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People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

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Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#81

Post by incomingpain »

Most cities in my country are car-free optional. I have multiple bus routes literally in front of my house. I could own a place downtown and go without a car, which im considering.

The cities which mandate to be car-free are doing so out of obligation. Mainly due to civil engineering decisions from 500 years ago which have screwed them over. They basically want to go back to horses.

So in reality, people hate the idea of car-free cities and choose thusly. There is no 'until they live in one'.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#82

Post by pjerem »

nothercastle wrote: post #44
pjerem wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true. 2/3 of Parisians don’t even own a car and Paris is a very average city when it comes safety. Density is also pretty low for one of the biggest European cities. And it’s just a known example, there are a lot of cities way smaller than Paris where it’s easy to live car free.

The French work week is 7 hours so they get an extra hour to fuck around with public transportation a day. So that might help quite a bit. Still I’d be curious how upper middle class folks with kids survive without cars. Maybe that 33% covers the affluent folks with kids tho.

I don’t think it’s a class issue because money won’t buy the inexistant parking lots around schools. Also money can actually buy you really nice bikes.

It’s just that driving a car in Paris is hard and awful.

I lived in a city of And it was in France, where public transports are ok-tier but far from top notch in Europe.

Also the 7 hour day is pretty false. That’s the minimum time of a full-time job but most people are working 39-40 hours. It’s just that the extra hours are paid or are compensated with off time.

In practice you’ll only work 7h/day if you are at the minimum wage.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#83

Post by HKH2 »

tejohnso wrote: post #12

Not even sure how you'd start off hating the idea. Less noise, less pollution, shorter commute, cheaper infrastructure, more green, more walking, improved health...I mean...just off the top of my head I'm thinking of tons of advantages. I can't think of a single disadvantage. The only reason I need a car is because the city / neighbourhood is configured around the expectation that everyone has a car.

Maybe you need to get somewhere fast at night; public transport doesn't usually run all night. Also, you might find your commute to work requires multiple hops. Public transport might be crowded to save costs, and that might be terrible if you are pregnant or need to take someone elderly somewhere. Taxis are expensive and some drivers are dishonest. I've had people tell me they were abused by taxi drivers.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#84

Post by bko »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #8

I was back in Taiwan last year after an extended absence. It's pretty amazing how easy it is to get around with a combination of the mass rapid transit (MRT) system and high speed rail (HSR). When I was last there, you still needed to take a bus or taxi from TPE to the city center. Now right from TPE airport, you can be in either Taipei city center in 30 minutes (MRT) or on the other end of the island in short order…

Do you have any children? I can't imagine car free city is good when you have two or more young children. For one, groceries are a problem as you likely need to stock more food to cook. Sure you can go to the store every other day but that takes a lot of time and is more expensive. Plus you are on a lot tighter schedule. Most people with kids race home to pick up children and don't want to stop by the store and schlep back groceries.

Then you have just the stress of taking kids on public transport. You have to carry around a lot of things (snacks, drinks, diapers or change of clothes, toys and books, etc). You normally put that in a stroller but that's a huge pain to manage on a bus or subway.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#85

Post by smeej »

ghaff wrote: post #32
tejohnso wrote: post #12

Not even sure how you'd start off hating the idea. Less noise, less pollution, shorter commute, cheaper infrastructure, more green, more walking, improved health...I mean...just off the top of my head I'm thinking of tons of advantages. I can't think of a single disadvantage. The only reason I need a car is because the city / neighbourhood is configured around the expectation that everyone has a car.

One disadvantage is that many people do travel outside the city to go to an office in the suburbs, to visit friends, and to do weekend activities. I think everyone I know in Boston/Cambridge (which has relatively decent--really!--public transit) who isn't a very recent college grad owns a car.

I went to school in Boston/Cambridge, without a car, and was absolutely flabbergasted how much more convenient the city was with one when I graduated. It was like I hadn't known what I was missing. Places I thought of as "far apart" were really only a 15-minute drive from each other.

Getting to the airport really stood out. I thought of it as a two-hour trip, because I had to walk to a bus, then transfer to a train, then another train, then another bus. It took less than half an hour in a car. As a student, the difference in fare between mass transit and a taxi was enough that I couldn't swing it (dating myself--this was before Uber/Lyft), but I had essentially been trading my time for an extremely low amount of money when I look back at it.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#86

Post by [deleted] »

notaustinpowers wrote: post #36
tejohnso wrote: post #12

Not even sure how you'd start off hating the idea. Less noise, less pollution, shorter commute, cheaper infrastructure, more green, more walking, improved health...I mean...just off the top of my head I'm thinking of tons of advantages. I can't think of a single disadvantage. The only reason I need a car is because the city / neighbourhood is configured around the expectation that everyone has a car.

