You don't really think this thing knows how to drive do you?! Especially since it doesn't look like she knows how to wash her hair.
Posted on 07/01/2013 4:19:46 PM PDT by jjotto
The New York Times ran a piece this weekend with the foreboding title "THE END OF CAR CULTURE" (and people accuse us of clickbait). Here's why you should take that claim with a grain of yellow cake uranium.
What New York Times environmental reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal is getting at is what most people are calling "Peak Car." This is the idea that car ownership and usage has peaked in the United States and is never coming back.
There's ample data to support this theory, although the most recent look at the data suggests that while the recession may have put a permanent peak in per-household ownership, car sales will probably continue to go up in the near-term.
Rosenthal does nod to the recession which, as Karl Henkel pointed out, is probably the single biggest reason why young people aren't buying cars.
But let's grant the premise. Let's say that we've reached the peak number of vehicles we'll have on U.S. roads. Let's say more kids won't get cars and the number of vehicle miles driven each year will drop.
This is not the "End of Car Culture." It's the death of "Commuting Culture," which, I'd argue, is the greatest threat to car culture.
What are the most popular vehicles in the United States? They're not Miatas or Mustangs or sports cars. They're relatively dull commuter vehicles like the Toyota Prius, Toyota Camry, and Ford Fusion or work vehicles like the Ford F-150 and Chevy Silverado (although in many places trucks count as both).
The NYT piece leads with a photo of teenagers hanging out at a drive-thru in 1959. They're not all driving the then contemporary equivalent of a mid-size cruiser (seen in the background), they're all driving stripped down sports cars or older, we assume modified, hot rods.
After the Suburban boom that followed a combination of white flight and the massive investment in the interstage highway system, we changed into a commuter driven culture. People had to own cars and we've been suffering from the environmental, social, and congestion-related consequences ever since.
A highway full of boring econoboxes does not create a car culture, it destroys it. A long commute causes people to hate their vehicles and leads to them buying something that compromises a sportier ride or more power for comfort and fuel efficiency. There might be a "Camry Owners of America" club, but I doubt it has the membership of the Mustang Club of America.
The fewer beige Camrycordusionltimas appliances on the road the better off everyone is.
As a car enthusiast, I believe people should take public transportation when it makes sense. They should not use their cars to get the mail from the end of the street. They should take better care of used cars instead of rushing out to buy something new every few years. They should not work a million miles from where they live thus wasting time and gas sitting in traffic.
While car sales dropping may be bad for automakers, it's not bad for auto lovers. When car ownership becomes more of a choice than a necessity, people will buy cars because they desire them, which will make the cars automakers build more desirable.
Since the recession, cars haven't gotten worse, they've gotten better. They're sportier, more attractive, more powerful and, yes, more fuel efficient all at the same time.
When we empty the roads of commuters, we free them up for the kinds of people who get in a car just for the joy of it.
That won't kill car culture, that'll help save it.
A Ka and K band radar jammer (a real, illegal one, not the kind they scam on boxes, but one with a real antenna that you place in your bumper is an easy fix.
You need a radar detector calibrated to ignore it, then brake when you get a cop and turn off your jammer.
Costs maybe $800 and a weekend.
There are kits on the interenet, or there were. The FCC was trying to shut them down.
Enjoyed my road trip to PA this past weekend in my gas guzzling new Hemi Challenger. Oh wait, I got 27.1 mpg average. Never mind!
You don't really think this thing knows how to drive do you?! Especially since it doesn't look like she knows how to wash her hair.
You're right. I think some of it is wishful thinking, and trying to push a subconscious idea generating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Don't like guns and freedoms they bring? Put out the meme that gun-culture is dead, bad, backward, etc.
Don't like private cars and the freedoms they bring? Put out the meme that car-culture is dead, gone, backward, etc.
Oh yeah, the NYT is soooo progressive, so forward, so cutting edge in their thinking. {snort} (that's so obviously sarcasm, I don't have to put the emoticon on it, right?)
