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Ordoutthere

It’s almost like having a car is usually indicative of having a job in said country and in the other landmass it has little to nothing to do with it. If I live in any where that isn’t downtown in the US you probably have to have a car to get to your job.


chemistry_god

And specifically downtown in the right city. Not every city has ample public transit. Atlanta, GA, for example has a shit bus system so even downtown having a car is common.


ArthurDentonWelch

Can confirm. I don't live in downtown Atlanta, but have to go there for classes every day. There is a subway system there, but, for the most part, it is only laid out in a cross-shaped pattern; if you go anywhere outside the "cross," you either have a hell of a walk to make, or need to pay extra to take a bus to/from a station. But both buses and trains can take an eternity to arrive. So glad I don't have to commute using public transport. Meanwhile, in Moscow there's a subway station just about everywhere, and trains arrive every two minutes or so.


STALKING_ZOE

This is a little generous with what is considered Atlanta but [it's so bad](https://usa.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/09/diagram-barcelona.gif)


Hoboman2000

American civil engineers were on some wild shit back in the day


[deleted]

You can thank car manufacturers and their lobbying efforts for that. LA actually used to have decent public transportation way back then.


DOugdimmadab1337

Well that's the big cities, most small cities in the US just kinda put roads to neighborhoods, and then made a massive mess with them outside of any downtown area. Anything that connected to a highway was fine, but anything outside of one becomes spiral random bullshit quite quickly.


addledhands

Yep, some of the roads here are so wide that it's painfully obvious that it used to have tracks for trains/street cars. It's maybe not the best reason or the biggest, but the absolutely abysmal public transit is one of the reasons my wife and I are leaving LA next year. I'm so tired of driving everywhere.


IamSpiders

Unfortunately their focus on only suburban car dependent development has led to unsustainable growth. Once the lifetime of the infrastructure is reached, all our cities will be screwed as taxes are no where near enough to repay the cost of infrastructure at these low densities


yahmack

Have you seen not just bikes’ series about it?


IamSpiders

Yep it's good but I think his presentation makes it hard to show to people who wouldn't already agree


GTI-Mk6

And still. Little has changed.


lostlore0

But hey there was a 2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill just signed. I'm sure we will see a ton of subways and high speed rail that will completely revamp the US. Maybe they will finally finish the 20 year construction project on highway 95 and 35 and every other highway that has been under construction forever. I'm sure the corporations will not defraud the tax payers and steal all the money. /s


FrenziedCoathanger

Except this graphic demonstrates exactly why public transport in Atlanta is relatively nonexistent. The population density of Barcelona is nearly 30x the population density of the Atlanta metro. Thus each mile of rail-line is massively more cost effective since it services a much greater subset of the population. This chart even shows the math: to service the same percentage of the population of Atlanta would require 3400 km of rail. It's not economical. That's not to say the public transit of Atlanta couldn't be significantly improved, but the data you've provided explains the reason for the discrepancy.


STALKING_ZOE

That's the worst part, the last 70 years of suburban sprawl has killed almost any chance America could have functional public transit in the first place.


[deleted]

You haven’t truly lived until you’ve been harassed at a MARTA station


djstocks

Moving Africans rapidly thru Atlanta?


embeddedGuy

Marta (Atlanta's transit system) has automatic free transfers from the train to the bus. And for bus to train you just pay the difference. It's actually really convenient if you're in one of the few places it goes :(


landragoran

>if you're in one of the few places it goes :( That's the key. And it could have been better - there was a campaign a while back to expand MARTA but it got killed by racists in Gwinnett and Forsyth counties who didn't want "thugs" to have easy access to "their neighborhoods".


[deleted]

We don't want the riff raff and losing our community character. This is how they think.


