A Former Farm Kid's Thoughts on the Anti-Car Movement

[@GalpsPGH]

All of these towns are pre-war towns. That's why they're walkable. Any town that was built with an actual main street was built before cars became rampant and people needed to be able to get to work and back home with just their legs or a streetcar. I've been saying for awhile now that all of the old steel mill towns along the rivers surrounding Pittsburgh (where I'm from) are ripe for transit expansion and transit oriented development. They're all old pre-war towns with tighter housing lots and main streets with old business districts and most of them were all built around streetcars and rail to take people to Pittsburgh and back to their suburb. We just ripped out all the street cars. Put them back (or an equal or better equivalent) and all these towns function again the way they were built to.

[@karlrovey]

You can usually tell which parts of town are pre-war vs post-war.

[@user-qr7ee2cp4y]

People are too lazy to walk... They need hover boards and electric scooters.

[@catsupchutney]

Absolutely! Post World War zoning practically mandated suburban sprawl because the expense of owning a car excludes lower income residents. The resulting housing shortage was to be expected.

[@hufficag]

LET'S DO IT!

[@user-id9bn1ic9v]

⁠​⁠@@user-qr7ee2cp4yThis sounds like a boomer disconnect. I honestly thought I was too lazy to walk until I moved to Pittsburgh. Now walking is my favorite mode of transport.

[@saxmanb777]

You hit the nail. I’ve been a long time advocate for normal speed/long distance passenger rail, especially for rural areas. I went to college in a small town in the north that had Amtrak service in the middle of the night. It saved my butt lots of money and headache getting to and from school and home. It was too expensive to fly and winter driving long distance was just unpleasant. Most only focus on adding trains between major cities, but we need them in rural areas too. You create economies of scale that way, which is what rail needs to run.

[@InDefenseOfToucans]

Note on the college towns that's probably something I could have mentioned more. This stuff was originally built on the rails. So if those two mainlines has passenger service. University of Kansas, Kansas State University, Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University. Most of the college towns in Kansas could easily be hit with just those. Right now some of those towns have small regional airports, but it is like 100$ just to fly between them, if that exists and a lot don't. Providing this would permit more people to go to college and not need to bring a car with them. It could also help bring extra money to electrify the rails, which would be a big deal and help reduce shipping costs for agriculture in the state.

[@SiriusXAim]

Even in Europe this level of rail connection is a pipe dream that only exists in the tech bros CGI concept. Rail in Europe will give you very decent to exceptionally fast connection between large to medium cities and towns, but the last mile to your destination can be a massive hassle. European high speed trains like the TGV or the British HST's are indeed impressive, but only if your destination is one of those major to mid-size population centers and your trip is the line running between the capital city and your destination. If you're going to smaller proper rural areas, your options are either a very unreliable regional bus service, that can take as long if not longer than your train ride to get to your destination, or a taxi that can end up costing about as much as your train ticket. And if by chance your village has a train station, expect a very spaced out schedule rendering a 1 hour errand into an afternoon ruining trip. Most European villages do not carry all the essential stores you need to live or even stay for a few days and it will be expected that you drive to near, larger settlements for things like grocery stores, or any other type of large chain store. For example, I was recently at a music festival and the nearest grocery store and vape store was a 15 or so mile drive down south. Nearest pharmacy was a good 5+ miles from it as well. Closed on weekends, obviously. Need meds on Saturday? It's a 30 mile drive.

[@enjoyslearningandtravel7957]

I would be for rail service in small towns that had colleges since back when I went to college in a small town I feel isolated since I couldn’t afford a car and almost everyone else had a car and went away for the weekend. There wasn’t much to do in the small town.

[@sniper.93c14]

@@SiriusXAim i was once with one of my mates going to a party in a small town - about 8k - and the bus we were meant to come did not arrive - it was day after Boxing Day, no one had called the driver to do the run, and the train operator bought us taxis to get there instead of the bus - i think it ended up costing $4000 for them to run 3 taxis for 20 of us instead of a single bus and it took an hour longer than we thought because we were waiting around

[@jan-lukas]

​@@SiriusXAimwhat is "European" rail anyways? Switzerland has the highest density of rail in the world and an amazing service, Germany has one of the highest densities of rail and not so great service, many other countries have not super great densities and great service. I think a better metric is rail per person, because that actually shows why Germany is so bad: it's as bad as the US in this metric

[@calvenknox8552]

I honestly agree. Cars have their benefits which often go ignored, but hearing pro urbanist points come from someone not raised in an urban environment is insanely valuable.

[@travcollier]

You might like some of the Strong Towns stuff. They talk a lot about making places more sustainable from a financial POV, as well a nicer to live in. The conceptual ideal is less big city and more 'old fashioned ' small town. Hell, even a big city can be thought of a collection of towns (neighborhoods). Suburban sprawl and vast swaths of single family zoning connected by stroads with strip malls is the problem. Not rural vs urban.

[@calvenknox8552]

@@travcollier Personally I'm a fan of the giant ultra urban, towering building kind of city, but it just isn't for everyone. I like strong towns, despite disagreeing with nearly all of the pro urban channels to some degree. Oh the Urbanity has to be, by far my personal favorite.

[@InsufficientGravitas]

@@travcollier It's more urban vs sub-urban than urban vs rural.

[@Iamwolf134]

Indeed, the strong towns, big cities etc. (not every place needs to be like those) all have their own unique combinations of strengths and weaknesses that actually compliment one another across the wider spectrum.

[@travcollier]

@@InsufficientGravitas I honestly don't know why we did it, but seems like post-WWII we've tried to make almost everyone live in suburbs. Maybe they were legitimately what most people (thought) they wanted, but around 90% of our residential space is allocated to it (mandated by zoning). It's crazy

[@thelovewizard8954]

My rural family: I hate 15 minute cities! You better get used to it. You're living in one.

[@r.pres.4121]

15 minute cities are much more sustainable than sprawling low rise suburbs.

[@thelovewizard8954]

@@r.pres.4121 I agree. They're the most hardcore US conservatives I know, and they're able to walk to their grocery store, pharmacy and church and yet they quote 15 minute conspiracies to me. It's maddening.

[@benjaminwatson7868]

@@thelovewizard8954they probably hate cuz they live it for some reason the glorification of big cities has only gotten stronger over the years

[@drewgon13]

Rural people hate 15 minute cities for an entirely different reason: they are the outsiders who need to get somewhere in the city, not the people living in it. The push to traffic control urban centers works great for everyone except the outsiders who begrudgingly have to brave urban traffic because of centralized uses like airports, government offices, and large commercial centers. Also, they hate it because it is probably going to cost the state a lot of money for infrastructure that will only benefit the city, either meaning more taxes or robbing the funds from other budgets.

[@thelovewizard8954]

@@drewgon13 that's.... that's the point of all of this. To reduce traffic. In my families town there is a railroad. This railroad goes to every major city in their state, and goes right next to the airport. There used to be a stop in town but no longer. Now if they have to leave they have to drive, which one of them cannot and it puts an extra burden on my other family members. If a city has effectively managed traffic, then you as an outsider will experience better traffic when you have to go into a city. They hate 15 minute cities because they think the ((((insert ethnic group here)))) are coming for their dodge.

[@ionflow1073]

I used to drive a Ford F250 diesel. I bought it because I owned a business where I had to pull a 10,000 lbs trailer every day for work. One day, a young man was talking to me about my truck, and he mentioned that he would love to have a truck like mine. I said yeah they're great until you have to start paying for fuel and maintenance on them. Not to mention the insurance and personal property taxes. I told him that unless he really needed a truck like mine, not to bother. They're more trouble than they're really worth. I told him that he'd be better off with a small Toyota or Nissan pickup.

[@QuilloManar]

The 2008 Toyota Hilux SR trayback ute was the peak of tradie utility vehicles and the quality of pickups have declined since.

[@rydoggo]

We used an old 4x4 ranger as a plow truck on our ranch and it did a fine job. Would've been perfect for hauling trash and grain if it had been road legal, too (northern rust claims frames.)

[@ionflow1073]

@QuilloManar tell me about it. My first brand new pickup was a 1993 Toyota 4×4 base model. I loved that truck. It was easy on the wallet and would go through damn near anything. It could pull my 16' Jon boat anywhere and anytime i wanted to go fishing. I was 19 years old when i bought it, and I was so proud of that little old pickup.

[@sjsomething4936]

Obviously not pulling a 10k lb trailer with a car, but your average person can also use a small utility trailer towed behind a car for a lot of their needs. A lot of people simply can’t be bothered to hitch and unhitch the trailer, which I fully admit is a bit of a pain. Also acknowledge that not everyone has a place around their house to store a trailer but I feel many people end up with a pickup for the “just in case” scenario when buying a utility trailer would actually give them a lot more flexibility for a lot fewer bucks. I don’t give a crap about throwing gravel or anything else in the trailer, whereas I definitely wouldn’t want to do damage to my expensive vehicle if I was loading a pickup.

[@ionflow1073]

@sjsomething4936 I agree, I pulled a trailer with a car for years. I mostly used it to haul firewood to heat my house in the winter, but it also came in handy for a few other oddball tasks as well. With the exception of my 93 Toyota, I never owned a brand new pickup, so I really wasn't worried about scratching up the bed. The biggest advantage to using a trailer was that I could put permanent plates on it and didn't have to worry about insurance on it. The trailer that used was so small and light that it could easily be moved around by hand.

[@bobpeters61]

Having grown up in a small town, I can tell you that if you live in a small town and don't have a car, you're stranded in that town. You may be home, but you're stranded there. Terribly limited job opportunites, which can enforce the lack of a car as they're expensive to buy, operate and own and the local pay scale is down. You can walk or bike all over town with no problem, but the only way elsewhere is by highway, where you can't safely walk or bike.

[@willg-r3269]

In parts of the world where car dependency isn't normal or universal, rural small towns are generally linked by small-scale transit routes using microbuses or large vans; the service isn't always fast, frequent, timely, or reliable (anyone from eastern/southern Europe would laugh out loud at the very idea) but still workable as long you're not tied to a daily commute ratrace and all you really need is the basic ability to get somewhere out of town and back home on your own. Of course these are generally also the kinds of societies where the downsides of car dependency (vis-a-vis total lack of independent mobility for anyone who can't drive, particularly children and seniors) would be a complete nonstarter for cultural reasons -- but then again, this degree of infantilization in childhood and indignity in old age probably would've been just as culturally unthinkable in the late 19th century United States as it still is in most of the world today.

[@andrewesau51]

You're not necessarily wrong. But if you need to get out bad enough you can always start walking. And I mean pack up one day what you can carry comfortably and start walking to a new life. Maybe not maybe I'm just dreaming of a bygone era but it's nice to believe you could still do that.

