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Lately I see a lot of this "fuck cars" mentality and how cars are ruining the world and stuff, but never have I seen alternatives. Say all parking spaces vanis

Lately I see a lot of this "fuck cars" mentality and how cars are ruining the world and stuff, but never have I seen alternatives. Say all parking spaces vanish over night and now a lot of people are left with cars. What then? What is the next step? Are these people just expected to pay some fee to get their cars taken away? What if I need a car for commuting? Is it really reasonable to ask me to start using public transportation and completely revolve my life around a their schedule? Just this summer I saw attractive new apartment complex being built that I was going to buy an apartment from - until I saw that their parking structure doesn't have enough parking spaces for every apartment. Meaning that if I don't pay extra to nab one of the spaces (+ maintenance fees and whatnot) there wouldn't be a place for my car and all of a sudden there would only be tiny expensive grocery store as my only walkable shopping place or ordering takeout from even more expensive restaurants. I feel like this anti car sentiment comes from people who already don't have access to a car and have already molded their lives around public transportation and of course then it is easy to say we should get rid of cars. Just like it is easy for non-students to cut from stupid benefits, just like it is easy for non-parents to get rid children, etc, etc.

TomK32 3y ago
> I feel like this anti car sentiment comes from people who already don't have access to a car and have already molded their lives around public transportation and of course then it is easy to say we should get rid of cars. Are you sure you haven't been indoctrinated by the car industry that pushed you into this car dependency? It was the car industry that bought and destroyed the US street cars, that made jaywalking illegal in the US (no other country has those laws in such a strict manner) and lobbied quite hard to make cities are place for cars rather than people. If it's a war on cars, then it's just the long overdue counter offensive against cars. In all seriousness, I don't have a car (there's a car sharing in my city, but even for heavy loads I borrow a cargobike) but I also don't see the need to get rid of cars. It's just two points: Restrict the public space they take up in our cities and give people the choice to pick an alternative to the car. If you walk out the door in the morning and have options for your way to work, be it your bicycle, public transport or because you need to carry something large this morning, a car sharing vehicle, wouldn't that be a true freedom?
midoridensha 3y ago
>but never have I seen alternatives. You've never been outside the US, have you? >Is it really reasonable to ask me to start using public transportation and completely revolve my life around a their schedule? Tens of millions of people in my city do it every day. "Their schedule" means a train comes every 3 minutes.
- nextlevelwizard 3y ago
  >You've never been outside the US, have you? You are right. Having lived all of my life in Finland, I have never been outside of US... oh wait... Again what is the alternative for me? To walk to the train station. Wait for the train that goes once per hour to spend 10 minutes on a train, so I can then walk to the bus station and wait for the bus that goes every 30 minutes, so I can take the bus for 15 minutes, so I can get - sort of close to work - and then walk for 5-10 minutes to work. In blistering snow storm. or I can just hope in my car and drive 15 minutes and be within 30 meters from my office door. Do you see how getting rid of cars doesn't seem to have alternative? >Tens of millions of people in my city do it every day. What if I don't live in your million people mega city? What if I live in my 30k people small city and commute because I don't want to pay out the ass to live in some shoe box?
  - rhn_mk1 3y ago
    Perhaps you need a (e-)bike. Instead of taking 15min, you'd take 30min at city speeds. But actually, if cars disappeared, people would have an incentive to work closer to where they live. So instead of living next to a quick road connection, you could live next to a quick bus/foot/bike route. And others would do, too. And look at all the unneeded space that used to be streets and parking lots, ready to be repurposed into new houses and offices!
    - HideousKojima 3y ago
      >Perhaps you need a (e-)bike. Instead of taking 15min, you'd take 30min at city speeds. My old commute, prior to switching to full time WFH, was ~25 miles and took 25-30 minutes by car depending on traffic/stoplights. It would take me an hour to an hour and a half on a typical ebike, and it would be far too cold to make the trek 3 months out if the year.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hutzlibu 3y ago
