Sure but do you recall what LA looked like in the 80's? The gas is more expensive but the unseen cost of that level of pollution is very high. The gov can solve all future gas problems with EV subsidies and manufacturers can help solve this problem by making affordable EVs, but getting the current admin or manufacturers to do either seems like a cruel joke at this point. The fed is going as far as to deny Chinese car imports because the EVs are so cheap it would crash the US car industry.
Boston had a similar problem. I remember more than once coming over Belmont Hill on Route 2 and seeing this gray-brown cloud sitting over the city with the Prudential Building sticking up out of it.
The problem with Chinese imports and the American auto industry gives me serious flashbacks to the 1970s, when cheap Japanese compacts came in and took business away from American automakers.
Seems to me the American auto industry can't learn to adapt until some foreign competitor comes in and repeatedly kicks them in the nuts.
Prices just shot up over a dollar nationally and no one is burning anything down.
The real "let them eat cake" is the biggest polluters externalizing the costs of that pollution down to the people, all while the state is dismantling the EPA and clean energy.
Imagine if we had real public transportation across the nation. Less pollution AND cheaper for the average person. Wonder why that isn't happening.
Because the US is overwhelmingly urban sprawl and is not Europe. The only way to fix this is to tear down and rebuild (which we cannot afford), or accept that public transit wait times are terribly slow due to the distance between stops.
Combine that with a lack of nerve to aggressively combat crime or antisocial behavior on transit, maybe a fear of perpetuating inequality or something, and anyone who isn’t a man doesn’t feel safe trying it.
> Because the US is overwhelmingly urban sprawl and is not Europe
That's a bad excuse
a) because Europe isn't one single demographic but still public transport is useful, reliable and safe everywhere (from Dublin/Zurich on the low side of the population density scale to London/Paris/Madrid on the high side and Amsterdam/Hamburg/Prague in the middle).
and b) there are plenty of examples outside of Europe. Melbourne is urban sprawl. The metro area is 50 miles east to west, 30 miles north to south (more, but there's also a big bay) and a population of only 5 million. A lower population density than the Denver MSA but manages to run a train/bus/tram system that's useful, reliable and safe.
Between the US and Canada, Canada (with it's population the size of California) has three out of four of the highest-ridership light rail systems.
Blaming sprawl or population count, while being outshone by Canada, means it's neither of the above. Perhaps we can move on to the auto companies pushing out light rail in California in the fifties to bump their own profits, or accept that it's the American people and their ethos that has left the automobile as the claimed only option.
