There can be a deterrent effect in very specific situations. At crowded public events, like a parade, a police presence can lower crime at that event. Sometimes. But otherwise, police don’t work like that.
SkepticalButOpenMinded
joined 2 years ago
BC has a safe supply program, the first in the nation, but it’s been politically difficult to expand it. If you support it, don’t scream into the void. Write to your MLA.
Newsom and Whitmer come to mind. Not saying they’re sure to do better, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
I agree, but just to clarify a minor point: small rural towns are actually some of the most walkable and bikable because they were built before cars. If you’re staying within a rural town, you don’t need a car.
No urban designer or transportation expert thinks that cars scale with population. Talking about rural and small cities is the opposite of scaling with population. Car dependent big cities like LA or Houston have hellish traffic.
At least have a cursory look at the link I posted in my last comment. Cars play a huge role in bad land use. This is why they have an enormous effect on housing supply.
You seem to be lost. You made the point that walking from a train station to your final destination was some major problem. I’m not even sure what point you think your last paragraph is responding to. Yes America is bigger than a few blocks. So is Europe and China. So what?
The fact that cars mathematically cannot scale with population is “so very minor”? Or that cars are the most expensive form of transportation? Or that cars require tons of parking and wide roads that lead to inefficient use of land, contributing to a housing crisis and ugly sprawl?
So what is a “major” problem? Ah right, walking a few blocks.
nowhere near where I live
Even the Netherlands or Japan have many places where only travel by car makes sense. We will always need some cars. Maybe your situation is like that. But your personal situation doesn’t dictate whether or not it makes sense for society to build a lot more trains, which is what we’re talking about.
Also, describing how much less convenient trains are for you presently than driving is kind of missing the point. Everyone already agrees that train lines don’t exist to service many places. We’re not talking about what exists now, but how things should change.
It’s pretty obvious that a single train full of passengers is more energy efficient than the same number of people driving a bunch of individual 4000 lb SUVs.
Cars are even more restricted in travel time. Unlike trains, which typically come multiple times an hour, car travel has to be planned around rush hour and gridlock.
Honestly, I don’t even know how we can be debating this. Car dependence is a dead end. Cars don’t scale because a linear increase in drivers requires a non-linear increase in surface area. Car dependence makes it impossible to meet our climate goals. These catastrophic failures are so much worse than needing to walk a few blocks. There are so many flaws that car people just ~~fail~~ refuse to see.
There are many places in the US with the density of Europe or Asia. And those are all the places trains are being built.
Though it was even cheaper in the past, gasoline today is still VERY cheap in the US because the US has one of the lowest fuel taxes in the developed world. Economists, right and left, love the gas tax because driving incurs so many negative externalities.
Incidentally, this is one reason why roads and bridges are falling apart in such a rich country. The fuel tax pays for infrastructure and it is way too low.
Canada spends a LOT less on policing than the US and has MUCH less crime. Crime severity is basically half in Canada, and per capita police spending is half. For example, the safest major city in North America is Toronto.
Not coincidentally, Canada also has better social services like public healthcare, more equitable access to schooling, and higher social mobility. This is the argument for defunding the police. We need police, but other things have a much bigger effect on safety.