The green's policy was to shut down nuclear plants and relaunch coal plants. Recently, they've been protesting wind power as well. I don't blame you if you didn't realize something THIS ridiculous happened. That said, don't recommend parties in foreign countries, as it's easy to miss details. Advocate for policies, not politicians.
As someone who moved about a year ago from Argentina to the Netherlands, I must say that there hasnt been one day where I go by thinking: "man, I need my car". I do have one specific use case for me that still try to compels me to buy one, but I don't NEED, it at all. I live in a city close to Amsterdam, and public transport has not been a problem once. Not even when there where strikes and service shortage a few months back (comming from Argentina, they were just a breeze in comparisson). I can go to the office by bus or train, I have stops for bus at most 2 blocks away from my house. I have the train station by 10 min walk or multiple bus lines if I dont feel walking, or biking. Usually have more than one option to arrive at my clients offices... Bus, metro, train... And finally, when all else fails... Like, when I had to go to Den Haag to renew my passport and it just happened that a train derailment caused massive train delays and redirections, I just used a car sharing service (I try to pick electric cars if available) and paid for the 3 hours that I actually used it instead of parking, gas, insurance, permits, etc etc etc. Anyways, great vid, as always. Cheers.
@@LimakPan nuclear plants are perfectly fine, sure they create waste but with proper disposal practices that is just not a problem, and they produce a lot of power too, yet why are these so-called greens relaunching fucking coal plants, I wonder?
In Baltimore, they are actively working to narrow streets and reclaim road area for not car uses. They preemptively address the people that complain about the narrower streets by putting up road signs saying: “wouldn’t YOU want to live in a neighborhood safe to walk in?”
seriously its fucking depressing how little my city cares abt pedestrians. and that attituded is propagated and spread to the point where i can fucking tell how little drivers care abt my saftey. i can go on and on for literally hours abt how unsafe i feel going on a walk. it makes me so fucking sad. and if i wanted to go to like a park where i can walk in peace, I NEED A CAR O GET THERE. its insulting to say the very least.
" “wouldn’t YOU want to live in a neighborhood safe to walk in?”" you dont have sidewalks and crossings in baltimore? huh? or do you mean that when you make driving worse and force more people into not using the road then the street by your house will get less cars so safer?
I went to my first city meeting about a week ago and have already noticed a few amazing changes, some great new crosswalks that are very highly visible have already been painted. It's about the last thing I expected from my car centric Texas city but almost everyone there surprisingly shared the same ideas and expressed their concerns about having to drive everywhere, and how they are tired of not having sidewalks and basic pedestrian infastructure.
Im from a relatively big city from Mexico, and like 90% of my friends/people of my age don't have a car (25/27 yo). Its getting useless, and the city itself is catching on. The only people that complain about the city becoming walkable is old people who use their car for everything
Old people need safe walking even more. And we can reduce cars and still have handicapped parking for old people. Why should young healthy people be ALLOWED to park anywhere they want? Reduce total parking space and keep handicapped parking.
I thought you said Mexico City and I was gonna call this bullshit. Which city do you live in? Perhaps worth taking a look at it. Mexico City is awful. You need a cad but at the same time you will have a bad time in traffic.
@@soundscape26it's not just the parking. It's also the roads. Something like 90% of the public space is built for cars. Just imagine your city if these roads where not running straight through them. How silent they will be. It'd be great.
Dont live in a city and cars are grand freedom makers. Let government control it and it will be just like the movie "sleeper" You will be able to travel only when the government says it is ok. Idiocracy is waiting for you if you let the government keep taking from you.
Same. Ever since I started watching Adam Something and NotJustBikes, I can't even take a casual stroll around my home town without seeing a million problems with it. It's blessing but at the same time a curse.
@@soundscape26 you need around 30-40% of the building space if it is a single home, or even more for a highrise as parking space if every single person in that building gets a car park for their car. most modern cities simply dont cater for cars as a whole, nor should it cars waste a lot of private and public money just to make it possible to use comfertably, public transport simply can do everything a car can do just a lot cheaper and a lot safer, only a very niche application where cars are actually needed like living in a remote area or when you want to go to very remote areas that rarely do people go there, and barely anything else.
I'm a car enthusiast, but seeing how car dependent cities made car owning experience a nightmare. I fully support the notion of building walkable cities. Car owning experience nowadays is a nightmare, gas is getting expensive, traffic jams nearly everywhere, and dont forget about the ridiculous prices for newer cars.
Not even just the price of new cars, but the SIZE of them! Even the US isn't built for those monstrosities. We're going backwards with these as EV's too. We need smaller, more efficient cars, not huge ass trucks and SUV's that need enough batteries to power 4 regular sized cars.
yeah that would work, but it'd be cruel. But making cars more expensive would work. Lets say everyone has to pay the price for gas and recarbonasation of the gas, because that's whats causing other harm, than MUCH more people would go by a cheap metro
Making public transport insanely convenient And walking and biking to be a obvious option Whilst cars are simplistic reliable and 659cc 750kg The amount of cars on the road is less And the car itself takes up less
@@schlechtestergtaspielerdek3851 yeah I mean genociding people would "work" too but for some strange reason we don't do that, u know? But hey I am sure making a necessary utility unaffordable will totally not cause poverty, misery and suffering. It's all for the planet. A lump of rock that does not give a fuck about us. Yup. Totalllyyyyyyy worth it.
Young people aren't buying or owning cars because we literally can't afford to. 30-40k is a few years savings in your 30s, but in your 20s that's tuition. Rather than being a victory of urbanist theory, it's literally just the final state of car dependency: millions of youth now lacking freedom of mobility, with the only way to access food and mobility is through ride sharing apps, costing you more money and making car ownership even more of a pipe dream.
Hell, 30k-40k is maybe a decade of savings potentially at this point, especially if you start to factor in the cost of insurance, parking (even if you own a garage, that's still a lot of space dedicated to the car), upkeep and fuel costs. For something that will sit unused 90% of the time. And when it is used, it's probably a glorified shopping cart for groceries and goods or for one to/from work.
In the US. The trend is going down globally, and I can tell you economics is not why everyone rides a bike in Denmark. For a lot of people in european urban centers, the car is just a big expense you'd use very occasionally when you want to travel somewhere that's not practical to ride a train or a bus to. But it's typically american to assume cars are mandatory in every country. The former US ambassador to Denmark never could quite figure out why so many people rode bikes and ignorantly also attributed it to bad economics. It's not true, get better urban planning
Cars are stupidly expensive these days, and are also only getting even more excessively large. But that doesn’t mean that we lack the freedom of mobility, quite the opposite actually. In a well designed city you can get anywhere easily via public transit, biking, or walking
Do you live in a suburb where people only drive BMWs and Teslas? 💀 You can get a decent Honda or Subaru for at least 6k maybe less, insurance adds up but even if you add on 5k for that for a couple years that’s still way less than 40k.
I’m a fan of public transportation policy too, I’m not a big leftist but I am on this issue, just wish people would get real about it and stop being doomers and edgy nihilists
The fact that people my age don’t want to drive in spite of the fact that we live in a country that’s unnavigable without a car is a clear indication that we need public transit. The demand is there, we just need the infrastructure to meet the demand. *Edit:* Fair warning, the solipsism in the comments section will make your eyes bleed.
Too bad they ripped all the public transportation out of the city 60-70 years ago to build parking lots. I guess it will take about the same time to turn around and rebuild it.
Hehe sadly Supply/Demand economics are some BS. The government doesn't give an actual fuck about public demand unless it can make a buck off the top, or if it hurts their "friend's" businesses.
@@monsieurdorgat6864 Maybe it's less about muh evil gubamintz and more about people not voting for the kind of politicians who will do what they want. Simply wanting is not enough, you have to vote as well.
Something I read on Mastodon: politics is like public transport. It may not get you exactly where you need to be, but if you pick the right bus, it can get you close enough. Not voting is like sitting at home mad that your bus doesn't take you to the doorstep of your destination.
Great theory if you live in the city, but it falls appart pretty quickly when you live in the country side and you have 1 bus the whole morning and getting to your work place would require changing bus 4 times and you'd arrive by lunch time. You're fired on your first day at work, congratulations.
@@TheFPSPower That's something that I think takes the comparison too hard. If you live in a rural area, are your choices suddenly all bad and you choose to not vote then? Because the bus is being presented in a place where it's supposed to function; it's a metaphor.
Prague was ruled by Pirates, but in the last elections, older right wing car friendly party won and things are going back to car centric culture. Fortunately Pirates did a lot of good changes before they left and a lot of these things can't be just simple took back by new government, which is good.
For me, personally, I attribute a lot of my lack of satisfaction in life to being unable to socialize with other people my age. This isn’t a social anxiety thing either, it’s just that there is no place for me to actually meet people outside of a work setting.
because everyone is inside of car, here in my village, you see only cars, you don't see actual people outside and when they go from work, they jump to cars and then hide behind their walls and they will not go anywhere because, this culture is terrible, I want back to Prague, but unfortunately housing crisis made living in my mother city not affordable, but I really want back because of culture and people actually go outside and chill, not sitting in cars and behind their walls as in small towns
Yeah sure it's because of the car, let's ignore that people before the internet and smartphone were all driving and still meet and socialize easily. All capitals in Europe have great public transportation and "walkable" cities and despite that people are lonelier than ever. Stop blaming everything on car
@@OMAROMAROMAboa Nah mate, the cars were the start of it. We fucked over a lot of our neighborhoods and cities that used to actually have places to go and socialize at just to make more space for cars. The Internet and Smartphones are only a symptom of the problem that shitty cityplanning for cars started. But yeah sure, ''new technology is bad''.
Speaking as someone who LOVES cars, I can say you're damn right! If we would always provide better alternatives and could make people see that these alternatives are better, the roads would become a better place for car hobbyists. If you're not a car hobbyist, the only reason you have to choose driving over effective public transit or walking when it's feasible is the luxury of never making contact with anyone you don't already know. Since I'm sure someone will bring it up if I don't, even though you explained this in the video: Of course driving into the city from small towns or farm houses will always make sense but that's not what causes traffic jams and most of automobile related pollution.
I remember studying George Lucas's "American Graffiti" in a university film course twenty years ago and thinking that the entire premise of the film felt completely alien to me - 1. being a teenager with their own car, and 2. driving it around for fun. Also it seems insane to me that the main form of identification in most places is the *_driver's license_*
It's pretty easy to simply get a federal ID instead. A lot of folks use military IDs too. Just whatever suits your needs. I had a buddy who lost his driver license and used his passport to get into a bar.
The whole 15 minute city thing is absolutely hilarious in most places outside of North America. Because most places outside North America... ARE 15 minute cities and have been for hundreds or even thousands of years in some cases. Somewhere like London is probably a prime example, it's basically a bunch of towns in a big urban blob. You don't need to walk far to get to a shop to do your "big shop" or at least just get some basics, or go out for a meal, or chill in a park. Obviously not all of London is like that, but a huge chunk is, all without having to drive to get further. And if you do need to go further, the public transport doesn't actually suck. It's kind of insane to drive though London, by choice. Only those with no other option should be doing it, but you get people doing it because, well, reasons.
I had this epiphany as to why when I was in allegedly overcrowded Singapore the spread of COVID was so much slower than I was reading about in America or basically everywhere else, and the answer I came to was that all the basic services were nicely distributed into the neighbourhoods, meaning I don't even have to leave my neighbourhood to do basic groceries, reducing the number of unique people I make contact with. Almost everything I needed was literally a 5 minute walk away. Yet, at no point did I ever feel overcrowded when walking around around my neighnourhood. All the apartments are well maintained because people understand that if you make the effort to make things look good, they will actually look good. Of course the quintessential commie blocks in East Europe look bad, that's because no one actually paints them and repairs them regularly.
Because people commute into London as no one wants to live there and the trains are mayhem. People will say nationalise them, but they already are. The majority of people would deal with the inconvenience of lack of parking than deal with the kind of scum that inhabit our cities.
I live in Germany. I have in easy walking distance several bars and bakeries, one super market, several groceries and fast food joints, shops where i can buy clothes, shoes, even electronics, a bookstore, a tailor and other things i can't remember right now. But then again, cities in Germany house on average 200,000-300,000 people, suburbs included....
I always supported the idea of car-free cities and IM A CAR NERD! Sure, even if cars stop being a necessity, I’ll still probably drop a few thousand bucks on my lil girl, but I’m definitely all for being able to just walk to where I wanna get. Plus a life without traffic jams sounds like a dream come true
It seems like reduced car dependency is good for everyone but oil lobbyists. People who wanna walk, can. People who want to bus or train, do. People who want to drive, now with fewer cars on the road there is less traffic. More options is inherently better than fewer options. Inherently more free. I still don't think that removing all cars form the road is desirable at all though.
I liked the idea too till my first child got born. The moment the little was sick I was happy to have a car. No way I was waiting 15 minutes for a pick up bringing me to the place I needed to be.
I love cars, I have 2 cars. I use public transportation everyday. I never commute by car because I love driving, and nothing breaks me more than sitting in traffic not being able to read or watch Adam's videos. I also think that being able to WALK in cities is a must. Cars should be a hobby not a necessity.
Hopefully, cars will soon be relegated to the same class of historical/hobbyist vehicles as steam trains and horse-drawn carriages. A small number of people will keep on making and driving them for fun or sport, but society will not depend on them as a regular form of transport.
@@InventorZahran That'll never happen outside of cities, which to be honest, I'm fine with, most rural locations depend on that car-based infrastructure not just for travel, but goods, services, etc.
Same, my daily commute to office is ~40km one-way between two towns and being able do that via bus or train would be great because then I could simply have a fun car for the weekends. But, the conservative pensioner-lobby is strong in Bavaria and it would be faster to walk than take public transport.
Cars will remain a necessity in rural areas or places where the nearest big city is a 4 hour drive across multiple mountain passes, rail infrastructure between big cities would be nice though.
@@kirenscragg740 Kinda true, but we can also just build better monorails or train systems. I don't think cars will ever be abolished but cars will probably fade into irrelevancy like horses and carriages. The Amish will be driving honda civics in the far future.
Taking a train to NYC and traversing by foot is much more liberating a feeling than taking my car down, worrying constantly about parking, worrying about fees, about cops, about accidentally hitting a pedestrian, just all of that, gone.
i never realized just how car-fucked my city is until i lost my license and realized i was basically trapped in my house: unable to go to work or the store or even just leave to visit friends or do ANYTHING. it was like i was a prisoner in my own city.
Philadelphia has one of the more robust public transport systems in the US and it's still very easy to get stranded in the city after 11pm because they reduce the trains to one an hour. Most cities don't even have 24 hour rail. And we wonder why everyone drives drunk
@@themightymcb7310well you need to be able to point at people who do bad things and tut-tut about personal responsibility. Circumstances be damned. (Obv. Don't drive drunk, but like if someone is in an unfamiliar part of town late at night and doesn't feel safe, as opposed to being 8 minutes away from home on foot, it makes sense why some people take that risk anyways. Well, that and the double bind of getting in trouble for just being in the vehicle vs getting busted for public intoxication. You can't win!)
