My biggest point on car free cities is that it is supported fervently by the people who would gain massive amounts of power over others if nobody had a car. If you're dependent on public transport, it can be taken away from you as leverage.
Well if your dependent on oil to make your car run, the people who have the power to block oil distribution have a huge leverage.
I don't get your argument, we have a huge dependency on the oil distribution infrastructure. A switch in transportation system is a switch in the type of infrastructure, not a freedom vs control thing.
The difference is incentives. The oil company wants my money whereas public transit is ran on hope and well wishes. Winds shift and policy can change at any time
Well not on hope and well wishes, more on planning and political will. As the oil, If your gas station is filled it's not only a thanks you the money you give the oil company but a large infrastructure work and political and geopolitical framework that make it happen.
Ha what a joke. The biggest lockin is the financial burden of owning a compulsory car. Costs are transferred onto your household. It continues to keep workers poor. When you can bike you don’t need to earn the cost of maintaining a car if you don’t want to. No-one says you can’t buy a car or a jet pack, it’s the car dominance that is in question.
"If you're dependent on public transport, it can be taken away from you as leverage."
I have always lived in Czech cities with extensive public transport and I have never heard of this kind of punishment, ever. Neither against communities, nor against people.
Of all the risks, this is probably the most theoretical one.
On the other hand, suspending a driving licence is pretty straightforward and it happens daily, CZ or US. And yes, sometimes it is done for leverage in situations that have nothing to do with road safety. For example, in some jurisdictions, if you don't pay child support, they will suspend your driving licence as a punishment / motivation.
Its common in third world country where I lived as retaliation if voting went to non-establishment candidate. It would work for many social amenities like police station, dispensary, bus route and so on.
Wow, so a mayor can say "from now on, neighbourhood X will have no bus/tram", and the apparatus will comply?
That's really bad.
Technically, I suspect that mayor of Prague could do the same, but the press would eat him alive and his own party colleagues would probably turn on him because of the resulting bad publicity.
As leverage for what? If everyone is using the public transport, wouldn’t “taking it away”, if that were even possible, be a massive self-own for the local and state economy? Also, what about countries using this method with overwhelming success?
AFAIK many car free cities depend also on bikes. What do you mean by taking away public transport? Because a car can be taken away, the access to roads can be taken away, there are traffic jams and in case of a city wide emergency - when everyone has a car, no one has.
