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Not sure about Australia but the situation of living without a car in the US is dismal. We spent decades making sprawling suburbs and exhurbs that cannot be liv

Not sure about Australia but the situation of living without a car in the US is dismal. We spent decades making sprawling suburbs and exhurbs that cannot be lived in without a car and there is much apathy and even antagonism in the US to change that.

golemiprague 7y ago
Australia is the same, this guy probably lives in some inner city suburb but for most people in Australia a car is a daily necessity
Retric 7y ago
I regularly go weeks without driving anywhere and don’t live in a city just reasonably close to mass transit. So, while I do live in the US I treat a car as an affordable luxury not a requirement
- noobermin 7y ago
  I think generally mass transit is pretty bad in the US compared to most other cities in the world, but it does vary quite a bit depending on where you live since the US is such a large place and diverse place, so it always makes talking about this stuff difficult. A better qualification of my above comment is to say a significant enough fraction of people in the US live in situations that require them to have a car. If anything, having access to mass transit that enables a decent enough quality of life is the exception (which says something given how large the US is).
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 7y ago
    While the US has an incredible amount of land, most people live on a tiny fraction of it. NYC for example is ~1/38th the US population on (including parks and office space for commuters) ~1/12,000 the the land area of the US. It’s hard to do these kind of comparisons across the US, but the car culture has a lot more to do with how rich the US is than absolute need. Consider the school buss system is a form of mass transit available across most of the US. It’s inexpensive and something similar would work if most people could not afford cars.
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  > just reasonably close to mass transit The problem is not that people live outside of cities, it's that many people do not live near viable mass-transit options.
  - Hamuko 7y ago
    Yeah, I think most of the people killing off the personal car live in bubbles. >Mass transit will replace car ownership Mass transit sucks in a lot of places. Where I'm from, the bus came every hour, stopped running before evening and covered only some of the town. >Self-driving cars are here in a few years I'm still waiting for the self-driving tech companies to start doing tests in the Finnish Lapland during winter.
m0zg 7y ago
Living with a car in the US, OTOH, is pretty awesome. Roads are usually pretty great, and you can go on hikes and road trips without it being a logistical nightmare.
jdavis703 7y ago
I grew up in the U.S. suburbs without a car — I only got a car when I was 21. This was because my office moved to a completely transit and pedestrian-hostile location. I’m now living and working downtown and am again car free. Unless you’re at the suburban-rural edge, it’s quite possible to live car free.
_bxg1 7y ago
Yep. I wouldn't be surprised if part of the US decrease in ownership has to do with people moving closer and closer to major cities. In a good number of them, if you're truly centrally-located (not in the suburbs) you can make do with the bus system.

golemiprague 7y ago

Australia is the same, this guy probably lives in some inner city suburb but for most people in Australia a car is a daily necessity

Retric 7y ago

I regularly go weeks without driving anywhere and don’t live in a city just reasonably close to mass transit. So, while I do live in the US I treat a car as an affordable luxury not a requirement

noobermin 7y ago
I think generally mass transit is pretty bad in the US compared to most other cities in the world, but it does vary quite a bit depending on where you live since the US is such a large place and diverse place, so it always makes talking about this stuff difficult. A better qualification of my above comment is to say a significant enough fraction of people in the US live in situations that require them to have a car. If anything, having access to mass transit that enables a decent enough quality of life is the exception (which says something given how large the US is).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 7y ago
  While the US has an incredible amount of land, most people live on a tiny fraction of it. NYC for example is ~1/38th the US population on (including parks and office space for commuters) ~1/12,000 the the land area of the US. It’s hard to do these kind of comparisons across the US, but the car culture has a lot more to do with how rich the US is than absolute need. Consider the school buss system is a form of mass transit available across most of the US. It’s inexpensive and something similar would work if most people could not afford cars.
jjoonathan 7y ago
> just reasonably close to mass transit The problem is not that people live outside of cities, it's that many people do not live near viable mass-transit options.
- Hamuko 7y ago
  Yeah, I think most of the people killing off the personal car live in bubbles. >Mass transit will replace car ownership Mass transit sucks in a lot of places. Where I'm from, the bus came every hour, stopped running before evening and covered only some of the town. >Self-driving cars are here in a few years I'm still waiting for the self-driving tech companies to start doing tests in the Finnish Lapland during winter.

m0zg 7y ago

Living with a car in the US, OTOH, is pretty awesome. Roads are usually pretty great, and you can go on hikes and road trips without it being a logistical nightmare.

jdavis703 7y ago

I grew up in the U.S. suburbs without a car — I only got a car when I was 21. This was because my office moved to a completely transit and pedestrian-hostile location. I’m now living and working downtown and am again car free. Unless you’re at the suburban-rural edge, it’s quite possible to live car free.

_bxg1 7y ago

Yep. I wouldn't be surprised if part of the US decrease in ownership has to do with people moving closer and closer to major cities. In a good number of them, if you're truly centrally-located (not in the suburbs) you can make do with the bus system.