Spot on! In Europe, I parked the car and walked around. In the damn USA, I park the car, do my shopping and then drive 500 m to next store. WTF is wrong with me!!!
i think european malls/commercial areas are way less likely to be that horseshoe shape, it's almost always some rectangular-ish shape with shared corridors and parking around it, whereas the horseshoe kind where you have to cross the parking lot to get to the shops on the other side seems pretty normal in the US.
Driving is fun, but it also shouldn't be the default mode of transportation. Society and infrastructure should not be designed around the expectation/requirement of driving a personal vehicle to get there.
I was talking to a coworker about how I thought public transit was superior to individual cars, and so we should put a lot more investment into it, and his response was, "You'll have to pry my car keys out of my cold dead hands."
Like, dude, I wasn't even talking about that.
Anyways, my point is that a big thing missing from this is how people often build their identities around their stupid fucking cars.
For so many, everything is black and white. They don’t understand that when we want better public transport we aren’t saying to get rid of the roads. We’re just saying that if people have more options maybe those roads won’t constantly be under construction, traffic won’t be as bad, and maybe the roads won’t have to be as big so we can build more cool stuff instead.
There’s such a stupid mentality around “Everyone must <X>”.
Lacrosse exists. I don’t care for it. I’m not going to dictate no one else play it. I imagine if the government mandated everyone play Lacrosse it would become hard to find the equipment for it because it would be in such high demand.
And yet, whether it’s meat, cars, guns, as soon as we suggest “I know this stuff has a place but we should use it a little less” they process it as an effort to completely ban the item in question.
i think the key is when the thing in question is normalized and something most people do, then saying "we should do this less" means de-normalizing it and not having most people do it, which means they'll personally experience change in some way.
like if driving isn't the way to get around you'd eventually get rid of the oversized everpresent highways, which makes their personal travels require more thought and attention, and that's unacceptable and thus they just completely fucking make shit up to defend their lifestyle.
When my grandmother got too old to drive, she became confined because of cars. There was no public transit in walking distance. There was nothing in walking distance except houses.
She just sat at home by herself and waited for the end. Hoping someone would come to visit her. It was insulting and inhumane.
Yeah! That and the fact that our society has erased several or most of our ways to communally build identity and shifted us to build identity based on consumption items
My best commute was once when I lived within walking distance of my work. The only downside was that they one time figured I could make it into the office when nobody else could due to snow.
My second best commute was via a bus.
By far my worst commute was one time when I moved in with a friend who liked cars and lived far away. With zero traffic, the commute was 45 minutes, but there was always traffic.
Fuuuuuck... I don't know how things work there, but in this part of theseTexas, you can call the city and they'll do a survey to find out if a sidewalk could be installed. If that doesn't work, you can write to your city council.
As someone who occasionally drives a bmw, I agree.
When I have to drive somewhere, because there's no inter-city passenger rail where I live, I want to do it as comfortably as possible, and bmw is one good option for this(unfortunately I can't afford a Rolls and/or a chauffeur 😞)
To be fair, even when I’m walking, I get road rage. People can’t fucking drive and it’s my job to make them understand how inadequate they are as not just commuters, but as human beings.
The bmw should be one of the ugly ass suv ones not the more normal sports car. Those are even a bit fun to drive and US carbrains dont like to have fun.
Just wait until we can't afford gas any more .... everyone will start bicycling, running, walking and using public transit and asking for trains like it was the logical thing to do all along.
I hate how this has obviously been coming for decades and yet they still refuse to listen. Even if someone doesn't believe in climate change, oil is non renewable. That's just how fossil fuels work
i once lived in the core of a large city (pop. ~1M) like 200 feet from the gas station. my roommate insisted that driving was the correct way to get there. she acted like i was crazy when i suggested walking, and got annoyed and shut down when i proved it was literally faster. these people exist and are common.