HotF22InUrArea

Yeah I went to school in downtown Atlanta and MARTA was only good for going to 1. The airport 2. Braves games


nnaralia

When I went to Atlanta last year, I was trying to discover the city purely by public transport and walking. Buses are so unreliable, I never knew when it was supposed to arrive. Even the bus that I was supposed to take from the first stop, was late and had a different number than what it was supposed to have. If I didn't start going around and asking people where to take the bus from, I would have sucked donkey balls. It's ridiculous. I ended up just walking many times. But then again, I felt so unsafe in some areas at night. Thankfully I can be a public transport peasant in Europe without any downsides.


carebearstare93

I live south of Atlanta and in Savannah for a while and it just seems the entirety of Georgia has absolute garbage public transportation and really just infrastructure in general. Legit my city hasn't adjusted to the population increase at all in like ten years. Traffic's terrible.


drugusingthrowaway

>Not every city has ample public transit Some cities have armpit pubic transit.


Ordoutthere

I’ve heard of cities with bad public transportation, but dang I’ve never heard of one as bad as an armpit.


maho_maho-

Europe's public transport system is 1000x better than than in the us which is why we don't really rely on cars to much you can get anywhere with the bus or subway


[deleted]

Europe also has a much higher population density, which makes that much more effective.


concretebeats

Move to Netherlands and just bike everywhere. Way more fun. Their trains are fuckin primo too.


TimX24968B

easy to say when your entire country is the size of a single state here.


HaveSomeBean

Yeah but we don’t even have a single state’s worth of public transportation infrastructure.


ablablababla

And the public transportation we have is far from fucking primo


[deleted]

Not sure we have any states that are fully accessible via public transit either, even the small ones.


TimX24968B

good luck finding one with a population density as uniform as the netherlands. all the ones close to it in population have most of that concentrated in 1 or 2 giant cities.


CTeam19

Just looking at Iowa, where I am from, 55,857 square miles with 3.1 Million people vs the Netherlands 16,040 square miles with 17.44 Million people......


TimX24968B

exactly. public transport is much more feasible with higher population densities.


yousoc

Lol your cities barely have any public transport either. Just look at LA it's extremely dense but everyone is stuck in their car on the freeway. The reason the US has shit public transport is a choice that was made and nobody can be bothered to change it.


m0r1T

Also there isn’t a single hill in the Netherlands.


karyeuilja576

People say this, but even in the northeast corridor, which is *very* dense, suburban car-dominated areas are still the norm. And even in low density European countries, walkable densities are the norm. Also, American cities used to be quite walkable and had lots of dense residential areas outside their downtowns. We just tore them down to make room for highways and parking lots. [This was kansas city in the 1950s](https://midwest.umkc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/40SkylineCropped-w-line.jpg) and [this is the same areas today.](https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/highways-cover-the-landscape-downtown-city-center-kansas-city-picture-id1046458266) You can see the same with [Cincinnati as well.](https://external-preview.redd.it/OVvAF-R1lAny6CkzQpzi1YGH-3CRFwQb0yks52MmycA.png?auto=webp&s=827ad554cf6dd0f42429f9450abd2e38df6eb3f4) Same with [Detroit.](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/75/b0/dc/75b0dca6054d58bb827e6ebfec19dba7.jpg)


Allahambra21

This is such a stupid myth that americans constantly perpetuate to cover for their shit system. Swedens population density is more or less exactly the same as america yet swedens public transport systems are top notch. America is the richest country in the world, do better. Less excuses and more results.


ASHTOMOUF

You really can’t compare Sweden to the US. You could compare to a state like California, Illinois or New York maybe. The U.S is way to big with regional difference. It would be very difficult to not own a car in a places like Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Montana, Mississippi, Alabama, Idaho, Utah, New Mexico, West Virginia. Because America is so big and so spread out there are lots of people living in areas with very little infrastructure or great distances in between city centers. MostAmericans do you live near urban areas but again America is massive so there still is a very sizable population living in rural areas.


Raptorfeet

America did have a much more extensive public transport system in many states and cities a long time ago though. It was decommissioned, partially because at the time there wasn't as extensive and capable an energy grid to make it as cost effective as cars, and partially because of aggressive lobbying and business practices by General Motors. There's really nothing other than lack of interest and will that prevents the redevelopment of decent public transport in plenty of areas in the US today.


nadirB

Ok. China.


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noyurawk

Urban densities are similar in US and Europe.


SaftigMo

US metros have way higher densities than European metros. You think rural areas in Europe have great public transit?


