A researcher asked 10 people to go car-free for 20 days. None wanted to continue
2mon 27d ago by sopuli.xyz/u/lnxtx in fuckcars from www.brisbanetimes.com.au
Article about an experiment from Brisbane, Australia.
“It demonstrates that in low-density, sprawling cities like Brisbane, people cannot be expected to permanently give up driving unless there is significant investment in public transport.”
However, researchers found given participants were likely to slightly reduce their reliance on cars, it showed experiencing car-free living, even briefly, could help people break away from automobility.
In Brisbane, 89 per cent of households own at least one car and 48 per cent of commuters drive to work.
This was essentially the goal of the study, to demonstrate that more investment is needed in public transport to increase public buy-in, and that even just being forced to try it for a few weeks increases usage and lowers car use longer term - so if there can be incentives to try public transport that could also increase its use long term and reduce cars on the road.
The headline is not what people here (myself included) wanna read, but the study succeeded in its demonstration and will hopefully drive positive govt policy outcomes.
will hopefully drive positive govt policy outcomes.
From the current city and state governments? Highly unlikely.
If services aren't within 5-10 minutes maximum, people will not walk or bike there. That's often greater than the distance just to get out of some neighborhoods.
If public transportation is not within 5 minutes or so, people will not use it.
The cost of a car can be under 10/day. If public transport is even half that for full day multistop use, people won't use it.
I've been to Brisbane, it is really drawn out. A bit like LA. Tiny CBD, lots of sprawl.
The same was done in Vienna. People did not use their car for 3 months.
Results
- 2/3 could imagine living without a car
- 25% have sold or are planning to sell their car
Considering it was founded, like, 2000 years ago, that isn't really surprising. Turns out, being a pedestrian in a city which was established in a millennium when being a pedestrian was the norm is quite easy compared to the same effort in much more recent municipalities. Have you ever really paid attention to the plot of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Spotted the American.
You have very little understanding about city development and planning. Otherwise you'd know that most of the transport corridors that are in use today were started in the Industrialisation period when trams were introduced.
A city with millions of inhabitants can't be explained by looking at the small population in the centre.
Vienna has an amazingly good and inexpensive public transport system and quite good bike routes combined with fairly inexpensive housing due to good city governance over several decades (social democratic party by and large).
The difference between most North American and European cities in terms of availabke transport choices is not what happened hundreds of years ago, but what city planners did in the post war period (50s to 70s).
It's not too late however, if you look at the incredible progress Paris had in the past 5 years.
Vienna is a dream for public transit. Didn't get to use the cycle routes but it seemed I was never far away from any transit. Beautiful city to boot.
The framework was still established long before cars, which was then easier to expand upon. Absolutely governance has a huge effect, but more modern cities were developed with cars in mind, with endless suburban sprawl. It's far easier to implement public transportation in places that were originally built around walkable city centers.
Additionally, places that weren't bombed to hell in WWII didn't have the opportunity to redesign for public transit mid-century. They grew with car-centric infrastructure and never reset. I'm not saying we shouldn't develop public transit, we absolutely should, I'm just saying it's harder to implement with existing infrastructure and layout that spread everything out over dozens of miles.
After World War 2, the Netherlands was bombed to shit, and they rebuilt their cities For The Car! Then in the 90s they realised cars suck, and they started rebuilding their cities for people. Now it's the best country in the world to drive a car, because there are so few cars on the road.
The moral is, Europe isn't winning at urbanism because their cities are old, they're winning because they're trying hard. Brisbane isn't trying hard.
This didnt start in the 90's, but in the 60's
Also, the Netherlands wasn't bombed to shit. There was some bombing here and there with low to moderate damage. Only Rotterdam was pretty much levelled just to make the point during the invasion (and because of a number of other stupid reasons)
The point though is that, yes, the Netherlands decided that levelling Amsterdam to make it a giant car parking lot was a bad idea and they went full bicycle. And yes, its been the best decision ever.
Having said that, i live in Vancouver now and they've made some great strides in improving the city for bicycles. If Vancouver can do so, a y other city can do so too..it's just a matter of wanting
In the Netherlands, this change caused a huge change in architecture as well, because when you restrict cars and push bicycles, you start also making local communities better, making sure that there are smaller local stores, bars, restaurants, within each community, at walking on cycling distances. It has transformed the country over these decades.
Here in American continent countries this can work too, even though the architecture has been messed up so badly because of so many decades of car brain designs. It will take decades to undo the damage, but it can be done
The only necessary ingredient is the will
The best country to drive in? Hmm. It’s just as busy as the surrounding countries and traffic speeds off the major roads are painfully low. The standards of driving are surprisingly poor, at least compared to neighbouring Germany. It is very well set up for car alternatives and I really enjoy going car free on my visits there, but there are many countries that are more enjoyable for driving.
Vienna is very walkable but also really big. The answer is, mostly, public transport, a lot of it and cheap. Public transport costs ~ 400€ per year if you have the annual pass for Vienna (you can use all public transport). Also at the moment a build out of bike lanes makes a combination of bike/public transport very interesting for big parts of the city.
P.s. Can't really remember the plot if Rodger Rabbit.
