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America's love with cars is founded on fear and selfishness
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this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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Unpopular Opinion
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You literally can't commute in the US without a car. There aren't any sidewalks and everything is so spread out it would take a full day to get groceries by bike.
I live in Denver. Transit is decent. The light rail can be a faster commute during rush hour. Plenty of regional buses to go hiking and skiing. Under 10 min walk to multiple grocery stores. Regional bike path network span multiple cities.
It's not perfect, but I've been car free for over two years with very little issue.
Edit, to add to this: It's more convenient for me to take the train to the airport or the bus to the slopes. Some ski resorts will charge more for daily parking then a round-trip bus ticket. And driving to the ski resorts is a traffic nightmare, much rather just sit on the bus and not worry about it.
Agreed that it's doable in a number of areas. I'm in the suburbs where that's harder, though I happen to be near a grocery store at least.
I moved from the suburbs to the city. I sacrificed a bit of living space and have higher rent. But the increased rent is offset by the lack of car payments, insurance, etc.
Everyone's situation is different and not everyone has the flexibility to move. But there are many cities in the US that are affordable and have decent transit. Just depends on what you value.
Ok? Some places it snows and some places it's hot. Are we just describing things now?
Some places you can commute with transit and some places you cannot. The original thread was making the statement that you could not commute in the US without a car.
Which is true, for some places in the us. And some it is.
What if you work in Denver and live in Firestone?
Obviously there are already public transit offerings in urban areas
I would move to somewhere closer? Even when I regularly drove I would move, take a different job, etc instead of dealing with a long commute. To me it's just not worth it.
You say obviously but the original thread was started by someone who made a blanket statement about the US. There are millions of people in the US who commute without a car. I was curious and looked up some data: https://data.census.gov/table/ACSST1Y2018.S0801?q=S0801:+COMMUTING+CHARACTERISTICS+BY+SEX&hidePreview=true
I would even argue that some of that 85% could switch to transit with very little effort. But as the OP stated, I think there is a cultural aversion to transit in the US. So there's some of that 85% who could use transit but choose not to.
"just move" is a privileged statement
I agree, which is why I said "Everyone’s situation is different and not everyone has the flexibility to move" below.