This is apparently in Columbus, Ohio – a pretty major city by any stretch of the imagination.
And yet there are people who rail (geddit?) against 15-minute cities and efficient public transit that ensures no one ever gets stuck like this.
Hell, just needing a jump start becsuse your battery died can be a PITA if you have to rely on strangers.
Columbus is special. It’s a 15 minute city by car outside rush hour. But gods help you if you don’t have a car. The bus comes like every hour.
I spent years there trying to convince people that it needs light rail
Looks like you had a really good light rail system up until the late '70s?
https://allcolumbusdata.com/rail-transportation-history/
I’m assuming Judge Doom got involved at that point and paved over the lines
That looks more like they had a role in the national rail lines and trams, before proposing a really good light rail system and continuously changing their minds to oppose it. Which is exactly what I’d always heard. “Rail is too expensive and difficult and it doesn’t work, we’ve tried and it keeps getting proposed and shot down”
Cars (like any technology under capitalism) are meant to keep people dependent, desperate, and exploitable.
This is naiive and dumb (like a lot of posts in this community).
If you drove to the grocery store, then you almost certainly have more groceries than are going to be comfortable to carry back by hand.
I mean if you can walk to the grocery store in a reasonable amount of time you’ll be able to divide those groceries over multiple visits and not have to deal with this.
Not to mention, cargo bikes are a thing.
Ah yes; the cargo bikes everyone carries in their car when they have to lug a ton of groceries home
Not just cargo bikes. I’ve got a folding bike (small apartment) with two panniers and a backpack. Sure it’s not car level but its pretty good for grabbing groceries.
And it should be noted, Columbus has a pretty bad food desert problem.
And if your cargo bike got a flat while you were at the grocery store? It’s nice to have friendly neighbours to help out.
Ah yes, the inevitable “I have no suggestions, but what if your suggestion doesn’t work???” scenario begins
I think they were trying to make an analogous situation for the car with a flat tire on the cargo bike, not saying that cargo bikes aren’t awesome
Thanks. Yeah, I think cargo bikes are awesome, but breakdowns can happen to anybody.
If you have the sense to get a cargo bike you almost certainly have the good sense to have a patch kit and a pump on hand for exactly that scenario. Also fixing a flat on a bike is orders of magnitude easier than fixing one on a car
Sure, I’m not here to disagree, just trying to make a charitable interpretation of their comment for the purpose of discussion. Maybe a badly bent rim is more analogous, so just pretend that’s the example used if that’s more helpful.
…which is much more likely in a walkable community where people actually see each other every day instead of locking themselves away in metal boxes.
It is certainly nice to have friendly neighbors as backup in any scenario, though most frequent cyclists keep a small repair kit on the bike that includes a patch kit. Bike flats happen more frequently than car flats but are almost always field serviceable in 5-10 minutes. It’s not uncommon for daily cyclists to be rolling on tubes with multiple patches.
I live next door to a grocery store, and a 2m walk from multiple green grocers. I live the walking grocery lifestyle.
But there are still situations where I have to drive to the store to pick up a large amount of supplies. Like say, when hosting a birthday party, or wanting to pick supplies up at a grocery store that doesn’t have exorbitant prices.
Because everyone has so much time. I have 3 hours just to go back and forth.
If it takes you 3 hours to walk a return trip to the grocery store, you don’t just live in run-of-the-mill car-centric design, you live in an absolute barren food-desert hellscape. Which is precisely the sort of thing people in this Community advocate against.
Define “grocery store”. If I wanted a loaf of bread and a couple of regular vegetables, I’d walk 5min down the road to the convenience store. If I wanted my weekly shop of supplies, it would be the supermarket a 15min drive away, and it would take several trips to do that by hand.
I mean, that’s certainly not a reasonable amount of time.
That is legitimately an insane person thing to say
Nobody in NYC can buy groceries because they don’t have cars. Cars are the only way to get groceries home.
We use rolly carts in NYC and make more frequent trips. It’s also not uncommon to stop by Trader Joe’s or the supermarket on your way home. The best carts are those with the weird tri-wheels that go up and down stairs.
Love the rolly carts. Lil old ladies pushing them home all over the outer boroughs. They’re actually what I was thinking about when I made the above sarcastic reply. I think most supermarkets sell them for like $10 or something.
They’re a little more expensive. Cheap ones are $20 or so at dollar stores, but the nice ones are $80+. It’s worth the small investment though
There’s a big difference between what’s “comfortable to carry back by hand” and “what’s feasible to carry to a bus stop 100 metres outside the store, and then 400 metres from where the bus drops you off to your home”. That’s if we’re assuming a situation where you did drive to the store, planning to drive home, but an emergency means you can’t drive the return leg.
But also, if you do have good public transport, it becomes much easier to adjust your schedule to more frequent, smaller shops, where it’s not just feasible but easy to carry the groceries. Or in a good city for cycling, to drop the groceries in your paniers, basket, or even full-on cargo bike.
Pffft. Amateur. Everyone knows if you can’t carry every bag you bought in one trip you are a failure.
Sure. It’s definitely that, and not that most North American cities are designed expressly to force you to drive even if you want a single cup of coffee or a sandwich or something.
Oh this case for sure 100% without a doubt has to prove out the point you’ve been obsessing over.
No possible way it could be a situation that contradicts your pre-conceived notion, adds nuance, or just isn’t really relevant to it. I mean what are the odds of that ever happening? /S
As I’ve said, I live in a walkable city near grocery stores, that still doesn’t eliminate the need to occasionally drive to one.
As someone who also does, quite frankly it does eliminate the * need * to
No, it doesn’t. It eliminates the need to for you, in your specific cases.
Weird how people on this sub seem incapable of imagining lives other than their own.