The villain of WFRR was dismantling the trolley system in order to force people to buy cars and use the freeway system.
Fair point. We even maintained our 2000 year old skyscrapers here.
But you forget, that we're living in forest cities with exploding trees!
That this idiot even got a single vote is beyond me...but well, who am I to talk with Kickl promoting the same kind of xenophobia.
But I'm getting a bit off topic, although all those conversatives world wide seem to love to be stuck in their cars in traffic jams...
Los Angeles was founded in 1781. They didn't have cars then.
Then how did they get on the 10?
Same way they do now. You just don't.
They did, just not with engines.
Yes we get it it colonists living on stolen land have all the room in the world to be able to vroemvroem their fatass everywhere
A researcher asked people who live in car dependent areas to go without theirs for 20 days, none of them were able to overcome the poor infrastructure.
Fixed Headline for them.
I couldn't do it where I live without just taking 20 days off work. I've got a grocery store a couple of blocks away so food wouldn't really be an issue. The problem is that I work about 5 miles from my house down a road that doesn't have sidewalks most of the way and you'd have to be crazy to ride a bike in a lane. There is no public transportation anywhere between my house and work.
With public transit, I'd have to walk / drive 5 miles to a bus stop, then hop across 2 seperate bus routes, then make it another 5 miles on foot or an uber or smth to get to work, for a combined 2 hours 40 minutes, assuming I uber the 10 miles where public transit is either non-existent, or goes too far out of the way that walking would be faster
Its only a 30 minute drive...
20 days isn't really enough to judge. If you didn't own a bike at the start of those 20 days, could you really get a bike and all the clothes, safety gear, etc. you need and get used to biking before the end of the experiment? If you're using public transit, can you really learn the routes and schedules for the places you need to go in just 20 days?
Also, assuming these people all owned cars, they were still essentially paying for their cars the whole time. They might not have paid for gas, and the wear and tear would have been very slightly less, but any car loan they had still had to be repaid on schedule. If they rented a monthly parking pass or something, that would have to be paid. Not only that, but when you don't own a car, you tend to make different decisions on where to live, and sometimes where to work too. So, they're living in a place that's car friendly (and maybe not public transit friendly).
I would bet that if you took someone who didn't own a car and intentionally lived next to a major transit hub and asked them to get around by car for 20 days, they wouldn't like it either. They wouldn't have a place to park at home, rush hour traffic would probably be extremely stressful for someone who didn't do it every day, and so-on.
What this really needs is something like what you get in one of those "wife swap" TV shows. Someone goes to live in a completely different place with people who live very different lives. Instead of living in the sprawling suburbs and getting around everywhere by car, you now live downtown in a high-rise right near a great public transit location. In addition, calculate how much someone would save without a car, and give that to them as a cash payment every day/week so they understand that positive side of not owning a car as well.
could you really get a bike and all the clothes, safety gear, etc. you need and get used to biking before the end of the experiment
Most people don't wear special clothes to ride their bikes.
Those aren't pictures from Brisbane.
In places where biking is well established as a way to get around, people think they don't need safety gear. But, when a city doesn't have a lot of bike infrastructure, cars are going to be constantly driving way too close to bikers.
This is an image that's actually from Brisbane:
Or you could have gone with this one:
From this story: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-11/many-busy-brisbane-cycling-routes-make-no-allowance-for-riders/12862402
What? I spent years riding a bike. You could literally go buy a bike and 2 minutes out of store. As far as special clothing or anything you don't need any special clothing. Winter time you wear your winter stuff summertime you wear your summer stuff. That's about it. You put on a helmet that you buy at the same place you buy your bike at. And that's all you need to do. You can literally jump online and have it delivered same day as well. And you don't even have to go anywhere. That's not the issue in getting a bike and using it for those 20 days.
You only need special clothes if you are a wanker, everyone else just wears their normal clothes
You need special clothes (full face helmet, kneepads, ripstop breathable clothing) if you ride downhill or enduro. But normal everyday riding you really just need a helmet unless you’re a new rider.
wankers
Yeah, I already covered that
You think someone riding downhill is a wanker? I’m guessing you’ve never tried it if you think that.
This is the gear i’m talking about:
I guess, that was in jest, also anyone can be a wanker if they want to
Yeah twas in jest, I should have put /jk
Twas in jest, I should have put a /jk
Wankers is quite harsh
Let them feel sexy on their bike, if they want to
"However, researchers found given participants were likely to slightly reduce their reliance on cars, it showed experiencing car-free living, even briefly, could help people break away from automobility."
I think this is an important secondary take away here. Reducing car use is still much better than continuing at current rate. (Similar to eating less meat vs going vegan cold turkey).
Owning a car does come with large sunk-costs tho - so you won't feel the full financial benefit from just reducing car use (still have to pay rego, insurance, maintenance etc.)
Yeah, that's bcz most towns/cities are not set up to be walkable. And nobody wants to carry groceries miles back to their house. We've set up society in a way that not owning a car is a nonstarter.
You get the mobility you build your cities for. Cites were not built for cars (most of them at least), they were transformed into car cities (which took decades). Thing is, cities can also be transformed back into transit oriented cities. Both takes time and commitment though.
