Do away with cars
- Thread starter Tyr
- Start date
Here's an old Ford promotional film from the 50s, but it shows why car use exploded in the 1900-20s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FcuVtX_bXs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FcuVtX_bXs
Compared to car-inspired suburbs, railroad suburbs and streetcar suburbs were still quite dense in population. Also, moving into and out of city centres has been a matter of fashion even in our car-dominated timeline, so it might be conceivable that, once all sorts of ecological technologies were implemented from the early 1970s on and city centres weren`t so polluted and stinking anymore, living in a downtown skyscraper would be more attractive than living in a streetcar suburb.
Whether McDonald`s would not have triumphed across the US and later across the world if there hadn`t been cars is a question I regard as quite open. I don`t see why they wouldn`t spring up in railway stations (they do IOTL), and with railroads often being administrated centrally, the triumph of McDonald`s could easily have stemmed from a general rental contract between them and, say, Amtrak.
Whether McDonald`s would not have triumphed across the US and later across the world if there hadn`t been cars is a question I regard as quite open. I don`t see why they wouldn`t spring up in railway stations (they do IOTL), and with railroads often being administrated centrally, the triumph of McDonald`s could easily have stemmed from a general rental contract between them and, say, Amtrak.
Could be, but remember that the first restaurant chain was based around railroads--the Harvey House.
RodentRevolution
Banned
No, the world does not solely consist of the urbanised bit of the United States. Cars were not pushed, cars are inevitable once the technology is there because of the simple fact that the vast majority of the world is not urban. Of course car is rather poorly defined in this debate but try getting around Africa say without a car...yes it can be done but becomes vastly more difficult and the 'personal' car industry is not merely closely related to but helps spread the costs of the rest of the motor industry, those buses would be a lot more expensive without cars.
However even without cars those branch lines for rail transport would not be as numerous as large numbers of the population need. Further but the flexibility of rail transport compared to road transport is just not there quite apart from the times that you need off road transport which even quite early cars can provide to some extent.
Continued reliance on animal transport would have a hugely limiting effect on the economic development of human society. Trains alone could not provide the necessary flexibility and where you can build a steam bus you can build a steam car and where a motor bus a motorcar.
As soon as you introduce non-animal powered road transport the personal version becomes inevitable. An aggressive anti-car campaign can be conducted but not without significant impacts on the economic development of the C20th.
Devvy
Donor
Likewise to many previous commentors, despite my obvious delight in railed transport, I simply can't see cars not being embraced by the public.
Even in Japan, or Korea, or Singapore, where public transport is simply excellent and you don't need a car, cars are owned by a huge amount of people. Public transport can always get you where you need to, but it only gets the majority of people to where they want to go quickly (or at least in a reasonable time). And how do you move larger goods (ie. that desk that you want to buy)?
We can make cars less desirable - higher fuel taxes are probably not hugely difficult, making driving more expensive, and funnel that tax into cheaper and better public transport, but I don't see any way in which you can "do away with cars" entirely outside of the huge urban cities (ie. London, New York, Paris etc).
Even in Japan, or Korea, or Singapore, where public transport is simply excellent and you don't need a car, cars are owned by a huge amount of people. Public transport can always get you where you need to, but it only gets the majority of people to where they want to go quickly (or at least in a reasonable time). And how do you move larger goods (ie. that desk that you want to buy)?
We can make cars less desirable - higher fuel taxes are probably not hugely difficult, making driving more expensive, and funnel that tax into cheaper and better public transport, but I don't see any way in which you can "do away with cars" entirely outside of the huge urban cities (ie. London, New York, Paris etc).
I don`t know about the US, but here in Germany, cars_were_pushed. Through massive state investments in roads and car factories and legislation privileging cars (outlawing pedestrians on many public grounds, limiting the driver`s liabilities for damages caused by him etc.), while cutting state investments and even regular maintenance of railroads; through things like a tax refund based on how far you have to travel to your workplace (a subsidy for living in suburbia and the micro-towns we call villages) etc.
There were a lot of reasons behind this government policy: in WW2, much of the country`s industry (which was not 100 % destroyed) had been building motorised military vehicles, and building cars seemed like a practical conversion. Also, US culture was highly attractive, and US culture had already branded the car as the symbol of individual liberty and progress.
