Are you gonna get an electric car anytime soon? (Or do you already have one?)

[Bobby Henderson]

America's gasoline tax system is already pretty badly broken. When the 18.4¢ federal rate was established in 1993 total gasoline taxes amounted to between 25% and 33% of the total purchase. In 1993 the national average price per gallon was $1.11. Today fuel taxes are ranging between 10%-15% of the total purchase. Oklahoma has some of the cheapest gasoline in the nation, some stations here in Lawton have 87 octane gasoline at $2.67 per gallon currently. The price per gallon is considerably higher in other states. The cost of building and maintaining roads is far greater now than 1993 cost levels.

Matters are made worse by lawmakers at varying levels re-directing fuel tax revenue into other not-roads places. When Oklahoma raised its fuel tax by 3¢ per gallon the extra funds were slated to go into public schools for several years and then phased back to road funding later. Oklahoma still has school teachers leaving the state in droves (or refusing to come here in the first place).

Something has to change with how streets and highways are funded. Americans aren't going to give up their vehicles. Most Americans live in locations where they can't do without a motor vehicle. "New Urbanists" have promoted a city planning ideology where everyone should move to the city core and simply walk and ride bicycles everywhere. That whole idea is a freaking utopian pipe dream.

The cores of most American cities have turned into extreme high cost of living zones only for the richest few people. In the trendy "Bricktown" section of Downtown Oklahoma City most of the people waiting tables at restaurants, cooking food or doing other service industry jobs have to commute considerable distances to work those low pay jobs. Meanwhile all the high priced condos built up in that downtown area are either owned by people who also have much bigger primary homes in the suburbs or the condos are owned by institutional investors. New Urbanism will always be a bullshit idea as long as the working class is price-excluded from participation.

That underscores the fact that America's need for highways and personal vehicles isn't going to go away any time soon. If most people are driving electric vehicles then some other method for funding road building and maintenance will be required.

[Leo Enticknap]

"New Urbanists" have promoted a city planning ideology where everyone should move to the city core and simply walk and ride bicycles everywhere. That whole idea is a freaking utopian pipe dream.

Ironically, they should really be called very old urbanists. For the 13 years before I emigrated, I lived about 300 yards outside the city walls of York, England. Supermarkets, pubs, restaurants, the movie theater at which I worked when I moved there (and which was the reason for my moving there) ... all were within a 10-minute walk of home. The layout of the city center is basically as the Romans designed it, though expanded during the millennium or so after they called it quits and buggered off back to Italy. Given that knocking down buildings between 500 and 1,500 years old to build two-lane streets would be somewhat politically incorrect, there is (or at least, there was, when I left) an 8a curfew for vehicles delivering to businesses within the city walls, after which, if you want to go there, you have to do so on foot.

I could have lived those 13 years in York without owning a car, with only minor inconvenience. The reason I kept one was because (a) the apartment I rented came with a garage, and (b) the car I had when moved there was a decade old, completely paid off, I maintained it myself ... in short, the cost of owning it was no more than that of buying rail tickets to where I needed to go, when I needed to go there, but gave me a lot more flexibility.

In contrast, many American cities either did not grow into major settlements until almost everyone having a car became a thing, or were young enough that they could be adapted (roads widened, underground parking garages built, etc.) relatively easily and cheaply. It would be as physically and politically impossible to redesign LA to enable most of its residents not to need a car as it would be to demolish York Minster. So if the EV conversion is going to happen, it needs to happen around, and compatible with, cities and 'burbs that are already here, lived, and worked in.

[Marcel Birgelen]

It's very hard to impossible to change the mindset of the living population, unless you unleash extreme measures like war on them. Still, I tried to change mine. It's still a work-in-progress, I'm waging war with my inner-self, but slowly, we may be getting somewhere.

