A Former Farm Kid's Thoughts on the Anti-Car Movement
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- Опубликовано: 18 июн 2024
- Tired of hearing people say those advocating against car dependency don't understand rural area. So decided to give my thoughts on that.
Hopefully my next video ends up being more about my typical topics. I wanted to get this out and it was an easy one to get me back into making videos.
Made this using kdenlive, trying out other video editors.
December 2022 Update: Wow i made this video while i was still sick and it shows. I am tempted to do an "HD rerelease" of this maybe next year and I can try and get some footage of some rural parts of Kansas.
All of these towns are pre-war towns. That's why they're walkable. Any town that was built with an actual main street was built before cars became rampant and people needed to be able to get to work and back home with just their legs or a streetcar. I've been saying for awhile now that all of the old steel mill towns along the rivers surrounding Pittsburgh (where I'm from) are ripe for transit expansion and transit oriented development. They're all old pre-war towns with tighter housing lots and main streets with old business districts and most of them were all built around streetcars and rail to take people to Pittsburgh and back to their suburb. We just ripped out all the street cars. Put them back (or an equal or better equivalent) and all these towns function again the way they were built to.
You can usually tell which parts of town are pre-war vs post-war.
People are too lazy to walk... They need hover boards and electric scooters.
Absolutely! Post World War zoning practically mandated suburban sprawl because the expense of owning a car excludes lower income residents. The resulting housing shortage was to be expected.
LET'S DO IT!
@@user-qr7ee2cp4yThis sounds like a boomer disconnect. I honestly thought I was too lazy to walk until I moved to Pittsburgh. Now walking is my favorite mode of transport.
You hit the nail. I’ve been a long time advocate for normal speed/long distance passenger rail, especially for rural areas. I went to college in a small town in the north that had Amtrak service in the middle of the night. It saved my butt lots of money and headache getting to and from school and home. It was too expensive to fly and winter driving long distance was just unpleasant. Most only focus on adding trains between major cities, but we need them in rural areas too. You create economies of scale that way, which is what rail needs to run.
Note on the college towns that's probably something I could have mentioned more. This stuff was originally built on the rails. So if those two mainlines has passenger service. University of Kansas, Kansas State University, Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University. Most of the college towns in Kansas could easily be hit with just those. Right now some of those towns have small regional airports, but it is like 100$ just to fly between them, if that exists and a lot don't. Providing this would permit more people to go to college and not need to bring a car with them. It could also help bring extra money to electrify the rails, which would be a big deal and help reduce shipping costs for agriculture in the state.
Even in Europe this level of rail connection is a pipe dream that only exists in the tech bros CGI concept.
Rail in Europe will give you very decent to exceptionally fast connection between large to medium cities and towns, but the last mile to your destination can be a massive hassle.
European high speed trains like the TGV or the British HST's are indeed impressive, but only if your destination is one of those major to mid-size population centers and your trip is the line running between the capital city and your destination. If you're going to smaller proper rural areas, your options are either a very unreliable regional bus service, that can take as long if not longer than your train ride to get to your destination, or a taxi that can end up costing about as much as your train ticket. And if by chance your village has a train station, expect a very spaced out schedule rendering a 1 hour errand into an afternoon ruining trip.
Most European villages do not carry all the essential stores you need to live or even stay for a few days and it will be expected that you drive to near, larger settlements for things like grocery stores, or any other type of large chain store. For example, I was recently at a music festival and the nearest grocery store and vape store was a 15 or so mile drive down south. Nearest pharmacy was a good 5+ miles from it as well. Closed on weekends, obviously. Need meds on Saturday? It's a 30 mile drive.
I would be for rail service in small towns that had colleges since back when I went to college in a small town I feel isolated since I couldn’t afford a car and almost everyone else had a car and went away for the weekend. There wasn’t much to do in the small town.
@@SiriusXAim i was once with one of my mates going to a party in a small town - about 8k - and the bus we were meant to come did not arrive - it was day after Boxing Day, no one had called the driver to do the run, and the train operator bought us taxis to get there instead of the bus - i think it ended up costing $4000 for them to run 3 taxis for 20 of us instead of a single bus and it took an hour longer than we thought because we were waiting around
@@SiriusXAimwhat is "European" rail anyways? Switzerland has the highest density of rail in the world and an amazing service, Germany has one of the highest densities of rail and not so great service, many other countries have not super great densities and great service.
I think a better metric is rail per person, because that actually shows why Germany is so bad: it's as bad as the US in this metric
My rural family: I hate 15 minute cities!
You better get used to it. You're living in one.
15 minute cities are much more sustainable than sprawling low rise suburbs.
@@r.pres.4121 I agree. They're the most hardcore US conservatives I know, and they're able to walk to their grocery store, pharmacy and church and yet they quote 15 minute conspiracies to me. It's maddening.
@@thelovewizard8954they probably hate cuz they live it for some reason the glorification of big cities has only gotten stronger over the years
Rural people hate 15 minute cities for an entirely different reason: they are the outsiders who need to get somewhere in the city, not the people living in it. The push to traffic control urban centers works great for everyone except the outsiders who begrudgingly have to brave urban traffic because of centralized uses like airports, government offices, and large commercial centers.
Also, they hate it because it is probably going to cost the state a lot of money for infrastructure that will only benefit the city, either meaning more taxes or robbing the funds from other budgets.
@@drewgon13 that's.... that's the point of all of this. To reduce traffic. In my families town there is a railroad. This railroad goes to every major city in their state, and goes right next to the airport. There used to be a stop in town but no longer. Now if they have to leave they have to drive, which one of them cannot and it puts an extra burden on my other family members. If a city has effectively managed traffic, then you as an outsider will experience better traffic when you have to go into a city. They hate 15 minute cities because they think the ((((insert ethnic group here)))) are coming for their dodge.
I honestly agree. Cars have their benefits which often go ignored, but hearing pro urbanist points come from someone not raised in an urban environment is insanely valuable.
You might like some of the Strong Towns stuff. They talk a lot about making places more sustainable from a financial POV, as well a nicer to live in. The conceptual ideal is less big city and more 'old fashioned ' small town. Hell, even a big city can be thought of a collection of towns (neighborhoods).
Suburban sprawl and vast swaths of single family zoning connected by stroads with strip malls is the problem. Not rural vs urban.
@@travcollier Personally I'm a fan of the giant ultra urban, towering building kind of city, but it just isn't for everyone. I like strong towns, despite disagreeing with nearly all of the pro urban channels to some degree. Oh the Urbanity has to be, by far my personal favorite.
@@travcollier It's more urban vs sub-urban than urban vs rural.
Indeed, the strong towns, big cities etc. (not every place needs to be like those) all have their own unique combinations of strengths and weaknesses that actually compliment one another across the wider spectrum.
@@InsufficientGravitas I honestly don't know why we did it, but seems like post-WWII we've tried to make almost everyone live in suburbs. Maybe they were legitimately what most people (thought) they wanted, but around 90% of our residential space is allocated to it (mandated by zoning). It's crazy
I used to drive a Ford F250 diesel. I bought it because I owned a business where I had to pull a 10,000 lbs trailer every day for work. One day, a young man was talking to me about my truck, and he mentioned that he would love to have a truck like mine. I said yeah they're great until you have to start paying for fuel and maintenance on them. Not to mention the insurance and personal property taxes. I told him that unless he really needed a truck like mine, not to bother. They're more trouble than they're really worth. I told him that he'd be better off with a small Toyota or Nissan pickup.
The 2008 Toyota Hilux SR trayback ute was the peak of tradie utility vehicles and the quality of pickups have declined since.
We used an old 4x4 ranger as a plow truck on our ranch and it did a fine job. Would've been perfect for hauling trash and grain if it had been road legal, too (northern rust claims frames.)
@QuilloManar tell me about it. My first brand new pickup was a 1993 Toyota 4×4 base model. I loved that truck. It was easy on the wallet and would go through damn near anything. It could pull my 16' Jon boat anywhere and anytime i wanted to go fishing. I was 19 years old when i bought it, and I was so proud of that little old pickup.
Obviously not pulling a 10k lb trailer with a car, but your average person can also use a small utility trailer towed behind a car for a lot of their needs. A lot of people simply can’t be bothered to hitch and unhitch the trailer, which I fully admit is a bit of a pain. Also acknowledge that not everyone has a place around their house to store a trailer but I feel many people end up with a pickup for the “just in case” scenario when buying a utility trailer would actually give them a lot more flexibility for a lot fewer bucks. I don’t give a crap about throwing gravel or anything else in the trailer, whereas I definitely wouldn’t want to do damage to my expensive vehicle if I was loading a pickup.
@sjsomething4936 I agree, I pulled a trailer with a car for years. I mostly used it to haul firewood to heat my house in the winter, but it also came in handy for a few other oddball tasks as well. With the exception of my 93 Toyota, I never owned a brand new pickup, so I really wasn't worried about scratching up the bed. The biggest advantage to using a trailer was that I could put permanent plates on it and didn't have to worry about insurance on it. The trailer that used was so small and light that it could easily be moved around by hand.
Having grown up in a small town, I can tell you that if you live in a small town and don't have a car, you're stranded in that town. You may be home, but you're stranded there. Terribly limited job opportunites, which can enforce the lack of a car as they're expensive to buy, operate and own and the local pay scale is down.
