I wouldn’t be able to get to work or buy groceries without a car. I also refuse to pay the cost to live in a walkable area, as everything is significantly more expensive. The change required to create a city that is both affordable and livable without a car is impossible at this point.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
It doesn’t matter. Cars are still an unsustainable grift destroying the planet. Just ban cars and make a million light EVs instead.
radivojevic@discuss.online 1 month ago
Laborer3652@reddthat.com 1 month ago
I disagree, but the USA just isn’t willing to have that conversation right now. I work in a suburb and work in the middle of fucking no where 19 miles away; I regularly e-bike and take the bus to my place of employment. It takes the same amount of time to drive as it does to e-bike. The e-bike can also get me to all the places I run errands at as well. The only infrastructure I need is a dedicated, protected bike lane on the state and busy roads, and a well maintained public transportation system.
This is a solvable problem, even with the limited resources we have at our disposal.
Facebones@reddthat.com 1 month ago
The problem with arguing that we can’t just redesign cities for mixed transit is that is EXACTLY what we did for cars. 🤷♂️
jabathekek@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Vehicles will always have specific use cases, it’s just that most of North America’s infrastructure is designed to accommodate vehicles with everything else being designed around that, put in as an afterthought or just not thought of in the first place (like cycling infrastructure).
As things are right now, people would probably die if cars were outright banned. It’s kind of funny how important personal vehicles have become and as such kind of scary how necessary they are (it’s a bit of a paradox, isn’t it?). To ban cars there first needs to be a good replacement option like well connected rail lines or cycling only roads (or at least protected bicycle lanes). These take time, money, resources and, most of all, political will to create. For most of the developed world money and resources aren’t exactly an issue, the issue is politics that lock up those resources for vehicles.
I.e., funding for my cities major bicycle route that serves 1000+ people everyday is still only funded by my regions parks and recreation board which doesn’t get enough money to maintain it properly. Even though it’s really great, I can’t use it after dark because there aren’t any lights until I get to a shared route and there are a few bridges that are so uneven I have to walk across.
North America has to undo multiple decades of relentless car-centred development and the prevailing political climate means that will happen piecemeal at a municipal level, street by street, year by year. I personally don’t want to wait for that though, so I’m learning Dutch.