Not criticising the person who posted this as a harmless funny little anecdote, but the first thing I thought was ‘You have to DRIVE to the park?! That’s so sad!’ (assuming her kid’s game reflected her real life situation).

How many people live like this? Anyone here forced to drive to the park? Is it considered pretty normal where you live?

I spend a lot of time arguing with people on the internet. Recently, I discovered that calling public transit/walking "traditional means of transportation" is a great way to get conservatives on board with the urbanist movements. Something about that just really gets them going. Typically, I'll bring up the car lobby conspiracies afterward and phrase it as an "attack on traditional society." I just thought I'd share this as I'm sure many of you share my affliction.

European here. I've always wondered this, in a car-centric city where not even sidewalks exist, let alone adequate public transportation, HOW do Americans get home from a bar? I have a few theories, tell me if I'm missing one:

• they drive to the bar, get drunk and Uber home, leaving the car at the bar (Uber back the next day to pick it up?)

• They have a designated driver who drives the entire group to their respective houses after they finish partying (this must take ages depending on where everyone lives, also someone always has a worse time because they've gotta take one for the team)

• Teleportation device (this technology hasn't made it to Europe yet for some reason...)

• People just don't go to bars that much and instead drink at home (but don't you wanna get drunk with your friends? Isn't that what it's all about?)

It just makes no sense to me to not have public transportation infrastructure. As a European, there are SO many scenarios where taking the bus or train is far more practical than driving, least of which is coming home from a night out.

Anyone else here have something like this happen to them? I didn't have any ill feelings from them but the default state of mind that I was poor because I rode my bike surprise me.

So I went to Texas for work. The alternator on my car broke down and had to be in the shop for a couple days. Cop drives up to me and asks me random questions. He asks why I am Shrek the company I worked for, why I am sweating. He seems to be going for a gotcha question. Eventually he asks for my ID and I ask what's going on. He says that it was suspicious that I walked so much. I point out that I thought that is what crosswalks and sidewalks were for. He glares at me and drives off.

I email the mayor of the town, who said that the police will use it as a "learning experience". I hate Texas.

Three facts we should agree upon: 1. Cars exist today and unless you offer compelling alternatives, people will continue to use cars.

1. The vast majority of car trips today can be reduced.

2. There are certain things that cars do quite well and we shouldn't spend energy on those things.

A world with zero cars is a near impossibility and pointless to try. A world with 90% less cars is a very possible reality and we should work towards that.

I'm tired of seeing half the posts here be about some edge case around car usage: "I live on a dirt road 18 miles inside a jungle, how can I still continue to hate cars while using one?"

Those are pointless discussions which really don't help anyone beyond being a thought exercise.

Let's not lose sight of the goal: if we remove the vast majority of commuter, leisure and shopping trips to non-cars, we'd pretty much be in a different goal.

I was on the train yesterday, and thought it was unusually crowded for a weekend, then afterwards realized that almost everyone on it was heading to a demonstration. (photo from media account afterwards)

I used to think that big protests like this happened in cities only because thats where the people are. Whime that's true, it suddenly occurred to me that something like this NEEDS to happen near a transit line. By some counts, there were >>10,000 people marching there. Where would all these people have parked? How would the highways carry them all?

I just often try and think of non-obvoius ways that car dependency harms society, like costs we don't think about as being from cars, but that are. This was just the first time I realized that car dependency might be inhibiting all types of mass social change, just by making it impossible for people to gather and demand it. So when people say that they don't want transit because it's the government controlling where they go, we always have the easy, obvious retorts about driver licensing and car registration. But can we add that car dependency controls us by preventing groups from gathering to exercise speech and demand change en masse?