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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29554 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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I didn't see the thread, but car ownership in Japan doesn't save time by getting you to a place quickly. It saves time by allowing the wealthy attend to their chores in the 'back seat' of a car. Because the wealthy don't drive their own cars. They have drivers.

If you don't have to drive, walk to parking, find your own parking or maintain the car......then yes, car ownership is cheap.

You prove my point. There isn't a revealed preference for cars. There is a revealed preference for being chauffeured. It is a revealed preference for having a Butler.

No, the vast majority of people in Japan drive themselves, it's just that being able to do so marks them as upper middle class. Because they can only make the poor use public transit by restricting them from having cars

The Tokyo subway shuts down at 11:30 and doesn't reopen until morning. Nobody crowing about how Japan is a public transit success asks the night janitors if they care about walking home.

Nitpick, but plenty of lower middle class and what we Americans would consider "white trash" people drive in Japan as well outside of Tokyo. There's even a stereotype that if you have fake blonde hair, heavy make-up, and buy your clothes at Don Quixote, you probably drive a Toyota Voxy. My wife wouldn't let me buy one because it's a lower middle class marker.

I'll keep the conversation to urban areas, with dense urban cores. So.....Tokyo. I don't care much about towns or rural places.

Among developed cities, Tokyo has the lowest car use in the world. About 12% of trips are completed with a car,

In Tokyo, the majority does not drive cars.

In Tokyo, the majority can’t afford parking spaces in the centre. It’s perfectly liveable, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t help feeling that the path dependency is strong. American cities are mostly built for cars, other cities mostly had cars retrofitted. You can’t turn those cities into Tokyo any more than you can turn Tokyo into, say, Detroit (IANAA). You’d have to blow up the whole thing and start from scratch. Unless you’re making a new city, deciding which mode of transport you’d prefer in a context-independent sense seems rather beside the point.

Most American cities were not built for cars, because they are older than cars. That includes Motor City.

The vast majority of people who drive drive themselves

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