You’re off by a factor of 4 on the grocery distance for the last 3 places I’ve lived, and those stores were CLOSE. It’s like 100cc of petrol to go that far, 200cc round trip, in lieu of 40+ minutes of fast walking (in which you can only carry limited groceries). I know all about it because I’ve done the walk many times when I didn’t have a car, and it fucking sucks.
I’d say freaking out about 200ccs of petrol to get groceries is an insane degree of austerity, and the fact that people like you are proposing that is evidence of either an irrational need to control impact, or (if justified) evidence that the world is grotesquely overpopulated.
Nobody owns 3 ton cars around here. Mine isn’t even 2 tons. In fact it’s pretty close in weight to a Fiat 500, while being generally more useful in every way. Everything you’re presenting is a strawman/caricature of what you imagine typical suburban car owners to live like. And yes, we should all be driving electric cars, but it’s not going to happen overnight.
Edit: damn near nobody on earth would drive to get groceries if the store was 300m/1000ft away. Most people will never be able to live that close to the grocery store, work, or any other place that they routinely need to visit. That’s why your example is insane.
Did I talk specifically about your situation? No. But sadly enough I know a few people, that actually do exactl those kinds of trips.
And I have no idea where you live, but in most European cities (!) There’s a supermarket at most 1km away. Usually closer.
The closest one to me is 300m. Work is 32 km though. But you know what? I don’t own a car. Because there’s public transport.
And I live in a city with pretty great public transport. And yet people with way way shorter commuting distances still tend to have fucking big SUVs and drive everywhere. Those are the people I mean.
If you don’t even fit in that category, why do you even feel the need to actively defend yourself? That doesn’t even make any sense?
It’s hard to tell the intent of any poster, and there is a vehement anti-car movement here (and on Reddit) that allows for no exceptions to the idea that living should be done at high density, and without personal vehicles. It’s hard to read your intent and beliefs because the things you said before are very similar to what I’ve heard from the zealots.
I’m trying to make the point that public transit easily misses on serving every origin, destination, and timing efficiently. Usually it misses badly, and my average experience with specific commutes is a 3x time penalty for transit vs driving. The penalty gets worse if done at especially early or late hours. Maybe this is exacerbated by car infrastructure and lower density, but the anti car crowd would have you believe it’s intrinsic and not a function of history and preference. At any rate I usually disagree with them on almost every premise.
But that mostly just means that you have terrible public transport where you live. Not that it’s inherintely bad.
If I would take a car to work, it would take me at least (!) 50 minutes (depending on traffic, usually longer). With public transport plus bike I’m at 65 minutes. So just a bit longer, but delays are pretty uncommon (maybe 3 minutes every now and then). Plus I can relax, read or watch a show. And it’s incredibly cheap thanks to the Deutschlandticket (49€, but 14€ of that is payed by my employer). Only for fuel (not counting insurance, tax, repairs etc.) It would cost me at least 180€.
So yeah just this tiny delay is okay in my opinion, considering what I’m saving (money, environment, worries about a car…)
And I never said, it’s the ultimate solution. I’m just saying especially those huge as cars are a fucking monstrosity more or less. Because easily 95% of users don’t even need such a huge vehicle. They just want it. And don’t give a fuck what that entails for the environment and for other people. (especially looking at pedestrian and bike safety).
More people should just really consider if the car they chose is really what they NEED and if every trip they are taking with it is truly necessary.
