8 ms·

Doesn't having a car do this too?

lotsofpulp 2y ago
Cars destroy walkability, cyclability, ability for kids to freely play outside, enable sprawl (hence more energy consumption hence more carbon emissions). There’s no free lunch with using more surface area, which cars greatly expand people’s ability to consume.
- dreadlordbone 2y ago
  That's a goalpost moved from my response.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    The poster you responded to wrote: > They're not just about reducing emission! Cars increasing emissions seems to be a relevant disqualifier.
- nsokolsky 2y ago
  True to a degree but cars also make parenting easier: you get bigger houses, bigger backyards, don't have lug your kids around on public transit, deal with the weather, don't need to worry about rail worker strikes, etc. All America's missing is laws that allow kids to walk to school and adding more sidewalks to enable this, but this is changing over time (see Utah's free range parenting law).
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    Do bigger houses make parenting easier, do bigger backyards? I’m inclined towards a large communual yard (a park, if you will) being many times more efficient at keeping them busy, especially if you have a single child. Lugging your children around on public transit builds character that chauffeuring them around in a car does not. They’ll be exposed to a variety of people and situations they’d otherwise never experience. Similar thing for the weather. I don’t want my children to grow up thinking that any kind of weather limits their options if a car is not available. I realize my opinions might be different if I were living in a US city, just wanted to give a different perspective.
    - xyzzy123 2y ago
      The other great thing about public transport is you don't have to "lug" / "chauffer" them at all after about 8 or so (what age makes sense depends on area and the kid of course). They can exercise some independence.
      - Detrytus 2y ago
        Maybe that's true in small, peaceful countries like Denmark, but in the US children "excersising some independence" would likely be kidnapped, raped or killed.
        xyzzy123 2y ago
        Are you sure that's true? How do you know? How much does it depend on where in the US you are?
        danaris 2y ago
        This has never been significantly true, and becomes less true every year. The probability that any given child will be kidnapped or otherwise threatened by a stranger is minuscule compared to the chance that they will be abused, kidnapped, or killed by a family member.
        amanaplanacanal 2y ago
        People don't like to think about this harsh reality. Stranger danger is much easier for them to accept.
        itronitron 2y ago
        It's a low probability, high impact event in a country with limited public access to affordable health care and very limited access to therapists.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    >All America's missing is laws that allow kids to walk to school and adding more sidewalks to enable this, but this is changing over time (see Utah's free range parenting law). Laws and sidewalk curbs don’t stop a giant SUV/pickup truck driven by someone looking at their mobile at 40mph in a residential area. And crossing a 50ft+ wide intersection of a 40mph road (which means people drive 50mph) is daunting even for adults, and simply not advisable after the sun goes down. Those arterial roads basically box in your kids’ roaming area.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Symbiote 2y ago
      A law could ban those SUVs. It's currently being discussed in Europe, since the "independent import" route to import a special vehicle has started to be exploited to import unsafe American vehicles. (The Cybertruck is one example.)
    - jjav 2y ago
      > And crossing a 50ft+ wide intersection of a 40mph road (which means people drive 50mph) is daunting even for adults, and simply not advisable after the sun goes down. At least here (California) those intersections have stoplights and pedestrian crossings, so the width and moving speed of the road are not relevant. The cars will be stopped when you cross by walking. I don't remember exact age but certainly before kindergarden age my child (and all the neighborhood friends in that age range) knew how to operate the pedestrian walk buttons and cross safely. I fully agree it can be nicer walk when you don't have to cross a larger road. But at the same time, the difficulty of doing it is often greatly overstated. Press button, wait a bit, cross. Done. This is not in the top-100 things I'd like to see improved in society.
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
        > The cars will be stopped when you cross by walking. You live in a place with some combination of far more traffic enforcement or far more conscientious drivers than me. All I see when I look around is a sea of people glancing up and down between the road and their phone. It would be negligent to let my kids cross an arterial road, especially after dark.
  - komali2 2y ago