But let's be honest with ourselves: The new generations will probably have to cope with the fact that the idea of everybody owning a car may not be sustainable and an EV simply isn't a wildcard solution to this problem. In the end, an EV is still a car, needs considerable resources for the amount of transportation it offers and only changing the power source, doesn't change the reality around it, it only makes it more complicated.
In the end, the solution will be to change the way we all live and work together. The suburban sprawl, now very common in the U.S., but also since having flourished in many places all over the world, where having access to a car is essential for living, may not be attainable for the vast majority of the living population. Especially, if the trend of an aging population not only continues in the more developed countries, but also takes hold in the many still rapidly developing countries.

If you live in a place that offers decent public transport, then having access to a car can become an option, rather than a necessity. The way I had organized my life back a few years ago, having access to a car more or less 24/7 was an absolute necessity, my life could not function without it. The way I live right now, I have access to all my basic living needs by foot and I'm not living smack in the middle of a large city, the neighborhood has simply been organized in such way, that this becomes a possibility. The only reason I would need a car for, is visiting relatives and friends that don't live near easily accessible public transit.

I'm also happy to live in a country that has considered the bike to be a serious transportation option and thus invested quite some efforts in a bike infrastructure that actually works. I regularly take the bike to work nowadays and since I switched to an E-bike, I don't care too much that it's 15 miles every way. Taking the bike also saves me from visiting the gym, something which I hate and consider a waste of my time. Over the years, someone apparently commissioned some pretty beautiful biking infrastructure with dedicated biking paths through parks and forested areas that were not there even 15 years ago. Those paths keep you away from other heavy traffic, which makes much of my "daily commute" much like a cycle-through-the-park, which is more relaxing than I thought it would be.

Also, if I have appointments elsewhere, if I can go there by train, I'd do so. Having access to a stable 4G/5G network and a power socket in case your battery-powered gadgets may burp on you, helps in getting work done, while you'd otherwise would be stuck behind a steering wheel.

Not everything is perfect... it's still easy to simply take the car instead of the bike, especially if I have a good excuse, like the weather. Trains do have delays and if this train involves Germany, you can be absolutely sure your journey ends in a rather expensive, but almost certain complete failure. In Germany, the car is still the gold standard of transportation, much like in the U.S., trains have become an afterthought and as such, are a complete joke and therefore a pain to use. I can understand why people tend to bypass those kinds of systems whenever possible,

[Ryan Gallagher]

It's very hard to impossible to change the mindset of the living population, unless you unleash extreme measures like war on them. Still, I tried to change mine. It's still a work-in-progress, I'm waging war with my inner-self, but slowly, we may be getting somewhere.

But let's be honest with ourselves: The new generations will probably have to cope with the fact that the idea of everybody owning a car may not be sustainable and an EV simply isn't a wildcard solution to this problem. In the end, an EV is still a car, needs considerable resources for the amount of transportation it offers and only changing the power source, doesn't change the reality around it, it only makes it more complicated.
In the end, the solution will be to change the way we all live and work together. The suburban sprawl, now very common in the U.S., but also since having flourished in many places all over the world, where having access to a car is essential for living, may not be attainable for the vast majority of the living population. Especially, if the trend of an aging population not only continues in the more developed countries, but also takes hold in the many still rapidly developing countries.

If you live in a place that offers decent public transport, then having access to a car can become an option, rather than a necessity. The way I had organized my life back a few years ago, having access to a car more or less 24/7 was an absolute necessity, my life could not function without it. The way I live right now, I have access to all my basic living needs by foot and I'm not living smack in the middle of a large city, the neighborhood has simply been organized in such way, that this becomes a possibility. The only reason I would need a car for, is visiting relatives and friends that don't live near easily accessible public transit.

I'm also happy to live in a country that has considered the bike to be a serious transportation option and thus invested quite some efforts in a bike infrastructure that actually works. I regularly take the bike to work nowadays and since I switched to an E-bike, I don't care too much that it's 15 miles every way. Taking the bike also saves me from visiting the gym, something which I hate and consider a waste of my time. Over the years, someone apparently commissioned some pretty beautiful biking infrastructure with dedicated biking paths through parks and forested areas that were not there even 15 years ago. Those paths keep you away from other heavy traffic, which makes much of my "daily commute" much like a cycle-through-the-park, which is more relaxing than I thought it would be.

