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A third of Americans don't drive. So why is our transportation so car-centric?
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this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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You mean like New York where everywhere is clogged with taxis? Rather than people driving themselves, somebody else is.
Taxis are immensely more efficient space wise than individual people owning cars.
The average car is parked 97% of the time. If we took taxis away from NYC and didn’t compensate with public transport , they’d probably have to replace central park with a massive parking lot. Not kidding.
They are, my only point was no drivers license doesn't equal not traveling by car
I think this perception is a little inversed or skewed IMO. The congestion is caused by individual cars which block the transit and taxi routes.
The Transit is needed, otherwise more cars need to be added to the road. With increased transite, more cars are removed from the road.
From what I have seen based on the congestion charges implemented in NYC as a example, it's dropped the number of personal vehicles commuting into the city at any given day. This in turn has dropped the congestion, while in turn dropping taxi commuting times.
Things like congestion charges are a artificial incentive to carpool, take transit, or split the cost of a cab. This decreases the amount of cars while keeping the amount of commuters roughly the same.
Now you could argue with more of the road now "open" or "free", what stops more taxis from being added to take advantage of a increase in demand for quicker travel.
Of course transit is needed. I prefer it. I was only commenting on why we are still carcentric even if people don't have drivers licenses, people still use uber and taxis (car centric) instead of a bus or subway. Either routes and service are not enough, or people are uses to immediate needs serviced and don't want to wait at a busstop
New York is more than like midtown manhattan. I would not describe it as "clogged with taxis".
Also there's like 3.5 million subway riders per day in NYC.
So I don't know what point you're trying to make.
The article of "1/3 people don't have drivers licenses so why are we so car centric". People still use cars (as taxis) without a drivers license. Having no license does not mean you solely rely on transit.
I'm pretty confident that most people moving around NYC are not taking a taxi on the daily. I'm guessing you don't live here.
You missed the point of what I was meaning. The article was eluding to people without licenses should mean leas reliance on cars. But Uber exists, taxis exist, car pool exist. Just because a person doesn't have a license does not equal not traveling by car.