Who says you have to live like people sub Saharan Africa?
Just rake a look at how much of the pollution in America comes from the richest 10%. Same thing in Germany. Those people need to seriously cut down. And everyone else needs to reconsider if the 300m trip to the supermarket is really necessary to go by car. Or if it’s really necessary to have a fucking 3ton monstrosity of a car. Or if a small car like a fiat 500 isn’t actually enough.
You’re off by a factor of 4 on the grocery distance for the last 3 places I’ve lived, and those stores were CLOSE. It’s like 100cc of petrol to go that far, 200cc round trip, in lieu of 40+ minutes of fast walking (in which you can only carry limited groceries). I know all about it because I’ve done the walk many times when I didn’t have a car, and it fucking sucks.
I’d say freaking out about 200ccs of petrol to get groceries is an insane degree of austerity, and the fact that people like you are proposing that is evidence of either an irrational need to control impact, or (if justified) evidence that the world is grotesquely overpopulated.
Nobody owns 3 ton cars around here. Mine isn’t even 2 tons. In fact it’s pretty close in weight to a Fiat 500, while being generally more useful in every way. Everything you’re presenting is a strawman/caricature of what you imagine typical suburban car owners to live like. And yes, we should all be driving electric cars, but it’s not going to happen overnight.
Edit: damn near nobody on earth would drive to get groceries if the store was 300m/1000ft away. Most people will never be able to live that close to the grocery store, work, or any other place that they routinely need to visit. That’s why your example is insane.
Did I talk specifically about your situation? No. But sadly enough I know a few people, that actually do exactl those kinds of trips.
And I have no idea where you live, but in most European cities (!) There’s a supermarket at most 1km away. Usually closer.
The closest one to me is 300m. Work is 32 km though. But you know what? I don’t own a car. Because there’s public transport.
And I live in a city with pretty great public transport. And yet people with way way shorter commuting distances still tend to have fucking big SUVs and drive everywhere. Those are the people I mean.
If you don’t even fit in that category, why do you even feel the need to actively defend yourself? That doesn’t even make any sense?
It’s hard to tell the intent of any poster, and there is a vehement anti-car movement here (and on Reddit) that allows for no exceptions to the idea that living should be done at high density, and without personal vehicles. It’s hard to read your intent and beliefs because the things you said before are very similar to what I’ve heard from the zealots.
I’m trying to make the point that public transit easily misses on serving every origin, destination, and timing efficiently. Usually it misses badly, and my average experience with specific commutes is a 3x time penalty for transit vs driving. The penalty gets worse if done at especially early or late hours. Maybe this is exacerbated by car infrastructure and lower density, but the anti car crowd would have you believe it’s intrinsic and not a function of history and preference. At any rate I usually disagree with them on almost every premise.
But that mostly just means that you have terrible public transport where you live. Not that it’s inherintely bad.
If I would take a car to work, it would take me at least (!) 50 minutes (depending on traffic, usually longer). With public transport plus bike I’m at 65 minutes. So just a bit longer, but delays are pretty uncommon (maybe 3 minutes every now and then). Plus I can relax, read or watch a show. And it’s incredibly cheap thanks to the Deutschlandticket (49€, but 14€ of that is payed by my employer). Only for fuel (not counting insurance, tax, repairs etc.) It would cost me at least 180€.
So yeah just this tiny delay is okay in my opinion, considering what I’m saving (money, environment, worries about a car…)
And I never said, it’s the ultimate solution. I’m just saying especially those huge as cars are a fucking monstrosity more or less. Because easily 95% of users don’t even need such a huge vehicle. They just want it. And don’t give a fuck what that entails for the environment and for other people. (especially looking at pedestrian and bike safety).
More people should just really consider if the car they chose is really what they NEED and if every trip they are taking with it is truly necessary.
Maybe you happen to be on a route that runs well from home to work without lots of stops and no need to change lines. Can you find a destination in your city that would require a change of bus or train and incur a larger time penalty? What if your job was located there instead?
I think most people buy sensible vehicles but there are certainly people who have a truck fetish that is not justified. Unfortunately it creates an arms race where all cars get larger because there are very real risks of a collision with a larger vehicle.
I do. But I still live in the south, and my work is outside the city, to the north west of it, to be exact.
The average is 40 minutes commute time (for my city). So I’m already quite a bit off.
And yes, of course, if I lived in the south east of the city it would take me 1,5 hours at least by public transport. 40-60 minutes by car on average. But I wouldn’t move there, as that is too far off.
But most of these other possible places would mean, that I would most probably also always have to drive through the city center or take a big detour outside of it. Both possibilities aren’t actually preferable. So again I wouldn’t live there and at the same time work at the same company.
I just need to look at one of my brothers. Lives relatively close to the center but still a bit south of it. Could take 2 subways in 30 minutes (including walking) but still decides to take the car most days where he has to drive through heavy traffic, that takes him at least the same amount of time.
So no, a lot of people aren’t that sensible. They just do what they are used to and often enough even vehemently go against even the possibility of changing that with weird as excuses (smells terrible weird people, always packed, always delayed etc.) Which for most times of day and most routes just isn’t true.
Just take a look at the available cars nowadays. You can barely even buy a smal car, as those aren’t even produced in such a variety anymore. Because 1. People keep buying the big SUVs, and 2. Manufacturers can make way more money with those than with small cars.
Hell, in Germany they are actively debating making parking spots bigger, because the cars keep getting bigger (btw look at carsized they have a great visualization for this), instead of simply reglementaing how big cars can get, before they are either forbidden or so heavily taxed that it’s just not worth to buy something large.
