The article nails it really. The core problem here is that a small minded swap from ICE to EV is only a mild implementation improvement on top of an already fragile transportation system that is riddled with problems.
The government could really get the ball rolling by incentivizing a switch further by by adding more stick along with the current carrots, adding a carbon tax to make ICE vehicles less appealing, but that is likely to be unbelievably contentious as it is in Canada.
The bigger gains have always been a more fundamental transformation of the transportation system from car oriented to a multi-modal system of moving people around via walking/cycling/bus/train.
The article suggests that this is expensive but I don't really think it is. Cycling infrastructure is unbelievably cheap compared to everything else, and walking is made more viable at the stroke of a pen simply by changing the zoning and building code to actually allow people to build walkable neighbourhoods with retail amenities, which unbelievably remain outright banned in so many places.
Our entire approach to town and city building is fucked. People/professionals all vacation to places like Tulum (etc) where you can just walk through little slices of paradise on foot (or scooter) and reach everything you need sans car, rave about how great it is, and then go back home and continue designing and building the worst imaginable human experience infrastructure.
> adding a carbon tax to make ICE vehicles less appealing
Taxes are already built in, heavily so — on fuel, registrations, etc.
The #1 way to push the stick would be to dramatically raise fuel prices.
I'm personally an overall fan of ICEV over EV, but if you wanted to do it, raising fuel prices at the exact moment ICEVs in the U.S. are becoming bigger & heavier would greatly increase the incentive to move to EV.
"and walking is made more viable at the stroke of a pen simply by changing the zoning and building code to actually allow people to build walkable neighbourhoods with retail amenities,..."
This is an easy claim but unrealistic in North America. For the Boomers that have lived in single family housing for decades, those who also represent the larget voting block in most major cities, you're expecting them to forfeit their percieved "quality of life."
Have you seen large apartment projects in US cities, they are atrociously designed, with the vanity of walkability but rarely deliver the NYC or San Francisco level of walkability that they are selling.
Yimbys would do well to insist upon better replacement products.
> Yimbys would do well to insist upon better replacement products.
I have long ago learned that I can't think of everything. By allowing someone else to think and rethink the problem instead of insisting on a solution we can do better.
We have many examples of mandated replacement products where the ground floor retail I so strongly went is intentionally left empty because there is no demand. We have many examples of other things that sound good in the design phase but turn out not to work out for whatever reason.
Thus I want to allow property owners to as much as possible do what they want. Some things they will try will turn out to not work out. Then they will try something else until someone hits on a winning idea and then all developers will copy that. Thus I will allow you to build a pig barn right next door: so long as your pig barn cannot be smelled in my yard I'm okay with it - in this way people can figure out how to build great neighborhoods without me having to work out all the details including about things I didn't think about.
The government could really get the ball rolling by incentivizing a switch further by by adding more stick along with the current carrots, adding a carbon tax to make ICE vehicles less appealing, but that is likely to be unbelievably contentious as it is in Canada.
The bigger gains have always been a more fundamental transformation of the transportation system from car oriented to a multi-modal system of moving people around via walking/cycling/bus/train.
The article suggests that this is expensive but I don't really think it is. Cycling infrastructure is unbelievably cheap compared to everything else, and walking is made more viable at the stroke of a pen simply by changing the zoning and building code to actually allow people to build walkable neighbourhoods with retail amenities, which unbelievably remain outright banned in so many places.