I’m getting a lot of ‘but my car is more convenient’ arguments lately, and I’m struggling to convey why that doesn’t make sense.
Specifically how to explain to people that: Sure, if you are able to drive, and can afford it, and your city is designed to, and subsidizes making it easy to drive and park, then it’s convenient. But if everyone does it then it quickly becomes a tragedy of the commons situation.
I thought of one analogy that is: It would be ‘more convenient’ if I just threw my trash out the window, but if we all started doing that then we’d quickly end up in a mess.
But I feel like that doesn’t quite get at the essence of it. Any other ideas?
It really depends on context.
If you have low population density, then there’s no escaping the reality that cars are convenient.
In high density environments, cars can’t be “the” convenient option.
Striving for the latter is admirable, but frequently mismanaged. For example around here there is one fantastic walkable development, with a rich amount of offices, stores, residential, and parks. However every other attempt is just appartments with crappy parking and no where to walk to (the commercial properties that get tossed into mixed use are largely vacant because the retail space want taken seriously, because the developers really just wanted to do apartments and the city mandates mixed use in a way that let’s them half ass it).