You can walk or bike all over town with no problem, but the only way elsewhere is by highway, where you can't safely walk or bike.
In parts of the world where car dependency isn't normal or universal, rural small towns are generally linked by small-scale transit routes using microbuses or large vans; the service isn't always fast, frequent, timely, or reliable (anyone from eastern/southern Europe would laugh out loud at the very idea) but still workable as long you're not tied to a daily commute ratrace and all you really need is the basic ability to get somewhere out of town and back home on your own.
Of course these are generally also the kinds of societies where the downsides of car dependency (vis-a-vis total lack of independent mobility for anyone who can't drive, particularly children and seniors) would be a complete nonstarter for cultural reasons -- but then again, this degree of infantilization in childhood and indignity in old age probably would've been just as culturally unthinkable in the late 19th century United States as it still is in most of the world today.
You're not necessarily wrong. But if you need to get out bad enough you can always start walking. And I mean pack up one day what you can carry comfortably and start walking to a new life. Maybe not maybe I'm just dreaming of a bygone era but it's nice to believe you could still do that.
@@willg-r3269I'll consider a bus when the bus isn't full of smelly meth heads and criminals.
Cars are not the problem. Most polution is not from cars it's from the military and planes. A ton is also from trucks, I work concerts and if you want to save the world a good start would be to eliminate the tens of thousands of trucks and tour busses idling 24 hours a day.
@@andrewesau51I completely understand where the idea is coming from. But when you live in an area where the closest surrounding towns are 30 to 40 minute drives away, over steep and winding hills and long stretches of 4 lane highways. The idea of just packing up and walking is not an easy feat.
that's why people have older cars. they're cheaper
I live in a small town in western Canada. 35 years ago, we had reasonably good inter-city bus service from Greyhound. Over the years, the company cut back on the frequency of the service, and then cut it out altogether. Greyhound no longer offers service anywhere in Canada. The bus companies that replaced it don't service my community either. Passenger rail service ended in the 1950's, and the rails were completely removed in 2000. For those who support public transportation, we seem to be going in the wrong direction.
Saw the same thing in Nova Scotia, we had a passenger rail line that ran from Halifax across the province to the Annapolis Valley region with stops at the small towns along the way. I took it as kid several times, I'm 54 now. Its all gone now. I think it was removed in the 90s. Don't know when or why exactly, I live in the states now. The only reason I can think that all of this happened was the government wanted to save money and didn't want to support it anymore.
@@dphitchVia Rail used to have a load of routes all across Canada, 2 routes from Vancouver to Toronto, one from Montreal to Moncton through Maine, one that went the whole way across Nova Scotia, about 20 total. Now they're down to 9 routes, with all of them with much less frequent service than before.
How frequent was it
@@qjtvaddict In the eighties, two northbound and southbound busses each day. Then it was reduced to one, and then eliminated altogether.
Small town (village) in western Canada, we never even had Greyhound. Nearest access was 90 kilometres away. Passenger trains disappeared in 1950's.
Cars are also tremendously expensive and their costs are routinely underestimated - making up a huge chunk of the bottom half of incomes' expenses (many thousands of dollars per year, in addition to surprise maintenance bills which can be especially hard to plan for), so if rural families could be a one-car household instead of two, or rent a car when making trips instead of owning one, there could be a huge boost in financial health and more money to be spent in local communities!
Renting is more expensive tbh
@@Torrent263 he said "huge chunk" not that it was the largest portion. For most of the country housing is the single largest expense be it rent or mortgages. But the upfront and continual costs of cars are definitely a large necessary expense in a country where viable alternatives are scarce.
Even if you’re a student or just starting out on your job, a car has a huge chunk of your money and to prevent having a loan I bought for my first car a very small used car, and it was actually sort of dangerous because it was sort of a lemon, didn’t work, well, problems, etc. I lived in a major city is about 1 million people but there was no public transportation except maybe once per hour and not everywhere. And often they weren’t even sidewalks.
Instead of a car payment, which you don't have if you pay cash for a small, older used car, and instead of maintenance and gas, you pay a tax out of every paycheck...for the rest of your life. It just comes out of a different bucket...tax expense bucket vs. car bucket. I don't understand why people don't get this.
@@swisschalet1658 that's a good point that many people might not consider - my response would be that (at least in theory with a relatively capable government), the costs for public transit and pedestrian/bike-friendly infrastructure would be much less per person than for each person to own a car. Also keep in mind that everyone pays for the roads and parking used by cars even though not everyone uses a car. I'd be curious to see actual numbers.
Your insight on rural living is appreciated.
I don't think anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together was ever in danger of falling for "but ah need muh truck fer werk" excuse, though. It's pretty easy to spot the difference between a work truck and a cosplay truck, with the former really sticking out in suburbia because they're so rare.
I see too many cos play trucks
Need a truck for hay bails
Really if people want to have people driving vehicles more fit for purpose, they should be making it easier for regular folks to have multiple vehicles instead of trying to take em off the road for being 'sinful gas powered.' Even things people drive strictly for fun are not actually a big cut of emissions. (It's actually extremely classist to tell people 'Just buy electrics' even if none are as yet remotely suitable for much practical use in the first place. At least that regular folks can actually afford, as opposed to cosplayers. (And frankly, my friend's Tesla is heavy enough it basically may as *well* be a truck, so what shape they come in is less meaningful.)
A lot of this is fighting over *symbols,* with the exception of people modifyng diesels to defeat emissions and show off, which actually is a decent sized eco problem on its own, but in response the bureaucrats decided just to make it harder for regular people to keep used stuff on the road or even improve it emissionswise. Meanwhile the corporations are very content to just make people buy things they can't repair and don't last, even if that'd leave most of the country up a creek, not cause trains to appear.
@@OllamhDrab The issue is that the electric car was delayed by 20 years. Car companies successfully lobbied against the zero emission mandates. GM recalled their popular EV1 leases and crushed them. But to twist the knife: they sold the battery patents to Chevron.
Chevron then sued Panasonic for making batteries for the electric RAV4. Toyota has been avoiding full electric cars ever since: instead sinking their money into hydrogen powered cars.
If we started the transition 20 years ago: electric vehicles would be common. The people who actually need liquid fuel would be still be using ICE vehicles despite the higher cost.
@@jamesphillips2285 Not actually relevant to what I said, and as much as some liked the EV1 it still wasn't actually anything impressive technologically, never mind for mass market. Obviously Big Oil does their thing as always on many fronts but it doesn't change what tech is suitable for what and who. We'll need to use a lot of different things .. and use em smart, to get through this.
the obsession with HSR is to beat out planes not cars. the idea is to take HSR between major cities and when you reach the closest city to the rural town you take normal rail from there.
Eh, much of the traffic between major cities is still by cars so idk
@@gtctv7000 Well... Again HSR goal is to compete with Air travel. Planes are probably the worst thing for the environment.
@@thetrainguy1 yes and cars are second. still, many people commute between big cities by car, if theyre less than ~ 3 hours apart
@@gtctv7000 Sounds like you can have normal rail compete with cars then if it's under a 3 hour trip, HSR is for say, getting form New York to Houston or something like that. Something a lot of people would take a plane for.
@@Razor1473 well yeah, regional rail is plenty enough to replace trips under 3-4 hours, tho anything more should be covered by HSR.
In Europe, many HSR lines cover distances of max. 600-800 km, like the ones between Stuttgart and Mannheim or Paris and Marseille.
Imagine a different line, say from Oklahoma city to San Antonio that stops in Austin and Dallas/fort worth. Not all lines need to be transcontinental, you can have seperate lines for seperate needs. I mean sure, you could connect this imaginary line to Kansas city over Wichita and make Kansas city a hub as it's centrally located between Texas and the rust belt but i think you get the gist of what I'm saying
I have the exact same experience in rural Australia. Once, I got off the plane in the city and decided to walk with my suitcase to the nearest motel (3.1miles, the way the crow flies) I thought, yeah simple enough, it's a city so walking should be better than the country... After walking 45 minutes through industrial areas with no shade I ended up with heat stroke. It was so bad i couldn't even put together a sentence at the mall when trying to buy something to drink.
It's especially bad when you consider I am from the edge of the outback, someone who deals with some of the hottest temperatures on earth without AC and walks everywhere and the first time I nearly pass out from heat exhaustion isn't in the desert but instead a major coastal city.
Yea that is one thing he fails to talk about, those of us eho live in extremely hot climates just can't do this....when I visited Sweden, I had no problems walking 5, 10 mikes a day....walking 1 mile here in Georgia or Alabama in the summer and you are done for the rest of the day from heat exhaustion.....ask me how I know.
The city also soaks up the heat. Walking on dirt is much better than walking on and surrounded by concrete, steal and glass.
The issue is bad infrastructure. No one is saying that you should be forced to walk everywhere, we're not living in the stone age anymore, there are plenty of alternative vehicles that you can have that are much cheaper and environmentally friendly than a car.
Skill issue, walked 10 miles in 101f heat all week, fat and old
@@sunnohh that's my point, that shouldn't happen in a city.
Also 101f isn't even hot lol. that's body temperature. I live where hot is at least 40c (104f) and very hot is 45c (113f)
Thanks for this video. I've always felt that rural communities get a lot of flak for no reason, when they're often more sustainable than most suburbs or even cities in general.
