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>Most Americans cannot imagine a luxurious or aspirational life without a car. It has nothing to do with not having the means for it. The thing is, even in the

>Most Americans cannot imagine a luxurious or aspirational life without a car. It has nothing to do with not having the means for it. The thing is, even in the densest cities in the world it's not like people are completely without cars. They just manage to get by with one car per family rather than one car per driving age member of the household. It has the additional advantage of letting their teenaged kids get around and do shit on their own without having their parents play chauffeur all day. Between car sharing services, bike shares, and on-demand ride-hailing it's easier than ever to get around without a car and fill in the gaps that a transit system leaves. The only thing that actually gets hard is being able to drive out to go camping or manage the extemporaneous pick-up of free-shit on CraigsList. Even that would be doable if car rental companies were more focused on long term rentals for road-trippers rather than just people who need commuter econoboxes to leave their hotels.

wott 10y ago
> The thing is, even in the densest cities in the world it's not like people are completely without cars. They just manage to get by with one car per family rather than one car per driving age member of the household. 60% of households in Paris do not have any car. In its suburbs, and in other major but smaller cities in France, again 30% to 40% of households do not have any car. That's a fair share of people who are completely without cars.
ascendingPig 10y ago
You don't even have to leave the US to see cities like NY, where fewer than half of all households have a car, even including the spacious areas in Queens and Staten Island. Have you visited any of these dense cities?
6t6t6t6 10y ago
I live in Tokyo and I don't own a car. I take a 20 minutes train ride to commute to work and I do the groceries in the shops around my train station. I use online shopping as well and I receive my purchase the next day or two days after. To move around my neighbourhood I use a bicycle (if I was older I would have an electric one). The weekend I want to go out of the city, I just go to the rent a car next to my house and I rent a hybrid car during 48 hours for about $150. If the place I want to go is really far, I take the bullet train and I rent a cheaper car there. It's perfectly ok to live without car, it's just that the cities need to be designed in a different way.

wott 10y ago

> The thing is, even in the densest cities in the world it's not like people are completely without cars. They just manage to get by with one car per family rather than one car per driving age member of the household. 60% of households in Paris do not have any car. In its suburbs, and in other major but smaller cities in France, again 30% to 40% of households do not have any car. That's a fair share of people who are completely without cars.

ascendingPig 10y ago

You don't even have to leave the US to see cities like NY, where fewer than half of all households have a car, even including the spacious areas in Queens and Staten Island. Have you visited any of these dense cities?

6t6t6t6 10y ago

I live in Tokyo and I don't own a car. I take a 20 minutes train ride to commute to work and I do the groceries in the shops around my train station. I use online shopping as well and I receive my purchase the next day or two days after. To move around my neighbourhood I use a bicycle (if I was older I would have an electric one). The weekend I want to go out of the city, I just go to the rent a car next to my house and I rent a hybrid car during 48 hours for about $150. If the place I want to go is really far, I take the bullet train and I rent a cheaper car there. It's perfectly ok to live without car, it's just that the cities need to be designed in a different way.