Seriously, yes. There is a certain kind of "Professional Online European" who loves to come into discussions and talk about how things are different "in Europe" based on their existence within the Grachtengordel of Amsterdam or their lives in one of the nice bits of Paris. If you want to know the domestic political result of that kind of attitude, and one that is quite related to the issues of who needs a car or not - the Giles Jaunes are the perfect example.

Even in those European countries that generally have good public transportation, it is simply not the case that nobody needs a car. Many Dutch people I know who commute to work on their bikes also have cars. Anywhere outside the Randstad in NL, not having a car can be majorly inconvenient. In large parts of Groningen, Drenthe or Friesland it will be a substantial barrier to employment. Try living in Workum without a car. I hope you like Jopie Huisman because you're about to become reaaal familiar with his drawings as a sole form of entertainment.

In France, a political elite (btw all of whom do have cars) imposed a fuel tax increase on a population of outer-suburban and rural lower-middle-class workers who have to drive to work. Great result that had.

I think this is important for Americans to understand because if they have pinned their understanding of the art of the possible in terms of what has been done in Europe they should understand that putting in a better bus system is not a panacea and that some places are structurally just not going to be reachable with public transport.

Aye. On point.

A lot of this is just bad policies, and bad economics. Concepts like carbon taxation were intended to govern inter-country problems and large corporations. Applied to consumers, they often amount to simple regional and income discrimination. Country people drive more because they need to, and "pay up or consume less," applied is both heartless and not very efficient anyway. People drive because they need to, and prices must be exorbitant before these policies can eventually drive out the less fortunate.

I don't think most europeans are that fussy about "how" compared to americans. Car size issues, hybrids or electrics are all fine.

Btw, we should be having more pan-european political discourse. These policies are just bad, and unpopular. The fact that they've been "the gold standard" for so long is 50% lack of a decent feedback loop.

> In some places (eg netherlands)

That's because Netherlands changed the country to not rely on cars. It used to rely on cars, just like most countries. It's still far from perfect; there's still loads of places where there are not enough options.

Car-only places is considered restrictive. Similarly, kids should be able to do things on their own. Seems nowadays kids rely on their parents to move them around. That's pretty crazy IMO.

Any other country could do the same. Also people in Netherlands complained that "government is going after cars", etc.

Sure. It's not like roads or tracks are a natural feature.

The problem arise when we "go after cars" without an alternative anywhere in sight. I'm pretty dubious of my government's (ireland) likelihood of achieving netherlands-like transport. I'm all for trying. But, the place to start is not by reducing rural car ownership. The reality is that electric cars will probably arrive before rural public transport... at least here.

In practice, there a lot of implicit and explicit anti-driving laws. Many/most of these take the form of economic "incentives." Most affect rural people more. Rural locals don't have much public transport. A lot of these policies are classist too. Changing vehicle standards affect old cars more, making driving unaffordable to poorer people. Same for petrol taxes. Implicit "policies" like allowing a broken insurance system also results in a lot of class discrimination.

In practice, in ireland, saying "you shouldn't own a car" is like saying you should move to dublin or "you shouldn't go anywhere." In cities it means "take the bus or cycle," but not everyone lives in a city.

Meanwhile, I didn't think it's fair that to have policies which essentially mean "poor people shouldn't drive," which many policies with a rural blindspot are.

I would be totally fine with severe anti-car policies in the city or anywhere alternatives exist.

The population density in the Netherlands is one of the highest in the world, higher than any American state and 14 times higher than the US as a whole. So public transportation infrastructure that makes sense in the Netherlands isn't necessarily going to be practical elsewhere.

While you are correct the Netherlands has a higher pop density it really doesn't matter, for a country as a whole.

See, Russia has a population density of 8.4/km2 (vs 33km2 in US).

But that doesn't stop Russian cities from building public transport. Just like how empty acreage and dessert wouldn't stop US cities from building decent public transport.

What matters is not the average density of the country, but the layouts of the cities.

A good example is NYC. According to your statement it shouldn't have public transport because the average of the country is too sparsely populated, but that doesn't really matter. Just like how the empty tundra in Russia doesn't prevent Moscow or St Peterburg from building public transport.

