Less focus on cars, more focus on safety

Have you ever tried to transport 10 bags of groceries to New York? You might find out that cars are a horribly inconvenient way of doing so. Even just delivering 10 bags of groceries to Los Angeles is exhausting and stressful. Certainly NOT convenient at all.

So let's look at convenience and efficiency of the daily commute per mode:

0.5 mile: walking is the most convenient since it is fast, it is cheap and no search for parking.

1-3 mile: a regular bike on a flat surface, almost everyone can do it. 65% of the population say they would IF cities provide a solid bike lanes network.

1-10 miles: up, down, rain, shine - an ebike gets you everywhere and can transport a lot. No need to become an athlete, hop on, take the assist and still become healthier.

10-30 miles: most people are accepting a commute time of 30 min. each way. By car that means less than 30 miles. But this is very expensive, stressful and a time sink. It's a choice, but neither it is a convenient choice nor an efficient or good choice.

30-100 miles: trains are most convenient and safest option for this distance.

100-200 miles: only High Speed Rail would make this distance bearable for a daily commute.

200- miles: this requires air travel. You can travel in one day to NYC, do a meeting and come home the same day.

Assuming this is America, where almost everyone has a choice of where they want to live and work. Choosing a job within 10 miles can make your daily commute really convenient as you get transportation and a good workout. Anyone choosing 10-30 miles ... don't come crying to the government about making bad choices.

So the car is really NOT the most convenient and certainly the least efficient and the most wasteful form of transportation. It fits only one group of people, the ones that want to live in San Mateo but work in Oakland, San Francisco, or Silicon Valley and want to the government to subsidize as much of their transportation as possible without ever being inconvenienced at all. Or in one word: Socialists. ( I did not know you were one ... )

eGerd – Tbot here… Of course it would be horribly inconvenient to transport 10 bags of groceries to New York. NY is what, 3000 miles away? Thanks for giving us your interpretation of convenient and efficient, but the problem is you’ve restricted it to a daily commute. I’m talking about convenience and efficiency for daily life. You say delivering 10 bags of groceries are exhausting and stressful? It is, especially if you try doing it on a bike as compared to a car. How many trips and how much time is spent transporting 10 bags of groceries? In a car – one trip. In a bike – likely more than one trip and much more time depending upon how far the grocery store is. So a car IS the most convenient and most efficient form of transportation.

TBot, you sound again like a Russian chatbot who is doing a car commercial again.

You keep forgetting, the people in North Central are allowed to own and operate cars. Even the people on the side of Humboldt St. which only has the bike lane are still allowed to own and operate their cars. The neighborhood just needs to get the 5% of people owning 4 or more cars to take responsibility for storage themselves. It's not even convenience anymore, it's purely about entitlement

And if they really buy 10 grocery bags every single day, then we know why garages are full and credit cards empty.

It is a myth that if a city builds safer bicycle infrastructure EVERYONE has to ride a bicycle to EVERY place they want to go. If they really NEED to drive anywhere, >99% of streets here are still all about cars and driving.

I checked it out, you can still drive a car in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, or here in California's Davis. In fact driving is less congested in Copenhagen or Amsterdam than in many US cities (I wonder why).