I know the demographics around here, so I know everyone’s just going to put “nothing lol”, but please understand what I’m asking first.
I’m physically incapable of driving a car. I stand to gain immeasurably from a world that didn’t assume everyone owned one. Having loved-ones with respiratory issues aggravated by car exhaust has made me very aware of the health issues surrounding the burning of fossil fuels, and having to navigate sidewalkless suburban stroads on a regular basis and juggle poorly funded public transit has made it very clear to me that pedestrians are second class citizens. I could go on and on about the mess cars have made of urban planning, and the number of jobs I couldn’t take because they required driving, but I digress.
In short, I hate cars just as much as the rest of you. But I’m also conscious that a lot of other people feel differently. What does widespread car ownership enable that would be difficult or impossible otherwise?
As an American I’m familiar with the cultural aura that surrounds the automobile. One of the early episodes of Mythbusters explained this pretty well while digging into the folklore surrounding a particular car-related urban legend. Cars represent freedom and self determination, two qualities highly prized in American society. You can go where you want when you want, without relying on schedules and routes mandated by public transit[1].
Looking at more tangible things, I suppose hauling a bunch of stuff from point A to point B would be hard without a car.
But what else am I missing?
Ignoring the fact you can only go where there are roads, and someone has to build and maintain those roads. ↩︎
I live in Switzerland, and I go hiking almost every weekend without using a car. There’s plenty of places to do so accessable by public transport, and still the vast majority of journeys here are done by car. If even a quarter of those car journeys were instead taken by public transport, that would mean a doubling of public transport usage and justify huge expansions. That’s with Switzerland’s already comparatively high public transport usage, elsewhere the shift from cars wouldn’t need to be as large to multiply public transport usage.
Thinking about it you’re right. Technically I would be able to go hiking or even climbing using public transport. I just would have to spend way more time to get there and carefully plan my trips not to miss some connection and get stranded. In the end it’s all about flexibility. Where I live it’s 30 minutes drive to a climbing spot. I can do it any day after work. If I would go by public transport I would need 2.5h hours to get there. That’s 4 hours more, mostly spend walking. It means I would only be able to do it during weekends and would have to dedicate whole day to this trip and would be able to dedicate less time to other hobbies. During summer it’s only possible to climb in the morning and it would be impossible to catch a bus at 5AM to get there on time. So summer would be also gone. So yes, technically is possible but not as often and with way more effort. I guess you can say this about anything. It’s not that without a car things are impossible, they are just way more difficult.
Again, it doesn’t have to be more difficult, if most people don’t own a car there will be a lot more demand for public transport, and the services can be expanded to accommodate this much more easily. I can go hiking and usually not worry about getting home because the trains are hourly at the worst and connections are easy. It’s only more difficult because we’ve built a world around making things as convenient as possible for cars.
Climbing spots are usually in very remote places. No matter how many people use public transport there will never be a bus that goes 5 km up a mountain on a dirt roads to a place visited by 10 people a day during weekends. With hiking it’s easier because hiking trails start in many different places, often fairly well connected but many outdoors activities like climbing, paragliding, cannoning, speleology or even mountain biking only happen in very specific, remote places. I you have to hike for 4 hours to get to those places those activities become way less accessible.
To some extent I think you’re right, but for outdoor recreation that somewhat depends on where you live and what type of terrain your hobby requires. Switzerland as a country is full of beautiful hiking scenery and opportunities so I imagine the travel to get to it even by public transit isn’t an arduous one. In places where the terrain and landscape are more flat, barren or boring, the travel time to get to good hiking opportunities can be significant. For instance, the closest mountains to me are a 10hr drive by car; I could cross your entire country in about half that time. Unfortunately location plays a large role in the viability of using public transit for certain hobbies.
Flat terrain makes it much easier to build fast rail. If there’s another city on the way you could have a high speed rail connection, or a sleeper train.
See the fun thing is we have passenger rail from my city all over the country…but dogs aren’t allowed on it if they’re over 20lbs. I’ve even written the company pleading for them to review their policy and citing the crazy amount of dog sport participants that could use their service, and even suggesting they require an easily verifiable 3rd party obedience certificate and was effectively told to go pound sand.
Almost half of households in the US have dogs, so it’s frustrating that travel with them is limited to personal cars (there’s only one commercial airline that flies large dogs in the US and it has very limited destinations.) I would LOVE to take a train to a backpacking trip in the mountains, but then we’re back to leaving my pup at home. This country needs a major culture shift on a great many things, not the least of which is public transit.