The Dutch were on the same "train" to total car dependency in the 1960s. But during the oil crises in the 70s they put a hard stop to that and reversed course. Now half a century later, most of the country is designed to be attractive for multiple modes of mobility, among others cycling but also transit and yes even driving by car. The latter does not dominate everything however.
They don't have miles in Brisbane.
It's not our fault they're poor.
They're rich in SI units
Australia is poor?
T'was a joke abou them lacking miles as if it were a thing they did not possess as opposed to a measurement they do not use.
A mile is a mile no matter where.
You're in an international community. Why not use a standard unit of measure?
I'm not the person who originally made the 'mile' comment, but surely you can give grace to somebody using the unit they are most comfortable with when making a generic statement. Like if a Brit used the word "colour." We get the point.
Of course, the argument that metric units should be used everywhere has merit, but way way way above the level of an internet post.
They weren't using it to describe a specific measure, just to express a general sentiment - why take this one so personally?
Just trying to stop the further Americanisation of the internet.
The US did... develop it, it's more the de-americanization of the internet, which itself is a noble goal sure. But while it's a good goal to strive for, 50% of the internet is english - and of english language speakers, 23% of them are from the US. It's probably much more useful for you to focus on promoting the use of non-US tech companies / social media / web services than to try to enforce the purity of casual language.
The "internet", yes. But the web, http, etc was all invented by the English. You guys can claim email if you want.
I'm on a non-US instance of Lemmy on a post about a non US city.
HTTP was developed by TBL's team at CERN, it was not developed by "the english". You're actively erasing the contributions of non-american groups to the modern internet in your quest to de-americanize the internet. You're a far bigger contributer to this problem than the person who used miles in an extremely informal way.
Sure, I'll concede that it was TBL and his team at CERN. But it was not American.
And I never once claimed that it singularly was.
The name "the internet" was coined by researchers at stanford while they were defining the TCP/IP protocol, which* was then called the DoD model (IIRC the name originated in RFC 675). That said, the World Wide Web itself is a collaborative international work, and it always has been - though amusingly, TBL credits Ted Nelson (an American) with having done the critical work (developing hypertext document linking), and Ted Nelson in turn credits TBL and his team at CERN as the people who took the idea and "ran with it".
Nobody here is attempting to assign or take away credit for the development of the WWW except you, which is honestly pretty weird. The internet was an american invention - the internet we use (gestures grandly) is the most impressive work of international collaboration in human history. Stop trying to play keepsies over it, you're being regressive.
Ive been car free my entire life and I will continue to do so for the rest of my life
Same here!
Or until you start a family.
Ah yes, I forgot it's impossible to ride public transport with kids...
Public transport has routes and stop where they are planned to stop.
Maybe you're lucky and it will not be far from every of many places you have to be that kids can walk the rest of the way.
I knew 2 people who definitely wouldn't get a car after getting a kid.
First one got a car almost immediately because difficult.
Second one took about a year. She ran out of people to guilt people in helping the poor single mom.
Our systems are not perfect, you can ask people in wheelchairs how difficult they have it to get around.
And I see a lot of cargo bikes now, sometimes with 3 kids.
All great in theory.
But our bike paths were not designed for these relatively huge things. It creates dangerous situations.
Not to mention how fast they can go since all of them are electric.
My wife insisted I get a driver's license when we had kids, because she didn't want to be the only one taking them everywhere. Usually I'm the one taking them places. And still on my bike or by public transport most of the time.
I'm car free with 2 kids. Everyone thinks it's harder, like kids like driving in traffic. No, it's not. We do local things or get public transport. No parking hassles.fine to have a drink with lunch.
yeah, having kids in sports would be insane without a car. Practice is in two separate towns, multiple times a week, real meets are in other major cities.
You couldn't get them to where they need to be with US public transport.
Why do kids have to go to different cities to play? There are enough kids in nearby schools
There are enough kids in nearby schools
Maybe in a big city. The district I worked the most for was big enough that most matches were within the district. But when you think about most small towns, which maybe have one or two high schools, that’s not going to be true at all.
Even with that - are the nearby schools the same division? Lots of sporting leagues have restrictions on who can play who (bigger schools playing bigger schools instead of smaller ones, an attempt to be fair usually).
Heck, even leaving sports out I drove an hour out for a FIRST tournament recently.
Small towns almost always need personal transport. But the definition of a small town in US is much bigger than most other developed places (my experience is EU, SKorea, Japan)
If it's a small town, there's not going to be many big or small schools. Why such a weird system 😅
If significant travel is required, the school should organise travel and stay. Unless the kid is participating in state level at U-12, there is no significant travel for play in Japan and Germany (for popular sports). The kid is a kid afterall. And study is also important
But the definition of a small town in US is much bigger than most other developed places
This is the type of town that I had in mind when I was writing my comment..
Closest high school is Elk City, which you have to drive to, on the interstate. There is no public transit anywhere on this map.
