'For me, this is paradise': life in the Spanish city that banned cars - Sensationalist Headlines

I wouldn't mind at all. I'm 21 and I don't even have a drivers license. A lot of peers my age don't have a car/driver's license. Walking, biking and public transport like buses or trains are fine because everything is nearby. I'm planning on getting my drivers license near the end of uni JUST IN CASE my job requires long distance driving, but I doubt it.

I live in the fucking sun (AZ), and there is no way I'm giving up my car to do grocery shopping because A) Everything is spread out, like moreso than usual, and it's only growing larger B) Portable AC units don't exist yet. You won't catch me (or anyone else sane) walking outside for 7+ months of the year) I'm not just complaining because it gets so hot. It's also extremely dangerous when it's 110+ a majority of the day.

Oh yeah that, too. Virginia doesn't get as hot as AZ but between 90-100f (32-37c) is pretty normal. I try to stay out of the sun as much as I possibly can

Plenty of stores around me offer to deliver groceries themselves, so that may be a solution. You don't have to pay for train tickets but you do have to pay for fuel, car maintenance and insurance. Generally speaking cars cost more per trip than public transportation. They're not necessarily always more convenient either. Modern trains are much faster than cars for long trips, subways and trams completely ignore traffic jams, and there's no need to look for parking space. Again, whether cars are more convenient than the alternatives depends entirely on the quality and extent of your PT network, it's not inherent to the nature of cars. They're not a straight upgrade.

There are 3rd party services that do this as well like instacart, but they're not available in all areas and you have to pay for the delivery Well so lets do the math If I wanted to visit home from college for the weekend, it's about 120 miles. I pay probably like $4-500 a year in repairs for my car, but this year I paid like $1100 after my exhaust system broke. But still, I'm gonna use $500 because that's the typical number Additionally I get like 30mpg, and gas is like $3.25 a gallon around here. So, if I wanted to take Amtrak from Richmond to DC for two people (me and gf) leaving this friday and coming back next sunday it would be: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/132997/db011b29-08b3-4a2f-aa6f-46b2d82cad82/Screen Shot 2018-09-24 at 8.33.38 AM.png $76 for the both of us to get TO washington DC. additionally, it's slower than going by car (by car it takes me between 2-2.5 hours). Then it's $76 to get back as well (and a little bit shorter time, but idk why) so that's $152 to go home for the weekend if I drive then I spend about $12 in gas (120 miles / 30 miles per gallon = 4 gallons => 4g * $3.25 = ~$12) Then if you consider that I drive my car every day, we can divide the cost of the repairs by how many miles I drive a year (I'd guess about 20,000mi at that point in my life). $1700 (throw in another $1200 for insurance on top of the $500 I pay in repairs per year) divided by the 20,000 miles I drive is $0.085/mi. This means that driving 120 miles is 120 * 0.085 = $10.20 So the cost in gas to get there is $12, and the cost in mileage I'm putting on the car is $10.20, meaning $22.20 one way, or $44.40 round trip. Additionally I can leave whenever I want, tend to get there faster, AND the amtrak calculation isn't accounting for the fact that my parent didn't live in Washington, DC, they lived in a suburb of DC about $30mi west, which means I then have to pay a little bit extra to take the metro as far west as I can, and then either have someone pick me up or take a Lyft the rest of the way. Now multiple this by 52 because I used to drive from my hometown to Richmond every weekend when I was in community college and you see how taking the train is a lot more expensive and why I put 20,000 miles on my car

I feel like this entire thread is just Americans missing the point: the reason you can't live without your car is because your entire world is designed around having a car. To go carless in most places would require redesigning entire counties. But I personally think it's a good idea, especially in cities.

in sydney a 3 hour train ride costs 5-10 dollars and you are shortly in for a rude surprise if you think your car only costs $500 per 20k miles to maintain

Who would've thought; traveling by car is better than public transportation in countries whose infrastructure has been largely designed around private car ownership for the better part of the last century. The point is, we should probably investigate alternatives to this if we all don't want to fucking die.

I'm not sure why you're framing American cities built for car use like that's a good thing. Or how an American city looking like a grid from overhead is a good thing, if anything that's bad, because basically all junctions are 4 way and there's no space between junctions. I think it's bad that the reason that Americans can't walk/cycle anywhere is because their cities were designed assuming everyone would drive everywhere. It also probably doesn't help that the American approach to government leads to god awful transportation systems from what I've read.

I've been driving for a while I think I know how much I've paid

I thought that grid roads are pretty bad for cars because there are so many intersections that just slow everything down.