@Alexander_Kale I don't mean physical things, but societal factors. In USA, you are supposedly free, until you get injured, then you are cursed to pay huge medical bills. You are free to take education, but you will forever be burdened by its cost.
@@alihenderson5910 Look most people don't have a private plane do you really think people outside of like the F A R north are using a private plane to get groceries.
At its heart, a car is personal transportation with the added option of moving your things. There simply is not better option for that than a car of some description. Sure, you can use a scooter or a motorized skateboard or a bike to get around, but you cannot use that to move stuff. Using public transportation when you need to buy groceries for a family of four is also not appealing. The reason cars are not going away in fiction is the same reason capitalism isnt going away. they are both too useful.
6:11 That's not western Europe. That's Moscow after it's "My street" big urban redesign project which gave central Moscow: -wide side walks -removed car lanes - parking fees -quality urban furniture -much improved public transport
Urbanists: literally no one wants to get rid of cars, we just want to minimize the negative effects they have on society. Making everyone use cars helps to stratify society by concentrating opportunity in the hands of those who can afford their purchase and upkeep. We have to make society better for EVERYONE, not just people who can afford cars. Some dude on FB with a lifted F250 who makes $40k a year as an assistant manager at Chili's: REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Accurate. I hate how thats a thing. Poeple who don't have any critical thinking skills act like they have a degree in civil engineering and think we're wrong and going against their ideals when in reality our beliefs would benefit everyone
I'd like to see far fewer cars, which will happen naturally if we invest properly into well priced, reliable, regular integrated public transport networks, then it'll be more a case of those who either NEED to drive or really want to. We shouldn't take the option away, but offer more and encourage the modal shift.
There are in fact plenty of people who want to make cars illegal, but it's silly to screech about them, since car lovers outnumber them 1000 to 1, so it'll never happen in a democracy.
5:09 There was a time I was that 1% of people who took a commute of 120 minutes by public transport instead of 30 minutes by car. In my case, it was because I had PTSD from a car crash and didn't have the guts to drive back then.
A world where walking , public transport, bikes, scooters is what I hope to see more and more. Cars are good for very specific situations and don't need to be used for the usual trips.
Reminds me of the time when the Netherlands decided to build the nationwide biking infrastructur. They got enourmos backslash from the elderly and middleaged people. However they were the ones who started using it the most and don't want to miss it at all anymore.
People just dislike change. They don't want change, even if it is nothing but beneficial to them. They don't want change, because it's unfamiliar to them and that unfamiliarity is uncomfortable. People are lazy and want to live comfortably - People do not want to leave their comfort zone. I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just trying to rationalise people's thoughts, even if their thoughts are irrational.
I got my drivers license as soon as I could, I absolutely love driving and I am the proud owner of a nice car at age 21 (which I worked for myself). Yet, even I am a massive proponent of reducing and outright banning cars from the city limits, and possibly beyond... because that's what true automobile realism is.
One thing to keep in mind. If someone is a car owner, they'll be reluctant to pay for a bus or metro because of all the money they've already put into having a car. So they end up trying to use the car for all their travelling needs, even when there are more convenient options available.
But a car is only cheaper if you own it outright. Most people can’t afford to spend tens of thousands up front, so they lease, which is why the average car payment in the US is like $700 a month
@@faustinpippin9208 Used cars are still thousands of dollars, and the older they are the more it costs to maintain. If you can do that maintenance yourself then great, but most people don’t have the knowledge or time.
I have an old car and it doesn’t me cost thousands of dollars to maintain it. Usually I have like one repair that’s over $500 and then other than that I’m just doing oil changes and some minor items here or there like new wipers.
I'm 33, live rurally in Aotearoa, and still never want to be a driver and am perpetually pissed off at the sprawling housing development going on around me on what used to be crop and dairy farm land.
@@真夜中の橋 Your choice, but you are severely limiting your life. Every trip we go on, we rent a car to explore, recent one was in Corfu, there was no way to explore the whole island otherwise. There is a time and a place for a car and it's in most places more of the time with the exception of large city centres.
@@DigiDriftZone that’s why I’m advocating for human-centric infrastructure. Tell me, would you have brought a car along with you on a trip if the whole island was accessible by bike and walking, most of the streets were nearly car free. No, you wouldn’t. You used a car, not because it’s a good locomotive, but because you didn’t have a choice. If I keep living like you and not take drastic actions against car centric infrastructure, I may not even have a future because of climate change. I’m well aware that my personal choices don’t matter that much. But the mentality to take drastic actions when needed is important.
My city (Montpellier, France) just made public transportation fully free a few days ago. It has a huge pedestrian city center and they made a huge event during the night with fires and a lightshow. I came here to study and I'm probably staying because of the human friendly design of the city. Truly an example of what a city should be and something that I'm proud of belonging to.
We should always consider the *other* big factor in "car brain" - lobbying. I'm sure there are politicians who absolutely *could* imagine a world without cars, but not a world without lobbyists' "donations".
Finally someone who points out about this. It is simply impossible to create a world without cars before getting rid of the rampant bribery from the corporates to the politicians. The center of the tumor is the Big Automobile, which should be struck first.
I'm on vacation in a developing country (Vietnam) and let me say, I have had fewer problems walking from point a to point b. That said, I have had a new horror story: crossing the damn street with all the motorbikes coming at me.
Yea developing countrys are a different story. They don't really have cars or designated lanes. People and motorbikes just use the same lane and there are no rules. It somehow works though. They have reasonable accident statistics.
I moved from Edinburgh, Scotland to the suburbs of DC for one summer in 2018. In Edinburgh, I had either walked or taken the bus to work/school since I was 11, and none of my friends had driving licenses (few do now either). I was almost completely trapped in the DC neighborhood. There was one bus, that ran only at peak times in and out of the city centre. My only other option was an expensive uber, or a four mile walk. And this is in a city that is often touted as having one of the best public transport systems in the USA. I hope the US can move in the more positive direction you outlined.
My problem with the whole "voting for the least worst" is that, in my country, Australia, the labour party supports cars, the liberal party supports cars, the national party supports cars, and the green party supports electric cars. There literally isn't even an option.
It's single vote transferable there no? You can vote for the electric car party, then tell them to pull their support closer to no car. Parties aren't a monolith. There is still a perception that no car is a very radical change so the best you can do right now is to get those who are already amenable to less polluting options to choose more comprehensive methods.
This might be true on the Commonwealth level but on the state level this simply isn't true. This is because many urban planning decisions are state issues, sometimes council issues. There are definitely parties that have better urban planning strategies than others on the state level.
@@BluePieNinjaTV Vote for the electric car party, then through grassroots movements try to convince them to deprioritise cars. You may not succeed, but never let perfect be the enemy of good.
As a young adult, I want a future where we can have actual good infrastructure and walkable cities, so no matter what pressures me, I refuse to get a car.
@@Exoskel2 Carbrain is a real disease. I've seen people spouting off about how it's muh freedum to own and drive a car (while ignoring the massive costs associated with it.) On the other hand, I want the freedom to not *have* to drive everywhere and the peace of mind that I'm not going to get hit by a Ford F150 that refuses to give space when I'm biking or something. My coworker ate the conspiracy pill on 15 minute cities about how you "wouldn't be able to leave your 15 minute zone." Went on about how he'd be taxed for driving, forced into buying a certain type of car, the government will control you when you can't drive anywhere etc. I'm fortunate to live a mile from a rail line which is super rare for the US because it's relatively close by. It goes like 1.5 miles away from my work. So it'd be doable. The distance could be significantly shorter if it wasn't for all the awful roads everywhere. But they don't run trains 24/7 so while I'd be able to get to work, I'd have to bike 13 miles home in the dark. Public transit exists, it's just NOT effective at all. (Yet.) I hope things improve. Less roads, more train lines.
Honestly this is more depressing than anything. Not because of the message I 100% agree, but because Denmark as a whole is backsliding FAST! We might be building some transit lines here and there and make a few walkable city improvements but everything else is moving us towards car dependency at a much greater pace! Like the extremely high ticket prices for public transit which have caused a deahspiral with even greater ticket price increases, decreasing ridership for over 10 years, and several servcie cuts and line closures in both urban and rural areas! The ticket prices for Public transit here are insanely high, about twice that of German or American cities, especially for longer suburb to downtown trips where transit otherwise would have the bigger edge! In most cases the economic difference between a monthly transit pass, and a car is negligible, and the transit pass is only valid in the exact few zones between your home and your workplace, which already gives you much less flexibility than the car here! The economics here are sadly working in favour of cars, not transit! And this is all while our governments for the last many years have refused to increase subsidies for transit or even just turn the situation around, and increasing subsidies for car commuters, and limiting municipal and regional governments the power to change that. All of that while canceling several rail and public transit projects in favour of increased domestic air travel, and 4+ lane 130km/h highways to every single town in the country with over 20.000 people living in it, while their parallel railways have seen no investment since the 1980's and only run once per hour! And this is all while the politicians preach about that people should take public transit more, while also sabotaging it constantly, giving the public little to no faith in the system or that it could ever be improved, making even more people switch to cars just to not deal with it! Oh and that's not mentioning the Police having the right to Veto any changes in road design here in Denmark, and 99% of the time being highly against changes that improve safety and practicality for pedestrians and cyclists for very car centric reasons! Plus they've heen on an all out offensive against cyclists lately with over 1000 arrests just in the last week in Copenhagen for minor offenses like not having an electric light turned on, a lack of a bell, holding a phone, or cycling down the wrong way on a quiet one way side street. God I hate Denmark at times like these!
As another person from Denmark i totaly agree im courintly studinge in Aarhus and if it wasent for ungdomskort the trip would cost me more then 100kr each Way and simple 20km rides kan cost more then 40 kr each Way and at that point it cost the same i fule to drive it youreself. There is no world where those proces can work for someone having to work for them. And bikking which we are known for is also not progressing as qikly as it should. In more rual places the bike lanes help a lot and make people cykeling to and from plases fell a lot safer. Insted they often just get the dich of the cars road to drive in.
I just sold my car and your channel has a big part in inspiring the change and opening my eyes to car culture. It has been freeing in many ways. I hope more people decide against driving (if able) and cities start shifting towards car free planning.
Sometimes I get discouraged by French politics, wondering for who to vote at the next elections, and sometimes even wondering "why?". Your reminder that it is a game of the lesser evil is of great help against harmful abstention, thanks for that.
just a little reminder that lobbies have offices in l'elysée that basically where the real decisions are taken, corruption is rempant legalized, organized, encouraged, politicians are the new mafia in france. this is too late to have a change, it need to collapse before any change is possible sadly...
@gandjaman59560 it was exactly that type of doomersim "they are all the same",."your naive for voting" type of thinking that drove my country into dictatorship. Whenever someone says "they're all the same or democracy isn't working" they are increasing the chances of those things becoming true. So yeah just vote don't try to be smart and endgy.
@@ganjaman59650 People who advocate for collapse seem never to realize that the people dying in such a collapse may well be themselves. Revolutions are rarely bloodless and often hijacked after all.
I am a "car guy". I love wrenching on my truck. I like going for drives. I like thrashing around in the dirt. I really don't understand why ppl are against public transport and bike lanes. it literally makes driving easier for ppl who just like driving like me.
Back in the 70s and 80s and even 90s, the whole point of young people wanting to get their license and a car (in the U.S.) at least was to go and hang out with their friends. With the onset of social media this isn't a thing anymore. I have 3 teenage daughters right now and they'd die without their phones but aren't in a hurry to get a car. So couple that with the economic reasons you pointed out and I can see why youth don't want cars.
What's the coolest thing your daughters could do with friends? Assuming you buy the car and insurance, how often could they do that thing while still affording gas and keeping up with responsibilities? There are communities where kids have valuable third places, if yours does then it would be good for your daughters to get out of their comfort zones. In all likelihood though the experience will be expensive and hollow if not dangerous.
Lived in London for 10 years. Didn't get a driver's license until the age of 35. Didn't need one. Only learned to drive because we went on a holiday where my girlfriend was forced to do all the driving and refused to do it in future. But then learning to drive meant that when we could afford to buy our own place we weren't restricted to just London. And ended up living in pretty much the countryside. But if we moved back to a city, my expectation is that I shouldn't need a car.
I honestly think that Covid19 changed the American workplace forever. Private offices used to be the norm for professional workers, but today you get a work-table, a storage unit, and a chair, crammed into a wide-open space with everyone else. When Covid19 sent millions of workers home, unused guest bedrooms were quickly turned into offices. And almost immediately Americans re-discovered the benefits of a private office. A quiet and productive work environment with fewer interruptions, and the ability to take private family phone calls without having to censor yourself or telling them you'll call them back in a few minutes. I believe this is another (lesser) reason for the trend,.
@@ericmatthews8497And when ecological concerns stop the globalized economy and make power too spotty to have the majority of Westerners working on computers at home an economically feasible solution?
Ah yes, cars are the true icon of freedom. Essentially a prisoner of your own home until you are old enough to get a license and scrape up enough money to finally get one. America really is the icon of freedom where there is only one way to reliably get around and it is slow & insanely expensive.
And keep in mind that when you're going anywhere, you're essentially a prisoner inside your car untill you arrive at your destination, specially if you get yourself into a traffic jam.
AND EVEN BETTER, driving cars is treated as a privilege not a right. So your "freedom" gets taken away anyway! Isn't the transit system in America so amazing!?
The fact that car enthusiasts aren't even smart enough to say "it's great if other people choose bikes, so there is less congestion for me"... says it all. It's about identity. Reality denial. Fear of change.
Actually, you'd be surprised with how many car enthusiasts, mostly on the younger side, chime in on r/fuckcars and other urbanist internet-places supporting public transportation. Some *do* understand that less traffic makes driving better and public transportation gets bad drivers off the road. It's mostly older folk who cling on to cars. Because they're set in their ways, or they grew up when public transportation was actively being ruined & brand new road networks had yet to succumb to the cycle of induced demand, or they watch anti-city, fear-mongering new too much.
I am a car enthusiast and literally just commented that. But also please realize that we car enthusiasts are always getting screwed over by sloppy regulations that apply to the masses. E.g. I have a sweet offroad truck I put tons of work into building that I only drive like once every 3 months to go camping, but have a nightmare to deal with annual inspection and emission testing because the regulations just assume it's a daily driver. Even if that thing emitted 100x a regular car the fact that I only use it for recreation means it still has a lower carbon footprint. But because it's all a custom build I have tons of legal problems to deal with thanks to the laws that just assume a car is a person's default sole form on mobility for monotonous life. In my daily life I ride a little electric kick scooter to get groceries and walk and bike. The people overusing their cars as sole form of transport ruins it for us. Imagine if your favorite thing got a ton of laws written about how you can do it because a ton of over people do it too much for no good reason. Please don't be anti-car, be pro-alternatives so that people don't have no choice but to resort to cars. Being anti-car is just focusing on the symptom instead of the problem that the cities are not providing efficient mobility options to residents.
@@mikebarnacle1469 I totally get it. I have family members who like to work on 50s and 60s American classics, only to drive them a couple of times each summer. I hope you find a way to use your camper without the legal hassle.