When I was in high school, our track team all met at the high school and got on a bus to the other schools matches, often they were long rides. However, the school provided the bus transpo. I think that was true for all the HS sports leagues. I think the same occurred for the middle school. The elementary school? I don't know, I don't think they had inter-school sports. Mostly kids were in local leagues where businesses sponsored teams and they played in local parks. (At least that was how it was in a village I lived in Long Island. We had a few ballfields and just rotated through them. For winter sports like basketball, they used the church gyms and local rec center. Believe me, my parents never drove us to any activity other than a school drop off.
We got a bigger car than I would like because my stepdaughter decided that she wanted to be a hockey goalie. 🙈
we get it, you're rich
we get it, you’re rich
everyone has their own definitions, sure are a LOT of rich people in this thread :)
i have a family. living with a small child in an american city without a car is entirely possible. you lose the ability to go out (either to city or to nature) but with a small child you don't have time to do that anyway so you might as well pay more to live closer to your job. alternative is paying the difference in rent for a car loan and loosing the time you don't have while sitting in traffic. big caveat: this works only if you earn enough to be able to afford living close to a city center in the first place. also, it is still way less comfortable than a life in a developed european city.
alternative is paying the difference in rent for a car loan
Why do you have to take an expensive loan to get a car? Is there no used car market in US? I live in a bit different reality, and here there's thriving market at any price tag. You have to do the research, pay for paint thickness check to ensure car didn't get wrapped around a tree, but getting very cheap used car to drive your ass from point A to point B is absolutely a thing.
Is there no used car market in US?
There is, but prices on anything that doesn't require constant repairs is still fairly expensive.
Buying a used car is always a crap shoot, but things aren't as bad as the old days. It used to be that you really didn't want a car with more than 100,000 miles, but today, any car will make it well past 200,000.
I've bought numerous cars with over 100,000 miles, and didn't need any more than the normal amount of maintenance for a 100k vehicle.
Nah US has used cars, got mine for like $6000 a few years ago when prices were kinda high.
Also you, probably: "There are no atheists in foxholes"
I think this small experiment simply demonstrates that ditching cars is not a matter of personal preferences, but a community effort
And a matter of traffic design. You can design places to require a car for everything, or you can design them with bike paths everywhere and a good public transit system.
The system is rigged. If you're dependent on the bus in a city where everything is miles apart, the buses run every hour and only daytime hours, of course it's going to suck.
I remember in Australia, trying to meet my friends in the city center. I had a bus scheduled every hour, sometimes it didn't come though, so I could be waiting over an hour for the bus to take me to the nearest train station. The train was every forty minutes, so it would easily take me two hours to get there. Then I had to hope they showed up too.
I later found I could bike and it would take about an hour.
Brisbane is a shit city for cycling. Who is surprised?
Ask 10 people in Amsterdam and half would tell you they already haven't used a car in weeks. The only ones who'd have a problem with it are those who work far away from Amsterdam.
I was amazed by the transformation in Amsterdam when I visited last summer. I've been visiting Netherlands for 40 years and always admired their cycling culture but lately they seemed to have almost eliminated cars from the city. As a result it is incredibly quiet, serene and there is no vehicle soot on the buildings, as is the case in London. I could often choose among many different modes of alternative transport in any given location.
The English solution to this problem is ever more stringent penalties on the driver (e.g. ULEZ) which may be profitable but they have been ineffective at reducing the volume of vehicular traffic, pollution, accidents, ad nauseum. We pay a huge price for car culture.
and fat people in Amsterdam are rare, coincidence?
I lived in Amsterdam for 10 years and only got a car when I married someone who lived in the suburbs. Well, actually I still don't own a car but I can borrow one as needed!
That'll be 1.5M€ for a 40m² apartment thanks.
That's the big problem with nice places to live: they quickly turn into expensive places to live.
I live in a busy city too and i haven't driven a car in 8 years. Wouldn't know where to leave the damn thing either.
I still have a license but I love not having to drive anymore. It was always so stressful.
The average claim per person for all their travel expenses during the experiment in Brisbane was $125 – but they saved $300 in car costs. “I hadn’t realised how much money my car eats up,” a 43-year-old man from Brisbane said.
Those $300 for 20 days look like just fuel costs. Add the yearly depreciation value of the car (especially bad for new cars), insurance and maintenance costs and it gets even worse.
Even limiting oneself to only a financial viewpoint (which is quite reductive since the are also big Environmental, Health and Social costs), for most people (especially those who live in cities) cars are stupidly expensive for the utility value that they deliver.
Hopefully they got action items out of it - what do they need to work on.
Personally I loved the freedom of not having to deal with a car on a daily basis, but there was too much I couldn’t do.
One of the shortcomings that seems to surprise people is a lack of long term car storage. There will be an extended transition where many people can not give up their cars or think they cannot. Why not help with that? At one point I was driving my car mostly to move it for street cleaning because there was no permanent place to store it. We want the cars off the street to make room for more important road users. Garages in apartment blocks are too convenient and for-profit garages too expensive
You’ll get more people willing to try car-free if you give them a slightly inconvenient place to store their car, until they realize how little they need to use it. I wonder if making it cheap and easy to leave your car at a park and ride at the end of a transit line would work
I used to do this when I lived in New York state and would occasionally travel down to New York city. It was stupidly cheaper to drive (and faster - which WTF whhhhhy). So I would rent a cheap spot in a garage near the outskirts of the city for the day and use public transport for the rest of the day. I remember being mad that it was cheaper and faster to drive and pay to store my car then it would have been to take the train. That's a problem. Especially when I had a train station in biking distance to my apartment at the time.
