Only because the economic system is working as intended. There is always enough to go around, profits just get in the way of getting it around.

Its less about how much land is being used and more about the accessibility of that land. By suburbia being spread out so much, transportation becomes more difficult to implement. Many suburbs are so far away from a simple groccery store that walking there is unreasonable at best. Being so spread out also means we need to spend more resources to provide services. Thats more miles of roadways, water pipes and electrical lines that need to be installed and maintained.

There are other important things to consider too besides just total land area like wildlife corridors, stormwater management, and access to nature as an amenity.

If you’re gping through that trouble, lay the tram tracks so the next politician cant open that lane up to car traffic.

Tram systems could be made that simple as adding capacity is just add another tram car to the link onto certain routes. We do also need trains but trams serve a more localized purpose, which often make up the majority of someone’s trips

Lets go a step farther and put that bus on tracks, which will make it even easier and safer to implement self driving.

One thing id recommend is factoring vehicle weight into the registration, as weight is one of the big factors that contributes to roadway wear.

Even if we did want to humor them. 1 or 2 train tracks to cross is much easier for an animal than a 6 lane road of mixed traffic. Trains are all chained together so rails see a train every 5-15 minutes at most whereas a road could see hundreds of cars all spaced apart and going different speeds in that same time frame. Trains will still hit some animals, but it far less per person/good moved per mile of travel than a car.

As for their resources argument yes they still use resources, but it is less resources spent overall so still a better option.

Well technically some parking space and asphalt might be needed. And the odd snail or small snake may get hit by bicycles, and tires still shed particles off of bikes, but the scale is vastly different in comparison to cars.

My point is that we should be making the most impactful changes we can to fight climate change and environmental destruction, which means subsidies, government investments, and tax breaks are better spent on transit, density, or active transport than on EV infrastructure/incentives

The government building transit would effect the number of people who need to rely on a car.

Asphalt is at least the most recycled material we use. I guess except water technically speaking.

Those issues from trains and busses are less impact per person than a private automobile. Also pretty sure they don’t need to salt train tracks and trains don’t use tires (except a few very rare examples).

You do realize those roads are only driveable because of extensive maintaince. If we stopped maintaining a specific road and built tracks instead, many people would choose the tram/train as the road would be too rough to travel at any decent speed after a few years. The infrastructure we build and maintain directly impact the mode people use. And currently many places exclussively build and maintain roads, often not even including the option of a sidewalk.

Im curious if the additional weight of EVs causes more tire wear and ends up negating any savings from the brake dust. We also have to consider manufacturing and disposal of both vehicles to be truly fair.

Its because EVs are being marketed as a green solution, not a stepping stone. If a car must exist it might as well be electric but we should be asking how do we reduce the cars that exist and their frequency of use. Building electrified transit and keeping ICE cars would as a whole be more beneficial than just converting all cars to EVs.

This, to me, shows cars are more damaging than what just comes out of their tail pipes. Maybe the illustration could have included impacts of cycling and transit to help illustrate the point it is trying to make by comparing the impacts.

Not the onion but still from a fake news site.

Those trees really jump out in front of drivers sometimes.

If thats the case, every car needs a high visibility paint job. Its only fair.

Trucks actually started selling more when the first started mimicing the looks of semis. I think dodge was one of the first to adopt that mindset which was basically everything on the front end gets bigger.