A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Been living in NYC for (oh no I'm old) many years. No car. No complaints.
People imagine "the city" is all times square on New Year's Eve but it's not. The streets are rarely empty, but it's also almost never shoulder to shoulder dense.
I find the suburban emptiness depressing, personally. I like other people being around.
That should be any city.
The thing is it shouldn’t even need to be a city. Sure, cities can afford transit and many other amenities, but there’s no reason not to have a higher density area at the center of pretty much any town or village. There’s no reason you can’t have people in walking distance to whatever your town has to offer. Not everyone, of course, some will always want to be alone. But every town should be able to offer some sort of amenities and a reason to live there. Even if it’s just a diner and general store, you should be able to offer a compelling car-free existence.
I grew up in a town of 14,000 where there was a central business area, with houses and apartments in walking distance. My grandparents lived on a farm outside a village of 450, that had a walkable, higher density town center. If older places could do it, so can newer.
My current town is much bigger, 50,000 and a bedroom community of a major city. I live in a single family home, but can walk to the town center. We have a train station into the city, that’s a transportation hub with taxis, buses, scooters, Ubers, kayaks, and right next to the town common and city hall. We have a library, post office, and so many hair and nail salons. We have a regular grocery and an Indian grocery, and tons of shops and restaurants of various cultures. The so enter is surrounded by apartment buildings, then three deckers, and single family homes like mine are still walking distance! During pandemic, our new family activity became walking to the town center, grabbing kebabs, and eating in a bench on the Common. There are a lot of towns of this size, and you too should be able to have city-like amenities on a smaller scale.
Unfortunately I do have to use a car to goto work, but I work from home half the time. Many weeks I use my car only twice to work and once to the grocery, like three miles each, a bit far to walk. It’s an EV so a little gentler on the environment and I never need a gas station. But between the hills and my bad knees, and snow part of the year, cycling is out. I’m sure it would be cheaper to bus and uber the few places I need to, but it’s hard to entirely give up my car
So almost any town?
I became much richer when i moved into the city and sold my car.
Cars are a drain on your money, time, and mental health
I spent enough money to buy a house in 15 years of rent in the nearest city.
I rode a bike and subway mostly of that time until we got fed up giving landlords all our savings and bought a car and moved to the country to start a family.
OK, those are the solutions for people living in a city center. Commutes are short enough to walk or bike, and for longer trips, there is a bus or tram every five minutes. Got it.
And what would be the solution for those people living outside the city centers? Biking from here to the city is 20km, nearly an hour downhill towards the city, but at least one and a half back up. Busses go every hour, but only Mo-Fr during the core hours. In the evening or on weekends, bus traffic is spotty, to say the least. And Trams, well, we don't do trams or trains in the country.
That sounds like where I grew up, small town and nearest cities were over an hour by bus. Never had an issue without a car, most shopping is just food so easy enough to walk or cycle to the local Tesco.
Most weeks the only time I would leave the town was when walking the dog. Until I got a job in the next town over, which was only 6 miles away, easy distance to cycle. Moved since then, now its quicker to cycle to the next town over than get the bus or drive. Google says its up to an hour to drive there in the morning, cycling you can just go past all the cars that aren't moving anywhere.
Design better cities. End sprawl.
But it's probably too late for cities already designed to be suburban hell to make any changes that dont involve redesigning and tearing up half the city. I mean, its possible but unlikely in north america at least
You have to differenciate between sprawl and people living outside the city basically forever. Remember: cities are the new things, not the other way round.
Cities are centuries older than cars though. Cars are the new thing. And yet it's true that cars are an obvious QoL improvement for anyone in a rural area, and no reasonable person is suggesting that people in rural areas shouldn't drive cars.
The real issue is that Americans (among others) have decided they want all the convenience and amenities of living in a city (sewer, water, energy, convenient access to most goods and services, etc.), but they want to pretend they live in a rural area, with no density whatsoever. This has resulted in the suburban sprawl that is financially ruinous and requires cars to be able to go anywhere and do anything, which creates traffic, which we solve by building bigger roads and pushing things farther apart, creating more traffic.
Thus, the answer really is that if you want city amenities, you need to live in a city. It doesn't have to be as dense as New York. Not Just Bikes just posted a great video about the smallish town of Bergen in Norway that is not a super dense urban hellscape, it is medium density with human-centric development.
Y’all are missing the point. US had huge growth after wwii, most of it suburban and car oriented. This is how we got cities designed to sprawl, complete car dependency, and that’s all that too many people know. For all of them, too many cities, too much of the population, it’s new to want city amenities, new to think in terms other than cars and suburbs.
It’s still get odd looks talking about how much nicer things are. I still get people thinking cities are the crime ridden hellholes the 1970s told them they were
I'm pretty sure cities are like as old as history. They certainly go back a while https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_continuously_inhabited_cities
Nobody is suggesting people in rural areas to live without a car.
Fuck cars is about eliminating car dependency in cities. Actually, forget eliminating car dependency. I'd be happy if we could stop this silly car size arms race and ban these huge pickup trucks and SUVs in cities
So it's bike, bus, train and walk. I mean, yeah.
Step 5: Get hit by a car while on your bike and wind up with lifelong injuries because your city does not have bike-friendly infrastructure and riding on major roads is essentially a death wish.
Lol, you think horrific injury with permanent loss of limbs stops north americans from driving?
Mmm'k, I'll take the bike next time I'll bring 300kg of concrete from the store...
The problems is not having a car. The problem is taking its car everyday for less than 5km to go to work.
Yes, you can live without any car if you live in a big city (in 30m2 apartment 😝), eat in restaurant, go to cinema, etc... and love this way of living.