Fair enough. Of course with public transit you could send some of you home with some of the goods while one person waits for the tow truck.
Out of interest did you see the rest of the story? Looks like OOP deleted the tweet.
I did, it was a lovely little story about how the kid thought OP was a lot younger than she actually is, I think
In my country, most people who own a car are also members of a drivers’ club where you pay a membership fee in exchange for being able to call them for assistance in situations like this (they might repair or tow your car). Is that not a thing in the US?
It is, but they’re expensive, and since owning a car is already a pretty expensive necessity not everyone has it.
OK, in my country it’s about 100 euros for an entire year, ie much less expensive than many other expenses that come with owning a car.
It’s not terribly expensive. It costs like 2 tanks of gas a year. And you can usually sign up for AAA over the phone after you’ve already broken down on the side of the road. If you’re still financing your car, you probably already have roadside assistance. Expecting car owners/drivers to be financially prepared for a breakdown isn’t car-brained it’s just part of the social contract.
American drivers are required by law to purchase car insurance, and “roadside assistance” as it’s called is usually a mid or premium feature of said insurance
I see, car (liability) insurance is also mandatory here, but it’s a separate thing from automobile club membership.
You can call literally call anyone you know we all have cars here. If you don’t know anyone at all you can taxi or Uber. In smaller towns you may even be able to call the police non emergency number and get help from a community officer type employee who has a car and does minor non police related stuff. Many many many things would have to fail before you need to ask a stranger and even in that case you would be hard pressed to not find help within the first couple people you ask.
My point is that this entire situation is a massive systemic failure. You shouldn’t have to find yourself in a situation where your car breaking down means you’re stuck at the grocery store with no way to get home unless someone deigns to come and get you – hell, you shouldn’t even need to drive to get groceries, any well-designed city would have multiple grocery stores within a few blocks regardless of where you live, and a dense public transit network and/or cycling infrastructure so you can get to the ones that are farther away.
I think it is underappreciated how large the North American continent is with highly concentrated big cities, with vast portions of the land outside of larger cities without public transportation. This includes CA/US/MX as a general comment and not specifically this screenshot in question.
One may have “good” transit in Calgary, Edmonton and Red Deer but what about all those large spaces in between? It’s 1.5hrs driving from Calgary To Red Deer with many 10k person cities in the middle, etc. These villages do not have transit systems - cars are how North Americans travel when outside of larger cities. It’s why EV (lack of) range is a huge (non)selling point for some people depending where they live.
No, it isn’t underappreciated. It is severely overappreciated – i.e., it’s a bullshit excuse that’s been debunked over and over again.
FYI, misinformation and bad-faith rhetoric, including whataboutism, is uncivil and violates rule 1 of this community.
with vast portions of the land outside of larger cities without public transportation
I mean, yeah? That’s the OP’s point? That too much for North America consists of poorly-designed car-centric urban planning.
I mean, yeah? That’s the OP’s point? That too much for North America consists of poorly-designed car-centric urban planning.
Talk to me about the public transit options - besides the one bus that runs from Kalgoorlie to Esperance - in Norseman, WA.
I’m not sure what you mean. I didn’t hold out Australia as some bastion of urbanism. I simply reinforced OP’s point that North America is bad.
Australia is also terrible at this. It just wasn’t relevant to mention.
Your car will not break down, if you just walk to the grocery store.
That’s not an option for people who live in
goodfood deserts.And it is pretty sad, that people have to live like this. It takes me 10 minutes to walk to the store, 2 minutes by bike, or one bus stop.
Just fyi you got autocorrected (I swear, autocorrect feels like it’s more and more often these days changing from one correct word to a different word that’s grammatically correct but not what I wanted to say) from “food” to “good”.
Anyway, django’s point was the same as OP’s: that car-dependent urban design is bad for people. Food deserts are a feature of car dependency. They’re not a necessary feature (as in, it is possible to have car-dependent cities that don’t also have food desert), but by definition a 15-minute city, the thing this Community exists to advocate for, cannot be a food desert. A well-planned city makes it possible to get to a grocery store within a 15 minute walk or ride.
There can’t be food deserts in 15 minute cities.
Most people don’t live in those
yeah, that’s the problem
And pretty sad, to repeat the wording of the original post.
Uber exists. They could have easily spun up the app and called for a ride.
Buses also hit grocery stores or surrounding areas, often even in towns with limited public transit.
Uber exists. They could have easily spun up the app and called for a ride.
Clearly a single mom with two kids who can’t afford the upkeep on her car doesn’t have the money to spend on an Uber ride, or she would’ve done that already.
The bus network in and around Columbus, Ohio (which is most likely where this happened, based on OOP’s location) also doesn’t seem to be all that great – for all you know the nearest bus stop to the grocery store or to their house may well be kilometers away
For all you both know, apparently. You’re both arguing your side without much of a basis in fact…seems a little desperate.
Also AAA is very widely used to tow/get a ride when your car breaks down
Y’all wilding out. Uber, lyft, AAA - those are paid services. If your car is randomly breaking down in a parking lot, you probably don’t have a lot of money, people with money don’t drive unreliable cars. I mean sure, maybe they left the dome light on for hours, but I doubt it.
Yes its insane you can’t find affordable housing close to stores. Yes needing a car sucks.
I mean, parts fail. I had a new battery shit out on me after a couple of months, despite keeping up with regular maintenance. Everyone in this thread is running with completely unverified ideas about why the event happened the way it did, with no supporting evidence and then lashing out at others for disagreeing. Y’all all trying to verify your biases.
Surprisingly carbrained for a community called fuckcars, this place
Breaking up an echo chamber is rarely a bad thing. Life is full of nuance.
Doesn’t an AAA membership cost money and have limits on how often you can use it each year