What often frustrates me about these communities are the suburbanites who go and build a single family house on a half acre lot on an old farm that was subdivided, who then continue to commute into the city or suburbs for work. You do this enough times, and all of a sudden that rural farm community is just another suburb with massive arterials and low density sprawl, but none of the agricultural production that our society relies on.
I think cities need to be stricter about how they rezone these farm communities; rather than prevent apartments and higher density from being built in the suburbs, we need to prevent single family zoning consuming agricultural areas and turning them into suburbs.
Unchecked inflation of single family zoning is the worst thing to happen to America
I live sort of by St. Louis, and my parents moved out of the town we lived in that was closer to St. Louis for one reason. St. Louis citizens.
It is illegal to subdivide farms here.
Developers buy farms and get variances to be able to build subdivisions.
Here the opposite is in effect. Corporate farms buy up small family farms and consolidate fields.
Half of the farmhouses in my township have been torn down. One room school houses and churches were converted into storage buildings.
Dad told stories of riding the “doodlebug” to the city on the interurban rail network.
Cars replaced it.
Americans live on their land. Some areas the population is sprinkled so thin there is no alternative to cars.
Additionally suburban communities cause the flooding of farmland.
@@RazgrizWing Bingo. People demonize "urban sprawl", but it's suburbs that turn family farms into housing for a few dozen houses. Meanwhile transit adjacent housing sells incredibly fast and at high prices, showing that the market values such things, people want them even when there's compromises on size.
I live in an European village next to a bigger city. Because of this, the village basically became a pseudo-suburb. Most people who live here drive every day to the city for work. There is like 2 or 3 damn cars in front of every house. The village was not made for cars in mind, so the streets are too narrow, so in some cases they've expanded them and left barely any space for pedestrians to walk on. In some cases there isn't even space for pedestrians to walk on, and in some cases cars are parked on the side-walk. Public transport is pathetic, and most people do not even consider it. There is constant god damn traffic in the residential/living areas, and some people drive waaaay to fast for this type of environment.
At this point there are only a few places in the village where one can go to get away from cars. Depending on where one lives in the village, it might take 15 minutes to half an hour on foot to get to those places, which means having to walk through a bunch of stupid cars to get there. People's pets get run over all the time, usually cats because one can't fence them in. So you can't even have an outdoor cat in what used to be a rural/village environment. I can't even go on a walk most of the time without having to deal with dozens of cars driving past me, so I usually walk very late at night or very early in the morning. I'm starting to detest cars.
i though north americans and asians are the only ones. guess not
Tell me about it, I've had a cat killed by a car and another seriously injured in my small suburban town of 6000 people (also in Europe). My part of town has mid-rises and high-density buildings, so a lot of traffic going past at all times. Thankfully, there are sidewalks everywhere, but many people still drive everywhere, including the grocery store that's a 15-minute walk away. I'm trying to reduce my own car usage, use my e-scooter to go to work (8 km one way) and have bought the "climate ticket" which allows me to use all regional public transportation in my state (busses, trams, rail) for a year. Let's see how it goes, there's still an issue with getting home from the nearest city after 11 pm, as that's when the busses stop going. It's only 3 km, but a very dangerous, busy road with neither bike path nor sidewalk 😢.
Living in a rural area can be pathetic if the place you live at has awful transport system.
I live in Europe and the only way for me to leave my village is by a bus that comes every 2 hours once. And not just anywhere but to either the nearby town or the capital.
To further elaborate, when i work second or third shift, there is no way for me to use public transportation because there is no public transportation after 21:00...
@@abyssstrider2547 that sucks 😕
Few thoughts rewatching my own video.
1. Should have included Wichita on that route map need something connecting them.
2. Also a "feature" of car dependency in rural America mixed with dry counties promotes a lot of drunk driving, not that the US does not promote it on the whole.
Also if you want to look at a map of railways, this is a good map for doing it. www.openrailwaymap.org/
Drunk driving is always going to be a serious problem in the USA 🇺🇸. Raising the drinking age is just a glorified bandaid solution that didn’t do all that much because there are still too many fatalities from drunken driving. Until we get over our fierce love affair with the automobile, we will never solve the problem of impaired and drunken driving.
@r.pres.4121 Not to be that guy but it's not until we get over our fierce love affair with drinking poison that we'll see a decline in drunk driving accidents
@@xrichie7924 It's called a drunk driving accident regardless if alcohol is the cause. If I get t-boned while drunk because some idiot is running a red light then it gets counted as a drunk driving accident even though it would have still happened if I was stone cold sober. 6 beers deep I'm not really impaired at all, but it still passes the arbitrary number, while all the people who drive around about to fall asleep at any moment are perfectly fine and face no consequences.
I can tell you for a fact I've never been as dangerous behind the wheel after having some drinks as I was when I worked a night shift and was falling asleep constantly trying to drive back home.
Drunk driving has been villainized to the point that someone being responsible and sleeping it off in their car will still get a DUI.
I’m a car enthusiast against car dependency. Let the people who hate driving find another way to travel, so me and the lads can enjoy the roads in peace.
Exactly, less car dependancy and more transit options benefits everyone including drivers since there are less people clogging up the road to complain about.
I agree driving is so fun, especially the day you purchase a new car. so the people who hate to drive stay off the roads so me and my buddy can just cruise and enjoy the scenery. I love cars and I don't think no one can change my mind about that it's my hobby I'd give a gun up first even before the thought I don't own nor never want to own before I give up cars.
@@brooklynelite5428 personally i could do without driving everyday so a place with good public transport and infrastructure would be 👌
I already live in Europe but in Ireland which is very car dependant to European standards so im going to move to Germany.
@orangeairsoft7292 Here in America, our transportation sucks no high, well true, high-speed rail something if we had maybe people wouldn't drive but to be honest when you want you space and your own peace driving is the key but yes I don't want to be forced to give up my cars I just want options.
Based. Car-loving people should see that it's actually in their best interests that car-hating people have a chance to travel without having to drive.
Growing up in the suburbs without a car really ruined my childhood. My life was better when we lived in a rural area prior to that. I just biked everywhere as a 8y/o.
I live on the countryside in Europe. We have a bus every hour (night excluded), a train station and already sharrows. I don't know how my 3000 inhabitant village with the next city (13000 inhabitants with a huge pedestrian zone, lots of shops and restaurants and so on) being 50km away does offer a wider range of modes to choose from than even some American suburbs or sometimes even American city centers but it does. Besides that 80% of the village have a grocery store, a pharmacy, a doctor, 2 restaurants and a post office in walking distance and there are sidewalks everywhere. America definetly needs to change. My village grew a lot in the last 10 years.
The nearest railway station is about 26 miles from here but the cameras show as though I live right inside the railwaystation and booking tickets but it is not possible without network without desktop or laptop or without wifi ?
The advantage of high gasoline taxes. Such taxes make public transit competitive in that the cost of taking a bus is the same or cheaper then driving your car and thus you have enough demand for mass transit for mass transit to survive. In the US gasoline taxes are so low that it is cheaper to drive then to take the bus and you will NOT see decent mass transit in most of the US until the price of gasoline gets so high that mass transit is competitive in price.
Please note, I am talking about the "Marginal Costs" of driving or taking mass transit (when taking a bus the "Marginal Costs" is just the bus fare, when driving it is the cost of the gasoline being used). I have to EXCLUDE any "Fixed Costs" such as paying for the car itself, licensing and insuring the automobile, costs you have to pay, often monthly, just for owning a car. High gasoline taxes do affect people's desire to but an automobile, but many Europeans still buy an automobile for automobiles, even with high gasoline taxes, do have they advantages (and many people, even in high gasoline tax areas, buy automobiles). Thus the problem is not the "Fixed Costs" of owning an automobile but the "Marginal Costs" of using that automobile.
@@paulmentzer7658 wrong. This is not about it being "competitive", public transport shouldn't be for-profit only in the first place. Also, how can you say that Americans wouldn't use it without even giving them such an option first? As if there are no people who can't drive a car due to health reasons or can't afford a car? or simply don't want to always drive their own car
@@paulmentzer7658In many countries in Europe you still need a car if you wanna be away from home after 9 o'clock at night.
Which means that you you wanna work a second or third shift you gotta get a car.
I wish more people would point out, like you have here, that rural communities live by what would be considered "progressive liberal" values. They just don't think about them that way because they've been told that the city folk are trying to tell them how to live.
Everyone should be in agreement on this; suburbs suck.
my dad grew up in a town of 30000 in the Communist block at the time. he always mentions to us how pleasant it was for him to travel by bike all the time when he was young and how surprised he is that so many in the town drive now because it's so unnecessary and way less fun
Found your vid on the anti car collective discord. Its honestly pretty surprising how smaller towns can be much more walkable than suburbs, lol. In my area, theres a small town called Troy, Ohio that has one of the best downtowns that still exists. The bad part though I've seen in a lot of small towns in my area is the lack of grocery stores. In Troy, theres a fancy gormet one downtown, then a 20 minute walk to the nearest grocery store.
