Instead, here’s a plea to car-having readers who do not wish to live as I do: understand that your car is a luxury. Understand that when you get in your car to run a ten-minute errand, the same errand might take someone without a car two hours on the bus. When you turn your key in the ignition, please feel the same sense of wonder and good fortune that I feel every time I take my dirty clothes down to the basement instead of hauling them to the laundromat: what a lucky person I am to not only live in a world where someone was smart enough to invent this thing that makes my life easier, but that I, by some additional happenstance of good fortune, can have one.
via Not Crazy Just Resentful: On Being Car Free by Choice in Cleveland | Rust Wire
There’s a similar pattern here in Calgary (without the 30% poverty rate, and depopulated city – we’re on the other side of that curve, in a booming city that’s growing faster than anyone can keep up), where it’s normal to hop in the car and drive at 110km/h on a shiny new ring road, to travel 50km to walk around a sprawling rural shopping centre. We take cars (and the way they make distance and sprawl seem normal) for granted.
Now that I’m not driving (again), this is all coming back in a hurry. Things I can’t do with Evan on the weekends, because it’s not feasible to get there in time, without dedicating the day to travel via public transportation. Now that spring is nearly here, we’ll be able to ride our bikes to more places, but even that won’t get us to many of the places he needs to get to…
I can’t stand public transportation. It’s slow, crowded, dangerous and dirty.
On Calgary’s C-Train. I had a guy try and black jack me once from behind on the c-train platform. because he thought i looked at him funny, another incident where someone tried to strangle me for my wallet on the train.. Both times thankfully unsuccessful.
Before I had my own means of conveyance I had been panhandled andharassed by all manner of low life’s. I’ve seen the C-Train platforms and trains used as public toilets more times than I want to remember
The system is filthy unhygienic. I’ve picked up more colds and flus riding a bus or train and from people who ride the bus or trains.
To juxtapose, my car is personal freedom and its worth the cost. It’s worth staying healthy, its worth being able to haul what I need around and the personal safety. I have access to the world, my car can literally go anywhere as roads go everywhere and I’ve taken it everywhere. Its my sanctuary, a place to chat with and transport my friends, a means to transport a date or simply a place to be alone. When my family comes in from out of town, I can give them rides or even let them borrow it and know they can travel safe.
My car is a tool, it gets me to work, helps me make money, helps me move, run my errands, stores my stuff and helps me explore.
Leftists hate cars because they don’t believe people should have freedom of mobility. Automobiles are the ultimate representative of that freedom.
I don’t hate cars (I own two of them), nor mobility. What I resent is a city that has sprawled to the point that it’s not feasible to get around without needing a car. Rightists are against socialism, but they seem to be OK with multi-billion-dollar road projects and tax breaks to oil companies so they can afford gas to drive 50km each way to work.
This isn’t a left/right thing. This is an economic and social thing. Or, look at it as a sovereignty issue – we are reliant on foreign oil (tar sands don’t produce all that we need, and much of it is exported to china), so our reliance on driving for everything means we are dependent on stable and efficient access to foreign oil. Which means that we, as a country, are beholden to many other parties if we want to maintain our current way of life.
Or, we can become less dependent on oil. One way to do that is to reduce the distance that we have to drive.