    As someone who grew up in suburban sprawl, maybe it makes parenting easier, maybe. But they also had to drive me to and from school every day, and band practice, and every single game, and whenever I wanted to hang out with my friends. I would argue my parents basically were moonlighting as my Uber driver for about 16 years until I got my own car. Big yards are great, but empty. Mom, can you drive me to my friend's bigger backyard? That times the 5 other friends that want to go to the friend's house that has the biggest backyard. Comically the 5 cars all waiting at the same stop light before the final turn, taking up the entire residential street as we all get dropped off and later picked up. Eh, going to my friend's house is tedious. I'll just fully immerse myself in world of Warcraft, get fat, get socially maladjusted by spending all my time on the internet and 4chan, and enter college as a practically sociopathic asshole with no social skills. Could just be me. But if I have kids, I'm raising them somewhere where they can just get on a train to get to band practice.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - maigret 2y ago
      Funny, I was basically mobile with bike from age 10 or so. Had some friends I needed the parents for until I got a small motorcycle aged 14. So living outside a city is not an issue, although I often wished we’d be nearer to a city. But society has changed a lot since and everyone is scared of the beautiful outside world.
      - komali2 2y ago
        This was the life of my farmland friends in Wisconsin. In Houston if I had ridden my bicycle the mere 2 miles to my friend's house (half mile to leave my neighborhood, half mile to enter his, one mile or so on actual roads), I would almost certainly have one day been killed by a car or truck that failed to expect a kid on a bike. We didn't have sidewalks. That area is still missing sidewalks actually. In some ways our beautiful outside world is safer than it was 60 years ago, in others perhaps it's more dangerous.
  - pikelet 2y ago
    And yet I frequently see (in New Zealand), properties with oversized double garages (often built to fit oversized American vehicles) and driveways that take up half the land on the property. Cars use a huge amount of space in roads, carparks, garages, and are responsible for pushing things further and further away from the home. And then somehow cars are seen as the solution for the very problems they create. There's plenty of real world evidence that there are better ways to solve this. I don't think cars are responsible for bigger backyards at all. The size of the average property where I live only seems to be shrinking as the roads get more and more congested.
  - raverbashing 2y ago
    Here's easier parenting: walk from your house/apartment to a close by square, and play with your kids there
    - dreadlordbone 2y ago
      Honestly, I don't want that lifestyle. I live in the burbs with a big house and yard. We travel plenty and go to places that are dense/walkable but I love coming back home to my carbrained neighborhood with an HOA.
      - 15155 2y ago
        That's really too bad: your lifestyle does not support maximal economic output of the land you are using and tax dollars you're paying. HOA? Hah!- those shouldn't be allowed, neither should home ownership generally. You really need to live and raise your family in an apartment.. taxes should be raised enough that we can phase out private home ownership. Your children will attend a public school and understand and implement equity from an early age. They will learn to use and love mass transit, only the approved destinations are necessary. The Party may decide that the 50% of your income you are generously allowed to spend on approved items is too much. Social programs aren't free, you know, you need to pay "your share."
        lotsofpulp 2y ago
        More like “That's really too bad: your lifestyle is only possible by indebting future generations for your luxury today.” That’s great for those who have ridden the economic momentum from high fertility rates before the 1970s, but not so fun for those being born now.
        dreadlordbone 2y ago
        Wouldn't low fertility rates make land less valuable? I don't get how my lifestyle indebts the future generations.
eertami 2y ago
Anecdotally, I frequently take day (or weekend) trips to other European cities by rail. It is usually quicker than the roads but also crucially you can be productive on the train. If I had to drive my car there then I probably wouldn't bother.
- netsharc 2y ago
  This reminds me of this Swedish office on a train https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HbrI3refig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HbrI3refig , made for a company which had an hour train commute from Stockholm. It's even got 8 telephone line (4 in and 4 out)! I guess a lot of people would use work booths/conference rooms on trains, but the price/profit has to work for both sides (the train company and users). As for trains, the old-fashioned 6 seater compartments offer more privacy for groups.
  - intellix 2y ago
    you could also work from a car if someone else is driving it like a taxi, but imagine the price difference to travel such a long distance every day over rail versus metro + rail. Another point I haven't seen mentioned much is safety. Rail is vastly safer than cars and results in less strain on the medical system.
    - beAbU 2y ago
