Cycling isn't legitimate transportation...apparently
The person on the left is carrying bags, the one in orange is a delivery driver and a couple of people are wearing backpacks. Aside from car brained, Damaris is also blind.
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Don't remember where I heard it first, but I always love to hear it.
"Whenever someone brings up bikes, suddenly everyone needs to move their refrigerator 100 miles in the rain"
The solution? Rental vans...
It's like people think they need mega trucks for the time once a year or less that they have to move a couch.
"But what about when I have to haul wood for my yearly porch renovation?"
"Rent a fucking truck!"
Have it delivered by the people selling you the wood.
"That's so expensive!", having big goods delivered costs a fraction of maintaining your own car...
In this vein, I saw a comment on Lemmy that speaks to this. I'm paraphrasing but it really woke me up. The person said that Americans choose on edge cases and not standard use case. I realized I felt that way about ICE cars vs EV and I am a cyclist. It is amazing how we can have blinders on.
It's weird because all, and i mean ALL, furniture and electronic shop in my country will do delivery for you, most even do it for FREE.
Then there's 3rd party delivery service via an app.
or hitch a trailer...
I'm gonna steal that.
You're living up to your name, lol 😉
I'd gladly remove every car from the roads that is not carrying a sofa, table or desk.
I'm even willing to add "large amounts of water & a big ladder, or sick/injured people" to that list.
They already move an entire sofa, audiovisual center and HVAC.
Yea, car congestion isn’t about industrial transport, it’s about personal transport. All of the people commuting to/from work etc in single person occupied tanks.
Anyways...
Holy leg day
That's awesome
TIL driving to and from work is "recreational" unless you have a TV or something in the back of your car.
He didn't make it to the second semester of high school economics where he would have learned that labor is a service.
The bike in front literally has shopping bags hanging from the handles. Fucking clown take
And also someone sitting on the back of the bike.
Skill issue.
The Dutch absolutely use bikes to carry goods.
I've seen people with TVs on their bike. I've seen them with multiple crates of beer on the handlebars (kingsnight).
I saw three people on one (regular) bike.
Also these:
Yup and if we really NEED to transport big things, sure, we might need a van. But that's probably a once every once every year thing max.
You can stack at least 3 crates on the back of the bike if you have a bag carrier, 2 otherwise. Then 1 or 2 on the bar between your legs, and 1 on the steering bar, or 2 if you also have a bag carrier there.
Ebike recommended if they're full, but it's way doable when bringing them back to the store.
I'm sure that works well where it's flat. Try that in a city with tons of hills and you're gonna have a much harder time.
Ebikes can take a lot of the pain out of that. They're very powerful now.
And most cities are very flat.
I live in the very non flat south East of the Netherlands. We still do everything on bike. Groceries, mail, like 4 children while carrying groceries and being on the phone.
When I used to be on twitter and in response to idiotic comments like that, I would post the video of the guy cycling with a fridge on his back, one of someone moving a piano, several tradesmen that quit their vans to use cargo bikes, the pedal cab company in London (proper cargo bikes not the shitty tourist things) and the mother of 6 from Portland that had a cargo bike to take them all to school.
It used to shut them up
"Well I don't want to bike with a fridge on my back!"
"Oh I was never suggesting you could."
No, I was definitely suggesting you could but could you? Especially people like the person who made the half literate other reply
I was intending more like reverse psychology. "I'll show you!" That kind of thing.
I get how I might not have said that well enough though.
It's really hard to convey certain subtleties in text. It's all good!
With a 3 wheeler it's not really hard unless there is a hill or you have to dodge cars.
You are av ducking idiot if you are moving fridges on your bicycle
You're a fucking idiot if you think roads were only built for the transportation of goods & services as they were superceded by canals then by railways.
It was a massive step backwards in inefficiency in an orchestrated move by vehicle manufacturers that freight was shifted back to roads.
And the guys (yes, more than one) carrying fridges on their shoulders while cycling, have more fucking balls than you'll ever dream of having.