[@manners7483]

​@@willg-r3269I'll consider a bus when the bus isn't full of smelly meth heads and criminals. Cars are not the problem. Most polution is not from cars it's from the military and planes. A ton is also from trucks, I work concerts and if you want to save the world a good start would be to eliminate the tens of thousands of trucks and tour busses idling 24 hours a day.

[@thedreamchasers7252]

​@@andrewesau51I completely understand where the idea is coming from. But when you live in an area where the closest surrounding towns are 30 to 40 minute drives away, over steep and winding hills and long stretches of 4 lane highways. The idea of just packing up and walking is not an easy feat.

[@ummmbye1228]

that's why people have older cars. they're cheaper

[@heronimousbrapson863]

I live in a small town in western Canada. 35 years ago, we had reasonably good inter-city bus service from Greyhound. Over the years, the company cut back on the frequency of the service, and then cut it out altogether. Greyhound no longer offers service anywhere in Canada. The bus companies that replaced it don't service my community either. Passenger rail service ended in the 1950's, and the rails were completely removed in 2000. For those who support public transportation, we seem to be going in the wrong direction.

[@dphitch]

Saw the same thing in Nova Scotia, we had a passenger rail line that ran from Halifax across the province to the Annapolis Valley region with stops at the small towns along the way. I took it as kid several times, I'm 54 now. Its all gone now. I think it was removed in the 90s. Don't know when or why exactly, I live in the states now. The only reason I can think that all of this happened was the government wanted to save money and didn't want to support it anymore.

[@jeremyhillaryboob4248]

@@dphitchVia Rail used to have a load of routes all across Canada, 2 routes from Vancouver to Toronto, one from Montreal to Moncton through Maine, one that went the whole way across Nova Scotia, about 20 total. Now they're down to 9 routes, with all of them with much less frequent service than before.

[@qjtvaddict]

How frequent was it

[@heronimousbrapson863]

@@qjtvaddict In the eighties, two northbound and southbound busses each day. Then it was reduced to one, and then eliminated altogether.

[@Rancid-Jane]

Small town (village) in western Canada, we never even had Greyhound. Nearest access was 90 kilometres away. Passenger trains disappeared in 1950's.

[@GeatMasta]

the obsession with HSR is to beat out planes not cars. the idea is to take HSR between major cities and when you reach the closest city to the rural town you take normal rail from there.

[@gtctv7000]

Eh, much of the traffic between major cities is still by cars so idk

[@thetrainguy1]

@@gtctv7000 Well... Again HSR goal is to compete with Air travel. Planes are probably the worst thing for the environment.

[@gtctv7000]

@@thetrainguy1 yes and cars are second. still, many people commute between big cities by car, if theyre less than ~ 3 hours apart

[@helios2664]

@@gtctv7000 Sounds like you can have normal rail compete with cars then if it's under a 3 hour trip, HSR is for say, getting form New York to Houston or something like that. Something a lot of people would take a plane for.

[@gtctv7000]

@@helios2664 well yeah, regional rail is plenty enough to replace trips under 3-4 hours, tho anything more should be covered by HSR. In Europe, many HSR lines cover distances of max. 600-800 km, like the ones between Stuttgart and Mannheim or Paris and Marseille. Imagine a different line, say from Oklahoma city to San Antonio that stops in Austin and Dallas/fort worth. Not all lines need to be transcontinental, you can have seperate lines for seperate needs. I mean sure, you could connect this imaginary line to Kansas city over Wichita and make Kansas city a hub as it's centrally located between Texas and the rust belt but i think you get the gist of what I'm saying

[@TheRealE.B.]

Your insight on rural living is appreciated. I don't think anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together was ever in danger of falling for "but ah need muh truck fer werk" excuse, though. It's pretty easy to spot the difference between a work truck and a cosplay truck, with the former really sticking out in suburbia because they're so rare.

[@nishiljaiswal2216]

I see too many cos play trucks

[@Torrent263]

Need a truck for hay bails

[@OllamhDrab]

Really if people want to have people driving vehicles more fit for purpose, they should be making it easier for regular folks to have multiple vehicles instead of trying to take em off the road for being 'sinful gas powered.' Even things people drive strictly for fun are not actually a big cut of emissions. (It's actually extremely classist to tell people 'Just buy electrics' even if none are as yet remotely suitable for much practical use in the first place. At least that regular folks can actually afford, as opposed to cosplayers. (And frankly, my friend's Tesla is heavy enough it basically may as *well* be a truck, so what shape they come in is less meaningful.) A lot of this is fighting over *symbols,* with the exception of people modifyng diesels to defeat emissions and show off, which actually is a decent sized eco problem on its own, but in response the bureaucrats decided just to make it harder for regular people to keep used stuff on the road or even improve it emissionswise. Meanwhile the corporations are very content to just make people buy things they can't repair and don't last, even if that'd leave most of the country up a creek, not cause trains to appear.

[@jamesphillips2285]

@@OllamhDrab The issue is that the electric car was delayed by 20 years. Car companies successfully lobbied against the zero emission mandates. GM recalled their popular EV1 leases and crushed them. But to twist the knife: they sold the battery patents to Chevron. Chevron then sued Panasonic for making batteries for the electric RAV4. Toyota has been avoiding full electric cars ever since: instead sinking their money into hydrogen powered cars. If we started the transition 20 years ago: electric vehicles would be common. The people who actually need liquid fuel would be still be using ICE vehicles despite the higher cost.

[@OllamhDrab]

@@jamesphillips2285 Not actually relevant to what I said, and as much as some liked the EV1 it still wasn't actually anything impressive technologically, never mind for mass market. Obviously Big Oil does their thing as always on many fronts but it doesn't change what tech is suitable for what and who. We'll need to use a lot of different things .. and use em smart, to get through this.

[@thetrashmaster1352]

I have the exact same experience in rural Australia. Once, I got off the plane in the city and decided to walk with my suitcase to the nearest motel (3.1miles, the way the crow flies) I thought, yeah simple enough, it's a city so walking should be better than the country... After walking 45 minutes through industrial areas with no shade I ended up with heat stroke. It was so bad i couldn't even put together a sentence at the mall when trying to buy something to drink. It's especially bad when you consider I am from the edge of the outback, someone who deals with some of the hottest temperatures on earth without AC and walks everywhere and the first time I nearly pass out from heat exhaustion isn't in the desert but instead a major coastal city.

[@fortheloveofnoise]

Yea that is one thing he fails to talk about, those of us eho live in extremely hot climates just can't do this....when I visited Sweden, I had no problems walking 5, 10 mikes a day....walking 1 mile here in Georgia or Alabama in the summer and you are done for the rest of the day from heat exhaustion.....ask me how I know.

[@manners7483]

The city also soaks up the heat. Walking on dirt is much better than walking on and surrounded by concrete, steal and glass.

[@YeeLeeHaw]

The issue is bad infrastructure. No one is saying that you should be forced to walk everywhere, we're not living in the stone age anymore, there are plenty of alternative vehicles that you can have that are much cheaper and environmentally friendly than a car.

[@sunnohh]

Skill issue, walked 10 miles in 101f heat all week, fat and old

[@thetrashmaster1352]

@@sunnohh that's my point, that shouldn't happen in a city. Also 101f isn't even hot lol. that's body temperature. I live where hot is at least 40c (104f) and very hot is 45c (113f)

[@13ccasto]

Cars are also tremendously expensive and their costs are routinely underestimated - making up a huge chunk of the bottom half of incomes' expenses (many thousands of dollars per year, in addition to surprise maintenance bills which can be especially hard to plan for), so if rural families could be a one-car household instead of two, or rent a car when making trips instead of owning one, there could be a huge boost in financial health and more money to be spent in local communities!

[@Torrent263]

Renting is more expensive tbh

[@башарал]

@@Torrent263 he said "huge chunk" not that it was the largest portion. For most of the country housing is the single largest expense be it rent or mortgages. But the upfront and continual costs of cars are definitely a large necessary expense in a country where viable alternatives are scarce.

[@enjoyslearningandtravel7957]

Even if you’re a student or just starting out on your job, a car has a huge chunk of your money and to prevent having a loan I bought for my first car a very small used car, and it was actually sort of dangerous because it was sort of a lemon, didn’t work, well, problems, etc. I lived in a major city is about 1 million people but there was no public transportation except maybe once per hour and not everywhere. And often they weren’t even sidewalks.

[@TheSwissChalet]

Instead of a car payment, which you don't have if you pay cash for a small, older used car, and instead of maintenance and gas, you pay a tax out of every paycheck...for the rest of your life. It just comes out of a different bucket...tax expense bucket vs. car bucket. I don't understand why people don't get this.

[@13ccasto]

@@TheSwissChalet that's a good point that many people might not consider - my response would be that (at least in theory with a relatively capable government), the costs for public transit and pedestrian/bike-friendly infrastructure would be much less per person than for each person to own a car. Also keep in mind that everyone pays for the roads and parking used by cars even though not everyone uses a car. I'd be curious to see actual numbers.

[@beckyadams4729]

The biggest thing that is holding rural folks back from using public transit, is that it is not available -in cities. If they can walk to where they need to go in the small town, the reason they need to drive to big cities is because they need be able to drive IN big cities. Otherwise they could walk to the bus /train station and ride to the city. If you have a bus service to the city, but the bus doesn't run in the city, you are then stranded at the bus station when you get there. Connecting small towns to big cities can't be effective until cities fix their own public transit issues. Even those that live far enough outside the small town to have to drive into town to get to the amenities; they can park in one place and walk within the town to accomplish multiple tasks before driving back out home.

[@jamalgibson8139]

Thanks for this video. I've always felt that rural communities get a lot of flak for no reason, when they're often more sustainable than most suburbs or even cities in general. What often frustrates me about these communities are the suburbanites who go and build a single family house on a half acre lot on an old farm that was subdivided, who then continue to commute into the city or suburbs for work. You do this enough times, and all of a sudden that rural farm community is just another suburb with massive arterials and low density sprawl, but none of the agricultural production that our society relies on. I think cities need to be stricter about how they rezone these farm communities; rather than prevent apartments and higher density from being built in the suburbs, we need to prevent single family zoning consuming agricultural areas and turning them into suburbs.

[@ariss3304]

Unchecked inflation of single family zoning is the worst thing to happen to America

[@jukebox_heroperson3994]

I live sort of by St. Louis, and my parents moved out of the town we lived in that was closer to St. Louis for one reason. St. Louis citizens.

[@davehaggerty3405]

It is illegal to subdivide farms here. Developers buy farms and get variances to be able to build subdivisions. Here the opposite is in effect. Corporate farms buy up small family farms and consolidate fields. Half of the farmhouses in my township have been torn down. One room school houses and churches were converted into storage buildings. Dad told stories of riding the “doodlebug” to the city on the interurban rail network. Cars replaced it. Americans live on their land. Some areas the population is sprinkled so thin there is no alternative to cars.

[@RazgrizWing]

Additionally suburban communities cause the flooding of farmland.