      I like your taxi idea. I hate driving myself. We could bring down the cost of the taxi by putting more people in the car, to share the cost of the driver. That'll bring the costs down significantly. If the car is sufficiently large, we can get, say, 50 people in a car with a single driver. That should make the extra cost of the driver split between the 50 lassengers significantly cheaper. We could go further and link multiple cars together, with a single driver up front. They will be driving on one another's slipstream vastly improving fuel efficiency which will bring down costs even further. Imagine if we can get them to run on some sort of rail or metal track, which makes rolling resistance of the wheels basically 0. No more expensive rubber tyres that need replacing and yet again improved fuel efficiency. This will bring down the costs even further!
dpe82 2y ago
Having a car also entails massive subsidies; when taking that into account the all-in costs per unit traveled are basically always cheaper with rail.
- thehappypm 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - geysersam 2y ago
    Almost every road project is paid by public money.
    - thehappypm 2y ago
      $200B/year spent on roads in the USA (federal, state, and local) for passenger vehicle miles driven in the trillions, plus truck miles. $4B/year spent on Amtrak for passenger miles in the billions. Roads are an order of magnitude cheaper
      - geysersam 2y ago
        You can't just compare the entire multi purpose road network of the US to a single rail company. That's just not a serious comparison. Besides, you didn't include the cost of the vehicles or the cost of fuel for the cars. I presume the number for Amtrak include all operating costs. The truth is that different modes of transport have different strengths and weaknesses. In densely urbanized areas trains and trams are typically more efficient than cars.
        thehappypm 2y ago
        There are definitely places where rail is awesome, a great example is New York to DC. Better than driving or flying by a mile. But on a purely cost basis, rail is very expensive. It just more expensive for the government to build an operate rail than it is for them to build and operate roads. You’re right that part of it is because some of the cost is shouldered by the car owner. But, even in Europe, car ownership is very common outside of city centers. You can’t really expect there to be a rail station taking you from anywhere you want to go to anywhere else you wanna go unless you’re in an urban hub.
postpawl 2y ago
Trains scale better than cars in dense areas and offer more than just emissions reductions. Good rail infrastructure is a big part of makes a large city world-class and improves everyday lives. Subsidizing trains is better than a lot of other uses of government funds.
layer8 2y ago
A car is more expensive, and clogs the roads, which causes other costs to the economy and penalizes commutes.
CuriousCosmic 2y ago
No. This is something Texas is having to come to terms with right now. Cars and roads only scale so much before you physically can't move more people fast enough even with more roads and more lanes. Rail scales way better. So Texas is pushing a high speed rail line that will allow people to commute 30-90min into a city from locations that currently are 1.5-3 hours away. And at that allow those people to commute to cities on either ends of the line while still being a relatively accessible commute for anyone in between the cities. And of course as great as that is, the rail line will be able to relatively trivially scale capacity by adding more trains to the same line at a rate far above massively expensive road expansion projects that cost comparable to the entire planned rail line. So if you want to grow past a certain density you do have to start switching to rail and higher density does mean more business opportunities and generally greater options for prosperity for the populations in the area.
- kyleee 2y ago
  Good comment except for the first word. Obviously cars enable all sorts of movement and economic activity, so why not just admit it? The rest of your comment is just talking about how rail may do all those things to a greater extent than cars. You don’t need to deny benefits of cars, it doesn’t bolster your arguments. Better to just be honest and then extol the virtues of rail and other transportation methods.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    Of course a car does, but does that mean you should ignore all the benefits brought by bicycles? And if we go that far, should we overlook our own muscular locomotion? It all enables the same mobility after all.
    - nine_k 2y ago
      Cycling at 110F ambient temperature can be outright hazardous (speaking of Texas). Cycling at 80F is okay as long as you have a shower at the destination. (Most offices don't.) Also, cycling in a city, when you cycle for 2-3, maybe 5 miles, is fine. Cycling for 20 miles is pretty taxing and time-consuming, but in a low-density, car-oriented environment 20 miles correctly qualifies as "nearby".
dxuh 2y ago
Germany has a pretty high population density and the metropolitan areas have evolved around medieval cities, so they are sometimes very bad a carrying a lot of traffic. Getting around by car in lots of major German cities is a major PITA and parking your car there (if you live there) is just as horrible. Inside cities, public transport is much more efficient.

