Originally Posted by tandempower

IWhat can you really do besides attempt to talk sense into people and let them choose to support better policies or resist them? Raising consciousness propels discourse forward. For a while, we get support for alternative transportation, make some progress, then there's what I call an 'ego-backlash' that involves those who aren't supportive of the alternative developments getting defensive because it feels to them like they are under fire for driving. They don't understand that reaching parity between different modes of transportation makes the choice to drive sustainable because it allows growth into other transportation modes. All they can see is their choice to drive is becoming less ubiquitous, less dominant, less taken-for-granted, etc. and they backlash against this. Still, eventually they are going to have to accept the need for viability in other transportation choices because sprawl-growth is simply not sustainable in the long term. Things are going to get worse and worse for more and more people economically as long as the automotivism-choice is made inelastic by sprawl so really all you can do is keep trying to make people see the path ubiquitous driving leads down so that they will support making the needed changes before things get worse than they already are and the shift becomes even more difficult than it already is in many areas.