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Comment by cooper_ganglia | Hacker News Reader

"If you live somewhere where you have to drive, you are a captive audience"

I don't think you appreciate just how incredibly massive this country is. I have to drive 15 miles to work everyday. If I couldn't drive, I would literally just starve and die (or, I suppose start working as a local farmhand).

It's funny, I feel the same way about people who live in small areas and don't have the ability to independently go anywhere they want at any time without having to rely on someone else. The "walkable city" feels like a hellscape archetype for the most captive audience you could ever possibly conceive...

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> I don't think you appreciate just how incredibly massive this country is.

On the other hand, I don’t think you appreciate how much vehicle usage in this country is tied to round trip commutes to and from an urban center

I don’t think anyone is arguing that a rural lifestyle should exist on bikes and trains because that doesn’t make sense. However people who live adjacent to a city and go into the city every day, aren’t living a rural lifestyle.

> It's funny, I feel the same way about people who live in small areas and don't have the ability to independently go anywhere they want at any time without having to rely on someone else. The "walkable city" feels like a hellscape archetype for the most captive audience you could ever possibly conceive...

These are not mutually exclusive concepts unless you live in Manhattan.

I live a 10 minute walk to a subway station that brings me downtown to work. I also have a driveway and a car, and sometimes I drive to the parking garage next to my work. I also drive all over New England on the weekends.

A single subway line in Toronto is 38 km / 24 miles long. A single regional rail line passing through downtown is 114 km / 71 miles long. A 15 mile commute is perfectly achievable on public transit when the facilities exist.

In the rural US, you'd have maybe 1-2 people per hour who would take said public transit route. Most hours, you'd have zero.

It is really not about rural areas. But the massive sub-urban which sounds like it was designed to be as far from where work is as possible...

Farms take land, but cities should not. They should be designed to be effective in most ways by minimizing distance travelled for most common trips.

Yeah, I drive through 3 other towns before even getting to the town I work in. And the town I work in is 10-15 minutes off the "main road" (if you can even call it that, lol) so setting this up with public transport means having an entire bus SOLELY for me. You'd waste more than you'd save. I can't live closer, and my work can't move. These are the realities of living in the country. It's awesome and I wouldn't change it for the world, but stuff is just far apart, no matter what.

People really, really do not understand what living rural is like.

> People really, really do not understand what living rural is like.

The same criticism applies equally well to rural dwellers about urban life which is why someone rural could be shocked by the idea someone might actively choose to to travel by high quality public transportation.

I have lived both rural and urban and actively choose urban. Rural is a fine choice too, but rural dwellers shouldn't expect their energy intensive and economically expensive lifestyle to be subsidized by urban dwellers forever. Maintaining a huge road network with relatively low utilization is massively expensive and western rural life is currently among the most carbon intensive lifestyles.

For better or worse, Urban dwellers are the majority in the US - the "Fuck Cars" blanket statements get a bit frustrating to see as someone in a rural environment.

> Maintaining a huge road network with relatively low utilization is massively expensive and western rural life is currently among the most carbon intensive lifestyles.

Yet it's necessary, and cheaper than the alternative when you have industry which must exist in a rural setting (such as farming). Attempting to mandate public transport for rural settings would cost more, and may even be more carbon intensive.

So as much as people who live in rural areas shouldn't dictate how public transport is instituted in dense urban areas, neither should urbanites dictate how transport in rural areas is managed.

Urban dwellers in America isn’t a dense city. It’s a loose collection of smaller cities all over the place. The US census defines urban as having 5,000 people in an area.

Are you hypothesizing that eventually everyone will/should move to urban areas? I don't think that will end up being sustainable either.

Which is fine, but I'm sick of those same people consistently voting against high quality public transport inside cities while insisting on urban highways and tons of parking for when they come to the city. Untold billions have been spent creating a road network to support their rural lifestyle and then they object to any money being spent on transportation modes other than driving.

Farmers get a pass since they are producing things on the land. Everyone else who chooses to live rural or exurban doesn't get to object to urban dwellers wanting quality transit or to reduce the prominence of cars in urban spaces.

> Farmers get a pass since they are producing things on the land.

And the people who maintain farmers' equipment?

Purchasers of farmers' goods?

The people who sell food to farmers?

The people who maintain infrastructure?

Mail?

Which is to say, where there are farmers (or ranchers etc), there is a whole city nearby who supports them. And cities imply infrastructure - like roads.

Every able bodied person can cycle 15 miles. What a shame that people don't even know what their own bodies are capable of.

"I would literally starve and die". This is a sad, sad comment. I would laugh but I just find it so sad that you've got all these able bodied adults unable to get around without wheelchairs.

Wall-E isn't about the future.

Some of the most fun I've had outdoors with friends is when they want to try biking (or bikepacking) with me. You're right that people generally have no understanding of what they're capable of (and that no herculean effort is required).

I suspect that some of this is a result of humans being increasingly unable to estimate true distances. In my city, it can take 45 minutes to drive 3 miles, so most non-bikers understand 3 miles to be an insurmountable distance.

That's a good point. Americans I've met seem to only associate miles with cars. While a British person might say "let's walk, it's only a mile", Americans would say "you can't walk, it's a mile!".

Of course, if you do walk a mile then that's a "hike". In British that's also just called a walk.

That's the point, due to zoning & parking laws, density is lower, ppl need to drive more. Imagine both laws changed, how much the supply could increase, how many ppl would choose to move into the city instead of long commute. Combined with better pub transport&bike lanes both propulsed by high density, a lot of ppl would be able to live carfree

You're correct that rural life is an exception here, but most Americans don't live in rural areas and I presume that's what the other user is talking about. In many American cities there just aren't good alternative options, you need to spend the money on a car to get around even if you live in a reasonably urban area.

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