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A researcher asked 10 people to go car-free for 20 days. None wanted to continue
(www.brisbanetimes.com.au)
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Ive been car free my entire life and I will continue to do so for the rest of my life
Or until you start a family.
Also you, probably: "There are no atheists in foxholes"
Ah yes, I forgot it's impossible to ride public transport with kids...
Public transport has routes and stop where they are planned to stop.
Maybe you're lucky and it will not be far from every of many places you have to be that kids can walk the rest of the way.
I knew 2 people who definitely wouldn't get a car after getting a kid.
First one got a car almost immediately because difficult.
Second one took about a year. She ran out of people to guilt people in helping the poor single mom.
Our systems are not perfect, you can ask people in wheelchairs how difficult they have it to get around.
And I see a lot of cargo bikes now, sometimes with 3 kids.
All great in theory.
But our bike paths were not designed for these relatively huge things. It creates dangerous situations.
Not to mention how fast they can go since all of them are electric.
My wife insisted I get a driver's license when we had kids, because she didn't want to be the only one taking them everywhere. Usually I'm the one taking them places. And still on my bike or by public transport most of the time.
I'm car free with 2 kids. Everyone thinks it's harder, like kids like driving in traffic. No, it's not. We do local things or get public transport. No parking hassles.fine to have a drink with lunch.
yeah, having kids in sports would be insane without a car. Practice is in two separate towns, multiple times a week, real meets are in other major cities.
You couldn't get them to where they need to be with US public transport.
We got a bigger car than I would like because my stepdaughter decided that she wanted to be a hockey goalie. 🙈
we get it, you're rich
Why do kids have to go to different cities to play? There are enough kids in nearby schools
Maybe in a big city. The district I worked the most for was big enough that most matches were within the district. But when you think about most small towns, which maybe have one or two high schools, that’s not going to be true at all.
Even with that - are the nearby schools the same division? Lots of sporting leagues have restrictions on who can play who (bigger schools playing bigger schools instead of smaller ones, an attempt to be fair usually).
Heck, even leaving sports out I drove an hour out for a FIRST tournament recently.
Small towns almost always need personal transport. But the definition of a small town in US is much bigger than most other developed places (my experience is EU, SKorea, Japan)
If it's a small town, there's not going to be many big or small schools. Why such a weird system 😅
If significant travel is required, the school should organise travel and stay. Unless the kid is participating in state level at U-12, there is no significant travel for play in Japan and Germany (for popular sports). The kid is a kid afterall. And study is also important
This is the type of town that I had in mind when I was writing my comment..
Closest high school is Elk City, which you have to drive to, on the interstate. There is no public transit anywhere on this map.
When I was in high school, our track team all met at the high school and got on a bus to the other schools matches, often they were long rides. However, the school provided the bus transpo. I think that was true for all the HS sports leagues. I think the same occurred for the middle school. The elementary school? I don't know, I don't think they had inter-school sports. Mostly kids were in local leagues where businesses sponsored teams and they played in local parks. (At least that was how it was in a village I lived in Long Island. We had a few ballfields and just rotated through them. For winter sports like basketball, they used the church gyms and local rec center. Believe me, my parents never drove us to any activity other than a school drop off.
i have a family. living with a small child in an american city without a car is entirely possible. you lose the ability to go out (either to city or to nature) but with a small child you don't have time to do that anyway so you might as well pay more to live closer to your job. alternative is paying the difference in rent for a car loan and loosing the time you don't have while sitting in traffic. big caveat: this works only if you earn enough to be able to afford living close to a city center in the first place. also, it is still way less comfortable than a life in a developed european city.
Why do you have to take an expensive loan to get a car? Is there no used car market in US? I live in a bit different reality, and here there's thriving market at any price tag. You have to do the research, pay for paint thickness check to ensure car didn't get wrapped around a tree, but getting very cheap used car to drive your ass from point A to point B is absolutely a thing.
There is, but prices on anything that doesn't require constant repairs is still fairly expensive.
Nah US has used cars, got mine for like $6000 a few years ago when prices were kinda high.