Cars destroy walkability, cyclability, ability for kids to freely play outside, enable sprawl (hence more energy consumption hence more carbon emissions). There’s no free lunch with using more surface area, which cars greatly expand people’s ability to consume.

dreadlordbone 2y ago
That's a goalpost moved from my response.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  The poster you responded to wrote: > They're not just about reducing emission! Cars increasing emissions seems to be a relevant disqualifier.
nsokolsky 2y ago
True to a degree but cars also make parenting easier: you get bigger houses, bigger backyards, don't have lug your kids around on public transit, deal with the weather, don't need to worry about rail worker strikes, etc. All America's missing is laws that allow kids to walk to school and adding more sidewalks to enable this, but this is changing over time (see Utah's free range parenting law).
- Aeolun 2y ago
  Do bigger houses make parenting easier, do bigger backyards? I’m inclined towards a large communual yard (a park, if you will) being many times more efficient at keeping them busy, especially if you have a single child. Lugging your children around on public transit builds character that chauffeuring them around in a car does not. They’ll be exposed to a variety of people and situations they’d otherwise never experience. Similar thing for the weather. I don’t want my children to grow up thinking that any kind of weather limits their options if a car is not available. I realize my opinions might be different if I were living in a US city, just wanted to give a different perspective.
  - xyzzy123 2y ago
    The other great thing about public transport is you don't have to "lug" / "chauffer" them at all after about 8 or so (what age makes sense depends on area and the kid of course). They can exercise some independence.
    - Detrytus 2y ago
      Maybe that's true in small, peaceful countries like Denmark, but in the US children "excersising some independence" would likely be kidnapped, raped or killed.
      - xyzzy123 2y ago
        Are you sure that's true? How do you know? How much does it depend on where in the US you are?
      - danaris 2y ago
        This has never been significantly true, and becomes less true every year. The probability that any given child will be kidnapped or otherwise threatened by a stranger is minuscule compared to the chance that they will be abused, kidnapped, or killed by a family member.
        amanaplanacanal 2y ago
        People don't like to think about this harsh reality. Stranger danger is much easier for them to accept.
        itronitron 2y ago
        It's a low probability, high impact event in a country with limited public access to affordable health care and very limited access to therapists.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  >All America's missing is laws that allow kids to walk to school and adding more sidewalks to enable this, but this is changing over time (see Utah's free range parenting law). Laws and sidewalk curbs don’t stop a giant SUV/pickup truck driven by someone looking at their mobile at 40mph in a residential area. And crossing a 50ft+ wide intersection of a 40mph road (which means people drive 50mph) is daunting even for adults, and simply not advisable after the sun goes down. Those arterial roads basically box in your kids’ roaming area.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Symbiote 2y ago
    A law could ban those SUVs. It's currently being discussed in Europe, since the "independent import" route to import a special vehicle has started to be exploited to import unsafe American vehicles. (The Cybertruck is one example.)
  - jjav 2y ago
    > And crossing a 50ft+ wide intersection of a 40mph road (which means people drive 50mph) is daunting even for adults, and simply not advisable after the sun goes down. At least here (California) those intersections have stoplights and pedestrian crossings, so the width and moving speed of the road are not relevant. The cars will be stopped when you cross by walking. I don't remember exact age but certainly before kindergarden age my child (and all the neighborhood friends in that age range) knew how to operate the pedestrian walk buttons and cross safely. I fully agree it can be nicer walk when you don't have to cross a larger road. But at the same time, the difficulty of doing it is often greatly overstated. Press button, wait a bit, cross. Done. This is not in the top-100 things I'd like to see improved in society.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      > The cars will be stopped when you cross by walking. You live in a place with some combination of far more traffic enforcement or far more conscientious drivers than me. All I see when I look around is a sea of people glancing up and down between the road and their phone. It would be negligent to let my kids cross an arterial road, especially after dark.
- komali2 2y ago
  As someone who grew up in suburban sprawl, maybe it makes parenting easier, maybe. But they also had to drive me to and from school every day, and band practice, and every single game, and whenever I wanted to hang out with my friends. I would argue my parents basically were moonlighting as my Uber driver for about 16 years until I got my own car. Big yards are great, but empty. Mom, can you drive me to my friend's bigger backyard? That times the 5 other friends that want to go to the friend's house that has the biggest backyard. Comically the 5 cars all waiting at the same stop light before the final turn, taking up the entire residential street as we all get dropped off and later picked up. Eh, going to my friend's house is tedious. I'll just fully immerse myself in world of Warcraft, get fat, get socially maladjusted by spending all my time on the internet and 4chan, and enter college as a practically sociopathic asshole with no social skills. Could just be me. But if I have kids, I'm raising them somewhere where they can just get on a train to get to band practice.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - maigret 2y ago
    Funny, I was basically mobile with bike from age 10 or so. Had some friends I needed the parents for until I got a small motorcycle aged 14. So living outside a city is not an issue, although I often wished we’d be nearer to a city. But society has changed a lot since and everyone is scared of the beautiful outside world.
    - komali2 2y ago
      This was the life of my farmland friends in Wisconsin. In Houston if I had ridden my bicycle the mere 2 miles to my friend's house (half mile to leave my neighborhood, half mile to enter his, one mile or so on actual roads), I would almost certainly have one day been killed by a car or truck that failed to expect a kid on a bike. We didn't have sidewalks. That area is still missing sidewalks actually. In some ways our beautiful outside world is safer than it was 60 years ago, in others perhaps it's more dangerous.
- pikelet 2y ago
  And yet I frequently see (in New Zealand), properties with oversized double garages (often built to fit oversized American vehicles) and driveways that take up half the land on the property. Cars use a huge amount of space in roads, carparks, garages, and are responsible for pushing things further and further away from the home. And then somehow cars are seen as the solution for the very problems they create. There's plenty of real world evidence that there are better ways to solve this. I don't think cars are responsible for bigger backyards at all. The size of the average property where I live only seems to be shrinking as the roads get more and more congested.
- raverbashing 2y ago
  Here's easier parenting: walk from your house/apartment to a close by square, and play with your kids there
  - dreadlordbone 2y ago
    Honestly, I don't want that lifestyle. I live in the burbs with a big house and yard. We travel plenty and go to places that are dense/walkable but I love coming back home to my carbrained neighborhood with an HOA.
    - 15155 2y ago
      That's really too bad: your lifestyle does not support maximal economic output of the land you are using and tax dollars you're paying. HOA? Hah!- those shouldn't be allowed, neither should home ownership generally. You really need to live and raise your family in an apartment.. taxes should be raised enough that we can phase out private home ownership. Your children will attend a public school and understand and implement equity from an early age. They will learn to use and love mass transit, only the approved destinations are necessary. The Party may decide that the 50% of your income you are generously allowed to spend on approved items is too much. Social programs aren't free, you know, you need to pay "your share."
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
        More like “That's really too bad: your lifestyle is only possible by indebting future generations for your luxury today.” That’s great for those who have ridden the economic momentum from high fertility rates before the 1970s, but not so fun for those being born now.
        dreadlordbone 2y ago
        Wouldn't low fertility rates make land less valuable? I don't get how my lifestyle indebts the future generations.

