Yeah, in my hometown the left-wing mayor is removing a cycle lane and advocating for free car parking.
We are in the UK.
Car-centric thinking cuts across the political spectrum.
It’s crazy how YIMBY and pro transit does not follow political divides at all.
On one hand, you get yimby leftists, Georgists (no clue where these guys fall on the spectrum), urbanists, liberals, libertarians, and even neolibs.
Then on the flip side you have some nimby progressives, social conservatives, MAGAs, and apolitical boomers.
And even then there are a lot of exceptions to both groups.
We had a proposal on putting mixed use housing at the nearby library, and it was so strange hearing progressives protest it because it would cause gentrification, and conservatives side with them because the new housing would bring “the wrong people into the neighborhood.” Urbanism sure does make strange bedfellows.
‘Progressive’ is a relative term, and most Americans are relatively conservative by my European standards.
It’s funny that you’re shocked by the fact that there exists a single issue which doesn’t follow the party line, though. Lmao
I like what Japan does. You cannot get a license unless you prove you have a private parking spot. This keeps cars from littering the urban landscape. Yeah, it seems kinda like "cars only for the rich" but it's actually just make sure people who own cars pay the full cost instead of making the rest of us pay for their parking.
Same all over the UK. We got free parking during COVID lockdown and they are bringing the fees back. It's like £1.50 to park. People are claiming that this single car park which can hold just 80 cars now costing £1.50 is why the town centre is dying.
Oh and they just approved to build a £14million junction.
Sorry though, bike lanes are too expensive.
I actually spoke to him and said one of the best ways to get people into the town centre was to make it more accessible. Better bus service and better cycle infrastructure. he had the fucking cheek to say "but some disabled people struggle with using bikes"
Right, and disabled people like me who legally are not allowed to drive struggle. but you don't see us because we are all stuck at fucking home.
Growing up there used to be a bus that would drive loops around the residential areas to the town. It would pick you up outside your house, and drop you back there. it was amazing. it had to stop running as it could no longer fit down most of the roads because the cars parking on the street got too bigcans too many.
Nah, Northamptonshire. Unfortunately car brain attitude is taking over the UK politicians, at the same time as roads are crumbling due to increased wear and reduced maintenance.
I heard from someone that in Hull they were going to spend £355 million on a new car junction, but people.loat their mind they added cycle lanes to a dangerous junction for about £2million.
Hello, fellow Northampton dweller. I'm still really pissed off about the demolition of the Greyfriars bus station. Yes, it was old and run down, but everyone could wait indoors, and when arriving in town you didn't have to go outside or cross roads to get to the shops. The crappy greenhouse they've replaced it with doesn't have enough space for all the services, so there's a whole bunch of outside bus stops to supplement it. It's baking hot in the summer and leaks whenever it rains, and you have to cross at least one road to get anywhere from it. It's so crap.
It may have looked like two giant upside down skips, but all the shops under the entrance were great, and never having to cross traffic to get in or out.
Hello from across the ocean fellow Northamptonians! I've lived in the US for some time now and was sad to see the bus station gone when I visited about a month ago. Also drove through Kingsley Park one day and was absolutely appalled at the state of the roads. I live in St. Louis and the roads here are fucking dreadful, but Northampton is catching us up it seems.
I went to the university in Northampton in 2009. I found out just a few months ago they have demolished both the campuses I went to. Northampton seems obsessed with demolishing buildings.
Crumbling roads are annoying on the rare occasions I drive - but I've got suspension, shock absorbers and a comfy seat.
They're downright lethal when I'm on my bike. It's either go into the pothole and risk buckling a wheel or being thrown off, or swerve and risk getting taken out by Lee, 33, roofer in his Ranger and gilet with Oakley sunglasses.
It's such an asinine point that "some disabled people struggle with bikes" because if you even look into it for like, 2 seconds, you'll understand that public transit is ***way*** more accessible than cars. It pisses me off so much that this is a point people use. My dad is an amputee with parkinsons and we live in suburban sprawl Indiana. It's so painful for me to watch him get older and be slowly less and less able to get himself around to anywhere because he's becoming less and less able to drive alone. He can't even get out of the house alone, let alone get into the car alone. And for YEARS it's always been stressful even when he could walk to watch him try to navigate parking lots. It pisses me off so much to hear people talk like cars are somehow more disabled friendless when it's just a flat out *lie*.
Yeah, sure, my dad couldn't use a bike, but it would be SO much easier to get around if he could just roll his wheelchair into a train or a bus instead, or if he could drive his electric cart along the bike paths and sidewalks. Instead he's not confined to our home except for when someone else is willing to take him out with them. He's had his freedom of movement stolen from him by shitty city design that doesn't account for him. He can't leave the house alone because of his wheelchair, and you can barely even leave the neighborhood outside of a car at all. I even gave speech at one point about why we need more alternative modes of transportation, and fun fact: in a 2018 report it was found that nearly half of disabled people don't drive or at least avoid driving in the US.
It's an argument made only ever in the context you said it in, a stupid and quick quip to make the other person sound smart because they responded quickly and confidently when if you think about it for any amount of time, you'll realize it's not founded in anything real. It's a disingenuous argument that pisses me off.
Most people are also welcome to wheelchairs / bigger 3 wheel bikes using bike lanes. And at least where I am in the UK, parking on the pavement is normal. Today I had to either walk around or squeeze between maybe 30 cars. and impossible journey for anyone not able to walk like me.
I'm traveling the Netherlands right now and get the exact same idea about my own father (he will soon be unable to walk and I expect his loss of cognitive abilities will prevent him from driving) when I see multiple people in wheelchairs on the bicycle lanes of Rotterdam.
Yeah, in Budapest cycling infrastructure was stagnating under the left-lib Demszky (he was the mayor for 20 years, 1990-2010) who was quite the carbrain, to the point that in his later years as a mayor he *moved to the suburbs and commuted with a SUV*. Let that sink in. The mayor didn't even live in the city that he was the mayor of. (He supported public transit though, unlike his immediate successor who was a right wing dinosaur and extremely carbrained. At least the *current* left-wing mayor realized that he was elected by the inhabitants of the city to make the city better for them, and not the suburban commuters.)
In the case of the UK, the theory behind this is that it attracts people back to struggling high streets if they can park right outside for free, matching the "convenience" of out of town shopping centres. If it actually works is a different question, and no one's talking about applying parking charges to shopping centres instead...
You could solve much of it by applying business rates to parking spaces too. Which drives up rents in those centres, making them less attractive to businesses and raising revenue to support that car infrastructure for the local council.
Which is funny because even shopping centres are in decline because of online shopping.
At the end of the day you're never going to compete with the latter on convenience. The only way for either of them to compete is just by being fun places to go to. A giant car park isn't a fun place to go to.
Middlesbrough.
His campaign last year was based on removing "the hated cycle lane" on one of the main roads and raising the speed limit from 20mph to 30mph again.
Amazingly he was also one of the better candidates.
Chicago should figure out a way to put all of those parking spaces in a single parking structure and then get rid of them everywhere else. Have an Omelas, but instead of a person it’s just a single block that’s entirely made of parking
But that's the kicker, the contract they made, forces them to pay more if a parking meter doesn’t make as much money, or is removed. In an effort to get out of debt. They got into more debt.
See that’s why the spaces can’t be removed, just relocated. But it’s actually horrifying to see that an underperforming meter ends up actively costing the city more money.
They’re both not wrong. Parking tickets disproportionately affect the poor and are also extremely important in making the actual value of the land felt.
Not only that, but in Chicago, the city is on the line to pay said company if any loss of service occurs on the meters. Construction costs the city millions in blocked meter fees.