"I feel like this anti car sentiment comes from people who already don't have access to a car and have already molded their lives around public transportation and of course then it is easy to say we should get rid of cars" Or people who have choosen to not own a car and discovered that it is possible in the cities (at least in europe). And every person not driving a car in a city, is making that city nicer and every person insisting he must drive - makes it worse. Air pollution, noise and safety. I now own a car, but only since I live rural. In the city I was always faster by bike. So yes, the idea is to have eventually at least the cities mostly car free.
- nextlevelwizard 3y ago
  >In the city I was always faster by bike. Until someone steals your bike. >Air pollution, noise and safety. I can get the first two, but not safety. >Or people who have chosen to not own a car Yes, as I have always stated life is about sacrifices and paying way more for smaller apartment in a city lets you not have a car, but for many people paying thousands for rent is either completely out of budget or just ridiculous. I have chosen to commute with a cheap old car and live in a cheap city.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    ">Air pollution, noise and safety. I can get the first two, but not safety." Then maybe try not driving around with a car once, but walking or cycling and you might get it.
    - nextlevelwizard 3y ago
      Yes. I must have never walked or cycled. I stated driving from baby. OK. this is enough of HN for today, you people are insufferable.
      - hutzlibu 3y ago
        I mean, you stated that you do not get the safety argument. If you recently would have driven a bicycle in a car crowded city, or walked there around with small children, I don't think you would ask that question as it is obvious that cars are the danger number 1 in cities.
nehal3m 3y ago
>I feel like this anti car sentiment comes from people who already don't have access to a car and have already molded their lives around public transportation and of course then it is easy to say we should get rid of cars. I live in a place that is barely serviced by public transport but I still don’t like cars and I wish it were feasible to get rid of mine. It’s just an expensive tool to me.
widdershins 3y ago
You've missed the forest for the trees. The idea is that with fewer cars we would design our urban areas for walking and cycling. Your apartment block wouldn't have only one grocery store nearby, you would have a thriving ecosystem of local stores and restaurants within walking distance. You would take public transport or cycle to work. This is preferable for many reasons. Of course, as you point out, this only works if places are designed around local shopping streets and cycle paths, instead of strip malls and freeways smashing through city centres. Obviously we're not there yet, and a car-free life is unattainable for many as a result. Nobody is saying that this goal is acheivable in the short term. It's an ideal we'd have to work towards gradually, piecing together the required infrastructure and rebuilding the fabric of cities over decades. FWIW I am lucky enough to live in a high density part of an old city, and it is wonderful. I can walk 8 minutes to a small street of shops with almost everything I need. I can cycle to other parts of the city to enjoy other amenities and meet friends. But I don't kid myself that this is possible for most people, yet.
- lionkor 3y ago
  > Your apartment block wouldn't have only one grocery store nearby, you would have a thriving ecosystem of local stores and restaurants within walking distance. If you visit larger cities in Russia, this is a thing from the USSR times, and probably my favorite thing about the country. I've lived in one of those buildings for a few months in total, 6th floor, in the south of Russia. If you need anything - coffee, groceries, fresh meat or produce, baguette (lol), ready-made food, drinks, medicine, sushi, or anything else, you just take an elevator down to the ground level and walk 0-5 minutes. If you also have a job there (or work from home), you can spend your entire life, with the exception of going on dates, parties, and to specialized doctors that are further away (dentists etc are often in the building too), in 1/2 a square mile of land or so. Its much like a space ship, and its very very cool. These blocks can be very far away from the city center, or right in the center -- it really doesnt make a difference! Contrast that with some modern cities in Europe, where you have to take a bus to get to a store (unless you have a car).
- nextlevelwizard 3y ago