Not all car enthusiasts are idiots. Many are, but not all of them. I am a carguy myself but I only enjoy driving my 90s JDM cars to the mountain passes or something like that and for a versy long time even supported EVs (I live in the countryside of germany where not public transportation exists or makes even sense) but I learend that it is incredibly difficult because it seems there are just two extremes. Most of the EV fans are like "Ban all the other cars, shit on gas cars..." and on the tratitional car community its even more toxic. a lot of them just shit on everything that doe´nt burn gas. Its like there is no middle way. no "sure, 80% of my drive are just commuting to work or buy grocaries, why ot using a EV or public transport there and lets have fun with my toy cars on weekends. It seems a differentiated debate is,t possible anymore
@@ayanami5610 Yeah you're right. Of course everyone needs a car sometimes. Some of us need one all the time. (I sure hope everyone gets that.) I have a soft spot of the 80s Corvette myself.
Always have I had cars but the last year or so I have hardly used it in favour of bicycle and train. I love the train as it gives me an opportunity to finally read "that" book
I took a vacation to Amsterdam and I loved taking the train, trams, and the bus. I love having random encounters and conversations with strangers in my day to day life. You don't get that in car dependency
I remember an episode in Voyager in which Harry was going to Starfleet HQ in San Francisco, and he took BART! He went underground to take a train. I loved it!
And Star Trek also had fusion power (antimatter power?), matter replicators, transporters, and warp-capable SHUTTLECRAFT (never mind starships). But of all of the technology in Star Trek, the most important is the source of unlimited widely available energy in the form of fusion (and matter-antimatter reactors). Fortunately, that technology should be the easiest to achieve technology from that science-fiction universe. COULD YOU IMAGINE POWERING BART, REPLICATORS, TRANSPORTERS, ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY, HOLODECKS, ETC. WITH SOLAR AND WIND POWER SOURCES? (Not even talking about warp drive.) As soon as we have clean, reliable, renewable FUSION power, I am quite sure that many concerns we have today (and a lot of the concerns that Adam Something discusses) will just go away and fail to matter anymore. Fusion energy will power our gadgetbahns, electric cars, direct air capture plants, hydroponic farms, etc. Voila! Poof! A lot of problems just disappear instantly.
Excellent video as always. The American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, remarking on people who didn't want to vote in the 2016 election because they believed that it was just a choice between the lesser o two evils, said, "You know what the lesser of two evils is? Less evil!" He implored people to put aside purity and recognize that preventing more harm is a perfectly legitimate reason to vote for one candidate over another. Very glad to see your take on the subject in this video.
I’m a high schooler in Houston. My parents took our two cars to do stuff today, and now I’m trapped. If I want to go get something like, food, my options are a gas station, a cvs, or attempting to cross a 6-lane stroad and then survive the 10 acre parking lot to get to the grocery store
Yeah, I somehow always had the feeling in the US parents are not supposed to let their kids outside of their house unsupervised under any circumstances. This feels like clipping the wings of young people so they will never actually grow up and be independent and not fearful of unknown stuff they encounter.
I remember a friend of mine who watched a documentary like 20 years ago (we're in the UK) and it was about car use in Houston. He said they didn't have pavements (sidewalks) and they drove their kids 100m up the road to school. I didn't believe him until I saw it. It blew my mind.
I would like to tell all car enthusiasts that we do actually want most urban people to stop driving. I mean would you rather have karen drive her kids to school in an SUV therby increasing traffic and the amount of demand for SUVs or have her send her children to a school that they can walk or cycle to
Auto enthusiasts as a group are for the most part captured by industry. They trust the executives that profit from them more than the neighbours that respect them enough to meet them where they're at.
also if kids could walk SAFTLEY to school and back home, then schools wouldnt have to start and end in a way that makes sure parents are off work... it could help sm more than just less traffic.
car enthusiasts are the least problem. They actually take care of their car, and (for the most part) do not buy a new car every 3 years. As a car enthusiast, I approve of getting rid of cars and parking spaces in cities. The biggest problem are the normal folk, that do not care about their car but still use it because it is a more comfortable option.
@@Seltsamisierend The point is you as a car enthusiast should be at the front of the line advocating along with fiets-ers and urbanists for bike lanes and public transit. Your experience of the road would be so much better without shitty-driver-but-has-to-drive-because-there's-no-better-option Karen. And so would everyone else's.
I have a relatively car-brained family, and they REALLY want me to get my drivers license, but I just don’t see the point. Literally every place I plan to or am considering living in across my entire life you can live without a car. Plus it’s tremendously cheaper to bike or take public transit than it is to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on owning a massive block of metal that’s inefficient and dangerous to everyone else
Get licensed anyway. You're rated based on how long you've had one, not how many miles you logged on it. Should a future situation demand you to drive, it's better to have and not need than need and not have.
IF *THEY* are paying for it, do get a licence. You still don't need to own a car, but you will have an extra skill set. Plus in case of emergency, you could use a car from one of those car share systems. Or take over driving if your family member gets unwell behind the wheel when you're in the car with them. This advice is based on the premise that it's better to know things than to not know things. If your reluctance to learn to drive is purely based on environmental reasons, then by all means don't take it. I myself have a driver's licence that my parents paid for, but i don't own a car. I'd like to learn to ride a motorcycle, but i don't need to & it feels like a extravagant wasteful thing to do, burn all that fuel just to get an extra piece of paper, so i don't.
It absolutely is. We don't all live within 15 minutes of eachother, I want to visit some family friends in the next town, that could be a 30 minute drive or 4.5 hours by public transport, it's just not doable. It all depends on your geography and needs, here in London zone 6, it's impossible to live without a car. So much so 80%+ of households, including the poorest households own a car.
As someone living in Leipzig I just have to add something: You showed Richard Wagner Platz as a positive Example at 5:17. A 180 degree camera turn away is one of the WORST Intersections I have ever encountered with multiple lanes for cars. I cross this intersection on my way to work and its horrible. With my bike I have to cross the road 3 times ( a pedestrian signal just on one side of the intersection) while a car can go straight through. Literally a few hundred meters down the right is the pedestrianized city centre which is great here.
I'm 46 and I've never owned a car neither I know how to drive, all my life I've been using public transportation, walking or bike. I'm from Chile, currently living in the capital, Santiago. I live in a good location, I have 3 supermarkets at walking distance, and a full shopping center at 15 minutes using the subway (or 45 minutes walking), the commute to my job takes me about 30 minutes by subway. An odd thing about Chile, is the most conservative municipalities in Santiago are the ones with the most walkable and bikeable zones (Providencia, Las Condes, Vitacura, among a few others). The infrastructure isn't the best, but they keep improving by reducing car lanes and securing the bike lanes. Also a good thing about Chile is that the drivers are respectful of the pedestrian, stopping at the crosswalks whenever there is someone who wants to cross.
I’d like to chime in on this a bit. A big factor for me is the massive increase in both e bike supply and availability. Most good quality pedal assist e bikes can replace the single person transit needs that cars would previously have filled. While also still having the VROOM factor
I use my ebike everyday I need to go somewhere. I use it for grocery shopping, work commutes, leasure; its a wonderful machine and you don't even need to take on loans for it. My ebike was $2k and there are cheaper ones that can do the job just fine.
Even on my "acoustic" bike, even though I can go much faster in my car than on my bike, the bike somehow feels faster, especially going downhill. One part of the route I particularly like not far from my home is a section that goes downhill and then immediately uphill, and you can go down the downhill part as fast as possible and let the resulting momentum carry you all the way up the uphill part without having to pedal at all until you reach the top of the hill.
This is going to sound weird but there's another thing that helped make public a more appealing (or less unappealing) option: Mobile devices. People may hate them but watching a show or playing a game makes the commute much more bearable.
I just was explaining to my car loving friend about how rail based public transport is the best solution for all factors combined. He just replied "but, I like to drive". Some car people are so focused on cars and themselves, that they can not look at the big picture. They just keep to their habits without thinking at all. And the same guy always complains about other drivers, traffic etc.
@@MikaTuukkanenTell him it's a win for him as well. He can still drive but he will encounter less traffic and congestion. Cities being less dependent on Cars mean taking people off the road and less pollution so people who occasionally or prefentially would like to drive will have a better experience.
@@MikaTuukkanen I had one job with an hour commute years ago. Annoyingly it took double the time on public transport and tbh was impossible anyway because the business park that I was working at was pretty much impossible to walk to. I had a fun car but the grind of the commute completely took the fun out of driving. After that job I vowed I'd never have a job where I needed to drive. Then the next job I got was a 30 minute journey by train and even though it would be a bit crowded sometimes, being able to doze off while listening to a podcast or even read a book sometimes was way better than the stress of driving. Funnily enough I was late for work way less by train as even if a train was cancelled usually the wait was only about 10 minutes more for another one. Whereas if someone broke down on/had an accident on the motorway you could be waiting for god knows how long. Not to mention the cost, when i quit the previous job even after I wasn't working for a while I couldn't believe how much money I'd been spending on fuel/maintenance. The price for the season ticket felt like nothing in comparison. Now I wfh and have a very rare train commute into the office, I still have a fun car. But I chose to use it for actual fun things like trackdays or even the occasional road trip.
As a car guy I will still collect cars but mostly be car free in the city and only use it when it’s raining, going out with family or going to see my family
The price that energy (either electricity or gasoline) is reaching, coupled with the price that cars themselves are reaching, might be the trigger for people buying less and less cars. Much more than urban design imo...
Right on the money!!! But this Hungarian Communist only wants to spin his fairytale stories of millions of young adults in the Western world going carfree by choice!!! For 90% at least it has to be involuntary carfreeness because of poverty.
Worst thing is that they are reaching those heights for no other reason than, at least in Europe, botched energy transition and too tight regulations. When I have recently checked data from PXE the price of electricity went from 40-50€ per MWh in pre-2020 to 120-150€ per MWh post 2022. And that is in fact not a good thing. It is too rapid and progress on solution is too slow.
If only there were some way I could borrow a car on the rare occasions I needed it and could pay for privilege with some sort of tax and insurance inclusive hiring fee. A 'hire car' if you will.
Taxis I can just about live with but ride sharing? That involves being in a box with those horrible things I don't like very much... What are they called now?... Oh yeah! People.
This all sounds perfectly with urban spaces for bikes, trams etc. The problem starts when you have drive to work 20+ miles, have three kids, one of them is sick and you want to deliver everyone as convenient and quick as possible.
As someone who has always loved cars (and still does), I only bought one because there's no decent public transport in the countryside, and my workplace used to be far away from home. Driving's fun on twisty roads and highways, not in cities. That's what walking/riding a bicycle/motorcycle/using public transport's for. Edit: Also, cars are expensive, and taxes certainly don't help. I think that people aren't buying cars mainly for financial reasons, but that they would rather use nice public transport over driving if they could.
Lucky you if you have "nice" public transport that actually works, has a decent schedule, and you aren't at greatly increased risk of being robbed or stabbed or shot just by being on it!
Conservatives/capitalists be like "Oh you want more and better transit systems? Tell me, who's gonna pay for it? Us good, traditional folk? The hard-working billionaires? Dream on, liberals! Either don't come out of your houses or get a car!"
Working people pay nearly all of the taxes now & billionaires & their corporations pay from 9% to 0. Yes, we want our taxes to go to a rail transit system.
I was 19 when I got my driver's license, my mid 30's before I bought my first car which I sold in under 3 years. It was cheaper to use public transport as a single person & on the rare occasions I needed a car I hired one for the weekend or a week at most.
YES. Thank you. Voting in local elections is the most effective, easiest thing you can do to make change. It's literally the least you can do if you care about how your city is run.
“Caught the disease called car brain” I think “received lobbying money from the industrial complex since the first cars were invented” is the most accurate description
I'm curious why the massive industrial complex that was the railroads wasn't able to strangle the automotive industry in its crib in your childlike view of politics...
@@CowMaster9001 y’know what? Just thought about it for one more second and it’s become very obvious… Why did we still have horses instead of just railways until motorcars were invented?
I would like to point out that in my country(brasil), the way to get in the "car world" is not very friendly. Usually there’s a major corruption problem: after all the fees possible to get a license, we usually have to pay what we call "quebrado" that's just a bribe to the car instructor don't deny you the license.
As soon, as I moved from the Czech countryside to Brno, I've lost the rational need for a car. Repairing old cars is still one of my passions, but it's not a thing my life depends on now. I can get anywhere either on bike, or using one of the best public transport system in our country. Hell, there are even a bunch of special night lines to take your drunk ass back from the pub, and spit you out in 5 minutes walking distance from your home. Imagine around 16 high capacity busses leaving the city centre at the same time. Every 30 minutes from 11PM to 1AM and then every hour till 6AM, when the normal daytime lines gradually start their operation. The small amount of time you save by driving the car to work is lost when you are trying to find available parking spot, and then stressing over the police giving you a ticket, when you had to park on the side of the road, because every parking spot were taken.
Yeah, with all the Adam's bashing on Czech Republic's car centrism and bad urban planning and general backwardness (which is justified, don't get me wrong), the public transport, at least in big cities, is really great, it's frequent, gets you everywhere and with the exception of some bus lines that go through congested areas, it's usually pretty on time. There's really no need to own a car if you live in Prague or Brno. And I think about 50% of commutes are done via public transport at least in these two. And yet, there's still so many people insisting they absolutely must drive everywhere (and park anywhere) and then they complain about the big traffic jams that _they_ cause. Meanwhile I ride right past them in a tram or on my bicycle. Lately, more and more I laugh at them and keep telling them that there's simply too many people driving cars and that the only solution to smoother traffic is less cars, or at least less car trips. The mentality here is really baffling, given the public transport options.
Reminder: if you live in a city with ranked choice voting, don’t strategic vote. Just vote for who you like, it’ll lead to the same result. Just remember to number all the boxes!
I love how we can easily distinguish stuff by music :D - Fallout Ambient Music = DYSTOPIA - Super Mario 64 Underwater Stage Music = UTOPIA Also I now have to listen too all the N64 music tracks. Super Mario, Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo Kazooie, ... childhood nostalgia activated :D Thanks @Adam
one thing that's not talked about when it comes to car centric cities, is that if kids have parents that are not willing to drive them around to go places, the kids will be more likely to be isolated and overweight. no one really plays outside in the field past 10-12 years old. you have to actually go somewhere fun, and if you can't do that because you don't have a driver's license, and the city has very late buses, then you're screwed. this becomes infinitely worse if you live in north america style suburbs. basically guaranteed to have no social life if your parents are unaware and aren't taking you places.
Yeah I was super lucky (relative to NA kids) to grow up with short walks to school playgrounds/sports fields/parks one way or another, and have been fit to some extent my whole life Then you think of kids in suburbs with their residential area literally caged out by a highway on all sides... gee I wonder why +40% of the USA populous is obese
@@NoahElRhandourOur lives?? The only reason I wanted to drive as a high school senior was because I got tired of coordinating with my parents to have a social life. Not everything needs a paper, especially if it’s lived by most of the people you’re talking to here.
That sounds absolutely counterintuitive for people not in North America. Your parents don't drive you = you have to take the bicycle or the bus. Both modes of transportation force you to move much more than driving would.
