Having lived in both Europe and the US, yes you are correct that owning a vehicle does make many things more practical.

On the flip side, being required to drive everywhere because there is no transit option is a negative impact on quality of life, especially in cities.

Ultimately it comes down to how good the transit infrastructure is. Some cities make transit feel effortless and get you anywhere you need to be; others make you battle your way through it and lose a lot of time.

The solution to this is a car sharing programme. You pay your membership and get access to a fleet of cars and vans that you can pickup whenever you like. Tax, insurance, and petrol is all covered in the price (usually) and you can pick the right vehicle size for the trip you're making (no need to own a truck for the rare occasions you need to move large items).

Obviously not a solution for every situation, but if you only need a car occasionally then it would likely work out well.

The "Not Just Bikes" video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OObwqreAJ48

Personally I only drive once a week at most, but there isn't a car share scheme locally. If one started up that was cost effective and convinient enough then I'd consider it.

owning a car is almost always the convenient option, especially if you disregard all the downsides like the (monetary) cost to one personally and to society at large. i agree that living car-free is not practical for many, mostly those living in rural or suburban areas, but even here the car is part of the problem, having made this possible in the first place for people who shouldn't even live there. we've got to break the self-reinforcing loop on car dependency, starting with the cities. we'll lose a lot of convenience and some things will be unreasonably hard compared to before but i think it's the future and it'll pay off in increased quality of life.

Maybe some sort of distance-dependent taxation on cars may be a more viable option, so that people can enjoy private commutes when they absolutely need it, while still pushing people towards public transport.

I had opposite experience: not owning a car and only on occasion renting a car, using a taxi etc. made my life in big cities much easier.

OK, but what I love about being here is that I, personally, haven't driven a car here in two months. And there has literally never been a time where we said to ourselves "we could do it but only if we had a car" because the rare occasion where that comes up is what car-share (or van-share, etc.) is for.

And that way I don't have to screw around with taking my own car to the shop for (oil changes, tyres, brake jobs, whatever), or having it inspected annually, or shopping around for insurance, etc.

My original comment was about removing cars from the city centre, which is great for people who are _not_ in cars because, of course, drivers kill a lot of people and biking to school with your 6 year old is utterly TERRIFYING when someone decides to cut in front of them in a giant truck. Cars make the world worse for everyone around them (including those who are in _other_ cars!) and it's kinda rude to use one in a city.

That's not how I interpret that chart.

The title says "Travel Distance per person day by main travel mode for urban mobility on all days". That is ambiguous, but suggests that the numbers are actually the share of the travel distance for peoples' main mode, meaning that people who need to travel further in a day tend to have cars, to an overwhelming extent.

That is still a coherent situation in a world where most people don't use cars because their daily travel needs only involve short distances (e.g. because they live in an area where all of their needs are met within a short range).

May I hazard a guess that you love somewhere on the San Andreas fault?

I don't see how me wanting car-free areas in the centre of dense cities impinges on your ability to live in the sticks.

I think you're reading too much into your parent's comment.

I personally am pro limiting cars. But, if you have to go further than 10km or move a load of stuff around, go ahead, by all means.

My personal experience with cars is daily hours of gridlock hell, with drivers screaming, cutting you off, and being generally nasty. Car sickness from the stop start stop start as bonus. I much rather take the train, do some laptop stuff or read a book, and end up 20 minutes later. I do think we in western europe overoptimized for cars, to the detriment of our children and our health. I do think an SUV generally is a sign of someone being dangerous for everybody else, with not much upside.

But hollywood movies show huge roads with, presumably, hours of absolutely nothing. I don't think I've ever seen more than 1 whole km with nothing but roads and fields, but I can't blame anyone for owning a car in that kind of landscape.

People have vastly different experiences, and equally different needs. Car fanatics, car haters, and everyone in between should try to acknowledge and respect that.

By all means, those who are downvoting, explain the specific thing that's wrong about what I commented. Deciding from specific, circumstantial privilege about the wrongness or rightness of others necessities in the wider world is indeed an inherently shitty habit. So too is ignoring one's own hypocrisy in deriding certain broadly used things.

My proposal for the middle of cities is not relevant to what you're saying here.

Before living here I was in a field in rural Ireland, in case you think I lack perspective.

A priori, people who don't drive in cities are not affected by car bans in cities.