Before all of this took place, there was individual motorisation going on in the countryside, of course. But, as I´ve said, the motorised vehicles were working tools for farmers: tractors, combine harvesters, very simple pick-ups, and all sorts of motorised bicycles. They fulfilled their role for the rural population nicely enough: If you had to transport animals (which you didn`t have to that much back then, there were animal markets everywhere and butchers, too), grain or whatever from A to B, you hauled it to or from the railway station with these vehicles. If you had to travel somewhere yourself, you used the motorised bicycle. It was cheap, easy to maintain, easy to store. What all of these vehicles were not, was this:
They were not giving you the feeling of being a swank modern cosmopolitan guy. They did not make you look like a James Dean. You were still a peasant on them. In the early years, only crazily rich people owned cars in the German countryside. Not because the cars were so expensive, but because they made so little sense on the dirt roads, large and inflexible as they were, and with the excellent railroad system in place. They were symbols of social status.
Cars were, at least in some parts of the world, politically promoted. And they were culturally attractive symbols of social status.
If you remove this political promotion, they would only be symbols of social status. If the PoD is in a relatively minor country like Western Germany, the diversion from OTL will not be total; more and more upper middle class and middle class people would want cars because they`re part of a global US-inspired culture.
As for the US, I`ll promise to keep my mouth shut since I really don`t know how things developed there and if a US PoD would have to be ASB or not.
Replacing horse carriages
Think of it this way:
The functional role of the modern car had previously been fulfilled by horse-drawn multi-person carriages (an individual, flexible means of transporting one or several people, comfortable and protected from bad weather).
How many people in the countryside owned horse-drawn carriages? (Not oxen-carts, not a horse to ride, but horse-drawn carriages?)
In Germany, my estimation is that less than 5 % of the rural population owned a horse-drawn carriage. That is, in part, because they were expensive - but cars weren`t really cheaper. But it is also in part because you didn`t really need a horse-drawn carriage that much. And neither did the peasant need cars.
They began to buy them when railroad services, which had been cut back during the war, were not restored to their pre-war standards; when the small-scale economic structures of the countryside began to be dismantled; and when posh people from the town (white-collar worker families) moved into the newly built houses in the new "development areas" and drove cars.
Think of it this way:
The functional role of the modern car had previously been fulfilled by horse-drawn multi-person carriages (an individual, flexible means of transporting one or several people, comfortable and protected from bad weather).
How many people in the countryside owned horse-drawn carriages? (Not oxen-carts, not a horse to ride, but horse-drawn carriages?)
In Germany, my estimation is that less than 5 % of the rural population owned a horse-drawn carriage. That is, in part, because they were expensive - but cars weren`t really cheaper. But it is also in part because you didn`t really need a horse-drawn carriage that much. And neither did the peasant need cars.
They began to buy them when railroad services, which had been cut back during the war, were not restored to their pre-war standards; when the small-scale economic structures of the countryside began to be dismantled; and when posh people from the town (white-collar worker families) moved into the newly built houses in the new "development areas" and drove cars.
MrP
Banned
Actually the majority of the world's population does live in cities.
World Health Organization:
The migration of country dwellers to the cities has been one of the most significant trends in mankind's demographic history for the past two centuries or so, and it's possible that without cars said trend may be even more pronounced.
What Salvador79 said
I agree entirely. No it is not possible to eliminate personal vehicles. However the current situation in the US where most households need two or more vehicles did not have to occur. Avoiding the scale of suburban sprawl in the postwar era (which was actively subsidized by government infrastructure spending) would allow the retention of effective transit systems (which do not work when population density is too low). Suburbs still happen but they expand out along trainlines (Hudson County NJ, a suburb of NYC, is denser than many central cities in the South and West).
In this scenario most families would still have a car (the modal household would own one car), but a substantial number of central city dwellers would be carfree (currently only true in NYC) and multiple car households would be rural dwellers and people who need work vehicles (trucks etc) along with those who are wealthy enough to own cars for fun (sports cars, classic cars etc).
I agree entirely. No it is not possible to eliminate personal vehicles. However the current situation in the US where most households need two or more vehicles did not have to occur. Avoiding the scale of suburban sprawl in the postwar era (which was actively subsidized by government infrastructure spending) would allow the retention of effective transit systems (which do not work when population density is too low). Suburbs still happen but they expand out along trainlines (Hudson County NJ, a suburb of NYC, is denser than many central cities in the South and West).
In this scenario most families would still have a car (the modal household would own one car), but a substantial number of central city dwellers would be carfree (currently only true in NYC) and multiple car households would be rural dwellers and people who need work vehicles (trucks etc) along with those who are wealthy enough to own cars for fun (sports cars, classic cars etc).
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I live in a place where depending on your origin and destination it can take three quarters of an hour to go under 4 km, a distance that would take about a quarter of an hour by car.
