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I skimmed the article and I feel like nothing really answers the question to "How to quit cars", aside from pricing parking better. Personally, I'd love to be a

by kortex 3y ago

I skimmed the article and I feel like nothing really answers the question to "How to quit cars", aside from pricing parking better. Personally, I'd love to be able to rely on cars less. They are kind of the epitome of tragedy of the commons. But as a lifelong suburbanite with 2 cars in a 2-person household, this is what I'd have to see to quit cars: - Ability to get a vehicle on-demand (say within 5-10 minutes) 24/7/365, anywhere in Upstate NY, from cities to boonies. - That vehicle would need to allow me to transport large goods, bulky goods (to an extent), lumber <6', flammable solvents - also needs to accomodate 2 medium dogs - I'd need dedicated bike lanes to the nearby shops and groceries before I could even attempt to use that as an option. There's stores only a few miles from me but the roads to get there are treacherous There's more but those are the bare minimums, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

geff82 3y ago
I think the main problem is how American cities are built: they are not intended to be walkable (the same is true for some modern European suburbs). Compare this with European city centers: having a car there is not a benefit, but a liability. You can get around mega cities such as Paris without having a car (taking a taxi for the 2 occasions a months where you'd need one). I recently visited Milan: we parked the car and then did not need it again once - despite having little kids. Why? Classic European cities are dense. They were built in a time where "walking" was the main means of transportation. And now that policies and opinions change, this older style of building gets fashionable again.
- bombcar 3y ago
  To be fair to the Europeans who own cars (In Europe, for example, the median national share of car owners was 79 percent [1]) life as a tourist is easy; the entire city is doing everything to make your car-free life work. And every time I've touristed in Europe it's been great wandering around without a car (the times I've driven the backcountry with a car have been fun, too). But all the people I've worked with when in Europe have a car (sure, it might be small) and drive when it makes sense, which is often. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-17/a-pew-survey-charts-global-car-motorcycle-and-bike-ownership https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-17/a-pew-sur...
matsemann 3y ago
You can't have that, and also expect to live in a sparsely populated suburb. I live in a dense city. I have a grocery store next door. I have car sharing cars in my street I can rent. This is feasible, because we're so many people within a few minutes walk. In a suburb this is impossible. Would be far too few people per shop or car. You're kinda part of the problem talked about in an other comment here: you can't even visualize how things could be different. Basically you could only give up your car if you could live exactly as before.. But why can't your lumber get delivered? Do you need a car with huge dimensions just for the off chance you one time the next five years need to carry something big? Why not then rent something for the occasion? Why do you constantly need to drive your dogs? Again, the reason is probably rooted in a car centric society. The solution isn't to fix all your needs, just without owning a car. The solution would be to make you able to do your hobbies and live your life without the gigantic sprawl.
- UtopiaPunk 3y ago
  I don't think it's impossible, but being in the suburbs makes it an uphill battle. Most suburbs in the United States are built very very intentionally to accomodate car and discourage other modes of transportation. Cul-de-sacs and winding roads only make sense with cars. The logistics of having a bus serve an area like that don't make sense, and even walking these winding, dead-end streets is a much bigger chore than, say, walking on relatively straight streets that try to connect point A to point B efficiently. That said, I currently find myself in a suburb, and bicycling is actually okay. I can bike out of my neighborhood to reach the main streets, and there are actually pretty decent bike commuting paths once I reach them. If you're wanting to haul things like pets and lumber, recent cargo e-bikes can haul a lot. They're expensive, but they exist if that's a priority for you. I think bicycles can be a pretty decent option for people in the suburbs, at least sometimes. Plus, bikes are just fun! That said, using my car less is a big goal for me, so I sometimes take the less convenient option. My longterm goal is to find a way to leave the suburbs and live in a city, though, so I can be much less card-dependent.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    That is the real problem. Suburbs are mostly dense enough to support good transit, but you can't get good transit into cul-de-sacs. The bus takes too long getting down each one, and if you live in the next one it is a waste of time going down it - while if you do live down that one it has to because you don't live in walking distance of a road they can get down. No cul-de-sac alone has enough people to support the bus. A subway could be dug under everything, but the $$$ are too high. A gondola system could potentially go between houses and so serve a few cul-de-sacs before coming out at a suburban station - this looks like the lowest cost answer, but it still isn't cheap.
vlunkr 3y ago
> tragedy of the commons This is a great way to put it. Quite often these arguments against cars feel completely blind to reality. We've built our cities and culture around having cars, we can't easily change that. Starting with some small regulations, like having bike lanes everywhere, would go a long ways. I would love to not pay for a second car, and gas, and insurance, but where I leave, it's just not reasonable.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Give every American an e-bike; would cost less than the covid payments and suddenly you'd have a huge demand for bike infra.
  - kortex 3y ago
    Where exactly would that bike infra go? There's literally nowhere to put a bike lane on 90% of the "strodes" in my town which would actually benefit from one. It's not just a political or environmental problem, it's purely a "where does this infra even go" situation.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      I would have to see the stroads but I can fit bike infra on perhaps the most famous stroad of all, Avenue des Champs-Élysées, so I'm sure I could figure it out. One thing people don't realize is many US lanes are twelve feet wide, which is much wider than needed for slower traffic (in fact, one of the best ways to slow traffic down is to narrow the lane). An 18-wheeler is 8.5 feet wide, so even a 10 foot lane offers excess room. If a stroad is three lanes each way, and they're 12 feet each, that's 12 feet that can be recovered simply by reducing lane width, and that doesn't even involve any sidewalk rearrangements. But bike infra doesn't have to even follow the car infra, you can put a nice bike lane setup one block over from the stroad (more properly the arterial or collector). Nobody really wants to bike next to a bunch of cars anyway.
  - vlunkr 3y ago
    I like this idea. I'm sure the automobile industry would suddenly increase their interest in politics.

