The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom

Is that because many people find even first tier city public transit inadequate for much of their normal in-city transport, or are there a lot of people living in the first tier cities who need to visit the smaller cities or rural areas often enough that it is worth keeping a car just for those occasions?

The fact you claim that opportunity does not matter shows that you don't understand the issue. No state on the planet is able to 100% guarantee your safety. Choosing to make yourself more vulnerable by traveling on foot is asking for trouble.

>In a lower trust country, cars are the preferred target of bandit attack. Check out Russian dashcam videos to see how it's done.

Cars are prevalent in Russia. The Russians live in a harsh environment and live more or less distributed, rather than packed like sardines. If you live in a city, motorcycles are the preferred vehicle for bandits. Two guys on a beat up motorcycle should make you take notice.

>And when push comes to shove, a good bandit worth their salt will disable cars in the wilderness by using spike strips.

If you live in such a place, you'll travel in a convoy and arm yourself to the teeth. This is not common anywhere in the West (thankfully). Bandits tend to not be well-equipped, especially in Western countries where that kind of advanced tier organized crime is not tolerated. If you live in a place where such crime is common, your home will also have to be built like a fortress and constantly monitored.

What I'm saying is that travelling by bicycle or on foot exposes you to even the least capable bandits. Have you never had to walk through a bad neighborhood? Wouldn't driving through it be more appealing and obviously safer? For some reason you've chosen to ignore this obvious reality, throwing out weird contingencies to muddle the issue.

>The vehicle itself is also expensive, so your threat window grows; you need to protect the car itself, so you can be threatened with a mere key held in the hand.

If you're on a bicycle or on foot, you can be threatened with literally any object. You have to protect your own body and the bicycle. Medical bills cost way more than a scratch on even an expensive car.

>But for the most part, people in bad neighbourhoods will never hassle you on a bicycle because they see you as one of their own.

It depends on what you look like overall, and how expensive your bike is. There are lots of people who would rob you in a place like that to steal your bike, or anything else you might be carrying. And you know, riding a bicycle through a ghetto does not make you a thug. You aren't fooling anyone.

I forgot to mention that on foot or on a bike you are also subject to getting stuff thrown at you (general abuse), the elements, and dog attacks. Are YOU prepared to get in a fight over someone throwing a drink (or bottle of piss, or whatever) at you? If you were in a car, then you'd leave unscathed.

Even somewhere which is lauded as having "good" public transport such as London and its actually not good in real life situations. Yes its great and all to visit London or Amsterdam or Berlin or whatever on vacation when you don't have Real Life (TM) responsibilities to worry about and you're only ever shuffling around the most central tourist areas and attractions with no real time pressures etc.

But realistically unless you put train lines literally everywhere there are roads now, and have non-stop trains shuttling around all day every day that turn up every 3 minutes, public transport is going to be terrible for day to day living for most people simply because it doesn't go where you need it to go, when you need it.

I think the 15 minute city proponents are deluding themselves. Yes it is a nice dream that everything is a 15 minute walk away (...presumably on a warm sunny day when you have no time pressures), but really when it comes down to actual day to day living its kinda ridiculous - so you're going to have offices, nurseries, primary schools, secondary schools, universities, doctors, dentists, hospitals, grocery stores, vets, hardware stores, gyms, libraries, churches, synagogues, mosques, cinemas, restaurants, bars, art galleries etc etc - all the things we need for day to day living and life in general - repeated every mile or two so that people can walk to them within 15 mins?

That is absurd.

You just cant have that density of things like major hospitals or universities for example. Ah but then we add public transport links they say! But then you're back to where we are currently with a "good" public transport system actually being expensive and a pain in the ass to use because it can't be a direct link to every single possible place in the urban graph so it ends up meaning in reality you walk 5-10 minutes to reach a stop, wait 5-10 minutes for something to turn up, pay £3.50 to ride for 10-15 minutes, potentially change buses or train/metro/tram lines (including the 5-10 minute wait for that to arrive), get out, walk another 5-10 minutes etc, when if you had just driven it would have taken 5 minutes and you don't need to carry back 18kg of groceries on the return journey that also costs you £3.50 as well and also takes just as long except now everyone else on the bus/train/tram hates you because you're taking up the space of 4 passengers with your shopping bags and you're banging into them. And let's not even start with the weather.

mode share even in tokyo is only 51% - they have a lot of work they can do. That 51% is likely just going to work, cities rarely collect data for other trips but those matter and are places to work on.