I'm just saying I'd hate to live in or near a city that bans cars, it sound super inconvenient to travel to

he's more reflective of the majority than you realize.

It takes me twenty minutes to walk to the store and another twenty back with all the food on my back, every week, and I am laughably unfit. Unless you're disabled in some way, using a car for what would otherwise be a ten minute journey is lazy and wasteful. I grew up in the middle of nowhere so I understand why having a car is 100% necessary sometimes, but if you live somewhere that you can walk to where you gotta go then not doing so is a mistake.

Sure. Can you explain to me how you might take 600 square kilometres of space and say to all the people in it “go the city”, and how you do that without a decree?

But there is no reason to spread out cities to that extent. The actual size of your country is irrelevant to this. Obviously if you live in a more rural area cars become much more useful compared to public transportation but the problem was never the rural areas, the problem is that CITIES are made into these sprawls where nothing is close and you need a car to do basic day-to-day activities.

I don't think you really understand what I'm saying. Google Maps This is BC. Vancouver is one small city on the bottom left edge of it. The rest of the province is sparsely populated but there are an additional million people living outside of the city, and living in small towns and other areas. These cannot be serviced by rail. These cannot be serviced by bus(not with any frequency that would allow people in those areas to forgo cars) so when some people say "oh they can just do without" based on nothing, I have to wonder, shouldn't I least share the reality that over a million people in my province alone live with? Or do they not matter in these discussions?

My country has good public transport. That doesn't mean that people who live in the middle of nowhere can live without cars. This discussion about urban road design, car policy and public transport has always been with cities in mind. NOBODY is saying that farmer Joe who lives 40 miles from the nearest store should abandon his car and take the bus.

We've got lots of space there's no reason to make everything so dense and uncomfortable, why would you want to do that when you're perfectly capable of buying lots of land and using it?

Do you stack all your furniture in the corner of the room regardless of the size? If you have the space you spread out.

I mean gfs my forefathers slaughtered women and children for their land itd be a waste of energy to not build a Wendy's on it

I'm sure you're used to it, but thanks to the mercator projection, your country is visibly larger on a map than it is in reality. Your entire country fits inside my province. We're talking much larger scales of distance than you might be used to. Yes we can deal with it, but PT isn't an option outside of dense urban and rural areas, which are noticably spread out here. My point was more or less about this difference. These areas, and these towns are spread out as it is. To condense the population of these areas to cities, and leave the country side is not feasible for the majority of people who would want to do so. You're talking about condensing large areas quite heavily.

