No one forces you to drive. You can still walk.

They build cities around the car, they defund public transit, they close down rail lines, they build new housing a 5 km away from your closest grocery store, and 20 km away from any cafés and other cultural venues. Your job is located 50 km north of where you live, your partner’s job is 60 km in the other direction, and your child’s school is 10 km in the third direction.

They neglect to build sidewalks, and force you to walk 1-2 meters from cars racing at 70 km/h. With all the noise and high risk stressing you up to the level you just wanna scream.

stevenhuang: No one forces you to drive. You can still walk.

▲

AmigoCharlie 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Don't tell me you dream of a maoist city where only bike is allowed and "car-brains" (as anti-automobile fanatics call us) are considered "enemies of the people" right?

	▲	RugnirViking 11 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		do you think, perhaps, that it might be possible to cool the discussion? that there might be some meaning located between the picture painted by the person you're replying to and your own? or do you sincerely think that the only options available to us are "all cars banned" or the alternative posted by the person above?
	▲	simgt 10 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		TIL amsterdam, tokyo and barcelona are maoist cities

▲

stevenhuang 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So drive then. You can also move. The point is there are options. Many cities have strong infrastructure and have embraced walk ability. If not driving is such a big deal to you, why not do something about it?

▲

sassbadger 15 hours ago | parent [-]

You're arguing like an edge lord here. What he is saying is that you're effectively forced to drive. Not so difficult to understand. There are plenty of people fighting for change but because our political and economic landscape is captured by big business, it's not so easy.

▲

defrost 15 hours ago | parent [-]

This is extremely location dependant.

Not everybody in the world is effectively forced to drive. Sure, maybe if someone has the misfortune to be an US city they have no other option but there are other places that are not like that and cities with good public transport and relatively low car usage.

	▲	sassbadger 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes but GP is describing basically the norm, while I'd argue the minority here lives in a public transport utopia like the Netherlands or Denmark. People generally have very few options outside car ownership, even in cities.

▲

xigoi 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But it now takes 3 times as long because you constantly have to cross roads.

▲

Vaushite a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's pretty well documented they deliberately made things impractically large distances apart and scrapped the idea of footpaths, to encourage car sales, paid for by car companies to your local city government several decades ago.

▲

bcvvvy a day ago | parent | prev [-]

But Terry T said I have to drive or die.

Or has he changed his mind again.

	▲	dang a day ago \| parent [-]
		Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.