I don’t foresee cars ever becoming unnecessary, since that’s the only feasible way to get to work without being severely limited in your choice of employers, and having little or no choice of employer would be feudalism in all but name.
That said, work isn’t the only place you need to go. Neighborhoods ought to include shops, restaurants, and the like, too. Here in suburban Oregon, that is already the case, and it’s quite convenient to be able to walk over to the nearby grocery store whenever I need something.
It may be true for US but in Europe lots of cities have functional public transport and are dense, so you aren’t limited in any way. Lots of people use trains here to get to the city, where I currently live, to work. So their commute is about 50 km but with train it is 30 min.
Yes public transport is network not single lanes, when done right you get of the train and have already bus waiting for you. It is not easy to implement these connections but not impossible.
I’d say that’s a very USA take; not having a car can lead to longer commute times, but it won’t severely curtail your job options. If the city has a decent public transportation network, many places will be within a 30 minute trip. If you extend that to 45 minutes, that can cover a significant amount of places.
I don’t foresee cars ever becoming unnecessary, since that’s the only feasible way to get to work without being severely limited in your choice of employers, and having little or no choice of employer would be feudalism in all but name.
That said, work isn’t the only place you need to go. Neighborhoods ought to include shops, restaurants, and the like, too. Here in suburban Oregon, that is already the case, and it’s quite convenient to be able to walk over to the nearby grocery store whenever I need something.
It may be true for US but in Europe lots of cities have functional public transport and are dense, so you aren’t limited in any way. Lots of people use trains here to get to the city, where I currently live, to work. So their commute is about 50 km but with train it is 30 min.
Does that not limit you to only working at places that happen to be near a train station?
Well you could take the bus / tram / subway too.
Yes public transport is network not single lanes, when done right you get of the train and have already bus waiting for you. It is not easy to implement these connections but not impossible.
I’d say that’s a very USA take; not having a car can lead to longer commute times, but it won’t severely curtail your job options. If the city has a decent public transportation network, many places will be within a 30 minute trip. If you extend that to 45 minutes, that can cover a significant amount of places.
The only person whose commute time I know off the top of my head right now commutes by car in 15~20 minutes, so 30~45 minutes is not great.
People spend far too much of their time working or commuting as it is. The last thing they need is even more commute time.