  >The idea is that with fewer cars we would design our urban areas for walking and cycling. Your apartment block wouldn't have only one grocery store nearby, you would have a thriving ecosystem of local stores and restaurants within walking distance. You would take public transport or cycle to work. This is preferable for many reasons. This very much feels like when people talk about how money is bad and we should get rid of it. Sure it might be preferable, but unless you have literal magical powers it won't happen. All of this shit has to happen at the same time - preferably over night. No one is going to first start these grocery stores just incase cars are banned and if cars are banned first everyone will just move away from these places before these stores are built/started.
MarkSweep 3y ago
I don’t think people are proposing to ban parking. I think the idea is to just stop having the government mandate that it be given away for “free”. People can figure out how much parking to build and how much to charge for it without the government’s help. > Just this summer I saw attractive new apartment complex being built that I was going to buy an apartment from - until I saw that their parking structure doesn't have enough parking spaces for every apartment. This framing makes it sound like it’s a bad thing for you to have the choice of whether or not you want to pay for parking. Under the system where everyone gets a “free” parking space, you are still paying for it. It increases the cost of the housing because less housing can be built in the same space. Why should your neighbors that don’t drive a car pay for your parking space?
throwbadubadu 3y ago
> I feel like this anti car sentiment comes from people who already don't have access to a car and have already molded Just to tell you that is wrong: Have a car here, could have access to two or more, but regret having bought it every day now as we rarely need it (most is walkable, bicycling increases radius, and for the rest public transport or car sharing easily would do, better for the planet and the wasted space to just do the unimaginable and get rid of it. The felt anti car sentiment that you have I think is also exaggerated, and more because for you it cannot be right what's wrong and unthinkable. Also there are certainly use cases for cars, but we (collectively) have overblown it as many things..
- nextlevelwizard 3y ago
  Why don't you get rid of your car then. I don't really see an argument here.
atoav 3y ago
I can (and do) walk to; - a big supermarket (<1 min) - a drug store (<1 min) - a pharmacy (<1 min) - a kiosk that sells beer during the night (<2 min) - three bakeries (<2 min) - a locksmith/shoe-repair guy (<2min) - my doctor (<3 min) - a hardware store (<3 min) - a few bars/cafes (<3 min) - my bands rehearsal space (<5 min) My work is the only thing that is to far to walk and there the times look like this (during typical hours) - bicycle (17 min) - public transport (21 min) - car (including parking lot: 40 min) Now granted I do live in a city, but this is also the reason why I live in a city. When we are talking about cars we are usually talking about cars in cities. But I grew up rurally — in a country with good public transport. Till I moved out I used the public transport for everything. That might be hard to imagine for someone from the US, but if you have working public transport and a society with nearly no violent crime you don't really need a car.
- whelp_24 3y ago
  40 mins to make a 5 min drive sounds terrible. What does rural mean to you? The United States is huge, and if you are in Europe, you probably weren't all that far from a city (making public transit feasible). Also cars are fun, maybe not in hypercities like New York, but in places where you can get to a moving road, it's fun the drive.
jusssi 3y ago
> I feel like this anti car sentiment comes from people who already don't have access to a car and have already molded their lives around public transportation and of course then it is easy to say we should get rid of cars. Let's start with this, it's kind of obvious. "Cars are evil but I have two" would likely cause severe cognitive dissonance. Choosing to live carless is going to shape your life. It restricts where you can live, what jobs you can accept, your hobbies, family planning etc. > What if I need a car for commuting? Then you get a car for commuting, if you have to haul a lot of gear, can't move closer to your work, or choose another work that's accessible without a car. > Is it really reasonable to ask me to start using public transportation and completely revolve my life around a their schedule? Ideally you'd get public transit that runs often enough that you don't bother checking the schedule before heading for the stop, it'll be a couple of minutes of wait at worst. If you need to go somewhere off hours you accept the longer wait or the occasional taxi fare as a cost of not owning a car. That will rule out living anywhere that doesn't have the population density to support it, or is otherwise too car-centric. > Meaning that if I don't pay extra to nab one of the spaces (+ maintenance fees and whatnot) there wouldn't be a place for my car If there's