I mean, if you search around you can probably find someone willing to rent out driveway or garage space for cheap. Or else if you head to the outskirts of your city or near the industrial areas, you'll find car/rv storage lots - usually near or part of storage units. So the solution already exists.
I think it'll be a hard sell to get people to, say, approve government subsidies for parking garages to make it cheaper for people to store cars that they arent even using. Especially if street parking is already free
The point would be to remove/recover street parking for more important uses. Especially in older urban neighborhoods you might have really narrow streets, no room for bicycle or bus lanes. This lets you compromise: car is still possible for those who need it, but less convenient so used less, neighborhood streets have reduced traffic and can be opened for cycling or pedestrians
I mean, if the point is to remove street parking, I'm in favor of that.
I don't think there should be any real government intervention to then create additional parking, though. Seems like a move in the wrong direction.
What I think would be good instead, though, is ending parking minimums and then declaring that businesses cannot restrict who parks in their lots to only customers. They can charge a fee for the use of their lot, but otherwise anyone can park there for any amount of time. This would vastly expand the amount of long term parking, drastically driving down the price, while also incentivizing landowners to now redevelop their parking lots into something useful
They do that in my town. Finding parking and garages and everything is not even an issue. I feel like you're more in a much more Cityfied area than I live in. Well I do live in a major match politen area I was making the comment the other day that the majority of the city I live in is more valley and suburbs than actual city. However at all of the train stops throughout the valley there is free parking. And you could even leave your car there for a few days if you wanted to. And at any of the major bus hub areas there's also large lots and free parking. They even provide random park and ride lots throughout the outer suburb areas so you are encouraged to carpool.
We’re probably more city. While it’s effectively a suburb to a major city, it was built out pre-car with a nice walkable downtown with larger buildings and a central business district, including the train/bus station. A small city
While there’s parking, it’s all pay, and all signed for no overnight. While there’s enough parking within a few blocks, the train/bus station used to fill up by 8am. It’s not expensive, $3.50/day in my town, but no overnight parking makes it tough.
I was annoyed when even our library started charging for parking, but they have a small lot and complained it was filled up with people looking for cheap parking for the day
As someone who has been without a car for a decade now I'm not sure I could go back. I love walking and biking too much.
My understanding of the study is it is highlighting that without good public infrastructure it is difficult for most people to go car free.
For example, for me, my daily commute is ~20 minutes each way by car. Or ~3+ hours one way by bus, ~5 hours walking, ~90 minutes biking. The closest store to my house is a 20-30 minute bike ride, or hour walk, without sidewalks or bike lanes for most of it, making it rough and dangerous to traverse (Dont get me started on how its an over 1 hour bus ride [yes for a route that takes 40 minutes to walk]) It is its own chiken and the egg, poor infrastructure is justified as not even enough usage but people dont use it because there is not enough non-car infrastructure.
The Brisbane public transport is pretty bad, but there are more reasons: the bus network is owned by the council while the train network is owned by the state government. As a result both tend to compete with each other. This is especially bad when the busses don't even cover some areas. Partner went for a course there recently and their best option to reach the place on public transport was to just walk 40 minutes from the train station! I can't think of a single area in Sydney that wouldn't get a bus service at least once a day on a work day. (You know things are bad if you're comparing to Sydney busses because these things are terrible)
Absolutely, although as a Sydneysider, I generally have pretty good bus services where I live. The only thing that makes my blood boil is how awful the bus drivers can be to children. There was one day I had to catch the bus to the library after school, and it was storming a fuck ton. This group of highschoolers get on, and some of them don't tap on and go and sit down. The bus driver, an old grey haired lady yells her head off at the back of the bus, but since they had already sat down, she couldn't find them. So she decides the only thing left for her to do, is to stand by the Opal card reader, and force every single person to tap on. You might be thinking "well fine she's pissed, but those guys should've just tapped on right?"
Well this little kid jumps on, and he looks no older than 12 years old. He asks, in a voice I can barely make out over the raging storm outside "can I come on? My family just moved here and I don't have a card yet" - to which the decrepit bus driver yells "Not on my watch, get out of here! No one is allowed on this bus unless everyone taps on!", she then proceeds to shove him to the middle of the entrance before shoving him outside.
I remember kicking myself the rest of the trip to the library - I was furious at myself for not having recorded what she had done, and I couldn't stop thinking about it for the rest of the week. No one, especially not a child, deserves to be forced out of a bus in the middle of a thunderstorm.
So every time someone praises public transport here, I'm grateful for the comfortable experience I get to enjoy. But each and every time someone praises the buses, the first thing I can think of is that little boy, and how despite confessing to the bus driver he was new to the area, was pushed into the middle of a raging thunderstorm.
NYers' "I've been doing this my whole life"
Pro tip: live in one of the few cities that has a working mass transit system to most places.
I have found that you can often go car free if you live and work near a University.
10 is not a statistically significant sample size
Last time I looked at using public transport to get to work it would take about 3.5 hours. Takes 30 minutes to drive. Housing is too expensive near there for me to move.
