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Comment by scottious | Hacker News Reader

Cycling is great for many reasons, but I feel that the biggest boost to my well-being was giving up driving.

I'm a firm believer in cars ruin cities.

Cycling is great. I ride both for sport/fitness and for errands, has a ton of benefits, but I agree with you that the biggest boost is not driving.

Car culture/motonormativity in the US is a huge problem and transit here is severely lacking, cycling infrastructure or other wise (trains, busses, safe pedestrian paths and areas, trams, etc.).

People point to traffic and stress, but there are overlooked harms of car culture we tend to ignore. It's responsible for a significant portion of emissions, and drivers and those near cars inhale a staggering amount of microplastics.

Those who use public transit are less likely to be overweight, less likely to devlop type 2 diabetes, and less likely to have high blood pressure.

Driving needs to stop being an unavoidable default. EVs and self driving aren't the answer either, all the same problems, except exhaust, are present with EVs.

Absolutely. The US' urban density problems, housing cost crisis - they all go back to car-based society.

I agree. This is one reason why I want gas prices to go to $10/gallon. It will hurt, but maybe we'll start having some serious conversations about our awful transportation system and city design

It'd also be nice because cyclist deaths in the US closely mirror gas prices. When gas prices drop, people drive more, and injure/kill more cyclists.

Sadly commuters are the least price sensitive, any gas price which would be enough to convince people to stop using gas would justify buying an electric car. There's also not really an alternative in most American cities as the density prevents public transport.

The low density though is a policy choice, not a geographical constraint. The US is low density because zoning laws criminalized denser housing and mandated excessive parking spaces.

Many smaller municipalities wouldn't be able to afford a drastic uptick in EV usage either, they would be much better off focusing on any kind of public transit to reduce the number of vehicles on the road.

Calgary (Canada) as a similar population density to most US cities and its light rail system has some of the highest per-capita ridership rate in North America, so it absolutely can be done. We just need to stop enforcing car-centric design with our zoning laws and parking mandates.

It's also crazy how slow countries have been to build solar panel roofs on car parks, this should have been done so long ago with the budget that car infrastructure gets.

> There's also not really an alternative in most American cities as the density prevents public transport

I think buses might have something to say about that

Even buses require you to have a minimum density to be in some way economical. There's also a shortage of bus drivers as it's an underpaid job dealing with awful people.

That's what how we got fuel economy regulations in the 1970s. But it didn't really usher in a golden age of public transport. Probably would just help Tesla and BYD.

Just sharing what I know to be an extreme minority opinion but for my money, cutting up SF traffic on a bike is the greatest feeling in the world. On some level I have a deep respect for the cars because they provide me with a matched partner for the dance. That being said, yeah, ban cars, fuck cars.

While I haven't given up driving, the fact that I don't rely on it to commute (granted I work from home rather than cycling) means that when I do drive, my relative frustration is really low. About the only thing that annoys me is dangerous driving... for obvious reasons!

Same situation, working from home, although my city has decent public transport so even going downtown is easier without driving. But now when I need to drive for whatever reason, I get frustrated at having to drive. I'll complain about having to take the car, that why can't they put a bus route here, why is it the train doesn't stop at the station I need etc etc.

Which actually surprised me, when my SO said to me: but I thought you liked driving? When we first met you were always working on your car...

Oh yeah. I did, didn't I? It just kinda happened without me realizing it.

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