Except being in house in the suburbs is not mutually exclusive to having good transit at all. Modern American suburbs are just designed terribly so that often times there isn't any place to bike or worse, no sidewalks to walk on.
"An advanced city is not one where the poor can get around by car, but one where even the rich use public transportation."
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Oh I wasn't really commenting on the need for good transit. I agree on that. My comment was just about all the people who like living in dense areas. My city (Kansas City) installed a streetcar a few years back, and I keep hoping that they'll expand it outside of downtown. I'd love that. Even if it was just to hubs around the city I'd go there and ride into town rather than drive and fight for parking.
What sucks most is that KC used to have a really extensive streetcar system. There's remnants of it all over the metro area. It was brought to attention again when a bank was building their parking garage and accidentally dug down into an old streetcar tunnel.
God damn that Halloween looked lit AF. My daughter would love that. Some of those houses in Riverdale were ridiculously too close together for my tastes. Unless they're townhouses. Guess that's a part of the compromise. Narrator is right though, someone like me knowing just American burbs had no concept of this. Thanks for sharing!
The accessibility might make the yard space worth the compromise. I really like not having people walk by my windows but I'd give that up for better commute ability. I feel like a dinosaur but I want to try to fucking change, lmao.
I'm not a fan of hyper-density.
Yeah, there's many ways that we should be able to comfortably live in and outside of the city, but for a variety of reasons we as a society have decided to only build exactly one type of hyper-unsustainable suburb that caters to cars above people. It's really frustrating knowing we could do so much better since we had the blueprints for it in the early half of the 20th century. We just threw those in the trash at the behest of the auto industry.
OP
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Is the article about ending car use?
It's a specific use case, moving millions in dense cities.
It's also more than just moving. It's also about creating walkable neighborhoods, allowing for bicycles, allowing mixed zone development, and of course public transport.
Nobody is saying folks can't have cars, but they shouldn't need cars to live properly.
No one should need a car to get medical care though. I get what you're saying but the point is to provide options for people. Sure, take the car to get 10 bags of groceries. But it'd also be nice to walk down the block to grab a few things real quick rather than having to drive just to get a coffee or pregnancy test.
Exactly, no need to get 10 bags of groceries if there are neighborhood stores you can grab things there quickly.
Word, my buddy grabs a single bag of fresh groceries a few times a week. He doesn't mind since it's not even a 10 min walk away and he gets some fresh air. I drive. But that's cause I chose to sacrifice that so I didn't have to live on top of 50,000 people like sardines.
Long term it doesn't matter. Shit just isn't sustainable.
Really wish I could do this--just get what I need when I need it.
Getting to and from and in and out of a big grocery store is such a hassle that it basically necessitates being one big haul per week.
It's not just about the public transport system but also about how cities are designed. If you were living in my country, only the the carrying of equipment requires private transportation. Or I could just hire a cab and ride that instead. Most people here live 10 mins away from a mall, by walking or by bus. Like I have 3 supermarkets that takes me 10 mins to walk to. In that same radius I have
-10 clinics I can see if I'm sick
-20 hair salons
-10 places to eat at
-4 different banks
-Post office
-1 Gym
-3 schools
-More stores providing goods and service than I can count
-a train station
-a mall that has 100 stores/eateries.
Most people live like a 10 min bus ride from a place where they have all these things here.
Right in front of my apartment I have a bus stop that has 10 different bus services on 10 different routes. That's how convenient things are here. Buses come every 5 to 10 minutes so they're never that packed and 99% of the time people behave.
I'm happy that I can live in a country that is small enough so you can basically have one big commuter network:
The system is very very dense. Zürich HB has almost 3000 trains per day and is one of the busiest train stations in the world - even though it only has around 400'000 inhabitants.
Trains aren't even that fast. They travel only around 90mph most of the time. But they are quite frequent and on time (at least most of the time). Same is true for commuter rail/local transport within cities.
Everything runs on clock-face sheduling which means that you have on every full hour (or every 30minutes/15minutes in some cases) a train/tram/bus/boat available in every possible direction. This means that even if you live in a very remote village with only 100 inhabitants, you have at least at every full hour a connection to the biggest city in the country.
The system is very very dense. Zürich HB has almost 3000 trains per day and is one of the busiest train stations in the world - even though it only has around 400'000 inhabitants.
Trains aren't even that fast. They travel only around 90mph most of the time. But they are quite frequent and on time (at least most of the time). Same is true for commuter rail/local transport within cities.
Everything runs on clock-face sheduling which means that you have on every full hour (or every 30minutes/15minutes in some cases) a train/tram/bus/boat available in every possible direction. This means that even if you live in a very remote village with only 100 inhabitants, you have at least at every full hour a connection to the biggest city in the country.
The only one of these use cases where I could imagine a car is absolutely necessary is the sporting event, and that highly depends on what the sporting event is and how much is really needed.
In a properly designed city, you absolutely wouldn't need a car for going to the supermarket as everybody would have a supermarket on walking or biking distance and needing a car to go to the doctor sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Tokyo really opened my eyes to good reliable cheap public transportation. Only thing pricey was the Shinkansen. Then when I came back to the US and had to drive everywhere and then covid hit. My car just sat in the driveway for months. Public transportation is terrible in the US. Can't get anywhere without a car, so I'm stuck with it. Would love it if we have more trains in Cali here.
Can depend on the car you've got.
I actually look forward and get excited when I drive my car. I commute to work and back every day on public transport (train) and never use my car for work.