Even though I am a car dependent countryside inhabitant, I fully support all policies disincentivising cars in cities. Many of us are poor in the countryside, but for a thriving living space for humanity with both more comfort and longevity, everyone should be willing to make some sacrifices.
I'm 18. I recently got my driver's licence. My parents keep insisting on buying me a second/third hand car, have it repaired and ready. While this is a way better alternative to buying a 30K+ car, i still don't want a vehicle. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to not be bound to my parents' cars but i also do not want to have my own car. I do not travel a lot, nor do i want to. We have arguments about it nightly.
i would imagine that cannot be done for most people though. Even leaving aside the obvious like construction and carpenting and repair work, most service jobs still require hands on deck. restaurants, fast food joints, shops, all of those might reduce their people on site, but if they do, they will replace them with robots, not introduce home office. One could argue that all of the above can use busses or trains, but then again the same would be true for the people who would otherwise be doing home office.
@@aaronbono4688 european comission statistics. The data is from 2019, but unless we all gotten richer ( spoiler alert: we did not ), LESS people can afford to work from home. Because surprise surprise: the actual goods you consume are made by people who don't "work from home".
The automotive industry has given us a golden opportunity to leave cars behind as a niche transportation option, with the high prices for all things car, we just need to make sure there is some viable alternative for people to choose. What makes a viable alternative varies from person to person and location to location, could be bike lanes, could be walkable plazas, could be trains or maybe (probably) all three.
If you do such a step you have to give the alternative simultaneously. It will never happen in Germany, where the so called conservatives bulldoze bike lanes and destroy train and bus infrastructure to maximize the profit for the upper class that is "leading" it
@@Xenderman 😉 I once read Singapore has some kind of absurd car tax too, would be interesting for a video. Can't be that many places with such absurd taxes.
I have moved to a small town. I happily walk into the town centre and to visit family. I barely use my car these days, I still have it for those more rural runs I need to do on a weekly and monthly basis. I get a bit more exercise, and get so annoyed at my family which continually uses their car for the same journey
I went through the car-centered rite of passage in the 90s. Now that I live in a city where I can be car-free, I feel much freer than I did when I had a car. So much less hassle & responsibility along with less sunk costs that come with car ownership.
“streets will be destroyed and rebuilt every 30 years” My brother in Christ, here in Romania it feels like almost every meter of road is rebuilt every 5 to 10 years so that the politicians can have residents say “yeah they stole but at least they did something” edited for typo
The city of Szczecin, in Polande, is going through a great re-urbanization program. 4 lanes avenues are being rebuild with only 2 lanes and larger sidewalks. Changing interchanges with roundabouts. Give it a look if you have the chances Adam. Cheers!
Yes, Lublin has rebuild one of it's main roads leading to the city centre. They actually made an additional lane in both directions but these are bus lanes. They also managed to make bike lanes on both sides and wide pavements while keeping the trees that've been there. Earlier it was a terrible asphalt pavement that started rolling itself and looked like a cheese with all these holes surrounded by bushes. There is still a trafic jam sometimes but at least not for the buses. There is nothing worse than being stuck in a full bus in the middle of the summer after whole day of work. But the traffic seems to be smaller anyways.
Wrocław did same massively but cars are still needed and i dont like the video is against them. Bikes during winter suck. Riding a bike from outside of a city is time and ene4gy consuming. Green plan doesnt mean perfection. It must be balanced
Yeah our cities are kinda good in that regard. Even warsaw with its huge shitty roads is still walkable enough, especially with all tram lines etc. Though bike there isnt the best option
Actually it is very simple to get people off from a habit and getting them into a new one: just offer a cheaper and more convinient (or even better, also a more fun) option. On the other hand, this is the ONLY way, forcing, intimidating, shaming, punishing never works.
Denver, Colorado has been building out a robust light rail system for decades. In just the last few years, they've done a lot of work to add safe bike paths that go everywhere.
I live in Jakarta and the local government's solutions to congestion and the subsequent air pollution have been nothing but bullshit like odd-number policy, watering the city with fire trucks' hoses, etc. The school I attend is about less than 5 minutes from walking distance and the streets are 3 meters wide at most, yet I still feel uncomfortable walking them because of motorcyclists. Edit: I missed adding "meters".
Jakartan here. I can confirm the situation you mentioned. Unfortunately though since we are a developing country with less free politics (also GOOD LUCK trying to vote for car-free cities when ALL of the big politicians don't take car-free seriously) it will take quite some time to wean off the automobiles
I am born in Prague, I am used to going everywhere by public transportation or walk (or bike in rural areas for short distances). I was confronted with car culture for the first time when I was like 14 and we moved from our actual family to foster parents who were not originaly from Prague and were car people. It was so weird for me, like instead of just go outside to buy something, they had to go down there to back yard (tiny place full of cars) and then it took always like 30 minutes to do all those car things like to clean windows, prepare car for ride, put baggage inside, check everything again, return to 4th floor for all things you forgot there and do it 3 times again and after 30 minuts (with luck) we were ready to leave back yard and join all those traffic jams in center of Prague. I was always like "what is this about?" I didn't understand it, I was 14 and it was for the first time in my life when I was confronted with car culture. And don't take me wrong, I liked my foster parents, but this car thing was really annoying, sometimes I wanted just to go somewhere alone by public transportation and then wait for them there. When I was very little, we had car for very short time, but my father just loved old cars, so he wanted old Mercedes W123 just for fun and it actually was fun, modern car culture is not fun, it's just stressful and you spend most of your time in traffic jams. And don't take me wrong, sometimes you just need a car, but I am always saying that it's better pay to someone than feed your own metal can. Older people don't understand this, they still consider having a car as some proof that you are an adult, also people in small towns don't understand it like here where I live now - I have supermarket 500 m from my home, I have train and bus station near, so why feeding some metal can? Yes, ofcourse, sometimes it would be nice to jump into a car and go somewhere where it's hard to get by public transportation, but then I imagine all that stress and things which car people have to care about and all things they have to pay and I am like "I will just wait for that stupid train" 😀 Later when my mom started living with her boyfriend who has a car, my sister (still living with them in that time) started doing that "screw you, I will go by metro and then wait for you there" thing which I wanted to do many years ago with my foster parents going everywhere by car. It was the same, once you have a car, you have "enough time" for everything and then you realize you are already late and you didn't even leave parking yet, while my sister and me are already waiting there by public transportation. 😀
@@perrycheong1058 My mother fell into all those MLM and pyramide shits and made a lot of debts and father was just drinking beer because of that and didn't care about anything. I am saying it for a long time, MLM selling model should be absolutelly illegal.
As far as the US. End? No. I think we are reaching a plateau and in the near future will see a steady drop in car ownership if cities can invest in more public transport and design more walkable neighborhoods but cars are never going away.
Great video. I do have a car albeit a small one, and drive. I live in Dublin in Ireland and the public transport is inadequate for going to many places. If I want to get to work, it's 15-25 mins by car and over an hour by two buses, and cycling there isn't even an option as I'd be risking my life on windy back roads. Or to drive to my parents' house it's 20 mins and 90 mins by public transport. The only place I won't drive into is the city centre because it takes longer by car and very stressful. I would love if there were a better and quicker public transport system. If there were, I'd definitely use my car far less than I do.
Yup. I live on the outskirts of dublin and the public transport is pathetic. Literally every single other european city i have been to (including poorer eastern european ones) seem incredibly more liveable than Dublin. Shame all of this is hid behind the glamour of our inflated gdp per capita (we know why that is lol).
In Singapore, it costs $100,000 to get a driver's license. They provide as many alternatives as possible for all of the people who live and visit there. Wish we could do something like that...
Up until lately, I'd always felt really at ease while driving. I really enjoyed being behind the wheel, maybe speeding a little bit, with the radio on. But I've had one too many close calls, and now I'm more afraid than calm in the car. It's become much more apparent to me my likelihood of dying in my metal box, and it's terrifying. I think moving past cars is about changing the reality that a lot of people die on the road every day. I hope it's not me next.
I'm a transit user. Writing this on my bus. New hire at work came and asked to sign up for the parking garage because she tried transit and it blows for her. Two transfers and it takes an hour to get to work and maybe one or two hours to get home vs 20 to 30 minutes for driving. Transit needs to be a better option than cars in all respects for people to choose to use it, not because they have to or they're an advocate like me who hates driving.
Yep. In germany we currently have the 49 € ticket which allows you to ride regional public transport for 49 € a month. Some people with cars switched over because of the financial insentive (1 hour longer ride but I safe 100 € in fuel? maybe worth it) but the network needs to be expanded, so that it won't take longer than the car. Like Not Just Bike says: You want the freedom of choice. When car, bus, bike take all the same time then you're free to choose what you want.
If you can live without a car, great. If you cannot, great, get one. Framing this whole ordeal as a question of whether cars should be banned or their infrastructure gotten rid of is absolutely the wrong way to talk about it, and will only scare and rile up car people even more. Everyone's free to have what they want. This is a city people issue. Little changes like having downtown plazas be walk-only could work, with few roads only for emergency vehicles or minimal traffic, but never more than two blocks away from wherever you are.
As a European and an NBA fan, it blows my mind how many car ads there are on the US tv. It's like grocery ads here, giving the impression that cars are a necessity and they always have to be fresh 😀
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goyslop
The green's policy was to shut down nuclear plants and relaunch coal plants. Recently, they've been protesting wind power as well.
I don't blame you if you didn't realize something THIS ridiculous happened. That said, don't recommend parties in foreign countries, as it's easy to miss details. Advocate for policies, not politicians.
As someone who moved about a year ago from Argentina to the Netherlands, I must say that there hasnt been one day where I go by thinking: "man, I need my car". I do have one specific use case for me that still try to compels me to buy one, but I don't NEED, it at all. I live in a city close to Amsterdam, and public transport has not been a problem once. Not even when there where strikes and service shortage a few months back (comming from Argentina, they were just a breeze in comparisson). I can go to the office by bus or train, I have stops for bus at most 2 blocks away from my house. I have the train station by 10 min walk or multiple bus lines if I dont feel walking, or biking. Usually have more than one option to arrive at my clients offices... Bus, metro, train... And finally, when all else fails... Like, when I had to go to Den Haag to renew my passport and it just happened that a train derailment caused massive train delays and redirections, I just used a car sharing service (I try to pick electric cars if available) and paid for the 3 hours that I actually used it instead of parking, gas, insurance, permits, etc etc etc. Anyways, great vid, as always. Cheers.
@@LimakPan nuclear plants are perfectly fine, sure they create waste but with proper disposal practices that is just not a problem, and they produce a lot of power too, yet why are these so-called greens relaunching fucking coal plants, I wonder?
omfg youtubers canät stay away from misleading vpn ads
In Baltimore, they are actively working to narrow streets and reclaim road area for not car uses. They preemptively address the people that complain about the narrower streets by putting up road signs saying: “wouldn’t YOU want to live in a neighborhood safe to walk in?”
I'm sure that will really keep people safe from the gangs robbing people om the streets dave not driving to work is really going to solve this issue
seriously its fucking depressing how little my city cares abt pedestrians. and that attituded is propagated and spread to the point where i can fucking tell how little drivers care abt my saftey. i can go on and on for literally hours abt how unsafe i feel going on a walk. it makes me so fucking sad. and if i wanted to go to like a park where i can walk in peace, I NEED A CAR O GET THERE. its insulting to say the very least.
@@unseenmolee Houston is a fucking nightmare for pedestrians
" “wouldn’t YOU want to live in a neighborhood safe to walk in?”"
you dont have sidewalks and crossings in baltimore? huh?
or do you mean that when you make driving worse and force more people into not using the road then the street by your house will get less cars so safer?
I went to my first city meeting about a week ago and have already noticed a few amazing changes, some great new crosswalks that are very highly visible have already been painted. It's about the last thing I expected from my car centric Texas city but almost everyone there surprisingly shared the same ideas and expressed their concerns about having to drive everywhere, and how they are tired of not having sidewalks and basic pedestrian infastructure.
Im from a relatively big city from Mexico, and like 90% of my friends/people of my age don't have a car (25/27 yo). Its getting useless, and the city itself is catching on. The only people that complain about the city becoming walkable is old people who use their car for everything
Sounds awesome. I could have a car, but I hate the way they kill nature.
Nice to hear something good about Mexico!
Old people need safe walking even more. And we can reduce cars and still have handicapped parking for old people. Why should young healthy people be ALLOWED to park anywhere they want? Reduce total parking space and keep handicapped parking.
I thought you said Mexico City and I was gonna call this bullshit. Which city do you live in? Perhaps worth taking a look at it. Mexico City is awful. You need a cad but at the same time you will have a bad time in traffic.
That last sentence is a little funny considering that as they get even older, they shouldn’t be driving or should at least have it reduced.
@@SA-cb8fg You say this like old people don't have problems using cars.
Once I started seeing how cars are a space problem, I literally cannot unsee it anymore.
That's why most new buildings come with parking garages.
@@soundscape26it's not just the parking. It's also the roads. Something like 90% of the public space is built for cars. Just imagine your city if these roads where not running straight through them. How silent they will be. It'd be great.
Dont live in a city and cars are grand freedom makers. Let government control it and it will be just like the movie "sleeper"
You will be able to travel only when the government says it is ok. Idiocracy is waiting for you if you let the government keep taking from you.
Same. Ever since I started watching Adam Something and NotJustBikes, I can't even take a casual stroll around my home town without seeing a million problems with it. It's blessing but at the same time a curse.
@@soundscape26 you need around 30-40% of the building space if it is a single home, or even more for a highrise as parking space if every single person in that building gets a car park for their car.
most modern cities simply dont cater for cars as a whole, nor should it cars waste a lot of private and public money just to make it possible to use comfertably, public transport simply can do everything a car can do just a lot cheaper and a lot safer, only a very niche application where cars are actually needed like living in a remote area or when you want to go to very remote areas that rarely do people go there, and barely anything else.
Nah, Pixar still has like 10 Cars sequels to make
they better
soon we'll get a bikes movie
Imagine if the last one was the Cars having an existential crisis because they're no longer needed and they all end themselves.
Tbf, Cars has always been about racing, which will still be a sport even if we have more walkable cities.
Coming soon from the producers of Cars and Planes: "Legs"
I'm a car enthusiast, but seeing how car dependent cities made car owning experience a nightmare. I fully support the notion of building walkable cities. Car owning experience nowadays is a nightmare, gas is getting expensive, traffic jams nearly everywhere, and dont forget about the ridiculous prices for newer cars.
I am one hundred percent with you! I also love cars, but that doesn't mean I think cars should be used for every trip!
And the 40 thousand people who die on our streets EVERY SINGLE YEAR
Not even just the price of new cars, but the SIZE of them! Even the US isn't built for those monstrosities. We're going backwards with these as EV's too. We need smaller, more efficient cars, not huge ass trucks and SUV's that need enough batteries to power 4 regular sized cars.
@@TalesOfWar I despise pickup trucks and massive SUVs, those things are death machines
...and old car prices are also going up, and now increasingly targeted for theft. It's hard for those who couldn't afford one before.
