People like to conflate two problems together.
Lots of Australia is small and far away from metropolis.
Lots of metropolis could happily exist with wonderful multi modal transport options like trains bus bike and walking.
Between the two, cars grant autonomy outside public planning for individuals to still be individuals to get between families and economy between remote to remote and metro to remote even when there’s no feasible public transport.
The devil in the detail is the problem at it always is anything when you look into it.
Yes there’s big opportunity to improve mass transit. Yes there’s a place for long range individual and small scale transit. Yes there’s a place for last mile delivery.
But the average Joe doesn’t really and shouldn’t really need to know, or care. Why does it take a nation, that is every individual, to understand and vote for what is nuanced and specific? Why can’t bold moves be made and results be explained?
Anyway that’s enough drunk reply
Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 day ago
It’s both. People will do whatever is most convenient. If our cities are built to be convenient for cars, people will use cars. And this has the effect of people seeing cars are more convenient than other options and being unable to imagine another way, so they are hostile towards ideas which would improve the city planning.
People in the Amsterdam or Tokyo are not more virtuous than Australians for choosing to ride or take public transport. They do it because their cities are just designed around these things being the easy option.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Are you really talking about cloistered small mindedness though ?
I’ve never visited Amsterdam or Tokyo but I can imagine, without any difficulty, that planning could make cities more navigable without cars.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 hour ago
I’m not really sure how to answer your question because I don’t know what you mean. To me the reason for it doesn’t really matter too much. People are opposed to improvements to our city planning and transportation networks. Call it “small mindedness”, call it “having been lied to their whole lives”, call it “wanting things to stay similar to what they already know”, call it what you like, the fact is that they will lobby against improvements like increased density, better bike paths, and reductions in the convenience of cars.
The fact is that neither Amsterdam nor Tokyo got how they are by sheer accident. Amsterdam’s case is perhaps more well-known, because they were going down exactly the same route as us in the '60s, until there was a concerted effort to reverse that (a campaign known as “Stop de Kindermoord” or “Stop the Child Murder”), and now it’s one of the best cities in the world to get around in.