Also, if I have appointments elsewhere, if I can go there by train, I'd do so. Having access to a stable 4G/5G network and a power socket in case your battery-powered gadgets may burp on you, helps in getting work done, while you'd otherwise would be stuck behind a steering wheel.

Not everything is perfect... it's still easy to simply take the car instead of the bike, especially if I have a good excuse, like the weather. Trains do have delays and if this train involves Germany, you can be absolutely sure your journey ends in a rather expensive, but almost certain complete failure. In Germany, the car is still the gold standard of transportation, much like in the U.S., trains have become an afterthought and as such, are a complete joke and therefore a pain to use. I can understand why people tend to bypass those kinds of systems whenever possible,

I'm on nearly 20 years without a car (in Austin, with reasonably shit public transit). But you have to be content with your world being somewhat "small" and spending quite a bit more on housing to be where you need to be. Things got a bit easier with the ride-sharing/scooters/etc... now at least there is a convenient 3rd option to the bike or public transport. Actually 4th option most days, my commute is walking distance if I feel like 20min and the weather is playing nice. After hours I tend to not walk, feel much safer from random downtown mayhem at two wheel speeds.

[Bobby Henderson]

Very few American cities are set up where it can be somewhat practical to live without a personal vehicle. Those cities are typically the oldest ones, built-up before the automobile took off in popularity. Rail travel or the horse and carriage were the primary modes of long distance travel when cities like Boston and New York were going through their original boom phases of growth.

It's all but impossible to live without a personal vehicle in smaller American cities, towns and rural areas. Outside of the very biggest cities options for public transit get limited pretty quickly.

My town, Lawton has a city bus system, but it only runs Monday-Friday during daytime hours. Its bus routes cover only a limited part of the city. Only so many buses run at a time. So you might be waiting a while at the bus stop, even if you time things right according to the posted schedule. The bus service survives in part on government subsidies because it doesn't have nearly enough ridership to stay in the black. Anyone without a vehicle will have to take a cab (or an Über) if they can't get access to a city bus. The cost of rides in a cab or ride-sharing vehicle add up quick.

Even in a city with easy access to public transit (such as NYC) the commuting experience can be a real time-draining pain in the ass. When I commuted from Staten Island to college in Midtown Manhattan it would take 90 minutes each way. 30 minutes on a city bus, 30 minutes on the Staten Island Ferry and another 30 to get from Battery Park to 23rd Street. Three hours drained every day just commuting.

In the Summer of 1988 I worked a temp job at Merrill Lynch headquarters next to the original World Trade Center. There were a few times I had to work late. Rather than just let me commute home the usual way (subway-ferry-bus) they had their car service drive me back to Staten Island. At that time of the evening the ride took less than 20 minutes. It was so nice.

[Marcel Birgelen]

It probably won't be something for current generations, but people can adapt and will need to, as I don't see how this suburbanism will ever scale to a rapidly shrinking working population. If the suburbs start to become unlivable ghost towns, people will eventually leave. We've seen this happen before. The problem though is that there is far too little new "urbanist" development, so if people move, they often move from one badly laid-out neighborhood to a new one, hopefully just a slightly better designed one.

For an American city, I guess New York has a very good public transit system, but it's certainly far from being perfect and in general feels very run-down and at the edge of capacity. A friend of mine used to live Midtown Manhattan, but moved to a waterfront property in New Jersey, with the PATH station right next door. He was literally one PATH stop away from the Oculus. Another alternative was the ferry. Going to work via PATH/subway took him like 20 minutes. Trying to do the same by car any given workday would be a nightmare, including finding a space to park the damn thing and New York parking spots are amongst the most expensive in the world. I'm not sure if it was the commute that got to him, but he moved to Austin a while ago. I guess that's where the new gold is nowadays.