[@Joesolo13]

@@RazgrizWing Bingo. People demonize "urban sprawl", but it's suburbs that turn family farms into housing for a few dozen houses. Meanwhile transit adjacent housing sells incredibly fast and at high prices, showing that the market values such things, people want them even when there's compromises on size.

[@anewunfolding195]

I live in an European village next to a bigger city. Because of this, the village basically became a pseudo-suburb. Most people who live here drive every day to the city for work. There is like 2 or 3 damn cars in front of every house. The village was not made for cars in mind, so the streets are too narrow, so in some cases they've expanded them and left barely any space for pedestrians to walk on. In some cases there isn't even space for pedestrians to walk on, and in some cases cars are parked on the side-walk. Public transport is pathetic, and most people do not even consider it. There is constant god damn traffic in the residential/living areas, and some people drive waaaay to fast for this type of environment. At this point there are only a few places in the village where one can go to get away from cars. Depending on where one lives in the village, it might take 15 minutes to half an hour on foot to get to those places, which means having to walk through a bunch of stupid cars to get there. People's pets get run over all the time, usually cats because one can't fence them in. So you can't even have an outdoor cat in what used to be a rural/village environment. I can't even go on a walk most of the time without having to deal with dozens of cars driving past me, so I usually walk very late at night or very early in the morning. I'm starting to detest cars.

[@ummmbye1228]

i though north americans and asians are the only ones. guess not

[@PawsOnTheBalcony]

Tell me about it, I've had a cat killed by a car and another seriously injured in my small suburban town of 6000 people (also in Europe). My part of town has mid-rises and high-density buildings, so a lot of traffic going past at all times. Thankfully, there are sidewalks everywhere, but many people still drive everywhere, including the grocery store that's a 15-minute walk away. I'm trying to reduce my own car usage, use my e-scooter to go to work (8 km one way) and have bought the "climate ticket" which allows me to use all regional public transportation in my state (busses, trams, rail) for a year. Let's see how it goes, there's still an issue with getting home from the nearest city after 11 pm, as that's when the busses stop going. It's only 3 km, but a very dangerous, busy road with neither bike path nor sidewalk 😢.

[@abyssstrider2547]

Living in a rural area can be pathetic if the place you live at has awful transport system. I live in Europe and the only way for me to leave my village is by a bus that comes every 2 hours once. And not just anywhere but to either the nearby town or the capital.

[@abyssstrider2547]

To further elaborate, when i work second or third shift, there is no way for me to use public transportation because there is no public transportation after 21:00...

[@PawsOnTheBalcony]

@@abyssstrider2547 that sucks 😕

[@spielpfan7067]

I live on the countryside in Europe. We have a bus every hour (night excluded), a train station and already sharrows. I don't know how my 3000 inhabitant village with the next city (13000 inhabitants with a huge pedestrian zone, lots of shops and restaurants and so on) being 50km away does offer a wider range of modes to choose from than even some American suburbs or sometimes even American city centers but it does. Besides that 80% of the village have a grocery store, a pharmacy, a doctor, 2 restaurants and a post office in walking distance and there are sidewalks everywhere. America definetly needs to change. My village grew a lot in the last 10 years.

[@georgen9755]

The nearest railway station is about 26 miles from here but the cameras show as though I live right inside the railwaystation and booking tickets but it is not possible without network without desktop or laptop or without wifi ?

[@paulmentzer7658]

The advantage of high gasoline taxes. Such taxes make public transit competitive in that the cost of taking a bus is the same or cheaper then driving your car and thus you have enough demand for mass transit for mass transit to survive. In the US gasoline taxes are so low that it is cheaper to drive then to take the bus and you will NOT see decent mass transit in most of the US until the price of gasoline gets so high that mass transit is competitive in price. Please note, I am talking about the "Marginal Costs" of driving or taking mass transit (when taking a bus the "Marginal Costs" is just the bus fare, when driving it is the cost of the gasoline being used). I have to EXCLUDE any "Fixed Costs" such as paying for the car itself, licensing and insuring the automobile, costs you have to pay, often monthly, just for owning a car. High gasoline taxes do affect people's desire to but an automobile, but many Europeans still buy an automobile for automobiles, even with high gasoline taxes, do have they advantages (and many people, even in high gasoline tax areas, buy automobiles). Thus the problem is not the "Fixed Costs" of owning an automobile but the "Marginal Costs" of using that automobile.

[@KateeAngel]

@@paulmentzer7658 wrong. This is not about it being "competitive", public transport shouldn't be for-profit only in the first place. Also, how can you say that Americans wouldn't use it without even giving them such an option first? As if there are no people who can't drive a car due to health reasons or can't afford a car? or simply don't want to always drive their own car

[@abyssstrider2547]

​@@paulmentzer7658In many countries in Europe you still need a car if you wanna be away from home after 9 o'clock at night. Which means that you you wanna work a second or third shift you gotta get a car.

[@InDefenseOfToucans]

Few thoughts rewatching my own video. 1. Should have included Wichita on that route map need something connecting them. 2. Also a "feature" of car dependency in rural America mixed with dry counties promotes a lot of drunk driving, not that the US does not promote it on the whole. Also if you want to look at a map of railways, this is a good map for doing it. www.openrailwaymap.org/

[@r.pres.4121]

Drunk driving is always going to be a serious problem in the USA 🇺🇸. Raising the drinking age is just a glorified bandaid solution that didn’t do all that much because there are still too many fatalities from drunken driving. Until we get over our fierce love affair with the automobile, we will never solve the problem of impaired and drunken driving.

[@xrichie7924]

​@r.pres.4121 Not to be that guy but it's not until we get over our fierce love affair with drinking poison that we'll see a decline in drunk driving accidents

[@lukasg4807]

@@xrichie7924 It's called a drunk driving accident regardless if alcohol is the cause. If I get t-boned while drunk because some idiot is running a red light then it gets counted as a drunk driving accident even though it would have still happened if I was stone cold sober. 6 beers deep I'm not really impaired at all, but it still passes the arbitrary number, while all the people who drive around about to fall asleep at any moment are perfectly fine and face no consequences. I can tell you for a fact I've never been as dangerous behind the wheel after having some drinks as I was when I worked a night shift and was falling asleep constantly trying to drive back home. Drunk driving has been villainized to the point that someone being responsible and sleeping it off in their car will still get a DUI.

[@praxismakesperfect8810]

I just stumbled across this channel and have been binge-watching your videos and was suprised to see this drop! And, its about a topic I love! Good stuff.

[@GMPax]

Yeah, very very few people at r/fuckcars want to ban all cars/trucks from all people for all uses. We just want LESS cars on the road. We want alternatives that are competitive with driving yourself somewhere. We want people to stop using their cars for trips of only 1, 2, or 3 miles. And most of us want to ban 90% of motor vehicles from URBAN (and semi-urban and suburban) areas.

[@Plan73]

Amen. nobody want to "ban" all the cars in the universe. And surely rural areas are not in the equation. It's about the car "dependency", cars as the ONLY means of trasport available, even for things who doesn't, in theory, need it. And look, the problem isn't even the cars per se, it's the insane system of suburban sprawl, who force you to have a car for everything.

[@GMPax]

Godwin's Law: invoked ::sigh::

[@WarbossSkolCraka]

Nothing you said made any sense

[@GMPax]

@@WarbossSkolCraka On the contrary, it all makes a great deal of sense, provided you actually *THINK* about what car-dependency really means, and whether or not it really is a *necessary* thing. Spoiler, it's not.

[@WarbossSkolCraka]

@@GMPax I'm with you all the way bro, i was responding to the good sir, Xavier behaviour

[@balazsdusek]

my dad grew up in a town of 30000 in the Communist block at the time. he always mentions to us how pleasant it was for him to travel by bike all the time when he was young and how surprised he is that so many in the town drive now because it's so unnecessary and way less fun

[@HydratedBeans]

Growing up in the suburbs without a car really ruined my childhood. My life was better when we lived in a rural area prior to that. I just biked everywhere as a 8y/o.

[@AbrahamCasillas-t3o]

As a person from the city of Chicago. It can be walkable depending on where you are going!

[@VanTilburger]

Found your vid on the anti car collective discord. Its honestly pretty surprising how smaller towns can be much more walkable than suburbs, lol. In my area, theres a small town called Troy, Ohio that has one of the best downtowns that still exists. The bad part though I've seen in a lot of small towns in my area is the lack of grocery stores. In Troy, theres a fancy gormet one downtown, then a 20 minute walk to the nearest grocery store.

[@enjoyslearningandtravel7957]

I believe there’s either no or not many groceries in the down part town part of small towns because usually there’s a Walmart or something similar on the edge of the small towns and they put up the mom and pop groceries out of business in the downtown walkable parts and of course people have gone to the Walmart or something similar big stores because they’re cheaper and the mom and Pop small groceries can’t compete with the goods ships from China or the big companies able to put the prices down for a year and then raise them back up

[@jasonlescalleet5611]

Yeah, this. Small towns are very walkable and you can get to anywhere in town quickly because they’re small. But you can’t get to a grocery store if there isn’t one to get to. And there won’t be one if the one that used to be there went out of business because everybody started just driving to the nearest bigger town or small city to shop at the huge megamarket there which has better selection and lower prices. Consolidating a whole region’s grocery needs into a single huge building has advantages (bigger variety of foods offered, cheaper due to economy of scale) but disadvantages too (customers have to travel farther to get there). Not sure how to entice small groceries back into small towns (and into the downtowns of bigger places where people are often as underserved as small town dwellers).

[@travcollier]

​@@jasonlescalleet5611The "happy middle" between inefficient (expensive) small "mom and pop" grocery stores and giant Walmart style things exists. IGA is a grocery "chain" with store brands, distribution, ect. but for independent grocery stores. I've also heard good things about Aldi.

[@benchociej2435]

Hi! I'm a city council member in a close-in Kansas City suburb, and you are absolutely spot on. We are falling all over ourselves to replicate the kind of traditional, small scale, and/or mixed use development patterns that never left most of the small towns in Kansas. Our collective urban obsession with extending suburbs as far from the city center as possible for the last 8 decades has been devastating economically, ecologically, and psychologically. We have a lot of work to do to fix all this, but I'm glad to see people like you holding up another lens helping to reveal the silliness behind some of the regressive arguments out there.

[@Theroha]

I wish more people would point out, like you have here, that rural communities live by what would be considered "progressive liberal" values. They just don't think about them that way because they've been told that the city folk are trying to tell them how to live.

[@nicelol5241]

my issue with suburbs is zoning, and as you said, you have to walk kilometres just to get a bottle of milk.

[@Littleweenaman]

parking lots

[@stiltongruyere9691]

I’m a car enthusiast against car dependency. Let the people who hate driving find another way to travel, so me and the lads can enjoy the roads in peace.

[@orangeairsoft7292]

Exactly, less car dependancy and more transit options benefits everyone including drivers since there are less people clogging up the road to complain about.