*Politicians wildly taking notes*
"... pushing people into poverty will solve the car problems of cities"
yeah that would work, but it'd be cruel. But making cars more expensive would work. Lets say everyone has to pay the price for gas and recarbonasation of the gas, because that's whats causing other harm, than MUCH more people would go by a cheap metro
Making public transport insanely convenient
And walking and biking to be a obvious option
Whilst cars are simplistic reliable and 659cc 750kg
The amount of cars on the road is less
And the car itself takes up less
@@schlechtestergtaspielerdek3851
Cheap metro...
**me who lives in a town with 100.000 people** me-tro?
@@schlechtestergtaspielerdek3851 yeah I mean genociding people would "work" too but for some strange reason we don't do that, u know?
But hey I am sure making a necessary utility unaffordable will totally not cause poverty, misery and suffering.
It's all for the planet.
A lump of rock that does not give a fuck about us.
Yup. Totalllyyyyyyy worth it.
@@cr4yv3nfor cities under 100000 ppl population a proper bus system is a great solution
Young people aren't buying or owning cars because we literally can't afford to. 30-40k is a few years savings in your 30s, but in your 20s that's tuition. Rather than being a victory of urbanist theory, it's literally just the final state of car dependency: millions of youth now lacking freedom of mobility, with the only way to access food and mobility is through ride sharing apps, costing you more money and making car ownership even more of a pipe dream.
Hell, 30k-40k is maybe a decade of savings potentially at this point, especially if you start to factor in the cost of insurance, parking (even if you own a garage, that's still a lot of space dedicated to the car), upkeep and fuel costs. For something that will sit unused 90% of the time. And when it is used, it's probably a glorified shopping cart for groceries and goods or for one to/from work.
In the US. The trend is going down globally, and I can tell you economics is not why everyone rides a bike in Denmark. For a lot of people in european urban centers, the car is just a big expense you'd use very occasionally when you want to travel somewhere that's not practical to ride a train or a bus to. But it's typically american to assume cars are mandatory in every country. The former US ambassador to Denmark never could quite figure out why so many people rode bikes and ignorantly also attributed it to bad economics. It's not true, get better urban planning
Cars are stupidly expensive these days, and are also only getting even more excessively large. But that doesn’t mean that we lack the freedom of mobility, quite the opposite actually. In a well designed city you can get anywhere easily via public transit, biking, or walking
Do you live in a suburb where people only drive BMWs and Teslas? 💀 You can get a decent Honda or Subaru for at least 6k maybe less, insurance adds up but even if you add on 5k for that for a couple years that’s still way less than 40k.
I’m a fan of public transportation policy too, I’m not a big leftist but I am on this issue, just wish people would get real about it and stop being doomers and edgy nihilists
The fact that people my age don’t want to drive in spite of the fact that we live in a country that’s unnavigable without a car is a clear indication that we need public transit.
The demand is there, we just need the infrastructure to meet the demand.
*Edit:* Fair warning, the solipsism in the comments section will make your eyes bleed.
Too bad they ripped all the public transportation out of the city 60-70 years ago to build parking lots. I guess it will take about the same time to turn around and rebuild it.
Hehe sadly Supply/Demand economics are some BS. The government doesn't give an actual fuck about public demand unless it can make a buck off the top, or if it hurts their "friend's" businesses.
An used car costs like 300 euros for a bad example, 1500 € nets you a decent car with probably no large malfunctions. It's rather affordable.
ur 2 young to be watching athf then... imma tell ur mom
@@monsieurdorgat6864 Maybe it's less about muh evil gubamintz and more about people not voting for the kind of politicians who will do what they want. Simply wanting is not enough, you have to vote as well.
Something I read on Mastodon: politics is like public transport. It may not get you exactly where you need to be, but if you pick the right bus, it can get you close enough. Not voting is like sitting at home mad that your bus doesn't take you to the doorstep of your destination.
Oh hey, I also use Mastodon. Neat!
It's cool to see other people's insight there tbh
You made my day sir
I'm stealing this comment
Great theory if you live in the city, but it falls appart pretty quickly when you live in the country side and you have 1 bus the whole morning and getting to your work place would require changing bus 4 times and you'd arrive by lunch time. You're fired on your first day at work, congratulations.
@@TheFPSPower That's something that I think takes the comparison too hard. If you live in a rural area, are your choices suddenly all bad and you choose to not vote then? Because the bus is being presented in a place where it's supposed to function; it's a metaphor.
Good god, that sidewalk in Czech Republic turning into parking lots must be the dumbest idea in human history.
CZ has a reputation for making poor car-centric decisions lately…
Prague was ruled by Pirates, but in the last elections, older right wing car friendly party won and things are going back to car centric culture. Fortunately Pirates did a lot of good changes before they left and a lot of these things can't be just simple took back by new government, which is good.
lol they just drew four white lines with a chalk and called it a parking lot
Well one of our party who might be in parliament is called “motorists”. Go figure
For me, personally, I attribute a lot of my lack of satisfaction in life to being unable to socialize with other people my age. This isn’t a social anxiety thing either, it’s just that there is no place for me to actually meet people outside of a work setting.
because everyone is inside of car, here in my village, you see only cars, you don't see actual people outside and when they go from work, they jump to cars and then hide behind their walls and they will not go anywhere because, this culture is terrible, I want back to Prague, but unfortunately housing crisis made living in my mother city not affordable, but I really want back because of culture and people actually go outside and chill, not sitting in cars and behind their walls as in small towns
Yeah sure it's because of the car, let's ignore that people before the internet and smartphone were all driving and still meet and socialize easily. All capitals in Europe have great public transportation and "walkable" cities and despite that people are lonelier than ever. Stop blaming everything on car
And then you meet them and they scam disappoint you instead. Don't be dependent on people
@@OMAROMAROMAboa Nah mate, the cars were the start of it. We fucked over a lot of our neighborhoods and cities that used to actually have places to go and socialize at just to make more space for cars. The Internet and Smartphones are only a symptom of the problem that shitty cityplanning for cars started.
But yeah sure, ''new technology is bad''.
Get into cars and you'll find other car guys to socialize with.
Speaking as someone who LOVES cars, I can say you're damn right! If we would always provide better alternatives and could make people see that these alternatives are better, the roads would become a better place for car hobbyists. If you're not a car hobbyist, the only reason you have to choose driving over effective public transit or walking when it's feasible is the luxury of never making contact with anyone you don't already know.
Since I'm sure someone will bring it up if I don't, even though you explained this in the video: Of course driving into the city from small towns or farm houses will always make sense but that's not what causes traffic jams and most of automobile related pollution.
how would you feel if you could not drive walk cycle in your city because of outsiders
@@scruf153 I don't understand why you're asking me this question.
I remember studying George Lucas's "American Graffiti" in a university film course twenty years ago and thinking that the entire premise of the film felt completely alien to me - 1. being a teenager with their own car, and 2. driving it around for fun. Also it seems insane to me that the main form of identification in most places is the *_driver's license_*
And people out walking in some places are treated with suspicion.
Clearly a poor person up to no good.
Driving is no longer fun in places such as California since there's heavy traffic everywhere unless you travel at night.
It's pretty easy to simply get a federal ID instead. A lot of folks use military IDs too. Just whatever suits your needs. I had a buddy who lost his driver license and used his passport to get into a bar.
American Graffiti takes place in a sparsely populated steppe area with a town in it.
A rolling theme of this comment section is that people can't fathom that places unlike theirs exists
The whole 15 minute city thing is absolutely hilarious in most places outside of North America. Because most places outside North America... ARE 15 minute cities and have been for hundreds or even thousands of years in some cases. Somewhere like London is probably a prime example, it's basically a bunch of towns in a big urban blob. You don't need to walk far to get to a shop to do your "big shop" or at least just get some basics, or go out for a meal, or chill in a park. Obviously not all of London is like that, but a huge chunk is, all without having to drive to get further. And if you do need to go further, the public transport doesn't actually suck. It's kind of insane to drive though London, by choice. Only those with no other option should be doing it, but you get people doing it because, well, reasons.
I had this epiphany as to why when I was in allegedly overcrowded Singapore the spread of COVID was so much slower than I was reading about in America or basically everywhere else, and the answer I came to was that all the basic services were nicely distributed into the neighbourhoods, meaning I don't even have to leave my neighbourhood to do basic groceries, reducing the number of unique people I make contact with. Almost everything I needed was literally a 5 minute walk away.
Yet, at no point did I ever feel overcrowded when walking around around my neighnourhood. All the apartments are well maintained because people understand that if you make the effort to make things look good, they will actually look good. Of course the quintessential commie blocks in East Europe look bad, that's because no one actually paints them and repairs them regularly.
Rome is the same, if you leave out the center with all the monuments it’s basically 20 small towns fused together.
Because people commute into London as no one wants to live there and the trains are mayhem.
People will say nationalise them, but they already are.
The majority of people would deal with the inconvenience of lack of parking than deal with the kind of scum that inhabit our cities.
That thing basically debunks the myth of America being a developed country.
I live in Germany. I have in easy walking distance several bars and bakeries, one super market, several groceries and fast food joints, shops where i can buy clothes, shoes, even electronics, a bookstore, a tailor and other things i can't remember right now.
But then again, cities in Germany house on average 200,000-300,000 people, suburbs included....
I always supported the idea of car-free cities and IM A CAR NERD! Sure, even if cars stop being a necessity, I’ll still probably drop a few thousand bucks on my lil girl, but I’m definitely all for being able to just walk to where I wanna get. Plus a life without traffic jams sounds like a dream come true
Amen brother
Amen.
Same
It seems like reduced car dependency is good for everyone but oil lobbyists. People who wanna walk, can. People who want to bus or train, do. People who want to drive, now with fewer cars on the road there is less traffic. More options is inherently better than fewer options. Inherently more free. I still don't think that removing all cars form the road is desirable at all though.
I liked the idea too till my first child got born. The moment the little was sick I was happy to have a car. No way I was waiting 15 minutes for a pick up bringing me to the place I needed to be.
I love cars, I have 2 cars. I use public transportation everyday. I never commute by car because I love driving, and nothing breaks me more than sitting in traffic not being able to read or watch Adam's videos. I also think that being able to WALK in cities is a must. Cars should be a hobby not a necessity.
I'm in a similar boat. Commuting by car blows. Cars are best suited for longer distance travel and exploring
As a fellow car enthusiast who enjoys taking my Honda Civic on drives, I whole heartedly agree.
Hopefully, cars will soon be relegated to the same class of historical/hobbyist vehicles as steam trains and horse-drawn carriages. A small number of people will keep on making and driving them for fun or sport, but society will not depend on them as a regular form of transport.
@@InventorZahran That'll never happen outside of cities, which to be honest, I'm fine with, most rural locations depend on that car-based infrastructure not just for travel, but goods, services, etc.
Same, my daily commute to office is ~40km one-way between two towns and being able do that via bus or train would be great because then I could simply have a fun car for the weekends. But, the conservative pensioner-lobby is strong in Bavaria and it would be faster to walk than take public transport.
Cars? No. Car dependency? Slowly but surely.
I'd say the death of the car? No. The decline of the car? Yes, very much so.
Cars will remain a necessity in rural areas or places where the nearest big city is a 4 hour drive across multiple mountain passes, rail infrastructure between big cities would be nice though.
@@kirenscragg740 Kinda true, but we can also just build better monorails or train systems. I don't think cars will ever be abolished but cars will probably fade into irrelevancy like horses and carriages. The Amish will be driving honda civics in the far future.
Well, ones self-driving cars become a thing, they all will be taxis, no one will own a car 🎉
Too slowly IMO
Taking a train to NYC and traversing by foot is much more liberating a feeling than taking my car down, worrying constantly about parking, worrying about fees, about cops, about accidentally hitting a pedestrian, just all of that, gone.
Me in my SUV driving between appointments watching a 20-something in a suit riding an e-scooters…grrr…my car is a trap!
i never realized just how car-fucked my city is until i lost my license and realized i was basically trapped in my house: unable to go to work or the store or even just leave to visit friends or do ANYTHING. it was like i was a prisoner in my own city.
People in USA will say they are free...until they realize how dependent they are on so many things
Philadelphia has one of the more robust public transport systems in the US and it's still very easy to get stranded in the city after 11pm because they reduce the trains to one an hour. Most cities don't even have 24 hour rail.
And we wonder why everyone drives drunk
@@themightymcb7310well you need to be able to point at people who do bad things and tut-tut about personal responsibility. Circumstances be damned. (Obv. Don't drive drunk, but like if someone is in an unfamiliar part of town late at night and doesn't feel safe, as opposed to being 8 minutes away from home on foot, it makes sense why some people take that risk anyways. Well, that and the double bind of getting in trouble for just being in the vehicle vs getting busted for public intoxication. You can't win!)
@@somerandomguy___ try to live without oxygen then.
Of course you depend on a multitude of things. THat does not mean those things are shackles.
@Alexander_Kale I don't mean physical things, but societal factors.
In USA, you are supposedly free, until you get injured, then you are cursed to pay huge medical bills.
You are free to take education, but you will forever be burdened by its cost.
I don't think the car is ending, but the notion that everyone SHOULD NEED a car certainly is starting to crumble.
Which to me, is pretty good.
@@alihenderson5910do you disagree with their sentiment if applied to private jets? Should everyone need a private jet???
@@alihenderson5910 Look most people don't have a private plane do you really think people outside of like the F A R north are using a private plane to get groceries.
At its heart, a car is personal transportation with the added option of moving your things. There simply is not better option for that than a car of some description.
Sure, you can use a scooter or a motorized skateboard or a bike to get around, but you cannot use that to move stuff. Using public transportation when you need to buy groceries for a family of four is also not appealing.
The reason cars are not going away in fiction is the same reason capitalism isnt going away. they are both too useful.
@@costelinha1867 agreed. only the rich should own car. electric tricycle for you, peasants!
6:11 That's not western Europe.
That's Moscow after it's "My street" big urban redesign project which gave central Moscow:
-wide side walks
-removed car lanes
- parking fees
-quality urban furniture
-much improved public transport
Urbanists: literally no one wants to get rid of cars, we just want to minimize the negative effects they have on society. Making everyone use cars helps to stratify society by concentrating opportunity in the hands of those who can afford their purchase and upkeep. We have to make society better for EVERYONE, not just people who can afford cars.
Some dude on FB with a lifted F250 who makes $40k a year as an assistant manager at Chili's: REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Accurate. I hate how thats a thing. Poeple who don't have any critical thinking skills act like they have a degree in civil engineering and think we're wrong and going against their ideals when in reality our beliefs would benefit everyone
I'd like to see far fewer cars, which will happen naturally if we invest properly into well priced, reliable, regular integrated public transport networks, then it'll be more a case of those who either NEED to drive or really want to. We shouldn't take the option away, but offer more and encourage the modal shift.
There are in fact plenty of people who want to make cars illegal, but it's silly to screech about them, since car lovers outnumber them 1000 to 1, so it'll never happen in a democracy.
and he only leases the F250
the guy with the lifted ford is right tho. is it really freedom if you cant throw around your 4 ton pickup truck of death
I was able to live without a car for 2+ years and I felt more free than I ever had.
“The stuff that you own, ends up owning you.”
5:09 There was a time I was that 1% of people who took a commute of 120 minutes by public transport instead of 30 minutes by car. In my case, it was because I had PTSD from a car crash and didn't have the guts to drive back then.
