>without adding much to human progress and development
I am opposed to vehicles being the priority, but their prevalence is directly related to their usefulness within the economic regions they occur in. If you ever go to the developing world, you will see vehicles used to grow and maintain society. It is easy to forget, living in the suburbs as i do, that most of the world does not joy ride over-produced SUVs.
The ability to move freely is a magical thing. Living in a place with bad roads is a reality to itself that i think every westerner should experience. The problem is what we use to take advantage of the roads.
Roads are great. The argument is against personal cars. You can have most of those gains with a vastly smaller number of automobiles, and remove many of the negatives like parking lots.
I completely agree. I was only responding to the assertion that roads and vehicles are fairly useless.
I hope i live to see the day when city centers are car free, and all cars on the road are automated and distributed. Imagine leaving your domicile, hitting a widget on your device, and in a short time a vehicle approaches near silently, its bay door opening. you step in and you are off to work at a consistent 60kph. Each day, you see the same people on their commutes, so you naturally strike up conversations and friendships. With the steering column as well as ~90% of other standard car interaction gack gone, the interior is free to be redesigned to suit whatever purpose one may have. Vehicles could link up, breakfast could be enjoyed over whatever amount of data you choose to view on your way, and there would be no traffic that the passenger is accountable for. And in the afternoon you do it all again, only now beverage quads flit back and forth between mothership and car swarm, possibly making the commute the high point of the day.
I am opposed to vehicles being the priority, but their prevalence is directly related to their usefulness within the economic regions they occur in. If you ever go to the developing world, you will see vehicles used to grow and maintain society. It is easy to forget, living in the suburbs as i do, that most of the world does not joy ride over-produced SUVs.
The ability to move freely is a magical thing. Living in a place with bad roads is a reality to itself that i think every westerner should experience. The problem is what we use to take advantage of the roads.
Roads are society's rivers.