Owning a car in Singapore, one of the world’s most expensive countries, has always been something of a luxury. But costs have now soared to an all time high.
My GF is just getting her license as an adult and the number of times she’s been asked “So have you been driving without a license for a while?” is incredibly troubling.
Then you need to cancel the whole countryside… because there won’t be any « fantastic public transportation » outside of large cities… and living in the countryside doesn’t mean one is rich.
The other guy is wrong. For people living in the actual countryside, there’s no reason to go after their cars. We don’t need to provide top-notch public transportation networks to the tiny percent of people that live in the actual countryside. You scale what you offer to the population that exists. Some places are too remote to even get twice-a-day bus and that’s fine: the kind of people that live in the actual countryside aren’t simpletons and know what the bargain is. No one is charging them congestion taxes or coming for their cars.
But it’s also irrelevant. These legitimately rural places… hardly anyone lives there. They’re practically a rounding error. It doesn’t really matter towards how the future needs to look if we want it to exist at all. Leave them alone. Country people aren’t simpletons. They made their choices and understand the bargain. They know that they have to maintain their own roads, water systems, septic fields. Get satellite or cell internet. Generate most of their own power. They know they have to cook their own meals and that their options for shops are limited. They know that country life isn’t supposed to be just the same as city life but with more space of your own.
This idea that some huge population of people living in the country is under threat – or indeed even exists – is just a bad faith invocation to reject actual sensible town planning policy. Because the reality is, nearly everyone lives in towns and the size and population where a town is “large” enough that it makes no financial sense to build for cars above all else is a lot smaller than you think. My experience is that nearly every American who claims to live in the country is simply mistaken. They actually live in the suburbs of a small town. A small town that is likely facing the barrel of a gun in the form of the financial sustainability of its current, car-first design patterns. A small town that is going to have to contend with either forcing suburban and “exurban” drivers to finally start paying their fair share to maintain roads, sewers, utilities, police, fire, and all these things or else accept that these services are going to increasingly fall apart and go away.
Always pleasant to be called a « rounding error »… Policies at country level generally applies to those living on the countryside same as urbanites save for some funky parking taxes that select cities elected to add on top of the global incentives to reduce the overall car park. This applies obviously to my local context in europe.
Man you seem to live in a paradise if those living in the countryside have to maintain their own roads or networks… here that’s all guaranteed to be at least minimally covered.
Make up your mind, guy. Which is it? Do we need to increase transportation spending for people in the countryside or not?
You can’t have it both ways here. Either there are tons of people in the countryside meaning it makes perfect sense to fund transportation projects for them or there aren’t and it doesn’t. You can’t have it both ways.
Policies at country level generally applies to those living on the countryside same as urbanites
Sure, in Singapore they do. Because Singapore is a city state on an island. Its countryside is a different fucking country.
But everywhere else in the world, that’s total bullshit and you know it. Just utter tripe. You don’t run the same policies and projects for the countryside as you do for the cities.
I’m tired of the wealth transfer from cities to the countryside. I’m tired of the tax dollars of the 85% of people that live in cities being used to build more roads and highways for the <15% of people that live in the fake “exurban” countryside and sprawling suburbs and lack the imagination to see that even there, the car doesn’t need to be a religion.
Erh I don’t think you’re making sense… and generally your argumentation is a lot of rebuttals and no sources either.
So as an example let’s take the taxation in my home country - Belgium. We generally decided that cars are a source of pollution and that everyone should move away from the more polluting ones. To do that taxes were generally raised for cars not matching a given norm.
That you are rich or poor, from the north or south, countryside or city-side we have the exact same taxes.
If you’re poor and in the relative countryside you’re screwed ; public transport offer is getting shittier each years and soon older cars will be banned effectively or way too expensive to be affordable for the less fortunate / those that cannot already swap to compliant cars.
But I see that you’re an angry dude - you should redirect that energy into something more positive.
Are you against those taxes then, cause the premise sounds fair. Cars are dangerous and pollute a lot, whether they’re in the countryside or in the city.
They’re also expensive, especially older ones that you have to repair constantly. Seems you’ll do more good for the poor in the countryside making the public transit better than getting rid of the tax. You know, direct your energy into something positive like sustainable public transit, instead of a technology that’s slowly killing us.
It’s almost a moot point in his case. The Belgian “countryside” is all towns and small cities. Every bit of it should be served by some kind of transit. It’s only about 350km the long way across with a population of almost 12 million. There’s hardly a hectare in it where you aren’t a bike ride from a town center. Even in the dead center of Hodge Kempen you’re still adjacent to small, fairly dense town.
He just falls for the typical false dichotomy that you’re either in the “countyside” or you’re in a major metropolis. When the reality is, most people live in small towns and small towns are still urban.
He replied to a guy talking about the states and applied just completely wrong standards of what both what good transit and the countryside are because his own experience doesn’t map to what the other guy was talking about.
Yeah it seems so… and it’s not only the barren countryside that is set aside - anything smaller than metropolis or conurbations isn’t relevant to them.
2 buses a day and 1 train every hour - one direction at a time. You miss one due to whatever reason especially cancellation by an operator or delays and suddenly you lose 2 hours.
If you read the article, it says twice that the public transport is fantastic
We need that in the states. Fantastic public transportation and the ability to own a car should be expensive and hard to obtain even for the rich.