no parking lot expanse, parking needs to be placed underground or within buildings, unless a lot more people are willing to go carless. It's going to be expensive, and someone has to pay for it. As long as it's not you, right? > there would only be tiny expensive grocery store as my only walkable shopping place This sucks. It's the kind of place you'd immediately rule out if you don't have a car. This is partly poor city planning, and partly a chicken-and-egg problem. Zoning for those apartments should take into account that there is enough space reserved for services within a walking distance. But if everyone just takes a car to the nearest highway hypermarket, there's no point for anyone to bring the services closer. Btw. we get our groceries delivered weekly since covid, I'm not looking to go back to a supermarket that's intentionally designed to waste my time walking past every single product to get what I need. Disclaimer: not a "fuck cars" extremist, I just don't like driving very much, cars are expensive to own and operate where I live, a hassle to own and maintain in general, and inconvenient as a mobility solution in my immediate surroundings. So I've decided to try to hold out as long as I can (~20 years of adult life so far).
Ekaros 3y ago
At least in Finland it seems to have ended up in failures. Enough people still want parking, so if it is not provide it will fill the streets and then people get creative. Now there is a balance with too much and too little, but later will not work out.
thrifteez 3y ago
That is exactly what is expected, yes. You literally listed all the solutions in your complaint. Buses (in the longer term, nicer vehicles) running on empty roads are prompt and fast, and more demand means so many could run that you don’t have to ‘revolve around their schedule’ - try it in any large city. Cars have extremely large externalities that are not sustainable socially, economically (asphalt is _expensive_ to maintain at the American scale!), and environmentally. So perhaps we should move towards more walkable / bikeable cities and lowering the shared social costs for everyone? literally everyone wins here.
UtopiaPunk 3y ago
"Say all parking spaces vanish over night and now a lot of people are left with cars. What then? What is the next step?" Parking spaces won't vanish over night, so I'm not sure it's worth entertaining this rapture-esque scenario. I do think we should begin gradually reducing the amount of parking spaces in the United States, though, for various reasons. Instead of subsidizing car usage through building free or artificially cheap parking lots (and highways, for that matter), I'd like to see my tax dollars subsidize public transit and bicycle infrastructure instead. "What if I need a car for commuting? Is it really reasonable to ask me to start using public transportation and completely revolve my life around a their schedule?" It's reasonable for some people right now, as evidenced by the millions of people who use public transit for their daily commutes. The alternative is to revolve our lives around finding a place to store a very large piece of property, in addition to planning around traffic congestion. But I get it - I live in a suburban area outside of a major metro area, so while I have access to an okay bus network that I sometimes take advantage of, it often doesn't make sense for me to take the bus. The busses here simply don't run frequently enough and their routes have to cover a lot of points, which means that the routes sometimes take too long if I need to be punctual. And sometimes the bus stops aren't that close to my destination, which is fine if I want a little exercise and the weather is nice, but often it's annoying. I own a car, so I don't have to take the bus if I find it too convenient. But I'm advocating for better public transit, which means buses that run more often, have more direct routes, and have stops that are closer to where I want to be. I also think there are a lot of creative ways to tackle the "last mile" of a trip, such as bicycling and scooters. For example, the busses in my area have bike racks, and since I enjoy biking, that really expands where I can travel without a car. Some scooters can fold up small that are easy for people to carry, and other options can be rented on the spot. And with my bike, there are many places I can easily travel to without ever needing public transit, like the grocery store about a mile away. A 3-5 mile trip feels pretty pleasant on a bicycle, imo. And parking a bicycle obviously requires significantly less space than parking a car or truck. Ideally, I'd love to see better train networks as well, something approaching the train networks in Europe or Asia. Some major cities in the US are expanding in their train networks, and I'm hopeful that Amtrak will become more robust as it receives some significant funding from the infrastructure bill that Congress passed in 2021.