Everytime I hear lawyer ads for car crashes, I cannot help but ask "Why are our roads so dangerous in the first place?"
A world where walking , public transport, bikes, scooters is what I hope to see more and more. Cars are good for very specific situations and don't need to be used for the usual trips.
no scooters. they have a working life a a few months.
You guys don't have winters?
@@cr4yv3n if we burn all the gas driving cars, winter will really suck.
Reminds me of the time when the Netherlands decided to build the nationwide biking infrastructur. They got enourmos backslash from the elderly and middleaged people. However they were the ones who started using it the most and don't want to miss it at all anymore.
Is this why they are now punishing us by killing us with their e-bikes?
There's a large chunk of society who are vehemently opposed to change as a point of principle
People just dislike change. They don't want change, even if it is nothing but beneficial to them.
They don't want change, because it's unfamiliar to them and that unfamiliarity is uncomfortable.
People are lazy and want to live comfortably - People do not want to leave their comfort zone.
I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just trying to rationalise people's thoughts, even if their thoughts are irrational.
@@Hurc7495 They're called 'conservatives'.
I got my drivers license as soon as I could, I absolutely love driving and I am the proud owner of a nice car at age 21 (which I worked for myself).
Yet, even I am a massive proponent of reducing and outright banning cars from the city limits, and possibly beyond... because that's what true automobile realism is.
Absolutely. That's just having a brain.
One thing to keep in mind. If someone is a car owner, they'll be reluctant to pay for a bus or metro because of all the money they've already put into having a car. So they end up trying to use the car for all their travelling needs, even when there are more convenient options available.
my car uses 7liters of LPG per 100km thats like 5$ per 100km and that fuel is heavily taxed, still way way better then public transport and cheaper
But a car is only cheaper if you own it outright. Most people can’t afford to spend tens of thousands up front, so they lease, which is why the average car payment in the US is like $700 a month
@@Pwnation98 then dont buy a new car...
just buy a used old car that is easy to maintain by yourself....
@@faustinpippin9208 Used cars are still thousands of dollars, and the older they are the more it costs to maintain. If you can do that maintenance yourself then great, but most people don’t have the knowledge or time.
I have an old car and it doesn’t me cost thousands of dollars to maintain it. Usually I have like one repair that’s over $500 and then other than that I’m just doing oil changes and some minor items here or there like new wipers.
Damn, I thought I was a the odd one out for wanting transit and getting my license late, not part of a global trend. I’m feeling hopeful.
Depending where you live and how available public transport is you either are or you aren't.
I’ve decided: I’m never gonna drive a car in my life. NEVER. You hear me?
I'm 33, live rurally in Aotearoa, and still never want to be a driver and am perpetually pissed off at the sprawling housing development going on around me on what used to be crop and dairy farm land.
@@真夜中の橋 Your choice, but you are severely limiting your life. Every trip we go on, we rent a car to explore, recent one was in Corfu, there was no way to explore the whole island otherwise. There is a time and a place for a car and it's in most places more of the time with the exception of large city centres.
@@DigiDriftZone that’s why I’m advocating for human-centric infrastructure. Tell me, would you have brought a car along with you on a trip if the whole island was accessible by bike and walking, most of the streets were nearly car free. No, you wouldn’t. You used a car, not because it’s a good locomotive, but because you didn’t have a choice. If I keep living like you and not take drastic actions against car centric infrastructure, I may not even have a future because of climate change. I’m well aware that my personal choices don’t matter that much. But the mentality to take drastic actions when needed is important.
My city (Montpellier, France) just made public transportation fully free a few days ago. It has a huge pedestrian city center and they made a huge event during the night with fires and a lightshow. I came here to study and I'm probably staying because of the human friendly design of the city. Truly an example of what a city should be and something that I'm proud of belonging to.
Thanks for convincing me to visit your beautiful city
We should always consider the *other* big factor in "car brain" - lobbying. I'm sure there are politicians who absolutely *could* imagine a world without cars, but not a world without lobbyists' "donations".
Finally someone who points out about this. It is simply impossible to create a world without cars before getting rid of the rampant bribery from the corporates to the politicians. The center of the tumor is the Big Automobile, which should be struck first.
Alas, it do be like that.
if people wanted a world without cars, they would buy fewer cars. "we are all brainwashed by evil money people" only gets you so far.
Maybe we should start lobbying lol
@@Window4503who would pay more, you with friends, or multibillioners,who own car industry?
I'm on vacation in a developing country (Vietnam) and let me say, I have had fewer problems walking from point a to point b. That said, I have had a new horror story: crossing the damn street with all the motorbikes coming at me.
Yea developing countrys are a different story. They don't really have cars or designated lanes. People and motorbikes just use the same lane and there are no rules. It somehow works though. They have reasonable accident statistics.
Us third world cant have any luxury of europe country had. How many lane do u need to cross? Never give me any ideas of crossing 2 lane each direction
@@julhizantwo2277 How many grammatically understandable sentences can you build is the better question.
I moved from Edinburgh, Scotland to the suburbs of DC for one summer in 2018. In Edinburgh, I had either walked or taken the bus to work/school since I was 11, and none of my friends had driving licenses (few do now either).
I was almost completely trapped in the DC neighborhood. There was one bus, that ran only at peak times in and out of the city centre. My only other option was an expensive uber, or a four mile walk. And this is in a city that is often touted as having one of the best public transport systems in the USA.
I hope the US can move in the more positive direction you outlined.
DC has well good for Murica public transport. Which means they at least have a train/subway, but you have to drive to the subway.
My problem with the whole "voting for the least worst" is that, in my country, Australia, the labour party supports cars, the liberal party supports cars, the national party supports cars, and the green party supports electric cars.
There literally isn't even an option.
It's single vote transferable there no? You can vote for the electric car party, then tell them to pull their support closer to no car. Parties aren't a monolith.
There is still a perception that no car is a very radical change so the best you can do right now is to get those who are already amenable to less polluting options to choose more comprehensive methods.
Is that the only thing thats on the ballot
Just street planning? Poor you
That must be so complicated
@@Moonstone-Redux except there is no "no car" party
This might be true on the Commonwealth level but on the state level this simply isn't true. This is because many urban planning decisions are state issues, sometimes council issues. There are definitely parties that have better urban planning strategies than others on the state level.
@@BluePieNinjaTV Vote for the electric car party, then through grassroots movements try to convince them to deprioritise cars. You may not succeed, but never let perfect be the enemy of good.
As a young adult, I want a future where we can have actual good infrastructure and walkable cities, so no matter what pressures me, I refuse to get a car.
Everyone should want walkable cities.
I would also say bikable, or affordable transit.
@@ericb.4313 Absolutely
@@Exoskel2 Carbrain is a real disease. I've seen people spouting off about how it's muh freedum to own and drive a car (while ignoring the massive costs associated with it.) On the other hand, I want the freedom to not *have* to drive everywhere and the peace of mind that I'm not going to get hit by a Ford F150 that refuses to give space when I'm biking or something.
My coworker ate the conspiracy pill on 15 minute cities about how you "wouldn't be able to leave your 15 minute zone." Went on about how he'd be taxed for driving, forced into buying a certain type of car, the government will control you when you can't drive anywhere etc.
I'm fortunate to live a mile from a rail line which is super rare for the US because it's relatively close by. It goes like 1.5 miles away from my work. So it'd be doable. The distance could be significantly shorter if it wasn't for all the awful roads everywhere. But they don't run trains 24/7 so while I'd be able to get to work, I'd have to bike 13 miles home in the dark. Public transit exists, it's just NOT effective at all. (Yet.) I hope things improve. Less roads, more train lines.
The problem is when you get a good, well paying job that's like 20 miles away from home
Honestly this is more depressing than anything. Not because of the message I 100% agree, but because Denmark as a whole is backsliding FAST! We might be building some transit lines here and there and make a few walkable city improvements but everything else is moving us towards car dependency at a much greater pace! Like the extremely high ticket prices for public transit which have caused a deahspiral with even greater ticket price increases, decreasing ridership for over 10 years, and several servcie cuts and line closures in both urban and rural areas!
The ticket prices for Public transit here are insanely high, about twice that of German or American cities, especially for longer suburb to downtown trips where transit otherwise would have the bigger edge!
In most cases the economic difference between a monthly transit pass, and a car is negligible, and the transit pass is only valid in the exact few zones between your home and your workplace, which already gives you much less flexibility than the car here! The economics here are sadly working in favour of cars, not transit!
And this is all while our governments for the last many years have refused to increase subsidies for transit or even just turn the situation around, and increasing subsidies for car commuters, and limiting municipal and regional governments the power to change that. All of that while canceling several rail and public transit projects in favour of increased domestic air travel, and 4+ lane 130km/h highways to every single town in the country with over 20.000 people living in it, while their parallel railways have seen no investment since the 1980's and only run once per hour!
And this is all while the politicians preach about that people should take public transit more, while also sabotaging it constantly, giving the public little to no faith in the system or that it could ever be improved, making even more people switch to cars just to not deal with it!
Oh and that's not mentioning the Police having the right to Veto any changes in road design here in Denmark, and 99% of the time being highly against changes that improve safety and practicality for pedestrians and cyclists for very car centric reasons! Plus they've heen on an all out offensive against cyclists lately with over 1000 arrests just in the last week in Copenhagen for minor offenses like not having an electric light turned on, a lack of a bell, holding a phone, or cycling down the wrong way on a quiet one way side street.
God I hate Denmark at times like these!
As another person from Denmark i totaly agree im courintly studinge in Aarhus and if it wasent for ungdomskort the trip would cost me more then 100kr each Way and simple 20km rides kan cost more then 40 kr each Way and at that point it cost the same i fule to drive it youreself. There is no world where those proces can work for someone having to work for them. And bikking which we are known for is also not progressing as qikly as it should. In more rual places the bike lanes help a lot and make people cykeling to and from plases fell a lot safer. Insted they often just get the dich of the cars road to drive in.
I just sold my car and your channel has a big part in inspiring the change and opening my eyes to car culture. It has been freeing in many ways. I hope more people decide against driving (if able) and cities start shifting towards car free planning.
I did the same 12 years ago, and never want to come back to it a single time since.
Sometimes I get discouraged by French politics, wondering for who to vote at the next elections, and sometimes even wondering "why?". Your reminder that it is a game of the lesser evil is of great help against harmful abstention, thanks for that.
just a little reminder that lobbies have offices in l'elysée that basically where the real decisions are taken, corruption is rempant legalized, organized, encouraged, politicians are the new mafia in france. this is too late to have a change, it need to collapse before any change is possible sadly...
@@ganjaman59650 Get lost with this doomerism. Things get bad when people stop caring, you're adding to the problem with this attitude.
@gandjaman59560 it was exactly that type of doomersim "they are all the same",."your naive for voting" type of thinking that drove my country into dictatorship.
Whenever someone says "they're all the same or democracy isn't working" they are increasing the chances of those things becoming true. So yeah just vote don't try to be smart and endgy.
@@ganjaman59650 Spoken like a true gamer.
@@ganjaman59650 People who advocate for collapse seem never to realize that the people dying in such a collapse may well be themselves. Revolutions are rarely bloodless and often hijacked after all.
I am a "car guy". I love wrenching on my truck. I like going for drives. I like thrashing around in the dirt.
I really don't understand why ppl are against public transport and bike lanes. it literally makes driving easier for ppl who just like driving like me.
Back in the 70s and 80s and even 90s, the whole point of young people wanting to get their license and a car (in the U.S.) at least was to go and hang out with their friends. With the onset of social media this isn't a thing anymore. I have 3 teenage daughters right now and they'd die without their phones but aren't in a hurry to get a car. So couple that with the economic reasons you pointed out and I can see why youth don't want cars.
What's the coolest thing your daughters could do with friends? Assuming you buy the car and insurance, how often could they do that thing while still affording gas and keeping up with responsibilities?
There are communities where kids have valuable third places, if yours does then it would be good for your daughters to get out of their comfort zones. In all likelihood though the experience will be expensive and hollow if not dangerous.
Lived in London for 10 years. Didn't get a driver's license until the age of 35. Didn't need one. Only learned to drive because we went on a holiday where my girlfriend was forced to do all the driving and refused to do it in future.
But then learning to drive meant that when we could afford to buy our own place we weren't restricted to just London. And ended up living in pretty much the countryside.
But if we moved back to a city, my expectation is that I shouldn't need a car.
I honestly think that Covid19 changed the American workplace forever. Private offices used to be the norm for professional workers, but today you get a work-table, a storage unit, and a chair, crammed into a wide-open space with everyone else. When Covid19 sent millions of workers home, unused guest bedrooms were quickly turned into offices. And almost immediately Americans re-discovered the benefits of a private office. A quiet and productive work environment with fewer interruptions, and the ability to take private family phone calls without having to censor yourself or telling them you'll call them back in a few minutes. I believe this is another (lesser) reason for the trend,.
"My job doesn't require me to actually go in so we should make it harder for everyone who does" is entirely the expected take for 🥖 mouth breathers.
@@CowMaster9001 No. My job doesn’t require me to go in. More jobs can be like mine. That reduces road use… congestion… pollution….
@@ericmatthews8497And when ecological concerns stop the globalized economy and make power too spotty to have the majority of Westerners working on computers at home an economically feasible solution?
@@CowMaster9001 Well, when the globalized economy stops you're out of a job anyway.
@@tortenschachtel9498 Back to foraging for food in the post-apocalyptic landscape.
Ah yes, cars are the true icon of freedom. Essentially a prisoner of your own home until you are old enough to get a license and scrape up enough money to finally get one. America really is the icon of freedom where there is only one way to reliably get around and it is slow & insanely expensive.
Not to mention dangerous. 40,000+ traffic deaths per year! It's crazy.
And keep in mind that when you're going anywhere, you're essentially a prisoner inside your car untill you arrive at your destination, specially if you get yourself into a traffic jam.
@@sachamm Not to mention the noise and air pollution.
A car gives you freedom, as soon as you use that freedom, it becomes your master, you cannot live without it.
AND EVEN BETTER, driving cars is treated as a privilege not a right.
So your "freedom" gets taken away anyway! Isn't the transit system in America so amazing!?
The fact that car enthusiasts aren't even smart enough to say "it's great if other people choose bikes, so there is less congestion for me"... says it all. It's about identity. Reality denial. Fear of change.
Actually, you'd be surprised with how many car enthusiasts, mostly on the younger side, chime in on r/fuckcars and other urbanist internet-places supporting public transportation. Some *do* understand that less traffic makes driving better and public transportation gets bad drivers off the road. It's mostly older folk who cling on to cars. Because they're set in their ways, or they grew up when public transportation was actively being ruined & brand new road networks had yet to succumb to the cycle of induced demand, or they watch anti-city, fear-mongering new too much.