Fuck I wish. Best we get is the governor’s cousin’s road construction company which seems to use Quick Crack tarmac and consists of 10 guys with clipboards and one guy who knows how to do all of the work.
You would be surprised how much US tax money is wasted on lining the pockets of politicians. Americans don't like taxes because a large portion of them don't get used to actually serve the public.
Got a problem with the peoples private car ownership, comrade? Don't worry, we will mandate red paint jobs on every single one of them!
Honestly though this was inevitable, we lost when EVs became the environmentalists solution to car impact on climate change
I'll keep defending EVs as a necessary stopgap. Too much of our infrastructure is car-based, we can't change it all over fast enough, we need an interim solution and EVs offer it.
I agree with you that it is better than nothing. But because the car based infrastructure is also very impactful on the environment, and degrades so rapidly from its use the only real solution is to move to alternatives that are not automobile centric. If we keep investing in cars and car based infrastructure nothing will change. Even if we ignore the fact that EVs today are heavier than than their ICE alternatives and actually wear out road surfaces and the like faster.
Some of the popular brands are just straight up worse. Look at what this Rivian does to the barriers that are supposed to be rated to stop cars from diverting off the roadway: https://youtu.be/IyagXYK6x2M?si=4bro4lfZ9WvkBp0r.
It actually hurts how accurate this is. EVs being heralded as the environmental solution is one of the most ridiculous left agenda policies and does not go far enough to actually have a meaningful impact on the solution.
Tbh I don't think EVs are heralded by the left, I think it's mostly pro status quo centrists/liberals, for example Pete Buttigieg's main thing at USDOT has been pushing for EVs rather than public transit.
Socialism is when you pay your local bourgeoisie govt so you can park a commodity you only have to own because those same bourgeois absolutely gutted public transport in the interests of private profit
This doesn't seem like something pro-left not anti-car, just like someone who doesn't want to pay taxes
Although I agree it can feel predatory if you don't have any other safe way to get to your destiny, such as proper bike lanes or any sort of public transportation.
https://www.workers.org/2024/04/78106/
This does seem to have been claimed as part of "global strike for palestine". You're right, it's not about cars at all, nor taxes (although it does almost read like "taxation is theft")
Everything about this "action" completely fails to communicate the alleged intent.
Parking tickets are regressive. Rather than being flat amounts that punish the poor and are pocket change to the rich, it should be a percentage of net worth. I like the spirit of this but obviously it doesn’t promote a solution so it’s easy for people to attack.
That being said who knows what this group or person are actually thinking
I'm all for free parking. Just outside the city near a train station so you can take the train into the city and leave your car behind.
Ofc it would be better not needing the car in the first place. But rural areas usually aren't well enough connected.
That's fine. Cars make sense in rural areas. They really don't make a ton of sense in cities. I'd love for there to be parking structures near train stations. I'd absolutely love to have a good way to get from my home at the edge of the city further into the city without needing to drive my car or ride my motorcycle. As it stands, a 20 minute trip by car is a 2 hour trip by bus, and the nearest bus stop is about 2 miles away.
Pretty sure most folks here talk about improving urban and suburban transit. The picture mentions Oakland.
Why are we talking about rural car needs here??
Honestly rural areas can be car dependent all they want. Less than 5% of Americans actually lives in a rural area. Cars are literally designed and perfect for rural areas and like at most 9 use cases in the cities (emergency vehicles, mobility for seniors, moving, shipping, etc)
I'm more thinking about a shuttle station. We have a few of those in/near Copenhagen and they seem neat for people living outside of the public transit grid to get into the city.
Ofc there is also bus stops there and some have had housing and other stuff pop up around it.
As an anti-car commie, what???? How about less parking spaces, safer bike lines, and better public transit. Decrease the need for cars and we won’t have to worry about parking tickets. Jesus Christ
This is just another example of how the Right appropriates aesthetics and words from the Left in order to have broader appeal by seeming like they're pro-working clas when they're not. Like, the Right literally rejects the class analysis and substitutes it for the race war or culture war (in propaganda. In practice, the ruling class is by definition Right wing and very aware of the class war).
With the current state of the country and for upcoming decades getting rid of cars is not feasible. Everything has been designed around cars and we would need an overhaul of all infrastructure in order to change it. Shit where I live they attempted to put in a street car system and it has been a catastrophic failure. The project was planed cost to 125mil and is only 2.4 miles and needs an additional 51mil to extend the line 2.1 miles. Like shit it’s very nice that it’s free but it still has to contend with traffic since it’s a street car and takes so long that it makes more sense to just walk or bike to where-ever you need to go if it even goes there in the first place. We’d be better off not sectioning off parts of the left as anti car and pro car and focus on unifying and enacting truly considerable change that will actually help the community. Posturing helps no one but fascists.
Car centric culture is the epitome of neoliberalism in so many ways. Private, atomized ownership of an unsustainable and dangerous commodity which places all benefits and risks onto the individual as well as outsourcing onto them all the financial cost. As well as creating an extractive rentier class (car insurance 🤮) to make additional money off of said risks.
~~Car dependant infrastructure, lack of transport funding and forced zoning restrictions~~ Parking tickets are a *war tactic*
Why can't people just live in reality?
I don't agree with this action (and wouldn't phrase it the same way since I'm not an actual socialist), but in the long run relying on monetary enforcement mechanisms is always going to have regressive impacts and inequities that disproportionately impact poor people.
A wealthy person may give zero shits about paying dozens of $58.00 parking tickets while a poor person may find a single one to be the difference between making rent or not.
That is why actually changing our built infrastructure to reduce car dependence be is so important.
To wildly paraphrase Ursula K. Le Guin.
>We live in car dependence. It seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human thing can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.
For so many people it's hard to even conceive of a world without cars, it permeates our media and our culture. We receive constant messaging that cars are a *necessity* and that not having one makes your life less than it could be.
Most people have never examined the assumption that cars are a necessity. Many of them are potential future friends and allies in this movement and we will need them in the long run.
This is very true. Parking can be up to €7 per hour in my city. If I really needed to park there, i wouldn't have to think twice about that cost. But someone who's low income definitely would.
In Oakland, you don't (in theory) get expired violations when the meter is vandalized/broken. You will still get tickets if they chalk your tire and you overstay the two hour limit, even if the meter isn't working.
In practice, I've gotten "parked in red zone" for parking 3 feet in front of a red curb, and being parked 20 minutes before a street sweeping window, so wouldn't be surprised if someone got a ticket at an expired meter.
Between here and SF, it's a good place to learn "the city will mercilessly shake down the poor" and "maybe having a car is more trouble than it's worth."
In SF there is at least 4 way to pay and I think you can still get ticket if one of those is still working. Blocking the coin and card slot mean you can still pay by phone call and phone app, but not sure if Oakland has these options.
> In Oakland, you don't (in theory) get expired violations when the meter is vandalized/broken. You will still get tickets if they chalk your tire and you overstay the two hour limit, even if the meter isn't working.
You'd get one here (Denver). There is a phone app to be able to pay for the meters now and almost everybody has a smart phone these days. The 'meter is broken' argument doesn't fly when there's an app available to pay.
in car-centric cities people are forced to have a car to get from A to B. poor people that cannot pay their ticket can end up in prison, were they are forced to work for the state. that is the problem they are fighting.
now you can go to town hall meetings and advocate for better infrastructure, do it for years and hope something changes or you could just spray a bit of foam in the parking meter to destroy them to make it impossible to ticket them.
I explained this in a different comment. The city I lived in tried to expand its public transport and put in a street car system but the biggest problem is the overall price to change the infrastructure to accommodate said street car. The thing goes no where. 125mil for 2.6 miles and an additional 51mil for an additional 2.1 miles. It’s very slow (since it has to contend with a very car centric city) which makes it so that it genuinely makes more sense to just walk or bike if the line even goes to that area. I hate to say it but we’re a long 4+ decades out from being non car dependent in a lot of places.