I believe there’s either no or not many groceries in the down part town part of small towns because usually there’s a Walmart or something similar on the edge of the small towns and they put up the mom and pop groceries out of business in the downtown walkable parts and of course people have gone to the Walmart or something similar big stores because they’re cheaper and the mom and Pop small groceries can’t compete with the goods ships from China or the big companies able to put the prices down for a year and then raise them back up
Yeah, this. Small towns are very walkable and you can get to anywhere in town quickly because they’re small. But you can’t get to a grocery store if there isn’t one to get to. And there won’t be one if the one that used to be there went out of business because everybody started just driving to the nearest bigger town or small city to shop at the huge megamarket there which has better selection and lower prices. Consolidating a whole region’s grocery needs into a single huge building has advantages (bigger variety of foods offered, cheaper due to economy of scale) but disadvantages too (customers have to travel farther to get there). Not sure how to entice small groceries back into small towns (and into the downtowns of bigger places where people are often as underserved as small town dwellers).
@@jasonlescalleet5611The "happy middle" between inefficient (expensive) small "mom and pop" grocery stores and giant Walmart style things exists. IGA is a grocery "chain" with store brands, distribution, ect. but for independent grocery stores. I've also heard good things about Aldi.
Yeah, very very few people at r/fuckcars want to ban all cars/trucks from all people for all uses.
We just want LESS cars on the road. We want alternatives that are competitive with driving yourself somewhere. We want people to stop using their cars for trips of only 1, 2, or 3 miles.
And most of us want to ban 90% of motor vehicles from URBAN (and semi-urban and suburban) areas.
Amen. nobody want to "ban" all the cars in the universe. And surely rural areas are not in the equation. It's about the car "dependency", cars as the ONLY means of trasport available, even for things who doesn't, in theory, need it. And look, the problem isn't even the cars per se, it's the insane system of suburban sprawl, who force you to have a car for everything.
Godwin's Law: invoked
::sigh::
Nothing you said made any sense
@@ethansinclair7987 On the contrary, it all makes a great deal of sense, provided you actually *THINK* about what car-dependency really means, and whether or not it really is a *necessary* thing. Spoiler, it's not.
@@GMPax I'm with you all the way bro, i was responding to the good sir, Xavier behaviour
i used to live at the intersection of two stroads, up in the northern suburbs of detroit, and it was absolute hell. i didn`t own a car at the time, or even have a license, and i honestly felt more isolated there than i did at any point during covid lockdown. every suburb should be razed.
It's probably the most hostile environment to human (pedestrian) life that you can find outside of a nuclear reactor.
@@ArmadousHey man. Nuclear reactors have layers upon layers of safeguards and radiation shielding. Pedestrians get a 6 inch piece of raised concrete and a social contract that some boneheaded idiot in an F-150 won’t pulverize them.
This is 100 % correct. I live on the outskirts of a small rural town and I spend most of trips and time in it pulling a bike trailer full of kids or walking on the sidewalks. It's FAR easier and safer to use non-motor vehicle transportation here than in any of the cities I've lived in.
Rural towns are not the problem, nymbis suburbs mentality is
@@rauli386 agreed. neighboring bigger towns with big box store also pull stuff away from rural towns making it harder to be car free in these places.
I just stumbled across this channel and have been binge-watching your videos and was suprised to see this drop! And, its about a topic I love! Good stuff.
This is exactly the type of infrastructure that I've been wanting to see in suburbs. You nailed it. We started building tons of suburbs instead of small towns. Just put more grocery stores and corner stores and cafes in the suburbs and *magic*, everyone will suddenly start walking more and driving less.
make them bike friendly
Part of the suburbia problem is the zoning laws where they won't even allow anyone to run small shops or grocery stores in an area, forcing the residents to drive multiple miles just to get food.
Yep, zoning laws are the devil. I live in a suburb of Atlanta, and the closest business to my house is... about 4 miles. Everything in between is single family low density housing with friggin' .5 acre+ yards. Great if you hate people and never want to see anyone but your next door neighbors for any reason, I guess, but stupid and awful in every other conceivable metric.
I used to live in an older pre-war suburb of Denver, and the closest business was... directly under my apartment. I lived there happily for about a year without a car or a bike, because I could just walk to literally anything I needed in less than 30 minutes.
Night and day.
Car defenders don't present their arguments in bad faith, but also they haven't developed those arguments on their own. It's just the "common sense" speaking through their mouths, and I'm thankful for any effort to tear it down
The problem is setting 'cars vs trains' like an all or nothing zero sum, instead of like.... Being pro-trains and letting people optimize for better purpose. Banning/making people buy things is just pushing a systemic problem off on individuals and not helping any community. If there's a good train service or good bus services and people don't think it's poverty-spec/dangerous, people will *use* them. Look at Europe.
You would be surprised by the internal narrative in people's heads. I live in a fast growing place with actually good transit that's clean and safe, growing traffic problems and where the transit is a hell of a lot cheaper than ever having a car. (Ogden Utah) basically all of the points that you mentioned and a few more(no ban, safe and affordable good transit, good density, rising pop, transit innovation, little corruption, forward thinking transit authorities, bad air inversion, etc.) And it's still only a small fraction of people who take it. There's always more capacity in the bus or train, and the busses and trains themselves could always be extended.
The fact of the matter is that to survive as a species against climate change, we needed fast, wide ranging and strict government action decades ago. There should have been a ban on cars in 1993, let alone today.
@@ethanstump Ah yes, government overreach, when has that ever gone wrong...
The subset of pro-car people that are against any infrastructure for other modes of transport, be it train lines, bicycle lanes, or even the humble sidewalk, baffles me. Do they realize by giving other people choices in getting around means that there would be less cars on the road, and therefore less traffic to make them miserable? No, they don't see it that way and the zero sum mentality means that the government is "conspiring to take away their cars and force them to use trains" or whatever is the ludicrous type of things they're inclined to believe.
I admittedly like driving and really value the privacy my car offers because I'm introverted, but then again I vote for and support plans by my local and state government to improve transportation for all modes, not only cars, as it will actually reduce traffic and sometimes I do like to bike or walk for quick errands near my house.
@@CodysCarConundrumkeep voting for the party that bans books and legitimate healthcare while calling yourself a supporter of ‘limited government’
Hi! I'm a city council member in a close-in Kansas City suburb, and you are absolutely spot on. We are falling all over ourselves to replicate the kind of traditional, small scale, and/or mixed use development patterns that never left most of the small towns in Kansas. Our collective urban obsession with extending suburbs as far from the city center as possible for the last 8 decades has been devastating economically, ecologically, and psychologically. We have a lot of work to do to fix all this, but I'm glad to see people like you holding up another lens helping to reveal the silliness behind some of the regressive arguments out there.
Appreciate your perspective and experience from a rural area and working on a farm. You are absolutely right: no one actually needs these big trucks. Trucks are simply status symbols. You can get farm work done using much smaller size trucks, and keeping the necessary big trucks on the job site. Urbanize is not limited to cities. Rural towns have as much to benefit from its principles.
Thing is, they don't really make smaller sized trucks anymore. The old Nissans and Ford Rangers don't exist anymore. Laws and regulations have made it so in order to sell a pickup truck, the frame has to meet minimum size requirements relative to the rest of the vehicle. So a bunch of laws that were put in place to try and force more fuel efficient vehicles actually made it worse, as car companies now could not sell their small utility trucks (old Rangers, Tacomas, Nissans, etc) without paying hefty fines. That's why even basic trucks like the modern Tacoma are huge compared to what you could have gotten only 15 years ago, have 4 doors, less bed space, and cost $40,000 minimum.
You used to be able to get cheap, 2 door, bench seat utility trucks. It's just not legal to sell them anymore. Unfortunately, this is a case of bad policy making a problem even worse.
as an european this video really opened my mind to an aspect of life in the US that I had never known about, Thanks for the great video
Well said. I’m trying to advocate for walkablity in my suburban town (which is actually not too bad compared to many others), and I’m often told “if that’s what you you want, move to the city”.
... thats the point. Move to a city if thats an issue for you
@@allsystemsgootechaf9885 But US cities are not necessarily very walkable. Also, there are many places in the world where suburbs (not cities) are walkable. So, this is not something normal.
@@allsystemsgootechaf9885and then y’all drive into the cities and try to make them suburbs.
@@kaydenl6836 nah we cant stand living ontop of strangers. Only time im in a city is to visit, for whatever reason.
@@allsystemsgootechaf9885 Why? Your car-dependent lifestyle is a burden and a danger to others. Me moving away isn't going to fix that. It's not a problem of individuals living in places that aren't a good fit.
I wish we would build more small towns like before. A real Main St. with storefronts up against the sidewalks, people actually walking around, small aesthetic houses, rowhouses, small apartments, duplexes, etc. I'm tired of every place being a walmart surrounded by asphalt and sprawling low density suburbs.
You'd have to bring the industry back first. That's the reason why a lot of these small towns are declining
Typically when people argue to reduce car dependency, they are only talking about in large cities, where the concentration of people makes everyone having a 2 ton metallic pollution machine much more of a problem.
I’ve often given thought about living in small town. I like the density and the ideas that you spoke about, being able to walk or bike safely. Maybe a college town would be better for this because you might have the possibility of an intercity bus. I wonder if someone in rural areas could create some dial a ride system or a shuttle bus that goes between the towns and takes everyone to the bigger city.
Interesting point about the lack of car infrastructure improvements in these towns. I haven’t really thought about that.
Ya i could have talked about it more Lawrence for example is known for being pretty bikeable, not that people don't drive. It is a college town having KU there. There is still a lot of ingrained aspects of car culture that make people default to, it but at least these towns are making improvements in the direction. Lawrence has Amtrak as well though not any regular service with the Southwest Chief, if KDOT does that rail to Topeka-Lawrence-KC I think it would be one of the best towns in Kansas to live in car free.