None wanted to continue what? Driving cars? Continue the trial? I can't read the article due to a pay wall
Here is an archive link.
Almost a dozen regular Brisbane people took on a challenge to give up their car for 20 days, but by the end of the experiment, they decided it was unrealistic for them to go totally car-free.
Urban planners from The University of Queensland recruited 10 car-owning Brisbane residents – five men and five women.
They were asked to follow their regular schedules, but use public transport, walk or ride instead.
What they found is that the city and it’s public transport options are antagonistic toward people who do not or cannot drive themselves.
The word "antagonistic" implies intent. I generally believe in human incompetence.
There's about 4 million people in Brisbane-Gold Coast, 10 is not very representative...
I went without a car for 8 almost 9 years. Bus, train, biking. Etc. everywhere. It's honestly such a limited existence compared to having a car. When I can just jump in and go anywhere I want. I regularly go on long road trips I go visit multiple states. In the first year I had a car I visited probably eight different states. Where is in the previous 8 years the farthest trip I had taken was bumming a ride up into the mountains to do a camping trip and waiting in the rain for my friend to show back up to pick me back up. As much as I love my bike and as much as I love walking and I honestly don't even mind the bus system having a car is something I'll never go without again.
It really depends on how easy and expensive it is to rent a car last minute.
Also depends on where you live.
When I lived near Central London I ended up selling my very nice car and started cycling because almost all the nice places to go out to were more easilly reached by public transport (plus you could get piss drunk if you felt like without risking anybody's life driving back like that).
Sure, you could use a car to go out to the countryside, but given that it took almost an hour just to drive out from London, it wasn't worth it to do on impulse and to do it for vacations I could just rent a car (or, even better, fly away to a country with better weather and rent a car there).
In practice what was happenning was that I was paying around half the value of the car every year for renting a garage and car insurance whilst I only used the car maybe once every 2 months, which financially was incredibly dumb, so I just sold it.
Living in England would be so weird to me. You talk about going an hour like it's the trip of a lifetime. Just Saturday alone I drove something like 175 miles just to shop, pick up a load of bricks and a fountain for my garden. I watch shows like Clarkson's farm where his helper said he's never left their village and that blows my mind.
It's not a "trip of a lifetime" (closest I did to a driving "trip of a lifetime" in Europe was driving from Lisbon to Amsterdam, about 2000km which I did in 2 days), it's just part of my mental calculation of whether something is fun or not.
City driving is not fun for me, so having to spend 1h each way just to go somewhere to have fun reduces the overall appeal of it vs spending 15m in the tube each way to go somewhere to have fun.
Back when I lived in Lisbon I used to have a 1h commute by car to work because I lived in the outskirts and had to endure traffic jams on the way in, but over the years I lost patience with spending a significant fraction of my life in city traffic and, frankly, don't have to endure it anymore.
More broadly I would say that your use of miles vs my use of time isn't a like to like comparison: the problem isn't distance if you can get there fast or at least in a relaxed way, the problem is when it takes quite a bit to get there and the driving is stressful. Driving out of the city starting from Central London would be like driving out New York from Manhattan: a lot of pain in the arse city driving in the transit just to get to the nearest freeway and then some extra pain from driving in a freeway with lots of traffic until you're far out enough that there's a lot less traffic and you can relax, and all this is if you're lucky and don't get a traffic jam.
Driving a long distance starting from suburbia can actually be fun, but driving anywhere starting from the center of a big city is not fun.
car is something I’ll never go without again
Anthropogenic climate change cascade says "Good luck".
Yes and no.
I lived without a car for about 5 years and never missed it, since I could consistently bum rides with friends who had cars.
To your point about the convenience of having a car and being able to travel - with better infrastructure and built environments, these things would not be issues. Daily necessities within walking distance + transit frequent enough that you don't need to plan for it + high speed intercity rail covers about the same use case. More pleasant to run daily errands, since no traffic. High speed rail is faster than driving, plus you can get up and walk around whenever you feel like it, and even get a bunk in a sleeper car to travel while you sleep. Of course, it is still less private, and you are on the train's schedule - but you also never have to change the oil or stop for gas.
I currently can't imagine living my life the way I want to live it without a car. For example, today I am returning home from a weekend trip climbing in the desert. To do this, I wrapped up the work I was doing (late), threw all my shit in my car, and drove for several hours into the night before sleeping in my car at a highway pull off. Then I finished the drive early in the morning, going from interstate to rural highway to rural desert road to dirt road to get to the random patch of dirt my friends were camped at. And doing this, I had a car full of water, food, camping gear, and climbing gear. Making this trip without a car would be literally impossible with our current transit infrastructure. And even with some futuristic infrastructure, the trip would take significantly longer since any transit to remote areas will always be less frequent than you want it to be.
