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Comment by RGamma | Hacker News Reader

I recently had the pleasure to vacation on a car-free island (few thousand inhabitants including tourists).

Only motorized vehicles allowed are a handfull small electric transporters for logistics (and construction vehicles, ambulance).

Turns out the space gained from lack of car infrastructure increases space efficiency by a lot (not that that wasn't obvious from theory).

It really was bliss and it makes me despise the status quo so much more fervently. Paradise is so close and yet so far away...

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It's always this circular logic where "I need my car because the supermarket is an hour walk" but the supermarket is an hour walk because everyone drives.

It's mind boggling how much resources get poured in to cars and car infrastructure only to provide a slower, inefficient, more expensive, and toxic system. Feels like the next generation is seeing this now and things are slowly starting to change in some countries. Not sure how fast we can undo decades of damage and corporate brainwashing though.

> It's always this circular logic where "I need my car because the supermarket is an hour walk" but the supermarket is an hour walk because everyone drives.

If there’s no roads and vehicles, how does the food get to the supermarket?

There's a huge gap between "literally no roads or vehicles of any kind" and "I have to use my car to get anywhere".

These bad faith arguments are tiring.

You propose no alternative. You can't have cars if you have no roads. You can't have roads without cars, because you need to figure out how things are going to get to that supermarket.

That's a bit of a non sequitur.

Roads and streets existed before cars. Even then, that ignores that the same location can be traveled to through different means. Goods can be delivered to a store by a van even if most customers arrive on foot or by public transportation.

There are streets within north America which ban passenger vehicles but still allow trucks and vans for deliveries.

You can still have light roadways, people walking on them mixed with bikes and electric scooters, small electric cars, etc.

You can still stock supermarkets, etc, with larger vehicles that only run once a day or every few days depending on demand, etc.

It's common in places other than the US with it's hyper car centric development to have more walkable spaces.

In the Netherlands many shops sit in pedestrianized areas. The local government sets specific times, mostly low-traffic hours such as between 07:00 and 11:00 to open the area to trucks and vans to resupply shops.

The other times these are closed with things like this: https://lowist.be/app/uploads/2017/03/Meir-antwerpen-4-1024x...

No one's saying "no roads or vehicles", op was pointing to the circular justification for the level of infrastructure built up for vehicles. This is a classic straw man.

Where was this island? Would love to go!

Mackinac island is one, absolutely beautiful place. Although I think it has a lower population than where GP went

Catalina Island right off the coast of california

Spiekeroog

That paradise is unsustainable without mechanized agriculture and industry and a way to transport people and goods to those work sites. People aren't going to give up the conveniences of modernity for higher principles when they can't afford to.

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