this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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I don't own or want a car. My housemate drives me to work. It's a 7 minute drive, 50 minutes by public transport. You need to put on 10 minute buses on multiple routes through every suburb 24hrs to make public transport a viable option for most people.
The problem with transit is more about how cities are designed, zoned, and built. If we built cities for people instead of cars the vast majority of people in a city would likely have faster commutes on transit than driving a private vehicle.
Other things can help with this as well such as transit signal priority.
It's a 7 minute drive, i practically live in the same suburb. I also work evening shift. Are you going to put on a bus to everywhere for those 250 people who finish work at 230am? Must all of us work and live next door? I try to live as close as possible but you cant ask everyone to do that. A job change shouldnt mean you are required to move house. Its just not feasible for a city of millions to move every time they change jobs. And its not feasible to put on a bus service so me and a couple of others can get home at 230am.
You're right, it isn't feasible to always use a bus, thats why walking, cycling, trams, and light rail should also be used. The biggest problem is density. Low density makes it very difficult to effeciently service, yet many north american zoning and building codes make it very difficult to build any housing that isn't detached single family homes with minimum parking standards and set backs.
She's afraid to be out alone at night. Biking infra isn't going to change her mind.
Ableism much? These options don’t suit a bunch of people.
No. There are many more disabilities that prevent operation of a car compared to train or tram, so the status quo of car supremacy is far more ableist.
No one said the individual being accommodated had to be the one operating the vehicle.
@Cypher @Hawke So if you were to lose your vision or develop epilepsy tomorrow, you would prefer to be dependent on family, friends, or personal servants to drive you everywhere rather than having options of accessible trains and buses and being able to walk to nearby destinations safely?
Not at all. I’m 100% onboard (pun intended) with trains and buses and trams.
Not sure where you got the idea that I wasn’t.
I would absolutely prefer a private chauffeur given that I find the general public to be imbecilic disgusting wastes of time and oxygen.
Advocates against ablism then calls the general public imbecilic disgusting wastes of oxygen.....
Many trams and light rail are accessible for various disabilities.
Cars are also restrictive to people with certain disabilities. The fairest way is having a wide variety of options available, including specialized cars for those who need them. Currently, the car is pretty much the only option in many north american cities, which certainly isn't the fairest.
Options are good, ignoring the car as an option is ridiculous.
I'm pretty sure people aren't ignoring cars as an option - the topic of discussion is excessive prevalence of cars, so the discussion is focused on the viability of alternatives.
Oh cool we just need to tear down and rebuild the cities.
You say that as if we didn't already do it once before, when we demolished perfectly-good walkable downtowns to pave over them for car parking.
Yeah but then it was actually politically viable.
Thats pretty much exactly what we did to accommodate cars with their highways and parking lots in the first place. But its really less about tearing down and more about building up instead of out. They already tore down the cities to pave more lanes and make more parking.
So assuming we have as much buy in from government at all levels as we did for highways and parking lots we might have walkable cities in 50 years.
And that’s a huge assumption.
It is a huge problem cause we had great functional cities with lots of housing and most had trams on every majory roadway. We made huge mistakes destroying multi story buildings to pave surface level parking lots. This problem was decades in the making and will take decades to build out of, but thats what we'll have to do if we want to fix it. There is no magic undo button.
Things cities can do to start improving today inckude upzone residential neighbourhoods to make midrise multi units possible to build. Allows mixed use zoning where residential moxes more with light comercial and restaurants. Restrict new developments on the edges of the city to meet minimum density requirements and transit access standards. Update fire/building codes to make single staircase buildings safe and viable. Do a street assement when repaving roads to determine if dedicated transit, cycling, or pedestrian lanes should replace some car lanes.
Anything that takes decades to do is no longer possible in America. At best we get four years of progress and then four to eight years of stagnation, if not actual regression.
Saying things like “oh just do this” ignores the complete lack of political will to do this at every level from the voters to the presidency.
Nearly everything i mentioned can be done at a municipal level which tends to have less extreme shifts than federal politics. A good city council could commit to improving their city's situation. Often once this gets started, people like it. For example, people loved the pedestrianized streets some cities had during covid. I do understand your point though, the premier of my province made it illegal for municipalities to build bike lanes (which imo is way too much provincial over reach into muncipal planning).
Sounds like a good bicycle ride away.
Im a woman and i finish work at 230am. Im not going to expose myself to the risk of riding a bike home. If i worked day shift that would be ok but its just not safe for me to bike home at that hour.
Risk of what? Getting run over? It's actually better since 2:30 AM = less traffic. Getting assaulted and/or abducted? Good luck for would-be criminals catching up with you on foot. Even if they're in a car, they usually have to get out of it in order to do their stuff and that limits them to running speed.
You're an idiot. Criminals see patterns and take advantage. If i walk through the same streets and park every night and they see me every night they can easily predict my behaviour and take advantage. I have a decent paying job, plenty of money and a vagina. I am at risk. Grow the fuck up.
Or design cities to have better bike lanes, light rail, etc.
It's really hard to imagine in most US cities, and it was hard to believe when I lived there.
I'm in a very commuting-friendly place now and the small towns having easy access to good public transport is just reality, and it feels fantastic.
I hope someday more places will adopt that type of design mentality