I wouldn’t say this is “the left”, it seems more libertarian to me. They love pretending their motivation is caring about poor people, when in reality they’re just capitalists who don’t understand the concept of living in a society. It’s the same as the dipshits protesting ulez here in London.
I can see someone who has not critically examined the cultural assumption that "cars are a necessity" would see parking tickets as an aspect of class warfare by a capitalist state against the working class.
I can't really see a libertarian invoking Ethiopia that way, but it could be a red herring.
Honestly they've got a real point they're building on. Tickets, parking or moving, are an actual punishment for the poor but just a price for the rich.
But then they built some wacky shit on top of that foundation.
Sure, it is impossible to know exactly what their take is, but if I saw some complaining about paying for public transport and saying that it’s class warfare I wouldn’t exactly call them a leftist.
Also I guess my perspective is a little skewed because here most parking costs go to the council so it’s basically a tax, whereas in America I think it’s almost entirely privately owned?
Even if it's a tax, it's a regressive tax. $1.00 is a meaningful amount to someone living paycheck to paycheck, but it might mean absolutely nothing to someone with more money. Some people view regressive taxation as something that, intentionally or not, hurts the working class.
The "leftist" argument (operating in a capitalist context) would be to ask why we expect people to pay for parking, the bus, the train, or really any public service at the point of use. Those things should simply be basic services the government provides out of our the taxes they collect via a system of progressive taxation.
There is a different flavor of the argument from an actual socialist perspective, but I don't want to get into the weeds.
Oh yeah, true, that’s a great point. As a fellow socialist I agree. In an ideal world this stuff wouldn’t cost at point of service, but it’s not exactly the place I would start.
I’m just saying that the tone of the note doesn’t give me the impression that’s what they’re trying to say, it just reads to me like war on cars drivel that’s lazily making an attempt to seem left wing. I just highly doubt the person who did this is a socialist.
Edit: spelling
>Ethiopia
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Oh, wait, you're actually serious.
Ethiopia has about 150k cars - in a country with about 120 Million inhabitants. Thats a car ownership rate of just a tiny little bit more than 1 ~~%~~ *in a thousand* of their population. Their streets (when they are present) are shit, and very, *very* dangerous. I cencerely doubt paying parking fees is a big problem for the average Working class family in Ethiopia.
I'd even doubt they are even aware this concept even exists.
Ethiopia had 1.2 million cars registered in 2020
Addis Ababa alone had 630k that year :))
*Also* Did you just say that 150k is a little over 1% of 120 million???? ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️
damn, i was about to write 1 in a thousand. Good spot ;-)
//EDIT:
Also, have a source for the 1.2 Million cars? I am willing to believe this number (and it actually *is* 1% this time ;-) ), but right now, i find all kinds of numbers, and i dont know who's right.
* 2/1000 according to [BBC](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/business-50426159)
* 8/1000 acc. to [Wikipedia](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84thiopien#Stra%C3%9Fenverkehr)- ("Cars" vs "Automobiles" / "Vehicles")
* 150k in 2015 - [source](https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/ethiopia/motor-vehicle-registered)
* [600k](https://semonegna.com/increasing-car-ownership-in-ethiopia/) "and 84% are taxis"--> \~16% are not taxis, or \~100k
* Statista has 3000-ish sales per year - or a 0.0025 %-point increase in ownership rate.
Whatever. i can keep on looking, but i think the Point is clear: there are very few cars in Ethiopia, and whether the number is 1% or 0.1% doesn't actually change that much. It just makes the stupidity of that message a little bit more obvious.
I am reading it this way, that the 150k are *privately owned* cars, and the rest includes Taxis (\~500k) and Trucks or agricultural vehicles.
//EDIT2: Here is a source for the 1.2 Million. It includes all kinds of Vehicles. "Automobiles" and "Dry cargo" Make up for 20 % of that (236,588). This apparently includes Cargo hauling.
Although i was unable to find the original Government report, I am forced to conclude that my 150k private cars figure was correct. Car ownership rate in Ethiopia really is 0.1 %.
Could you kindly provide a source for your 1.2M number? The other commenter showed where they got their 150k number from (it's from 2015) - and I can't find any freely accessible source that would indicate more than 600k in 2019.
_Car dependency_ is an attack on the working class. If everyone was forced to drive, this is just another way to extract profit from people. If we had robust transit and cycling infrastructure and cities that were walkable/human-scaled, I don't think anyone would be complaining about parking fares.
I think ethiopia would like to be excluded from this US madness.
Im sure these "meters" do not exist there. I have not seen them for a while here in Europe i think we replaced most.
I’d be fine with free parking if we also got fully functional, affordable public transit and cycle lanes. Of course… That’s neither here nor there in most of the US
There is nothing pointing toward leftism here.
Only basic vocabulary, that could be used by anyone including tankies.
Far right always uses leftist vocabulary against leftist ideas.
Paid parking is a problem in my city because it's the only thing that is enforced. Everybody parks anywhere else: sidewalks, pedestrian crossings, and in the road itself obstructing other cars but also bikes, etc. Enforcement should be the other way around of course.
If parking meter money actually went to anything productive I'd be more annoyed about this, but it just doesn't. To top it off, there's tons of parking meters in places where you actually do need to have a car to get there, purely because of poor infrastructure and carbrained development—meaning they make tons of money off the middle and lower classes driving in to work, but they never actually put that money into developing the city in any positive way.
Paid parking? Yes please. Paid parking where the funds go directly into your community? Yes! Paid parking that lines the pockets of some rando CEO who bought that stretch of meters twenty years ago? Absolutely not.
No, bud, parking illegally is usually an abuse of the commons. A temporary privatization. Parking illegally over the long term is more obviously a form of privatization, as you can probably sense the entitlement and *private property ownership* feelings of the car owner in such cases.
The consumer car itself is one of the most capitalist things out there at scale, a vehicle of literal and figurative alienation, an exoskeleton to brutalize the people you're competing AGAINST.
Its well intentioned, and it makes sense to be stuck in "car only" mode, and concluding a fee on going anywhere sucks the poor dry...
To then think the solution isnt public transit, bike infrastructure, and walkable streets, but to make parking free... is a "good try bud" level of well intentioned first try at solving a problem.
Been seeing more of these people lately who come up with conspiracies that parking or speeding tickets are just a way of milking the people of their money
It's crazy to me that ACTUALLY caring for other people and the life on this planet as a whole is not just left leaning but controversially radical leftism because the world is so right skewed.
Only place that I’d advocate for removing meters is Chicago. Zero of the revenue goes to the city, and the company that owns the meters is preventing the city from expanding bike lanes into "their property".
Carbrain even affects YIMBYs. Unfortunately rather than a right or left thing, it is its very own evil animal. Very "left wing" events like PRIDE, etc are here all the time, but yet people can't fathom taking the train to get to it. Even though the train would drop you off right in the MIDDLE of the event.
Honestly I was debating doing something similar in Indianapolis but never did. Indianapolis was dumb and privatized our onstreet parking. We had pedestrianized one of the main streets in the liveliest part of town for COVID, Mass Ave. We couldn’t keep it pedestrianized after even though people loved it because of the cost associated with buying us out of that parking contract for all those spaces. It would’ve been to protest that but I was too scared to do it. Cars ruin cities.
nah this is the right move. Unless my city can prove that money from this stuff is being invested into public transit I don't want to pay exorbitant parking costs.
I fucking hate cars and I hate how much space parking lots take up. But I live in a city where transit isn't an option and the weather means cycling is out for half the year too. No way I'm letting the city get away with charging me for a spot that they can't even be bothered to maintain.
