When we talk about raising the price of something in order to decrease demand, just remember… the only demand we’re decreasing is among those folks who can no longer afford said thing. Increase the taxes on fuel and you’re making it harder for lower income folks, not the wealthy who can pay any price you demand. Demand may decline, but it may also be punishing to the people just trying to get to work, not the jet-class.
@feld Not true. There’s never just one solution. This requires a multifaceted approach. You can’t build a world that requires cars to get your needs met and then simply say, “Too bad for you. Gas is now so expansive you can’t get to work and back.” We have to end several mistakes from the great urban sprawl decades. Suburbs are idiotic when there are no services nearby. We need to end that approach to “affordable housing.” Houses generally get cheaper the farther they are from urban areas.
@SlicerDicer Welcome to the convo. You may want to read it before responding. We’re discussing all of the changes that need to be made to go car-free. It’s not a one solution problem. It’s multifaceted and includes housing, infrastructure and infill, zoning, community master plans, public transportation, taxation and tax credits, urbanization, and more. You’re not wrong, you’re just responding as if none of this has been discussed here.
@SlicerDicer Ah I understand your point now. Yes, that is how it’s done and it still exists. I have a friend who owns a home in West Seattle. Her home has been claimed my eminent domain for the future site of a support structure to accommodate high speed rail (someday). It still happens.
@feld You took this in a whole different direction. “We” who? I’ll take the moral stand and you can argue until you’re blue in the face. I love our planet too. But I’m also realistic and I don’t believe we should just forget about all of the people we would be harming with such draconian measures. That shows a lack of creativity and care on our part if that’s the path we choose.
@azonenberg@jenk3 Yes, but without a good alternative ready to go, such as free and highly available public transportation or jobs close enough to cycle to, that effect is harming people who are living with less already.
@thesquirrelfish@KatM@azonenberg@jenk3 the question is not “do we want people to drive fewer ICE’s?” it’s “how do we best transition away from ICE’s?” A gas tax is a regressive policy, maybe there are better ways.
For example Bernie sanders advocated grants to families and businesses to purchase EVs.
@Jackiemauro Thank you. That’s my point too. We shouldn’t just take away necessities without a plan to offset the impact that would have on people’s livelihoods. @thesquirrelfish@azonenberg@jenk3
@KatM@thesquirrelfish@azonenberg@jenk3 yea 100% agree. And honestly at this point with the incredible technical advances we’ve seen, I think it’s basically time to throw out the idea that fighting climate change requires taking away anything really.
EVs are great cars. E-bikes are an incredible alternative in lots of places. They should be subsidized and their infrastructure should be built out.
And fundamentally we need broad buy in. The gnd is still good policy I think.
@Jackiemauro@KatM@azonenberg@jenk3 yes but EVs aren't really a solution - they still cause a lot of pollution(tires & brakes) destroying local clean water and making people around them sick. They're better than gas cars, but we have to reduce the total number of cars.
@thesquirrelfish@KatM@azonenberg@jenk3 agreed! But a gas tax REALLY won’t reduce the number of EVs. Policies to make biking / walking / transit better will. This is all just a question of how we get where we want to go (literally and figuratively, ha!) and I think the point is that regressive punitive policies should not be our first resort.
@Jackiemauro As someone who worked for a decade on providing affordable housing, I couldn’t agree more. All too often those affordable housing communities are built way the hell outside of town and the people living there have to drive in for work. Buses are too infrequent or non existent to rely upon to get to work. If we want to rid ourselves of cars, we need to consider how and where we create housing and commercial zones.
@KatM@thesquirrelfish@azonenberg@jenk3 yea I live in a dense city and all my life relied on transit and biking (and walking just miles and miles). But with two kids it’s really hard, you really come to understand how threadbare and deprioritized even “good” systems are for anyone but the most able and unburdened.
@Jackiemauro@KatM@azonenberg@jenk3 yeah which is why I object to any phrasing of cars as a necessity. If they are a necessity we need to be providing free cars & drivers to everyone without a license.
@thesquirrelfish@KatM@azonenberg@jenk3 I mean, there are lots of things that are a necessity that we don’t provide for free or universally…are you saying if we acknowledge that cars are currently a necessity, we would need to advocate for universal free cars? I’m not sure that tracks, or would be good policy.
Yes. If it's a necessity it should be universally available as part of our human rights. Food, water & housing should be in this category. Public education already is acknowledged to be this kind of necessity.
We should not call things a necessity when people live without it. We should not create laws or other restrictions making something a necessity without making provisions for providing it for free. @KatM@azonenberg@jenk3
Hmm I see the logic but it seems unhelpfully absolutist to me. I think we need to acknowledge that getting to a situation where everyone can easily do without a car is going to take a really long time. And also acknowledge that we can and must transition away from ICE’s quickly with as much political buy in and practicality as possible.
A gas tax is regressive. Giving everyone an EV is impracticable. We’re going to have to find a middle road (ha!)