It's such a shame. Walking through the no-car areas that popped up during covid was soooooooooo nice. I didn't even have to think about the possibility of getting hit by a giant truck! Oh well, the 3 inch curb will keep me safe I guess.

~50% of Americans are sedentary and obese.

They're obviously going to want cars. Walking & cycling are not options (see sedentary).

It's pretty expensive for the city to do that. Tons of signage needs to be removed and replaced with every expansion, and if you choose automated enforcement you need to install lots of new cameras and posts too.

Easier to start with one big zone over the whole city, and keep making the requirements stricter automatically. Eg. Take the cars age, add the current year, subtract the cars rated mpg, add 10 if it's a diesel. If the result is 2050 or more, there is a fine of $20/day if you drive it.

Indeed!

https://www.citiesforum.org/news/superblock-superilla-barcel...

https://www.barcelona.cat/pla-superilla-barcelona/en

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/9/18273894...

(Barcelona superblocks)

Well.. There are lots of roads that closed totally for cars over the years, and quite a few after COVID.

Do people really go to NK by car?!

> not-interested in having a full Western-life experience (which necessitates having a car)

American life experience, you mean? It's totally OK to live in Stockholm, as well as in many other cities in Europe, without a car. Besides, you make it sound like EVs are more expensive than ICE cars. They surely are, but the difference is not that much and subsidies cover a part of it.

How does Western life experience necessitate a car? Big cities don’t require a car at all.

> having a full Western-life experience (which necessitates having a car)

This is just not accurate.

Generally people with children dont live in the center of Stockholm and a high % already drive electric. Biggest change is that delivery/transport services have to find alternatives and Im really happy about that, everyone benifit from removing "heavy loud polluting traffic" in the city.

> not-interested in having a full Western-life experience (which necessitates having a car)

Wait, what's this "Western-life experience" I'm missing out on by not having a car? Having lived in Western Europe all my life, I seem to have missed the memo about this.

You don't need a car in central stockholm. Poor people wouldn't even have a petrol car. Public transport is much cheaper and highly convenient.

Do you actually have any evidence that this will happen? Or is this just an evidence-free rant?

I don't think this deserves to be downvoted. Alas the "you'll own nothing and you'll like it" / "you'll go where we say according to our schedules and you'll like it" crowd is strong here.

You're right of course that not having a car self-evidently limits the things you can do (yes even in your country that has flawless transit that is free and goes "everywhere"), and is even worse if you have children. Want to go to the country to relax? You're limited to the places you can get by transit. Kid wants to do something that isn't near a transit stop? Too bad. Visiting relatives outside the city? Better hope you can get a ride from the nearest transit stop. The list goes on and on.

Being able to walk places is desirable, but it's best when you can walk/bike and drive a car if you need to.

Around here the Clarity PHEV are seen daily (I own one). I don't know if that was because of subsidies/incentives or what. In my use case the ~35 mile EV range is perfect and like you I experience the engine running only when the computer commands maintenance cycles, or if I take a long trip and it flips into HV mode. Considering the embodied energy of a full EV especially in the year that I bought the Clarity, I still think it was the right choice at the time.

No.

Yeah, the obvious solution is to make smaller lighter vehicles. We’ve built EVs in the image of ICE vehicles, so they’re big and heavy.

There are a lot of people who are driving an EV with several hundred miles of range to work less than 20 miles away. That extra order of magnitude of battery capacity is a lot of extra weight. Imagine I’d you could instead rent a battery trailer for those occasional long trips?

I think e-bikes are the way to go, tho perhaps we can define a new and smaller class of vehicles with cabins and/or inherent stability for those unable to ride.

EVs don't use brakes as much as ICE vehicles because of automatic regenerative braking. This converts your forward momentum back into electricity. ICE vehicles use engine braking or brake pads. Both of those are much worse in more ways than one.

You might want to cross that off your list of things to complain about when talking about EVs.

There is absolutely no way that brake wear is higher for EVs. I can practically drive my entire morning commute without braking a single time in my Bolt. Any study that says otherwise is seriously flawed or ignoring one pedal driving.

Electric cars are good for both aggressive driving (lots acceleration and brake use), and also for energy-efficient driving (almost no use of brakes, slow down by converting speed back to electricity). I wonder which one dominates in city driving in practice?