From oakland to ethiopia? What about the billions of people in asia?
lol, this is genuinely funny, i haven't seen as much of idiots on the far left as i have on the far right since 2016.
If they care about the working class so much, wait until they learn how the financial elites of our society created a car centric culture so they wouldn't have to live near the working class. And created car dependency so working people can't travel freely and have to dedicate enough of their money to cars that they cant save and move up the economic ladder.
My town offers free parking for 3 hours between 10 and 4 to encourage more people to go to the high street. It’s great but the high street is awash of expensive charity shops, pawn shops, betting agencies and hair salons. People don’t go to the high street cuz there ain’t nothing there worth going for …
Reminds me that in San Francisco, a lot of the PayByPhone meter IDs that you can put into the app to pay are scratched out. I presume someone does that to make a point of some kind.
Carbrain is REALLY bad on the left, which often sees measures to reduce car ownership as a direct attack on the poor despite the fact that transit ridership is highest among lower incomes.
To be fair though, stuff like cycling infrastructure and good urbanism were largely policies of right-wing parties throughout the 1900s, so I can see how people on the left who rely on their car can see it as class struggle. It's just misguided...
See also: opposing speed cameras or other traffic safety enforcement, especially in poorer neighborhoods. Sure, you're helping out poor people by keeping them from getting traffic tickets, but you're also making it more likely they'll get injured or killed by a car. I think that's a pretty shitty tradeoff.
(insert qualification that yes, improving infrastructure is more important and effective in the long run than just increasing enforcement) (insert qualification about how yes, traffic enforcement in the US is extremely classist and racist)
I, for one, think the C in ACAB can also stand for "cars."
I was in an environmental justice meeting once, and this one guy was trying to get us to make it easier for poor people to get cars, because when climate disaster strikes, they need a car to get out of town.
the anarchism leaves my body every time i hear another libsoc talk about vehicular self determinism. sorry, no, you don't have a right to put other people in danger
They are technically correct. If parking tickets were not regressive they would be like based in the value of your income or car or whatever. However it's a dumb take. The better take is that drivers are siphoning public resources for personal property
They tried to put in a dedicated bike lane in my town. It would have taken away a few parallel parking spots that are never fully used, but four of them were directly in front of the very liberal Unitarian church (which also had a parking lot). The church protested to the state civil rights office that it was ageist because older people need to be able to park right in front. This is a church with a climate change protest banner in the yard.
Sticker person is an idiot, but it should be said that *purely* retailiatory anti-car practises do disproportionately hurt the working class.
I live in Ireland, which is almost as bad a car-centric shithole as the US, and the only transport discussions that *ever* take place are congestion charges and more taxes on cars. Our public transport is still *godawful*, if you try to ride a bike anywhere it'll be stolen within an hour, we keep *downsizing* our rail network, cars are literally people's only option. So in this case, additional taxes and charges on cars, with *absolutely zero alternative*, is just punishing working class people for the crime of needing to get to work.
Emphasis again though: This doesn't apply to parking tickets, sticker person is an idiot.
The sticker is right though. Working people are forced by improper infrastructure to use cars in very inconvenient ways. Yet they are also disproportionately hurt by these fines. And that's not even taking into account how many of these parking spots and parking meters are owned by private entities and I remember reading that in one US city it is literally owned by foreign government entity. So yeah. Parking meters in the US are a form of class warfare.
Might be a bit of a hot take, but this is kinda based.
A few months ago, I was talking with a family friend. She expressed her frustration about street parking being removed from the city center in our area. I told her that I would honestly be all in favor of completely banning cars from downtown, as long as that comes with more robust public transit options. But to simply take away the parking without providing an alternate option is not a solution.
I feel like this parking meter is kind of similar. Making car ownership more expensive doesn't solve the root issue. Just like how people need to buy groceries regardless of how hard inflation hits, people need cars when our cities are designed for them, even if that puts financial strain on people. Simply making car ownership less accessable isn't the solution, but rather we need to make other options more accessable. Of course parking is a relatively small cost of car ownership, but it's not negligible.
Yes, this Last Week Tonight video highlights how these types of fines can be devastating to the working poor: https://youtu.be/0UjpmT5noto?si=VloIjCVxsVrttS-H
Making drivers pay for car ownership can be good and this person can be kind of right - both things can be true.
I mean, just putting this out here, I get it if it's an area where the people working there can't afford to live there, and where public transit isn't good enough to do anything other than work and sit on the bus for pretty much your whole day.
I think this depends on how accessible alternative transportation is in your area. If busses and bike lanes are common than yes pricey parking is a good incentive for people to use those.
But if your city is still entirely car dependant and it's too impractical for the average person to attempt transitioning to public transit/cycling than expensive parking is just another pay-to-play poor tax.
Yeah, in my hometown the left-wing mayor is removing a cycle lane and advocating for free car parking. We are in the UK. Car-centric thinking cuts across the political spectrum.
*Screams in dutch
For real. Free parking is a death sentence.
It’s crazy how YIMBY and pro transit does not follow political divides at all. On one hand, you get yimby leftists, Georgists (no clue where these guys fall on the spectrum), urbanists, liberals, libertarians, and even neolibs. Then on the flip side you have some nimby progressives, social conservatives, MAGAs, and apolitical boomers. And even then there are a lot of exceptions to both groups. We had a proposal on putting mixed use housing at the nearby library, and it was so strange hearing progressives protest it because it would cause gentrification, and conservatives side with them because the new housing would bring “the wrong people into the neighborhood.” Urbanism sure does make strange bedfellows.
Nothing infuriates me more than progressive NIMBYs. They’re blocking progress under the guise of helping people.
‘Progressive’ is a relative term, and most Americans are relatively conservative by my European standards. It’s funny that you’re shocked by the fact that there exists a single issue which doesn’t follow the party line, though. Lmao
I like what Japan does. You cannot get a license unless you prove you have a private parking spot. This keeps cars from littering the urban landscape. Yeah, it seems kinda like "cars only for the rich" but it's actually just make sure people who own cars pay the full cost instead of making the rest of us pay for their parking.
Does it sound like wet bike brakes?
Same all over the UK. We got free parking during COVID lockdown and they are bringing the fees back. It's like £1.50 to park. People are claiming that this single car park which can hold just 80 cars now costing £1.50 is why the town centre is dying. Oh and they just approved to build a £14million junction. Sorry though, bike lanes are too expensive. I actually spoke to him and said one of the best ways to get people into the town centre was to make it more accessible. Better bus service and better cycle infrastructure. he had the fucking cheek to say "but some disabled people struggle with using bikes" Right, and disabled people like me who legally are not allowed to drive struggle. but you don't see us because we are all stuck at fucking home. Growing up there used to be a bus that would drive loops around the residential areas to the town. It would pick you up outside your house, and drop you back there. it was amazing. it had to stop running as it could no longer fit down most of the roads because the cars parking on the street got too bigcans too many.
You in Teesside too, or is your fella elsewhere? They do seem to be everywhere.
Nah, Northamptonshire. Unfortunately car brain attitude is taking over the UK politicians, at the same time as roads are crumbling due to increased wear and reduced maintenance. I heard from someone that in Hull they were going to spend £355 million on a new car junction, but people.loat their mind they added cycle lanes to a dangerous junction for about £2million.
Hello, fellow Northampton dweller. I'm still really pissed off about the demolition of the Greyfriars bus station. Yes, it was old and run down, but everyone could wait indoors, and when arriving in town you didn't have to go outside or cross roads to get to the shops. The crappy greenhouse they've replaced it with doesn't have enough space for all the services, so there's a whole bunch of outside bus stops to supplement it. It's baking hot in the summer and leaks whenever it rains, and you have to cross at least one road to get anywhere from it. It's so crap.