These morons are insufferable because they don't believe anything exists outside the frame of the photo. they have worse object permanence to babies
Yeah. That building is probably an office block.
And those guys usually have loading/unloading areas in the back (if not an actual car park).
The right building is a clothing store. There are indeed often back entrances for smaller vans for supplies
That person clearly hasn't witnessed Dutch students carrying a whole bedroom on the back of their bike.
Moving out a whole apartment with bikes : https://youtu.be/qCraLSgVx6E?si=x_UZpk--c5Kkdgcu
Having lived in Utrecht, yes all those stores in the picture, completely empty, also all the people on bikes are happy to finally have the chance to sit after spending their day in a house without furniture.
Also many pedestrianized streets allow for deliveries with larger vehicles! These just have to drive more carefully and slower for the last couple hundred meters. Usually just a city block or two.
Clearly they're not bringing the goods, they're bringing the services. That clown even said it himself. Refers to goods and services then only talks about the goods.
A perk of belonging to my city's bike advocacy group is that you can rent this for no additional charge:
Nosireebob, can't haul stuff around with that... /s
Trying to persuade the (amazingly) only contractors on the entire planet that think they need a tiny-penis truck because they occasionally need to pick up some wood from Howm Deeepo to ride a bike is like trying to get blood from a stone
My dad has a solid bike trailer. It's not as big as your group's one, but he can do about a WinCo shopping cart worth in it. That's plenty for the vast majority of their household needs.
Looks at literally the front bike in the picture...
You can't just dictate what you believe roads should be for and think everyone should agree with it as fact. Roads are for a lot of things, and even in this guy's narrow definition, people are goods, in fact they are the most important and valuable goods on the roads.
Yeah, and I mean, even most car traffic doesn't fit into this ridiculous definition. People take their car to just do recreational stuff all the time.
I mean, holy fuck, how else would you get there than via streets in some fashion? Take the helicopter from your roof?
People lived before cars, people will live without them.
Not if cars destroy the planet with us first.
Throughout history, most people have lived within an hour of work.
The biggest difficulty is retrofitting cities that have developed in the last century. Places that have been around for centuries were developed with walking in mind. Places that were developed around the automobile and climate contril are very difficult to convert.
The world has both quadrupled in population and urbanized over the past century as the car became the primary mode of transit in much of the world.
The only thing that makes transitioning even possible is that the landlord class would love to return to feudaliam.
It's actually still doable, but requires some creative thinking to undo the damage done for half century. Train can carry people from suburb into the city, the last mile can be solved either by brt, tram, or by micromobility. Bus, tram, and bicycle need their own dedicated lane for this to work nicely. This won't necessarily prevent people from driving but it will make driving not the only way to go to work.
Iirc Amsterdam is basically that, it used to be car-centric but the government take away that monopoly and give it back to bicycle and micro-mobile. Paris is another recent example on how bicycle usage is rising if given the proper safety infrastructure to ride around. It's also a car-centric city before this.
It's not that it's hard, it's just lack of political will and dinosaur way of thinking. It's something that never crossed their mind.
Your examples are cities that are hundreds of years old and we're absolutely initially designed around walking.
Cities design around walking is technically harder because the space limitation if they want to share it with car, but tend to have everything in close proximity, which in that case it's far easier to just ban car from entering and cater the street to just pedestrian and bicycle/non-electric scooter. Cities design around car however, is easier to convert, as they tend to have wider road and more lane for car. They just need to take away one lane and give it to cyclist and that's it. The only hard part is going through the legislation and carbrain.
Okay. Great. Downtown is now walkable.
How do people get downtown?
The thing about auto-centric design is that it covers transportation from end to end. Other methods require a much more complicated network of fist and last-mile solutions that aren't easily adapted.
"Just use park and rides" doesn't solve the problem. It just moves the traffic to the transit stations. And now it's more expensive and slower than the existing system.
