A) Every bank is run by racists who are sufficiently racist to ignore a profit opportunity

B) The neighborhoods are bad credit risks

You can choose the car regime if you want, the US does, but: 1- public transit is lower quality due to higher income brackets choosing cars. 2- everyone is screwed by the cars' negative externalities (noise and air pollution mainly). 3- lower income brackets are screwed by the traffic generated by the higher guys (50 minimum wage workers occupying the same lane space as 3 SUV-driving middle managers). Also you have to remember how much the mortality increases in higher car traffic areas, so that X figure isn't really true

Like if you had to drive on toll roads built underground then nobody would ever drive (see Hyperloop). I think the big mistake being made is people are arguing for free subways and really we should just go to free buses first.

How do costs compare for average people in that area is a much better metric. (understand that in transit areas I'd expect people with cars to have newer luxury cars, while in more car centric areas I'd expect more used non-luxury cars, and in poor areas worn out cars - which is itself a skew of the facts)

The interstates in the US alone have costed more than 25 trillion dollars. That's just the interstates, no other highways or roads.

But none of that even considers cost of using said roads. In the US, on average 15% of gross income is spent on automobile transportation.

That's a 15% tax right off the top, before your other taxes.

It becomes like the meme when people talk about nuclear power. Sure, it would had been an good idea 10-20 years ago, but there is no time to do it now and it cost too much. Next year will be even later, and it will cost even more. Any new funding need to be channeled directly to the starving short-term budget, which will continue to always be too low on funding.

What does the auto industry have in response? Jobs? The left don't care about jobs to begin with, they view anything linked to capitalism or employers to be inherently suspicious.

To see this is true, just look at which group is a net tax payer vs net tax recipient. Car drivers subsidize public transport everywhere I know of (unless you get into stupid arguments that assume world peace exists solely for the purpose of oil transport).

A direct democracy could decide tomorrow that we wanted to fuck China sideways with nukes because it's funny and based all because a tiktok went viral.

That's rather confusing. If women didn't have the right to vote, how would they be able to vote on the question of whether or not to grant women the right to vote?

PS: electricity is hard as there's a lot of volatile renewables, but I bet is still way easier than clever formulas.

My car, a 2025 Hyundai Kona Electric SEL, weighs 3 800 pounds. Call it 4 000 when carrying one typical person. It has two axles so the axle weight is 2 000 pounds.

Let's call the amount of stress this puts on the road when driving from point A to point B 1 car's worth of stress.

Suppose we need to get 60 people from point A to point B. If we put them in 60 Konas that would result in 60 car's worth of stress.

A bit of Googling suggests that a typical 40-foot transit bus with 60 passengers would weigh around 36 000 pounds and has two axles which gives an axel weight of 18 000 pounds, which is 9 times that of the Kona.

The bus taking 60 people from A to B then will result in 9^4 car's worth of stress, which is a little over 6 500 car's worth of stress. That's a little over 100 times the stress from sending those people in 60 Konas.

There might be some differences due to other factors like tire types and speed, but the weight difference would be the dominant factor.

There are some good arguments for buses, but saving on road maintenance might not be one of them.

BTW, this outsized stress from heavy vehicles is also relevant to the ICE vs electric debate, since EVs usually weigh more than similar sized ICE cars.

For example the ICE version of the Kona is about 500 pounds lighter. The EV version should cause about 70% more stress on the road.

But wait! The ICE version needs gas, and gas is usually delivered to gas stations via tanker trucks. When the stress from that delivery of gas was taken into account it turned out that replacing ICE Konas with EV Konas would be a net reduction in road stress if the tanker truck that brought the gas had to drive more than just a few miles from wherever it gets filled up to the gas station.