Indeed. You really have to look at settlement patterns and not just a single scalar density. What makes public transport difficult in the US is that suburbs are dense enough that a lot of people live there but not dense enough to put in efficient public transport. If you drew a histogram of the Russian population sorted by density, you would find that a very large % of the population lived in dense local areas and a relatively small population is spread over the vast rural parts of the country. Not even just tundra, even Russia West of the Urals is very sparsely populated for the most part.

And Canada has one of the lowest population densities, a tenth of the USA, and yet has considerably better public transit (though worse than most of Europe).

One major difference I noticed from the USA is that it's usually, at least in principle possible to get from any point A to any point B in a Canadian city over about 20,000 people, by public transit, because even small towns often have public transit systems in Canada. (It might take a couple hours, though.) In many US cities, it's simply not possible because there is no public transit system.

After all, in every developed country, most people live in cities. Government policy and funding seems to be most of the difference.

I'm not sure "technically runs a bus, which may or may not be practical to use" is the most useful metric here.

While I certainly agree there are substantial bright spots in parts of Canada for transit investment, there's also big and worsening issues.

Rural inter-city transit has been getting drastically worse out in much of country.

VIA Rail has mostly been in a long-term downward spiral of cuts/"service suspensions" outside the main Ontario/Quebec corridor.

Inter-city buses aren't much better. Recent years have had Greyhound giving up and quitting Western Canada, and Saskatchewan shutting down their inter-city bus company. The result being limited patchwork of services not coming anywhere close to the kind of service that used to be provided.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/29/canada-greyhou...

https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-one-y...

Having lived in both countries, I’m not sure there is that much of a difference. Pretty much all the large US cities have public transport. The only Canadian cities I’ve seen with something close to say NYC are Toronto and Montreal. Getting around mom Skytrain in Vancouver is doable, but painful from a lot of areas.

And of course Canada has one of the lowest population densities when you average the population across the swaths of uninhabited arctic. But 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border in a handful of cities.

Also, you just have to take reality as it exists to an extent. England's population density is high too, but public transport is what it is. They can make it better, if they can. We can't just look at population density, conclude that it could be like the netherlands and proceed as if it is. It isn't.

Regardless, reducing rural car ownership in most places means reducing quality of life. It also reduces economic well being. People have fewer employment options, can't access supermarkets and such...

The whole approach of "make driving expensive" as the main policy vehicle is heartless... The actual way it works is that only wealthier people can drive, and that driving is actually important to people's lives.

It's a totally different proposition in London and in the country. If England (scotland & Wales are more sparse) becomes the netherlands great... but losing your car without gaining regular bus routes is a genuine loss. People need to get around.

Some people tried to grab my young adult daughter.

Safe bet, if they had succeeded she would never have been seen again.

Human trafficking is alive and well in the United States.

Younger ones always go in pairs, and always with adult seeing them.

Crude we were out for a walk the Other day and one kid was several hundred feed in front of us. Car slowed down and was pulling up next to her. Car pulled away quickly when sibling came out of bushes.

May have been nothing, but still a good scare.

I'm dutch, I live in the center of a big city that is extremely bike friendly. At the same time, people are surprised I don't own a car, and I've been considering getting one.

We don't need a car here for most things. But it is still extremely convenient to have one.

Move out of the bigger cities, and things change even more. Bikes are popular, and often used. But very rarely are bikes and public transport able to replace a car. I'd guess like 10% of people go without a car because they don't need it. At the same time, I think almost everyone here will own a bike for just general purpose.

Yeah I know. Most of the people who comment about biking and transit in the netherlands seem to miss the fact that the dutch story is pretty moderate.

20 year olds in cities don't have cars. 40 year olds with kids generally do, and a lot depends on where exactly you live. The Netherlands does a nice job of providing multiple options. The train and bus links ing rural areas are especially impressive, compared to what we (ireland) have. But... it doesn't replace cars. Cars still exist. People use them, just less. It's moderate.

This applies to most of the Nordics as well; once you get outside city limits getting around becomes quite difficult unless you have a car. Once you get further out, it's simply not possible. Many areas simply lack access to public transport, and while a 20 km bike ride can be nice during summer, it's not really an option during winter.

On the other hand, one could live in Copenhagen or Stockholm for an entire lifetime without actually _needing_ a car.

I can imagine the same applies for much of Eastern Europe as well.