Houston put in a light rail system that costs 1% of every dollar spent in the city, costs a ton to ride, adds 45 minutes to a trip downtown, and drastically increases the odds of your car getting broken into at the park-and-ride. So yeah - there's pushback against expanding it.
There's also inherrent difficulty when the city is so spread out (The Grand Parkway outer loop has a 60-mile diameter, compared to Paris's 15), and walking outside is a health hazard 3-4 months out of the year.
The first step and the mindset is already wrong, focusing on moving traffic instead of removing traffic. So yeah, of course it wouldn't work. Houston failed at it doesn't mean other city would fail too.
People can't travel 30 miles from their home to the office entirely using public transit. Walkable cities and light rail are Last-mile. Heck - throw in high-speed for the majority of the transit and you still have a huge first-mile problem, which is by far the hardest to solve.
The reasons modern cities are designed around cars is because cars are flexible. Add a street for a new row of houses and every single one of those points is connected to every end point in a single step. No new scheduling, routing, or transit lines required. Problem solved with a little asphalt.
It's an easy solution, and backing out of it is very, very difficult because it must be replaced with a complicated, expensive solution that's less-convenient for most users.
I'm not anti-transit at all, but people around here seem to believe that a city can be fixed with the power of wishes and fairy dust just because another city that covers 1/10th the area and was developed hundreds of years before auto-centric decelopment ago managed to do it.
@chiliedogg @Annoyed_Crabby cities that were designed around cars should be easier to convert as there is so much wasteful tarmac dedicated to low occupancy travel and parking.
Here in São Paulo, services and goods can only be hauled at night, so I guess the argument doesn't stand in its legs if you think about it a bit.
That's one of the busiest intersections in Utrecht, especially in the weekend with buses, cyclists, pedestrians and some cars. It's pretty easy to navigate too
This is one of the busiest intersections in Greater Victoria, British Columbia. Yes, it's as awful as it looks. It also cuts in half what would have been a really great trail-rail. It's like they just gave up.
But I mean, it doesn't matter if you can't carry a single 2x4x24ft lumber from home Depot to your house or from the lumber hard to home Depot. We got the main roads for that so big trucks can do that. Just commuting yourself from your house to work and back is enough.
In Amsterdam I got to see lots of little human powered delivery vans though. Mostly DHL. It was awesome to see. So it is doable in flat locations for sure.
We’ve got to move these microwave ovens. We’ve got to move these colour TVs.
Ok so before your anti car brain downvotes this... Read me out.
It's a legitimate question for cities that do remove most car access, some essential items (fridges for example) do break and they do need to be replaced. A Bike won't do to transport these types of things (mattress is another example) what's the solution to this logistics issue?
I'm all for car fucking don't get me wrong but the image does raise an reasonable question, and i feel it deserves reasonable answers not just 'fuck you you stupid car brained fuck head' which is the majority of these comments.
I don't think car access should ever be completely removed. The way it's done in most pedestrian/bike areas around here is that trucks (delivery and trash pick up) are all done within a small window of time. Outside of that, no cars are allowed besides the one or two security vehicles that move at walking speed if they even move at all.
See, the way you're phrasing it is a legitimate question. I notice you didn't give a smug description of what a road is for and you didn't continue to point out that bicycles don't fit all use cases.
To answer the question, there's a few ways. Some furniture stores rent out cargo bicycles (like IKEA) and inner cities do allow traffic specifically for delivery of goods in a lot of places.
The Netherlands does have access for those things. Its the petrolheads who make up that they dont. Otherwise we'd see their cities failing. And there are cargo bikes for many things. My Cousin's partner rides one thats like a mini boxvan, half electric with a solar panel on the top.
If the above is about the Netherlands then cars are rarely every completely banned. Mostly restricted and trucks for supplying businesses are allowed (although they often have to be low emission if it's downtown).
Idunno, maybe they don't get all' their shit delivered in front? Maybe there are trucks in back instead of clogging up the front door that customers use to get in and buy things? Maybe there's a damn train underneath all' this! How 'bout that! Nyeehh!!! 😝
Well, this ups the ante. We need to start build really BIG bikes that can carry an entire shipping container.
