591–600 of 764 posts
That's great. Assuming the following: - Your commute is sufficiently short - You have facilities to shower and dress at work - You have sufficient time to shower and dress at work - You don't have to bring kids or sizable cargo - Weather is sufficiently good - You're sufficiently healthy
- the commute is sufficiently flat
Cycling is not only good for the environment, but for cities in general. During the last confinement, when car traffic completely stopped, I realised that cars are the single biggest reason why living in the city can be unpleasant. People may not realise it consciously, but when they move out of the city, what they are looking for is a place with not as much cars driving around. Cars destroy cities by making a viciou…
This is something I've been musing over recently as well: cars really are responsible for much of what is unpleasant about city life. When people gripe about cities, their complaints are often around: * Noise. From where I sit, the only noises that filter into my apartment from the city are occasional laughs or shouted conversations from bargoers, loud trucks grinding gears on the avenues, or honking of desperate com…
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What do you mean “no means of escape?” There are trains, buses, taxis, bikes, rental cars etc. To me owning a car seems much more miserable!
>"To me owning a car seems much more miserable!" Well you are free not to own it. Nobody's forcing you. Actually my main mean of transportation in Toronto is bicycle myself (well I work from home for the last 20 years anyways). I also own car (van actually) and it gives me great and hassle free degree of freedom. If I am in a mood and I often am I can jump in and in few hours be in complete wilderness swimming in som…
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>"To me owning a car seems much more miserable!" Well you are free not to own it. Nobody's forcing you. Actually my main mean of transportation in Toronto is bicycle myself (well I work from home for the last 20 years anyways). I also own car (van actually) and it gives me great and hassle free degree of freedom. If I am in a mood and I often am I can jump in and in few hours be in complete wilderness swimming in som…
Car centric infrastructure forces people to own cars.
Where? I live in Toronto and I certainly do not feel that I am forced to have a car.
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How many people want to live in dense cities without any means of escape? It sounds miserable to me. But I live in a really small city (< 250k) and drive maybe 3-5k miles a year (mostly to our cabin in a neighboring state) and bike a LOT. It's kind of ironic I am pretty far from your utopian dense dream yet largely living it.
What do you mean “no means of escape?” There are trains, buses, taxis, bikes, rental cars etc. To me owning a car seems much more miserable!
That doesn’t mean they are the best vehicle to offer that freedom and electric vehicles will definitely be an improvement over ICE vehicles but in my experience as soon as you’re outside of major metropolitan cities public transport options fall apart and are often incredibly inconvenient compared to owning a car.
Maybe the solution would be to build better public transport systems outside of major cities but to do that requires funding and local governments (in the UK at least) seem to be chronically underfunded so I doubt that it will become a reality anytime soon.
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>"To me owning a car seems much more miserable!" Well you are free not to own it. Nobody's forcing you. Actually my main mean of transportation in Toronto is bicycle myself (well I work from home for the last 20 years anyways). I also own car (van actually) and it gives me great and hassle free degree of freedom. If I am in a mood and I often am I can jump in and in few hours be in complete wilderness swimming in som…
How can it be 'complete wilderness' if reachable by car? Isn't there some sort of infrastructure necessary in order to reach it by car which ultimately destroys nature?
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Car centric infrastructure forces people to own cars.
>"Car centric infrastructure forces people to own cars." Where? I live in Toronto and I certainly do not feel that I am forced to have a car.
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Car centric infrastructure forces people to own cars.
And I don't know a ton of people that "buy" cars they can afford, they buy car payments they can afford. I just can't help but feel that breaking that cycle would be a societal good ( for people, sorry automakers).
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Ok, I'll bite. How do I get my family to church? 4 kids between 1 and 6. 6 miles from home. It would be nice if we didn't smell when we arrived.
Assuming you have a partner, each adult has two kids on their bike (one front seat, one back seat). At 6 the eldest can even cycle by themselves if you push. I'm Dutch and this is completely normal here. I used to have this bike with an extra front seat and regularly cycled places with 4 kids (4-7) by myself (pushing one on their own bike): https://kokfietsen.nl/image/cache/data/Azor%20Catalogus/069-... But then agai…
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Doesn't it worry you to live in a city whose infrastructure is not compatible with global emission goals? Within the next decades either of too scenarios will realize: a) your home will loose most of its market value as nobody will be able to live there, OR b) we are all royally f*ked. Neither sounds too good.
> Doesn't it worry you to live in a city whose infrastructure is not compatible with global emission goals? It does. I'm constantly pushing to rezone the entire city as multi-use and multi-dwelling. The city council has ignored me, and most of my fellow citizens vehemently disagree, as they believe that would devalue their property.