At the same time - maybe I could catch a night train to the desert. Wake in the morning in a small desert town, and strap my haul bag onto my back and mosey over to a sunblasted diner, drinking a cup or two of cheap, weak coffee (the kind that makes Mormon Jesus cry as little as possible), before catching the twice daily NP shuttle to a remote desert outpost. Watching the barren scrub plains roll by until I'm just about there, then tapping the driver on the shoulder and asking to be let off at the unmarked dirt road so I can hump my 100lb load a 1/4 mile to camp. Certainly, the trip would be less convenient and a bit longer. But at the same time, being without a car could enhance the quality of the adventure - which is kind of the point in the first place
You must live in Utah based on your description of things. I do pretty much the same. Get done with work, or often times I'll take a job in say Moab, cruise down there, work, then spend the weekend in the desert climbing, 4x4ing, just sitting under the stars watching the world go by. No train goes there, very few public transport options that don't cost a bunch. And no way to work the way I do.
Well, CO, but same diff.
But yeah, that was kind of my point. With the world as it is now, I would probably have completely missed out on the weekend I just had, seeing a number if friends for probably the last time this year.
But with better urban design and transportation options, I potentially could have made the trip car free with some small alterations. And if you spend time there, I feel like it is becoming more and more obvious that these changes are needed. Just see the line backing up traffic at the front entrance to Arches on any weekend. The constant traffic in downtown making it impossible to run errands in a timely fashion. The constant flow of people coming from only 3 directions to visit this one place. Its really one of the places I think of most frequently when I think of places that would benefit a lot from reforming their urban design
We went involuntarily car-free for a month after a heavy rain flooded my family's car. It was much more manageable than expected, due to both the walkability of our suburban neighbourhood and commutes that aligned with nearby bus routes. But if we lived even 1km further from the bus stops, it would have been unpleasant. The alternatives to driving need to exist with reasonable frequency before more suburbanites consider ditching their cars. But I also believe that people need to be receptive to trying something different that may not always be as comfortable as getting into a climate controlled, sound insulated private box to get around.
Despite how close we are to amenities, almost everyone drives to the grocery stores or to work regardless of age or physical health. One factor is 30+ minute bus headways even at peak times. Another is that 2+ buses are needed to get to the nearest commuter rail station, which has free parking and again 30+ minute headways. So to make it to the station on time, people just choose to drive there. That lack of integration with regional rail schedules is another thing that may be limiting bus ridership. An interim solution to low built densities affecting bus routes is more bike infrastructure that is transit compatible, like bike racks at bus stops instead of awkwardly using utility poles. (Also, why are we not allowed to use both bus bike rack slots when they clearly have the space for it? It seems asinine.)
While we are not really a car-lite household, many grocery and commuting trips have been replaced by transit. I realize there's a degree of discomfort that comes with a change in travel patterns when the alternatives are not as maturely developed. Waiting 30 minutes for a bus or walking 20 minutes to another bus route because the last bus came early can be unpleasant, but on the flip side, the ride itself unlocks the ability to relax or get work done that driving does not permit. Walking or biking to the grocery store can be a workout on the way back, but it's free cardio through 'the gym of life,' as Jason Slaughter of Not Just Bikes would say. We need to be okay with some discomfort before ridership can increase enough to improve transit frequencies. Or, you know, hope that 40% increases in gas prices in 2 weeks is enough of a price shock that people start embracing the alternatives on their own accord.
It depends on where you live. I wouldn't be able to get around without my whip.
I wfh so I only drive once a week and that's to stock up on groceries. The grocery store is a number of miles away-- way too many for me to be able to bike and return with bags.
Having food shipped would just mean putting another car on the road anyways. Or has guzzling truck.
If I could afford to move, not sure how feasible it would be to have something within a mile or two anyways since I'd still need to bring back a ton of heavy bags. I'm old.
:(
European cities have grocery stores within walking distance. I walk to mine, no problem.
It is really not about Europe or US. Even the US has cities and neighbourhoods that are like that. In most places however, it is illegal to build such places new and their supply is so ridiculously low that most people could not possibly afford to live in such a place, or those places, or those places are so poor and dangerous that they aren't good places to live for other reasons.
The problem is car centric urban design. Most people don't get it that they do not only have to drive by car because everything is so far away but everything is so far away because everyone is expected to drive by car. You can change that but it takes a lot of time and the political will to do so.
I live in a center city area, but the problem I have is that it's a food desert like lots of center cities are. The small independent grocery stores usually have too much shrink to remain open so it leaves me with three options that are all equidistant and not walkable. I fill a 55L messenger bag and transport it via bike but it's quite uncomfortable carrying that much weight compared to just hopping in a car.
Sounds like part of the problem is that groceries in the US are not designed as proper full sortiment stores. By that I don't mean being a hypermarket with 1000 flavours of yoghurt but having a broad sortiment, just like an Aldi doesn't have all that many different products either but they do cover most of the stuff you need. In many cities you find such grocery stores that are still pretty compact on every corner. You really need to go to anything else only if you want something rather special or extraordinary.
I find it pretty strange to consider city centres to be food deserts by default but then, I guess that is the case in many cities in the US, even when they are not entirely car dependent.
One thing that is a key difference in transit oriented places, other than the stores I was talking about above is that shopping habbits are widly different. Shopping more often but buying less. This has pros and cons but as stores are more efficient (good sortiment at compact size) one does not need as long in the store and buying stuff after work means, one can have a lot fresher stuff at home, for example, fresh bread, fresh vegetables, fresh fruits ...
