The Automobile

Ok, let me start off with this. I made the hypothesis not only on the current infrastructure. Of course, our infrastructure will fail to accommodate the scenario. Even so, do you think that investing more on infrastructure will help? One has to know that there are just so much you can do. Let's take up two actions one can take to improve the situation; Building new roads, and building highways. Regarding building roads, some cities can no longer do this. For example, in Penang, due to its layout and current buildings, there is no more space to build roads, other than relocating current buildings. Instead of doing this, the government is improving it by building more public transports. Furthermore, some cities are already matured. It has no place to build more roads. It's simply already... perfect. For example, some sectors in New York is already perfect. Parallel roads, intersected perpendicularly; they create perfect squares. Civil Engineers have always called this the perfect road system. With this, there is simply no way to perfect it. Worst thing? New York is already facing traffic jams, and most people there do not own a car. Ok, let us look at another way we can improve our current infrastructure; building highways. We can either build roads on top of current roads, or digging a tunnel. The bad thing is, even with these, some cities will still face horrible jam if everyone owns a car, and the cost for it will be simply too much to benefit humanity. You speak of our current transportation being horrid if everyone uses it. Yet, you argued by saying we can improve our current infrastructure. Instead of investing on roads, why not invest on more public transports? The thing about public transport is, governments can create and govern these public transport, making its price reasonable. Look at Singapore, for example. It's busing and LRTs are simply amazing, and most people do not own a car. The fare is dirt cheap, and the buses and LRTs are beautiful. In short, I'm saying that it'll be better for the government to invest on public transport than to just invest on roads, which will not solve the problem either, as explained above. Speaking of Singapore, we can use it as our ideal infrastructure. Just enough roads for current cars, their buses are beautiful, it's easy to transit around using the LRT, and literally every stop is close to where you want to be, being at most a 5 minutes walk. "The entire concept of public transit is designed to haul a relatively low number of people. " False, Singapore's public transport is used by the mass. "Large stretches of tracks have to be replaced every few months and the trains themselves have not been replaced in many decades due to the massive amount of inefficient planning that occurs when control of transportation is centralized." If everyone drives a car, maintaining the road will be an even heavier burden than replacing its tracks. Regarding train and bus maintenance, the cost will be relatively cheaper than the total of everyone's car maintenance. Air quality remains a huge concern. Why would I spend more to buy a environmental friendly car, when I can just use public transport, which purpose is to both reduce traffic jams, and also to help the environment? The fact that you do not care of the environment is itself a huge problem to humanity as a whole. Many people have the mindset that paying more for an environmental-friendly car isn't worth the cost, hence being a huge burden to our air quality. Furthermore, older cars tend to have higher carbon-emissions. True, I never did say automobiles do not greatly benefit those who use it. All I'm saying is, it does not benefit humanity as a whole.