You've made the decision to live without a car. Congratulations! While a car is a useful solution to getting from place to place, it can also cost a lot of money to maintain. Cars can also cause a lot of unneeded stress. Without one,...
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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