TomK32 3y ago

> I feel like this anti car sentiment comes from people who already don't have access to a car and have already molded their lives around public transportation and of course then it is easy to say we should get rid of cars. Are you sure you haven't been indoctrinated by the car industry that pushed you into this car dependency? It was the car industry that bought and destroyed the US street cars, that made jaywalking illegal in the US (no other country has those laws in such a strict manner) and lobbied quite hard to make cities are place for cars rather than people. If it's a war on cars, then it's just the long overdue counter offensive against cars. In all seriousness, I don't have a car (there's a car sharing in my city, but even for heavy loads I borrow a cargobike) but I also don't see the need to get rid of cars. It's just two points: Restrict the public space they take up in our cities and give people the choice to pick an alternative to the car. If you walk out the door in the morning and have options for your way to work, be it your bicycle, public transport or because you need to carry something large this morning, a car sharing vehicle, wouldn't that be a true freedom?

midoridensha 3y ago

>but never have I seen alternatives. You've never been outside the US, have you? >Is it really reasonable to ask me to start using public transportation and completely revolve my life around a their schedule? Tens of millions of people in my city do it every day. "Their schedule" means a train comes every 3 minutes.

nextlevelwizard 3y ago
>You've never been outside the US, have you? You are right. Having lived all of my life in Finland, I have never been outside of US... oh wait... Again what is the alternative for me? To walk to the train station. Wait for the train that goes once per hour to spend 10 minutes on a train, so I can then walk to the bus station and wait for the bus that goes every 30 minutes, so I can take the bus for 15 minutes, so I can get - sort of close to work - and then walk for 5-10 minutes to work. In blistering snow storm. or I can just hope in my car and drive 15 minutes and be within 30 meters from my office door. Do you see how getting rid of cars doesn't seem to have alternative? >Tens of millions of people in my city do it every day. What if I don't live in your million people mega city? What if I live in my 30k people small city and commute because I don't want to pay out the ass to live in some shoe box?
- rhn_mk1 3y ago
  Perhaps you need a (e-)bike. Instead of taking 15min, you'd take 30min at city speeds. But actually, if cars disappeared, people would have an incentive to work closer to where they live. So instead of living next to a quick road connection, you could live next to a quick bus/foot/bike route. And others would do, too. And look at all the unneeded space that used to be streets and parking lots, ready to be repurposed into new houses and offices!
  - HideousKojima 3y ago
    >Perhaps you need a (e-)bike. Instead of taking 15min, you'd take 30min at city speeds. My old commute, prior to switching to full time WFH, was ~25 miles and took 25-30 minutes by car depending on traffic/stoplights. It would take me an hour to an hour and a half on a typical ebike, and it would be far too cold to make the trek 3 months out if the year.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hutzlibu 3y ago

"I feel like this anti car sentiment comes from people who already don't have access to a car and have already molded their lives around public transportation and of course then it is easy to say we should get rid of cars" Or people who have choosen to not own a car and discovered that it is possible in the cities (at least in europe). And every person not driving a car in a city, is making that city nicer and every person insisting he must drive - makes it worse. Air pollution, noise and safety. I now own a car, but only since I live rural. In the city I was always faster by bike. So yes, the idea is to have eventually at least the cities mostly car free.

nextlevelwizard 3y ago
>In the city I was always faster by bike. Until someone steals your bike. >Air pollution, noise and safety. I can get the first two, but not safety. >Or people who have chosen to not own a car Yes, as I have always stated life is about sacrifices and paying way more for smaller apartment in a city lets you not have a car, but for many people paying thousands for rent is either completely out of budget or just ridiculous. I have chosen to commute with a cheap old car and live in a cheap city.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  ">Air pollution, noise and safety. I can get the first two, but not safety." Then maybe try not driving around with a car once, but walking or cycling and you might get it.
  - nextlevelwizard 3y ago
    Yes. I must have never walked or cycled. I stated driving from baby. OK. this is enough of HN for today, you people are insufferable.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      I mean, you stated that you do not get the safety argument. If you recently would have driven a bicycle in a car crowded city, or walked there around with small children, I don't think you would ask that question as it is obvious that cars are the danger number 1 in cities.

nehal3m 3y ago

>I feel like this anti car sentiment comes from people who already don't have access to a car and have already molded their lives around public transportation and of course then it is easy to say we should get rid of cars. I live in a place that is barely serviced by public transport but I still don’t like cars and I wish it were feasible to get rid of mine. It’s just an expensive tool to me.

widdershins 3y ago

You've missed the forest for the trees. The idea is that with fewer cars we would design our urban areas for walking and cycling. Your apartment block wouldn't have only one grocery store nearby, you would have a thriving ecosystem of local stores and restaurants within walking distance. You would take public transport or cycle to work. This is preferable for many reasons. Of course, as you point out, this only works if places are designed around local shopping streets and cycle paths, instead of strip malls and freeways smashing through city centres. Obviously we're not there yet, and a car-free life is unattainable for many as a result. Nobody is saying that this goal is acheivable in the short term. It's an ideal we'd have to work towards gradually, piecing together the required infrastructure and rebuilding the fabric of cities over decades. FWIW I am lucky enough to live in a high density part of an old city, and it is wonderful. I can walk 8 minutes to a small street of shops with almost everything I need. I can cycle to other parts of the city to enjoy other amenities and meet friends. But I don't kid myself that this is possible for most people, yet.