[@brooklynelite5428]

I agree driving is so fun, especially the day you purchase a new car. so the people who hate to drive stay off the roads so me and my buddy can just cruise and enjoy the scenery. I love cars and I don't think no one can change my mind about that it's my hobby I'd give a gun up first even before the thought I don't own nor never want to own before I give up cars.

[@orangeairsoft7292]

@@brooklynelite5428 personally i could do without driving everyday so a place with good public transport and infrastructure would be 👌 I already live in Europe but in Ireland which is very car dependant to European standards so im going to move to Germany.

[@brooklynelite5428]

@orangeairsoft7292 Here in America, our transportation sucks no high, well true, high-speed rail something if we had maybe people wouldn't drive but to be honest when you want you space and your own peace driving is the key but yes I don't want to be forced to give up my cars I just want options.

[@jfrd-pw4hk]

Based. Car-loving people should see that it's actually in their best interests that car-hating people have a chance to travel without having to drive.

[@MadmanMcNabb]

This is 100 % correct. I live on the outskirts of a small rural town and I spend most of trips and time in it pulling a bike trailer full of kids or walking on the sidewalks. It's FAR easier and safer to use non-motor vehicle transportation here than in any of the cities I've lived in.

[@rauli386]

Rural towns are not the problem, nymbis suburbs mentality is

[@minnalunar]

@@rauli386 agreed. neighboring bigger towns with big box store also pull stuff away from rural towns making it harder to be car free in these places.

[@carlobragagnolo8640]

as an european this video really opened my mind to an aspect of life in the US that I had never known about, Thanks for the great video

[@Davidgon100]

I wish we would build more small towns like before. A real Main St. with storefronts up against the sidewalks, people actually walking around, small aesthetic houses, rowhouses, small apartments, duplexes, etc. I'm tired of every place being a walmart surrounded by asphalt and sprawling low density suburbs.

[@morewi]

You'd have to bring the industry back first. That's the reason why a lot of these small towns are declining

[@caligulacorday]

i used to live at the intersection of two stroads, up in the northern suburbs of detroit, and it was absolute hell. i didn`t own a car at the time, or even have a license, and i honestly felt more isolated there than i did at any point during covid lockdown. every suburb should be razed.

[@Armadous]

It's probably the most hostile environment to human (pedestrian) life that you can find outside of a nuclear reactor.

[@jooot_6850]

@@ArmadousHey man. Nuclear reactors have layers upon layers of safeguards and radiation shielding. Pedestrians get a 6 inch piece of raised concrete and a social contract that some boneheaded idiot in an F-150 won’t pulverize them.

[@Dsonsee]

Car defenders don't present their arguments in bad faith, but also they haven't developed those arguments on their own. It's just the "common sense" speaking through their mouths, and I'm thankful for any effort to tear it down

[@OllamhDrab]

The problem is setting 'cars vs trains' like an all or nothing zero sum, instead of like.... Being pro-trains and letting people optimize for better purpose. Banning/making people buy things is just pushing a systemic problem off on individuals and not helping any community. If there's a good train service or good bus services and people don't think it's poverty-spec/dangerous, people will *use* them. Look at Europe.

[@ethanstump]

You would be surprised by the internal narrative in people's heads. I live in a fast growing place with actually good transit that's clean and safe, growing traffic problems and where the transit is a hell of a lot cheaper than ever having a car. (Ogden Utah) basically all of the points that you mentioned and a few more(no ban, safe and affordable good transit, good density, rising pop, transit innovation, little corruption, forward thinking transit authorities, bad air inversion, etc.) And it's still only a small fraction of people who take it. There's always more capacity in the bus or train, and the busses and trains themselves could always be extended. The fact of the matter is that to survive as a species against climate change, we needed fast, wide ranging and strict government action decades ago. There should have been a ban on cars in 1993, let alone today.

[@CodysCarConundrum]

@@ethanstump Ah yes, government overreach, when has that ever gone wrong...

[@cyclicmusings2661]

The subset of pro-car people that are against any infrastructure for other modes of transport, be it train lines, bicycle lanes, or even the humble sidewalk, baffles me. Do they realize by giving other people choices in getting around means that there would be less cars on the road, and therefore less traffic to make them miserable? No, they don't see it that way and the zero sum mentality means that the government is "conspiring to take away their cars and force them to use trains" or whatever is the ludicrous type of things they're inclined to believe. I admittedly like driving and really value the privacy my car offers because I'm introverted, but then again I vote for and support plans by my local and state government to improve transportation for all modes, not only cars, as it will actually reduce traffic and sometimes I do like to bike or walk for quick errands near my house.

[@adrianc6534]

@@CodysCarConundrumkeep voting for the party that bans books and legitimate healthcare while calling yourself a supporter of ‘limited government’

[@overcaffeinatedengineering]

This is exactly the type of infrastructure that I've been wanting to see in suburbs. You nailed it. We started building tons of suburbs instead of small towns. Just put more grocery stores and corner stores and cafes in the suburbs and *magic*, everyone will suddenly start walking more and driving less.

[@daniellarson3068]

make them bike friendly

[@2shabbs]

Part of the suburbia problem is the zoning laws where they won't even allow anyone to run small shops or grocery stores in an area, forcing the residents to drive multiple miles just to get food.

[@Mr._Du]

Yep, zoning laws are the devil. I live in a suburb of Atlanta, and the closest business to my house is... about 4 miles. Everything in between is single family low density housing with friggin' .5 acre+ yards. Great if you hate people and never want to see anyone but your next door neighbors for any reason, I guess, but stupid and awful in every other conceivable metric. I used to live in an older pre-war suburb of Denver, and the closest business was... directly under my apartment. I lived there happily for about a year without a car or a bike, because I could just walk to literally anything I needed in less than 30 minutes. Night and day.

[@jstnrgrs]

Well said. I’m trying to advocate for walkablity in my suburban town (which is actually not too bad compared to many others), and I’m often told “if that’s what you you want, move to the city”.

[@allsystemsgootechaf9885]

... thats the point. Move to a city if thats an issue for you

[@Alejandro-vn2si]

​@@allsystemsgootechaf9885 But US cities are not necessarily very walkable. Also, there are many places in the world where suburbs (not cities) are walkable. So, this is not something normal.

[@kaydenl6836]

@@allsystemsgootechaf9885and then y’all drive into the cities and try to make them suburbs.

[@allsystemsgootechaf9885]

@@kaydenl6836 nah we cant stand living ontop of strangers. Only time im in a city is to visit, for whatever reason.

[@Anglerbe]

@@allsystemsgootechaf9885 Why? Your car-dependent lifestyle is a burden and a danger to others. Me moving away isn't going to fix that. It's not a problem of individuals living in places that aren't a good fit.

[@danieldaniels7571]

I feel this on such a personal level. I grew up in Douglas, Wyoming, and functioned just fine without a car. I also lived without a car in Cody, Laramie, Buffalo, and Jackson, Wyoming and also Scottsbluff, Nebraska. Living in these small towns i rarely had any need to go awywhere that i couldn't walk or bike to. If i left town, i either took a bus or rode with a friend.

[@Recreationaltrespasser]

As a rural folk myself, I am totally in favor of detatched urbanites having less access to cars.

[@logans3365]

Typically when people argue to reduce car dependency, they are only talking about in large cities, where the concentration of people makes everyone having a 2 ton metallic pollution machine much more of a problem.

[@MayorMcC666]

I think advocating for not picking the literal biggest car possible is where the most ground can be made when it comes to the transportation climate impact of rural americans

[@Brickington23]

I love my car and love sports cars in general but I’d love it even more if I only had to drive it on a track and didn’t need it for daily transport. Traffic sucks, racking up miles sucks, paying insurance and maintenance because of daily use sucks. We need better public transport for sure!

[@robertcrawford718]

I live in a small Western Kansas town. My car only moves on a weekly shopping trip and when I go out of town (once a month or so). I am able to ride my bicycle to work and near anywhere else I need to go.

[@nerdwisdomyo9563]

YES! think you! Think you so much, to quote not just bikes “America was not built for the car, It was bulldozed for it” I live in a town of 2 thousand people and I guaranteed you the town could function just fine if people biked and used minivans instead of giant pick up trucks, it’s dangerous! all the roadkill is enough to make that point, it isolates people and I have no idea who my neighbors are, and it destroys the health and character of the town. Nobody is in shape, and barely anyone is nice, of course cars aren’t the only reason but I think it’s a problem that people just refuse to fix because it’s rural when rural American was built for walking and trains

[@lmnop29]

My friend got a job in a small town in the middle of nowhere. She can't drive, but luckily she found an apartment walkable to her job. The grocery store was also within a 5 minute walk. (Even though it sucks having to carry a bunch of bags.) She lived on the same block as a pharmacy so she could easily pick up her life saving medication. When she had to, she used a bike or had stuff delivered. The only real issue was when she had to *leave* town. There's no trains, no buses, and obviously no airports. She had to rely on me and others who could drive her at least an hour away. Seeing all these abandoned train stations make me sad because the demand is there but it's not considered necessary or profitable by the standards of big city capitalists.

[@paulmentzer7658]

Until you get to the Rocky Mountains, Counties tended to be 20 miles north to south and east to west. That was done so that everyone in that county could walk to the county seat and back home in a day. Thus these rural areas are "walkable" in that most things people need is within walking districts if you define walking distance is anything within one to two hours. Further west the distances get to far but most people do not live in that part of the US until you get to West Coast. My point is most of "rural America" you can live without an automobile provided you accept the restrictions and work around it. The problem is most of the US is based on the assumption you will get around by automobiles thus the infrastructure to get around without an automobile no longer exists in most of the US.

[@johnm9263]

yep, i live in an area where the nearest restaurant is a hour walk away MINIMUM, if you are willing to literally walk along old highways with 55mph traffic we literally have acres of land that we grow a certain type of hay on for our outdoor pets and neighbors' animals, as well as profit the ever so slightest, or get favors like a cleared road in heavy snow because he has equipment that people dont typically have, but also, equipment that would likely be nearly illegal to own in a city the entire issue is within cities, but people love to try and shove car-free transportation on us before they are willing to do anything to their own city plus, theres no space to put in a sidewalk in certain areas, so within the town, theres sidewalks, but outside of the main town area, nobody has access to a sidewalk outside of their small suburban-type development pod area passenger trains are unsafe, and get delayed by one of the three reasons why they are unsafe: freight trains that could all be fixed, but how likely is it that its not going to be absolutely fucked up in the process? i would absolutely love (provided that we remove all of the absolutely BS megatrucks) to own a kei truck, but sacrafice some of the cargo capacity for a quality AC unit for good summer cooling and winter heating to supplement the rather small engine that they tend to have imagine the savings at the pump! id only have to fill it up likely either half as often or just as often, for less fuel each time

[@Super_bus_machine]

I’ve often given thought about living in small town. I like the density and the ideas that you spoke about, being able to walk or bike safely. Maybe a college town would be better for this because you might have the possibility of an intercity bus. I wonder if someone in rural areas could create some dial a ride system or a shuttle bus that goes between the towns and takes everyone to the bigger city. Interesting point about the lack of car infrastructure improvements in these towns. I haven’t really thought about that.

