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Comment by h2zizzle | Hacker News Reader

Alternatives are the most effective option. Tolls just make laws the rich don't have to obey and conditions they don't have to experience. Aggregate suffering isn't lowered, just shifted to the poor.

If you want cars off the road, you tax rich people and build trains and bike lanes, and shut down cynical RTO. Full stop.

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It’s not that simple. For trains to be a complete solution you need walkable cities, and high density transport-oriented residential construction near stations.

This is almost diametrically opposite to parking-oriented cities and sprawling suburbia.

The best time for a city to invest in making their city walkable and public-transportation-able is decades ago. The second best time for a city to invest in making their city walkable and public-transportation-able is now.

Not everyone wants walkable. I'd much rather a remote first economy and cars. One of my hobbies is riding motorcycles on race tracks, I need a garage to store them, and a vehicle to tow them there. This is practically impossible in "walkable" cities.

I suppose Honda doesn't make bikes for domestic purchasers.

I dont understand your comment.

90% of Japanese residents live in, essentially, a walkable megacity, and plenty of them ride motorcycles on the country's many tracks (which you would expect, since Japan houses several of the top motorcycle manufacturers). They don't have any issues participating in their hobby, and you wouldn't either.

Note that this holds without even having to mention that holding the ability for millions of people to be independent and mobile without needing to purchase and maintain a vehicle against a niche and expensive hobby is ridiculous. But there's no need to bring that up because we can have both.

Suburbs are often plenty dense for great transit if you give great. Howeveriwhen transit is as bad as most get it is no wonder nobody uses it

I know many people who would always prefer their cars over trains or bikes, simply because that's what they know, and they would not leave their comfort zone unless there's something nudging/pushing them.

my wife and I lived a block walk from a metro stop. my wife’s work was on the same metro line, also one block walk. 20 minute metro ride, at least 45 minute drive plus parking. my wife has not taken a metro once in 4.5 years.

> If you want cars off the road, you tax rich people and build trains and bike lanes, and shut down cynical RTO. Full stop.

The first two smell like communism, the last massively harms the rich people and their playthings (REITs - real estate investment trusts). Won't happen, not in countries where Big Money is pulling the strings (i.e. the US, Germany and UK).

If levying taxes and using those tax receipts to build infrastructure is enough to smell like communism to you, I have unfortunate news to tell you about how every single government on the planet operates

Should have added a /s. My point was that this is precisely what way too many people think, and this is why good things either do not happen at all or get massively impeded until they are finally done.

My apologies for not picking up on the sardonic tone, and I appreciate that you don't rely on the crutch of /s to make up for others lack of reading comprehension.

But UK and Germany are already heavily invested in taxing rich people, trains and bike lanes?

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