lionkor 3y ago
> Your apartment block wouldn't have only one grocery store nearby, you would have a thriving ecosystem of local stores and restaurants within walking distance. If you visit larger cities in Russia, this is a thing from the USSR times, and probably my favorite thing about the country. I've lived in one of those buildings for a few months in total, 6th floor, in the south of Russia. If you need anything - coffee, groceries, fresh meat or produce, baguette (lol), ready-made food, drinks, medicine, sushi, or anything else, you just take an elevator down to the ground level and walk 0-5 minutes. If you also have a job there (or work from home), you can spend your entire life, with the exception of going on dates, parties, and to specialized doctors that are further away (dentists etc are often in the building too), in 1/2 a square mile of land or so. Its much like a space ship, and its very very cool. These blocks can be very far away from the city center, or right in the center -- it really doesnt make a difference! Contrast that with some modern cities in Europe, where you have to take a bus to get to a store (unless you have a car).
nextlevelwizard 3y ago
>The idea is that with fewer cars we would design our urban areas for walking and cycling. Your apartment block wouldn't have only one grocery store nearby, you would have a thriving ecosystem of local stores and restaurants within walking distance. You would take public transport or cycle to work. This is preferable for many reasons. This very much feels like when people talk about how money is bad and we should get rid of it. Sure it might be preferable, but unless you have literal magical powers it won't happen. All of this shit has to happen at the same time - preferably over night. No one is going to first start these grocery stores just incase cars are banned and if cars are banned first everyone will just move away from these places before these stores are built/started.

MarkSweep 3y ago

I don’t think people are proposing to ban parking. I think the idea is to just stop having the government mandate that it be given away for “free”. People can figure out how much parking to build and how much to charge for it without the government’s help. > Just this summer I saw attractive new apartment complex being built that I was going to buy an apartment from - until I saw that their parking structure doesn't have enough parking spaces for every apartment. This framing makes it sound like it’s a bad thing for you to have the choice of whether or not you want to pay for parking. Under the system where everyone gets a “free” parking space, you are still paying for it. It increases the cost of the housing because less housing can be built in the same space. Why should your neighbors that don’t drive a car pay for your parking space?

throwbadubadu 3y ago

> I feel like this anti car sentiment comes from people who already don't have access to a car and have already molded Just to tell you that is wrong: Have a car here, could have access to two or more, but regret having bought it every day now as we rarely need it (most is walkable, bicycling increases radius, and for the rest public transport or car sharing easily would do, better for the planet and the wasted space to just do the unimaginable and get rid of it. The felt anti car sentiment that you have I think is also exaggerated, and more because for you it cannot be right what's wrong and unthinkable. Also there are certainly use cases for cars, but we (collectively) have overblown it as many things..

nextlevelwizard 3y ago
Why don't you get rid of your car then. I don't really see an argument here.

atoav 3y ago

I can (and do) walk to; - a big supermarket (<1 min) - a drug store (<1 min) - a pharmacy (<1 min) - a kiosk that sells beer during the night (<2 min) - three bakeries (<2 min) - a locksmith/shoe-repair guy (<2min) - my doctor (<3 min) - a hardware store (<3 min) - a few bars/cafes (<3 min) - my bands rehearsal space (<5 min) My work is the only thing that is to far to walk and there the times look like this (during typical hours) - bicycle (17 min) - public transport (21 min) - car (including parking lot: 40 min) Now granted I do live in a city, but this is also the reason why I live in a city. When we are talking about cars we are usually talking about cars in cities. But I grew up rurally — in a country with good public transport. Till I moved out I used the public transport for everything. That might be hard to imagine for someone from the US, but if you have working public transport and a society with nearly no violent crime you don't really need a car.

whelp_24 3y ago
40 mins to make a 5 min drive sounds terrible. What does rural mean to you? The United States is huge, and if you are in Europe, you probably weren't all that far from a city (making public transit feasible). Also cars are fun, maybe not in hypercities like New York, but in places where you can get to a moving road, it's fun the drive.