eertami 2y ago

Anecdotally, I frequently take day (or weekend) trips to other European cities by rail. It is usually quicker than the roads but also crucially you can be productive on the train. If I had to drive my car there then I probably wouldn't bother.

netsharc 2y ago
This reminds me of this Swedish office on a train https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HbrI3refig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HbrI3refig , made for a company which had an hour train commute from Stockholm. It's even got 8 telephone line (4 in and 4 out)! I guess a lot of people would use work booths/conference rooms on trains, but the price/profit has to work for both sides (the train company and users). As for trains, the old-fashioned 6 seater compartments offer more privacy for groups.
- intellix 2y ago
  you could also work from a car if someone else is driving it like a taxi, but imagine the price difference to travel such a long distance every day over rail versus metro + rail. Another point I haven't seen mentioned much is safety. Rail is vastly safer than cars and results in less strain on the medical system.
  - beAbU 2y ago
    I like your taxi idea. I hate driving myself. We could bring down the cost of the taxi by putting more people in the car, to share the cost of the driver. That'll bring the costs down significantly. If the car is sufficiently large, we can get, say, 50 people in a car with a single driver. That should make the extra cost of the driver split between the 50 lassengers significantly cheaper. We could go further and link multiple cars together, with a single driver up front. They will be driving on one another's slipstream vastly improving fuel efficiency which will bring down costs even further. Imagine if we can get them to run on some sort of rail or metal track, which makes rolling resistance of the wheels basically 0. No more expensive rubber tyres that need replacing and yet again improved fuel efficiency. This will bring down the costs even further!

