That said, I live in a very bike friendly city now, close to their school, can afford a cargo bike, etc.
The cargo + electric combo is really amazing.
The bike, a Tern GSD with a big two passenger seat for the kids, wasn't cheap ($6k) but it lets us get away with owning only one car using far less uber'ing, and is way less expensive and hassle than a second car.
(This is in Pittsburgh - it's hilly and we have weather, but we don't have too many bike-hostile drivers in the city)
The perfect is the enemy of the good. E-bikes are good. They're not perfect on their own and that's ok.
Edited to add: and I left off: they're WAY more fun! It's delightful riding around on it compared to being stuck in a car in rush hour traffic. :-) the bike is almost never stopped. and we get to say hi to more people we know as we pass by. Much better experience, even if a big rainstorm sends us back into the car.
I said reducing your car usage by half doesn't eliminate your need for a car. You still have to buy the car. You still have the need for the car. We’re in a thread under “most people don’t need a car”.
No. At best most people use a car more than necessary, unless you live in a dense city, maybe then you don't need a car. But then you aren't most people.
And frankly that -is- a point worth remembering. I know lots of couples that could be able to get by with a single vehicle instead of two at a significant financial benefit to them as well as an environmental benefit.
I know in my late 20s I was able to ride my -normal- bike to and from Meijer and get 40-80$ of groceries (2008 dollars mind you) in a trip. Back then that lasted the two of us a week, although yes I had to hoof it back for the sake of perishables. And yes I balanced triple bagged items along the handlebars.
But, frankly, if I had the money for even a small 'trailer' that wouldn't have even been an issue. It's amazing how much volume a child trailer has for groceries/etc when there isn't an actual child involved.
Edited to add: maybe the bigger questions are why we have economic and social pressures for single folks to have a car and DINKs (ESPECIALLY SINKs) to have two cars.
And this in a city that has max 500 m to a busstop frequented at least once per hour but mostly every 5-10 minutes. And bike roads covering the whole town. It's just a status symbol with social pressure. You have to have a House, Kids, Car and a dog/cats or you are a looser.
I also do most shopping with the bike, have baskets on the back of it. Works really nice. The kid bikes to school until the ice shows up, then it's bus time. Bigger things still go in the car and I have a job that involves needing the car to transport handicapped people now and then so can't get rid of it yet.
If the whole family is going somewhere we also choose the car because the bus is much more expensive and usually it also involves shopping for the grandma 60 km away.
Exactly, it's half of a counter argument.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
The requirement for “most people need a car” depends on the definition of most people. Live in a small town in Arizona? Sure you need a car. Live in TriBeCa? You don’t need a car.
The touchy part is be ause the logic often goes, because 100% can't get off cars, the necessary infrastructure to allow the 20% who could, won't be built.
It's like public transit, it sucks due to shoe string funding, ridership is low because it sucks, funding is then reduced because ridership is low.
It also sounds like you might be an outlier, the average used car cost is much higher than that[2], let alone new[3]. It's ok to not fall on the average, but it is important to notice when you do.
1: https://www.move.org/app/uploads/2021/02/Average-cost-of-own...
2: https://cdn.thezebra.com/zfront/media/production/images/chea...
3: https://i2.wp.com/financialsamurai.com/wp-content/uploads/20...
But at $0.10 vs $0.50 per mile of operating costs, the TCO is much lower than an equivalently priced car. I bought the bike planning on getting at least 10 years out of it. My road bike is 17 years old and going strong, which is better than I can say for any car I've owned
I think of and treat this bike as my second car more than as a typical "bike".
(It's kind of funny that with the huge size of cars in the US these days, our car won't fit into the garage, so the e-bike gets to share it with a rack of computers. :-)
I am nor sure what you consider “walking distance” but I am going to assume there is a greater population density where you live.
I do not think there is anything that is not a private residence within 200 m of me. It is well over a kilometre to the nearest school. It is more than 2 to the closest business. I am having trouble relating to a world that has all these services available a short stroll from my front door.
Oh, and with regards to the poster from the UK with the free daycare, I pay $800 per month for one child ( and have 4 ).