[@InDefenseOfToucans]

Ya i could have talked about it more Lawrence for example is known for being pretty bikeable, not that people don't drive. It is a college town having KU there. There is still a lot of ingrained aspects of car culture that make people default to, it but at least these towns are making improvements in the direction. Lawrence has Amtrak as well though not any regular service with the Southwest Chief, if KDOT does that rail to Topeka-Lawrence-KC I think it would be one of the best towns in Kansas to live in car free.

[@mikeylind8107]

@@InDefenseOfToucans Can confirm. I live about a 30 minute drive from Lawrence and have been multiple times. The east side of town around Mass Street is my favorite part, and it's definitely the best part to walk or bike in. I was also surprised by the bus system being pretty consistent, though I think it needs more frequency than it currently has (maybe a bus every 15 minutes instead of 30 minutes?). I'm considering going to KU for college and a regular Topeka-Lawrence-KC train would be awesome! Something like that would definitely make it the best town to live car free or car light in Kansas.

[@AssBlasster]

Yeah it's definitely doable. I lived in a rural college town area with 2 intercity buses a day to the nearest big city of >100K. A couple bike trails, mostly gridded road network, and walkable main street make it a very pleasant small city (25K people). We also had a free circulator bus with 30/60 min frequency, but you could use a dial-a-ride to get anywhere in town for $1.50 with one-day notice (made it useless IMO).

[@Wsnewname]

I'm always glad to hear discussions on this topic from the rural point of view. I've always lived in small towns here in the midwest and have a lot of thoughts on the topic, but I am happy just to boost engagement for now.

[@dylanc9174]

Everyone should be in agreement on this; suburbs suck.

[@christianchellis9057]

Hell yeah.

[@ChampDiamondFoot4954]

nah, they are great.

[@lazy747unitedairlines]

@@ChampDiamondFoot4954unwalkable suburbs suck. you should be able to walk to a grocery store and to a school within 5 minutes of you and you should be able to take a tram to get to the greater metro and city area.

[@d3str0i3r]

honestly, there are a couple things that can be done to improve cities without unfairly punishing people who don't want to be stabbed on public transport, followed by someone targeting pedestrians, or kidnapped by a fake uber driver firstly? strip out and restructure parking regulations, currently, every business is required to build ten times as much parking as they'll ever need, if we revise this requirement to be more sensible, we'll open up so much space to build our cities so much more sensibly flip regulations on the kinds of trees planted by cities and businesses, currently they're only allowed to plant male trees, this is a regulation in response to the messes of rotting fruit that had to be cleaned up when they were allowed to plant both, but it makes walking in spring and summer a nightmare, because pollen is produced regardless of whether a female tree is present, if we replaced them with female trees, there'd be no pollen, and female trees don't produce fruit unless pollinated, so there'd be nothing to clean up but leaves, and air quality would greatly improve revise EPA standards which unfairly target trucks, it is physically and economically non-viable to produce pickups and keitrucks in the united states that meet national EPA standards, and those standards are getting worse by the year revise taxes on imported vehicles that make it economically impractical to import keitrucks that are less than 25 years old TL;DR we don't have to be anti car to be pro public transit and walking/biking, we just have to clean up some poorly written red tape

[@NevisYsbryd]

I am (circumstantially) pro-car and I would strongly support this. Much of these problems are the inevitable consequences of terrible and artificial incentives.

[@eguineldo]

Such a great argument for rural communities. Originally from Eastern Colorado so I sympathize with a lot of your experiences. Hot take though, cars are the worst thing to take hold in America.

[@Rancid-Jane]

We call living in a village as urban. Real rural are, farms and wilderness. Drive 20 or 40 kilometres to get to the post office to get mail.

[@sirjuly2791]

Appreciate your perspective and experience from a rural area and working on a farm. You are absolutely right: no one actually needs these big trucks. Trucks are simply status symbols. You can get farm work done using much smaller size trucks, and keeping the necessary big trucks on the job site. Urbanize is not limited to cities. Rural towns have as much to benefit from its principles.

[@LC-wv7tz]

Thing is, they don't really make smaller sized trucks anymore. The old Nissans and Ford Rangers don't exist anymore. Laws and regulations have made it so in order to sell a pickup truck, the frame has to meet minimum size requirements relative to the rest of the vehicle. So a bunch of laws that were put in place to try and force more fuel efficient vehicles actually made it worse, as car companies now could not sell their small utility trucks (old Rangers, Tacomas, Nissans, etc) without paying hefty fines. That's why even basic trucks like the modern Tacoma are huge compared to what you could have gotten only 15 years ago, have 4 doors, less bed space, and cost $40,000 minimum. You used to be able to get cheap, 2 door, bench seat utility trucks. It's just not legal to sell them anymore. Unfortunately, this is a case of bad policy making a problem even worse.

[@joshfennell2257]

If one wants to live in a walkable area, one has to live there. Commit to it. It’s doable, if you actually want it. But most people don’t actually want that - people want land, big houses, driveways, and “better schools” and all that implies. That’s partly why we have suburban sprawl (80% of Americans live in urban areas, but much of that is suburbs without any services or infrastructure). If one wants to live in a walkable area, move there. Commit to it. You may not be able to have a car. You may not have a yard. You may not have room for 3 kids and a dog and a cat. But what do you actually want? Decide. People love to complain that they want to live in a city but also in mansion on 2 acres and their 11 kids need space, and plus “crime is bad.” It’s nonsensical.

[@seancatacombs]

A lot of genuine rural/agricultural towns were built well before cars, and like you said, never got the mid-century redevelopment money to tear up all the 19th century planning. The place I live in has my doctor, a grocery, schools, the library, and the beach all within walking distance. The core area around Main Street has had 2-3 story walkup apartments and mixed use buildings with storefronts on the ground floor and housing above pretty much since it was built in the 19th century.

[@sorairons]

In the world of agriculture, especially in companies that specialize in irrigation, "ridiculously big trucks" are more than just oversized vehicles. They are the life force that keeps these operations running efficiently. Let's delve into why these behemoths are irreplaceable and should be appreciated for their role in agriculture. Irrigation companies, tasked with the critical mission of ensuring efficient water management for farms, heavily rely on large trucks. Consider their role in moving heavy machinery, materials, and equipment required for installing and maintaining irrigation systems. These trucks are the backbone of irrigation operations, making sure that farms can sustainably utilize water resources. The importance of these trucks becomes even more evident when we look at the broader agricultural landscape. Many rural areas depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and large trucks are the workhorses that support this industry. They transport vital supplies like fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation equipment to farms, ensuring that crops thrive. Beyond their role in transporting supplies, large trucks are instrumental in supporting various aspects of agriculture. They help in moving produce to markets, which is essential for feeding both local and global populations. Without these trucks, the entire agricultural supply chain would be severely hampered. What's noteworthy is how these trucks are not just about size; they are about efficiency and productivity. Their capacity to carry substantial loads reduces the number of trips needed for transportation, resulting in cost savings, reduced energy consumption per unit of cargo, and improved logistical efficiency. This translates to better resource utilization and a more sustainable approach to agriculture. Additionally, these trucks contribute to the economic growth of rural communities. They create job opportunities, sustain local economies, and have a profound impact on regional development. In many cases, they are a symbol of progress and prosperity for these areas. In conclusion, "ridiculously big trucks" are unsung heroes in the world of agriculture, particularly for irrigation companies. They are the vital link that ensures efficient water management, supports farms, and sustains rural communities. While concerns about their environmental impact are valid, it's equally important to acknowledge their indispensable role in feeding our growing population efficiently and sustainably. Rather than vilifying these trucks, we should focus on making them greener and more efficient while appreciating their contributions to our food supply chain.

[@NevisYsbryd]

The same applies to vehicles generally to some capacity, especially in the USA and Canada. Raw material and resource harvesting/production, processing (sometimes multiple separate stages at different locations), and manufacturing is _way_ more regionally specialized than most of the world has been historically, across a territory almost the size of Europe. Most of those goods are transported by either ship/boat or by some variety of large wheeled vehicle. Many American cities would collapse within a week without tractor-trailers bringing supplies in and waste out. The logistical network is precariously dependent on them. While often less so at a food level, rural and agricultural areas are usually similarly reliant on importing metals, machines, oil, and other supplies.

[@jameskennedy7093]

I used to haul concrete countertops to renovation jobs in Philadelphia, and we used to always laugh at the people we saw in those terrible luxury trucks. We’d laugh especially at how stupidly hard it would be to lift things into the higher cabs.

[@Talarue]

I can tell not all rural towns are walkable. I live in the mountains in NH. It is multiple miles to a tiny mini-grocer and a 10 minute drive the nearest supermarket. 30 minutes to the nearest place to buy shoes(over an hour drive to a decent movie theater lmao). Our "Welcome to X" signs say "welcome to the villages of:" rather than "welcome to the town of" because the towns are spread apart little clusters of houses. Now would I love to be able to take a train rather than needing to drive 45 minutes to the nearest large town town. (or an hour and a half to visit my old town and hang out with my old friends) heck yes, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Also yes. People who buy oversized trucks "just cuz" can kick rocks. Granted at least in this area a bunch(not all) of them at least get used to plow snow in the winter.

[@DevonBagley]

The reason Rural communities are targeted isn't because of the towns themselves... It's the extended community outside of town they are talking about. When you live on a farm 40 miles from the nearest town it's another problem entirely. After that you are correct again.. it's not the city itself it's the extended community of suburbian sprawl that has trouble with transportation in most cases.

[@0bzen22]

Not a fan of people telling other people what to do, especially because 'it works for them'.

[@SmallTown_Studio]

I’ve done a bit of scouting on Google Earth for tiny towns in the middle of West Texas, and there seems to be a trend. See, you have tiny collections of houses next to an interstate or some other highway, OR you have places that became a place before the automobile and look just like the old downtowns of big cities, just a lot smaller.

[@AssBlasster]

Come to the small towns along I-90 in north Idaho...you get both! Nice walkable downtowns juxtaposed to an interstate. Check out Kellogg ID for a good example.

[@Phil9874]

as someone who was raised in the suburbs but has spent a significant amount of time at my grand mothers house in the country the town they lived in and was pretty easily navigable once you got to the town proper.

[@AlexCab_49]

A lot of towns in the Central Coast of California were either founded by the railroad or the Franciscan Spanish missionaries in the 18th centuries and they are very compact and very easy to walk around or ride your bikes. However a car is still a must to be able to go to other towns but they are served by Amtrak's Surfliner and can take the people there to Los Angeles.