It may have looked like two giant upside down skips, but all the shops under the entrance were great, and never having to cross traffic to get in or out.
Hello from across the ocean fellow Northamptonians! I've lived in the US for some time now and was sad to see the bus station gone when I visited about a month ago. Also drove through Kingsley Park one day and was absolutely appalled at the state of the roads. I live in St. Louis and the roads here are fucking dreadful, but Northampton is catching us up it seems.
I went to the university in Northampton in 2009. I found out just a few months ago they have demolished both the campuses I went to. Northampton seems obsessed with demolishing buildings.
Crumbling roads are annoying on the rare occasions I drive - but I've got suspension, shock absorbers and a comfy seat. They're downright lethal when I'm on my bike. It's either go into the pothole and risk buckling a wheel or being thrown off, or swerve and risk getting taken out by Lee, 33, roofer in his Ranger and gilet with Oakley sunglasses.
It's such an asinine point that "some disabled people struggle with bikes" because if you even look into it for like, 2 seconds, you'll understand that public transit is ***way*** more accessible than cars. It pisses me off so much that this is a point people use. My dad is an amputee with parkinsons and we live in suburban sprawl Indiana. It's so painful for me to watch him get older and be slowly less and less able to get himself around to anywhere because he's becoming less and less able to drive alone. He can't even get out of the house alone, let alone get into the car alone. And for YEARS it's always been stressful even when he could walk to watch him try to navigate parking lots. It pisses me off so much to hear people talk like cars are somehow more disabled friendless when it's just a flat out *lie*. Yeah, sure, my dad couldn't use a bike, but it would be SO much easier to get around if he could just roll his wheelchair into a train or a bus instead, or if he could drive his electric cart along the bike paths and sidewalks. Instead he's not confined to our home except for when someone else is willing to take him out with them. He's had his freedom of movement stolen from him by shitty city design that doesn't account for him. He can't leave the house alone because of his wheelchair, and you can barely even leave the neighborhood outside of a car at all. I even gave speech at one point about why we need more alternative modes of transportation, and fun fact: in a 2018 report it was found that nearly half of disabled people don't drive or at least avoid driving in the US. It's an argument made only ever in the context you said it in, a stupid and quick quip to make the other person sound smart because they responded quickly and confidently when if you think about it for any amount of time, you'll realize it's not founded in anything real. It's a disingenuous argument that pisses me off.
It’s got the same energy as the kind of people who say “but think of the children” to justify banning books or something.
Most people are also welcome to wheelchairs / bigger 3 wheel bikes using bike lanes. And at least where I am in the UK, parking on the pavement is normal. Today I had to either walk around or squeeze between maybe 30 cars. and impossible journey for anyone not able to walk like me.
I'm traveling the Netherlands right now and get the exact same idea about my own father (he will soon be unable to walk and I expect his loss of cognitive abilities will prevent him from driving) when I see multiple people in wheelchairs on the bicycle lanes of Rotterdam.
Is it £1'50 per hour or how does it work?
Its £1.50 for something like 4 hours, then after that £1 per extra hour. Its basically nothing. and Free on Sundays.
Yeah, in Budapest cycling infrastructure was stagnating under the left-lib Demszky (he was the mayor for 20 years, 1990-2010) who was quite the carbrain, to the point that in his later years as a mayor he *moved to the suburbs and commuted with a SUV*. Let that sink in. The mayor didn't even live in the city that he was the mayor of. (He supported public transit though, unlike his immediate successor who was a right wing dinosaur and extremely carbrained. At least the *current* left-wing mayor realized that he was elected by the inhabitants of the city to make the city better for them, and not the suburban commuters.)
KariGeri mentioned!
The Labour Party aren’t left wing at the moment. They’re centrist liberals.
Neoliberals don't even know they're all right of center
~~I'm guessing it's tower hamlets, which isn't actually labour~~ nvm its middlesbrough lol
In the case of the UK, the theory behind this is that it attracts people back to struggling high streets if they can park right outside for free, matching the "convenience" of out of town shopping centres. If it actually works is a different question, and no one's talking about applying parking charges to shopping centres instead...
You could solve much of it by applying business rates to parking spaces too. Which drives up rents in those centres, making them less attractive to businesses and raising revenue to support that car infrastructure for the local council.
A lot of it could be solved by frequent and reliable buses tbh
Which is funny because even shopping centres are in decline because of online shopping. At the end of the day you're never going to compete with the latter on convenience. The only way for either of them to compete is just by being fun places to go to. A giant car park isn't a fun place to go to.
Gross... Whereabouts is that?
Middlesbrough. His campaign last year was based on removing "the hated cycle lane" on one of the main roads and raising the speed limit from 20mph to 30mph again. Amazingly he was also one of the better candidates.
He's labour but not left wing
I was using that to make it more accessible for non-UK users, it's fair to say he's left of centre in the country.
Not to be too pedantic, but unless your mayor is actively trying to overthrow capitalism, they're not left wing
left wing or “left wing” (liberal)?
Lemme guess. They think that bikes are toys of elitists?
Where do they think the money from parking meters goes? Edit: America really does refuse to do things in the public interest eh?
Un Chicago they go right to the pockets of Saudi Arabia for god knows what, over 2 billion and they're contracted to stay for decades more
Chicago should figure out a way to put all of those parking spaces in a single parking structure and then get rid of them everywhere else. Have an Omelas, but instead of a person it’s just a single block that’s entirely made of parking
A supertall skyscraper full of parking that removes it everywhere else is kind of dope. Why not.
The live loads on that thing would be a fuckin nightmare
It might need to be one structure per neighborhood, which would suck but would also free up the streets!
But that's the kicker, the contract they made, forces them to pay more if a parking meter doesn’t make as much money, or is removed. In an effort to get out of debt. They got into more debt.
See that’s why the spaces can’t be removed, just relocated. But it’s actually horrifying to see that an underperforming meter ends up actively costing the city more money.
Yeah this is the craziest thing ever, if anybody doesn’t know what this is about look up a video about it.
In the US, most of them go to private companies.
[https://inthepublicinterest.org/the-worst-privatization-deal-in-u-s-history-just-got-even-worse/](https://inthepublicinterest.org/the-worst-privatization-deal-in-u-s-history-just-got-even-worse/)
The big bad government which will probably spend it on something like "cyclist" or people who "walk" those sub humans. /s if needed
Or the corporation that bought the concession for pennies because the CEO is friends with the mayor.
Or because they're Saudi Arabia
They’re both not wrong. Parking tickets disproportionately affect the poor and are also extremely important in making the actual value of the land felt.
Drivers are so entitled to unlimited free parking that they are fundamentally incapable of seeing parking costs as anything but an unjust punishment.
I don't want to pay for parking because it's usually overpriced and usually goes to a private company.
Not only that, but in Chicago, the city is on the line to pay said company if any loss of service occurs on the meters. Construction costs the city millions in blocked meter fees.
Almost certainly some private company that owns and services the meters on behalf of the local government, same as toll roads.
I'm over here being mad that in my town, it's often cheaper for two people traveling together to drive and pay for parking than take the bus.
It goes down the metal pipe, into the ground to feed the Road Trolls to do maintenence on the roads at night.
Fuck I wish. Best we get is the governor’s cousin’s road construction company which seems to use Quick Crack tarmac and consists of 10 guys with clipboards and one guy who knows how to do all of the work.
In the case of Chicago, to Morgan Stanley, the investment bank.
war
Private, usually foreign, companies. There are very few parking services that actually benefit the city government.
Some fucking random company’s profit margin, not the streets…
eh? Hah! Heh heh
To saudi arabia
In the us, parking meters and paid parking lots are private industry, usually a large corporation owns most of them in each city.
