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Comment by FpUser | Hacker News Reader

>"To me owning a car seems much more miserable!"

Well you are free not to own it. Nobody's forcing you.

Actually my main mean of transportation in Toronto is bicycle myself (well I work from home for the last 20 years anyways).

I also own car (van actually) and it gives me great and hassle free degree of freedom. If I am in a mood and I often am I can jump in and in few hours be in complete wilderness swimming in some godforsaken lake. Or if I need to grab some heavy stuff and bring it somewhere which happens rather often. And I do not need to arrange / wait for anything. Just get in and go.

So no. Screw that dense car free living. To each their own.

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Yes and you can say that a helicopter would offer you even more freedom, but does that mean we should build our cities so that everyone has there own helipad?

Ironically it probably would take up less space than the infrastructure build for cars.

But this is the point made by the OP, essentially for the convenience to jump into your car a couple of times a year and drive to the wilderness without having to walk or take a means of public transport, you require cities to be build around those cars. The issue is you don't directly see the cost associated with it, because you're used to it. The thing is, if you actually had to pay for that convenience (because if we would not have to build the car infrastructure cities could be much cheaper) directly there clearly would be a point where you would say it is not worth it.

Yes, too many people can't bear making anything they sense to be a sacrifice on their part. The solution is definitely to shift the car ownership economic burden more towards car owners instead of everyone. Giant empty parking lots and huge roads are an insane cost with a terrible maintenance story.

I like to think of it as moving away from a datacenter to cloud based solutions. You don't need to buy all that capacity ahead of time anymore just for those short bursts.

>"Yes, too many people can't bear making anything they sense to be a sacrifice on their part."

Sorry but I do not live to make sacrifices for the "benefit of everyone". I already left one country because of that. It was called USSR. And the first thing I did as soon as I could - got myself a car and traveled all over the places on my own.

My small software development company does not use cloud either. Self host and rented dedicated servers. Orders of magnitude cheaper that that cloud. I prefer to feed myself rather then keep filling pockets of FAANG and the likes.

But you are expecting everyone to make sacrifices for your benefit, because non-car drivers are significantly subsidising car drivers. Lets make car cost exactly what they should be then, things like lets make real-estate used for roads in cities go into rental costs for those roads (via taxes, road tolls etc.), lets price the environmental costs appropriately, including the health cost from noise etc. If you still want to pay for your car then, go ahead, but don't expect others to subsidise your living.

How can it be 'complete wilderness' if reachable by car? Isn't there some sort of infrastructure necessary in order to reach it by car which ultimately destroys nature?

Gravel / dirt road and then take canoe to some secluded spot. No one is around which to me is enough to call it "complete wilderness", does not need to be Ellesmere Island. No visible "destruction of nature" either.

Car centric infrastructure forces people to own cars.

And I don't know a ton of people that "buy" cars they can afford, they buy car payments they can afford. I just can't help but feel that breaking that cycle would be a societal good ( for people, sorry automakers).

And I buy used vans. Whet you know might not reflect generic situation.

>"Car centric infrastructure forces people to own cars."

Where? I live in Toronto and I certainly do not feel that I am forced to have a car.

And because I do not feel forced it deserves downvote. Fucking thought police.

Toronto where the previous mayor removed bike lanes, was caught reading a book whilst driving, and called cyclists "a pain in the ass"? That Toronto?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17914504

Yeah, that sounds a welcoming place.

I do not give a shit what our previous world famous lunatic said. I just state my personal experience and I ride my bike everywhere nearly every day.

Everywhere where daily amenities are too spread out and the streets are too dangerous for children and old people to cycle on them. That's most of the developed world outside of some very large cities.

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