I believe that many of the negative misconceptions about a car-free lifestyle are rooted in attempting to conceive other modes as 1:1 replacements for cars. They are usually not!
I will illustrate this with the "private jet to Monaco" example.
— Laura Goodfellow 🚌🏃🏼♀️ (@transitrunner) August 19, 2019
While this is true in some areas, there’s basically nowhere that we visit in Florida that we could travel to sans a car. We couldn’t get to any of the state parks, most of the local parks, and we’d almost never be able to hike or explore. It would just not be possible. We’d be stuck at home all the time.
This is the case for about 90% of the US. The lifestyle she’s talking about works for people in about 10 urban areas in North America and that’s it.
Sure, we could change the system and make it work for more, which I am all for, but right now this deliberate asceticism would greatly impoverish my life and my experiences. As mentioned, we’d be stuck at home nearly all the time, or be forced to spend vast amounts on taxis or similar, while still unable to get to 90% of the places we go for recreation.
I like the ideas, but I see no signs of execution or the likelihood thereof anytime soon. Meanwhile, I am not going to make my life vastly worse and far more expensive to make some other person feel good. Not gonna happen. And that’s the impasse, isn’t it?