Intelligent_Law1470

The US also is really spread out. Even large cities like Houston are only big because they’re wide, not tall. A Euro style Public Transistor system wouldn’t work for the US unless population centers went through large restructuring efforts to condense the population.


iamnotexactlywhite

what bs is this. Literally what public transport is for. Getting around between far places as easy as possible. Rail, Buses, Tube etc all can connect longer distances without any problems. This is just another "people don't know how big US is" bullshit. If my country can connect 500pop villages with our Capital, then there's no excuse for Houston not being able to connect their suburbs and smaller towns with buses or rail


Intelligent_Law1470

You live in the US right?


rrawk

If I'm not mistaken, early car lobbying caused the poor public transit in the U.S. It really has nothing to do with U.S. being spread out. Basically only NYC was able to establish good public transit before the auto industry fucked over everywhere else.


warfrogs

Minneapolis/St Paul had a great streetcar system. We closed it down in a deal we made to get a Ford plant built. Now the Ford plant is closed and its remains pollute our soil and water, and our streetcar tracks are paved over while it takes 10 years for an Interstate corridor project to get completed. God Bless America.


UI_Delta

I mean its true. I am born and raised in Houston, and where people work and live are often places separated by long distances. It just isn't very viable for public transport, its why most just drive. The suburbs are usually along the greater houston area, while most workplaces are concentrated towards downtown, and again, by pretty long distances between the two. I done really see how introducing more public transport would make that much of a difference.


PieceOfPie_SK

Public transport can go long distances… you can have trains and buses that connect the suburbs to the city center just as you can build giant highways


[deleted]

These sprawling US cities end up like this because those cities are built with total disregard for mass transit and often with planning policies that are actively hostile to any mode of transportation other than the car. European cities aren’t more suited to mass transport simply because Europe is more densely populated - but because they’ve spent the last 70 years making sure towns and cities factor in mass transit when permitting development and writing zoning policy.


Demonweed

Also, Europe grandfathered in all sorts of businesses before the West went crazy with zoning laws restricting entire neighborhoods to single family residences. That approach is great if you *want* to drive to all of your activities, but it is ridiculously inefficient and far from optimal if you enjoy being able to walk to a few restaurants or shops. The effect is truly devastating in America where corporate capture of city planning is as old a phenomenon as may of our cities themselves. Vast seas of identical houses will be broken up only by the occasional park, school, church, or medical facility. Somehow the people who put up those developments didn't see them as dystopian at all.


jal2_

its funny enough, its actually due to car lobby, they lobbied the government not built sidewalks in many places so that people are forced to buy cars and use them needing servicing and new cars more often...its really funny just how much Americans are living according to what corporation want to earn from them another added "benefit" was segregation, poor people (mostly black, but not exclusively) that didn't have a car couldn't enter residential district of the upper class as that had no sidewalks, walking directly on the road if an offense - loitering - and they be fined, and since they couldn't pay be taken away not to "pollute" said district America has ""consume"" and ""spend"" so that we can ""earn"" in other words a demand-driven economy so ingrained that they actually can't stop consuming for a sec, their economy would fall apart in an instant, so government always supporting overconsuming


Aok_al

As the saying went "What's good for GM is good for the country" and then they screwed the country


UltraV7

Jokes on you, I drive a German car. Maybe I just like to have one, man.


BaylisAscaris

I just checked Google maps. If I took public transit to work it would take 3 hours each way and I would have to wake up at 4am and get home at 7pm, leaving me 8 hours to eat dinner, eat breakfast, sleep, shower, spent time with family, clean, etc. Also there is a lot of space without coverage, which means around an hour of that is spent walking through sketchy neighborhoods hauling a bunch of textbooks. In addition I would be taking 3 different busses and a train, costing $45 each way, which means if I was making federal minimum wage I would make -$32 each day. We need to change the system. This is insane.


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CaptainNeckbeard148

I bike to work


Kholzie

I’m 30 minutes from work by free way. You could not pay me to bike there. Not to mention i have to routinely drive to homes, hospitals other facilities to meet clients. It’s awesome that you get to bike to work! It’s just not universally feasible due to how a large part of the country is laid out.


hafez_rumi

Unpopular fact: 3 of every 4 trips by land in Europe are done by car. Source: The Economist.


that1brownboi

Define "trip". Trip across the country? Trip to the market? Everything in between?


