Upvote if you don’t have a car,
Downvote if you do.
No I’m not farming karma, there’s no counter on Lemmy. This is the only way to run a poll.
I have a car, but I don’t want to. My work or any interesting shopping is about 6 miles away, mostly uphill on a highway in a very desert-like area so I couldn’t comfortably bike, and the public transportation is practically nonexistent (and was recently cut to not run on the weekend at all).
I do take my bike most weekends when I can, though. It’s been a great experience.
driving is the absolute only way to get around my city so i have to have a car to live. planning on moving to a walkable city as soon as possible
just a heads up, this method of polling won’t account for people on instances without downvote turned on, like mine. hopefully we’re statistically insignificant enough not to skew your results
I have a car but I wish I had an alternative. In my city busses take so long I literally go faster by foot.
I might be wrong. But I think if cars were banned, we would have better public transportation.
Start with taxing cars wherever public transit is a reasonable alternative, then raise the rates annually, and pretty soon most cars will band themselves.
Just a pipe dream, of course…
I don’t have a car but I could afford one. It’s getting more and more tempting to get one. My husband and I are our mid 30’s and we all too often rely on friends and family for a lift. It feels likes like we’re not so much car free as carless.
I’ve never had a car but am considering it for the first time in my life, at least temporarily. My upcoming internship is at a school in a relatively rural village, and it’s technically under the 1.5 hours travel time my college promises, but only by 10 minutes. Compared to the travel time by car which is 35-45 minutes depending on the time of day. Even in a country as dense and non-car friendly as the Netherlands it still sucks ass to get anywhere more rural without a car.
I have three, I’m a car enthusiast. I want to enjoy my car without the entirety of society being required to own them to exist.
Even if the dream is achieved and taking my car is more expensive and slower than public transit (which it should be), I’d still drive most of the time because I actually enjoy it. I’d rather not share the road with people that also actually want to be there. It’d be a safer and more pleasant experience.
We did without one for ten years but bought a 12 year old hybrid last year because some essential journeys became impossibly unreliable and expensive by public transport (thanks to entirely deliberate government action).
We did have to hire cars occasionally before that to get stuff to the tip and for rare trips that couldn’t be done by public transport.
It doesn’t get used for trips we can still do by bus or bike but train prices for the routes we use have doubled since the pandemic and, if both of us are travelling, it’s often just not financially feasible any more.
We live where we live because public transport is excellent here (and are fortunate enough to have a choice). But the trains are no longer a realistic option a lot of the time.
It’s really sad how some of the government thinks removing public transport accessibility is beneficial.
They do. To their donors.
I have a car, it’s currently broken. I intend to sell it for scrap, but will likely need to get another one as my local infrastructure is not fit for purpose for anything but cars.
We moved to a big city and went from two cars down to one. I’m working on convincing my other half to go to zero cars. We don’t use it enough to justify the expense. An occasional road trip or big shopping run. We can easily (and far more cheaply) just rent a car when we want.
Make some kind of bet between you two. Like offer a nice dinner if you can save some money when going carless. And offer something in return if it’s actually more expensive, too.
Talk also about the convenience factor etc, those all matter.
Got rid of my car a month ago, and I’m happier without it.
Same here, I’m a true bus wanker now!
I do. If I didn’t it would take me 3 hours to get to work by bus and I don’t think I would be able to get a bus home. Assuming the busses are running which isn’t a guarantee, or 2 hours by bike. If I had the stamina to bike for that long and not get murdered on the road.
Would move into the town but that is completely unaffordable.
No car, I mainly get around by bike and public transportation… however I’m learning to drive.
Why? Public transportation here is getting less flexible, with more frequent strikes, timetables being spread out to make up for lack of staff, travel costs approaching levels similar to car ownership. Long distance travel that would have been really affordable and convenient before 2020 is a non-starter now sadly. When I moved here I could rely on a bus every 8-10 minutes… now its anywhere from 30min to 1 hour some days. At least we have live bus times so you can plan when to walk to the bus stop.
Once the costs and timetable get more realistic I’ll happily return to public transport, until then I’ll continue getting things done by bike, and learning to drive for long distance travel.
One Prius Prime I share with my wife. I commute by bike and public transit but having a family car is still very handy and my wife uses it to commute.
I have a car because I need to. And that’s the issue. 😁
Can’t downvote from my instance so this types of posts don’t really work on Lemmy. (I don’t have a car)
They work the best. Is there another solution?
The other way to do it is to have two comments, one with each poll option. The other upside is that if this “no” vote is more popular, your post doesn’t get buried.
They simply do not work at all.
35 years old and I’ve never learned to drive. I’ve just been lucky enough to never had the need. I’ve always lived either in the centre of a city or in a place where public transport just made more sense (London and Japan). I currently live in neither of those situations, but I get by just fine on my bicycle.
My wife drives, though only rarely, and she’s pushing me to get around to learning.
If you have access to one, it’s worth learning how to. The longer you wait, the more difficult it is to learn. 35 is by no means too late (I’m 36 without a license), but it’s also worth not waiting much more.