From my experience, a lot of the hate that car-free cities and "15 Minute Cities" get is from fearmongering from far-right voices on social media. They're totalitarian ploys that will be used to track your every movement and have the government dictate when and where you can go. They're a plot to create new ghettos for "undesireables". They're to take away your freedom of movement. They're completely antithetical to…

[deleted]

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#87

Post by lucumo »

jddj wrote: post #40
lucumo wrote: post #25

There's probably also a bit of selection bias going on. People who prefer car usage will be less likely to go live in places where car ownership is difficult. The longer a city is "car-free" the more of that bias will accumulate. There's really not much in the article to suggest that the same people are first against and later in favour. It shouldn't be surprising that some people prefer to live in car-free places, b…

N of 1 here, but I've lived extensively in both environments. Love cars, got my licence on my birthday the first day I could apply. That said, I'm noticeably happier and healthier whenever I don't need to own one. My quality of life is higher when living somewhere everything is accessible by walking and by efficient public transport.

Well, I'm an N of 1 too :-)

I'm lucky to live in a place that gives me plenty of options. And I have a tech workers idea of tenure, in that I change jobs every few years. So I've done them all.

Cycling to work is the best. When the sun shines and birds are singing. It's a miserable experience when it's pouring rain and the headwind is strong.

Public transport is kind of nice for reading, or catching up on a bit of sleep. But it takes forever, and you're dependent on its schedule. And the walk on both ends is only fun in spring and summer. Umbrella's make it less bad than cycling when it rains, but it isn't great.

Driving is annoying when the traffic is bad, but it is by far the fastest for everything over a few kilometers. The roof and the AC protect against the worst of the weather. You have full flexibility on when to go. And while a podcast or audiobook isn't as good as a newspaper or ebook, it's not bad either.

Also, you can fart in peace.

Honestly, the whole "shops are nearby" are such an uninteresting part of the car-free discussion to me. I have to get to work more often than I have to get groceries. And nowadays, I just get them delivered, just like everything else.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#88

Post by nytesky »

lucumo wrote: post #49
vladms wrote: post #14

I would have expected the article to give some clear pool/metric/statistics about "people hate the idea ... ". There are indeed loud people and big interest groups that oppose car free cities, but I am not sure about "people" in general. Sure, you need means of transport and to be able to live, and you can't change things over night, but if you would ask people "would you prefer to have a supermarket 5 minutes away o…

> but if you would ask people "would you prefer to have a supermarket 5 minutes away or one 20 kilometers away" I doubt anybody would say "no I want only things far to be forced to use a car". For most people it's not about the supermarket. Those are a dime a dozen and all the same. It's easy to provide those in sufficient amounts everywhere. Now try it with jobs. Not any job, but your job. Is it possible to have you…

We lived car free life in our 20s before kids.

Groceries were a total PITA, maybe if you order a lot of delivery it’s fine, but we cook every meal and needed at least a granny cart at least once a week. And small grocers nearby had terrible vegetables; there is a lot of variance in supermarket quality. Maybe in NYC they have it figured out, but the trade off is everything cost crazy money.

I commuted by bus for this time to work, an hour each way and my hours were beholden to an infrequent bus schedule — it knee capped my career because I had to leave at hard cutoff and never could meet up for lunch or happy hour, and lost 10-15 hrs a week on a bus.

Even subway is so-so, unless they run every 5 minutes and you live and work on top of statio can add up fast, and transferring lines adds a ton of time.

Huge regret trying to live car free in an American city (not NYC).

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#89

Post by m000 »

Kindling7257 wrote: post #79

This whole idea is fucking terrifying. Normalizing not having cars i.e. making people dependent on the government from birth. If you didn't understand what Americans were complaining about with gun laws you will soon.

Aren't you missing a "/s"? I hope you are.

Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one

#90

Post by oulipo »

Kindling7257 wrote: post #79

This whole idea is fucking terrifying. Normalizing not having cars i.e. making people dependent on the government from birth. If you didn't understand what Americans were complaining about with gun laws you will soon.

Are you a troll?

Nothing better than a city without car, it's exactly the reverse: we have pure freedom (and health)

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