this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

We need that in the states. Fantastic public transportation and the ability to own a car should be expensive and hard to obtain even for the rich.

The amount of horrible drivers on the road in the states is crazy and way to easy to get a car and a DL.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

My GF is just getting her license as an adult and the number of times she's been asked "So have you been driving without a license for a while?" is incredibly troubling.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Then you need to cancel the whole countryside… because there won’t be any « fantastic public transportation » outside of large cities… and living in the countryside doesn’t mean one is rich.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The other guy is wrong. For people living in the actual countryside, there's no reason to go after their cars. We don't need to provide top-notch public transportation networks to the tiny percent of people that live in the actual countryside. You scale what you offer to the population that exists. Some places are too remote to even get twice-a-day bus and that's fine: the kind of people that live in the actual countryside aren't simpletons and know what the bargain is. No one is charging them congestion taxes or coming for their cars.

But it's also irrelevant. These legitimately rural places... hardly anyone lives there. They're practically a rounding error. It doesn't really matter towards how the future needs to look if we want it to exist at all. Leave them alone. Country people aren't simpletons. They made their choices and understand the bargain. They know that they have to maintain their own roads, water systems, septic fields. Get satellite or cell internet. Generate most of their own power. They know they have to cook their own meals and that their options for shops are limited. They know that country life isn't supposed to be just the same as city life but with more space of your own.

This idea that some huge population of people living in the country is under threat -- or indeed even exists -- is just a bad faith invocation to reject actual sensible town planning policy. Because the reality is, nearly everyone lives in towns and the size and population where a town is "large" enough that it makes no financial sense to build for cars above all else is a lot smaller than you think. My experience is that nearly every American who claims to live in the country is simply mistaken. They actually live in the suburbs of a small town. A small town that is likely facing the barrel of a gun in the form of the financial sustainability of its current, car-first design patterns. A small town that is going to have to contend with either forcing suburban and "exurban" drivers to finally start paying their fair share to maintain roads, sewers, utilities, police, fire, and all these things or else accept that these services are going to increasingly fall apart and go away.

[–] Honytawk 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Most would get around by bike and bus. And take the train to the city.

They wouldn't need a car if there was decent public transport.

~sincerely someone from the country side in Europe.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

2 buses a day and 1 train every hour - one direction at a time. You miss one due to whatever reason especially cancellation by an operator or delays and suddenly you lose 2 hours.

How’s that acceptable ?

~ someone else from europe in a small town.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A lot of urbanites simply cannot get their heads around that.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago

Yeah it seems so… and it’s not only the barren countryside that is set aside - anything smaller than metropolis or conurbations isn’t relevant to them.