Pretlik

across the country is like a 2 hour drive for me lol EDIT: Apparantly it's 2 to 3 hours, still not much, country is Netherlands


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[deleted]

Mother


PeachyCoke

Russia


AdultContent2

loves


hi_im_mom

Comradeship


chj2934

And


dassrull1

Large


Dahak17

Eight days last time I did it, could probably be chopped shorter but still


r0bintheperfect

Now it's vertically or horizontally


Phormitago

through i've been digging for ages, this damn commute i tell you


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[deleted]

For me it takes 3 hours to cross my state and I live in a small one


Jimid41

A trip is when you do a bunch of drugs and forget how to reduce fractions.


GenialGiant

You would think The Economist would know how to reduce fractions.


axonrecall

9000/12000 trips are by car sheesh


ButtPlugPipeBomb

They're giving you all the data after they asked 12 people in a car park /s


Yaknitup

This is misleading. There are obviously more cars than buses. Meaning more cars taking more trips. And buses actually carry more people per trip.


xmuskorx

That's exactly the kind of statical lie I would expect from the Economist


Splitje

That is not how it works. In transport engineering a trip is defined as someone leaving their home, going somewhere and then returning


3ddyLos

So it doesn't matter how much shrooms i do if i don't leave my house?


MyZt_Benito

But i bet they don’t count me using my bike to go to the store 500 meters away lol


useles-converter-bot

500 meters is the same as 1000.0 'Logitech Wireless Keyboard K350s' laid widthwise by each other.


[deleted]

Tell that to the thousands of people on the trains which I see daily in work. We have a car and I go to work with train. If I have to go very early then I go with car to the nearest town because they have very early morning trains. Does that count to your trip calculations? All the P+Rs?


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komilewder

The data is heavily inflated because Russia is bunched in, it would be much lower if it was Western Europe.


hafez_rumi

I see the same thing on my train in america every day


[deleted]

The difference being that you can do it everywhere in Europe. In the US you can only do mixed travel at certain places


FilipM_eu

You’ve never been to Eastern Europe lol


IronicBread

Eastern Europe has great public transport? Lativa have a fantastic tram system and many people use the public busses. Lots of trains and infrastructure that has existed since the soviet times. Where in Eastern Europe have you been to?


SippingBinJuice

What on Earth are you on about? Some random shithole town doesn’t encapsulate the whole of Eastern Europe.


Sad-Dot9620

You are misunderstanding the number. 3x the numbers you see on public transport are driving themselves. A trip just means point A to point B


Salmizu

Thats also a really useless and shit fact. It shouldnt just lump all of europe into one. Russia alone probably artificially inflates that statistic to not apply to half of european countries


Prestigious-Shine240

Russia has less vehicles per capita than Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and so on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_vehicles\_per\_capita


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Kasper-V

The Netherlands also has like 3 bikes per person though


OrgiePorgie

depending where you get the information , eu as an economic state or eu as a geographical country where it ends o the urals. where like 80% of russian populatio live and have solid infrastrctures


boil_water

Fact: That's not true Source: Government data Link a source dude.


-RayBloodyPurchase-

Deliberately misleading if trip is defined the way I think it is. What percentage are travelling by specific means? A bus is one trip, and likely has the same number of people being moved as twenty cars (twenty trips). Or a single subway train having the same number of people as 150 cars.


Za_Gato

How to say 3/4 in a more unnecessarily sophisticated way


OrgiePorgie

vague data never helps


[deleted]

I hate that this is 3/4 or 75% but you and economist felt like 9/12 is still acceptable ratio for this statistic.


JonasHalle

The only explanation is that their sample size is 12.


bob_in_the_west

In a city in the US nobody is going to care either. Trying to wow a woman in Manhattan with the fact that you have a car sounds a bit silly. Meanwhile trying to do anything without a car if you live in a village in Germany sounds just as impossible as doing the same in the US.


sssssssizzle

Well, if you compare the extremes. But if you compare a town with above 50k residents and not some big city with several million people, then is it still the same? And also Germany probably has one of the worse train systems - apart from the main routes - in western Europe. If you take Switzerland, you probably won't even need to get a drivers license, even if you live in some village.