by kortex 3y ago

geff82 3y ago

I think the main problem is how American cities are built: they are not intended to be walkable (the same is true for some modern European suburbs). Compare this with European city centers: having a car there is not a benefit, but a liability. You can get around mega cities such as Paris without having a car (taking a taxi for the 2 occasions a months where you'd need one). I recently visited Milan: we parked the car and then did not need it again once - despite having little kids. Why? Classic European cities are dense. They were built in a time where "walking" was the main means of transportation. And now that policies and opinions change, this older style of building gets fashionable again.

bombcar 3y ago
To be fair to the Europeans who own cars (In Europe, for example, the median national share of car owners was 79 percent [1]) life as a tourist is easy; the entire city is doing everything to make your car-free life work. And every time I've touristed in Europe it's been great wandering around without a car (the times I've driven the backcountry with a car have been fun, too). But all the people I've worked with when in Europe have a car (sure, it might be small) and drive when it makes sense, which is often. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-17/a-pew-survey-charts-global-car-motorcycle-and-bike-ownership https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-17/a-pew-sur...

matsemann 3y ago

You can't have that, and also expect to live in a sparsely populated suburb. I live in a dense city. I have a grocery store next door. I have car sharing cars in my street I can rent. This is feasible, because we're so many people within a few minutes walk. In a suburb this is impossible. Would be far too few people per shop or car. You're kinda part of the problem talked about in an other comment here: you can't even visualize how things could be different. Basically you could only give up your car if you could live exactly as before.. But why can't your lumber get delivered? Do you need a car with huge dimensions just for the off chance you one time the next five years need to carry something big? Why not then rent something for the occasion? Why do you constantly need to drive your dogs? Again, the reason is probably rooted in a car centric society. The solution isn't to fix all your needs, just without owning a car. The solution would be to make you able to do your hobbies and live your life without the gigantic sprawl.

UtopiaPunk 3y ago
I don't think it's impossible, but being in the suburbs makes it an uphill battle. Most suburbs in the United States are built very very intentionally to accomodate car and discourage other modes of transportation. Cul-de-sacs and winding roads only make sense with cars. The logistics of having a bus serve an area like that don't make sense, and even walking these winding, dead-end streets is a much bigger chore than, say, walking on relatively straight streets that try to connect point A to point B efficiently. That said, I currently find myself in a suburb, and bicycling is actually okay. I can bike out of my neighborhood to reach the main streets, and there are actually pretty decent bike commuting paths once I reach them. If you're wanting to haul things like pets and lumber, recent cargo e-bikes can haul a lot. They're expensive, but they exist if that's a priority for you. I think bicycles can be a pretty decent option for people in the suburbs, at least sometimes. Plus, bikes are just fun! That said, using my car less is a big goal for me, so I sometimes take the less convenient option. My longterm goal is to find a way to leave the suburbs and live in a city, though, so I can be much less card-dependent.
- bluGill 3y ago
  That is the real problem. Suburbs are mostly dense enough to support good transit, but you can't get good transit into cul-de-sacs. The bus takes too long getting down each one, and if you live in the next one it is a waste of time going down it - while if you do live down that one it has to because you don't live in walking distance of a road they can get down. No cul-de-sac alone has enough people to support the bus. A subway could be dug under everything, but the $$$ are too high. A gondola system could potentially go between houses and so serve a few cul-de-sacs before coming out at a suburban station - this looks like the lowest cost answer, but it still isn't cheap.

vlunkr 3y ago

> tragedy of the commons This is a great way to put it. Quite often these arguments against cars feel completely blind to reality. We've built our cities and culture around having cars, we can't easily change that. Starting with some small regulations, like having bike lanes everywhere, would go a long ways. I would love to not pay for a second car, and gas, and insurance, but where I leave, it's just not reasonable.

bombcar 3y ago
Give every American an e-bike; would cost less than the covid payments and suddenly you'd have a huge demand for bike infra.
- kortex 3y ago
  Where exactly would that bike infra go? There's literally nowhere to put a bike lane on 90% of the "strodes" in my town which would actually benefit from one. It's not just a political or environmental problem, it's purely a "where does this infra even go" situation.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    I would have to see the stroads but I can fit bike infra on perhaps the most famous stroad of all, Avenue des Champs-Élysées, so I'm sure I could figure it out. One thing people don't realize is many US lanes are twelve feet wide, which is much wider than needed for slower traffic (in fact, one of the best ways to slow traffic down is to narrow the lane). An 18-wheeler is 8.5 feet wide, so even a 10 foot lane offers excess room. If a stroad is three lanes each way, and they're 12 feet each, that's 12 feet that can be recovered simply by reducing lane width, and that doesn't even involve any sidewalk rearrangements. But bike infra doesn't have to even follow the car infra, you can put a nice bike lane setup one block over from the stroad (more properly the arterial or collector). Nobody really wants to bike next to a bunch of cars anyway.
- vlunkr 3y ago
  I like this idea. I'm sure the automobile industry would suddenly increase their interest in politics.