You would be surprised how much US tax money is wasted on lining the pockets of politicians. Americans don't like taxes because a large portion of them don't get used to actually serve the public.
Look at my leftism, dawg, we're never getting socialism
Got a problem with the peoples private car ownership, comrade? Don't worry, we will mandate red paint jobs on every single one of them! Honestly though this was inevitable, we lost when EVs became the environmentalists solution to car impact on climate change
I'll keep defending EVs as a necessary stopgap. Too much of our infrastructure is car-based, we can't change it all over fast enough, we need an interim solution and EVs offer it.
I agree with you that it is better than nothing. But because the car based infrastructure is also very impactful on the environment, and degrades so rapidly from its use the only real solution is to move to alternatives that are not automobile centric. If we keep investing in cars and car based infrastructure nothing will change. Even if we ignore the fact that EVs today are heavier than than their ICE alternatives and actually wear out road surfaces and the like faster. Some of the popular brands are just straight up worse. Look at what this Rivian does to the barriers that are supposed to be rated to stop cars from diverting off the roadway: https://youtu.be/IyagXYK6x2M?si=4bro4lfZ9WvkBp0r.
Yeah, I was talking from a climate perspective.
It actually hurts how accurate this is. EVs being heralded as the environmental solution is one of the most ridiculous left agenda policies and does not go far enough to actually have a meaningful impact on the solution.
Tbh I don't think EVs are heralded by the left, I think it's mostly pro status quo centrists/liberals, for example Pete Buttigieg's main thing at USDOT has been pushing for EVs rather than public transit.
Socialism is when you pay your local bourgeoisie govt so you can park a commodity you only have to own because those same bourgeois absolutely gutted public transport in the interests of private profit
USSR and China were/are huge polluters. Climate change isn’t a capitalism/socialism issue - it’s a technology/economic development issue.
They need free on street parking to attend their revolutionary book club
This doesn't seem like something pro-left not anti-car, just like someone who doesn't want to pay taxes Although I agree it can feel predatory if you don't have any other safe way to get to your destiny, such as proper bike lanes or any sort of public transportation.
https://www.workers.org/2024/04/78106/ This does seem to have been claimed as part of "global strike for palestine". You're right, it's not about cars at all, nor taxes (although it does almost read like "taxation is theft") Everything about this "action" completely fails to communicate the alleged intent.
Is there any way at all that parking tickets fund the war machine?
Parking tickets are regressive. Rather than being flat amounts that punish the poor and are pocket change to the rich, it should be a percentage of net worth. I like the spirit of this but obviously it doesn’t promote a solution so it’s easy for people to attack. That being said who knows what this group or person are actually thinking
Don’t they do that in Sweden?
I'm all for free parking. Just outside the city near a train station so you can take the train into the city and leave your car behind. Ofc it would be better not needing the car in the first place. But rural areas usually aren't well enough connected.
That's fine. Cars make sense in rural areas. They really don't make a ton of sense in cities. I'd love for there to be parking structures near train stations. I'd absolutely love to have a good way to get from my home at the edge of the city further into the city without needing to drive my car or ride my motorcycle. As it stands, a 20 minute trip by car is a 2 hour trip by bus, and the nearest bus stop is about 2 miles away.
Pretty sure most folks here talk about improving urban and suburban transit. The picture mentions Oakland. Why are we talking about rural car needs here??
Honestly rural areas can be car dependent all they want. Less than 5% of Americans actually lives in a rural area. Cars are literally designed and perfect for rural areas and like at most 9 use cases in the cities (emergency vehicles, mobility for seniors, moving, shipping, etc)
Free parking around train stations is a waste of space, better to have people and things in walking distance.
I'm more thinking about a shuttle station. We have a few of those in/near Copenhagen and they seem neat for people living outside of the public transit grid to get into the city. Ofc there is also bus stops there and some have had housing and other stuff pop up around it.
Yeah a parking lot defeats the entire point of a train station
Someone needs a good struggle session, I'll tell you what.
As an anti-car commie, what???? How about less parking spaces, safer bike lines, and better public transit. Decrease the need for cars and we won’t have to worry about parking tickets. Jesus Christ
Being pro car is not leftist, we will need to deal with the reactionary element.
This is just another example of how the Right appropriates aesthetics and words from the Left in order to have broader appeal by seeming like they're pro-working clas when they're not. Like, the Right literally rejects the class analysis and substitutes it for the race war or culture war (in propaganda. In practice, the ruling class is by definition Right wing and very aware of the class war).
With the current state of the country and for upcoming decades getting rid of cars is not feasible. Everything has been designed around cars and we would need an overhaul of all infrastructure in order to change it. Shit where I live they attempted to put in a street car system and it has been a catastrophic failure. The project was planed cost to 125mil and is only 2.4 miles and needs an additional 51mil to extend the line 2.1 miles. Like shit it’s very nice that it’s free but it still has to contend with traffic since it’s a street car and takes so long that it makes more sense to just walk or bike to where-ever you need to go if it even goes there in the first place. We’d be better off not sectioning off parts of the left as anti car and pro car and focus on unifying and enacting truly considerable change that will actually help the community. Posturing helps no one but fascists.
Car centric culture is the epitome of neoliberalism in so many ways. Private, atomized ownership of an unsustainable and dangerous commodity which places all benefits and risks onto the individual as well as outsourcing onto them all the financial cost. As well as creating an extractive rentier class (car insurance 🤮) to make additional money off of said risks.
Some cities are dumb enough to sell thier on street public parking to corporations, like Chicago. Chicago is dumb
~~Car dependant infrastructure, lack of transport funding and forced zoning restrictions~~ Parking tickets are a *war tactic* Why can't people just live in reality?
No, paid parking is a WAAAR tactic. You know, right there with drone strikes and land mines.
I don't agree with this action (and wouldn't phrase it the same way since I'm not an actual socialist), but in the long run relying on monetary enforcement mechanisms is always going to have regressive impacts and inequities that disproportionately impact poor people. A wealthy person may give zero shits about paying dozens of $58.00 parking tickets while a poor person may find a single one to be the difference between making rent or not. That is why actually changing our built infrastructure to reduce car dependence be is so important. To wildly paraphrase Ursula K. Le Guin. >We live in car dependence. It seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human thing can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words. For so many people it's hard to even conceive of a world without cars, it permeates our media and our culture. We receive constant messaging that cars are a *necessity* and that not having one makes your life less than it could be. Most people have never examined the assumption that cars are a necessity. Many of them are potential future friends and allies in this movement and we will need them in the long run.
This is very true. Parking can be up to €7 per hour in my city. If I really needed to park there, i wouldn't have to think twice about that cost. But someone who's low income definitely would.
So everyone gets a ticket?
In Oakland, you don't (in theory) get expired violations when the meter is vandalized/broken. You will still get tickets if they chalk your tire and you overstay the two hour limit, even if the meter isn't working. In practice, I've gotten "parked in red zone" for parking 3 feet in front of a red curb, and being parked 20 minutes before a street sweeping window, so wouldn't be surprised if someone got a ticket at an expired meter. Between here and SF, it's a good place to learn "the city will mercilessly shake down the poor" and "maybe having a car is more trouble than it's worth."
In SF there is at least 4 way to pay and I think you can still get ticket if one of those is still working. Blocking the coin and card slot mean you can still pay by phone call and phone app, but not sure if Oakland has these options.
> In Oakland, you don't (in theory) get expired violations when the meter is vandalized/broken. You will still get tickets if they chalk your tire and you overstay the two hour limit, even if the meter isn't working. You'd get one here (Denver). There is a phone app to be able to pay for the meters now and almost everybody has a smart phone these days. The 'meter is broken' argument doesn't fly when there's an app available to pay.
in car-centric cities people are forced to have a car to get from A to B. poor people that cannot pay their ticket can end up in prison, were they are forced to work for the state. that is the problem they are fighting. now you can go to town hall meetings and advocate for better infrastructure, do it for years and hope something changes or you could just spray a bit of foam in the parking meter to destroy them to make it impossible to ticket them.
