alt-hist: a world without cars

[Johan Larson]

OK, so,
1. A string of celebrity deaths in car crashes early in the century impress upon the public and lawmakers that cars are dangerous and need to be carefully regulated. Accordingly the standards for drivers licenses are set high, and even early cars come equipped with important safety features, at significant cost.
2. The autobahns and interstate highways never get built. Logistics experts point out that rail moves more people and cargo than even very elaborate highways do, so mid-century governments focus on building extensive and modern rail networks.
3. After WWII, governments face a housing crisis for returning servicemen, but solve it by encouraging construction of spiffy new apartment blocks served by buses and streetcars, not by subsidizing loans for suburban Cape Cod houses.

Yes, I think that might work. There would be cars, but most families wouldn't have one. The automotive industry would focus on making trucks, delivery vehicles, and luxury cars. The road network would be designed for local use in cities; it would be possible to drive across the country, but doing so would be quite an adventure.

[RogerBW]

In the UK, the major move to fully paved roads came from the 1870s onwards and was driven by bicycling enthusiasts. If you don't have bicycles for some reason, and rail is working well, maybe you don't have the same ready-made network for cars to use.

[Irish Wolf]

Reputedly, the US Interstate Highway system originated when a young officer by the name of Eisenhower had to take a military convoy from the East Coast to the West Coast in 1919, to practice deployment of materiel in the event of an invasion of US territory. It was a struggle, taking two months to cover the distance (the first highway across the country, the Lincoln Highway, later known as US 30, was largely a notional thing once they got west of the Mississippi River). Later, during WWII, Eisenhower got to see how the Reichsautobahn improved the efficiency of German deployments; these two factors were apparently foremost in his proposal of an interstate network of autobahn-style freeways.

Remove Eisenhower from the equation (either he isn't the one in charge of that convoy, or he isn't elected President in 1950), and the network of freeways may not be constructed; however, it's difficult to imagine anything like what we call a "first-world" lifestyle without automobiles. (Major cities may be able to get by just fine with limited car ownership - but try to imagine a metropolis the size of modern-day New York with transshipment of foodstuffs and other supplies limited to rail traffic and horse-drawn carts...)

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

Yes, I think that might work. There would be cars, but most families wouldn't have one.

Incidentally most families having one isn't the same as them being widely used. A majority of American families may have owned a car as early as the 1920s (there are 0.61 per household in 1925), but many of those owners didn't use them every day. Everyone owns a car but only uses it for occasional long trips or when they need to transport a lot of stuff looks a lot different than people drive to the corner to buy a loaf of bread.

Another factor to consider might be gasoline prices. In 1913 gasoline sold at 27 cents per gallon in the Pennsylvania towns right around the refineries. Adjusted by the relative consumer price index, that would be $6.53 today. Prices crashed in the 30s and stayed down, but might not have.

[Koshka]

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

3. After WWII, governments face a housing crisis for returning servicemen, but solve it by encouraging construction of spiffy new apartment blocks served by buses and streetcars, not by subsidizing loans for suburban Cape Cod houses.

Urban planning puts those apartment blocks next to schools and shopping, so barring lousy weather people can easily walk to the store, or to the movie theater, or walk their kids to school. As technology improves in the decades after WWII, this neighborhood design encourages architects in lousy-weather states to either build skywalks connecting the neighborhood or put both residential and business space under the same roof.

[joppeknol]

Driving a car means making split-second decision while processing tons of information. You have to anticipate curves in the road, and movements of other participants, while at the same time steering a ton of steel at an insane speed by using your hands and feet. It is incredibly hard and only some people are able to do it reliably.

I suppose that cycling is a rare event in this world and that pilots are really hard to find. Travel by air-ship is probably a lot more common here.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Koshka

Urban planning puts those apartment blocks next to schools and shopping, so barring lousy weather people can easily walk to the store, or to the movie theater, or walk their kids to school. As technology improves in the decades after WWII, this neighborhood design encourages architects in lousy-weather states to either build skywalks connecting the neighborhood or put both residential and business space under the same roof.

To be fair, this was actually the plan for a lot of British and European high rise developments during the 60s and 70s - each block was meant to have satellite amenities that the inmates could use. And then the government realised that it could save money by not building these things. Also, in our timeline a lot of the blocks were monkey-made and dreadful places to live even without the lack of amenities.
No idea if American projects went the same way or not...

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

You could vastly reduce car usage by increasing regulation and taxation and avoiding the 1950s era decision to design cities for motor vehicles.
...
A combination of localised communities and good public transport could then account for most people's transport needs, leaving motor vehicles for local freight and the elite.

Assuming the intent is for cars to be uncommon rather than nonexistent, this is the way to go. I left out the bit about the World Wars because, while avoiding those would certainly help, I feel so much other technology would be impacted that it would be much less feasible to reach a point that looks just like today but without cars. Given, any solution is going to cause some butterfly-effect style ripples, but the above is going to be far less disruptive than removing the World Wars.