and privacy that one gets in a car is unrivaled (remember that public transport, be it trains or buses, is always overcrowded).

The general attitude among middle class, when discussing how unsustainable cars are, is - why do I, as a first time car owner, have to think about pollution and traffic when all first-world countries have enjoyed it for decades? I don't necessarily agree with that stance, although I understand it.

Impose a tax on fuel that is enough to pay to repair the environmental damage. Then it doesn't really matter if the tax disuades car ownership or not. If it doesn't then you have the money.

India already has very high tax on fuel - https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-breakdown-of-petrol-price-...

The problem is that a huge percent of the population use two wheelers to get around and any hike in petrol prices will affect them adversely.

That also requires the will to spend the money on offsetting the environmental damage done.

That's technically a separate issue. If you spend the money on hospitals instead then the environment will get worse, but you have the hospitals. You should just try to spend the money wherever it's most effective. If the environment gets worse because of that then whatever you got in exchange must (by definition) more than compensate.

I agree that spending money on the environment is a good idea, but it's still a separate cause. We could spend money on the environment even if we weren't taxing those who harm it.

As an "American" who's visited India as a tourist once, I have some questions to educate myself.

1) India is a very large and very diverse country. How is the culture of acceptance towards carpooling and resource sharing, especially when it will gain an ascendant middle class like we're seeing in China?

2) Vehicles have always had a status communication role. Is there something we can tap into that can impede this desire?

> 2) Vehicles have always had a status communication role. Is there something we can tap into that can impede this desire?

I really doubt it. People are always looking around for honest signals about each other, and a vehicle is the most expensive possession other people will see in a casual social setting by at least an order of magnitude. Whether you're at school, work, a bar, hiking, etc, people will see you get into your car.

1. Car pooling has become very acceptable. I live in NCR and every time I've taken an Uber Pool or Ola Share the car has been packed to capacity. This is especially popular among solo office travellers.

2. This has, sort of, lost its charm with the younger generation especially if they are earning well or used to own a car. Public transit has become faster (on the order of twice as fast during peak time) compared to driving. 2 wheelers are more popular than 4 wheels for cost and practical reasons.

Not specific to India but one theory behind luxury tax type approaches is that the social signalling still remains, but everything is shifted down a bit.

So if car pollution, parking, congestion is priced appropriately then some people will still have bigger, less efficient vehicles to show off but the baseline will be lower and therefore society as a whole is better off.

1) I think most of the resource sharing is driven out of cost necessities. There are many places where people share a single autorickshaw to the same destination. This is sometimes because there is a shortage of taxi/autorickshaws/bus availability at peak hours. I tried Uber pool a couple of times in Mumbai and almost always travelled alone. Not sure what's the reason.

2) The status still exists. However it can be practical to not own a car as roads are extremely congested in big cities (in some places temporarily worsened by public transportation infrastructure projects)

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