I think New York is a bad example for urban development in general though, as it has become way too expensive to live or operate a normal business there, especially in Manhattan and most of the popular neighborhoods. This obviously isn't a New York only problem, but it's on full display if you just take a little walk through Manhattan. It also feels like everybody is close to the breaking point. Many smaller businesses seem to have given up and neighborhoods that used to be filled with small shops are slowly starting to look like I remember Times Square from the 1980s. I haven't visited for a while, but from what I hear from friends and family, San Francisco is even worse, where large parts nowadays look like Skid Row in L.A., complete with tent camps and heaps of garbage, like in a southern Italian city, where the local city has an argument with the local Mafia clan that runs the garbage disposal services.

Not the entirety of mankind needs to live in some dystopian megacities like New York, L.A.,Chongqing or Tokyo, but it's clear that we can't give every human nor family on this planet a car and certainly no EV. So, in order to keep stuff livable, we'll have to build walkable, livable cities at normal scales. I consider this more feasible and a bigger solution for our problems than sending people to some still non-existent colonies on Mars. There is nothing of value on Mars, other than to prove that we can go there. But sustaining life on the surface on Mars on a good day, is 10 times harder than sustaining life on the harshest place on this planet and I've not even factored in the costs to actually get them there...

[Randy Stankey]

Good grief! I looked it up and it's a State wide personal property tax on vehicles. Assesed at $25 per $1000 value. Glad I don't live there...

Why do you think they call it Tax-achussetts?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Why do you think they call it Tax-achussetts?

I've only been there a few times, never knew it was that bad there.

[Bobby Henderson]

It probably won't be something for current generations, but people can adapt and will need to, as I don't see how this suburbanism will ever scale to a rapidly shrinking working population.

The next couple of decades will be uncharted territory for the United States. The generational demographics issue, aka the worsening baby bust, will create big problems in more sectors of our economy as well as our nation's ability to defend itself. Our armed forces aren't even hitting recruiting numbers targets right now.

But shrinking population does not equal everyone moving into city centers. Despite all the sales pitches for New Urbanism the ideology is still a bunch of douchebag bullshit. Not everyone is a damned millionaire. As I said before, convincing everyone to live in the city core will be an impossible pipe dream as long as "revitalized" urban districts remain priced for rich people only. If there is no housing inventory for not-rich, but still working people the New Urbanist folks need to get fucked with their sales pitch.

I've had it with America's knee-jerk habit of punching down. Us assholes don't even think twice when we treat some service industry worker, such as a lady behind a cash register, like they're worth less than dog shit. Here's the thing: even the most wealthy enclaves in this nation depend greatly on "worthless" service industry workers. We take it for granted there will always be someone to wait tables, stock grocery store shelves, flip burger patties, etc. But we don't do shit for making it possible for these "worthless" employees to live within walking distance of their shit-pay jobs. The situation is disgusting hypocrisy. It has to stop.

High cost states like New York and California are not only shedding hundreds of thousands of people on a steady basis, but many of the people who are leaving are young adults who have most of their career life-spans ahead of them. It's not like they want to leave, but the choice is often either being stuck living with parents or leaving the state in order to live like a grown-up. That's a lot of tax base leaving for more affordable locations. For now, many of these people are merely moving to more affordable cities in places like Texas. But that won't last. The biggest urban centers in Texas have already seen housing go into over-priced, not-affordable territory. Austin's real estate price bubble is now in the process of bursting.

What we may end up seeing is a migration away from these super-sized mega-cities out to more modest sized cities and towns where there is still plenty of space to build. Super-fast Internet is increasingly common in ever smaller cities and towns, making all sorts of business possible anywhere. There is an increasing same-ness in out-of-home activities like eating at restaurants, going to cinemas, etc. Big cities now only have a lot more of the same thing. That would work against the notion of getting more people to live in major city cores. And it would work against getting people to give up driving personal vehicles.