But if you want a house, with decent garden, close to nature, then it becomes hard to live without car. Not that you must take your car everyday, I have an electric 50cm3 equivalent bike to go to work.But yeah, when I do the garden and have 3/4m3 of organic waste, it's hard to evacuate this by bus...
Why aren't you keeping you organic wastes on the property to make nutrituous compost?
Dude, do you have any idea if what 5m3 grass, woods and leaves represent in a 700m2 garden, and the time it would require to compost it naturally ?
There is an "organic factory" (don't know how to translate it) were people can bring their organic waste close to my home. They have big crusher for wood, and several areas to maturate the compost. You can buy premium organic compost for your garden for like 0.1 euros per kg. You can also come with your trailer and take a few tons if you want.
It is also used by townhalk to decorate round about, public PARC, etc...
I lived rurally for 15 years and we composted everything from food waste to yard trimmings in our yard. Does you area do organics collections? My area also has a municipal compost and they pick up organics every week along the garbage schedule.
Yes, we have this, but they don't pick above 1m3. Which is stupid, because for less than 1m3, I put it in my own composter.
You'd probably be surprised to know that people do just that kind of thing regularly. There are numerous videos on YouTube showing all sorts of large objects being moved by bike.
I came by bike to work during 10 years, I also have a trailer for my daughter, do regular cyclo-tourism, including crossing Scotland and Iceland with tent and bike.
Trust me, I know what a bike can do. But when you just discharge 4 tons of concrete from the delivery truck and noticed you missed a few bags of cement, you really are not motivated to drive 15km with cargo bike.
I’ll take the bike next time I’ll bring 300kg of concrete from the store…
To be fair, you could get a bike trailer that handles 300kg, and it would be way more affordable than a pickup truck or van.
But are you doing this often? Are most people??
When I get something large enough to require a cargo van, I usually just rent one for like $20.
It's about using the most appropriate vehicle for the job, with a priority being on the one that causes the least harm to the environment and community.
A car is not appropriate for most of the trips people take, and a truck/SUV even less.
@borokov @veganpizza69
Ironically, your car is destroying the nature you want to be closer to. If you really love nature and the outdoors, using a car to access it is like being a toxic ex-boyfriend who refuses to let go and calls it love.
But what's the alternative?
I'm not talking about the big national parks, which should absolutely have mass transit to shuttle people into it.
But the smaller parks, national/state forests, and public lands? I do a lot of backpacking so I'm regularly at an unnamed trailhead in the middle of my local national forest where we've been on dirt roads for the last 45 minutes. There's not really any feasible way to build public transport to service all of that, and I would very very very much not want them building actual roads for busses or rails for trains.
@Lv_InSaNe_vL
People spread over the earth and into every corner of it except Antarctica, tens of thousands of years before there were cars. Did Genghis Khan have a car? Did Hannibal have a car? Every location you say you can't get to without a car was settled by Native Americans, for thousands of years, without cars. Cable cars would probably have the lowest environmental impact to move people around a park. #MotoNormativity #CarBrain #FuckCars
Again, I'm not talking about a park because in the US there's enormous amounts of public land. For example, I like camping in Manistee National Forest, which is about a million acres of almost completely undeveloped land. Its just not feasible to build a cable car route to the like 7000 trail heads throughout. Nor would I want that because that in itself would destroy so much more of the nature compared to the handful of small cars.
Oh and Hannibal's famous march took 5-6 months. And unfortunately I don't have that kind of PTO ;)
@Lv_InSaNe_vL Lewis and Clark walked all the way to the west coast. My father hiked from Corpus Christie Texas to the Canadian border through the Rocky Mountains in the mid 1970s. If you want to visit remote areas of national parks your feet and a backpack are the best options. Horses are also an option. They can be rented and buying and maintaining a horse is cheaper than buying and maintaining a car. They also do less damage to nature.
my father hiked from corpus Christie Texas to the Canadian border
Yeah and I've done the Pacific Crest Trail too, which is 2650 miles from the Mexican border to the Canadian one. It took me about 4 months almost entirely on foot. I'm not saying it's not possible, it's just really nice to be able to go backpacking for a weekend.
If you want to visit remote parts of national parks
Again, I am not talking about the national parks. I mentioned that in my first comment. I am talking about things like State forests and National Forests which are essentially just enormous forests. They aren't "parks" in the same way a national park is. They don't have big visitor centers or perfectly well maintained trails.
Buying and maintaining a horse is cheaper than buying and maintaining a car
Hahahahahahahaha hahahahaha oh wait are you serious? Hahahahaha. God that's funny. My car cost me $3500 and about $1500/year after gas/insurance/maintenance. A horse is going to be significantly more than that. And I still need to get the horse to and from the various trail heads which is still going to require a vehicle. And a much larger one because my little car isn't gonna tow a trailer lmao
An alternative in this case is carsharing or taxis. Car ownership is a big issue, for every carsharing car you can get rid of up to 10 vehicles.
Lmfao what are you talking about? There's zero chance you'll find a ride share or taxi willing to take you out on seasonal roads. And that's also ignoring the fact that a lot of these are going to be ~2hrs or more away from an actual town so it's not financially feasible either.
I'm talking about going out into actual nature. Still very far away from civilization.
Carsharing is not the same thing as ride sharing. Carsharing (basically short term car rental paid by the hour/km) is an option anywhere. My girlfriend and I have used this widely in our nature adventures in Europe.
I am talking about possibilities of how we could reform our system and thinking, not the real life situation. Nonetheless, a taxi (ride sharing) is still a viable option in large parts of the world and the US.
Your attitude is unnecessarily hostile so I will shut this conversation down. Thank you for your time.