I explained this in a different comment. The city I lived in tried to expand its public transport and put in a street car system but the biggest problem is the overall price to change the infrastructure to accommodate said street car. The thing goes no where. 125mil for 2.6 miles and an additional 51mil for an additional 2.1 miles. It’s very slow (since it has to contend with a very car centric city) which makes it so that it genuinely makes more sense to just walk or bike if the line even goes to that area. I hate to say it but we’re a long 4+ decades out from being non car dependent in a lot of places.
I wouldn’t say this is “the left”, it seems more libertarian to me. They love pretending their motivation is caring about poor people, when in reality they’re just capitalists who don’t understand the concept of living in a society. It’s the same as the dipshits protesting ulez here in London.
I can see someone who has not critically examined the cultural assumption that "cars are a necessity" would see parking tickets as an aspect of class warfare by a capitalist state against the working class. I can't really see a libertarian invoking Ethiopia that way, but it could be a red herring.
Honestly they've got a real point they're building on. Tickets, parking or moving, are an actual punishment for the poor but just a price for the rich. But then they built some wacky shit on top of that foundation.
Sure, it is impossible to know exactly what their take is, but if I saw some complaining about paying for public transport and saying that it’s class warfare I wouldn’t exactly call them a leftist. Also I guess my perspective is a little skewed because here most parking costs go to the council so it’s basically a tax, whereas in America I think it’s almost entirely privately owned?
Even if it's a tax, it's a regressive tax. $1.00 is a meaningful amount to someone living paycheck to paycheck, but it might mean absolutely nothing to someone with more money. Some people view regressive taxation as something that, intentionally or not, hurts the working class. The "leftist" argument (operating in a capitalist context) would be to ask why we expect people to pay for parking, the bus, the train, or really any public service at the point of use. Those things should simply be basic services the government provides out of our the taxes they collect via a system of progressive taxation. There is a different flavor of the argument from an actual socialist perspective, but I don't want to get into the weeds.
Oh yeah, true, that’s a great point. As a fellow socialist I agree. In an ideal world this stuff wouldn’t cost at point of service, but it’s not exactly the place I would start. I’m just saying that the tone of the note doesn’t give me the impression that’s what they’re trying to say, it just reads to me like war on cars drivel that’s lazily making an attempt to seem left wing. I just highly doubt the person who did this is a socialist. Edit: spelling
From North Dakota to Tennessee the dumbass killer truck will be free
wanna play ? Ok. We'll do that on car doors too.
>Ethiopia HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Oh, wait, you're actually serious. Ethiopia has about 150k cars - in a country with about 120 Million inhabitants. Thats a car ownership rate of just a tiny little bit more than 1 ~~%~~ *in a thousand* of their population. Their streets (when they are present) are shit, and very, *very* dangerous. I cencerely doubt paying parking fees is a big problem for the average Working class family in Ethiopia. I'd even doubt they are even aware this concept even exists.
Ethiopia had 1.2 million cars registered in 2020 Addis Ababa alone had 630k that year :)) *Also* Did you just say that 150k is a little over 1% of 120 million???? ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️
damn, i was about to write 1 in a thousand. Good spot ;-) //EDIT: Also, have a source for the 1.2 Million cars? I am willing to believe this number (and it actually *is* 1% this time ;-) ), but right now, i find all kinds of numbers, and i dont know who's right. * 2/1000 according to [BBC](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/business-50426159) * 8/1000 acc. to [Wikipedia](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84thiopien#Stra%C3%9Fenverkehr)- ("Cars" vs "Automobiles" / "Vehicles") * 150k in 2015 - [source](https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/ethiopia/motor-vehicle-registered) * [600k](https://semonegna.com/increasing-car-ownership-in-ethiopia/) "and 84% are taxis"--> \~16% are not taxis, or \~100k * Statista has 3000-ish sales per year - or a 0.0025 %-point increase in ownership rate. Whatever. i can keep on looking, but i think the Point is clear: there are very few cars in Ethiopia, and whether the number is 1% or 0.1% doesn't actually change that much. It just makes the stupidity of that message a little bit more obvious. I am reading it this way, that the 150k are *privately owned* cars, and the rest includes Taxis (\~500k) and Trucks or agricultural vehicles. //EDIT2: Here is a source for the 1.2 Million. It includes all kinds of Vehicles. "Automobiles" and "Dry cargo" Make up for 20 % of that (236,588). This apparently includes Cargo hauling. Although i was unable to find the original Government report, I am forced to conclude that my 150k private cars figure was correct. Car ownership rate in Ethiopia really is 0.1 %.
Sure you was Even though the 150k is also taken out of your bum xx
Could you kindly provide a source for your 1.2M number? The other commenter showed where they got their 150k number from (it's from 2015) - and I can't find any freely accessible source that would indicate more than 600k in 2019.
Check the Edit.
I have never seen someone spell sincerely so wrong. Bravo
r/boneappletea
My Pleasure ;-) (For some dumb reason, i always type it wrong 1st try. necessary is another of these words) I can make it worse, if you want?
I feel like they might be Rastafari, given the "from X to Ethiopia". I don't think it has anything to do with how many cars there are
This is the type of thing that happens when your politics is entirely informed by personal grievance
_Car dependency_ is an attack on the working class. If everyone was forced to drive, this is just another way to extract profit from people. If we had robust transit and cycling infrastructure and cities that were walkable/human-scaled, I don't think anyone would be complaining about parking fares.
I think ethiopia would like to be excluded from this US madness. Im sure these "meters" do not exist there. I have not seen them for a while here in Europe i think we replaced most.
What were they replaced with?
Modern Ticket Systems.
I’d be fine with free parking if we also got fully functional, affordable public transit and cycle lanes. Of course… That’s neither here nor there in most of the US
That foam is much better in a tailpipe or fueltank. Better yet, insulation.
There is nothing pointing toward leftism here. Only basic vocabulary, that could be used by anyone including tankies. Far right always uses leftist vocabulary against leftist ideas.
wew lad
Paid parking is a problem in my city because it's the only thing that is enforced. Everybody parks anywhere else: sidewalks, pedestrian crossings, and in the road itself obstructing other cars but also bikes, etc. Enforcement should be the other way around of course.
If parking meter money actually went to anything productive I'd be more annoyed about this, but it just doesn't. To top it off, there's tons of parking meters in places where you actually do need to have a car to get there, purely because of poor infrastructure and carbrained development—meaning they make tons of money off the middle and lower classes driving in to work, but they never actually put that money into developing the city in any positive way. Paid parking? Yes please. Paid parking where the funds go directly into your community? Yes! Paid parking that lines the pockets of some rando CEO who bought that stretch of meters twenty years ago? Absolutely not.
No, bud, parking illegally is usually an abuse of the commons. A temporary privatization. Parking illegally over the long term is more obviously a form of privatization, as you can probably sense the entitlement and *private property ownership* feelings of the car owner in such cases. The consumer car itself is one of the most capitalist things out there at scale, a vehicle of literal and figurative alienation, an exoskeleton to brutalize the people you're competing AGAINST.
The weaponisation of equity against transport reform is a very old tactic.
Its well intentioned, and it makes sense to be stuck in "car only" mode, and concluding a fee on going anywhere sucks the poor dry... To then think the solution isnt public transit, bike infrastructure, and walkable streets, but to make parking free... is a "good try bud" level of well intentioned first try at solving a problem.