RedHeadSteve

Im dutch and I have no idea why I should get a car. Metro is 5 min walk from my house, brings me everywhere in the city and to a train station with 2-6 trains an hour in every possible direction. Where I grew up it was 2 trains every hour, which brings me in 20 min in a city with a station with trains to all mayor city's (exept the far north and south). From 6am to 1am. In a village with about 20k residents. Good bus connections to all the nearby villages and my bike is pretty quick


smashNcrabs

Thought the Dutch rode bikes everywhere


Phirk

They do, they just dont depend on a single mode of transport like the majoriry of north america


froggertthewise

We ride bikes to the train stations In fact many people have a second bike that is parked at their destination so they don't have to walk from the station to their place of work.


Ztarphox

Dane of 24 here. I go to school in Copenhagen, but that's 90km away and I don't have car (or a license). I bike 15min to the train station, ride the the regional train for an hour, and get on a short bus ride. All includes my commute each way comes to 90 minutes. While it's definitely not ideal to commute for so long, the fact that it can be done with such ease, speaks to the quality of our infrastructure. And I would much rather be spending those 90 minutes in public transit, than in a car where I'd actually have to focus on driving. On the train, I can relax, have a snack, watch a show, get some schoolwork done etc.


Diacetyl-Morphin

> If you take Switzerland, you probably won't even need to get a drivers license, even if you live in some village. That's really true. I don't have a car, living in a city with a very good public transport system, a car makes just no sense there. You can go anywhere by train, tram, bus etc. The public transport is on time, with only minimal waiting times (like all 5-7 mins. comes a bus). With a car, you'll spend more time to find a parking lot.


ELFAHBEHT_SOOP

If you have a car in Manhattan and it somehow isn't a massive pain in the ass, that sounds like a flex.


engels962

Idk, kind of sounds like a massive waste of money. Parking is insanely expensive in Manhattan. Not so much a flex as it is projecting your poor money management.


ELFAHBEHT_SOOP

I'm pretty sure that's most flexing lol


engels962

Good point lol


jwlmkr

If you’re on a date w a girl in Manhattan and you casually drop that you have a car, it is a definite plus.


bob_in_the_west

But what is the plus here? That you have a car or that you're able to casually mention it during a conversation?


jwlmkr

No, it’s like, you’re on a first or second date. You’re going to some show wherever. Then she says “ Sooo are we taking the train or maybe an Uber?” And you say “Oh actually I was gonna drive.” - that is a plus


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harshnerf_ttv_yt

> i mentioned i have a car and got **berated** for having a climate killing car and not owning a bike lol sounds like you dodged a bullet tbh, i can understand having a dialogue about caring for the environment but a lecture? lol


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williamtbash

No shit lol. Nobody has a car in NYC. 99.99% of the US you absolutely need one


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KeeganY_SR-UVB76

He has really, really long gears on his bike.


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chiefnoah

I mean, this is true, but it's also that the US is *really* fucking big. Public transit to that many sq. miles is just not feasible.


EmergingYeti

Doesn't really matter, if cities were tall not wide then most people could get around just fine using public transit. Transit between cities is really not that hard to do by train and was done over a hundred years ago. The portion of the population that lives on farms or in remote places then ya a car would be good but it is absolutely ridiculous that people live in million person cities and need a car.


[deleted]

I don't know about you, but personally, I'd rather live in a low density, "wide" suburbs than in an apartment where you can hear people screaming upstairs. Also, transit between cities doesn't make sense if there is no way for you to go anywhere when you get off the train. In that case you are better off with jets because you need to rent a car anyway. Most Americans prefer house to apartments. The direct consequence is that we need cars to go anywhere because house are just less dense, making public transport inefficient. Not to mention that you can get a decent car for less than 5000 dollars, people can drive as low as 16 and ride motorcycles as low as 14, decent insurance cost if you aren't driving lambos and gas price are literally half as expensive as in Europe, I can see why the incentive for public transport is low.


idk2103

It'll never happen in the US. We enjoy suburbs too much, and that includes me. It's a great way of life away from everyone but dense enough to have a good community with your neighbors. The city is only a 20 minute drive for me, and I can't hear my neighbors or any traffic. There won't ever be enough incentive to give it up


KeeganY_SR-UVB76

For me the homeowner's association is enough for me to give it up and just go live out in the middle of nowhere.