@@InDefenseOfToucans Can confirm. I live about a 30 minute drive from Lawrence and have been multiple times. The east side of town around Mass Street is my favorite part, and it's definitely the best part to walk or bike in. I was also surprised by the bus system being pretty consistent, though I think it needs more frequency than it currently has (maybe a bus every 15 minutes instead of 30 minutes?). I'm considering going to KU for college and a regular Topeka-Lawrence-KC train would be awesome! Something like that would definitely make it the best town to live car free or car light in Kansas.
Yeah it's definitely doable. I lived in a rural college town area with 2 intercity buses a day to the nearest big city of >100K. A couple bike trails, mostly gridded road network, and walkable main street make it a very pleasant small city (25K people). We also had a free circulator bus with 30/60 min frequency, but you could use a dial-a-ride to get anywhere in town for $1.50 with one-day notice (made it useless IMO).
I feel this on such a personal level. I grew up in Douglas, Wyoming, and functioned just fine without a car. I also lived without a car in Cody, Laramie, Buffalo, and Jackson, Wyoming and also Scottsbluff, Nebraska. Living in these small towns i rarely had any need to go awywhere that i couldn't walk or bike to. If i left town, i either took a bus or rode with a friend.
Until you get to the Rocky Mountains, Counties tended to be 20 miles north to south and east to west. That was done so that everyone in that county could walk to the county seat and back home in a day. Thus these rural areas are "walkable" in that most things people need is within walking districts if you define walking distance is anything within one to two hours. Further west the distances get to far but most people do not live in that part of the US until you get to West Coast.
My point is most of "rural America" you can live without an automobile provided you accept the restrictions and work around it. The problem is most of the US is based on the assumption you will get around by automobiles thus the infrastructure to get around without an automobile no longer exists in most of the US.
Such a great argument for rural communities. Originally from Eastern Colorado so I sympathize with a lot of your experiences. Hot take though, cars are the worst thing to take hold in America.
YES! think you! Think you so much, to quote not just bikes “America was not built for the car, It was bulldozed for it” I live in a town of 2 thousand people and I guaranteed you the town could function just fine if people biked and used minivans instead of giant pick up trucks, it’s dangerous! all the roadkill is enough to make that point, it isolates people and I have no idea who my neighbors are, and it destroys the health and character of the town. Nobody is in shape, and barely anyone is nice, of course cars aren’t the only reason but I think it’s a problem that people just refuse to fix because it’s rural when rural American was built for walking and trains
A lot of genuine rural/agricultural towns were built well before cars, and like you said, never got the mid-century redevelopment money to tear up all the 19th century planning. The place I live in has my doctor, a grocery, schools, the library, and the beach all within walking distance. The core area around Main Street has had 2-3 story walkup apartments and mixed use buildings with storefronts on the ground floor and housing above pretty much since it was built in the 19th century.
I'm always glad to hear discussions on this topic from the rural point of view. I've always lived in small towns here in the midwest and have a lot of thoughts on the topic, but I am happy just to boost engagement for now.
I used to haul concrete countertops to renovation jobs in Philadelphia, and we used to always laugh at the people we saw in those terrible luxury trucks. We’d laugh especially at how stupidly hard it would be to lift things into the higher cabs.
I’m a little concerned that some defensive major city urbanists maybe reading this video as a call for them to leave the big city for a small rural town to satiate their demand for walkable, safe, functional, accessible city infrastructure.
It takes a while to get to the idea that You aren’t asking that of them because there are many reasons people are living in big cities (friends/family/work/recreation/entertainment)
It seems like this is mostly for nimbys that think urbanists are trying to “push anti car propaganda” to rural communities, which is not the case.
A lot of towns in the Central Coast of California were either founded by the railroad or the Franciscan Spanish missionaries in the 18th centuries and they are very compact and very easy to walk around or ride your bikes. However a car is still a must to be able to go to other towns but they are served by Amtrak's Surfliner and can take the people there to Los Angeles.
It would be very easy to connect our entire country with train and bus service. I think we should make it a priority as voters.
We should stop building new interstates and declare the interstate highway network 100% completed. It is time to divert all that transportation funding from building new interstates into expanding and upgrading bus and rail service all over the USA 🇺🇸.
The reason Rural communities are targeted isn't because of the towns themselves... It's the extended community outside of town they are talking about. When you live on a farm 40 miles from the nearest town it's another problem entirely.
After that you are correct again.. it's not the city itself it's the extended community of suburbian sprawl that has trouble with transportation in most cases.
I live in a small city in northern Wisconsin and I would hate living in a big city too since there way too crowded and traffic is slow as shit there
The biggest thing that is holding rural folks back from using public transit, is that it is not available -in cities. If they can walk to where they need to go in the small town, the reason they need to drive to big cities is because they need be able to drive IN big cities. Otherwise they could walk to the bus /train station and ride to the city. If you have a bus service to the city, but the bus doesn't run in the city, you are then stranded at the bus station when you get there. Connecting small towns to big cities can't be effective until cities fix their own public transit issues.
Even those that live far enough outside the small town to have to drive into town to get to the amenities; they can park in one place and walk within the town to accomplish multiple tasks before driving back out home.
I’ve done a bit of scouting on Google Earth for tiny towns in the middle of West Texas, and there seems to be a trend. See, you have tiny collections of houses next to an interstate or some other highway, OR you have places that became a place before the automobile and look just like the old downtowns of big cities, just a lot smaller.
Come to the small towns along I-90 in north Idaho...you get both! Nice walkable downtowns juxtaposed to an interstate. Check out Kellogg ID for a good example.
When people respond to criticism of car dependency with "but what about rural areas", they clearly do not understand the discussion or criticism (either maliciously or out of naïvety).
No one is saying "you cannot have a car". They are saying "you shouldn't NEED" a car. Even in rural areas, unless you live 10+ miles from anywhere else, NEEDING a car is a sign of bad infrastructure and bad policy decisions.
And as you say, when talking about rural towns, they are (at least should be) easily great for avoiding car dependency.
Rural to me means at least 10+ miles away from any modern amenities. Where I'm at a car really is the only option...
No one is saying "you cannot have a car"
But many say "you are an horrible human being for having an car"
Good to hear this perspective. I'm also from a rural area and yes, you needed a car or horse to get to the nearest store(it was about 12 miles to the closest grocery), but we were pretty self-sufficient, so we rarely needed to go anywhere. Most travel was by foot...to get from 1 part of the farm to another.
Love this video! I especially like the fact that you talked about how rural towns were built pre WWII and thus had natural urbanism. Please continue making more videos, I love your work!
Atlanta is horrific sorry you had to go through that.
For a day
@@Torrent263 Yeah it sucks
I grew up in a small town in rural British Columbia in Canada where it is still possible to live day to day without a vehicle, compared cities in my province where you would need a car for everyday tasks. Lack of public transport makes going to the city only feasable with a car even though we have passenger rail and bus service. Also I love your argument against giant pickup trucks.
Salmon Arm is where I’m living, and it is terrible. Suburban sprawl, 50mph traffic on a wide massive two lane (pretty much a f*cking highway) through the town. On the rare occasion I do walk there are times when the sidewalk disappears! And when I bike I have to bike on the sidewalk as the road is too fast. It is so sloppily put together it is breathtaking. No consistency, no barely a downtown. Where in BC do you live though?
@@dinanbimmertv1864 A small town close ish to Prince George. Most of the town is still just the street network laid out by the railroad 100 years ago, and we still have train service, although not great. I don't live there anymore though.
I hate how car dependent even small communities have became, everyone in Hereford, Borger, and pampa in the Texas panhandle is convinced by their parents they need a car to get around when the cities are 30 blocks wide at most with grid layouts, I imagine just one or two bike lanes in these smaller cities could drastically change how people get around.
And also put in sidewalks they are already don’t have them
@@enjoyslearningandtravel7957 some cities are actually starting to make improvements like that, downtown Plainview is starting to install curb extensions and Tulia recently installed new sidewalks on all thier major roads. It's unfortunate that they didn't hold developers up to the same standards as larger towns or the job would mostly be done for them. Like you say most residential streets still don't have sidewalks and it's probably the only significant thing holding these cities back in terms of walkability
Probably don't even need bike lanes. When I was young we rode our bikes everywhere on the streets. But, BIKES ARE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. As you get older you accrue injuries that make mobility difficult. A 15-minute walk is to the mailbox and back. The Villages in Florida is an example of an organized community. They have golf cart paths to everything where you can ride a bicycle if you wish. The roads are there for visitors. For many seniors walking and riding a bike are not options and all these anti-car idiots need to understand that. If you break your left foot you are not walking to the grocery store no matter your age. Maybe we need to rethink car size and look at the k-car route but those things are not comfortable at all. Our biggest issue is not the cars but the need for semi-trailer trucks to get goods to everywhere. It's too dangerous to have small light cars when there are those things on the same road. Yes, we need more trains, we need more goods to be delivered by train and smaller trucks only for local delivery. There was a time that lumber yards all had rail to the stores, not anymore. I could go on but suffice to say that getting rid of cars is not an option. Downsizing street traffic is doable if rail can take over. Imagine a mall with cargo rail delivery to the stores and passenger rail for the customers. People complain about malls and stroads but malls are just your small town downtown inside with access for more people.
