The mileage of 6 miles (10km) isn’t going kill you, I’m talking about the bigger picture of cheap cars fueling urban sprawl with little spatial income density and we haven’t talked about subsidy inequality yet.
I assumed fast walking to be 5 km/h and you said 2 hours.
I’m totally with you, but the US mobility problem is fucked since the 1950s and now there’s no easy solution. The bigger picture is that every investment into car-only infrastructure will hurt the working poor and precariat.
A short-term solution could be raising fossil fuel taxes and subsidising people who cannot afford any other mode of transportation with a part of that money.
“Americans think 100 years is a long time and Europeans think 100 km is a long distance”
I’m fortunate to not be in this situation anymore but the commute for my last job before this one was around 40mi. That’s 64km and a bit. Prior to that it was closer to 60mi or 96.5km, I was driving over an hour just to get to work. This is not uncommon for Americans, especially poor ones. If you can’t afford to live in the city but still need a job so you can eat, situations like this are sometimes unavoidable.
Sure. But we’re in it now, and low fuel prices maintain the ability of the American working poor to survive. Changing this now would condemn millions of innocents to bankruptcy, homelessness and eventually death.
I don’t like it either, believe me. I want walkable cities, and sensible zoning, and affordable housing. But we don’t have that and there isn’t a magic switch we can throw to just make it happen. We’ve painted ourselves into a corner about this.
Fuck man, it takes me 45 minutes to drive to my workplace maybe 30 miles away, and that’s the closest town with more than a single grocery store and a couple gas stations. Also I live on top of a mountain because that’s the only place I can afford to live and still be within driving distance of work. And of course no public transit at all out here, we have like 3 stop lights total. I literally couldn’t walk to work and back, and also do things like working or sleeping. Just not enough hours in the day. Even on a bike 30 miles uphill at the end of the day, every day, would be brutal. Also no sidewalks, bike lanes, or even shoulders on most of the roads. Cliffs on both sides for most of it. You’d get creamed pretty quick. Infrastructure is so fucked here, partly because I live in a very mountainous area and also horrible NIMBYs everywhere. I’d love to not have to drive my car and buy gas but that’s the only way I can feed myself.
2 hours should be something in the range of 10-12 km walking, which with reasonable infrastructure should be more than manageable on either transit or by bike.
Reasonable infrastructure being the key words here
Yes just walk two hours to work instead
The mileage of 6 miles (10km) isn’t going kill you, I’m talking about the bigger picture of cheap cars fueling urban sprawl with little spatial income density and we haven’t talked about subsidy inequality yet.
Haha yeah, 10km… 😭
Also everything else is getting more expensive and poor people are already struggling to make ends meet. Not great making their life even harder
I assumed fast walking to be 5 km/h and you said 2 hours.
I’m totally with you, but the US mobility problem is fucked since the 1950s and now there’s no easy solution. The bigger picture is that every investment into car-only infrastructure will hurt the working poor and precariat.
A short-term solution could be raising fossil fuel taxes and subsidising people who cannot afford any other mode of transportation with a part of that money.
by building better public transport infrastructure :)
“Americans think 100 years is a long time and Europeans think 100 km is a long distance”
I’m fortunate to not be in this situation anymore but the commute for my last job before this one was around 40mi. That’s 64km and a bit. Prior to that it was closer to 60mi or 96.5km, I was driving over an hour just to get to work. This is not uncommon for Americans, especially poor ones. If you can’t afford to live in the city but still need a job so you can eat, situations like this are sometimes unavoidable.
The low fuel prices built this environment.
Sure. But we’re in it now, and low fuel prices maintain the ability of the American working poor to survive. Changing this now would condemn millions of innocents to bankruptcy, homelessness and eventually death.
I don’t like it either, believe me. I want walkable cities, and sensible zoning, and affordable housing. But we don’t have that and there isn’t a magic switch we can throw to just make it happen. We’ve painted ourselves into a corner about this.
Fuck man, it takes me 45 minutes to drive to my workplace maybe 30 miles away, and that’s the closest town with more than a single grocery store and a couple gas stations. Also I live on top of a mountain because that’s the only place I can afford to live and still be within driving distance of work. And of course no public transit at all out here, we have like 3 stop lights total. I literally couldn’t walk to work and back, and also do things like working or sleeping. Just not enough hours in the day. Even on a bike 30 miles uphill at the end of the day, every day, would be brutal. Also no sidewalks, bike lanes, or even shoulders on most of the roads. Cliffs on both sides for most of it. You’d get creamed pretty quick. Infrastructure is so fucked here, partly because I live in a very mountainous area and also horrible NIMBYs everywhere. I’d love to not have to drive my car and buy gas but that’s the only way I can feed myself.
2 hours should be something in the range of 10-12 km walking, which with reasonable infrastructure should be more than manageable on either transit or by bike.
Reasonable infrastructure being the key words here