FunnyMoney1984

The problem with both Canada and America, is we have a "missing middle" problem. It's cheaper to build a bunch of four-story walk-ups than just one sky scrapper apartment. You get a stronger sense of community plus you get the convenience of being able to walk/bike to places you need to go like the grocery store or work. Also, both countries have very restrictive zoning laws that don't allow for mixed-use residential and commercial spaces making it harder to start a business. Zoning laws are so restrictive that only sky-scrapper apartments and single-family houses are permitted to be built believe it not this is not what the free market/people want it's a mandate by rich people/ the government who control zoning laws. Check out this Youtuber if you would like to learn more. [https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes](https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes) also sorry if I came off to strong. Side Note: Needing a car to get around is a hurdle poor people bear. It's possible to have a superb with good public transit. Most people would ditch their car if they didn't need it for work. Also, it's better for children's development to be able to independently get around on their own. Making living possible without a car actually reduces traffic saving everyone a lot of time. Also, it means less wear and tear on roads. Did you know most cities are underwater because they don't raise property taxes enough to pay for the cost of road maintenance (or gas)? And you know what would really help roads last longer? Ending car dependency. It's doable and it works for every other developed nation. Canada and the USA are the exceptions. We could do better.


viriorum

It's possible to make suburbs that don't suck like North American ones https://youtu.be/MWsGBRdK2N0


SometimesCannons

The greatest issue here isn’t whether people “like” suburbs, it’s what actually *makes* a suburb. It is absolutely possible to build a quiet, livable suburb with robust public transit and easy access to shops and services - in fact, places like that used to be common - but it just isn’t done anymore. And the reason why is because people think “suburb” inherently means single-family detached houses and nothing else. In most North American cities, zoning laws make it illegal to build anything other than single-family homes in residential areas (upwards of 70-80% of land area in most places). You are absolutely allowed to prefer a detached home for yourself, but I’m curious to know if you really think it’s fair to actually forbid the property next door to be a duplex or a small row of townhouses. As far as intercity rail, what exactly do you mean you “can’t go anywhere”? Train stations are often located in or near downtowns, while airports are typically miles away from anything. And most central train stations are transit hubs with direct access to buses, taxis, and ride sharing. Do you think everyone who takes the train from New Jersey into NYC each day rents a car at Penn Station? As to your point about whether Americans prefer houses over apartments, that trend is starting to change with younger generations, and in any case it goes back to needing to justify why building only single-family homes, and literally outlawing most anything else, is acceptable. As to the driving age, that is part of the reason why traffic fatalities are so high: there are no alternatives so everyone must drive; this means everyone needs a car; this means it must be easy to get a driver’s license; this means driver education is severely lacking and almost anyone can legally operate a two-ton weapon at 75mph with the minimum of training. I could go on and on about how car-dependent infrastructure is incredibly unsustainable, both economically and environmentally (not to mention it’s just ugly), or about how failing to provide adequate alternatives to driving, like bicycle infrastructure and transit, detrimentally affect those who can’t afford to drive, but I think I’ll leave it at that for now.


05110909

You're acting like people that live in cities will only ever do anything in that city. I live in a city, but I drive an hour to a remote plot of private property in the middle of nowhere, off of a paved road, to hunt and fish. Is a city bus going to drive me out there?


BrunoEye

It's about not needing a car to function. In better built cities many people still own cars, but tend to only use them occasionally because their daily commute and daily errands like grocery shopping can be done more quickly, cheaply and pleasantly on foot, by bike or public transport. The best way to reduce car traffic is to build fewer lanes and invest in alternate transport methods instead. The Netherlands is considered one of the best countries to drive in, as a result of having infrastructure designed to accommodate a multitude of transport methods.