@@RPSchonherr bikes aren't for young people they're for people in good shape, my Grandma rode her bike up until her 60th birthday because she never stopped and those muscles and balance stayed with her. Obviously not everyone is in as good of shape as her and there are plenty of disabled people out there so it wont work for everybody but lets be real only 7% of Americans report having serious ambulatory difficulties, even in the 65-74 and 75+ crowd that only raises to 15% 30% respectively. Sperated multi-use paths like you mention can be amazing and useful pieces of infastructure if done right and can really help people's mobility, while I think they are important and they're construction should be promoted in new neighborhoods and subdivisions I don't expect these older neighborhoods and towns to rip apart the city to install them.
@@mcsomeone2681Rare circumstance these days. I have a bike but I'm not riding in over 100/40 deg temps. If I need to go somewhere it's in an air-conditioned car. Nothing like showing up at the office smelling like a locker room.
As someone living in a rural area in southern Germany, I like that someone speaks out on the problem that is not a city dweller. One thing that is also driving me crazy are suburbanites talking about living rural.
I think the big culprit when talking about "rural areas" is that there is a lot of nuance. Some people live in a small town and have everything within town and cycling distance. Others live in villages of varying sizes that do not have any supermarket or similar. Some people might live on an active or abandoned farm in the middle of nowhere. For everyone, the situation is very different. And it also makes a huge difference whether someone is working locally or not.
Great video! I also grew up in a rural town but wasn't fortunate enough to have a supermarket (they got rid of the one real supermarket in town and replaced it with a dollar general)or anything much within walking distance. The good thing was whenever we did drive there was no traffic and we'd get to places in the same amount of time, consistently. Now, living in urban hell, that's not the case. I do ride a lot more now to get to places and I prefer that because it's more consistent and beats out traffic.
I also resonate with a lot of your other points about rural communities. There was a train station to NYC where I lived though! Which was cool
As a "detached urbanite" I have strongly considered living in a rural area and may still end up in one someday. I also grew up in the suburbs and will never go back so long as they are egregiously car-dependent. They are the worst of both worlds.
I feel like they exist for a reason still. People of previous generations worked extremely hard to earn their own more private space of living and a nice small piece of quiet place to live. But in the meantime, big cities have more work opportunities, hence millions of people have to be near the city or in the city. If you really have to live those kind of life and you have the luxury to choose, it's only reasonable that people would choose suburbs as a better environment for living. If you bring in the emissions and whatnot into the conversation, then nvm. Do your thing. In a free country everyone (and I literally mean everyone, regardless of their choice), should be free to make their own decisions.
@@samonesa9125 if suburbs weren't inefficient hogs that are subsidized by denser areas, I would agree with you. As it stands, suburbs don't generate the commerce to support their own infrastructure and need state grants to maintain much of it. Turns that when you zone only for residential with extremely large lots, not a whole lot of tax is generated. So these choices don't exist in a bubble, and suburbs would look very different if they actually supported themselves economically.
@@karl_margs land tax, and these owners' income tax, purchase tax. An area full of industrial and commerce with more tax. Taxation is a rebalance of spending to areas of need. If you hear more wealthier people complain about their contributions to the retirement program are used towards the less wealthier so they receive almost equal amounts of retirement income, would you still think this way? It's the same logic of rebalancing funds to benefit all after all.
@@samonesa9125 They're not the same. The suburbs are the wealthy people taking more than their fair share in this case and using lopsided political power to maintain their enclaves, not a redistribution to the needy. See: redlining, white flight. If suburbs weren't designed around cars and single family homes they wouldn't need to be subsidized. You can have less dense areas that are mixed use and are able to support themselves. It's not either/or, and the video showed that pretty well IMHO. The economic drawbacks of American suburbs are very well documented, so I'm not going to explain more if you're not going to approach the argument in good faith.
@@karl_margs more than their fair share? So those who live in condos and other complex housing surely pay more tax than single family house dwellers & their business do then? All the hype over issues like this, the problem is the hatred towards the "rich" these days (maybe not you, but all over the Internet, it's there for sure), sometimes I wonder if it's not even about the house or the environment AT ALL. And should you be reminded that most people living in those neighborhoods are textbook middle-class. As for "The rich", they are invisible to you in this society. So let's be reminded to stay nice and stay kind to each other. Keep polarizing ideas and getting further divided is not going to do us any good. For all of us.
I love the content and honest, ovjective take herein. I grew up in Salina and Emporia. Your observation about princess pickups (as I call them) is 100% accurate!
I love my car and love sports cars in general but I’d love it even more if I only had to drive it on a track and didn’t need it for daily transport. Traffic sucks, racking up miles sucks, paying insurance and maintenance because of daily use sucks. We need better public transport for sure!
I also grew up in a small town. 2000 people. My walkable town experience is the opposite - even at 2000 people, the town was designed to be car dependent, with all the homes up on a hill and a 10+ minute walk from the edge of the housing down to where all the businesses were. Most homes not being right on the edge of course. The churches, school, and hospital were up on the hill, but my home was a 15 minute walk to the grocery store and 15 minute walk to the other end of the residential. So those people were 30 minutes away by foot, with a 25m height between them and the grocer. There was absolutely nothing about "well cities are so big, you just have to live with it" about the town I grew up in. Our town planners chose to keep all the houses away from everything, and assume everyone had a car.
Of course, my town was also a company town where 1/2 the housing stock was made by the oil patch companies in town for their own employees. And the closest workplace for their employees was already a defacto 20 minute drive out of town because nobody wants their town built next to an oil and gas refinery.
A lot of the businesses catered to the highway traffic. It makes sense to put those next to the highway, and maybe move the housing a bit further away. But it would have been a trivial decision to put the grocery store and the post office and a single restaurant next to the hospital, for example, and the whole town would have instantly been walkable instead of car dependent. Yea, 15-30 minutes is not that bad, even with the hill. But it was definitely enough to see most households with multiple cars. Sometimes multiple cars AND a work truck.
Before moving to the city as an adult, I did live on an acreage for a little while. That was a 7-10 minute walk to the nearest neighbour. But because of the hill and the assumption of car dependence in my old town, it was barely noticeable that it was less walkable. Now THAT was rural. And it had plenty of justification. I also have living relatives who homesteaded in the countryside near where I grew up, that still live out there. They used horses for errands because cars weren't out there yet.
Now I live in a city of almost 100,000, as part of a metro area of almost 2,500,000. Listening to my neighbours say we are "rural" drives me up the wall. There are wooded areas and a few horse ranches and we can't leave our bins out because bears and other wildlife will wander into town and make a mess. But there is nothing rural about it for 75,000 of the residents. It's exactly like you said: suburban sprawl confused for rural living.
I'm not saying because the people in my city have no connection to homesteading that they can't reach the bar of rural. I'm saying that their connection to it is so tenuous that their definition of rural is "most people live in single family homes or townhomes".
Great points made here. Nice to hear someone from a rural area voicing their opinion on cars and urbanism.
my issue with suburbs is zoning, and as you said, you have to walk kilometres just to get a bottle of milk.
parking lots
I totally agree! I was from a small town and my bike was so practical there, both for around the entire town as well as jobs out in the fields around the town, or even for going to the next town (about 10 miles away). Walking worked just fine too. Even my grandma that was out on a ranch outside of town was perfectly reachable on a bike, and biked there several times. I biked to all my first jobs (many in agriculture of various sorts out of city limits). I never felt threatened from cars as there wasn't much traffic. I could walk to the grocery store just fine. Many countries without a lot of cars simply end up with more convenience stores or small grocery stores placed all over the place.
Then I moved to Denver, with my bike, and I felt like I was going to ran over while trying to get anywhere. Where I live now, I've know many people who have been hit or hit and killed by vehicles. All of them were hit by pickups or SUV's. Trucks and SUV's are way too huge today. I think they need to make it a law that you need a commercial driver's license to drive a vehicle of a certain size or that have a large hood that blocks the view of childeren that could be in front of them.
I like having the option of owning a car. In many ways cars are cool. But it is getting to the point that owning a car is becoming more of a hassel than it's worth. They are becoming too expensive. Used cars are no longer worth it at all. You risk buying a $10,000 used car and then have the transmission go out 6 months later and cost $9,000 to repair. I know someone that that happened to them.
Getting cars fixed is becoming a nightmare. You can no longer do it yourself with a tool box full of wrenches. And I for one cannot find a mechanic that is trustworthy. This makes buying an old beater not worth it. You used to be able to get a car for under $1,000 that at least ran and you could go fixing up little by little. Not any more.
Brand new cars are too expensive too. There are now basically only three cars under $20,000, and there are rumors that two of those are going away (the Mitsubishi Mirage and Kia Rio. The Nissan Versa may be the only "affordable" car next year or the year after unless they stop selling those too). With houses too expensive to buy, rent skyrocketing and groceries getting more expensive, owning a car is like adding even more straws to the camel's back. Well, I can't eat my car, so it's starting to go the way of buying a new phone: not worth it. Food, house and clothing matter more than a shiny new car.
Interesting thoughts.
Why I'm pro-car:
1. I live in X. Mom lives in Y, a hundred miles away. Repeat for any other relative you want to visit.
2. Where it can snow 6" or gets down to -40F in the winter. Good luck.
Although our family has gone down to ONE car. If I have to, I can walk to work.
