this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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I'm a Canadian living in Korea and sometimes have to explain to locals that the reason I've never been to Vancouver is because I lived on the opposite coast and it would take a week to drive there. In Korea, aside from a few outlying islands, you can never be more than four hours away from anywhere else in the country.
This is what most people on Lemmy don't understand when they complain about cars in North America. Texas and California combined are the size of all of Europe. America and Canada are very large. In most situations we do need cars to live a normal life.
Some countries in Europe, even small ones, have really crappy public transport so driving cars is still necessity. Poland and Ireland comes to mind.
Ireland is a lovely place but it really is a pain in the backside to get around as a non-resident.
The size of the country/states isn't really the issue, right? You can cross Europe via train pretty easily, 4hrs London to Amsterdam, longer over land than Dallas to San Antonio for example, but I'd assume a normal life doesn't regularly involve driving all around the state. Most of daily life is just within a city or region, the size of the country is irrelevant there.
There absolutely are major factors that basically force North Americans into cars, I agree, but I don't think size is an excuse for those factors.
edit: This video talks about the 'North America is too big' argument in detail, but fair warning, the creator is a bit annoyed and crass at the start and talking about comments they get. You can skip to 2:30 to jump over it.
I think a lot of it is historical. America and Canada had virtually unlimited land for growth, so everything just sprawled outward. In Europe you're crossing multiple countries to travel the continent like you said. Since space was always a concern, more thought has been put into the designs and layouts. There are enormous American cities with poor public transit, and even if they had good public transit, it would take a long time to go from one part of the city to another. We've seen thoughtful layouts and good public transportation in dense cities where it makes sense, like SF, NYC, and Seattle. Cars are convenient for urban and rural sprawl, and there wasn't a lot of motivation for alternatives until recently.
BTW, you can cross the United States in a train too, but it'll take you 79 hours.
Parts of it is historical, although it shouldn't be understated that a lot of it was political (in the sense of powerful business interests influencing policy to advance their economic interest) and poor urban planning forcing that sprawl. As the video mentions, public transit like trains and streetcars necessarily predated the advent of the mass produced automobile around 1930, a long time after the initial sprawling. Almost all cities had them, they were removed and not replaced.
What I mean by this is that even with the open colonial sprawl, the current state of things was avoidable and, although increasingly difficult, can be undone and improved.
Oh yes, there's definitely a political element to it, driven (no pun intended) by business desires. I just read on Lemmy today that Michelin Tire Company started reviewing restaurants and awarding stars hoping to motivate people to drive further for culinary experiences. Driving further meant more wear on their tires, and thus more profit. That's the kind of genius marketing plan that I don't see very often today, and is a great example of those business influences at work.
Some more fun anecdotes relating to car dependency.
In the US, one very well-known city planner would deliberately build overpasses too low for buses to go under them on routes to the beach, to prevent poor people (read: black people) from being able to go to the beach.
The notion of "jaywalking" is also invented whole-cloth by the car industry. Prior to that, streets were a place that people could walk or ride safely, cross wherever the want, or even just hang out and maybe just get out of the way if someone wants to get by. A "jay" was an insult sort of like "loser".
Their older history is not a significant factor in European cities being more walkable/cyclable. In fact, thanks to the impact of WWII, many European cities had to be rebuilt and are those in some ways younger than significant American, Canadian, and Australian cities. The Netherlands, often the posterchild of walkability and cyclability, was heading very much in the same direction as the US in the post-war period, up until the Stop de Kindermoord movement of the 1970s started a versal of that trend. And even then, it wasn't a complete 180. Government votes supportive of stopping the child murder only barely won out over car-dependency, and many local businesses and entrenched interests were just as staunchly opposed to improved design in the Netherlands as they so often are today in places like America and Australia.
It's definitely possible for car-dependent cities and countries to improve. It just requires people supportive of change to speak up. Convince others to also be supportive. Most importantly, contact your representatives and vote for people who can be convinced to do better.
I'd heard the Michelin story repeated a couple of times by a friend, and it sort of checks out. The Michelin Guide was originally more a general guide for French motorists in 1900, to increase said demand for driving and therefore their tires, although when the restaurant section became more popular, they started hiring anonymous reviewers in the 20s and then eventually awarding stars about 30 years after the initial publication.
1 star : "A very good restaurant in its category" (Une très bonne table dans sa catégorie) 2 stars : "Excellent cooking, worth a detour" (Table excellente, mérite un détour) 3 stars : "Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey" (Une des meilleures tables, vaut le voyage)
So it's not as if it was a masterminded plan, a decent marketing tool just sort of evolved into a restaurant reviewing guide.
London to Amsterdam is not very far though. That's like maybe halfway across the state I live in.
But, point taken. I still take the train occasionally... When it works!
Australia is roughly the size of continental USA, and I do fine without a car
Somewhere between 70-90% of Australia is uninhabited.
Where are you going with that? It's harder to get by without a car in lower density places...
Capital city?
These days, yeah, but I used to live in country town Australia, without a car or license then either. I admit, that was harder, and did limit my options, but the majority of people don't live in country towns in Australia or the US
this is such a fucking wild logic, why would the size of your country have any relationship whatsoever to needing a car? Do you think the moscow subway is worthless because siberia is in the same country?
Who in their right mind would even drive across the US? you'd take an airplane!
Because the historical availability of land influenced city development, leading to urban and rural sprawl.
Yeah, I'm similar, living almost in the middle of the west coast in Oregon, USA. I can drive 20 hours south and only change states once. That's traveling 65MPH+ most of the time.