Another big problem in America: we can't build a passenger rail line of any kind without it costing a stupid fortune. Even if the commuter rail line is a glorified trolley car service we'll figure out how to make it cost billions of dollars. No one is building that kind of stuff in a city with 100,000 people. Small cities like mine are stuck with part time city bus service at best. And is there anyone anywhere who enjoys taking the bus?

[Leo Enticknap]

Another big problem in America: we can't build a passenger rail line of any kind without it costing a stupid fortune.

And, for passenger transportation at any rate, being functionally useless.

The California "high speed rail" project is notorious for having been an infrastructure sh!t show to rival the new Berlin airport. Lesser known, but equally ludicrous, is the project that is just starting to build a line from Las Vegas to ... wait for it ... Rancho Cucamonga (as in, the subject of the Bugs Bunny running gag, and nicknamed Rancho Cucamethlab locally). This is apparently going to be open in time for 2028, so that visitors to the Olympics can zoom off to Vegas for the day when they've gotten bored of watching the athletics. How they are going to get from LA to Rancho, about 40 miles east along one of the most congested stretches of freeway in the world (there is also a local train that runs once every two hours outside the rush hour, stops everywhere, and takes around 90 minutes), has either not been figured out, or the geniuses behind this scheme have chosen not to share.

Oh, and while the whole world is in LA and banned from using cars by the mayor in order to save the planet, they can enjoy charming, authentic local experiences such as this one. Maybe Disneyland could come up with a "Busjack" ride?

[Lyle Romer]

Bobby makes some excellent points above. One issue that seems to repeat itself is that there will be a reasonably priced town somewhere. Then, as people realize it and start moving there it causes the costs of homes to rise. Then, developers see an opportunity but the cost of land has now increased and they don't want to make the investment for little return so the new houses they build are priced based on the new market for the town and it keeps getting more and more expensive so that the only service employees who can afford to live there are the ones who were already there before the town started growing.

As for the military issue with the ageing population, have no fear, AI robot soldiers are just around the corner. It will be like The Empire's Storm Troopers. Once the exhibition industry moves to direct view screens the lasers from the replaced projectors can be used to power the blasters!

[Bobby Henderson]

I think computing technology has to achieve the big step beyond AI in order for true robot soldiers to be possible. That step is AGI or Artificial General Intelligence. Computers that develop self-awareness or consciousness and their own motivations may open one hell of a Pandora's Box. For now, so-called AI is just automating a lot of repetitive tasks in somewhat glorified fashion. There is a dumb quality to AI, which makes it very dangerous when applied to military technology. It's pretty important for the systems to be able to distinguish the difference between friend or foe.

With fewer soldiers on the battlefield more work will be done by drones. Recently the US Army moved its Counter UAS school from Yuma to Fort Sill. Multiple defense technology companies are developing and testing all sorts of drone systems. The playbook on drone warfare is getting re-written in Ukraine. Drones still need human pilots, but it's possible for one pilot to control a swarm of drones.

The California "high speed rail" project is notorious for having been an infrastructure sh!t show to rival the new Berlin airport.

The situation is pretty ridiculous. The LA to Bay Area high speed rail project is costing a breath-taking fortune, but will end up only having true high speed service between Bakersfield and Merced. Normal speed trains will get passengers the rest of the way into the edges of the LA and Bay Area metros. The LA to Las Vegas line will be an entirely different service (Brightline) with different kinds of trains. Most other nations with high speed rail have unified systems. The US seems destined to have a random scattering of different systems confined to certain regions of the country. In Texas they're trying to get a high speed rail project off the ground, but it would only serve the triangle of big metros (DFW, Houston, San Antonio-Austin). There is no national focus.

The other big failing is America can't build high speed rail lines from one city center to another city center. I lived in Japan over 40 years ago and keenly remember their Bullet Train connecting to just about every major city core. This is why the high speed rail projects in California seem like such a waste of time. If you have to drive a personal vehicle to a train station on the outskirts of the city how is that going to save time and money (much less cut down on air pollution)? For that trip from LA to Vegas it seems more convenient to just keep driving the entire way.