You’re definitely onto something, Paladin2. Free parking rocks.
In beautiful downtown Spokane, there are many empty buildings where businesses used to be. Predictably the city mothers decided what they needed to do was raise the parking rates. So fewer people shop there now.
Naturally, businesses are moving to city outskirts, mowing down lovely trees and animal habitats to put up ugly shopping centers, bringing more congestion to residential streets. Target just did that in my ‘hood. — may allah frown upon them :( — Why in the world couldn’t they have purchased a couple of downtown buildings, remodeled them into a nice big shiny store with a nice big shiny free parking structure next to it. We’re not talking a long commute...ten minutes max from my place on the outskirts to the middle of downtown.
Actually Spokane is not a rat hole, a bastion of conservatives in this liberal state.
Two practical solutions for higher fuel mileage are
1. Hybrid, 2. Diesel.
Toyota made the biggest commitment to hybrid, hence Prius, Camry hybrids.
Ford is serious about hybrid, also.
VW/Audi made the biggest commitment to diesel.
Big three American brands are following, not leading like they once did.
At long, long last Chevy introduced their Cruze diesel sedan.
I don’t think you read the article.
The only place to go now is Flintstone.
(yes, that's a tach on the hood)
I thought you rode your bike most of the time :<)
Target “moving to the City outskirts”? Hah! Their new location is no more the city outskirts than Shopko across the street. Look at Browne’s Mountain to the east, and Anywhere along Regal Street to the south. Hardly downtown, but not rural by a long shot. “Outskirts” is now out to Baltimore Road.
Target only got the site that Home Depot couldn’t get the tony-class neighbors to bless because HD “would’ve brought the wrong kind of traffic”.
As for not going downtown: (a) Location; (b) Location; (c) Location. It’s a crappy location if (a) you can’t afford it; (b) there’s no parking, free or otherwise, (c) no one sticks around to go shopping, even at the competition. Stand-alone Target stores only ever have about 2 complete city blocks worth of parking spaces, at minimum.
I know. I’ve watched the tussles over that site for 20 years.
“I thought you rode your bike most of the time :<)”
______________________________________________________
Yes, in town I use only my bicycle.
My wife and child go by C-cad (pedicab) or “tricycle” (motorbike powered cab that caries 4-8 people).
For long distance, we catch an aircon bus from anywhere out on the highway. We rarely wait more then ten minuets to catch one.
The highway is only a five min. walk from our beach house.
I’d do almost exactly that for a daily driver if my wife would allow it (she sells upscale cars).
I can get away with a ‘93 GMC pickup on weekends.
100%
It's a pretty town but I'm observing more and more liberal creep in eastern Washington and everywhere. Worst where Redmond and Seattle (Amazon) vermin are accumulating. Wenatchee and Ellensburg are Silicon Valley in spots (in terms of liberal infiltration if not quite in real estate prices).
May be driving up your way this weekend to show the kids the "Bowl & Pitcher" and other sights.
Don't ya hate it when that happens ;)
Interesting but a matter of perspective.
I lived in South Florida, which is paved over to the max. Had to drive for miles and miles and MILES to see any significant green space. Also in LA. For me, Spokane is a small town where I can drive a couple of miles to lovely open spaces. As recently as yesterday, walked around the grounds of the retreat center on Ben Burr. Nature without traffic means a lot to me. Peaceful, quiet.
Target means zilch. I won’t shop there. I miss the birds and ducks on that land. It was nice to see them there...and I think some farm animals too. The scraped-off site looks like a war zone.
Meanwhile, downtown with some architecturally nice but now abandoned buildings is full of low-life dopers. Urban renewal just might force them out. But nobody seems to care.
Ja, ja, liberal creep even in North Idaho.
Bowl & Pitcher is beautiful. Enjoy :)
Don’t believe I had heard of the Immaculate Heart Retreat Center before your comment and looking it up. We have another destination. Thanks!
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