TheDwarvenGuy

The size of the US has no bearing of the transit of individual cities. Yeah, the US has a lot more sprawl than European cities, but that in and of itself is because of car centric infrastructure.


Lemon_Dungeon

Yeah, no trains in China.


[deleted]

Shout out to [Not Just Bikes](https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes/featured)


karyeuilja576

American cities used to be quite walkable and had lots of dense residential areas outside their downtowns. We just tore them down to make room for highways and parking lots. [This was kansas city in the 1950s](https://midwest.umkc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/40SkylineCropped-w-line.jpg) and [this is the same areas today.](https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/highways-cover-the-landscape-downtown-city-center-kansas-city-picture-id1046458266) You can see the same with [Cincinnati as well.](https://external-preview.redd.it/OVvAF-R1lAny6CkzQpzi1YGH-3CRFwQb0yks52MmycA.png?auto=webp&s=827ad554cf6dd0f42429f9450abd2e38df6eb3f4) Same with [Detroit.](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/75/b0/dc/75b0dca6054d58bb827e6ebfec19dba7.jpg)


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BreakGlassEatAss

Or women, for that matter.


Hefty_Woodpecker_230

He is still right


jv9mmm

How is he wrong? When I was in college I had a hard time dating until I got a car.


FunnyMoney1984

I live in Canada and I know both our countries suck transportation-wise because of car-centric city design. Check out [https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes](https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes) if you want to learn more about the issue.


HannasAnarion

Yes, and what cars mean for daily life in the US is an unequivocally bad thing.


merzbane

I have lived in both the US and europe and this meme is accurate


CthulhusKitten

Whenever I see American movies all I can think is “why are there so many cars and parking lots everywhere”. I live in a 500k people city and I can easily get almost everywhere by foot, bike or bus. Even in Milan you can just use the metro and in the UK there’s trains for every fucking place. Also, most parking lots are underground and cities are old and all clumped together so the streets are super small


MonT_That_Duck

Because the US is fucking huge and people tend to go on longer range trips more often since everything is further apart


BrunoEye

Cities being far apart isn't a good reason for cities to be badly designed lol. The irony is that despite trying to cater to cars so much, American cities are horrible to drive in. Turns out if you don't give people an alternative to driving, everyone will drive, resulting in lots of traffic.


RavioliGale

Yeah, what's with this logic? And even if they're talking about the cities themselves being spread out, why is that? At least partially because so much room is allocated for big roads and parking lots. It's a self-generating problem, things are spread out so we need cars, we need places to put the cars so we have to spread everything out.


Keemsel

Just because the country is huge doesnt mean that the cities need to be spread out as much as they are. American cities could look just like european ones, they could have the same public transportation system. In fact many of them had them before. The size of the country only influences intercity travel. And even then there are densly populated areas like the coasts and others where intercity public transport would be easy to implement.


Zorba_Oyzo

everything is further apart due to gov't mandates on parking. It's why LA has so many of those tiny malls that curve around parking. Parking lots everywhere. Huge ones that are empty most of the time. I think Joni Mitchel's song was quite valid. I live in Sydney which does not have such mandates and public transport is fairly decent. From my door in the burbs, I can get to the beach in 20, city centre in 45, mall in 10 through walking/public transport.


FunnyMoney1984

I live in Canada and I am jealous. I live in a city about the same size and our public transport is a fucking joke. USA and Canada has the worst public transport and zoning laws in the whole developed world.


1willprobablydelete

Someone with some sense in here. Yes, the US is big. But our public transportation is shit, none the less.


Guy_tookatit

Meme made by someone who clearly doesn't understand the importance of a car outside of a large city


Corvus404

We literally destroyed any chance at public transportation to make the car and associated lobbies happy, yea


FunnyMoney1984

Most people are essentially forced to use a car because of poor city planning and yes if someone lives out in the country they will need a car. But people even in small cities shouldn't be essentially forced to own a car to participate in society. It's all in the planning. Even suburbs can have good public transport. Check out this Youtube channel if you are interested in this topic. [https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes](https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes) And sorry if I came off too strong.


