I’m from Europe but I lived in Houston during my college years. I had to use my car to go almost anywhere. It was the opposite of freedom. No matter what whenever I left my apartment I had to get into my car, drive it and then park it somewhere. If it was rush hour I was at the mercy of traffic. At times (e.g. Sunday mornings) it was pleasant. But often it was suffocating.

Now I’m back in Europe and I feel free when I’m moving around a city. I might take public transportation one way and walk back to my apartment. I can get a call from my friend in the afternoon and go out for some whisky without having to drive back to my apartment and taking a cab.

I don’t know where I’ll live in the future but I’d be happy if I didn’t need to own a car.

Marketers for cigarettes [1], gogurt, lunchables, cell service, guns, etc. make similar claims. It doesn't make it true. Cars bring convenience, sure. But freedom? Not owning a car, I've never lost sleep worrying that someone was breaking into my car, I pay no car insurance, no gas, no car maintenance, never pay for toll roads, never get road rage, never sit in traffic. I feel significantly more free today than I ever did owning a car.

> One says to me, "I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg today and see the country." But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day's wages. I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some time tomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you.

- Henry David Thoreau in Walden

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom

> I feel significantly more free today than I ever did owning a car.

That works both ways though. I feel significantly more free today owning an EV hybrid car, then I did without a car.

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I have lost sleep worrying I would miss the only bus, or that it would be late, or that it would be full, or that it would never show, or that they could change the route without telling me, or that if the weather is bad I'll arrive soaked / freezing / dripping in sweat. Or if the other passengers are bad, I could arrived smelling bad or covered in bedbugs.

I have commuted by bus. It was a huge impact on personal freedom -- even if all conditions are ideal every trip still had to be delicately and precisely pre-planned, with exact arrival and departures, (that all stacked up, because even the shortest bus trips require one or more transfers) and they allowed travel only to specific places deemed worthy of it by other people. And of course, every trip required at least 2x to 3x longer trip times than driving.

Buses are like 70% of the stress of flying, with only 10% of the benefit.

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A car isn't limitless freedom, it comes with plenty of responsibilities and costs of it's own. But it certainly can be a form of freedom of mobility. One that currently isn't easily reproducible in any other way.

Because you live in a place where public transport is bad.

When you have to evacuate, how much freedom do you have then? Going to rely on someone like Ray Nagin to drive you in a school bus?

Constantly worrying about parking, insurance, traffic, how long you need to wait before you're sober enough to leave the pub does not seem like freedom to me.

Only being able to use a car to get around also does not seem like freedom.

Freedom is having good options - the option to use a car if that's what you have to, but also the option to bike, bus, or walk if you don't.

I've been to Houston recently - 'freedom' was about the last thing that I was feeling, as I traversed its freeway system.

That's interesting. Part of my point is that this freedom of anything anywhere blinds you from the bliss of things near you.