I am a car enthusiast and literally just commented that. But also please realize that we car enthusiasts are always getting screwed over by sloppy regulations that apply to the masses. E.g. I have a sweet offroad truck I put tons of work into building that I only drive like once every 3 months to go camping, but have a nightmare to deal with annual inspection and emission testing because the regulations just assume it's a daily driver. Even if that thing emitted 100x a regular car the fact that I only use it for recreation means it still has a lower carbon footprint. But because it's all a custom build I have tons of legal problems to deal with thanks to the laws that just assume a car is a person's default sole form on mobility for monotonous life. In my daily life I ride a little electric kick scooter to get groceries and walk and bike. The people overusing their cars as sole form of transport ruins it for us. Imagine if your favorite thing got a ton of laws written about how you can do it because a ton of over people do it too much for no good reason. Please don't be anti-car, be pro-alternatives so that people don't have no choice but to resort to cars. Being anti-car is just focusing on the symptom instead of the problem that the cities are not providing efficient mobility options to residents.
@@mikebarnacle1469 I totally get it. I have family members who like to work on 50s and 60s American classics, only to drive them a couple of times each summer. I hope you find a way to use your camper without the legal hassle.
Not all car enthusiasts are idiots. Many are, but not all of them.
I am a carguy myself but I only enjoy driving my 90s JDM cars to the mountain passes or something like that and for a versy long time even supported EVs (I live in the countryside of germany where not public transportation exists or makes even sense) but I learend that it is incredibly difficult because it seems there are just two extremes. Most of the EV fans are like "Ban all the other cars, shit on gas cars..." and on the tratitional car community its even more toxic. a lot of them just shit on everything that doe´nt burn gas. Its like there is no middle way. no "sure, 80% of my drive are just commuting to work or buy grocaries, why ot using a EV or public transport there and lets have fun with my toy cars on weekends. It seems a differentiated debate is,t possible anymore
@@ayanami5610 Yeah you're right. Of course everyone needs a car sometimes. Some of us need one all the time. (I sure hope everyone gets that.) I have a soft spot of the 80s Corvette myself.
Always have I had cars but the last year or so I have hardly used it in favour of bicycle and train. I love the train as it gives me an opportunity to finally read "that" book
I took a vacation to Amsterdam and I loved taking the train, trams, and the bus. I love having random encounters and conversations with strangers in my day to day life. You don't get that in car dependency
And then there’s Star Trek which has humanity thriving without both capitalism and cars 🖖🏼
Try Ursula Le Guin.
Yes! It was interesting to see a system of no money use in a way. People were just taken care of, could apply for things etc.
I remember an episode in Voyager in which Harry was going to Starfleet HQ in San Francisco, and he took BART! He went underground to take a train. I loved it!
@@RahshuBART being finally useful is indeed science fiction 😂
And Star Trek also had fusion power (antimatter power?), matter replicators, transporters, and warp-capable SHUTTLECRAFT (never mind starships).
But of all of the technology in Star Trek, the most important is the source of unlimited widely available energy in the form of fusion (and matter-antimatter reactors).
Fortunately, that technology should be the easiest to achieve technology from that science-fiction universe.
COULD YOU IMAGINE POWERING BART, REPLICATORS, TRANSPORTERS, ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY, HOLODECKS, ETC. WITH SOLAR AND WIND POWER SOURCES? (Not even talking about warp drive.)
As soon as we have clean, reliable, renewable FUSION power, I am quite sure that many concerns we have today (and a lot of the concerns that Adam Something discusses) will just go away and fail to matter anymore.
Fusion energy will power our gadgetbahns, electric cars, direct air capture plants, hydroponic farms, etc.
Voila! Poof! A lot of problems just disappear instantly.
Excellent video as always. The American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, remarking on people who didn't want to vote in the 2016 election because they believed that it was just a choice between the lesser o two evils, said, "You know what the lesser of two evils is? Less evil!" He implored people to put aside purity and recognize that preventing more harm is a perfectly legitimate reason to vote for one candidate over another. Very glad to see your take on the subject in this video.
I’m a high schooler in Houston. My parents took our two cars to do stuff today, and now I’m trapped. If I want to go get something like, food, my options are a gas station, a cvs, or attempting to cross a 6-lane stroad and then survive the 10 acre parking lot to get to the grocery store
Yeah, I somehow always had the feeling in the US parents are not supposed to let their kids outside of their house unsupervised under any circumstances. This feels like clipping the wings of young people so they will never actually grow up and be independent and not fearful of unknown stuff they encounter.
@@niklasoliverroth I’m constantly confused by parents driving their children 100m to the school bus stop
I remember a friend of mine who watched a documentary like 20 years ago (we're in the UK) and it was about car use in Houston. He said they didn't have pavements (sidewalks) and they drove their kids 100m up the road to school. I didn't believe him until I saw it. It blew my mind.
Darwinism at work
/s
thats the fault of bad zoning in the US and cheap land not the car...
I would like to tell all car enthusiasts that we do actually want most urban people to stop driving. I mean would you rather have karen drive her kids to school in an SUV therby increasing traffic and the amount of demand for SUVs or have her send her children to a school that they can walk or cycle to
Auto enthusiasts as a group are for the most part captured by industry. They trust the executives that profit from them more than the neighbours that respect them enough to meet them where they're at.
also if kids could walk SAFTLEY to school and back home, then schools wouldnt have to start and end in a way that makes sure parents are off work... it could help sm more than just less traffic.
car enthusiasts are the least problem. They actually take care of their car, and (for the most part) do not buy a new car every 3 years. As a car enthusiast, I approve of getting rid of cars and parking spaces in cities. The biggest problem are the normal folk, that do not care about their car but still use it because it is a more comfortable option.
@@Seltsamisierend The point is you as a car enthusiast should be at the front of the line advocating along with fiets-ers and urbanists for bike lanes and public transit. Your experience of the road would be so much better without shitty-driver-but-has-to-drive-because-there's-no-better-option Karen. And so would everyone else's.
Boring cars should be banned actually. They're slow and annoying and useless.
"falling out of love" is a weird way to say "seething hatred"
I have a relatively car-brained family, and they REALLY want me to get my drivers license, but I just don’t see the point. Literally every place I plan to or am considering living in across my entire life you can live without a car. Plus it’s tremendously cheaper to bike or take public transit than it is to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on owning a massive block of metal that’s inefficient and dangerous to everyone else
Get licensed anyway. You're rated based on how long you've had one, not how many miles you logged on it. Should a future situation demand you to drive, it's better to have and not need than need and not have.
same here in the netherlands, am still getting one just in case i ever need it.
IF *THEY* are paying for it, do get a licence. You still don't need to own a car, but you will have an extra skill set. Plus in case of emergency, you could use a car from one of those car share systems. Or take over driving if your family member gets unwell behind the wheel when you're in the car with them.
This advice is based on the premise that it's better to know things than to not know things.
If your reluctance to learn to drive is purely based on environmental reasons, then by all means don't take it. I myself have a driver's licence that my parents paid for, but i don't own a car. I'd like to learn to ride a motorcycle, but i don't need to & it feels like a extravagant wasteful thing to do, burn all that fuel just to get an extra piece of paper, so i don't.
My family is the same way. I don't listen to them lol
@@alexseguin5245 me neither lol
Would love to see a response to some of the rhetoric around 15min cities being a way to 'restrict your freedom'.
It absolutely is. We don't all live within 15 minutes of eachother, I want to visit some family friends in the next town, that could be a 30 minute drive or 4.5 hours by public transport, it's just not doable. It all depends on your geography and needs, here in London zone 6, it's impossible to live without a car. So much so 80%+ of households, including the poorest households own a car.
@@DigiDriftZone 15 minute cities are always going to devolve into walled cities
@@lookstothetroon yeah sure all cities in my country are walls💀💀💀
@@DigiDriftZone I can't tell whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with jack
@@lookstothetroon ...as evidenced by...?
1960: "i bet we will have flying cars in the future"
the future: no cars
As someone living in Leipzig I just have to add something: You showed Richard Wagner Platz as a positive Example at 5:17. A 180 degree camera turn away is one of the WORST Intersections I have ever encountered with multiple lanes for cars. I cross this intersection on my way to work and its horrible. With my bike I have to cross the road 3 times ( a pedestrian signal just on one side of the intersection) while a car can go straight through. Literally a few hundred meters down the right is the pedestrianized city centre which is great here.
5:45 as a Czech, I was waiting for you to talk about it. Its just marvelous to see how far backwards we can actually go in this direction.
I'm 46 and I've never owned a car neither I know how to drive, all my life I've been using public transportation, walking or bike. I'm from Chile, currently living in the capital, Santiago. I live in a good location, I have 3 supermarkets at walking distance, and a full shopping center at 15 minutes using the subway (or 45 minutes walking), the commute to my job takes me about 30 minutes by subway.
An odd thing about Chile, is the most conservative municipalities in Santiago are the ones with the most walkable and bikeable zones (Providencia, Las Condes, Vitacura, among a few others). The infrastructure isn't the best, but they keep improving by reducing car lanes and securing the bike lanes. Also a good thing about Chile is that the drivers are respectful of the pedestrian, stopping at the crosswalks whenever there is someone who wants to cross.
I’d like to chime in on this a bit. A big factor for me is the massive increase in both e bike supply and availability.
Most good quality pedal assist e bikes can replace the single person transit needs that cars would previously have filled. While also still having the VROOM factor
I use my ebike everyday I need to go somewhere. I use it for grocery shopping, work commutes, leasure; its a wonderful machine and you don't even need to take on loans for it. My ebike was $2k and there are cheaper ones that can do the job just fine.
Even on my "acoustic" bike, even though I can go much faster in my car than on my bike, the bike somehow feels faster, especially going downhill. One part of the route I particularly like not far from my home is a section that goes downhill and then immediately uphill, and you can go down the downhill part as fast as possible and let the resulting momentum carry you all the way up the uphill part without having to pedal at all until you reach the top of the hill.
This is going to sound weird but there's another thing that helped make public a more appealing (or less unappealing) option: Mobile devices. People may hate them but watching a show or playing a game makes the commute much more bearable.
I just was explaining to my car loving friend about how rail based public transport is the best solution for all factors combined. He just replied "but, I like to drive". Some car people are so focused on cars and themselves, that they can not look at the big picture. They just keep to their habits without thinking at all. And the same guy always complains about other drivers, traffic etc.
@@MikaTuukkanenTell him it's a win for him as well. He can still drive but he will encounter less traffic and congestion. Cities being less dependent on Cars mean taking people off the road and less pollution so people who occasionally or prefentially would like to drive will have a better experience.
@@Priya-cm3tr i did. He dod not teally react to that in any way.
That's what I do alot on Lyft rides which allows me to be alot more productive
@@MikaTuukkanen I had one job with an hour commute years ago. Annoyingly it took double the time on public transport and tbh was impossible anyway because the business park that I was working at was pretty much impossible to walk to.
I had a fun car but the grind of the commute completely took the fun out of driving. After that job I vowed I'd never have a job where I needed to drive. Then the next job I got was a 30 minute journey by train and even though it would be a bit crowded sometimes, being able to doze off while listening to a podcast or even read a book sometimes was way better than the stress of driving.
Funnily enough I was late for work way less by train as even if a train was cancelled usually the wait was only about 10 minutes more for another one. Whereas if someone broke down on/had an accident on the motorway you could be waiting for god knows how long.
Not to mention the cost, when i quit the previous job even after I wasn't working for a while I couldn't believe how much money I'd been spending on fuel/maintenance. The price for the season ticket felt like nothing in comparison.
Now I wfh and have a very rare train commute into the office, I still have a fun car. But I chose to use it for actual fun things like trackdays or even the occasional road trip.
As a car guy I will still collect cars but mostly be car free in the city and only use it when it’s raining, going out with family or going to see my family
The price that energy (either electricity or gasoline) is reaching, coupled with the price that cars themselves are reaching, might be the trigger for people buying less and less cars. Much more than urban design imo...
Right on the money!!!
But this Hungarian Communist only wants to spin his fairytale stories of millions of young adults in the Western world going carfree by choice!!!
For 90% at least it has to be involuntary carfreeness because of poverty.
Ive been getting around by ebike and my gas bill is just about $0
Or just using older cars
@@ilyassakhanov6438 .
In the UK, there is the yearly MOT, an older car can be expensive.
Worst thing is that they are reaching those heights for no other reason than, at least in Europe, botched energy transition and too tight regulations. When I have recently checked data from PXE the price of electricity went from 40-50€ per MWh in pre-2020 to 120-150€ per MWh post 2022. And that is in fact not a good thing. It is too rapid and progress on solution is too slow.
If only there were some way I could borrow a car on the rare occasions I needed it and could pay for privilege with some sort of tax and insurance inclusive hiring fee. A 'hire car' if you will.
that's called "taxi" and if we allowed tax breaks for calling taxis we'd end up with a hillarious, but not necessarily deisrable situation.
These 2 replies are worthy of r/whoosh
I think thats a great idea. I think we should call it "Ride Share", you know cuz many people can "Share" a "Ride".
Noooo we make them pods on wheels. With drivers that you can call with a wireless device called x-phone. We call these pods Megapods
Taxis I can just about live with but ride sharing? That involves being in a box with those horrible things I don't like very much... What are they called now?... Oh yeah! People.
This all sounds perfectly with urban spaces for bikes, trams etc. The problem starts when you have drive to work 20+ miles, have three kids, one of them is sick and you want to deliver everyone as convenient and quick as possible.
As someone who has always loved cars (and still does), I only bought one because there's no decent public transport in the countryside, and my workplace used to be far away from home. Driving's fun on twisty roads and highways, not in cities. That's what walking/riding a bicycle/motorcycle/using public transport's for.
Edit: Also, cars are expensive, and taxes certainly don't help. I think that people aren't buying cars mainly for financial reasons, but that they would rather use nice public transport over driving if they could.
Lucky you if you have "nice" public transport that actually works, has a decent schedule, and you aren't at greatly increased risk of being robbed or stabbed or shot just by being on it!
@@gorak9000 Exactly. That's an issue for a lot of people, sadly.
Conservatives/capitalists be like "Oh you want more and better transit systems? Tell me, who's gonna pay for it? Us good, traditional folk? The hard-working billionaires? Dream on, liberals! Either don't come out of your houses or get a car!"
"We don't have houses. We have roommates. And no parking space."
Working people pay nearly all of the taxes now & billionaires & their corporations pay from 9% to 0. Yes, we want our taxes to go to a rail transit system.
Billionaires golf, they don’t work.
Ironically this is the least crazy narrative.
Not that I disagree with you, but nice strawman
I was 19 when I got my driver's license, my mid 30's before I bought my first car which I sold in under 3 years. It was cheaper to use public transport as a single person & on the rare occasions I needed a car I hired one for the weekend or a week at most.
YES. Thank you. Voting in local elections is the most effective, easiest thing you can do to make change. It's literally the least you can do if you care about how your city is run.
“Caught the disease called car brain”
I think “received lobbying money from the industrial complex since the first cars were invented” is the most accurate description
This is how political diseases are transmitted. lol
I'm curious why the massive industrial complex that was the railroads wasn't able to strangle the automotive industry in its crib in your childlike view of politics...
@@CowMaster9001 y’know what? Just thought about it for one more second and it’s become very obvious…
Why did we still have horses instead of just railways until motorcars were invented?
I would like to point out that in my country(brasil), the way to get in the "car world" is not very friendly. Usually there’s a major corruption problem: after all the fees possible to get a license, we usually have to pay what we call "quebrado" that's just a bribe to the car instructor don't deny you the license.
