4 ms·

> for some reason I managed to do everything with a bicycle/public transport till I got my driving license Reasons being: no job and no kids. I lived for years

> for some reason I managed to do everything with a bicycle/public transport till I got my driving license Reasons being: no job and no kids. I lived for years in the LA megalopolis without a car. Where going to the toilet is customary done at the wheel (1). We could possibly share stories about that one multi-hour bike ride to the box store and back. All that ended quite abruptly with the first job and especially the first kid. (1) Not really, but I hope it helps getting the the point across.

hypertele-Xii 5y ago
Yet even an unemployed single parent gets around just fine in Europe. Where I live, public transport is free for young kids and parents with strollers. The buses have separate "getting on/off with stroller" buttons that signals the driver to activate the hydraulics that tilt the whole bus just to make it easier to dis/mount with a baby.
- dzikimarian 5y ago
  Unless you want to visit parents in other, smaller city. Then half hour drive with car, changes to two hour struggle in a crowded bus.
  - atoav 5y ago
    Or your half an hour bicycle ride changes to one hour on a crowded street. Totally depends.
mcny 5y ago
I support banning cars specifically in certain neighborhoods in Manhattan. Probably not in any other borough or Jersey City but I want a ban on cars in Manhattan for exactly the same reason you are describing - building empathy toward people who need to use the subway with their babies in a stroller or backpack (not sure what the correct terminology is for this). If everyone has to use public transit, maybe we will be nicer to people who have to take their human infants to the doctor in a bus or a subway.
II2II 5y ago
A lot of that has to do with the design of the city. In my neck of the woods (a moderately dense urban area in Canada) I see plenty of parents who either don't own a car or use their car as the exception rather than the rule.

hypertele-Xii 5y ago

Yet even an unemployed single parent gets around just fine in Europe. Where I live, public transport is free for young kids and parents with strollers. The buses have separate "getting on/off with stroller" buttons that signals the driver to activate the hydraulics that tilt the whole bus just to make it easier to dis/mount with a baby.

dzikimarian 5y ago
Unless you want to visit parents in other, smaller city. Then half hour drive with car, changes to two hour struggle in a crowded bus.
- atoav 5y ago
  Or your half an hour bicycle ride changes to one hour on a crowded street. Totally depends.

mcny 5y ago

I support banning cars specifically in certain neighborhoods in Manhattan. Probably not in any other borough or Jersey City but I want a ban on cars in Manhattan for exactly the same reason you are describing - building empathy toward people who need to use the subway with their babies in a stroller or backpack (not sure what the correct terminology is for this). If everyone has to use public transit, maybe we will be nicer to people who have to take their human infants to the doctor in a bus or a subway.

II2II 5y ago

A lot of that has to do with the design of the city. In my neck of the woods (a moderately dense urban area in Canada) I see plenty of parents who either don't own a car or use their car as the exception rather than the rule.