I understand the problem fully. The problem of solving it is a whole different kettle of fish.
How do you break the cycle? In the USA it feels insurmountable. Nothing is close enough to be walkable, so you must have cars to do just about anything. But that makes everything more spread out, which leads to even less walkable environments and so on.
I live in a hilly area, for example. Being built around car infrastructure means that steep grades don’t matter all that much because you won’t be sweating your ass off pedalling up a 10% incline; you’re in a 3 ton hermetically sealed air conditioned box with a 6.0L V8 chugging diesel to get your fat ass up the hill.
I’m sure that if we were building our environment around bike infrastructure and public transit and actually had to think about things like this, the entire road network and neighborhood layout would be drastically different. Without just starting over from the beginning, how do you fix that?
Just my thoughts: It would not be overnight. The infrastructure should change before the people do. The infrastructure needs to make it easier for people to walk, bike or take public transportation, rather than use their cars. Decrease the size of supermarkets, but make more of them and more spread out, so people can walk or bike to them. Create train lines that go to the most popular destinations like malls, schools/universities, hospitals, etc. Then remove car lanes from roads and make them into bike lanes. There needs to be bike lanes on all big roads. Otherwise cars have a “shortcut”, which is not what we want. We want the bikes to have shortcuts. So we could make bike only “roads” which only are as wide as one car lane. But this will take a lot of money and motivation. All these things amplify the usefulness of each other. But that’s just some of my rambling. Feel free to tell me wrong, or suggest something better.
All great stuff. Now convince this asshole to support it:
I’m totally here for all the things you said. But maybe 1 in 10 people where I am would even consider the idea. Carbrain has metastasized here, and it’s terminal.
Yeah culture is the hardest to change, and the number one reason that any change in the right direction is so damn difficult and takes so long. I’m in LA for my summer vacation and everywhere I look I see something car related. Big road up to 6 or 7 lanes each way! I have never seen something like that before. Parking lots that are the same size as the building it belongs to, and cars that are double the size of the cars I’m used to. People that drive in cars like that probably will never change their view. But we don’t need everybody to never drive again. But to make people drive less frequently.
E-bikes!
Crazy how well this also works when you replace car with capital
It’s either that or walk home syndrome. 3 of one, quarter dozen of the other.
I’ve never heard the 1/4 version of that saying. I’ve always known it as 6 in one, half dozen in the other.
Eggs have just been so expensive lately, had to cut back.
I don’t need a car. I like it 🤷♂️.