Another aspect is drinking habits or rather infrastructure. Where I live, a lot of people don't buy a lot of drinks, other than the occasional orange juice or and milk. Tap water is great, no need for bottled water and if you like it carbonised, something like Soda Stream is saving you a lot of schlepping.
PS: Every thought about getting an e-bike or a compact cargo e-bike? Still worlds better than wasting fuel for the car for inner urban transportation, if it is safe to ride that is.
Couple of miles away feels dystopian.
Imagine a video game where all activity is in one region and you need to periodically gather resources from a much different region.
This mechanic would flop hard.
If one delivery truck is making 100+ deliveries a day, it should be partly or fully eliminating dozens of vehicle trips. Even if that truck pollutes more than the typical car, I'm sure the decrease in vehicle miles traveled more than compensates for it.
Is there a place you could live that has half-decent biking infrastructure and groceries within a few miles? An electric cargo bike or even mobility scooter could handle those trips. While a good one may cost a few grand, that's still cheaper than operating a car for a few months.
Amateurs...
I live in an area where you don't have to have a car, you can do most things without. But you'll have to pry my car keys from my cold dead hands because it is so incredibly more convenient and faster to have one.
Edit: noticed the community. To be clear, I'm all for good infrastructure for people who don't own one, I just wouldn't go back to the days where I didn't have one.
Myself, and probably a good percentage of this community dont just have a blanket hatred of cars. It's mainly about how car-centric design sucks, even for people who drive cars.
Many cities that are designed with good public transit are also way easier to drive in. If 99% of people have to drive into a city center for work, or school, or groceries, or whatever, everything has to be really spread out for enough parking, roads need a lot of lanes and a lot of entrances/exits, so driving is stressful, and you still end up spending a lot of time in traffic.
With competent infrastructure for walking/biking/public transit, the mode share for cars drops, and driving actually gets easier since you aren't competing with everyone else.
Yeah, I have a kid. From groceries to doctors appointments and camp and activities, doing all this without a car would be a nightmare. That said, I buy used, pay cash, and own a little Honda hatchback that sips gas.
I was a kid when i was poisonned by idiots drivers
The real question is would you ditch your car if it were more convenient and faster to go by bike or transit, or with a shared car service for extra and week-end trips?
People like you ruined my life. I have a long term disease because of all the fine particle from idiot vroomists. I hope you get lung cancer
This is what people don't get. Having a car changes everything. It's much more convenient.
Yeah I'm also all for good public transport and as many options as there can be. However that doesn't change the fact that having your own var is much more convenient. Especially in an emergency.
Yes because your own life is the measurement of what's right and wrong. Everything revolves around you and your ability to vroomvroom your fatass around
there is a reason they dont use a bike in the first place
Yeah, seems like a study ripe for bias.
If you ask a person who lives near decent transport infrastructure (or near work) to take public transport, it's no big deal.
Honestly, biking is a problem for showing up to work sweaty.
I've had 2 catalytic converters stolen now. Its just not worth the hassle to have more costly maintenance on a machine that already requires regular costly maintenance
Wish I could. I have a company work truck, and I need to dramatically downsize my personal vehicle.
It's nice to have the OPTION. Moving from NYC to Bay Area, I definitely feel the effects of losing robust public transportation.
Bart and Muni are so poorly designed in terms of direction.
The trains are pretty nice but need more supervision and they need to beef up numbers of cops and station staff in 3 specific downtown stations especially in the evening.
just a suggestion
none wanted to continue "using cars afterwards".
That would be good, but unfortunately the opposite was true.
haha, my eye-word comprehension failed me, thank you. I can guess why that happened in Australia, but now I will read the article out of idiotic shame to make sure.
whoops no i wonttttt paywallllll here folks:
yeaaa, limited public transport, urban sprawl, stuck in their routine, even though it's cheaper to use public transport they've been indoctrinated to use cars and imprisoned by their municipal layout.
suuucks.
In many places, using a car is really the only reasonable way. Even when you technically could bike and/or use public transit, it's either so slow or impractical that it wouldn't be practical for a normal person. Sometimes, anything short of an infrastructure overhaul can't work long term.
A combination of pandemic lockdowns and work-from-home was practically an orange-pill recipe for myself and many others. There's no looking back now, and there hasn't been in over five years.
Run this scenario in NYC. The amount of carbrain people when we have so many ways to get around is absurd.
You'd be able to get to work. If you have kids younger than high-school age, or if anyone in the house plays a sport, you have zero chance.
Not once have I seen someone taking a train to footy or cricket practice.
If you haven't seen it, it can't exist
Poor kids going to football practice having to carry a grand total of some clothes to change into, completely unthinkable to take transit/bike to the field
Jesus christ what a joke of a comment
Yes, footballers are generally a bunch of softcocks. I live next to a footy oval. 100% cars. Mostly monster trucks. It's a 10 minute walk from the train station.
Spectators will watch from their cars. They don't even walk to the fence. Every parent is overweight. None of them actually play.
Some of the cars come from houses so close that I can see them leave the park and pull into their driveway.
You don't live in a place with good public transit though, so of course you haven't