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Comment by pizza234 | Hacker News Reader

> The difference is that people actually need to get around

This is really context-dependent. Some cities/countries do have efficient enough public transport, and/or they're flat enough to make bikes usable.

In such contexts, using a bike is a realistic choice (like mine). This goes even for families with children (in some countries, parents who don't want to depend on cars use cargo bikes).

I know that in some countries/cultures, people will use the car even to avoid a 5 minutes walk (I know it for a fact; I'm familiar with that), with the result of massive traffic and pollution.

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Mass traffic isn't really the result of a 5-minute drive to McDonald's. It's the result of people only being able to afford single-family houses 1-2 hours away from their workplaces, and either having no commuter trains to get them there, or having city jobs that require driving in a car. For instance, in LA a lot of Uber drivers commute in from an hour away. Contractors, roofers, plumbers, all commute in. People who live in the city may actually get to work by biking or walking, but they aren't the vast majority stuck in traffic on the highways in and out every day. The problem really is the sprawling nature of the economy which necessitates spending hours in a car, not that people are so lazy they can't walk for five minutes.

> It's the result of people only being able to afford single-family houses 1-2 hours away from their workplaces

Idk how this works in the USA but shurely if you can afford a single family house you could easily rent an apartment near to where you actually work?

In the US, workers in the service industry in large cities generally can't afford rent within walking or biking distance of where they work. In most cities public transit to and from the outlying areas is slow and bad simply because of the size. The greater LA metro area is about 3/4 the size of the Netherlands, and many people need to commute all the way across it every day.

Contractors who need space for tools and equipment and make $100-200k per year can't live in an apartment with their kids and can't afford houses in the city. A family of four making $100k/year could barely get a small 2 bedroom apartment in near-ish suburbs and they would still need multiple vehicles for work. Once you get 90 minutes from the city center, you can afford a 3-bedroom house and two cars. It's the only rational choice. But once you're out there, you need a car even to get to the nearest train station.

To quickly disabuse you of that notion: it absolutely does not work like that.

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