Life is so much more enjoyable when you move away from the suburbs and get rid of your car. The freedom to just walk to your destination and having everything within walking range is priceless.
You can rent a car anytime you want to go on a longer excursion. It is far harder to rent walkability or access to amenities. You can’t rent “my children can walk to school and I can walk to pick them up for lunch” nearly as easily. Nor can you rent “it’s my buddy’s birthday and we wanted to go out on the town without a long car ride after”. Nor can you rent the physical benefits of movement to apply to your many car trips. Nor can you rent the climate benefits of the freedom to not take a car to do all of your errands.
A substantial portion of my childhood is 20-40 minute car rides punctuating every excursion, every new experience. Maybe it’s family time, but mostly I was on my Nintendo DS or GameBoy Color (or reading and getting carsick) and ignoring legs made restless from lack of use. Freedom has its price.
My colleague is an avid mountaineer. He has his gear in the trunk of his car at all times. After work, if the weather is nice, he drives to the mountains to go hiking. That would be very hard to do with a rental car.
You don’t lose any of that having neighbourhoods where you don’t need a car to pick up some milk. I don’t think we should ban private cars or anything, but when public schools have 3 lane car pickup lanes several blocks long there’s an issue.
My cousin's husband has been mugged three times in his life. Each time was when he was walking to school in NYC, each time was with a deadly weapon, and each time there was a chance he could have died. I've never heard of a single person being mugged driving to school.
I'm not saying this is the primary reason to have cars and live in the suburbs, but not being forced to share space with every random person in your vicinity is no small thing.
Where did I say everybody should be in something like nyc density? Even then, there are plenty of cities (especially outside America) where those safety concerns are virtually nonexistent.
I just turned 41 and my son turns one in January. I can think of a million reasons to leave the city and in fact my wife and I are strongly considering it, but the necessary reliance on cars in the suburbs is an enormous deterrent. I’ve lived that way before, so I know what’s bad about it. We are probably only going to consider walkable small towns (as opposed to car dependent exurbia).
Mmm don't sell it too short. Long distance passengers become non-drivers art least initially at either end. Good city-center stations will not have parking or rental cars nearby.
The conservative tendency to car apologia is really disappointing. For some reason, it's perceived to be consistent with the conservative worldview, but it isn't. Automobile supremacy requires massive social engineering and state intervention and car-based cities can only remain as such by artificially limiting homebuilding (and therefore density). If you set individuals free to build what the market demands they will create cities in which it's very unpleasant to drive (i.e. densely populated city centers) and those cities will need to solve the transportation problem some other way. The only way you can prevent that is to, well, literally prevent it -- i.e. make it illegal (via zoning).
It’s true that progressives are wild about transit, but I wish more conservatives resisted the urge to view cars as the natural political opposite.
Speak for yourself. The last thing I want during covid is to be stuck in a metal box with 100 strangers uncomfortably wearing masks instead of in my own car blasting music with the window down.
You still get to have your car, it just means you can't drive it right through the middle of a dense living area, you'll have to park on the edge and walk/tram/scooter in. Which is the best for everyone.
Except for those in a condition not to easily walk or use any kind of two wheels device.
Then there is the whole issue that local city transportation is pretty lousy, even in Europe.
Sure big cities have it good on the innermost district, live a bit more on the outskirts or in a smaller town and taxi becomes the only option for those not willing to wait between 1-2h for each bus into each direction plus additional commute.
Electric wheelchairs are likely the best option for the first group. Good thing is making an area better for walking makes it better for disabled people as well. A car centric area is extremely hostile for people with disabilities which make it difficult/illegal to drive.
I am all for improvements in such areas, unfortunately even in countries like Germany, there are plenty of local subway stations and local train ones where those requirements are just ignored.
There are cars specially tailored for people with disabilities, and electric wheelchairs are only practicable in sunny weather.
No one wants to wear rain pants. The point is that it is a nice compromise. Amsterdam used to be a car focused city till the late 70s-- and now it is much nicer.
Blind, wheelchair-bound, and elderly people use trains daily everywhere in Tokyo. It only sucks if your city doesn’t value the non-able-bodied (which unfortunately is most of the world).
It also means that, often, it will be slower and/or more inconvenient to use the car.
For example, in my city, for distances inside the urban core, bicycle is usually the fastest mode of transport, public transport is about 1.5x - 2x the bicycle (fine if you are feeling lazy), and car is 1.5x - 3x the bicycle depending on time of day and associated traffic levels.
Sure, if the weather is horrible and I am feeling lazy, I might use my car instead of jumping on the bike, but often after reaching my destination I'll realize that it wasn't really worth taking the car.
> The last thing I want during covid is to be stuck in a metal box with 100 strangers uncomfortably wearing masks instead of in my own car blasting music with the window down.
Or you could walk or take a bicycle (e.g., Amsterdam/Netherlands).
In the event that this is a (somewhat/semi-)serious comment:
First: one doesn't have to cycle all the time. If the weather is bad, or if you just don't feel like it, then one can certainly just not cycle. Feel free to take transit or your car/taxi/uber.
But by designing 'human scale' neighbourhoods this gives people the option of choosing their mode of transportation, instead of being forced to own/operate an expensive piece of equipment that sits idle and depreciates most of the time.
That being said, as someone who cycled in the Before Times to work in Toronto for ~9 months out of year,† I've found the risk of rain was more of a deterrent than actual rain. The number of times I was actually commuting in the rain as quite small over the course of a year.
When I started cycling I would look at the weather forecast, and not take my bicycle if there was a decent chance of rain. And most times it ended up not raining anyway. So at some point I bought rain gear and stuck it in a pannier: I no longer bothered looking at the forecast.
Of course one doesn't need to go for all the funny looking clothing. A simple poncho folded away can be sufficient:
† Often the road conditions were garbage in January and February because a lack of decent practices in snow clearing. Those were the months I generally skipped: I often cycled into December (when it was still 'dry') and often re-started in (mid-)March.
Walking barefoot and living in a cave is also not the end of the world, but most of us would not prefer that kind of life. Not everybody is like you and not everywhere is like Amsterdam.
I have an aunt/uncle in Germany and when I visited them I'd occasionally take one of their bikes out and bike to my grandparents dacha about two miles away. It's cute and super euro but as soon as it's a little cold or rainy I'm over it.
Of course they still own two cars and drive to work despite it being "only" a 15 minute bike ride. They are both MDs.
> Of course they still own two cars and drive to work despite it being "only" a 15 minute bike ride. They are both MDs.
Yeah, I always marvel at Americans who think that Europeans walk, cycle, or take public transit everywhere. Some do, especially students and retirees. However, for working people, car is still king.
