One time I got into a who-gets-the-parking-spot competition with another vehicle. I was faster and I got it. The other vehicle was a monster truck bigger than this one. As I got out and walked away I heard it’s h loud horn blare and a voice shouted “hey!” It was the guy in the monster truck. I walked over to him. He remained inside, rolled down the window. He was smallll. Like probably not quite 5 feet tall small. And in a little squeaky voice he said “aw man! I was gonna get that parking space, bro!” I just said “you mean that one where my car is?” and walked away.
Having a small penis doesn’t make you a bad person and being a bad person doesn’t shrink your penis. Let’s stop shaming people based on things they have no control over, such as skin color, sexual orientation or penile length.
To be fair, that’s a stupid, pointless hard mode, regardless of having a car or not. If your city is designed correctly, it more like taking a day worth of groceries 200m.
Economies of scale and specialization of shops mean that even if you get your noodles and tomatoes from the corner store each afternoon, you’re still going to want to go someplace else to stock up on 40lb sacks of basmati and chickpeas. And maybe you want to visit the farmer’s market on the weekend, which cannot be on everyone’s streetcorner.
I use paniers, and every 2-3 years I get my bike trailer out of the closet. I can carry 90 litres in my panniers and not even notice they’re there.
I walk past it on my afternoon walk, get my groceries for the day and that is it. Why would I bother storing that much crap? This way I get fresh food basically every day.
Most trips I don’t use the cart, I also just do short walks on a semi daily basis for most things. I was just pointing out it’s still possible to do big trips without a car. I mainly cart for the bulky/heavy items. Bags of rice, paper towels, cat litter, etc. Or if I’m doing a bigger trip to a specialty market across town like an Asian grocer.
In the UK we have 2 types. Campus and non campus. I went to a campus because I targeted that. Meant I and everyone I knew cycled or walked less than a mile to uni and everything was on top of each other. Also the uni was within walking distance of town centre (most people got a taxi on a night out though tbf). The other option is a non campus which could be somewhere like London and spread out all over the bloody city but you might only have to go to a couple of locations (London is transit friendly though) or somewhere like Oxford which is a non campus but the uni is built into the city fabric in a time before cars, it’s everywhere but everywhere is walkable in Oxford if you live close enough to the city.
This is a long way of saying for a most people that go to uni they don’t have a car and live in a “15 minute city” it’s the first time seeing something work like that. Lots of people miss a lot of uni and that campus lifestyle is certainly one of them. Is that how it is in American uni or does every take their car to go to the gym/lecture/night out.
Heck, even free-market capitalists have a good reason to hate cars: parking minimums, exclusionary zoning, and other government policies that prop up, mandate, and subsidize car dependence are massive barriers to the invisible hand doing what it wishes. If we didn’t have those in place, I think the invisible hand would be building us a significantly less car-dependent world than we currently live in.
That’s how you know you’ve likely stumbled upon something good: when wildly different ideologies (maintaining ideological consistency) converge upon the same conclusion. Of course, the matter of ideological consistency (or lack thereof) is exactly how we get self-described libertarians defending restrictive zoning and parking minimums.
This is the angle I come at the issue from. Prohibitive zoning and perverse incentives for car use are skewing what the market would otherwise provide.
One of the few issues where free market liberals 🤝 socialists 🤝 libertarians
I’ve shared this story before but maybe not on Lemmy:
Landed in Amsterdam in 1997 for the beginning of a six month backpacking tour through Europe (obligatory cliché thing to do for every 22-year-old). First thing outside the airport I notice is these big roomy sidewalks. So much space! So much freedom! So much—holy shit where did these bicycles come from? I quickly found out their sidewalks were highways for their insane bike infrastructure. Just bikes everywhere as far as the eye could see.
Moved from South Africa to the Netherlands about 2 years ago, I have gotten so used to the infrastructure I have a mild panic attack any time i think about how on earth I would get from a hotel to a super market if I go back to visit Cape Capetown South Africa.
I have gone from desperately fighting that I need the best car and I should be able to speed all I want to being happy to just hop on my bike and cycle to work never caring if there will be parking.
This country may as well be a fever dream and some day soon I will wake up back home.
The top one. I’m tired and I’d rather rest on my car seat in the warm interior than on one of those wooden chairs. I ride bikes a lot, 5000 km per year and I advocate for walk ability but nothing beats a coffee in my warm car on a 6am commute where it’s 6°c outside
I am lucky enough to live close to mackinaw island and it is as amazing as the picture says. For people who don’t know mackinaw island is an island in one of the lakes surrounding Michigan and it has banned vehicles (except for essential businesses like repairs). You’ve got a super walkable island, bikes everywhere, no one complaining about the no vehicles, horses everywhere too. It’s amazing and I wish I could have that in lower Michigan .
It’s actually so idealistic the houses for permanent residents on the island are ungodly expensive. Millionaires only get to live full time there.
Meh. Last time I visited it was just another overcrowded tourist trap full of generic souvenir stores and storefronts full of the same “local goods” found in every tourist attraction in the country, only instead of vehicle exhaust the main street smelled like manure and stale fry oil. The fort was neat, I guess, and the fudge was good (I mean, it’s fudge), but overall it was pretty underwhelming.
Without all the tourists it would probably be a pretty nice place.
So it’s kind of a trip that really is up to you how it goes. I went expecting tourist stuff off the boat and quickly just got a bike and zoomed around the island enjoying nature. I came back to the main town when I was hungry and having a ton of options was nice. I’d also really prefer the horse smells to cars, horse poop and all. I grew up with farms around me all the time so cow poop smell during fertilizer season is real normal to me. Also picking up like 5 pounds of fudge before I left was nice lol. Disclaimer: I went outside of peak season so maybe it’s different during the huge wave of tourists.
I went during off season with a group of friends and had the exact same experience. There were times we didn’t see anyone. Most people we saw were in the early mornings, those stopping by to shop and such.
That sounds ideal. I was with a family including small children, which meant we walked everywhere, and slowly. The kids easily grew bored with the historical stuff, which necessarily meant I couldn’t really enjoy it myself. It was not ideal.
Same. After moving to Michigan I saw Mackinac Island in every list of things to do in the state and so far it has been one of the most borings one
I love the UP and sleeping bear dunes (and the whole area around Traverse City) but the island just felt as a very generic tourist trap with horses and for some reason they think it’s the only place to get fudge 🤷
Our goal is to peacefully encourage more people to cycle and convince car owners to use their car for less trips when viable to do so. A lot of people own cars, would calling them Nazis really help our cause?
My vision is we make cyclists and public transit users look like responsible happy citizens and attract jealousy of those stuck in traffic.
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