We got rid of our car when we moved to the Netherlands and love the carless life! When I do need one, I rent one. We're lucky to have some caresharing services around, so I can just open a car with my phone and pay by the hour. The longer we're carless, the more I look at our streets in amazement, it's so ridiculous how much space we're giving to cars! I do think it's going to be really hard to get people separated from then though. What makes you so optimistic in that regard?
Once you look at it in a different way, it's all quite strange right?! So much space reserved for cars... Parking in many cities is still quite cheap as well whereas rent prices have gone through the roof and public transportation gets more expensive as well.
To your question: I don't think we will necessarily get rid of cars, but what I see is a counter-movement and a new narrative that focuses on a more diversified road/street access and design. The main idea behind this post was to highlight the massive imagination space that opens up once we "unsee" car-dominated streets and think differently.
Oh I didn't think we'd get rid of cars altogether. It's just that, when I tell people we (as a family of 5) don't own a car, people think we're either really poor or have some extreme environmentalist ideas. :D
It's a great point that you're making; show people what's to be gained in stead of telling them they should give up their cars because they're bad.
our long tail bike is -by far- the best purchase we've ever made: https://objet.cc/mathilde/long-tail-family-bike
Been reminded of Keynes quotes today and I think he also said ‘the difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas but escaping old ones’
We got rid of our car when we moved to the Netherlands and love the carless life! When I do need one, I rent one. We're lucky to have some caresharing services around, so I can just open a car with my phone and pay by the hour. The longer we're carless, the more I look at our streets in amazement, it's so ridiculous how much space we're giving to cars! I do think it's going to be really hard to get people separated from then though. What makes you so optimistic in that regard?
Once you look at it in a different way, it's all quite strange right?! So much space reserved for cars... Parking in many cities is still quite cheap as well whereas rent prices have gone through the roof and public transportation gets more expensive as well.
To your question: I don't think we will necessarily get rid of cars, but what I see is a counter-movement and a new narrative that focuses on a more diversified road/street access and design. The main idea behind this post was to highlight the massive imagination space that opens up once we "unsee" car-dominated streets and think differently.
Oh I didn't think we'd get rid of cars altogether. It's just that, when I tell people we (as a family of 5) don't own a car, people think we're either really poor or have some extreme environmentalist ideas. :D
It's a great point that you're making; show people what's to be gained in stead of telling them they should give up their cars because they're bad.