The amount of horrible drivers on the road in the states is crazy and way to easy to get a car and a DL.
My GF is just getting her license as an adult and the number of times she’s been asked “So have you been driving without a license for a while?” is incredibly troubling.
Then you need to cancel the whole countryside… because there won’t be any « fantastic public transportation » outside of large cities… and living in the countryside doesn’t mean one is rich.
The other guy is wrong. For people living in the actual countryside, there’s no reason to go after their cars. We don’t need to provide top-notch public transportation networks to the tiny percent of people that live in the actual countryside. You scale what you offer to the population that exists. Some places are too remote to even get twice-a-day bus and that’s fine: the kind of people that live in the actual countryside aren’t simpletons and know what the bargain is. No one is charging them congestion taxes or coming for their cars.
But it’s also irrelevant. These legitimately rural places… hardly anyone lives there. They’re practically a rounding error. It doesn’t really matter towards how the future needs to look if we want it to exist at all. Leave them alone. Country people aren’t simpletons. They made their choices and understand the bargain. They know that they have to maintain their own roads, water systems, septic fields. Get satellite or cell internet. Generate most of their own power. They know they have to cook their own meals and that their options for shops are limited. They know that country life isn’t supposed to be just the same as city life but with more space of your own.
This idea that some huge population of people living in the country is under threat – or indeed even exists – is just a bad faith invocation to reject actual sensible town planning policy. Because the reality is, nearly everyone lives in towns and the size and population where a town is “large” enough that it makes no financial sense to build for cars above all else is a lot smaller than you think. My experience is that nearly every American who claims to live in the country is simply mistaken. They actually live in the suburbs of a small town. A small town that is likely facing the barrel of a gun in the form of the financial sustainability of its current, car-first design patterns. A small town that is going to have to contend with either forcing suburban and “exurban” drivers to finally start paying their fair share to maintain roads, sewers, utilities, police, fire, and all these things or else accept that these services are going to increasingly fall apart and go away.
Always pleasant to be called a « rounding error »… Policies at country level generally applies to those living on the countryside same as urbanites save for some funky parking taxes that select cities elected to add on top of the global incentives to reduce the overall car park. This applies obviously to my local context in europe.
Man you seem to live in a paradise if those living in the countryside have to maintain their own roads or networks… here that’s all guaranteed to be at least minimally covered.
Make up your mind, guy. Which is it? Do we need to increase transportation spending for people in the countryside or not?
You can’t have it both ways here. Either there are tons of people in the countryside meaning it makes perfect sense to fund transportation projects for them or there aren’t and it doesn’t. You can’t have it both ways.
Sure, in Singapore they do. Because Singapore is a city state on an island. Its countryside is a different fucking country.
But everywhere else in the world, that’s total bullshit and you know it. Just utter tripe. You don’t run the same policies and projects for the countryside as you do for the cities.
I’m tired of the wealth transfer from cities to the countryside. I’m tired of the tax dollars of the 85% of people that live in cities being used to build more roads and highways for the <15% of people that live in the fake “exurban” countryside and sprawling suburbs and lack the imagination to see that even there, the car doesn’t need to be a religion.
Erh I don’t think you’re making sense… and generally your argumentation is a lot of rebuttals and no sources either.
So as an example let’s take the taxation in my home country - Belgium. We generally decided that cars are a source of pollution and that everyone should move away from the more polluting ones. To do that taxes were generally raised for cars not matching a given norm.
That you are rich or poor, from the north or south, countryside or city-side we have the exact same taxes.
If you’re poor and in the relative countryside you’re screwed ; public transport offer is getting shittier each years and soon older cars will be banned effectively or way too expensive to be affordable for the less fortunate / those that cannot already swap to compliant cars.
But I see that you’re an angry dude - you should redirect that energy into something more positive.
Are you against those taxes then, cause the premise sounds fair. Cars are dangerous and pollute a lot, whether they’re in the countryside or in the city.
They’re also expensive, especially older ones that you have to repair constantly. Seems you’ll do more good for the poor in the countryside making the public transit better than getting rid of the tax. You know, direct your energy into something positive like sustainable public transit, instead of a technology that’s slowly killing us.
It’s almost a moot point in his case. The Belgian “countryside” is all towns and small cities. Every bit of it should be served by some kind of transit. It’s only about 350km the long way across with a population of almost 12 million. There’s hardly a hectare in it where you aren’t a bike ride from a town center. Even in the dead center of Hodge Kempen you’re still adjacent to small, fairly dense town.
He just falls for the typical false dichotomy that you’re either in the “countyside” or you’re in a major metropolis. When the reality is, most people live in small towns and small towns are still urban.
He replied to a guy talking about the states and applied just completely wrong standards of what both what good transit and the countryside are because his own experience doesn’t map to what the other guy was talking about.
A lot of urbanites simply cannot get their heads around that.
Yeah it seems so… and it’s not only the barren countryside that is set aside - anything smaller than metropolis or conurbations isn’t relevant to them.
Most would get around by bike and bus. And take the train to the city.
They wouldn’t need a car if there was decent public transport.
~sincerely someone from the country side in Europe.
2 buses a day and 1 train every hour - one direction at a time. You miss one due to whatever reason especially cancellation by an operator or delays and suddenly you lose 2 hours.
How’s that acceptable ?
~ someone else from europe in a small town.