jusssi 3y ago

> I feel like this anti car sentiment comes from people who already don't have access to a car and have already molded their lives around public transportation and of course then it is easy to say we should get rid of cars. Let's start with this, it's kind of obvious. "Cars are evil but I have two" would likely cause severe cognitive dissonance. Choosing to live carless is going to shape your life. It restricts where you can live, what jobs you can accept, your hobbies, family planning etc. > What if I need a car for commuting? Then you get a car for commuting, if you have to haul a lot of gear, can't move closer to your work, or choose another work that's accessible without a car. > Is it really reasonable to ask me to start using public transportation and completely revolve my life around a their schedule? Ideally you'd get public transit that runs often enough that you don't bother checking the schedule before heading for the stop, it'll be a couple of minutes of wait at worst. If you need to go somewhere off hours you accept the longer wait or the occasional taxi fare as a cost of not owning a car. That will rule out living anywhere that doesn't have the population density to support it, or is otherwise too car-centric. > Meaning that if I don't pay extra to nab one of the spaces (+ maintenance fees and whatnot) there wouldn't be a place for my car If there's no parking lot expanse, parking needs to be placed underground or within buildings, unless a lot more people are willing to go carless. It's going to be expensive, and someone has to pay for it. As long as it's not you, right? > there would only be tiny expensive grocery store as my only walkable shopping place This sucks. It's the kind of place you'd immediately rule out if you don't have a car. This is partly poor city planning, and partly a chicken-and-egg problem. Zoning for those apartments should take into account that there is enough space reserved for services within a walking distance. But if everyone just takes a car to the nearest highway hypermarket, there's no point for anyone to bring the services closer. Btw. we get our groceries delivered weekly since covid, I'm not looking to go back to a supermarket that's intentionally designed to waste my time walking past every single product to get what I need. Disclaimer: not a "fuck cars" extremist, I just don't like driving very much, cars are expensive to own and operate where I live, a hassle to own and maintain in general, and inconvenient as a mobility solution in my immediate surroundings. So I've decided to try to hold out as long as I can (~20 years of adult life so far).

Ekaros 3y ago

At least in Finland it seems to have ended up in failures. Enough people still want parking, so if it is not provide it will fill the streets and then people get creative. Now there is a balance with too much and too little, but later will not work out.

thrifteez 3y ago

That is exactly what is expected, yes. You literally listed all the solutions in your complaint. Buses (in the longer term, nicer vehicles) running on empty roads are prompt and fast, and more demand means so many could run that you don’t have to ‘revolve around their schedule’ - try it in any large city. Cars have extremely large externalities that are not sustainable socially, economically (asphalt is _expensive_ to maintain at the American scale!), and environmentally. So perhaps we should move towards more walkable / bikeable cities and lowering the shared social costs for everyone? literally everyone wins here.

UtopiaPunk 3y ago

"Say all parking spaces vanish over night and now a lot of people are left with cars. What then? What is the next step?" Parking spaces won't vanish over night, so I'm not sure it's worth entertaining this rapture-esque scenario. I do think we should begin gradually reducing the amount of parking spaces in the United States, though, for various reasons. Instead of subsidizing car usage through building free or artificially cheap parking lots (and highways, for that matter), I'd like to see my tax dollars subsidize public transit and bicycle infrastructure instead. "What if I need a car for commuting? Is it really reasonable to ask me to start using public transportation and completely revolve my life around a their schedule?" It's reasonable for some people right now, as evidenced by the millions of people who use public transit for their daily commutes. The alternative is to revolve our lives around finding a place to store a very large piece of property, in addition to planning around traffic congestion. But I get it - I live in a suburban area outside of a major metro area, so while I have access to an okay bus network that I sometimes take advantage of, it often doesn't make sense for me to take the bus. The busses here simply don't run frequently enough and their routes have to cover a lot of points, which means that the routes sometimes take too long if I need to be punctual. And sometimes the bus stops aren't that close to my destination, which is fine if I want a little exercise and the weather is nice, but often it's annoying. I own a car, so I don't have to take the bus if I find it too convenient. But I'm advocating for better public transit, which means buses that run more often, have more direct routes, and have stops that are closer to where I want to be. I also think there are a lot of creative ways to tackle the "last mile" of a trip, such as bicycling and scooters. For example, the busses in my area have bike racks, and since I enjoy biking, that really expands where I can travel without a car. Some scooters can fold up small that are easy for people to carry, and other options can be rented on the spot. And with my bike, there are many places I can easily travel to without ever needing public transit, like the grocery store about a mile away. A 3-5 mile trip feels pretty pleasant on a bicycle, imo. And parking a bicycle obviously requires significantly less space than parking a car or truck. Ideally, I'd love to see better train networks as well, something approaching the train networks in Europe or Asia. Some major cities in the US are expanding in their train networks, and I'm hopeful that Amtrak will become more robust as it receives some significant funding from the infrastructure bill that Congress passed in 2021.