Who says you have to live like people sub Saharan Africa?
Just rake a look at how much of the pollution in America comes from the richest 10%. Same thing in Germany. Those people need to seriously cut down. And everyone else needs to reconsider if the 300m trip to the supermarket is really necessary to go by car. Or if it’s really necessary to have a fucking 3ton monstrosity of a car. Or if a small car like a fiat 500 isn’t actually enough.
You’re off by a factor of 4 on the grocery distance for the last 3 places I’ve lived, and those stores were CLOSE. It’s like 100cc of petrol to go that far, 200cc round trip, in lieu of 40+ minutes of fast walking (in which you can only carry limited groceries). I know all about it because I’ve done the walk many times when I didn’t have a car, and it fucking sucks.
I’d say freaking out about 200ccs of petrol to get groceries is an insane degree of austerity, and the fact that people like you are proposing that is evidence of either an irrational need to control impact, or (if justified) evidence that the world is grotesquely overpopulated.
Nobody owns 3 ton cars around here. Mine isn’t even 2 tons. In fact it’s pretty close in weight to a Fiat 500, while being generally more useful in every way. Everything you’re presenting is a strawman/caricature of what you imagine typical suburban car owners to live like. And yes, we should all be driving electric cars, but it’s not going to happen overnight.
Edit: damn near nobody on earth would drive to get groceries if the store was 300m/1000ft away. Most people will never be able to live that close to the grocery store, work, or any other place that they routinely need to visit. That’s why your example is insane.
Did I talk specifically about your situation? No. But sadly enough I know a few people, that actually do exactl those kinds of trips.
And I have no idea where you live, but in most European cities (!) There’s a supermarket at most 1km away. Usually closer.
The closest one to me is 300m. Work is 32 km though. But you know what? I don’t own a car. Because there’s public transport.
And I live in a city with pretty great public transport. And yet people with way way shorter commuting distances still tend to have fucking big SUVs and drive everywhere. Those are the people I mean.
If you don’t even fit in that category, why do you even feel the need to actively defend yourself? That doesn’t even make any sense?
It’s hard to tell the intent of any poster, and there is a vehement anti-car movement here (and on Reddit) that allows for no exceptions to the idea that living should be done at high density, and without personal vehicles. It’s hard to read your intent and beliefs because the things you said before are very similar to what I’ve heard from the zealots.
I’m trying to make the point that public transit easily misses on serving every origin, destination, and timing efficiently. Usually it misses badly, and my average experience with specific commutes is a 3x time penalty for transit vs driving. The penalty gets worse if done at especially early or late hours. Maybe this is exacerbated by car infrastructure and lower density, but the anti car crowd would have you believe it’s intrinsic and not a function of history and preference. At any rate I usually disagree with them on almost every premise.
But that mostly just means that you have terrible public transport where you live. Not that it’s inherintely bad.
If I would take a car to work, it would take me at least (!) 50 minutes (depending on traffic, usually longer). With public transport plus bike I’m at 65 minutes. So just a bit longer, but delays are pretty uncommon (maybe 3 minutes every now and then). Plus I can relax, read or watch a show. And it’s incredibly cheap thanks to the Deutschlandticket (49€, but 14€ of that is payed by my employer). Only for fuel (not counting insurance, tax, repairs etc.) It would cost me at least 180€.
So yeah just this tiny delay is okay in my opinion, considering what I’m saving (money, environment, worries about a car…)
And I never said, it’s the ultimate solution. I’m just saying especially those huge as cars are a fucking monstrosity more or less. Because easily 95% of users don’t even need such a huge vehicle. They just want it. And don’t give a fuck what that entails for the environment and for other people. (especially looking at pedestrian and bike safety).
More people should just really consider if the car they chose is really what they NEED and if every trip they are taking with it is truly necessary.
Maybe you happen to be on a route that runs well from home to work without lots of stops and no need to change lines. Can you find a destination in your city that would require a change of bus or train and incur a larger time penalty? What if your job was located there instead?
I think most people buy sensible vehicles but there are certainly people who have a truck fetish that is not justified. Unfortunately it creates an arms race where all cars get larger because there are very real risks of a collision with a larger vehicle.
I do. But I still live in the south, and my work is outside the city, to the north west of it, to be exact.
The average is 40 minutes commute time (for my city). So I’m already quite a bit off.
And yes, of course, if I lived in the south east of the city it would take me 1,5 hours at least by public transport. 40-60 minutes by car on average. But I wouldn’t move there, as that is too far off.
But most of these other possible places would mean, that I would most probably also always have to drive through the city center or take a big detour outside of it. Both possibilities aren’t actually preferable. So again I wouldn’t live there and at the same time work at the same company.
I just need to look at one of my brothers. Lives relatively close to the center but still a bit south of it. Could take 2 subways in 30 minutes (including walking) but still decides to take the car most days where he has to drive through heavy traffic, that takes him at least the same amount of time.
So no, a lot of people aren’t that sensible. They just do what they are used to and often enough even vehemently go against even the possibility of changing that with weird as excuses (smells terrible weird people, always packed, always delayed etc.) Which for most times of day and most routes just isn’t true.
Just take a look at the available cars nowadays. You can barely even buy a smal car, as those aren’t even produced in such a variety anymore. Because 1. People keep buying the big SUVs, and 2. Manufacturers can make way more money with those than with small cars.
Hell, in Germany they are actively debating making parking spots bigger, because the cars keep getting bigger (btw look at carsized they have a great visualization for this), instead of simply reglementaing how big cars can get, before they are either forbidden or so heavily taxed that it’s just not worth to buy something large.