Just in terms of mass transit it's ridiculous how expensive any kind of rail line can be to build. Yet rail is usually the first thing that comes to mind when mass transit is mentioned. No one mentions riding the city bus.

One issue that seems to repeat itself is that there will be a reasonably priced town somewhere. Then, as people realize it and start moving there it causes the costs of homes to rise.

America's crisis with housing involves multiple problems.

For the past 3 or more decades American home builders and real estate developers have only been interested in building homes for rich people. It's either luxury-priced apartments in the trendy urban centers or it's big-ass McMansions out in the suburbs. No variety. There is a massive shortage of modest-size "starter homes" and other kinds of housing that would have been more affordable to people making less than $50,000 per year. Young adults just trying to move out on their own or older people wanting to down-size are stuck. Existing small homes are coming in two types. Some are renovated and have sky-high price tags. Or the homes are falling apart and need extensive, expensive repairs. The dilapidated homes are often in not-desirable neighborhoods.

It hasn't helped that America's residential real estate market turned into a global investor playground. A bunch of home buyers moved money out of the stock market and into residential real estate. Private equity companies, such as Blackstone, bought hundreds of thousands of homes. Private equity companies are now among the biggest landlords in America, often charging insane rent prices and dragging their feet on any repairs.

This is just another factor that is going to dramatically worsen America's falling birth rates. Young adults won't be as likely to get married and have kids if they can't find a decent place to live.

America's real estate market will face a severe reckoning in the next 10-20 years. All these well-off people with their big McMansions will be older and wanting to downsize. But they won't have any buyers for their big-ass houses. In the future far more home buyers will be single and child-less. Why would a single, child-less person want to buy a big house with big utility bills, big property tax bills, big maintenance costs, etc? A bunch of these big houses in suburban gated communities will be white elephants just waiting for the bulldozer.

[Lyle Romer]

The other big failing is America can't build high speed rail lines from one city center to another city center. I lived in Japan over 40 years ago and keenly remember their Bullet Train connecting to just about every major city core. This is why the high speed rail projects in California seem like such a waste of time. If you have to drive a personal vehicle to a train station on the outskirts of the city how is that going to save time and money (much less cut down on air pollution)? For that trip from LA to Vegas it seems more convenient to just keep driving the entire way.

Here in South Florida, this is exactly the problem with the Tri-Rail commuter service. Although you can connect to Miami's Metrorail and MetroMover system, in the Ft. Lauderdale area (and north) you have to take some other form of transportation to or from the train station. Except for a few people who live near a station, the commute to take the train is almost as long (time wise) as it would be to just commute to the destination.

It's not really a design/planning issue, trains just aren't a great solution in sprawling suburban and semi-urban areas. Since they can't deviate from the tracks, there has to be a high density of origins and destinations within walking distance of the tracks for stations to be convenient.

It hasn't helped that America's residential real estate market turned into a global investor playground. A bunch of home buyers moved money out of the stock market and into residential real estate. Private equity companies, such as Blackstone, bought hundreds of thousands of homes. Private equity companies are now among the biggest landlords in America, often charging insane rent prices and dragging their feet on any repairs.

I'm not normally a big "taxes are the solution" type of guy but, in this case I am. I think that the taxing structure on income and capital gains from residential real estate should be set up in a way that disincentivizes it as an investment vehicle for Private Equity or publicly traded companies especially. It also should be taxed in a way where it isn't really attractive for individuals to buy investment properties. It should be a lot more attractive to invest in companies (which have potential to employ people) than to invest in the homes and apartments that people live in.

For apartments it could even be something like the income tax rate is lower the lower the median rent per square foot is in the buildings owned by an entity. It would be an indirect rent subsidy.

This would also force developers to invest in more starter homes because it will take away a chunk of the market for the expensive homes.