@Jackiemauro
Driving right now is regressive - the people most likely to get hit by a car & die are kids, seniors, disabled folks, and people of color. Marginalized communities suffer from much higher rates of vehicle created pollution and have much lower access to cars. Actual necessities like expensive medical care because of that pollution are bankrupting people in regressive patterns. Services like parks and monuments that are primarily car-accessible are disproportionally used by richer whiter folks. Make more things bus access only and the whole world will get better.
@thesquirrelfish@KatM@azonenberg@jenk3 I feel like we’re arguing past each other a bit. I fully agree everything should be accessible without a car. I’m just saying that the distance between here and a car free us is really long, and we need to get rid of ICE’s in a shorter time frame.
What’s the best way to do it? I’m not sure! Not a gas tax, and probably EVs will be involved. Definitely requires way way more transit and bike infrastructure.
@Jackiemauro Tax the hell out of the rich. Use that money to build infrastructure that puts people closer to services and work. Provide free and reliable public transportation to outlying neighborhoods. Require new outlying neighborhood master plans to include common services. Create sustainable, affordable housing for low income families. Then and only then should we eradicate cars. Address the problem of why we need cars first.
@KatM
That's waiting for hundreds of thousands of people, mostly kids and older folks and people of color, to die and way more people than that to get sick and injured and bankrupt to deal with the problem. For as long as we subsidize middle class people to drive the rest of the problems won't get fixed. @Jackiemauro@azonenberg@jenk3
You might be surprised, but I have been studying this problem as a citizen for decades. I have been involved in urban planning at the local and state level. There are solutions, but we are only looking at transportation most of the time. @thesquirrelfish@Jackiemauro@azonenberg@jenk3
@KatM
Same. It's weird that you frame it as gas taxes then though, when what we are actually doing is subsidizing driving at costs to everyone else. It makes it sound like drivers are paying more than their fair share instead of the basic American truth:
Everyone is currently paying to make it easier to drive.
Even the people who don't want to drive or can't drive for whatever reason have to pay the taxes that make our gas so much cheaper than everybody else. And communities of color and poor communities end up paying the most for our current unsustainable system. @Jackiemauro@azonenberg@jenk3
@thesquirrelfish What @Jackiemauro wrote. I agree. Taxing fuel to reduce demand is going to hurt a subset of people who are already hurting. That is not a plan for a fair and just society. We need better solutions for all. The wealthy will prevail and the rest will suffer if our best approach is to make fuel only affordable to the moneyed. I’ll never be for a plan like that.
@KatM
And my response remains the same. Subsidizing gas is already hurting the most vulnerable populations. Repeating the idea that the middle class should continue to get subsidies which harm the lower class and marginalized communities isn't going to change my mind. How do you plan on convincing people not to drive if not increasing the cost to drive? @Jackiemauro@azonenberg@jenk3
@thesquirrelfish I believe lots of people would gladly give up owning, maintaining, and paying for their vehicles if there were better transportation solutions for them or the need to travel for work and services was dramatically reduced. Owning a car is an expensive pain in the ass.
@KatM@thesquirrelfish@Jackiemauro@jenk3 Yeah, eliminating commuting as much as possibly (by either providing opportunities near residential areas or remote work options) is probably the single biggest step to reducing car traffic.
There will always be some jobs that can't be done remote but most of them involve being hands-on with equipment and product, not commuting to an office.
@KatM@thesquirrelfish@Jackiemauro@jenk3 And of course once you've eliminated the need for commuting, you can turn all of those vacant office towers into housing.
@KatM@azonenberg@jenk3 And it has huge negative political effects like the yellow vest protests that make larger progress harder. We absolutely cannot afford to pit climate progress against the middle and working classes. We need broad political buy in.
@Jackiemauro Yes, and we need ready solutions for what we’re trying to take away. Want to eliminate more cars? Great! What are we doing to help people travel to where they need to be? I lived in Boulder, CO for 15 yrs. It was super easy to get to work by bicycle because of trail systems and public buses outfitted with bike racks plus bike racks all over the city. The downside? It is so expensive to live in Boulder that few can take advantage of those commute alternatives.
There seems to be a strong correlation between higher housing costs and better transportation. I remember how much more expensive near-Metro apartments were when I lived in NoVA suburbs of DC, and this was in the 90s. It's only gotten worse.
When I first moved out west I was (before getting priced out) renting a place in Bainbridge Island, WA - a very wealthy town just outside Seattle.
If I wanted to go to work via the stop at the end of my street, I had to leave stupidly early (I think 7am was the latest of the three daily pickups). And if I worked an hour later than usual, I'd miss the last bus home.
Where I am now (in a more middle-class neighborhood) I have about a 1-mile bike ride to get to the bus stop but I can get to work from there at any reasonable hour. The return buses provide decent coverage during commuter hours although I still can't go to after-hours social events in the city with coworkers or I risk missing the last bus home.
Very glad I ended up at a job that I can do majority remote (and moved even further from Seattle as a result).
I go into the city here and there (by bike+bus+ferry) to do lab work but try to keep it to a minimum. A car is still unavoidable for longer distance trips or if we're buying big stuff, but I'm pretty happy with our rate of usage (maybe one tank of gas a month).
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