[@lightster]

I also grew up in a small town. 2000 people. My walkable town experience is the opposite - even at 2000 people, the town was designed to be car dependent, with all the homes up on a hill and a 10+ minute walk from the edge of the housing down to where all the businesses were. Most homes not being right on the edge of course. The churches, school, and hospital were up on the hill, but my home was a 15 minute walk to the grocery store and 15 minute walk to the other end of the residential. So those people were 30 minutes away by foot, with a 25m height between them and the grocer. There was absolutely nothing about "well cities are so big, you just have to live with it" about the town I grew up in. Our town planners chose to keep all the houses away from everything, and assume everyone had a car. Of course, my town was also a company town where 1/2 the housing stock was made by the oil patch companies in town for their own employees. And the closest workplace for their employees was already a defacto 20 minute drive out of town because nobody wants their town built next to an oil and gas refinery. A lot of the businesses catered to the highway traffic. It makes sense to put those next to the highway, and maybe move the housing a bit further away. But it would have been a trivial decision to put the grocery store and the post office and a single restaurant next to the hospital, for example, and the whole town would have instantly been walkable instead of car dependent. Yea, 15-30 minutes is not that bad, even with the hill. But it was definitely enough to see most households with multiple cars. Sometimes multiple cars AND a work truck. Before moving to the city as an adult, I did live on an acreage for a little while. That was a 7-10 minute walk to the nearest neighbour. But because of the hill and the assumption of car dependence in my old town, it was barely noticeable that it was less walkable. Now THAT was rural. And it had plenty of justification. I also have living relatives who homesteaded in the countryside near where I grew up, that still live out there. They used horses for errands because cars weren't out there yet. Now I live in a city of almost 100,000, as part of a metro area of almost 2,500,000. Listening to my neighbours say we are "rural" drives me up the wall. There are wooded areas and a few horse ranches and we can't leave our bins out because bears and other wildlife will wander into town and make a mess. But there is nothing rural about it for 75,000 of the residents. It's exactly like you said: suburban sprawl confused for rural living. I'm not saying because the people in my city have no connection to homesteading that they can't reach the bar of rural. I'm saying that their connection to it is so tenuous that their definition of rural is "most people live in single family homes or townhomes".

[@OreoFromYesterday]

I’m a little concerned that some defensive major city urbanists maybe reading this video as a call for them to leave the big city for a small rural town to satiate their demand for walkable, safe, functional, accessible city infrastructure. It takes a while to get to the idea that You aren’t asking that of them because there are many reasons people are living in big cities (friends/family/work/recreation/entertainment) It seems like this is mostly for nimbys that think urbanists are trying to “push anti car propaganda” to rural communities, which is not the case.

[@Mr.Nichan]

1:54 Not to say you're points aren't important*, but I'm gonna gate-keep right back at you: I live closer than 200 miles from a major city, but I still think I live in the country more than you do. There's a big difference between living in a town/city/village, and not living in a town/city/village, which I think much more important when it comes to everyday things than how big or small your town is. (In reality, for each thing you need from the outside world, the difficulty of getting that particular thing matters sort of proportionally to how often and how much you need it. For example, while the small towns near me are perfectly good for grade school, groceries, gasoline, and utilities, mail, and infrastructure management, with differing restaurant, non-grocery store, and college capabilities depending on exact size ranging from the 300-person town to the 30,000-person town, it seems like there's not enough jobs for everyone to work in town. A large fraction in the smaller towns usually work in a bigger town or even in the nearby major city. Of course, many do work in town or out in the actual countryside.) Technically, I do sort of live in (or across the street from) an unincorporated town, but it's mostly just houses of people we basically never talk to and one or two limited businesses we basically never go to sometimes exist. (I think fireworks seasonally, and possibly gasoline and hamburgers sometimes, have been possible to buy across the street.) Also, walking into town only takes like 3 hours or something, and biking would be faster I knew how and weren't afraid of biking on windy 60 or 70 mi/hr speed limit country roads. Also, going to the store is not literally an "everyday" activity, as we only need to do it on something more like a weekly basis, so if more daily intellectual tasks like going to schooling and many jobs could be done more online, it would be easier to rely on something like a bus for transportation. Even if not, the school bus picks up kids at their houses out here every school day, so it would be possible for basically everyone to get by without their own cars with a little societal change and loss of personal schedule freedom. *including the point that just stopping urbanites from using cars would get rid most of the car problem or that public transport could work for small towns, and small town people + big city people is an even more huge chunk of the population, even if it's missing all the people who actually live in THE COUNTRY rather than in "a rural area".

[@NevisYsbryd]

You are right, the video example is not rural. It is a low-density, small-scale urban environment.

[@mcsomeone2681]

I hate how car dependent even small communities have became, everyone in Hereford, Borger, and pampa in the Texas panhandle is convinced by their parents they need a car to get around when the cities are 30 blocks wide at most with grid layouts, I imagine just one or two bike lanes in these smaller cities could drastically change how people get around.

[@enjoyslearningandtravel7957]

And also put in sidewalks they are already don’t have them

[@mcsomeone2681]

@@enjoyslearningandtravel7957 some cities are actually starting to make improvements like that, downtown Plainview is starting to install curb extensions and Tulia recently installed new sidewalks on all thier major roads. It's unfortunate that they didn't hold developers up to the same standards as larger towns or the job would mostly be done for them. Like you say most residential streets still don't have sidewalks and it's probably the only significant thing holding these cities back in terms of walkability

[@RPSchonherr]

Probably don't even need bike lanes. When I was young we rode our bikes everywhere on the streets. But, BIKES ARE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. As you get older you accrue injuries that make mobility difficult. A 15-minute walk is to the mailbox and back. The Villages in Florida is an example of an organized community. They have golf cart paths to everything where you can ride a bicycle if you wish. The roads are there for visitors. For many seniors walking and riding a bike are not options and all these anti-car idiots need to understand that. If you break your left foot you are not walking to the grocery store no matter your age. Maybe we need to rethink car size and look at the k-car route but those things are not comfortable at all. Our biggest issue is not the cars but the need for semi-trailer trucks to get goods to everywhere. It's too dangerous to have small light cars when there are those things on the same road. Yes, we need more trains, we need more goods to be delivered by train and smaller trucks only for local delivery. There was a time that lumber yards all had rail to the stores, not anymore. I could go on but suffice to say that getting rid of cars is not an option. Downsizing street traffic is doable if rail can take over. Imagine a mall with cargo rail delivery to the stores and passenger rail for the customers. People complain about malls and stroads but malls are just your small town downtown inside with access for more people.

[@mcsomeone2681]

@@RPSchonherr bikes aren't for young people they're for people in good shape, my Grandma rode her bike up until her 60th birthday because she never stopped and those muscles and balance stayed with her. Obviously not everyone is in as good of shape as her and there are plenty of disabled people out there so it wont work for everybody but lets be real only 7% of Americans report having serious ambulatory difficulties, even in the 65-74 and 75+ crowd that only raises to 15% 30% respectively. Sperated multi-use paths like you mention can be amazing and useful pieces of infastructure if done right and can really help people's mobility, while I think they are important and they're construction should be promoted in new neighborhoods and subdivisions I don't expect these older neighborhoods and towns to rip apart the city to install them.

[@RPSchonherr]

@@mcsomeone2681Rare circumstance these days. I have a bike but I'm not riding in over 100/40 deg temps. If I need to go somewhere it's in an air-conditioned car. Nothing like showing up at the office smelling like a locker room.

[@pedrohenriquecanciamsantar2044]

the gen z not owning cars thing is so real, I'm the only one in my friend group who wants a car, but I want it as a hobby

[@fortheloveofnoise]

To be fair, a lot of Gen Z don't own a car because they don't even leave the house 😂 I am a very late Millennial (1 or 2 years born before Zoomer generation started) I love cars, have owned a Miata, MR2 Spyder, 2 Mustangs, a Camaro, a Tundra, a 1972 Pontiac Grand Prix...but I got sick and couldn't work so fell on hard times and now drive a 98 Sentra....but at least it has a manual! I finally have mostly recovered after a year and a half, magically landed a high paying job with no experience or college....and now I have to get a right hand drive vehicle for my new job, so finally have an excuse to get a Japanese Kei van.... probably will get a Sambar but may get a Suzuki Every Van I think it is called.

[@karl_margs]

As a "detached urbanite" I have strongly considered living in a rural area and may still end up in one someday. I also grew up in the suburbs and will never go back so long as they are egregiously car-dependent. They are the worst of both worlds.

[@samonesa9125]

I feel like they exist for a reason still. People of previous generations worked extremely hard to earn their own more private space of living and a nice small piece of quiet place to live. But in the meantime, big cities have more work opportunities, hence millions of people have to be near the city or in the city. If you really have to live those kind of life and you have the luxury to choose, it's only reasonable that people would choose suburbs as a better environment for living. If you bring in the emissions and whatnot into the conversation, then nvm. Do your thing. In a free country everyone (and I literally mean everyone, regardless of their choice), should be free to make their own decisions.

[@karl_margs]

@@samonesa9125 if suburbs weren't inefficient hogs that are subsidized by denser areas, I would agree with you. As it stands, suburbs don't generate the commerce to support their own infrastructure and need state grants to maintain much of it. Turns that when you zone only for residential with extremely large lots, not a whole lot of tax is generated. So these choices don't exist in a bubble, and suburbs would look very different if they actually supported themselves economically.

[@samonesa9125]

@@karl_margs land tax, and these owners' income tax, purchase tax. An area full of industrial and commerce with more tax. Taxation is a rebalance of spending to areas of need. If you hear more wealthier people complain about their contributions to the retirement program are used towards the less wealthier so they receive almost equal amounts of retirement income, would you still think this way? It's the same logic of rebalancing funds to benefit all after all.

[@karl_margs]

@@samonesa9125 They're not the same. The suburbs are the wealthy people taking more than their fair share in this case and using lopsided political power to maintain their enclaves, not a redistribution to the needy. See: redlining, white flight. If suburbs weren't designed around cars and single family homes they wouldn't need to be subsidized. You can have less dense areas that are mixed use and are able to support themselves. It's not either/or, and the video showed that pretty well IMHO. The economic drawbacks of American suburbs are very well documented, so I'm not going to explain more if you're not going to approach the argument in good faith.

[@samonesa9125]

@@karl_margs more than their fair share? So those who live in condos and other complex housing surely pay more tax than single family house dwellers & their business do then? All the hype over issues like this, the problem is the hatred towards the "rich" these days (maybe not you, but all over the Internet, it's there for sure), sometimes I wonder if it's not even about the house or the environment AT ALL. And should you be reminded that most people living in those neighborhoods are textbook middle-class. As for "The rich", they are invisible to you in this society. So let's be reminded to stay nice and stay kind to each other. Keep polarizing ideas and getting further divided is not going to do us any good. For all of us.