So yes, these places are very much sounding like utopia to me.
There are 25 day cares within 700m from my home, 3 supermarkets and 3 primary schools, 3 parks and the police station.
Cars are greatly disadvantaged because of the lack of parking.
I have lived in several different towns and know a few more in the area. The town that was 1300 people had plenty of daycare within walking distance (500 m). The town with 150 people had about 1 km to the daycare but we didn't use it, had no kids at the time. The other towns I know: 10k ppl, plenty of daycare within 1 km wherever you live. 500 ppl, two day care at least, all in 500 m. Starting to guess population now but around 500 ppl and I saw at least two daycare when passing through. Surface similar to the other 500 ppl.
Where we live now is planned and built around 1980 and we have five daycare within 1 km. Three of them are less than 200 m away. Many of the younger kids gets walked there by their slightly older siblings that just continue to school after leaving them at daycare. This city have 100 k ppl, we live in the most populated areas of town with mixed single house and bigger appartment buildings with around 10 k ppl.
They all had space for our kid without having to wait or book a place before birth. The state is required to have space for all kids so they keep track of how many births and plan accordingly.
All this in northern Sweden.
I also know a few towns in Germany with similar situations except less bicycle-friendly roads and a lot more population. Didn't have the kid in daycare there though.
We want kids to be able to have other kids to play with and professionals to look after them.
I love my kids dearly, but I'm not cut out to stay at home raising them full-time from age 0.25 through 5.
I would argue that the fact that any of us have to work at all is just poor societal planning.
I mean, societies have been a thing for thousands of years already. At this point, I should be able to argue on the Internet that we should behave as if all problems have been solved by now because—-I mean, why haven’t they been?
The fact that so many parents live so far from available daycares that they need to drive to them is not ideal. It is a problem worth solving and there is no fundamental impossibility in solving it: part of the reason daycares are far is because cars exist, but it is unhealthy for a society to let the option to have a car degenerate into a requirement to have a car.
In any case, I never said the problem was solved or that anyone should act as if it was solved. I'm just pointing it out, because we're not going to solve any issue we refuse to even acknowledge.
Now, suppose I did manage to get my kids to daycare that I could conceivably ride a bike too, and suppose I manage to fit three on a bike, including an infant that’s not even one year old. What then, how do I actually get to my afterwards job? Yep, I still need to drive.
Ultimately, I could probably design my life around the goal of not owning a car. I could move to a place that’s close enough to my job to walk (and hope that all my future jobs are similarly close), and also find a daycare that’s close enough. I would probably have to compromise on housing size, quality and/or cost, distance to my friends and family, my hobbies that require indoor and outdoor space, but why would I, when I can hit a pretty good trade off with everything else, just by getting a car?
I'm going to say one thing, though: I would appreciate it if car owners were a bit more conscious of the externalities of their way of life. When I walk or bike around my neighbourhood, every car I encounter is a nuisance to me. They are noisy, they are scary, they are everywhere. So it's not just about your comfort, it's also about mine. If I understand that your car makes your life easier, and you understand that your car makes my life worse, maybe we can arrive to a productive compromise rather than think that the other is out to get us.
Thing is, the car-centric lifestyle, when taken to its extreme, is so space-intensive that it becomes the ruination of other lifestyles. The more people drive, the less amenities need to be near them, the more space is taken up by roads and parking, the less walkable the area becomes, the more people drive, and so on, until no one can walk anywhere. We have to be cognizant of that and make sure it doesn't get to that point. Part of that is making sure that e.g. as many people as possible have daycares at a walking distance from them.
Now, if you don't have any daycares at a walking distance, do what you must, I'm not the one who is going to judge (what would that achieve?) But in the grand scheme of things, it highlights a problem. Let's keep it in mind, you know. Let's try to solve it at some point, maybe.
But why? You seem to assume it to be universally accepted that everyone wants to live in walkable places, but the evidence in front of you is simply contradicting this. People routinely move to non-walkable places by the millions, with the expectation that they will be driving everywhere, and they don't mind it at all. I think you are so deeply emotionally embedded in your anti-car lifestyle (especially given how you describe them as "scary, noisy nuisances") that it might be hard for you to conceive that people might prefer this to the alternative you describe.