As soon, as I moved from the Czech countryside to Brno, I've lost the rational need for a car. Repairing old cars is still one of my passions, but it's not a thing my life depends on now. I can get anywhere either on bike, or using one of the best public transport system in our country. Hell, there are even a bunch of special night lines to take your drunk ass back from the pub, and spit you out in 5 minutes walking distance from your home. Imagine around 16 high capacity busses leaving the city centre at the same time. Every 30 minutes from 11PM to 1AM and then every hour till 6AM, when the normal daytime lines gradually start their operation. The small amount of time you save by driving the car to work is lost when you are trying to find available parking spot, and then stressing over the police giving you a ticket, when you had to park on the side of the road, because every parking spot were taken.
Yeah, with all the Adam's bashing on Czech Republic's car centrism and bad urban planning and general backwardness (which is justified, don't get me wrong), the public transport, at least in big cities, is really great, it's frequent, gets you everywhere and with the exception of some bus lines that go through congested areas, it's usually pretty on time. There's really no need to own a car if you live in Prague or Brno. And I think about 50% of commutes are done via public transport at least in these two.
And yet, there's still so many people insisting they absolutely must drive everywhere (and park anywhere) and then they complain about the big traffic jams that _they_ cause. Meanwhile I ride right past them in a tram or on my bicycle. Lately, more and more I laugh at them and keep telling them that there's simply too many people driving cars and that the only solution to smoother traffic is less cars, or at least less car trips. The mentality here is really baffling, given the public transport options.
Reminder: if you live in a city with ranked choice voting, don’t strategic vote. Just vote for who you like, it’ll lead to the same result. Just remember to number all the boxes!
this!!!!
But I think strategic voting is generall is a bad idea. It leads to only shit choices
I love how we can easily distinguish stuff by music :D
- Fallout Ambient Music = DYSTOPIA
- Super Mario 64 Underwater Stage Music = UTOPIA
Also I now have to listen too all the N64 music tracks. Super Mario, Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo Kazooie, ... childhood nostalgia activated :D Thanks @Adam
one thing that's not talked about when it comes to car centric cities, is that if kids have parents that are not willing to drive them around to go places, the kids will be more likely to be isolated and overweight. no one really plays outside in the field past 10-12 years old. you have to actually go somewhere fun, and if you can't do that because you don't have a driver's license, and the city has very late buses, then you're screwed.
this becomes infinitely worse if you live in north america style suburbs. basically guaranteed to have no social life if your parents are unaware and aren't taking you places.
Yeah I was super lucky (relative to NA kids) to grow up with short walks to school playgrounds/sports fields/parks one way or another, and have been fit to some extent my whole life
Then you think of kids in suburbs with their residential area literally caged out by a highway on all sides... gee I wonder why +40% of the USA populous is obese
source for that claim? ... btw ideally a paper and not a news article
@@NoahElRhandour y would u need a source bro is speaking fact
@@NoahElRhandourOur lives?? The only reason I wanted to drive as a high school senior was because I got tired of coordinating with my parents to have a social life. Not everything needs a paper, especially if it’s lived by most of the people you’re talking to here.
That sounds absolutely counterintuitive for people not in North America.
Your parents don't drive you = you have to take the bicycle or the bus. Both modes of transportation force you to move much more than driving would.
Even though I am a car dependent countryside inhabitant, I fully support all policies disincentivising cars in cities. Many of us are poor in the countryside, but for a thriving living space for humanity with both more comfort and longevity, everyone should be willing to make some sacrifices.
You'll get cheaper cars once urban demand falls.
I'm 18. I recently got my driver's licence. My parents keep insisting on buying me a second/third hand car, have it repaired and ready. While this is a way better alternative to buying a 30K+ car, i still don't want a vehicle. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to not be bound to my parents' cars but i also do not want to have my own car. I do not travel a lot, nor do i want to. We have arguments about it nightly.
The ability to work from home is another Factor that's allowing people to live car free.
i would imagine that cannot be done for most people though. Even leaving aside the obvious like construction and carpenting and repair work, most service jobs still require hands on deck. restaurants, fast food joints, shops, all of those might reduce their people on site, but if they do, they will replace them with robots, not introduce home office.
One could argue that all of the above can use busses or trains, but then again the same would be true for the people who would otherwise be doing home office.
Less than 5% of people work from home. Might wanna come out of the ivory tower
@@cr4yv3n where did you get that number?
@@cr4yv3n regardless of the percentage of people that work at home, it is a factor, how big of a factor that is a question but it has an impact.
@@aaronbono4688 european comission statistics. The data is from 2019, but unless we all gotten richer ( spoiler alert: we did not ), LESS people can afford to work from home.
Because surprise surprise: the actual goods you consume are made by people who don't "work from home".
Politicians won't make pro-commuter policies because they never use it.
In Toronto we recently elected a mayor that rides her bike regularly, even in winter. Politicians like her exist elsewhere, if you look for them.
@@Frostbiker there is always hope in every new generation. happy to hear about that
@@JohnM-ch4to something I learnt about politicians, force them to use the same services everyone else uses and they're going to fix it.
I wonder if they realized that fewer cars on the road would still help them get from point A to point B with fewer problems.
@@vxicepickxv they won't because no one is forcing them to get them out of their cars... yet
Love the use of the Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Conflux Theme at around 6:58.
Damn, you’re right.
Also love how South Park uses the new week music in certain episodes.
The automotive industry has given us a golden opportunity to leave cars behind as a niche transportation option, with the high prices for all things car, we just need to make sure there is some viable alternative for people to choose. What makes a viable alternative varies from person to person and location to location, could be bike lanes, could be walkable plazas, could be trains or maybe (probably) all three.
In Denmark there is a 150% tax on new cars. I think its a good economical way to incentivize people to not buy a car.
If you do such a step you have to give the alternative simultaneously. It will never happen in Germany, where the so called conservatives bulldoze bike lanes and destroy train and bus infrastructure to maximize the profit for the upper class that is "leading" it
@ your math is off. 150% is 1.5x 30,000 plus half of 30,000 is actually $45,000
@@Xenderman if the 150% are charged ON TOP of the vehicle price - Bogdan is actually right !!!
@@tk80mufa5 ohhh 45k added onto it. Yeah that's definitely an incentive not to get a car lol
@@Xenderman 😉
I once read Singapore has some kind of absurd car tax too, would be interesting for a video.
Can't be that many places with such absurd taxes.
I have moved to a small town. I happily walk into the town centre and to visit family. I barely use my car these days, I still have it for those more rural runs I need to do on a weekly and monthly basis. I get a bit more exercise, and get so annoyed at my family which continually uses their car for the same journey
I went through the car-centered rite of passage in the 90s. Now that I live in a city where I can be car-free, I feel much freer than I did when I had a car. So much less hassle & responsibility along with less sunk costs that come with car ownership.
“streets will be destroyed and rebuilt every 30 years”
My brother in Christ, here in Romania it feels like almost every meter of road is rebuilt every 5 to 10 years so that the politicians can have residents say “yeah they stole but at least they did something”
edited for typo
"Because we all watch notjustbikes" we're all the same aren't we
"It would be nice to assume young people are more enlightened but they are usually just more broke"
The city of Szczecin, in Polande, is going through a great re-urbanization program. 4 lanes avenues are being rebuild with only 2 lanes and larger sidewalks. Changing interchanges with roundabouts. Give it a look if you have the chances Adam. Cheers!
Yes, Lublin has rebuild one of it's main roads leading to the city centre. They actually made an additional lane in both directions but these are bus lanes. They also managed to make bike lanes on both sides and wide pavements while keeping the trees that've been there. Earlier it was a terrible asphalt pavement that started rolling itself and looked like a cheese with all these holes surrounded by bushes. There is still a trafic jam sometimes but at least not for the buses. There is nothing worse than being stuck in a full bus in the middle of the summer after whole day of work. But the traffic seems to be smaller anyways.
Wrocław did same massively but cars are still needed and i dont like the video is against them. Bikes during winter suck. Riding a bike from outside of a city is time and ene4gy consuming. Green plan doesnt mean perfection. It must be balanced
Yeah our cities are kinda good in that regard. Even warsaw with its huge shitty roads is still walkable enough, especially with all tram lines etc. Though bike there isnt the best option
Actually it is very simple to get people off from a habit and getting them into a new one: just offer a cheaper and more convinient (or even better, also a more fun) option. On the other hand, this is the ONLY way, forcing, intimidating, shaming, punishing never works.
It won't work because there is nothing better than personal transport. Public transport will never be better
@@Elcicikos Well, that’s it then
Denver, Colorado has been building out a robust light rail system for decades. In just the last few years, they've done a lot of work to add safe bike paths that go everywhere.
I live in Jakarta and the local government's solutions to congestion and the subsequent air pollution have been nothing but bullshit like odd-number policy, watering the city with fire trucks' hoses, etc.
The school I attend is about less than 5 minutes from walking distance and the streets are 3 meters wide at most, yet I still feel uncomfortable walking them because of motorcyclists.
Edit: I missed adding "meters".
Jakartan here. I can confirm the situation you mentioned. Unfortunately though since we are a developing country with less free politics (also GOOD LUCK trying to vote for car-free cities when ALL of the big politicians don't take car-free seriously) it will take quite some time to wean off the automobiles
I am born in Prague, I am used to going everywhere by public transportation or walk (or bike in rural areas for short distances). I was confronted with car culture for the first time when I was like 14 and we moved from our actual family to foster parents who were not originaly from Prague and were car people. It was so weird for me, like instead of just go outside to buy something, they had to go down there to back yard (tiny place full of cars) and then it took always like 30 minutes to do all those car things like to clean windows, prepare car for ride, put baggage inside, check everything again, return to 4th floor for all things you forgot there and do it 3 times again and after 30 minuts (with luck) we were ready to leave back yard and join all those traffic jams in center of Prague. I was always like "what is this about?" I didn't understand it, I was 14 and it was for the first time in my life when I was confronted with car culture. And don't take me wrong, I liked my foster parents, but this car thing was really annoying, sometimes I wanted just to go somewhere alone by public transportation and then wait for them there.
When I was very little, we had car for very short time, but my father just loved old cars, so he wanted old Mercedes W123 just for fun and it actually was fun, modern car culture is not fun, it's just stressful and you spend most of your time in traffic jams.
And don't take me wrong, sometimes you just need a car, but I am always saying that it's better pay to someone than feed your own metal can.
Older people don't understand this, they still consider having a car as some proof that you are an adult, also people in small towns don't understand it like here where I live now - I have supermarket 500 m from my home, I have train and bus station near, so why feeding some metal can? Yes, ofcourse, sometimes it would be nice to jump into a car and go somewhere where it's hard to get by public transportation, but then I imagine all that stress and things which car people have to care about and all things they have to pay and I am like "I will just wait for that stupid train" 😀
Later when my mom started living with her boyfriend who has a car, my sister (still living with them in that time) started doing that "screw you, I will go by metro and then wait for you there" thing which I wanted to do many years ago with my foster parents going everywhere by car. It was the same, once you have a car, you have "enough time" for everything and then you realize you are already late and you didn't even leave parking yet, while my sister and me are already waiting there by public transportation. 😀
What happened in your life/family for you to live with a foster family for a while?
@@perrycheong1058 My mother fell into all those MLM and pyramide shits and made a lot of debts and father was just drinking beer because of that and didn't care about anything.
I am saying it for a long time, MLM selling model should be absolutelly illegal.
Florida getting flooded might actually be the only good thing about climate change
That's where all the bigger, wetter hurricanes will hit too.
What a strange way to write California.
@@locustanon9676 Why not both? - Nature
As a Floridian I approve this message!
Aquaman is about to expand his real estate portfolio 💀
As far as the US. End? No. I think we are reaching a plateau and in the near future will see a steady drop in car ownership if cities can invest in more public transport and design more walkable neighborhoods but cars are never going away.
Great video. I do have a car albeit a small one, and drive. I live in Dublin in Ireland and the public transport is inadequate for going to many places. If I want to get to work, it's 15-25 mins by car and over an hour by two buses, and cycling there isn't even an option as I'd be risking my life on windy back roads. Or to drive to my parents' house it's 20 mins and 90 mins by public transport. The only place I won't drive into is the city centre because it takes longer by car and very stressful. I would love if there were a better and quicker public transport system. If there were, I'd definitely use my car far less than I do.
Yup. I live on the outskirts of dublin and the public transport is pathetic. Literally every single other european city i have been to (including poorer eastern european ones) seem incredibly more liveable than Dublin. Shame all of this is hid behind the glamour of our inflated gdp per capita (we know why that is lol).
This will be hard with all the lobbyists
So you’re telling me there’s a chance?
@@真夜中の橋 yes indeed
Yes, damn those short sighted echo worriers
It's already hard, and there's still a downward trend. There's only so much they can do
@@DigiDriftZone Dude, we get it. You looooove to destroy your lungs and brain with disel fumes. But some of us want to live without lung cancer.
In Singapore, it costs $100,000 to get a driver's license. They provide as many alternatives as possible for all of the people who live and visit there. Wish we could do something like that...
All sources I found list total cost of driving license at around $2-3 000. Please, list your source.
I think you're exaggerating, Google says it costs $2,078.30 - $2,442.10.
Not a license, it's $100,000 for a permit to OWN a car.
^ correct
Up until lately, I'd always felt really at ease while driving. I really enjoyed being behind the wheel, maybe speeding a little bit, with the radio on. But I've had one too many close calls, and now I'm more afraid than calm in the car. It's become much more apparent to me my likelihood of dying in my metal box, and it's terrifying. I think moving past cars is about changing the reality that a lot of people die on the road every day. I hope it's not me next.
Only Adam can roast not just one, but two tech billionares in a sponsored segment.
I'm a transit user. Writing this on my bus. New hire at work came and asked to sign up for the parking garage because she tried transit and it blows for her. Two transfers and it takes an hour to get to work and maybe one or two hours to get home vs 20 to 30 minutes for driving.
Transit needs to be a better option than cars in all respects for people to choose to use it, not because they have to or they're an advocate like me who hates driving.
Yep. In germany we currently have the 49 € ticket which allows you to ride regional public transport for 49 € a month. Some people with cars switched over because of the financial insentive (1 hour longer ride but I safe 100 € in fuel? maybe worth it) but the network needs to be expanded, so that it won't take longer than the car.
Like Not Just Bike says: You want the freedom of choice. When car, bus, bike take all the same time then you're free to choose what you want.
If you can live without a car, great. If you cannot, great, get one.
Framing this whole ordeal as a question of whether cars should be banned or their infrastructure gotten rid of is absolutely the wrong way to talk about it, and will only scare and rile up car people even more. Everyone's free to have what they want. This is a city people issue. Little changes like having downtown plazas be walk-only could work, with few roads only for emergency vehicles or minimal traffic, but never more than two blocks away from wherever you are.
As a European and an NBA fan, it blows my mind how many car ads there are on the US tv. It's like grocery ads here, giving the impression that cars are a necessity and they always have to be fresh 😀
Hey thats a good way to put it
Same with NFL ads. They all push for F150s