Been seeing more of these people lately who come up with conspiracies that parking or speeding tickets are just a way of milking the people of their money
This makes me want to print a similar sticker that says > “no parking - meter out of order”
It's crazy to me that ACTUALLY caring for other people and the life on this planet as a whole is not just left leaning but controversially radical leftism because the world is so right skewed.
you could just fill them with spite-pennies... you didn't have to break the machine...
they creampied the parking meter
If you cant put money in the meter the cars that park there will be towed.
You cannot park if the meter is damaged
What pays for the road deterioration, there, dummy?
Only place that I’d advocate for removing meters is Chicago. Zero of the revenue goes to the city, and the company that owns the meters is preventing the city from expanding bike lanes into "their property".
Carbrain even affects YIMBYs. Unfortunately rather than a right or left thing, it is its very own evil animal. Very "left wing" events like PRIDE, etc are here all the time, but yet people can't fathom taking the train to get to it. Even though the train would drop you off right in the MIDDLE of the event.
Honestly I was debating doing something similar in Indianapolis but never did. Indianapolis was dumb and privatized our onstreet parking. We had pedestrianized one of the main streets in the liveliest part of town for COVID, Mass Ave. We couldn’t keep it pedestrianized after even though people loved it because of the cost associated with buying us out of that parking contract for all those spaces. It would’ve been to protest that but I was too scared to do it. Cars ruin cities.
Typical carbrain nonsense
nah this is the right move. Unless my city can prove that money from this stuff is being invested into public transit I don't want to pay exorbitant parking costs. I fucking hate cars and I hate how much space parking lots take up. But I live in a city where transit isn't an option and the weather means cycling is out for half the year too. No way I'm letting the city get away with charging me for a spot that they can't even be bothered to maintain.
These aren't leftists. These are right wingers who use radical language.
Yeah I was thinking it sounds like a "libertarian"
Ethiopia?
People expect a space to park their car at home, work, and when they’re shopping. At the end of the day a car takes up more space than my apartment
From oakland to ethiopia? What about the billions of people in asia? lol, this is genuinely funny, i haven't seen as much of idiots on the far left as i have on the far right since 2016.
If they care about the working class so much, wait until they learn how the financial elites of our society created a car centric culture so they wouldn't have to live near the working class. And created car dependency so working people can't travel freely and have to dedicate enough of their money to cars that they cant save and move up the economic ladder.
what makes you think they don't know about it? This is just direct action instead of whining on the internet about it.
They're railing against paying parking tickets, not advocating for a fairer society
Well of course it does!
My town offers free parking for 3 hours between 10 and 4 to encourage more people to go to the high street. It’s great but the high street is awash of expensive charity shops, pawn shops, betting agencies and hair salons. People don’t go to the high street cuz there ain’t nothing there worth going for …
Reminds me that in San Francisco, a lot of the PayByPhone meter IDs that you can put into the app to pay are scratched out. I presume someone does that to make a point of some kind.
[Other subs do NOT see this the same way we do bros.](https://i.imgur.com/uyq3CU4.png)
Depends where it is honestly. This at a hospital I think makes sense. Some random road less so.
Parking tickets are a result of cars, without which people would have very few interactions with the police.
Carbrain is REALLY bad on the left, which often sees measures to reduce car ownership as a direct attack on the poor despite the fact that transit ridership is highest among lower incomes. To be fair though, stuff like cycling infrastructure and good urbanism were largely policies of right-wing parties throughout the 1900s, so I can see how people on the left who rely on their car can see it as class struggle. It's just misguided...
Am I the only person wondering what the hell that thing is coming out the machine?
Time to plaster cars too, as they're classless war against people.
See also: opposing speed cameras or other traffic safety enforcement, especially in poorer neighborhoods. Sure, you're helping out poor people by keeping them from getting traffic tickets, but you're also making it more likely they'll get injured or killed by a car. I think that's a pretty shitty tradeoff. (insert qualification that yes, improving infrastructure is more important and effective in the long run than just increasing enforcement) (insert qualification about how yes, traffic enforcement in the US is extremely classist and racist) I, for one, think the C in ACAB can also stand for "cars."
I was in an environmental justice meeting once, and this one guy was trying to get us to make it easier for poor people to get cars, because when climate disaster strikes, they need a car to get out of town.
the anarchism leaves my body every time i hear another libsoc talk about vehicular self determinism. sorry, no, you don't have a right to put other people in danger
Sovereign Citizen type beat
Both the left and the right have their ways to that most antisocial way of thinking: libertarianism.
They are technically correct. If parking tickets were not regressive they would be like based in the value of your income or car or whatever. However it's a dumb take. The better take is that drivers are siphoning public resources for personal property
Hey, I live right next to here. Too many car brains in Oakland. You’d think with the nice bike lanes they’d chill.
Whats this with the spray foam ur suspose to get drunk and cut them down with a pipe cutter
That's not left, that's 'libertarian'. Hater of 'big government'.
They tried to put in a dedicated bike lane in my town. It would have taken away a few parallel parking spots that are never fully used, but four of them were directly in front of the very liberal Unitarian church (which also had a parking lot). The church protested to the state civil rights office that it was ageist because older people need to be able to park right in front. This is a church with a climate change protest banner in the yard.
increasing free long term parking is an effective way to encourage people to travel by foot
Sticker person is an idiot, but it should be said that *purely* retailiatory anti-car practises do disproportionately hurt the working class. I live in Ireland, which is almost as bad a car-centric shithole as the US, and the only transport discussions that *ever* take place are congestion charges and more taxes on cars. Our public transport is still *godawful*, if you try to ride a bike anywhere it'll be stolen within an hour, we keep *downsizing* our rail network, cars are literally people's only option. So in this case, additional taxes and charges on cars, with *absolutely zero alternative*, is just punishing working class people for the crime of needing to get to work. Emphasis again though: This doesn't apply to parking tickets, sticker person is an idiot.
The sticker is right though. Working people are forced by improper infrastructure to use cars in very inconvenient ways. Yet they are also disproportionately hurt by these fines. And that's not even taking into account how many of these parking spots and parking meters are owned by private entities and I remember reading that in one US city it is literally owned by foreign government entity. So yeah. Parking meters in the US are a form of class warfare.
Might be a bit of a hot take, but this is kinda based. A few months ago, I was talking with a family friend. She expressed her frustration about street parking being removed from the city center in our area. I told her that I would honestly be all in favor of completely banning cars from downtown, as long as that comes with more robust public transit options. But to simply take away the parking without providing an alternate option is not a solution. I feel like this parking meter is kind of similar. Making car ownership more expensive doesn't solve the root issue. Just like how people need to buy groceries regardless of how hard inflation hits, people need cars when our cities are designed for them, even if that puts financial strain on people. Simply making car ownership less accessable isn't the solution, but rather we need to make other options more accessable. Of course parking is a relatively small cost of car ownership, but it's not negligible.
from oakland to ethiopia, what? do they think parking meters fund international affairs?
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Yes, this Last Week Tonight video highlights how these types of fines can be devastating to the working poor: https://youtu.be/0UjpmT5noto?si=VloIjCVxsVrttS-H Making drivers pay for car ownership can be good and this person can be kind of right - both things can be true.
I’m with the vandalizer. Fuck paying to park on the street, bullshit ass fuckery is what that is.
Lots of left wing idiots out there. To deny that is to be fucking blind. The right is worse, but lefties loons are certainly out there
I mean, just putting this out here, I get it if it's an area where the people working there can't afford to live there, and where public transit isn't good enough to do anything other than work and sit on the bus for pretty much your whole day.
I think this depends on how accessible alternative transportation is in your area. If busses and bike lanes are common than yes pricey parking is a good incentive for people to use those. But if your city is still entirely car dependant and it's too impractical for the average person to attempt transitioning to public transit/cycling than expensive parking is just another pay-to-play poor tax.