This took a while to compile, because I had work to do in between, but here goes: Alright. Let me preface by assuming that you're smart enough not to book a ticket at the last minute, especially since you say here that you went to your hometown every weekend. I suppose that if you were to book them a month in advance the prices wouldn't be as high as they are here. I also presume that rail companies offer subscriptions for those who travel regularly. If you want to make a honest comparison, you'll need to consider those options to find the cheapest one. Now, let's see how this would work in a country with a different infrastructure. For comparison's sake, we'll assume that I come from Le Mans and study at a university in Paris, and that I go home every weekend with my imaginary girlfriend. This makes for a 208 kilometers trip by car, ie 128 miles, so in the same ballpark as your example. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Paris,+France/Le+Mans,+France/@48.216263,1.163622,9z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e66e1f06e2b70f:0x40b82c3688c9460!2m2!1d2.3522219!2d48.856614!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e288d214f3aa31:0x69025d4c6a7de07f!2m2!1d0.199556!2d48.00611!3e0?hl=fr-FR Let's start with the car. I'll assume I have the same one as you, which does 30MPG or 30*1.6/3.8=12.75km/L, so it burns 16.5L for a one-way trip. I don't know what type of fuel your car uses, so I'll assume I use the cheapest I can find in Paris, at 1.619€/L. That means I spend 26.66€ on gas total. For simplicity's sake I'll assume maintenance and insurance costs the same as you, though it may obviously differ in reality. $0.085/mi is 0.045€/km, which makes for 9.31€ total for maintenance costs due to the trip. Now, I don't know how it works in the US, but over here most highways are privately owned, and you have to pay tolls to use them. Google knows this, which is why it offers an alternate, toll-free route that uses national roads, but as you can see it makes the trip last one hour longer. I assume you prefer to spend as much time with your family as possible (been there), but I'll consider that option, too. It would add 33km, or 1.48€ additional maintenance + 4.23€ additional gas, which makes for 32.37€ total. You also lose 40-60 minutes of your time, on a good day. Let's assume we actually choose the toll option. This site indicates the trip costs 18.60€ in toll fees. That makes for a total cost of 45.26€ per one-way trip. Additionally, the duration displayed by Google is the optimal one. If you depart on 10 a.m. like you did in your example, at which point the roads aren't busy yet, then you're roughly in the same ballpark as your example. But leave on a Friday at 5:30 p.m.? Brace yourself for a 3-4 hour trip. Alright, now for the train alternative. Let's do the idiotic thing first and book a train on Monday for Friday, and plan a return on Sunday evening, departing on the same hours as the car. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/211575/5cb07382-bad6-4a7e-8333-c6cca2cc0f9c/Sans_CJ.png Okay, so that's not great, a return trip by train costs about as much as a return trip by car if you pay the tolls. It's also a slow train. Now let's be smarter and subscribe to "Carte Jeune" which allows for special offers if you're <25 (which I assume you are if you are in college). That's 50€ per person per year, so 100/104=0.96€ per trip. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/211575/0d1aa8a4-7cd1-4763-b08e-2cec056c71d7/Avec CJ.png This is already cheaper than the return trip by car through the tolls, and almost as cheap as the return trip which avoids them. Also, the first trip is pretty short (1 hour). What if we try to book a month in advance? https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/211575/926b0017-328c-47e5-8685-8ff7f4943652/Full TGV 2.png This is what the website suggested to me. "Massy TGV" is a station that's located approximately 30 minutes from the center of Paris, as you can see. So let's be very generous and add 1 hour of bus/metro/tram on top of each trip. That's still an average of 2 hours 15 minutes, on par with the most optimistic car scenario. And you can schedule the same trip every week: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/211575/02e0eb02-a1eb-476f-af6e-a4436b81e46a/Full TGV.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/211575/b0eb9c1e-cede-4e2c-a41f-8b68beba9bae/Full TGV 4.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/211575/fdb03078-c5ba-4943-ab12-345c1bd49cf6/Full TGV 3.png So, to summarize: Car trip, no toll, total cost 32.37€, duration 2 hours 40 minutes (best case scenario) to 4 hours 30 minutes (worst case scenario) Car trip, tolls, total cost 45.26€, duration 2 hours 15 minutes (best case scenario) to 3 hours 40 minutes (worst case scenario) Train trip, total cost 27€, duration 1 hour 30 minutes (best case scenario) to 2 hours 15 minutes (worst case scenario) The train is superior in both aspects, it saves 5.37€ and 25 to 180 minutes compared to the no toll road (or 559€, between 43 and 312 hours per year) and 18.26€ and up to 130 minutes compared to the toll road (or 1900€, up to 225 hours per year). And this is for two passengers. For a single passenger, the car costs remain the same while the train tickets cost half. I'm single, so why exactly should I bother with a car when the train saves me time and money as long as I plan ahead? As I said, the car isn't inherently more convenient than the alternatives. It depends entirely on the context and on the quality of your country's infrastructure and public transportation network.

Okay yeah but I don't live in france

US cities aren't built for public transport, they're built for cars. I think that owning a self driving car (or having a public fleet of them) is way, way more feasible than rebuilding literally ever major city from the ground up.

Honestly, you deserve some commendation for the work you put into that post. However, I feel like even spending a week traveling around the US would quickly change your tune in that regard.

Plop him down in the middle of Kansas and let him rely on public transportation.

California can't even build a high speed link between LA and SF, how the fuck is the rest of the country going to do it?

So fucking what? The point I'm making is that the fact you guys feel that cars are inherently the most useful and convenient form of transportation has nothing to do with cars and everything to do with your PT systems being utter shit, and so statements like: Are false. Convenience depends on the options you have. The city this thread is about has traded cars for pedestrian streets and overhauled public transportation, and it has been an overall improvement. Okay? What exactly is your point here, that US public transportation sucks? No shit, that's my point as well. What would it change about my tune? How the fuck does France does it then? LA to SF is basically the same length as France's latest high speed line, from Paris to Bordeaux. So it's not like that's not feasible. What exactly is once again "exceptional" about the US that structurally prevents them from doing the same?

The width of Canada is 9,306 km I have family that live in Saskatchewan, were I to bus there, that's several days on a bus. Were I to train there I'd be extremely constrained by the passenger rail line, of which there is one that travels that distance. Our point isn't that the PT sucks(Which it does, even in much of Canada), it's that the space we're talking about is massive.