Snow or cold means nothing....I walked over 10 miles in the dead of winter in the snow in Sweden last Winter....and most days walked a few miles in it.
The real problem is walking in the heat.....try doing 10 miles in the south (U.S.) in the summer and you will die. 😂
I am also from a very rural area. I also understand where people in cities are coming from with their hatred of car dependency. I hate going to town and driving in traffic. For me, I have to haul hay and other materials, so getting rid of all my pickups is not realistic for me, but for many, not being completely dependent on cars would be beneficial for many.
i get irrationally attached to my vehicles, i loved my truck when i worked on a farm, its a 2500hd silverado duramax 2006, the IMO last year before chevy started going completely off the rails with truck size, hp, and cost and DEF. on the farm that truck is awesome, hauling equipment, welding gear, and tractor tires, so many tires, I was the assistant mechanic so i got to fix all the tires:) i loved it so much i decided to take it with me back home to my 30k people home town and it was great, moved all my stuff drove it 1000+ miles to Alaska without a sweat. but now that I'm here... driving it every day to work.... to school.... to the grocery store that's 10min drive or 1h walk away... IT SUCKS, it pains me to say this because i love my truck, but i want it to go back to that farm, it did good work there, cause i hate driving it here, its too wide, it takes a 12 point turn to do anything, the diesel is loud and obnoxious so you cant hold a conversation while its warming up in the cold, and just the sheer size and surface area to scrape ice off of in the winter takes me an hour. the ride on rough dirt roads and smooth highways is great but somehow its terrible and jolty on just average potholed streets, what ever magic chevy did to make this thing ride like a dream on the two extremes of highway and dirt washboards didn't does not apparently work on just a normal ass street that has a bit of broken pavement.
with heavy heart I've finally decided to sell my beast recently, given that I'm not in a farming town i doubt it will ever do the work it used to, but i hope someone can put it back in its element, hauling heavy shit and making money. im going to replace it with a honda fit, and i hope i learn to love it just as much as my beast of a truck. im not even worried about front wheel drive only in Alaska, that truck was basically front wheel drive in the winter cause there is no weight or brake pressure over the back wheels when its unloaded. just gonna mount some blissaks and call it a day, i don't even want a subaru, too big.
side note I could do the same trucks are too big and expensive rant but with ATV's. i could use one here to plow the neighborhoods 200+ inches of snow we get every year but all the new ones are like 10k$+ even on the used market, I just want a full size 125cc 4x4 for
Illinois has a good network of rural trains, basically connecting the entire state to Chicago. Those trains are used heavily, too. I often use the station in Princeton, Illinois, which gets two regional trains in each direction daily, plus two long-distance Amtrak trains. It's typical to have thirty or more people get on or off the cross-state trains in a town of about 5,000. They have similar usage in small towns all over the state. I wish other states would make the commitment Illinois has to providing transportation to their rural areas.
My priorities when it comes to public transit would be
1. Access - can I get there on foot in a sensible amount of time? A foot journey longer than 30 minutes or so is unviable, I'll use my bike but many people aren't in good enough health to do it.
2. Reliability - how easy is it to remember and rely on the bus? If it goes on the first Saturday, second Wednesday and fourth Friday of the month chances are I won't care to remember. Make it simple - every monday. Every friday.
3. Frequency - how often does it come? Can I feasibly use it in minor emergencies (needing something for tomorrow etc) or do I have to plan around it? Everyday is sufficient, preferably departing early and returning late - I'd rather wait 4 hours than miss the last bus home by 1.
4. Connections - can I get to a longer range solution? A sleeper train, a train that just stops less often etc.
5. Only now, speed. Can I get there fast?
Very strong arguments in favor of removing car dependency. Great work
I get to be a hipster for being on the kei truck train before anyone else. I know I was talking about them before fuck cars became part of the zeitgeist. In 100% going to get one someday. So yeah I'm glad you mentioned them.
My friend got a job in a small town in the middle of nowhere. She can't drive, but luckily she found an apartment walkable to her job. The grocery store was also within a 5 minute walk. (Even though it sucks having to carry a bunch of bags.) She lived on the same block as a pharmacy so she could easily pick up her life saving medication. When she had to, she used a bike or had stuff delivered.
The only real issue was when she had to *leave* town. There's no trains, no buses, and obviously no airports. She had to rely on me and others who could drive her at least an hour away. Seeing all these abandoned train stations make me sad because the demand is there but it's not considered necessary or profitable by the standards of big city capitalists.
I go to university in a amall town in Scotland, and yeah this summarises how small towns should work perfectly. I can walk from literally one edge of town to the other in 40 minutes, the shop, my classes etc is all within 20 minutes. For long distance travel, there are busses every 15 minutes through the night to Dundee, around 30 mins away and long distance busses to Edinburgh and Glasgow which take around 1hr 30 and 2hr 30 respectively. Theres no train station, due to it being on the end of a peninsula, but there is one at Leuchars, 5 minutes bus away, with trains to Edinburgh (and Glasgow from there), Dundee and Aberdeen in the northeast. You genuinely can live without a car here, as I do.
You could build narrow gauge railways to connect towns like this, freight and passenger, you could even have freight lines going past areas with farms, then you could extend a trunk into your farm for loading produce. Then in the largest town a yard with a main freight line converges with your small feeder lines and a station with regular speed trains to connect you to urban areas, sure people would still need to use roads to get to the farms to work (you could replace the car with a motorbike) but you could still connect these small towns, with the money spent on roads and the space they take up, this is do-able and is actually more efficient and practical, instead of loading trucks slowly, you can fill an entire train as long as you can accomodate/is necessary and reduce fuel use. Journeys will still take a long time, but they already do anyway. For large metropolitan areas, you connect them with metros, commuter lines, intercity exresses and high-speed regional and interstate railways as is practical based on population.
As a note on using smaller cars for towing they have limits on what can be pulled even with the smallest hitch. This is likely why anyone who wants to tow brought bigger cars which due to gas being cheaper (like 1/2 of what I've seen in Europe) wasn't an issue. Plus it's a lot easier to tow with a more powerful vehicle. I know this as I am one of the few people with a compact car that actually has a hitch on it. Europe is a different in that a lot more compacts actually have a hitches on them.
Seeing your video reminded me of my rural KS upbringing. This is a great explanation of rural, surviving, pre war infrastructure that “urbanites” can take a page from. Bricked lined, relatively narrow streets, population density, and inter-urban rail are all excellent pieces of the puzzle that are/were in play in so many small towns.
So nice to hear about this issue from a rural town dweller. You have a new subscriber.
Thank you for making this video. One of the largest hurdles I face when discussing car-centric development at work (I work for the state of NC) is how 'rural' most of NC is. It's a square I can't really circle because I've always lived in one of the major cities here and I don't have much personal experience which for some reason car-brains value more than actual evidence. Usually when I bring up that rural downtowns were historically more walkable and accessible by train I get scoffed at and told that just wouldn't be feasible to run a train to every small town.
Car Dependency also hurts drivers alot, they have to put alot more wear and tear on the car. Back before the car, people used horse and buggies, and when we use cars similarly to how horses and buggies were used, they aren't much of a problem
Back in the horse and buggy age, there were in the bigger cities Street cars pulled by horses, or if you could hire a driver with a horse and buggy, so not, everybody owned their horse and carriage. Of course, if you lived on a farm you were more likely to own on a horse and buggy. So there is still transportation back then besides the people that own horses, either the wealthy or the farmers.
I know right.
I have to use my car sometimes but I dodge using it when I can
@@enjoyslearningandtravel7957and for those examples, if you just consider a horse to be an ICE then it sounds an awful lot like a modern Steetcar or Bus service, and a taxi /ride hail service.
Instead we decided everyone should own their own horse and buggy and are wondering why the streets are full of manure.
@@jasonreed7522 Actually, we’re talking about the past and if you look at horse and buggies in cities in the present such as San Antonio Texas, the horses actually have a pouch under them so the manure doesn’t go on the road and in the past I believe there were jobs for people to pick up manure and the manure was used for farms
@@enjoyslearningandtravel7957 you missed the metaphor.
If every car was a horse, then car exhaust/pollution would be manure. And our cars don't have diapers to capture their waste. (And society/the media acts like the rampant pollution that is a natural consequence of this is a surprise)
And the first half was pointing out that the same transportation niches have existed long before engines. Horses were used for the equivalents of taxis, busses, trains, tractors, motorcycles/ATVs, and personal cars/trucks. (Or more broadly, animal labor was)
as someone who was raised in the suburbs but has spent a significant amount of time at my grand mothers house in the country the town they lived in and was pretty easily navigable once you got to the town proper.
Your title ID really discouraging to an urbanism with no context, but I've got to admit, I don't regret finally clicking after seeing it recommended for ages. Top notch takes mate, and not ones most people in rural areas would be able to admit.
Lots of great points. If I made a list of every point you hit on that I liked, this would be a very long comment, so I'll just leave it at this video is chock-full of great points from start to finish and should be seen by people both on the fuckcars side and on the "but what about rural communities" side.