Think of the fitness opportunities!
It is not quite a shipping container but there are cargo bikes large enough for the stuff named in the post, e.g. https://cargocycle.de/
Holy shit. I want one so I can go to costco and blow all the minds of the car brains.
These are common in India. We call them cycle vans.
And even a smaller Bakfiets will readily handle over 99% of the listed cases.
Bo-ring. C’mon! Beef up the aspirationals here!
You’d need a dog team of cyclists. Could be a fun time.
I mean we’re talkin’ big ole tires on that one.
The size of the thighs alone on the delivery teams would be the size of a normal obese truck driver.
Definitely the wrong argument against bikes.
A lot of the best ones just come down to time - 30 mins commuting in traffic vs 70+ cycling. 1-2 grocery trips per week vs 4-6.
Good public transport can balance that out (though less so for shopping).
@HexesofVexes @nehal3m Cycling commute times can be pretty compeditive in big cities, driving can have very bad worst case speeds where cycling is very stable.
The pictured example in Melbourne is 0:35 to 1:40 by car and 1:25 by bike. Yes the car will frequently win, but you can leave later to guarantee being in the office by 9. (TOA was set to 8:55am)
(The best and fastest is cycle to local station and catch the train)
The author could be the first to use a bike to haul furniture if he wanted to
Furniture gets moved by bike here all the time in the Netherlands ? We got this amazing invention called a bakfiets (tub bike) or we just balance it on the back.
Cool. Because we here in the US are so ice-centric though, we default to that for moving heavy things
Not saying i wouldn't rather have had a car to move shit around but it's certainly doable for some things.
When I lived in Switzerland I literally used a bike to haul furniture (flat packed). Honestly it's easier than you might imagine.
I brought a big tv home on my bike too. It's quite achievable, if awkward.
But a cargo bike would have been a better choice than my conventional bike.
No offense, but "flatpack" furniture isnt really
Bicycle trailers are a thing for a reason. I'm sure hauling a washer and dryer would be difficult but a sofa is easily achievable. For heavy stuff most places offer delivery for free or really cheap
Yeah you can haul all kinds of things with a trailer. You migjt even be able to get a couch from A to B without one if youre strong enough
Who made up that rule lol
I didn't realize that your commute to work required you to haul furniture and large appliances every day. Guess everyone needs a pickup then. Fuck public health and safety.
Apart from cargo bikes, in London City ULEZ, buses, cabs, and utility trucks are allowed. It's amazing how little traffic they generate.
Even Belfast only allows access to the city centre for vehicles doing deliveries. It's not uncommon to see one, but I mean a single one generally in the centre of a capital city
I think that's slightly critical of Damaris.
They are asking a question regarding something they do not understand.
It is a true statement that roads are used to transport goods and services.
They then simply ask who in the video is carrying goods and products into stores/homes, and how workers move goods from ports to the stores.
They don't know how a system like this works when it comes to, for example, stocking a grocery store, because they have not worked or lived in a place with infrastructure like this.
It's just ad hominem and poor practice to call someone blind when they aren't familiar with something, particularly when they seem interested in how it works, and works contrary to convincing people of the cause.
If someone has worked with punch cards to program a computer all their life, and someone showed them software written the python programming language and they said:
"But the punch card is so that the computer can read in bytes to know what to do, in this text I don't see any bytes, there's nothing telling the computer if this is little endian or big endian, it all looks like a book. How does the text tell the computer what to do?"
Then my response would NOT be "Well the list comprehension here is yielding a range of numbers which are sent to the print function, and this class is acting as a signal handler. Aside from punch card brained, you're also blind".
My response would be a very happy opportunity to explain to them the benefits of a modern programming language versus punch cards, and how it works in comparison.
Unless this is a person known to be explicitly anti-bike and pro-car, it is bad to be this critical of them and works in no one's favor.
