|
Top-level
This is how other industrialized countries do it. They make cities walkable and such that you don’t have to drive to the market and other essential locations. We need to grow up. The value of self-reliance has devolved in our culture to physical and emotional isolation. Not good. 5 comments
@casjo2022 @admin People pay a lot of money to visit where I live but the locals won't even walk or bike around our lovely multi use trail around our lovely lake with its beautiful trail. @casjo2022 @admin my husband grew up in the postwar valleys of South Wales, and there was a train down to Cardiff at ~15 minute intervals, meaning it was never a big deal if a chat with a neighbour meant you missed it and had to wait for the next one. Then they built motorways on the other side of the valleys from the railways, and then rail service intervals lengthened to what is now less than hourly. So now everyone relies on cars. @admin @casjo2022 @breadandcircuses If Americans can drive, they will. I live in a similar kind of town and I am one of the few who doesn't use a car for short trips. Most of us in live in a 15 minute city from biking perspective but you would never know it. We are determined to self destruct for what we see as convenience. |
Gregory's Server
@casjo2022 @breadandcircuses It's not even like we *have to* drive. People often just outright refuse to walk/bike/use transit for absolutely no reason.
Back when I was still working in an office I'd sometimes get my car serviced at a place down the road, because it was easy to drop it there before work and pick it up after. It was a ten or fifteen minute walk from the office, downhill. Basically across the street, just with a large parking lot and driveway at each end. I'd show up there after work and these guys would be going "You didn't walk here again did you??" Then they'd be yelling over to their coworkers "Can you believe this guy?! He WALKED here!". Happened every single time. They knew where I worked. They knew that walk was under a mile. They legitimately expected me to call them and ask for a ride and wait half an hour for them to get there just to get ACROSS THE STREET! And then these same kinds of people will spend every night on a treadmill at the gym. My last apartment was under a mile from a gym and I'd see my neighbors *driving to the gym*!! And I'm not talking about the middle of winter when it's below zero out there, I mean on a sunny spring day. Heck I've even recently had neighbors pull over and ask if I needed a ride after I walked to the end of the block to pick up some milk. I could see my apartment. I was at most a hundred feet away! What could possibly make you think I need you to stop and drive me that last hundred feet?!?
I walk to the grocery store pretty often. I live in a somewhat small town (population of 40k), basically zero transit, and I'm a couple miles from downtown. There are still four grocery stores that I regularly walk to, and four other stores that I wouldn't call a grocery store but where I regularly buy groceries (Dollar General, CVS, stuff like that.) I can walk to hospitals and doctors and dentists, I can walk to my office, I can walk to damn near everything I need on a daily basis. And I know not everyone can reasonably walk as much as I can...but I've seen people in wheelchairs doing a few miles around our downtown and I've known MANY perfectly healthy 20-somethings that won't even cross the street without getting into their car.
So I'm not sure a lack of transit is our primary problem...certainly if you need the car once a week or once a month then you're gonna buy a car, and once you own it you're gonna use it...so it would help if people *never* needed the car...but I think there's something deeper than that, something about the way people judge literally anyone who isn't driving. Talking about transit can help with that...as much as or even more than actually building it! We need advertising for the transit as much as we need the actual transit infrastructure itself. And walking/biking as much as possible is probably a great start because it is very visible.
@casjo2022 @breadandcircuses It's not even like we *have to* drive. People often just outright refuse to walk/bike/use transit for absolutely no reason.
Back when I was still working in an office I'd sometimes get my car serviced at a place down the road, because it was easy to drop it there before work and pick it up after. It was a ten or fifteen minute walk from the office, downhill. Basically across the street, just with a large parking lot and driveway at each end. I'd show up there after work...