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Comment by weberc2 | Hacker News Reader

Honesty question for everyone proposing bicycling and public transit: are these feasible in rural environments? (Especially WRT cycling if you have a disability or young children and/or have to commute long distances in very cold or very hot weather)

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Bicycling and transit doesn't have to be feasible for everyone, it just has to be made an option for trips where it makes sense, which is most trips. Nearly half of trips in the US were under 3 miles, 72% of those where done in a car. 60% of trips under a mile were made in a car or truck (!). Accommodating all those trips requires a ton of pavement, parking, gas stations to be built.

https://www.bikeleague.org/content/national-household-travel...

The vast majority of people making those trips are able-bodied people in urbanized areas (80% of the US lived in an urbanized area as of 2010).

https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/population/urban-pct-sta...

So if you can get bike infrastructure to where people are living, you've attacked a big chunk of the auto problem.

Per your second point, yes, it can be feasible. The modern rural US is very sprawling in terms of the built environment but it wasn't always that way. Rural areas in the US used to revolve around small villages and points of density that service a wide area, complete with transit connections. Many German rural villages are extremely bikeable and have regular transit through their regions and to larger cities.

You still can accommodate people who need vehicles, just the demand on infrastructure (parking, number of lane miles, subsidies and costs) would be greatly reduced. As it is now, the children, the disabled, and frequently the poor can't drive themselves and rely on other people driving them. Cycling can be done by almost anyone, is much cheaper and therefore much more accessible than driving.

I continued cycling with a young child, though less often and usually only solo trips. Bicycle trailers can help but it's still more work than putting the kids in a car, and with kids there is already less time for everything to be done.

Not everybody can use a car either. There's always exceptions to every proposal.

But I don't think bicycles and mass transit will take over ultimately. But self driving electric vehicles a bit larger than a bicycle could do it.

These will only need one seat and minimal storage. They'll go directly from home to work without stopping at every bus stop or train station along the way. And they'll be 1/4 the cost of today's car.

And, yes, they won't work for everybody and every situation, just like everything else.

The UN thinks 68% of the global population will live in urban areas by 2050 so it makes sense to focus on urban areas - rural areas could probably be the exception to the rule and still use cars, etc?

https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-...

Not at all. You cannot exist in the vast majority of the US without personal transportation.

Government sponsored automatic car is also public transport.

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