I'm skeptical of all that - surely they understand that roads carry more than just goods and services. It's such a basic part of society that you'd have to be from another planet to be confused about that and build a whole argument based on it.
It's a very simplistic and reductive view of roads, though, in response to a post that specifically mentions another function of roads, namely, facilitating people's travels as individuals for their own purposes. It's like you telling someone you like using lemmy because you've found communities you enjoy participating in and individuals you like talking to, and they go, "But the internet is for commerce, the buying and selling of goods! Who is selling and who is buying in these instances?"
Your example is overly charitable, in my opinion. Not everyone is being malicious with these sorts of questions, but the person is ignoring some pretty clear context explaining other uses of roads to go attach a strawman. At the very least, it seems like a bad faith argument.
And here I thought roads were for people... I'm so silly
I bet all those NYC bike messengers love this.
"WAAAH! hOw dO i GeT sTuFf??? i GoTtA HaVe mOaR StUff!!1"
consumer mentality makes me want to stab things.
I took a lawnmower home on my cargo bike (well trike), the box was too long to fit in our car.
What about the bags on the cyclist's steer? Those are goods.
i must consume!!!
yesyes the stores are all just there to be pretty, you can't buy things from them, everyone was completely stumped by how to get the stuff into the place so nobody tried and now we're all dead of brain herpes. Jesus.
Did they forget what century we live in?
Alright, I don't generally agree with you guys in this subreddit since cars man freedom from landlords to me. This person in the pic though? Absolute lunacy! I'm just dying to see the look on their face when someone sets them straight!
How?
Our housing supply is so shit that people have to sleep in cars.
And where I live, people were having too much fun living in vans, so they even made that difficult.
Ah yeah, they got me too. Made up fake charges to jail me.
Three entirely different use-cases there. Commuting, logistics and... Well, the port thing is also logistics but it kinda shouldn't intersect with a city downtown?
Not to mention that nowhere are cars completely restricted, you can have professional trucks and such.
Now, does everyone need to own their own car to move pianos, or should it just be a piano-moving service you hire the one time a year you need a piano moved?
A truck carrying freight ≠ a person driving home groceries. Groceries that typically fill up a car's trunk just for 2-3 people; a bicycle isn't carrying that. You'd need a rickshaw-like cart hooked onto it. They do exist though, for passengers, so making one for personal cargo loads is doable.
I wouldn't want to do any of that in winter, though. Snow, ice, and sub-zero wind-chill (plus the further cooling effect while moving) are not when anyone should ever be on a bicycle.
Also, driving to a larger grocery store is non-negotiable for us because they're the ones who stock the lower-demand allergy-safe foods. Guess how much a corn allergy sucks in America, on top of others. While most allergies and medical conditions are rarer than not, they are a huge problem.
Didn't get me started on commuting - and youn literally can't remote-work a labor job. Imagine having to make a 30+ minute car commute on a bicycle on top of a 9+ hour day.
So while yes, fuck cars, bicycles are not anywhere close to a magic bullet. Our entire civilization needs a comprehensive bottom-up overhaul that addresses every problem simultaneously, since most of them are interconnected.
Person who lives a car-centric life think human experience everywhere is the same.
Groceries, in particular, are more of an effect than a cause. Lots of people live without cars in New York City, or London, or Paris, or Toronto, or Tokyo, and they manage to eat. The reason you need to buy 7 days worth of food for two people all at once is because you live in a field far away from everything. "Getting Groceries" becomes a special trip, because, while driving, leaving the highway, stopping and parking are inconvenient.
As a pedestrian in a city, I was going to walk past 5 food stores on my way between work and home anyway, and it's really not problem to walk in and buy only what I ran out of yesterday, or some special item I wanted for tonight's dinner. It's simple to shop for 5 or 10 minutes, five times a week, rather than one hour once a week, and never need more than a single bag of groceries at a time. And rather than being inconvenient, it's actually great because I'm only buying what I need right now, the things I'm going to use as soon as I get home, so it's very simple.