> Part of that is making sure that e.g. as many people as possible have daycares at a walking distance from them.
No, because it is very much unclear that people actually want that more than other things. If you ask people whether they want to have a nice daycare in a walking distance, most will answer "yes", this much is true. However, this is not necessarily compatible with many other things people want, like, for example, big houses, low costs, low noise, low traffic (including public transit and foot traffic), or generally living in a place with fewer people and less churn, so that you can actually get to know your neighbors.
Given all these preferences and constrains, what most people are aiming for is a satisfactory trade-off. Your proposal about making sure that as many people as possible have daycares at a walking distance from them is basically trying to force on them your preferences, and ignoring the trade-off that they choose.
Going back to your description of this vicious (to you) cycle of car-centric lifestyle, I can also describe virtous cycle, where a walkable place pulls more people into it, resulting in more businesses and amenities setting shop there, which pulls even more people, and adds more transit options which are now economical due to existing density etc. Now imagine that someone helpfully tries to "make sure" that as many people as possible have a car parking spot close to where they want to be, and institute parking minimums on businesses. After all, if you ask people whether they want to have cheap and plentiful parking anywhere they need to go, most people will answer yes, just like when asked about daycares within walking distance.
Of course, as you almost certainly realize, you can either have daycares in a walking distance, or free and plentiful parking everywhere, but not both at the same time. Thus, if you understand the mechanics of this, you'll oppose the parking minimums (which, by the way, I oppose too). However, for the same reason, many people will oppose your plans of densification and daycares at walking distance, because they simply don't like it as much as they like other stuff, and they understand that there's a trade-off involved.
> But in the grand scheme of things, it highlights a problem. Let's keep it in mind, you know. Let's try to solve it at some point, maybe.
Yes, let's keep in mind that there are trade-offs, and figure out a way to eliminate it, so that people can satisfy more of their preferences. Often technology helps; for example, cars eliminated huge part of a trade-off between being able to live in calmer, less dense places, and access to amenities. Future technology might help here in other ways.
And yet your experience of it is totally foreign to me. There are a half dozen daycares within walking distance of my house. My sibling who lives overseas has the same thing.
When my kid hits school age the local primary school is next to the tram line that will take me to my office.
Please please please understand that infrastructure is a choice, urban design is a choice. These are not immutable facts of the world.
I took my child to daycare by pushing a pram 500m. Later I'd half-carry him, and half let him walk. After he was walking consistently he later started to cycle there himself, as I walked alongside.
In a few weeks he'll be walking to his school himself, again a distance of approximately 400-500m - with only one road to cross.
I've seen children take themselves to school from age seven by bus, tram, cycles, or walking here. It is common-place.
Maybe that isn't possible in America because the houses and the schools/daycares are too distant. But that's certainly not universal.
I live in a small college town in New England. I bike our toddler to/from daycare, our first grader either rides her bike or walks (about 500m). They’ll be able to walk to school through ninth grade, at which point she can ride a bike or take the bus or hitch a ride with mom. It’s definitely possible in much of America, if you simply choose to do it.
I have 1 kid, and we always went to the daycare by bike. Last year, age almost 5, I bought a followme, and it works great. He's 6 now. When we bike more than a few km or when it rains, he gets connected to the followme, otherwise he bikes by himself. My ebike did 2500km in what's now almost a year, easily paying itself by the gas we didn't buy. The car is mostly used for big groceries every 2 weeks.
Most roads have bike paths. On the way to school, 1.5km away, there are still 2 places where we have to cross unsafe car roads. Ironically, one is the school entrance. I think 1 parent in 3 or 4 still come by car, and their driving makes it harder for the others.
In countries like the Netherlands, urban areas in Germany or anywhere else that has a public infrastructure not exclusively focused on cars (aka, the services required for daily life not being mega-sized and requiring a car to get there, but small and distributed) it is a perfectly viable option. Hell I 'member walking to kindergarten. On my own, in the outskirts of Munich. I had never been driven to school by car.
Today the alternative are cargo bikes modified for child transport which become more and more popular around here (urban Germany).