[@SummitCoyote]

okay let's hit these... from another person who lives in a actually rural area town less than 2000 people (although being steadily encroached upon) Yes I could walk to a grocery store but that grocery store is not going to have a lot of stuff it's going to be incredibly basic. it's also going to be upwards of twice or more expensive than the Walmart that is outside of the town for the same items. and most likely lower quality especially in the meat and produce departments. that is also the same for other items, for instance we have a local hardware store but everything in that store is probably three times as expensive as Lowe's but you have to drive 45 minutes to get to Lowe's. it's still worth it though. there is no doctor's office or if you want "inclusive health care" You're definitely not going to get that with a rural doctor. I have to go an hour and a half for specialist care. it's not just old people who need easy access to doctor's offices. as you may be aware now with the heat wave going through walking and biking can't be done anytime of the year and in a lot of places weather really makes a big difference there. if you think I'm walking to anywhere in an afternoon thunderstorm you are sadly mistaken. that's normal every day for many people. Even if you have the infrastructure for trains just the cost of fuel a loan to run them would make it economically a disaster to run them to a small town even once a week. if you really work on the farm you should know that the price of diesel is ridiculous. Even a single car locomotive would be astronomically expensive to run that far out. there's a reason all of those lines are closed and it's economic they're not profitable. buses are the same buses and trains are only profitable when they're full. and people are only ever going to use them when they're more convenient than cars which means they need to run at all times. if I want to leave my house at 2:30 in the morning and go somewhere I should be able to do so and go anywhere i please. I think there's another reason why people pick larger vehicles trucks and SUVs. A family can only afford one vehicle so that one vehicle needs to be able to do everything they could possibly ever need to do with a car and that pretty much means buying an SUV or truck. are the massive lifted dude bro trucks stupid absolutely they are but there's also a reason to buy a full size trucker SUV that has nothing to do with the status symbol. also you are incorrect about a point most people don't live in the city most people live in suburbs. and those do have a major issue with being nearby anything because they are monoculture housing. but there's also a reason for this and there's also a reason why the lots are so large and that's because people need space. high density housing is not something that people want because people want to be away from other people. That's why the dream is to own a house and land not to own an apartment in a high-rise.

[@SummitCoyote]

also most of the people who live in small towns don't actually work in the small town they live in. they live there because it's cheap and then they commute to another larger town or city for work because small towns have crappy paying jobs and very few of them.

[@shaunhall960]

It would be very easy to connect our entire country with train and bus service. I think we should make it a priority as voters.

[@r.pres.4121]

We should stop building new interstates and declare the interstate highway network 100% completed. It is time to divert all that transportation funding from building new interstates into expanding and upgrading bus and rail service all over the USA 🇺🇸.

[@in.der.welt.sein.]

How exactly are voters going to make this an issue? What do the voters do when they vote? They put a blank checkmark next to a politician's name that expresses nothing else but "I consent to you running the show". In other words, the voter completely abstracts from whatever reasons they have for voting. They don't write an essay, nor does some rational deliberation process about how to best meet peoples material needs take place. What seems on the surface as an empowering act on one's self-interest and benefit turns out in reality to be nothing else than the actual powerlessness of the voter to have any say in how their lives are run. So, once a politician takes office they are supposed to rule in accordance with the laws. It is all within the framework of private property and competition for profit. Some politicians make the laws (legislative branch). These politicians are given a license to rule freely in accord with their conscience. So what do they do? They make sure the national conditions are conducive to profit-making for business. One of the major industries in the US is auto manufacturing. The railway trusts and monopolies were basically taken over by the state, and then it was simply sound economic device to allow cars, trucks, semis, etc. to overtake the old railways. The amount of revenue-making tied up in cars, highways, insurance, trucking, etc. long ago outstripped railways. It gives capital the freedom to move anywhere in the country and to draw from a wider labor pool, and the costs are defrayed, moved away from the state and made a private responsibility of individuals (yet another way to make money, to turn a minus sign into a plus on the balance sheet). Then crisis after crisis hits the auto industry, and the state bailed these companies out because they are bedrocks of the American economy. That in and of itself ought to tell you how important this infrastructure is for capitalism to function, and why they intend to transition to electric cars instead of high speed railways. The old rail infrastructure is also basically completely rotten and taken over by nature in so many areas that it would entail massive spending to remake it. It's not just ready made and waiting to go, but ruined from disuse.

[@frankallen3634]

My "town" has a feed store and a postal trailer and thats it. Cant walk to any stores...we do have a 4 way stop and thats it. No sidewalks but there is a ditch that runs the road so to walk you are on the road trying to not die. We dont have cable, broadband, and no transit. We don't qualify for any of these because our lack of population disqualifies us

[@Littleweenaman]

its a shame how Americas small towns get underutilized

[@Mercury29477]

I live in a small city in northern Wisconsin and I would hate living in a big city too since there way too crowded and traffic is slow as shit there

[@radarreally2110]

I think that when people are saying that there is a "rural problem" theyre talking about the people that live 30+ miles from town. Growing up if you didnt have a car or all day to walk to town you werent going to town. Once you get there everything is in spitting distance. You can walk across town and hit all the important spots in an hour if you wanted to. But then youve got to go back home after. Youve gotta have a car. But i do see where youre coming from with people that live in town. Unless you have to go to ANOTHER town theres not really a good reason to unpack the car. Just go there.

[@anindividual3889]

I am also from a very rural area. I also understand where people in cities are coming from with their hatred of car dependency. I hate going to town and driving in traffic. For me, I have to haul hay and other materials, so getting rid of all my pickups is not realistic for me, but for many, not being completely dependent on cars would be beneficial for many.

[@euanstokes2828]

I go to university in a amall town in Scotland, and yeah this summarises how small towns should work perfectly. I can walk from literally one edge of town to the other in 40 minutes, the shop, my classes etc is all within 20 minutes. For long distance travel, there are busses every 15 minutes through the night to Dundee, around 30 mins away and long distance busses to Edinburgh and Glasgow which take around 1hr 30 and 2hr 30 respectively. Theres no train station, due to it being on the end of a peninsula, but there is one at Leuchars, 5 minutes bus away, with trains to Edinburgh (and Glasgow from there), Dundee and Aberdeen in the northeast. You genuinely can live without a car here, as I do.

[@plskie9527]

I grew up in a small town in rural British Columbia in Canada where it is still possible to live day to day without a vehicle, compared cities in my province where you would need a car for everyday tasks. Lack of public transport makes going to the city only feasable with a car even though we have passenger rail and bus service. Also I love your argument against giant pickup trucks.

[@dinanbimmertv1864]

Salmon Arm is where I’m living, and it is terrible. Suburban sprawl, 50mph traffic on a wide massive two lane (pretty much a f*cking highway) through the town. On the rare occasion I do walk there are times when the sidewalk disappears! And when I bike I have to bike on the sidewalk as the road is too fast. It is so sloppily put together it is breathtaking. No consistency, no barely a downtown. Where in BC do you live though?

[@plskie9527]

​@@dinanbimmertv1864 A small town close ish to Prince George. Most of the town is still just the street network laid out by the railroad 100 years ago, and we still have train service, although not great. I don't live there anymore though.

[@blairseaman461]

A big obstacle to public transportation projects is a stipulation of eventual profitability. Profitable public projects are rare.

[@413453425]

No kidding, what if we applied the same standards to the highly unprofitable car infra…

[@purplepenguin43]

i get irrationally attached to my vehicles, i loved my truck when i worked on a farm, its a 2500hd silverado duramax 2006, the IMO last year before chevy started going completely off the rails with truck size, hp, and cost and DEF. on the farm that truck is awesome, hauling equipment, welding gear, and tractor tires, so many tires, I was the assistant mechanic so i got to fix all the tires:) i loved it so much i decided to take it with me back home to my 30k people home town and it was great, moved all my stuff drove it 1000+ miles to Alaska without a sweat. but now that I'm here... driving it every day to work.... to school.... to the grocery store that's 10min drive or 1h walk away... IT SUCKS, it pains me to say this because i love my truck, but i want it to go back to that farm, it did good work there, cause i hate driving it here, its too wide, it takes a 12 point turn to do anything, the diesel is loud and obnoxious so you cant hold a conversation while its warming up in the cold, and just the sheer size and surface area to scrape ice off of in the winter takes me an hour. the ride on rough dirt roads and smooth highways is great but somehow its terrible and jolty on just average potholed streets, what ever magic chevy did to make this thing ride like a dream on the two extremes of highway and dirt washboards didn't does not apparently work on just a normal ass street that has a bit of broken pavement. with heavy heart I've finally decided to sell my beast recently, given that I'm not in a farming town i doubt it will ever do the work it used to, but i hope someone can put it back in its element, hauling heavy shit and making money. im going to replace it with a honda fit, and i hope i learn to love it just as much as my beast of a truck. im not even worried about front wheel drive only in Alaska, that truck was basically front wheel drive in the winter cause there is no weight or brake pressure over the back wheels when its unloaded. just gonna mount some blissaks and call it a day, i don't even want a subaru, too big. side note I could do the same trucks are too big and expensive rant but with ATV's. i could use one here to plow the neighborhoods 200+ inches of snow we get every year but all the new ones are like 10k$+ even on the used market, I just want a full size 125cc 4x4 for

[@TheDaniel9]

As far as I can tell from trying to research why I can't buy a small truck, the major reason why everything in America is huge is because of how the regulations work. Currently the stringency of regulations goes down as the wheelbase and width increases. I would love to get a small truck to haul sheet goods when I need to that has good mpg for the vast majority of my trips that don't require it but we've literally made them more difficult to make.

[@tiojuan174]

I totally agree! I was from a small town and my bike was so practical there, both for around the entire town as well as jobs out in the fields around the town, or even for going to the next town (about 10 miles away). Walking worked just fine too. Even my grandma that was out on a ranch outside of town was perfectly reachable on a bike, and biked there several times. I biked to all my first jobs (many in agriculture of various sorts out of city limits). I never felt threatened from cars as there wasn't much traffic. I could walk to the grocery store just fine. Many countries without a lot of cars simply end up with more convenience stores or small grocery stores placed all over the place. Then I moved to Denver, with my bike, and I felt like I was going to ran over while trying to get anywhere. Where I live now, I've know many people who have been hit or hit and killed by vehicles. All of them were hit by pickups or SUV's. Trucks and SUV's are way too huge today. I think they need to make it a law that you need a commercial driver's license to drive a vehicle of a certain size or that have a large hood that blocks the view of childeren that could be in front of them. I like having the option of owning a car. In many ways cars are cool. But it is getting to the point that owning a car is becoming more of a hassel than it's worth. They are becoming too expensive. Used cars are no longer worth it at all. You risk buying a $10,000 used car and then have the transmission go out 6 months later and cost $9,000 to repair. I know someone that that happened to them. Getting cars fixed is becoming a nightmare. You can no longer do it yourself with a tool box full of wrenches. And I for one cannot find a mechanic that is trustworthy. This makes buying an old beater not worth it. You used to be able to get a car for under $1,000 that at least ran and you could go fixing up little by little. Not any more. Brand new cars are too expensive too. There are now basically only three cars under $20,000, and there are rumors that two of those are going away (the Mitsubishi Mirage and Kia Rio. The Nissan Versa may be the only "affordable" car next year or the year after unless they stop selling those too). With houses too expensive to buy, rent skyrocketing and groceries getting more expensive, owning a car is like adding even more straws to the camel's back. Well, I can't eat my car, so it's starting to go the way of buying a new phone: not worth it. Food, house and clothing matter more than a shiny new car.

