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This is such an interesting comment to me because it gets so much right on how to motivate ditching cars. If you were funding a campaign to eliminate cars to r
by dv_dt 3y ago
This is such an interesting comment to me because it gets so much right on how to motivate ditching cars. If you were funding a campaign to eliminate cars to reduce carbon emissions I think you would meet with widespread resistance. If you promote an idea of a higher quality life that is possible w/o cars and explore that - in the end I think you'd end up removing many more cars than the first approach.
- Glide 3y agoIt's a positive vision of where society can go rather than having to sacrifice and buckle down. Do people not remember riding bikes as kids? Riding a bike is _still_ fun. It never stopped being fun. Now you can do that and get to work.
- jfim 3y agoIt was fun until I got hit by a car when biking back from work. Now I just drive to work due to the risk of injury from distracted drivers and getting doored in bike lanes. It's really unfortunate because I'd rather bike, but the infrastructure in the US even in relatively bike friendly cities here is dangerous.
- webdood90 3y agoif you're not already, you should advocate for the infrastructure in your city. these things do not happen on their own, we must push for the future we desire.
- UtopiaPunk 3y agoThat's so frustrating and I'm sorry. The USA is the richest country in the world, but our biking infrastructure is worse than third-world countries. Not only is the bike infrastrcute inadequate and with many gaps, but what does exist is frequently designed to mix with a mode of transportation that is actively hostile to biking. I hope you find a way to bike again. Biking alongside cars is so stressful and dangerous, but biking along a safe route is so enjoyable.
- jfim 3y agoLuckily there are plenty of good places to bike here and it's enjoyable to do so on weekends. It's just not practical for commuting to work since the "bike infrastructure" consists of painted bike lines next to rows of parked cars.
- NovemberWhiskey 3y agoRiding a bike is not fun if you're doing it to commute - having to do it in all weathers, in traffic that feels unsafe, even if you don't feel like it and got poor sleep etc. It's really fundamentally not the same.
- Muromec 3y agoThen don't commute in bad weather and in unsafe conditions. Working from home and improving road infrastructure is totally an option.
- ponector 3y agoWork from home is an option only for some office folks. Would you be happy if your baker, barber, car mechanic will not commute to the workplace if it is raining?
- david-gpu 3y ago> Driving a car is not fun if you're doing it to commute - having to do it in all weathers, in traffic that feels unsafe, even if you don't feel like it and got poor sleep etc. It's really fundamentally not the same In a town that is minimally designed to facilitate the movement of people instead of cars there are multiple modes of transportation available to commuters, including but not limited to public transit for those days when you don't feel like walking or riding a bike.
- tomcar288 3y ago
- bboozzoo 3y agoThis is exactly what you wrote, a vision. The first major obstacle is our urge to lower the effort one needs to get through the day doing all the chores, groceries, work etc. If you tell someone that now they need to move their lazy ass, and ride a bike for a some for kilometers, a couple of times a week and then some more for the so called „greater good”, I’d expect a lot of push back.
- lotsoweiners 3y agoI remember riding a bike to go places as a kid/teen. I used to ride a couple miles to a CD store, convenience store, etc all of the time. If I had been aloud to drive a car I would have said fuck this piece of shit bike and thrown it immediately in the dumpster for the convenience of a car.
- houseatrielah 3y agoI think the root cause is further up the chain of casuality. People need cars because they live in the suburbs, they live in the suburbs because they have children, they want to raise children in more square footage than the urban housing stock offers. Notable exception being Tokyo Ironically, if you look NYC in the 1910s, kids used to play baseball in the street because it wasn't yet overrun by cars, suddenly not enough space for kids, so move to the suburbs, which means more and more cars...
- dv_dt 3y agoSure, but I'm not sure that's at the root either. Suburbs exist in part due to subsidy decisions on automotive infrastructure. And they're in a stress point in the return-to-office work remote debate now, because even with subsidies on highway infrastructure the commutes to get back to city centers are a major time waste. Offsetting 2-3 hours of family life with commute time is a major quality of life negative.
- zardo 3y agoAnd suburbs are not built around public transit anymore, those old enough to have been have mostly shut it down. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
- willio58 3y agoI live on a street that used to have a streetcar line on it! Now it's just a stroad and traffic monstrosity but I sometimes daydream of hopping on the streetcar and going to meet up with friends downtown.
- mdgrech23 3y agoI'm in the suburbs but like you an older one and more densely packed. I'm maybe a mile from a major highway that goes to the city center. It's dead straight and major thoroughfare. If they dedicated one line to rail, none of that mixed BS, and had stops say every mile into the city my god it would be amazing.