dpe82 2y ago

Having a car also entails massive subsidies; when taking that into account the all-in costs per unit traveled are basically always cheaper with rail.

thehappypm 2y ago
[flagged]
- geysersam 2y ago
  Almost every road project is paid by public money.
  - thehappypm 2y ago
    $200B/year spent on roads in the USA (federal, state, and local) for passenger vehicle miles driven in the trillions, plus truck miles. $4B/year spent on Amtrak for passenger miles in the billions. Roads are an order of magnitude cheaper
    - geysersam 2y ago
      You can't just compare the entire multi purpose road network of the US to a single rail company. That's just not a serious comparison. Besides, you didn't include the cost of the vehicles or the cost of fuel for the cars. I presume the number for Amtrak include all operating costs. The truth is that different modes of transport have different strengths and weaknesses. In densely urbanized areas trains and trams are typically more efficient than cars.
      - thehappypm 2y ago
        There are definitely places where rail is awesome, a great example is New York to DC. Better than driving or flying by a mile. But on a purely cost basis, rail is very expensive. It just more expensive for the government to build an operate rail than it is for them to build and operate roads. You’re right that part of it is because some of the cost is shouldered by the car owner. But, even in Europe, car ownership is very common outside of city centers. You can’t really expect there to be a rail station taking you from anywhere you want to go to anywhere else you wanna go unless you’re in an urban hub.

postpawl 2y ago

Trains scale better than cars in dense areas and offer more than just emissions reductions. Good rail infrastructure is a big part of makes a large city world-class and improves everyday lives. Subsidizing trains is better than a lot of other uses of government funds.

layer8 2y ago

A car is more expensive, and clogs the roads, which causes other costs to the economy and penalizes commutes.

CuriousCosmic 2y ago

No. This is something Texas is having to come to terms with right now. Cars and roads only scale so much before you physically can't move more people fast enough even with more roads and more lanes. Rail scales way better. So Texas is pushing a high speed rail line that will allow people to commute 30-90min into a city from locations that currently are 1.5-3 hours away. And at that allow those people to commute to cities on either ends of the line while still being a relatively accessible commute for anyone in between the cities. And of course as great as that is, the rail line will be able to relatively trivially scale capacity by adding more trains to the same line at a rate far above massively expensive road expansion projects that cost comparable to the entire planned rail line. So if you want to grow past a certain density you do have to start switching to rail and higher density does mean more business opportunities and generally greater options for prosperity for the populations in the area.

kyleee 2y ago
Good comment except for the first word. Obviously cars enable all sorts of movement and economic activity, so why not just admit it? The rest of your comment is just talking about how rail may do all those things to a greater extent than cars. You don’t need to deny benefits of cars, it doesn’t bolster your arguments. Better to just be honest and then extol the virtues of rail and other transportation methods.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  Of course a car does, but does that mean you should ignore all the benefits brought by bicycles? And if we go that far, should we overlook our own muscular locomotion? It all enables the same mobility after all.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Cycling at 110F ambient temperature can be outright hazardous (speaking of Texas). Cycling at 80F is okay as long as you have a shower at the destination. (Most offices don't.) Also, cycling in a city, when you cycle for 2-3, maybe 5 miles, is fine. Cycling for 20 miles is pretty taxing and time-consuming, but in a low-density, car-oriented environment 20 miles correctly qualifies as "nearby".

dxuh 2y ago

Germany has a pretty high population density and the metropolitan areas have evolved around medieval cities, so they are sometimes very bad a carrying a lot of traffic. Getting around by car in lots of major German cities is a major PITA and parking your car there (if you live there) is just as horrible. Inside cities, public transport is much more efficient.