I was curious so I just checked, and the number of cars is just shy of the number of people of driving age, even in the bicycle paradise of the Netherlands.
Lots of the peoples car needs would probably be covered by some form of car sharing but this is something car manufacturers hate and it has been always quite expensive. Maybe that will change.
New driver licenses are rapidly dropping in europe. Lets see whats gonna happen but i think Netherlands/Flanders are for sure important pioneers to get inspired from.
But that’s also because they have to be multigenerational to afford a SFH these days.
> I was curious so I just checked, and the number of cars is just shy of the number of people of driving age, even in the bicycle paradise of the Netherlands.
This might sound like a high amount of ownership, but if you compare it to some other countries then it’s not that bad (or impressive if that’s how you look at it).
The Netherlands has 588 cars per 100k inhabitants v. 908 in the US as an example[0].
If you go down the rabbit hole and look at the sources for these numbers, you’ll find that in the US only 8% of households don’t own a car[1] v. 26% of households in the Netherlands[2].
37.1% has two cars in the US and 21.9% has three or more in the US[1] v. 21% and 6% respectively in the Netherlands[2]
I think it’s safe to say that there’s less cars on the road in the Netherlands and thus less of that nightmare scenario that is described in GP.
That said, plenty of drivers in the Netherlands (not having the frame of reference of more busy countries) consider the Netherlands having “nightmares” for drivers. In particular when it comes to parking, where the main complaint is the price of parking and the lack of parking close to a destination.
Personally I don’t consider it a nightmare but a blessing that a lot of Dutch downtown areas force parking on the outer edge, leaving the shopping areas as pedestrian only areas. But that doesn’t mean that other people with other interests don’t consider it a nightmare.
Whenever, in the very rare instance, a city or town here in the US tries to marginally move towards such a situation, people start dusting off their pitchforks.
Just the other day I saw someone losing their shit on Threads because someone suggested that it would combat sedentary lifestyle somewhat if you’d have to walk 10 minutes from where you’d park every once in a while.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...
1: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/2023-car-ownership-statistics...
2: https://www.kimnet.nl/binaries/kimnet/documenten/publicaties... in Dutch