I can see T.R> going for this, he was a serious friend to the animals despite his love for shooting select ones.
AHC: The privately owned car as a "Rich men toy"
- Thread starter ScorchedLight
- Start date
hence the 5 year waiting time for a largely overpriced lada in the ussr?
never knew the communists thought that. If they did, it was merely a way to compete with the capitalist countries to show who was best for their citizens.
And thus only at the later stages.
As i said, don't think you can keep it a rich mans toy, but you can very much restrict the popularity of the car. Restricting loans would be one of the ways (and taxing).
A rich man's toy, no, but you can definatly keep it i nthe upper middle class.hence the 5 year waiting time for a largely overpriced lada in the ussr?
never knew the communists thought that. If they did, it was merely a way to compete with the capitalist countries to show who was best for their citizens.
And thus only at the later stages.
As i said, don't think you can keep it a rich mans toy, but you can very much restrict the popularity of the car. Restricting loans would be one of the ways (and taxing).
hence the 5 year waiting time for a largely overpriced lada in the ussr?
never knew the communists thought that. If they did, it was merely a way to compete with the capitalist countries to show who was best for their citizens.
And thus only at the later stages.
As i said, don't think you can keep it a rich mans toy, but you can very much restrict the popularity of the car. Restricting loans would be one of the ways (and taxing).
please, it's the ussr, you were supposed to wait for everything, including pure textbook communism.
btw, why restrict it? if there's so much money to be made, you encourage it.
Because making money is black heresey i nhe USSR.please, it's the ussr, you were supposed to wait for everything, including pure textbook communism.
btw, why restrict it? if there's so much money to be made, you encourage it.
agree on that, I think yr suggestion on T.R. is a good start, maybe somewhere in the 20s they get a bout of sanity and introduce laws to restrict loans, which essentially curtails the whole buying on credit system? something like that would seriously limit the the car sales.(are there possibilities to prevent the whole system from buying on credit from even taking off?)
And yet even in the 20s - before the successful attempt to destroy light rail - we see automobiles as convenient enough for this.
Also:
Even if you restrict automobiles IN National Parks, that doesn't rule out using them to GET to National Parks, which is where the Yosemite example comes in.
By the way, since the issue of numbers of Americans with cars came up.
After checking the census (All figures rounded for convenience):
106 million (approximately) Americans.
33 million males over 21. Assuming an equal distribution of males and females for calculation's sake (I can probably find the figure if I try), that's about 65 million Americans over 21.
Obviously there wasn't an age requirement to get a driver's license in this era, but since someone under 21 probably can't afford even a cheap car on their own, it seems fair.
That means if one in ten Americans own a car, and assuming each American owns only one car, there are ten million cars on the road.
Approximately one car for every six adult Americans.
It's not yet "a car for everyone", but its too late for it to be a rich man's toy - the mass market has been found and is being exploited.
And what's the incentive for the developers to build streetcar suburbs to such an extent as to dominate the urban landscape?
I don't think you can keep the car from being, at the very least, popular among the middle class - the working man might take the streetcar and not have the money to "splurge" on a new car, but even that seems unlikely to be completely successful as a way to keep the car from becoming popular - slow things down, yes, eliminate it, no.
In Europe railway companies were not bought and stripped down by car manufacturers in the 1950s, simply because they were mostly state owned back then (British Rail, SNCF, Deutsche Bundesbahn ...) and still the car became the favoured means of transport. The only way to keep cars a "rich men's toy" is to keep them expensive and impractical and that's pretty much impossible with a POD after 1910, since by then the Ford Model T was already in production for 2 years, and other companies had started to produce cars for the lower middle classes as well, like the Opel 4/8 PS "doctor's car" from 1908. And no matter how much is spent to improve public transportation, it can never be really decent in rural areas, simply because of the low population density there, so cars there are a necessity and will stay so.
VL I suggest altering suburban planning and restricting lending to keep cars i nthe Upper middle class/wealthy braket.
and restricting consumer loans & regulations like would also have the nice side effect of very likely preventing the great depression & the wallstreet crash of '29.
So stronger rules protecting the consumers are needed, this could also mean tighter control on companies, so carcompanies buying up railroads possibly would be prevented.
So stronger rules protecting the consumers are needed, this could also mean tighter control on companies, so carcompanies buying up railroads possibly would be prevented.
I didn't realize it was Olds that actually came up with the assembly line. In which case you have to get rid of him.
NothingNow
Banned
Yeah, but if it's as painful to own and drive an automobile as it is in say Seattle, San Francisco, Tokyo or New York City on a whole larger scale, Urban (and dense suburban) dwellers aren't likely to buy one except as a Status symbol, or because getting the groceries is literally that much of a pain in the ass without it.
But such a scenario also would provide an impetus to do a degree of grocery shopping on a much shorter interval, instead of doing the modern suburbanite's weekly run, since not only is the store literally right there, but home delivery of things like Dairy and Bread would remain convenient for a lot longer.
And doing all of that, plus some restrictive lending laws would pretty much leave the normal person in the realm of the B-Segment or Economy car. But you're right, actually killing the Personal Automobile for everyone is pretty much impossible without literally strangling it in the cradle.
Restricting lending to that extent was and is difficult to do in the US. For one thing most Americans don't the government to interfere in the economy to that extent. Also WHY would the government do this? It would seen as (because it would largely be true) as a bunch of elitist snobs deciding that they need to keep automobiles away from the plebes for their own selfish ends.
But would it be possible starting in 1910 to make that the case? And desired by those in a position to influence urban development?
San Francisco (the city of those four I know best, though I've been to Seattle) isn't absolutely impossible to drive in either - less practical, but people do own cars there (its more of a "No one drives any more, there's no room for parking." Berraesque problem).
Yeah. I think you can definitely keep it from being ubiquitous if all of this really works (I'm not sure it would, but its a good start) . . . but you can't just leave it merely a toy of the rich from this, and no one thinking of the assembly line is unlikely.
The first thing I thought when I read the OP was "I don't want to try winning any World Wars without Detroit backing me up."
The railway thing- it did happen. It was more trams though than trains. Car companies bought up shares in tram systems and drove them out of business thus increasing the demand for cars.
This isn't the sole reason for cars being popular of course, they had to be pretty rich and succesful to buy up the tram companies in the first place.
Keep it so people want to keep living in dense cities rather than in suburbs somehow?
Have far laxer safety regulations on cars and a lot of accidents which delays a lot of people buying them?
A hostile middle east making fuel unaffordable?
This isn't the sole reason for cars being popular of course, they had to be pretty rich and succesful to buy up the tram companies in the first place.
Keep it so people want to keep living in dense cities rather than in suburbs somehow?
Have far laxer safety regulations on cars and a lot of accidents which delays a lot of people buying them?
A hostile middle east making fuel unaffordable?
NothingNow
Banned
Yeah, but it's that shortage of parking everywhere, combined with the reduction in costs that ditching an Automobile very much is, and how conveniently close everything is that leads to people just not driving.
And Actually, San Fransisco is the perfect example of that, since getting rid of the Automobile has always been a nefarious goal of the various zoning agencies and urban planners, leading to everybody parking on the street because there isn't enough space in their garage.
And it pisses my Grandfather off to no end when he's visiting SF (which it also did to my Great Grandfather and his massively over powered Pinto apparently,) while I just pack a couple pairs of good walking shoes.
Yeah, but despite their efforts, there are still plenty of cars.
Tyr: How much laxer than OTL can you get? Car companies aren't going to deliberately make exploding vehicles or something.