What if EVs (actually, any cars) were programmed for geofencing where acceleration is limited in pedestrian-focused areas based on municipal ordinances? Braking wouldn't be limited (so this is more directly reducing tire particles than brake dust) but I think a lot of city braking would naturally fall off a cliff without excessive acceleration.

That's probably true if you only look at the cars themselves, but don't forget that getting petrol in cars requires a huge petrochemical industry, from oil wells to refineries, pipelines and pumping stations. Each of those steps also emits all kinds of crap. The same is true for electricity from many sources, but overall I suspect EVs come out somewhat better than petrol cars.

Of course, cars are generally too big, too heavy, and too fast. Addressing those issues would benefit everyone, regardless of fuel source.

Regenerative braking drastically reduces brake pad wear. At full regenerative braking, some EVs can decelerate at ~0.4G using only the engine.

Another (expensive) solution would be carbon ceramic brakes. These used to be for "race cars" but people found that they are too expensive to replace if you track the car, so people use iron brakes on the track, and carbon ceramics on the street. Carbon ceramics will last 100k+ miles under normal street use and they keep the wheels free of brake dust.

This is a common misinformation campaign against EVs. First of all, EVs use far less brake material than gas cars. E.g. Most Teslas run the same pads for 100k+ miles due to strong regenerative braking, for me it was triple the longevity of brake pads on my Audi.

As for the tire emissions, you are likely quoting the worst case scenario that was devised by emissionsanalytics. The reality is, that was a worst case scenario, if you actually saw tire wear that was significantly more polluting than traditional cars you would have tires that go bald in a very short period of time.

For example, the Micheline Pilot Sport all seasons that come on the Tesla Model 3 are rated for 45k miles, but typically get around 35-40k miles depending on driving habits. That is only 13-26% more tread loss depending on driving style. So how is it possible the tires are losing significantly more tread (and as a consequence, polluting more) but also lasting a long time?

This is a misleading whataboutism.

EVs use primarily regen for braking, so they contribute almost no brake wear. And that isn't even a problem.

It matters what is emitted. Tire wear particles are relatively large, and don't stay in the air.

Anti-EV disinformation uses the trick of counting pollution by weight, which completely discounts gaseous emissions, which is the real pollution that people breathe in.

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So I guess the imported soy lattes of those who made the rule changes are going to have a price increase due to delivery companies that need to upgrade their fleet. ;D

What standard means of measure are you referring to exactly?

I guess time will tell, but if you look at statistics many country side smaller cities are growing when in the past they were shrinking for a really long time. The wind is vänding.

Usually because they are too small but that will also force everyone to buy new cars which isn't exactly ideal for the climate or the economy of these people affected. Cars in Sweden already cost like the double amount of a car in the US.

I live quite far from Stockholm and commute there by train. My office is just outside of the zone.

Most people I know at work own a car, but no one drives to work. Why would they?

Seems like people driving in downtown Stockholm are the kind of people that can afford EVs anyway. (Of course, disabled people etc. But they are also covered by the new rules.)

What could possibly be more rational than designing cities for people, rather than cars, and pushing society away from petrol cars?

"Pretty fine"? More like world class considering it's a city of just ~2m.

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Not at all. Anywhere further out like Nacka or Täby are nightmares to get to. Or if neither start nor destination is in the inner city. Or if it's after ~1AM. Or if service in your area is havily reduced (or shut down entirely!) because MTR can't be bothered to respect their drivers. Or if you're in an Arriva area, period.

Maybe it looks brilliant if you're used to some US shithole. But even at its best it can't hold a candle to somewhere like the Copenhagen metro. And even that pales when compared to the trusty car that will take you from anywhere, to anywhere, whenever you want.

Source: lived in Stockholm for 8 years so far, half of which were carless.

I guess, though there’s a lot more money at stake. The US federal government is probably the most powerful bureaucracy in human history (and certainly among the biggest). I trust my local and state governments way more. But I wouldn’t trust them to run the whole country. Scale seems to matter a lot.

The huge oil reserves and tiny population make it much easier to give everyone a good quality of life...

It also masks the effects of inefficient decisionmaking.

But those countries are socialist hell holes! /s

Of course they are not, and trusting the government to do the right thing isn't too bad a position neither. After, we vote for them.

Do you think that conspiring doesn't occur? Do you think the media will inform you about what is going on at a supra-national level?