Nice. To add, where I live is almost on the main road from Howick to Auckland, both settlements being established prior to 1850 (very early in NZ's history). And buses are the only overland public transport available, the land being too rough for trams or trains (or not worth levelling out anyway).
The early Fords, Models A-T(as well as the first few Cadillacs) used planetary transmissions, so were very easy to shift vs the later 'crash' unsynchronized gearboxes that also required careful clutch work.
In the Fords, they were two speed plus reverse, each a pedal on the floor for each.
Think of them like a 'manual' automatic transmission, no valvebody to do the shifting for you.
The rest of the controls were also simple, a brake, ignition select between battery and magneto, and spark advance and throttle levers, plus a choke
They were so much easier to drive, most States had them as a restriction on your license, wasn't good for driving a 'standard' manual shift transmission.
Actually, second gear was when the hand lever was forward and no pedals were pushed, and yet when pulled back the thing was an emergency brake. First gear was when the clutch pedal was down, reverse when the reverse pedal was down, and the third pedal was the brake. The whole thing is given here.
DougM
Donor
A couple of points.
First it was not only the rich or wealthy in Germany that had access to powered transportation. My grandfather had a motorcycle with side car and his brother in law had a car, and they were respectively a steel mill worker and a worker in a stone quarrying. Neither were wealthy. This was before the war.
As for changing the post war suburban craze to save mass transit. Don't count on it. In all but the largest of cities in this US mass transit was all but dead in the late 20's and early 30's. The Presidents Conference Committee was formed in 1929 before the crash to try and figure out a way to save street car systems that were going under fast. They limped on due to the depression and then restrictions placed on cars during the war.
And it was the existence of the car (read personal powered vehicle) that allowed the suburb to become as popular as they are. Folks will always live as far from there work as they can get based on available transport.
The reason for this is that property is cheaper farther out. So folks that have less money or just want more property for the money they have will move farther out and put up with a longer commute. Unless you make it impossible to buy cheep(er) land farther out this will happen. It happened be for cars ever existed. Heck I bet if you look into it happened with the cavemen. Someone moved farther out because he could get a bigger cave...
So eliminating personal powered transport without Eliminating the small practical power plant (steam, gas, electric,etc) is as close to ASB as you can get.
I would love for it to not be the case, I love cities, I love trains, I love streetcars, but I am afraid that they are just not practical once the technology for "cars" comes into existence.
Mass transit just is not practical over large areas or lower density areas. As I pointed out elsewhere to cover the whole US you would average about 30 people living near any given station. So you could never afford the system. So you need something like the car for the areas that are to spread out. This means the car will exist. And then folks will want it.
It is a matter of cost as much as anything. There was a famous case of a city building a transit system that was supposed to talk folks to and from the local airport and it was pointed out after it had been up and running for a while that it would have been cheep to pay the cab fare for every person that used the system then to pay to maintain and run the system, much less built it.
And in the US some of those tax breaks to .I've things to the suburbs was an attempt by the government to get things out of the cities that would be bombed during a war. Germany, Japan and to a degree England learned that having industry and such in cities made the good targets. The nuclear bomb made that even more of an issue. And there was a proposal in the US to pass laws that would have resulted in the elimination of cities as we know them. But it was considered to radical.
First it was not only the rich or wealthy in Germany that had access to powered transportation. My grandfather had a motorcycle with side car and his brother in law had a car, and they were respectively a steel mill worker and a worker in a stone quarrying. Neither were wealthy. This was before the war.
As for changing the post war suburban craze to save mass transit. Don't count on it. In all but the largest of cities in this US mass transit was all but dead in the late 20's and early 30's. The Presidents Conference Committee was formed in 1929 before the crash to try and figure out a way to save street car systems that were going under fast. They limped on due to the depression and then restrictions placed on cars during the war.
And it was the existence of the car (read personal powered vehicle) that allowed the suburb to become as popular as they are. Folks will always live as far from there work as they can get based on available transport.
The reason for this is that property is cheaper farther out. So folks that have less money or just want more property for the money they have will move farther out and put up with a longer commute. Unless you make it impossible to buy cheep(er) land farther out this will happen. It happened be for cars ever existed. Heck I bet if you look into it happened with the cavemen. Someone moved farther out because he could get a bigger cave...
So eliminating personal powered transport without Eliminating the small practical power plant (steam, gas, electric,etc) is as close to ASB as you can get.
I would love for it to not be the case, I love cities, I love trains, I love streetcars, but I am afraid that they are just not practical once the technology for "cars" comes into existence.
