People also overestimate other people's ability to live car free.
I have 40 kilometers to work and bus density here is never more than once an hour. If I want to be at work on time I have to leave on the last bus the day before work, or I'd have to be late every morning. Even in that case of leaving the same day and accepting being late to work I'd be away from home for 14 hours at minimum.
I have 10 kilometres to the nearest grocery store, and like I said bus density is not great. Even if I planned to do all my shopping on days of I'd be away from home for three hours at minimum, instead of a round-trip time of around an hour by car.
That's just for easily planned daily things. Doctor, dentist, bank, etc? Forget about it.
Not everyone lives in a place where being car-free is an easy choice.
But don't you think that living in a place that requires you to commute for so long is a situation you would not be in to begin with if cars were not an option? And I don't mean it just as a personal choice but as a urban planning strategy.
It seems to me a bit of a chicken and egg problem.
I'm a strong proponent of decentralised planning of society and subsidised costs of local infrastructure to facilitate car free lifestyles.
Part of the current mess is almost certainly due to the low cost of transportation and society pushing the cost onto future generations, but people literally can't live car free in some areas of the world right now and you need to pony up the dough to fix infrastructure etc. first before people can give up their cars.
Otherwise you exacerbate an ongoing socioeconomic divide between the rich and the poor.
Hence, people overestimate how easy it is for others to live car free.
Bingo. It would certainly be wrenching for GP to move from their current life to somewhere less car-centric. But the issue (predominantly in the US, apparently) seems to be that a car-free life simply isn't on the menu when people are making the lifestyle decisions around settling down. Or maybe HN is poorly populated by the people who choose a car-free life.
The difference in living costs of having your home close to work is often ignored. It’s frequently cheaper to pay for the car, gas, and maintenance than it is to live that 40km closer.
Not to mention, there are other things, such as green spaces, good schools, and work for spouses, which make living “closer to work” impractical.
I think you nailed the most fundamental economic forces at work here. The total costs of operating a household - including opportunity costs - will keep pushing people into situations where a long commute is unavoidable.
The only way to green that up in the long run (besides carpooling), I suppose, is doing something crazy like making cars accessible to everyone that run on sunlight and last a million miles.
> People also overestimate other people's ability to live car free.
Here in Belgium there was this funny event where someone from the green party would do everything by bike. She would give it as example that it was definitely possible for everyone.
Once she was elected in the government, she started using a car because "the job required it". So yeah, what about the rest of us?
I mean in her defense most of us work a 9-5, M-F where we travel 2x per day, and the car sits unused 95% of the time. Some jobs do not have the luxury of sitting in an office. In those cases using a car makes perfect sense.
My local representative uses public transport, and recognizes 30% of the populace does not currently drive.
If you have to drop off your kids in the morning and go get them in the evening, and a ride with the car to work takes you 45 minutes, it's pretty simple to choose that over taking 90 minutes to work without taking the kids on the way over.
And yes I know the usual argument that everybody should be living in the city.
In my opinion, the issue is generally how uncar-free cities in the US are. In cities or near them, there is no excuse, but we hallow them out to accommodate those who want a yard outside the city limits by making conditions worse for those of us who live in cities.
For people in rural places or exhurbs, sure live out of your car.
I have 40 kilometers to work and bus density here is never more than once an hour. If I want to be at work on time I have to leave on the last bus the day before work, or I'd have to be late every morning. Even in that case of leaving the same day and accepting being late to work I'd be away from home for 14 hours at minimum.
I have 10 kilometres to the nearest grocery store, and like I said bus density is not great. Even if I planned to do all my shopping on days of I'd be away from home for three hours at minimum, instead of a round-trip time of around an hour by car.
That's just for easily planned daily things. Doctor, dentist, bank, etc? Forget about it.
Not everyone lives in a place where being car-free is an easy choice.