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Agree completely with you. That being said, owning a car is still a must if you have anything close to an outdoor lifestyle. For example: Leaving the car at t

Agree completely with you. That being said, owning a car is still a must if you have anything close to an outdoor lifestyle. For example: Leaving the car at the trailhead several hundred miles from home for the whole weekend. With Uber and Lyft, I already see my friends living an Urban lifestyle completely dumping their car. When this will become automated, another portion will likely dump their car. But for now at least, I cannot see the outdoor crowd, or the ones living in a real rural area (think opposite of the SF hipster) dumping their car.

prawn 9y ago
I actually think rentable self-driving cars would be useful for the trailhead problem. For non-spur trails especially, organising a shuttle service is a bit of a pain and relatively expensive.
spodek 9y ago
> owning a car is still a must if you have anything close to an outdoor lifestyle Nothing honors the beauty of nature like polluting it.
galdosdi 9y ago
That is a huge misconception. You can get to rural beauty with mass transit and/or a bicycle in metro NYC actually. My friends regularly organize a bike ride where we take the metro north to rural Putnam County then bike back the 30 some miles. You can go miles without seeing anyone but a tree and a snake... You can take the Long Island Railroad to Montauk. New Jersey Transit will take you to the shore. There's a bus that will take you to Hunter Mountain to go skiing in the Catskills. Look up maps of the above 3 train systems. In many cases you can take a train, then bike the last couple miles, and end up in a very very isolated place. I can also go to places that feel isolated and rural like the Jamaica Bay, the Pelham Bay Park area, or Inwood Hill Park, but are technically not because they're so adjacent to developed areas. But they do feel locally rural if you avoid a view that lets you see the city, because there is a jump discontinuity in density. Also, you can do traditional car trips and just rent a car for the weekend. City people do this crap all the time. You really think we don't get outdoors, huh? Demand more from your transit systems!
CalRobert 9y ago
There are at least one or two counterexamples - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimmelwald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimmelwald Personally, I live in the city and like getting out but I just use Gocar (pay by hour car rental)

prawn 9y ago

I actually think rentable self-driving cars would be useful for the trailhead problem. For non-spur trails especially, organising a shuttle service is a bit of a pain and relatively expensive.

spodek 9y ago

> owning a car is still a must if you have anything close to an outdoor lifestyle Nothing honors the beauty of nature like polluting it.

galdosdi 9y ago

That is a huge misconception. You can get to rural beauty with mass transit and/or a bicycle in metro NYC actually. My friends regularly organize a bike ride where we take the metro north to rural Putnam County then bike back the 30 some miles. You can go miles without seeing anyone but a tree and a snake... You can take the Long Island Railroad to Montauk. New Jersey Transit will take you to the shore. There's a bus that will take you to Hunter Mountain to go skiing in the Catskills. Look up maps of the above 3 train systems. In many cases you can take a train, then bike the last couple miles, and end up in a very very isolated place. I can also go to places that feel isolated and rural like the Jamaica Bay, the Pelham Bay Park area, or Inwood Hill Park, but are technically not because they're so adjacent to developed areas. But they do feel locally rural if you avoid a view that lets you see the city, because there is a jump discontinuity in density. Also, you can do traditional car trips and just rent a car for the weekend. City people do this crap all the time. You really think we don't get outdoors, huh? Demand more from your transit systems!

CalRobert 9y ago

There are at least one or two counterexamples - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimmelwald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimmelwald Personally, I live in the city and like getting out but I just use Gocar (pay by hour car rental)