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I need to haul an old kitchen oven to my dad's house so he can cook dinner, since his failed. Dad lives deep in the mountains at the end of a dirt road, far from any train station.

I've got a 20 foot fishing boat sitting in my backyard. I want to take it out on the lake.

I'd like to visit my in-laws who live on a farm in a rural town without bus service, 200 miles away. The temperature is a few degrees above freezing and it's raining.

I can't use a car, either owned or rented. What superior transportation solutions exist that allow me to do them?




The question to ask, is why your dad and in-laws live so far away from civilization. Probably because cars make it convenient. No matter the weather (excepting extreme conditions) they are not far from any of the comforts of civilization and benefits of dense living. In a way, their relationship to density is parasitic… they receive a great deal (electrification, roads, security, plus many other benefits) and pay relative pittances. Even their votes tend to count for a great deal more than urban votes (which perhaps explains the large benefits they receive).


No-one's arguing for an outright ban on cars everywhere in all circumstances. I'm pretty extremist but all I want to see is an end to using public space for private car storage, zero-parking buildings as a norm where land costs warrant it, single-vehicle-width shared streets (Americans would probably perceive them as alleyways) as a norm in cities where land costs warrant it...


There are still genuine uses for cars, and I doubt OP would disagree. But in urban areas your example situations aren't relevant. The point is that cars are inefficient in most if not all urban cases.


The anti-car brigade's argument always hinges on assuming everyone lives in urban areas, and only has to go to urban areas. If you constrain the problem space that much, then yea, nobody needs cars. In the rest of the universe, they are indispensable.


The "anti car brigade" is trying to ban cars in Manhattan, not Montana.


The vast majority of trips in a car aren't for transportation of kitchen ovens to houses deep in the mountains at the end of a dirt road guarded by an eldritch Being.


It’s a huge luxury to be able to live like that and still have access to modern amenities. These people usually don’t appreciate how much their lifestyle is subsidized, largely because their votes can be worth 25-30x as much as an urban voter.




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