Mass transit just is not practical over large areas or lower density areas. As I pointed out elsewhere to cover the whole US you would average about 30 people living near any given station. So you could never afford the system. So you need something like the car for the areas that are to spread out. This means the car will exist. And then folks will want it.
It is a matter of cost as much as anything. There was a famous case of a city building a transit system that was supposed to talk folks to and from the local airport and it was pointed out after it had been up and running for a while that it would have been cheep to pay the cab fare for every person that used the system then to pay to maintain and run the system, much less built it.
And in the US some of those tax breaks to .I've things to the suburbs was an attempt by the government to get things out of the cities that would be bombed during a war. Germany, Japan and to a degree England learned that having industry and such in cities made the good targets. The nuclear bomb made that even more of an issue. And there was a proposal in the US to pass laws that would have resulted in the elimination of cities as we know them. But it was considered to radical.
Some of this has to do with subsidies to suburbs; developers frequently (usually?) don't have to pay the cost of streets & sewer lines.DougM said:
There's also the issue of income inequality: people who have more money build bigger houses, encouraging lower-income people to want to do the same, which they can only do on cheaper (suburban) lots...
Remove either (preferably both) of these, you discourage (if not eliminate) 'burbs.
Eliminate fuel subsides would be good. High taxes & fees on cars help.
Firstly, I agree with what phx1138 replied.
Secondly: Much of the profitability of car transporation, which you alluded to, is owed to how their costs are externalised. And I´m not saying that it makes economic sense IOTL to connect everything with everything by public transportation because I know how culturally ingrained cars are.
But I still disagree on the question of inevitability. I don`t know about your grandfather, but mine was a real enthusiast for individual transportation, but the farthest he got was a motorcycle. The village I grew up in, which in my age had 1,800 inhabitants and perhaps 1,000 cars (and a fast byway to the nearest town), had exactly 7 four-wheeled motorised vehicles in 1951, and I don`t imagine there were many more before the war. Mind you, there were six-, two- and three-wheeled ones, each of them fulfilling their specific niche. But, from all I know, I stand by my assertion that cars only became a standard in German villages through a mix of governmental policies and (superficially absorbed?) US culture.
This didn't actually have very much to do with cars, but rather with a combination of policy and business factors that made the mostly privately-owned systems unviable. Many if not most were publicly-established monopolies that had purchased their charters by agreeing to certain conditions, like fixed, low fares or paying for paving local streets, which by that time were undermining their financial feasibility. Obviously a fare of 5 cents in 1905, say, that more than covered costs might not do so thirty years later. It's not implausible that a different business model is used that makes them more financially sustainable, or that public policy is less oriented towards undermining them, as it frequently was during the 1930s and onwards.
However, I generally agree that the 1940s and 1950s are too late to introduce a PoD that will significantly reduce the number of cars on the road.
Where is this notion that trains and streetcars aren't "practical" once the technology of cars comes into existence coming from?
Although cars have become a very important factor in personal transport, there have been many advances in rail technology, in rail usage, and in mass transit since their introduction. Many new rail systems have been built, even in countries which did go hard-core for cars, immediately, and old systems have sometimes been partially revived.For an obvious example, take Los Angeles. It is well-known that it quickly developed a reverence for the car and mass usage of the car that were not duplicated for some time in other areas. At the same time, it did once have a vast streetcar/interurban network in the Red and Yellow Cars, but that was dismantled as the car came in and shut down entirely in the early 1960s. Yet less than thirty years later, Los Angeles was opening a new rail line along one of the first routes that Pacific Electric had developed, all the way back in 1902. And since then it has opened up five other rail lines, two subway heavy rail lines and three other light rail or streetcar lines.
It seems to me that what this indicates was that there was a perhaps understandable bias in favor of cars as a mode of transport in the earlier part of the century which experienced showed was excessive--that cars did not, in fact, replace the railway, and that rail (or similar devices) were, in fact, a useful tool in a regional transportation system. In short, it seems to me, it shows that rail is entirely practical nowadays. After all, the Los Angeles system is the second-largest, by ridership, in the country (though several systems have it beat on ridership per mile).
Sure, many countries have large rural areas where mass transit might be financially infeasible. But generally speaking few people actually live in those areas; as MrP points out, over half of the global population lives in cities, and a much higher fraction in the developed nations we are generally talking about here (no one is discussing networking all of Brazil, say). So one could reasonably build a mass transit system that serviced most of the people in a given country reasonably well and left them needing a car less often than they often do today. Although that would not satisfy the OP, it would most likely significantly reduce the number of vehicles on the road.