how do their children walk to school if there’s no bloody paths? Come on.

They don't. There is a reason why kids are so desperate to get a driver's license, as before they do they are effectively trapped in their house if they are unlucky enough to live away from transit (Or even if they are they are still somewhat trapped). Before then they are driven to school and to activities. That is where the stereotype of the "Soccer mom" comes from.

Local government should be run out of office for endangering the kids like that, nevermind everyone else.

There is a perception that walking is inherently dangerous and for the poor, so people would get run out of office for trying to fix things. In Canada most cities have sidewalks to most places, but not to wealthier neighbourhoods.

I mean… how do wheelchair users etc get around? Christ.

Most of the bigger busses here can 'kneel' to let people on if need be, and if they live far from transit then they can schedule special busses to pick them up. The trains are also very good on accessibility. All of this is in a city with fairly well funded transit, in most cities and towns they are completely dependent on others to drive them around.

https://www.calgarytransit.com/content/transit/en/home/calgary-transit-access.html

It just isnt realistic to have public transit in webs of suburbs that brings you to islands of stores that are only accessible by road.

Almost like that's the point (and not entirely US-exclusive anyway)

Hey, we're working on it. I'm in Seattle and we're doing better than most in the country. People are coming around.

There's a woman from a town in Québec that had CPS called on her because she is using a cargo bike to carry her kids around.

Story in French: https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2022-06-20/signalee-a-la-dpj-a-cause-de-son-velo-cargo.php

At least in the US, there is no activity that is more likely to result in an interaction with cops than driving.

Where I live the roads have shoulders that are roughly 6-12” from where the pavement stops, which is usually terrain that is both difficult/impossible to ride on and privately owned. These are holdovers from carriage/wagon roads during like “founding America” times (yeah Pennsylvania) and expansion would require a great deal of money, property easements, etc, so it just isn’t done.

A random spot from google street view (because I don’t need some geoguesser nerd doxxing me). The state is plagued with this and the further east you go the more you get hills, stone walls, etc right against the edge of the road.

These are also mostly back roads and as a result are not really monitored well by police or anything so drivers go absolutely wild on them, especially in rural areas. Where I live there is a T intersection that has accidents somewhat often because people will go down the (35mph) rural road insanely fast during the night, like highway speeds (70+mph). Then all of a sudden the road stops and it’s either a 90 degree left or right turn, which they fail. Sometimes they die.

All the road signs are shot up too because redneck teens and young adults drive drunk at night and shoot signs, which is a thing that coal roller types do for fun apparently.

To walk or bike to the nearest grocery store isn’t terribly far, ~3 miles, and the nearest bus stop is ~5.5, but the path there is a death trap

I hate it here

Yeah, I mapped my public transit commute out one time. For starters, it’s complicated because Google/Apple/Waze/etc have the public transit option greyed out. Like it’s not even an option. If I try, Google suggests getting a Lyft. Which is really just saying “lol get a car, scrub.” I wish I were making this shit up:

Here’s a quick visual of my daily drive, versus the public transit route I would have to take:

So my commute starts with me biking 20 minutes away from work, to get to the nearest bus stop. Then I take a 20 minutes bus ride to the nearest rail hub. Then I take a commuter rail south-south-west for an hour, to get to the connecting line. Then I make a connection. The rail times rarely line up, so I’d probably have to wait at the station for ~15 minutes for the connection. Then I take the second rail line 45 minutes northwest.

But here’s where I run into my next problem… My house is serviced by one public transit system, and my job is serviced my another entirely separate transit system. Due to local politicians in the different cities not getting along, the two systems don’t connect. So now I need to bike 20 minutes north, to get from the northernmost station in one transit system, to the southernmost station in the other. Then I take another train 20 minutes north. Finally, I have about a 10 minute bike ride to get from the train station to my job.

All together, that’s ~50 minutes biking, ~20 minutes on a bus, and a little over 120 minutes split across three different trains. Plus the waiting time in between each connection, because the trains I need only run every 15-20 minutes. Bare minimum, I’m looking at around 3.5 hours for public transit… Or I can just take the highway 10 minutes west.

“But wait, you have walking and biking options! You could do those instead! The biking option in your screenshot is only 54 minutes!”

While this may be true on paper, I’d like to refer you to the “I had to go 2 hours out of my way to avoid certain death” panel in the posted comic. That 54 minute bike route is on a 70 MPH two lane highway, with no shoulder or sidewalk. I’d be dead before I was even halfway there.

“So take an alternate route?”

That giant loop I listed earlier is the alternate route. That 10 minute highway route cuts through a nature preserve. There are no other roads or paths parallel to it. You either take the highway, or you go all the way around.

I can’t even legally reach my grocery store without a car. I have to cross that same highway to get to the store, and there is no sidewalk that crosses it. So I’d need to break the law to walk to the grocery store.

This kind of design sounds completely insane. You could walk half way to Cockfosters along the Piccadilly line in that time. Any other city I can think of here you could walk the entire diameter of the city within 3 hours.

I don't even need public transport because I live in a town, usually quicker to walk and always quicker to cycle compared to waiting for a bus. Not sure if its better to swim than take the ferry, maybe I need an amphibious bike?

I get irritated when my wife suggests driving to the grocery store I can reach on foot in 13 min. Aside from the occasional big haul, where a car is really handy, I just feel like the car doesn't really save much time and effort.

Most people can't even really afford their car. They are reducing their quality of life, home ownership, putting off any hope of retirement, etc for an object that has a shorter lifespan than most pets.

Of course they want you to do the same. They need constant justification for staying on this treadmill. The fact that all that time and money is being wasted, is hard on the ego. Especially for anyone that claims they live a frugal life.

I honestly miss when that was my life.

If it's a US road it's also much much too wide and much too fast. The country is designed to kill people who aren't in cars.

Carry a brick and make eye contact with anyone in a car. Crossing the road gets much easier.

Since the 90's american cities have been successfully passing ballot initiatives to raise their own taxes to fund transit. They don't always pass but the tide has been slowly, painfully slowly turning for a while now.