The Anti-Car Collective Discord is an alright place and I hang out there from time to time.
discord.gg/anticar
Also I think some people have said "well i wouldn't want to move to a small town because there is no jobs there" well i am not advocating you do, I live in Kansas City these days because I want a job, but my point is more that there is more things in common between needs and how downtowns are between rural towns and very urban areas
I tried to go to this address, but safari says it’s an invalid address? Is there something I’m not doing, I’m just on a tablet not a computer.
I see you made this a year ago maybe this group has been disbanded? That’s why the address doesn’t work maybe ?
@@enjoyslearningandtravel7957 Works for me but requires the discord app.
replace cars with mech suits
@@kingmasterlordreplace cars with private jets
Great video. I have noticed rural downtowns are smaller and more compact, and now that you've said it, it makes me realize that rural downtowns need to be more intentional with what they put there, like a grocery and hardware store. I'd take my chest freezer with me though, because i like having lots of food on hand vs going to grocery store more often.
Your thoughts on intercity and intrastate transit made me think about how Colorado created the bustang and outrider buses to fit these niches. A lot of cities that used to have greyhound or national rail service, can still have some weekly regional bus service, but, the trick is it needs state support.
This is so important. And this is why I think we need to get back to providing regional rail services. Small towns are some of the most walkable places, and it's so sad to see so many of them slowly dying. If people had access to the resources of larger cities and the walkability of small towns, car free life in small towns would be incredibly doable.
Watching this while walking home from work, spending multiple hours along side a 50 mph road with little protection and no other way to really get around effectively without a car.
about the grocery prep thing, THANK YOU. i constantly have food waste because the quantity grocery stores sell is too much for me and things go bad. like just recently my grocery store started stocking pint bottles of milk (which is still too much for me, but it’s way better) and it helps me manage how much food i’m actually utilizing.
i live in downtown dallas where we have a disappointing lack of grocery stores, so while i can do multiple trips a week to take a train and then walk to a grocery store, the walk in 110f heat is unbearable, so i only go once a week.
meanwhile my sister basically lives off costco, and it’s so bewildering to me the sheer quantity of food they buy.
YOU got this nailed 💯. Excellent commentary/analysis! Canada and US are a: Restrictive Euclidean Hellscape of Stroads and Super Huge Vehicles, nightmare! I own a base model 2000 4Runner with a 5speed. Beautiful, small utilitarian vehicle. 2wheel drive. A station wagon is really what it is!
The thing is most rural people don't live inside a town boundary. Vehicles are absolutely necessary
That’s true. This picture of course doesn’t fit every one not everybody lives in a small town. Some people live on farms and ranches that are far outside the small town
I understand and agree with your points, but as someone living in rural Arkansas (Greers Ferry), I don't think your Kansas analogy works well at all for where I live. I would love to see trains, busses, and sidewalks in my town, but I've been struggling to find a solution. I live in a mountainous region with no rail lines anywhere in our county. The nearest grocery store to where I live is at least a 10 minute drive, actual town is a 20 minute drive. Plus our town was built in the 60s and has no real downtown due to the car dependent design. Besides the easy addition of sidewalks to our 'town', there's not much we can do. Even cyclists would have to traverse windey and steep roads for hours to get to their destination. Busses would have to have routes far and wide to access all of the rural mountain backroads in which our county's population lives. Very few people live in my town, most people live in secluded areas and commute 10-30 minutes to school or work. I am so eager to present better transportation alternatives to my town because I believe I have a high chance of convincing our current town cabinet to make change. However I simply can not find a practical solution and I'm worried my town will always be car-only with zero pedestrians. Advice (from anybody)?
Finally someone who understands rural areas are more than little towns. You can't have a bus route on 20 different 5 mile muddy dirt roads with cotton and cow pastures on either side that runs all day for maybe 1 person a day.
Cars in cities suck but you cant put a 500 pound hay bail on the back of a cargo bike
Yes!! I love going back to visit my small town where I feel safe walking and biking; the problem is getting to cities and transit hubs. Trains would be great, but even thrice-weekly shuttles to the nearest few cities would be a GAME CHANGER. It would make college a bit more accessible, and might even boost tourism.
I live in a rural scottish town, just off a highway about an hour from a city during covid we closed the roads into town, to all non residents dropped the speed limit, and the local store started running an order collection service, the town was covered in bikes we needed a half dozen new bike racks we had more bike parking than car parking. in the centre. The local authorities put a stop to it all eventually apparently we didn't have the power to change speed limits, or close roads to through traffic...
What I dont get is why all of a sudden over the last 4 years everyone and their mother thinks they are an expert city planner.
Because all these folks have common sense and they live in reality which is something that city planners know little to nothing about.
@@r.pres.4121nah it's more like it makes you feel superior in some way because you saw what some guy on youtube said about city planning. It's the classic "Smarter/Holier than thou" attitude.
That's not to say cities could be planned better, I'm just sick of literally everyone thinking they have the education, expertise, and ability to start talking about how we need to plan our towns and cities. Especially when it mostly boils down to just hating cars.
@@muscleman125 The ole, "You must be a professional chef to criticize a restaurants food" argument
And here you come with the classic Straw man argument. @@ScooterCat64
Because single use zoning's deleterious cultural and economic effects are coming to a head. And bad urban planning is a clear-cut punching bag versus the tougher topics of cost of living, housing market speculation, climate change, preservation of democracy etc...
The only people who should truly need a car are people who live on farms. And even then, many people with smaller properties could get to downtown easily by bike. Source: I grew up on a large farm a 20 minute drive from a 2,500 person small town.
Have you ever biked 10 to 25 miles in 105° heat with 93% humidity when and the nearest hospital is 55 miles away
@@Torrent263 I grew up in South Carolina, it's gonna take a little more than some humidity to stop me from biking.
@@Torrent263Is everything that far away?
You're going to go somewhere in 25 degree icy/rainy weather with your toddler and infant...on a bike..."easily?"...really?
@@Torrent263 Exactly. And where I live, it's literally uphill the entire way to the hospital. There are huge rugged hills and valleys that there is no freaking way to ride a bike ANYWHERE.
I grew up in farm country just outside a town of about 5,000 in NE Ohio and now live in an outer suburb of Cleveland. The little town I grew up next to has way more density and is way more pleasant to walk in than where I live, though I am walking distance to Walmart and several other stores. It would be so easy to have bus and rail service there and make it super convenient for everyone in town to walk to, while I am surrounded by seas of parking and a giant freeway in the suburbs. I always hated the argument “what about rural areas!” and I’m so glad to hear someone who still lives and works there say, “well what about them?” Small towns across the country by and large are less car-dependent and more urban than the outer suburbs of major cities. Only the people living and working on the farms miles and miles outside of town actually _need_ cars to get there, while everyone in the small towns could benefit majorly from even the simplest of public transportation. Kansas has some fantastic little towns too! Go somewhere East of the Mississippi though, and the density of small towns goes even higher…even though most are loaded with single family homes.
You’re absolutely right this whole argument about rural areas is silly.
This is a lovely piece, I appreciate these prices that realty check people who are still ignorant about transit issues outside of an insulated urban dialogue, it's great to imagine the future where bus routes patch together passenger rail connectivity across rural areas. Thank you!
What I'm afraid of is that with all this talk about how bad cars are, one day I'm not going to be able to own a car even if I want to.
That's the plan. They don't just want to make more trains, or bike paths, but take cars away. That's why all these proposals for changes to infrastructure are always "put a bike path where this highway is" or "put outdoor seating for this coffee shop in a major city where street parking use to be." They want to flip the script as cars are seen as vehicles (pun intended) of oppression.
@@cbalan777 Many deny such things but I don't doubt it.
@@cbalan777 I don’t think that’ll ever happen. The majority of people are too strong for cars that that will never happen so I don’t thank you need to worry about it.
I personally am for more safer places to walk and bicycle, etc. but I am thinking if it would be hard for it to change even 5 percent more for more sidewalks and bicycling since they’re such a lobby for cars with the gas and oil in car companies.
Think about how many walkers are killed per year in the United States, or even in the state where you live. Some of course, or killed by doing stupid things such as crossing the road at night with no light and wearing black clothes but often mini walkers are killed crossing safely and they should be crossing safely in the crosswalk with a green signal in a driver turned right without looking and strikes them.
That's exactly what the governments want. They want to corral the human cattle. They want to control your movement, above all else. It's easy to cram humans into a metal tube by the thousands, and limit where you can go, with a train. Not so easy with cars/off-road vehicles. And as the past few years have proven, over half the population will do WHATEVER the government wants them to do...even if it means walking around while wearing a self-suffocation device.
Often when a small town has rail, the town is there at least partly because of the rail, rather vice versa. The town I grew up in had rail to the paper mills, but no passenger service. The rail line was built sometime in the 1800s, connecting the city to the north with the city to the south. The town had already been there at least a couple decades, but I don't think there was much to it before the railroad. As noted in the video, you can't run rail to _all_ the towns, but that doesn't mean we couldn't do a lot better at having rail service at least where the rails exist, even if you can't have anything like the every-ten-minutes streetcar service you get in a city.
There's a distinction that should be made between micropolitan small towns, and *rural* rural living. Small towns can be very walkable, particularly historic ones. A farm 30 miles from the nearest town inherently isn't. Although it's useful to keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of people in the US live in a city, suburb or small town.
I still remember when back in 90's some people in the villages around my small town here in Poland used to drive horse carts to transport stuff. Heck I just saw one last winter filled with lumber.