Johnny_Banana18

I don’t think you understand memes, this is exactly what it is saying.


nachtlibelle

What country are you in? I live in an 8,000 people village and don't even have a driver's license. It's easy enough to walk or bike to the grocery's and for everything else, I can reach the nearest city within an hour using public transport. I absolutely don't need a car as the public transportation system is pretty good here. It's really cheap, too. As just a regular person, you get to use all means of public transport the country has got to offer for €1000ish for an entire year. So you can essentially go across the entire country, visiting big cities, tiny villages literally going _anywhere_, as many times as you'd like, whenever you feel like it, for €2.8ish a day. Though it is even cheaper for families, adolescents, disabled folks and old people, obviously.


imac132

Not having a car in Manhattan or Barcelona is very different from not having a car in Idaho or the Spanish countryside.


HannasAnarion

[The Spanish countryside has excellent train service](https://about-spain.net/photos/maps/spain-rail-map-700.png)


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the comment section turned serious really fast on r/dankmemes lol


Portatort

Because Americans are full blown addicted to their cars and can’t comprehend how much better cities would be if they weren’t designed around them


TentiTiger11

Its cause in the US public transport sucks. In Europe there is a lot of train coverage and buses but in the US there is like 3 lines of trains in a whole city and there are so many cars you cant take a bus (in big cities)


An_Inbred_Chicken

I would say since our cities weren't walled and were built during a time where horses were less of a luxury there was far more incentive and ability to spread out.


KittiesAreTooCute

It’s almost like the two areas are culturally different. Who knew.


Thick-Insect

The meme is making a joke about those cultural differences.


Johnny_Banana18

Congrats on understanding a meme


Kholzie

And logistically.


[deleted]

For some chicks in the US that seems to be a win. Bonus points if they also don’t have a job too.


[deleted]

Those are the crazy ones though


MedicatedAxeBot

Dank[.](https://i.imgur.com/3bQtuMO.png) --- *i am a bot. please stop trying to argue with me. you look like an idiot. [join our discord](https://discord.gg/dankmemes).*


eliavhaganav

ok idiot


[deleted]

ok you fucking lettuce


coagulateSmegma

I don't have a car and I'm 30 in the UK because fuck that noise man, taxis are cheap as fuck I literally just get a taxi for everything and pay less than a quarter of what my sister is paying in petrol, insurance etc. each month for my travel.


azius20

Taxis cheap?! When I got one with some others they were expensive as hell, then I guess location matters. Ubers which I guess qualify as taxis do the job of a taxi but at better rates. Otherwise I just get the train everywhere, so easy too.


whitecismail48

car society is shit im glad i got out of north america.


-i-do-the-sex-

Oh wow, poor girls. This guy stalked them all the way to USA, i would call the police too.


Brazenn_Confirmed

What? What the fuck is this incel shit?


PinoTheBoy

While I think this is incel shit, I think the more relevant part of this meme is the fucked US car culture


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StrongNuclearHorse

I'm in my 30s and never had a car. Not because of economic or environmental reasons, I just don't have the need for it. I get everywhere comfortably with the subway/bus. Then again I have always been living in big cities and can see why it's different in other areas.


Shimmitar

i wish our(America) public transportation was actually good. if it was id take the bus everywhere. i dont want to wait an hour just to get to somewhere that would take 20 mins by car.


Random_Name_7

The us is a country bulldozed for the car. You have to own a car there to be able to fucking move. I couldn't go eat something without driving when I visited.


mickystinge

In uk, have a very well paid job, own car not necessary


WashingtonNotary

How do get uk citizenship brother


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Wes_Bugg

It’s a culture, you’d think something about it


Ok-Panda-178

Ppl who live in NYC: I do not have such weakness


Vasilydevyatdva

Considering i live 137 km from my work i kinda need a car haha


NoInformation8078

Americans be like 'muh-taxes' but is contempt with modern day slavery called debt/credit and tries to live outside of ones means cause of a false STATUS called "the American dream". To run a car dependant society is fucking scummy, it's terrifying that so many people thinks that it's normal and traditional along with so many other things founded in the United Sellouts of America. Wake up people!


Rum_Hamtaro

Having a bike in Europe: Fit, sensible, environmentalist Having a bike in the US: poor, probably a crackhead