[@Firesgone]

My perception of rual has been "miles per neighbor" as opposed to the city's "neighbors per mile" There should be no confusion.

[@razkrunk3169]

Atlanta is horrific sorry you had to go through that.

[@Torrent263]

For a day

[@razkrunk3169]

@@Torrent263 Yeah it sucks

[@mattbrown5511]

CAFE regulations through the EPA causes the growth of trucks and SUVs. It is the stupid regulations from the EPA and DOT that leads to larger and heavier vehicles in America.

[@DonkeyDongs]

The execs in the EPA are also execs in the auto industry or highly brided (lobbied). The auto industry makes more money from larger vehicles so they purposely bent the regulations to "force" them to build bigger gas chuggers. Then they turn around a pretend to be victims. Corporations play with the laws.

[@mdhazeldine]

Great points made here. Nice to hear someone from a rural area voicing their opinion on cars and urbanism.

[@310McQueen]

Interesting thoughts. Why I'm pro-car: 1. I live in X. Mom lives in Y, a hundred miles away. Repeat for any other relative you want to visit. 2. Where it can snow 6" or gets down to -40F in the winter. Good luck. Although our family has gone down to ONE car. If I have to, I can walk to work.

[@fortheloveofnoise]

Snow or cold means nothing....I walked over 10 miles in the dead of winter in the snow in Sweden last Winter....and most days walked a few miles in it. The real problem is walking in the heat.....try doing 10 miles in the south (U.S.) in the summer and you will die. 😂

[@linuxman7777]

Car Dependency also hurts drivers alot, they have to put alot more wear and tear on the car. Back before the car, people used horse and buggies, and when we use cars similarly to how horses and buggies were used, they aren't much of a problem

[@enjoyslearningandtravel7957]

Back in the horse and buggy age, there were in the bigger cities Street cars pulled by horses, or if you could hire a driver with a horse and buggy, so not, everybody owned their horse and carriage. Of course, if you lived on a farm you were more likely to own on a horse and buggy. So there is still transportation back then besides the people that own horses, either the wealthy or the farmers.

[@Ag3nt0fCha0s]

I know right. I have to use my car sometimes but I dodge using it when I can

[@jasonreed7522]

​@@enjoyslearningandtravel7957and for those examples, if you just consider a horse to be an ICE then it sounds an awful lot like a modern Steetcar or Bus service, and a taxi /ride hail service. Instead we decided everyone should own their own horse and buggy and are wondering why the streets are full of manure.

[@enjoyslearningandtravel7957]

@@jasonreed7522 Actually, we’re talking about the past and if you look at horse and buggies in cities in the present such as San Antonio Texas, the horses actually have a pouch under them so the manure doesn’t go on the road and in the past I believe there were jobs for people to pick up manure and the manure was used for farms

[@jasonreed7522]

@@enjoyslearningandtravel7957 you missed the metaphor. If every car was a horse, then car exhaust/pollution would be manure. And our cars don't have diapers to capture their waste. (And society/the media acts like the rampant pollution that is a natural consequence of this is a surprise) And the first half was pointing out that the same transportation niches have existed long before engines. Horses were used for the equivalents of taxis, busses, trains, tractors, motorcycles/ATVs, and personal cars/trucks. (Or more broadly, animal labor was)

[@DustinDriver]

All of the work trucks around here (SoCal) are old F150s or Toyota pickups from the '90s. The huge shiny trucks see no work whatsoever.

[@TannerLindberg]

You are either ignorant or outright lying. It is statistically impossible for that to be the case

[@muscleman125]

What I dont get is why all of a sudden over the last 4 years everyone and their mother thinks they are an expert city planner.

[@r.pres.4121]

Because all these folks have common sense and they live in reality which is something that city planners know little to nothing about.

[@muscleman125]

@@r.pres.4121nah it's more like it makes you feel superior in some way because you saw what some guy on youtube said about city planning. It's the classic "Smarter/Holier than thou" attitude. That's not to say cities could be planned better, I'm just sick of literally everyone thinking they have the education, expertise, and ability to start talking about how we need to plan our towns and cities. Especially when it mostly boils down to just hating cars.

[@ScooterCat64]

@@muscleman125 The ole, "You must be a professional chef to criticize a restaurants food" argument

[@muscleman125]

And here you come with the classic Straw man argument. @@ScooterCat64

[@brn12113]

Because single use zoning's deleterious cultural and economic effects are coming to a head. And bad urban planning is a clear-cut punching bag versus the tougher topics of cost of living, housing market speculation, climate change, preservation of democracy etc...

[@chargermopar]

I always ask those people how am I going to two my tractor or skid steer without my truck? The Fed's constant inflation along with outsourcing has kept wages artificially low in purchasing power, made up with debt. Believe it or not it is more energy efficient to be on a farm than in a city. A really good friend of mine is homosexual and moved from Miami to rural Minnesota. He has a partner he met in the year 2000. As carnivores they almost never have to go grocery shopping but go straight to the rancher and buy the whole animal. The nearest town is as you described, full of trees and everything close together. You just drive a long traffic free distance to town, then get out and walk. If you like fruits and veggies you can grow your own. As my friend said, he was unable to find a quality partner in the big city, but found exactly what he wanted in the country. The closest thing we had to a small town here was Homestead. It is now a developed nightmare.

[@rlclark50]

I love the content and honest, ovjective take herein. I grew up in Salina and Emporia. Your observation about princess pickups (as I call them) is 100% accurate!

[@christianchellis9057]

I don’t get why people think bigger pickups are better pickups. They’re not.

[@AcmeRacing]

"Smart Growth" would have us all move to cities and live on top of each other. Farm country doesn't enter into their calculations. They're too obsessed with suburban "sprawl" to consider that low population density often comes with arable land and livestock for food production.

[@sweetpeach3649]

The thing is most rural people don't live inside a town boundary. Vehicles are absolutely necessary

[@enjoyslearningandtravel7957]

That’s true. This picture of course doesn’t fit every one not everybody lives in a small town. Some people live on farms and ranches that are far outside the small town

[@thefellowofthefellows]

Brother man, I see a lack of consideration for small rural towns. I'm talking sub one thousand small, I live in such a town and there is no amenities aside from a chain gas station. Nearest grocery store is a five minute drive to the next town over and any meaningful source of income is a twenty to thirty minute drive to the nearest city. Busses dont come here anymore and we havent had a passenger rail station since the seventies iirc. My towm has never had more than one thousand people, and it had its peak well before even my parents' time. These towns are mostly either dying or becoming places for people with luxury truck money to live so they can avoid city gridlocks. My town is lucky to have actual development in recent years.

[@5688gamble]

You could build narrow gauge railways to connect towns like this, freight and passenger, you could even have freight lines going past areas with farms, then you could extend a trunk into your farm for loading produce. Then in the largest town a yard with a main freight line converges with your small feeder lines and a station with regular speed trains to connect you to urban areas, sure people would still need to use roads to get to the farms to work (you could replace the car with a motorbike) but you could still connect these small towns, with the money spent on roads and the space they take up, this is do-able and is actually more efficient and practical, instead of loading trucks slowly, you can fill an entire train as long as you can accomodate/is necessary and reduce fuel use. Journeys will still take a long time, but they already do anyway. For large metropolitan areas, you connect them with metros, commuter lines, intercity exresses and high-speed regional and interstate railways as is practical based on population.

[@lowstringc]

There is a difference between “town” and “rural”. If you live in a town, even a small one, that’s much different than living 15 miles from the closest small “grocery store”.

[@ScimitarRaccoon]

Watching this while walking home from work, spending multiple hours along side a 50 mph road with little protection and no other way to really get around effectively without a car.

[@bldontmatter5319]

In russia they have rails to rural areas. The coverage is good, they stop 1 time every hour. They are 3 times the size of the usa

[@eryngo.urbanism]

This is so important. And this is why I think we need to get back to providing regional rail services. Small towns are some of the most walkable places, and it's so sad to see so many of them slowly dying. If people had access to the resources of larger cities and the walkability of small towns, car free life in small towns would be incredibly doable.

[@americancapitalist9094]

My biggest problem with the anti-car movement is everyone knows that cars are never going anywhere. It all boils down to who will be the only ones using them. And we all know it will be the rich and the elite. Cars are freedom. If I wanted to I could pack up and move anywhere I wanted to with a vehicle. If I’m stuck in a city with public transportation that eliminates most peoples ability to actually leave. A world without cars is a dystopian prison.

[@NevisYsbryd]

I wonder if said elites are actively involved in pushing said movement. They certainly espouse a lot of the same ideas.

[@MrMartinSchou]

When people respond to criticism of car dependency with "but what about rural areas", they clearly do not understand the discussion or criticism (either maliciously or out of naïvety). No one is saying "you cannot have a car". They are saying "you shouldn't NEED" a car. Even in rural areas, unless you live 10+ miles from anywhere else, NEEDING a car is a sign of bad infrastructure and bad policy decisions. And as you say, when talking about rural towns, they are (at least should be) easily great for avoiding car dependency.

[@NotTheRealRustyShackleford]

Rural to me means at least 10+ miles away from any modern amenities. Where I'm at a car really is the only option...

[@whiteetk8000persona3isgood]

No one is saying "you cannot have a car" But many say "you are an horrible human being for having an car"

[@empirestate8791]

Love this video! I especially like the fact that you talked about how rural towns were built pre WWII and thus had natural urbanism. Please continue making more videos, I love your work!

[@GodOfDonuts]

Thank you for making this video. One of the largest hurdles I face when discussing car-centric development at work (I work for the state of NC) is how 'rural' most of NC is. It's a square I can't really circle because I've always lived in one of the major cities here and I don't have much personal experience which for some reason car-brains value more than actual evidence. Usually when I bring up that rural downtowns were historically more walkable and accessible by train I get scoffed at and told that just wouldn't be feasible to run a train to every small town.

[@zhubajie6940]

Prewar cities are that way but not small towns in Florida which mostly were built in the 1960s and 70s prior to gasoline shortages that hit people about the face and head on thinking about car alternatives. A town I used to live in of a middlin' range of 48,000 population and 35 miles from any town of similar size or bigger had busy streets and the nearest grocery store was 2 miles (even the minimarts) in separation from the middle of town. As an old person that's an hour's walk one way.