Allergies could be tricky, yeah. If you're lucky the local shop, by nature of being smaller and more local, actually knows you and knows you need this stuff and stocks it because they know you'll buy it from them. But that's not a guarantee, for sure. That having been said, if the only people driving were people with corn allergies, the roads would be a much safer place!
I'm all for way less cars on the road, but, what do all these people with some form of physical disability that limits their movement abilities? I rarely ever see this brought up in the debate, what form of independent travel can these people use in a carless society that won't be impeded by their physical issues? Something that gives them the freedom to live their life and not rely on some form of ride sharing experience that takes their freedoms from them?
We can't leave people behind for a quick solution.
Mobility scooters, public transport, ect. Because of the overfocus on cars, acessibility is badly neglected and this needs to change.
What about the people that are unable drive a car because of physical or mental disabilities or age? Or the people that are allowed to drive but shouldn't? There are vastly more of them than people who couldn't ride a bike but can drive a car.
And yeah, unfortunately getting rid of cars completely is not going to happen, but cars will work so much better when the only people driving are those with no other alternative.
Fuck cars is about using our resources better to improve mobility for all.
None of this is about total 100% bans on cars, just making the option of not using a car nicer than using one. Even where car bans exist options still exist for delivery vehicles.
Public transit exists and is often better than driving depending on the disability.
In the current system we leave behind everyone that can't afford to buy and maintain a car, which is a staggeringly large number already.
it's not like a lot of disability that would still allow them drive in the first place, and if they need someone else to get them around, other form factors still work just as well. Just making places walkable will still accomodate mobility devices better than roads for cars anyways.
I'll get downvoted being in this community, but in extreme climates where it goes down to - 30 Celsius and has up to 230cm of snow a season, bikes don't work.
Fall Spring summer, sure.
Tell that to Finland.
You'll get down voted, but mostly for being wrong.
This is another version of the comment people are mocking. 'Ah, but in this incredibly extreme situation, bikes are inefficient!' Yeah, I know, mate. I wasn't planning on biking to the south pole with a fridge on my back, was I? The point is not that bikes are the best solution for every single journey any human has made or will ever make, but that cars aren't the best solution the vast majority of the time.
If you can clear the roads for cars you can do the same for bikes.
You haven’t been to Minnesota apparently, bike culture there is strong even in deep winter
That's why cities in such climates also need really good public transit systems.
They work better than cars do. Not long ago on my bike commute in a blizzard I had to keep getting off to help get stuck cars moving again, then if happily ride off...
And handling the cold is easier when riding than walking to and waiting for trains and buses because you generate your own heat. People ski in those conditions. It's just a matter of the right clothes and equipment and not being soft as fuck.
Similar experience here. Bike commuted year around for a decade and went through multiple blizzards. Helped more drivers get unstuck than i can count
Frequently did the commute sub-zero. If you have the gear it isn't that bad. And i never had to worry about my bike not starting.
Laughs in Edmonton.
Love seeing this, Montréal needs to step up it's winter cycling game
Laughs in Edmonton.
Cars don't either.
https://youtu.be/OdtR3T2Pg4s?si=YnWgYmCfCtiUDqgM
I'd be keen to know your (or others) experience of biking and driving in those conditions because in my experience cars aren't well suited to those temperatures either. I don't have direct experience of biking in that low but I know people who do and they swear by it.
Of course you could throw fuel at it and keep your car running all the time to stop it from freezing. 😷
https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/329955-russia-cars-extreme-frosts
Anyway as others have said no one is actually saying cycling is the solution for all extreme use cases that's a strawman.
The only reason bikes don't work in -30 is because there isn't infrastructure to support them and if there is it isn't maintained properly. I was going to link examples, but it seems other people already have.
Montrealer here. When roads are unplowed, cars also struggle. When it's too cold, cars also struggle.
I live at the top of a gentle slope and as soon as it starts snowing, cars are slipping and sliding down the slope. There's even a famous video of exactly this kind of thing, with cars, buses, police and snow plows just sliding down the slope.
Cars need very well maintained roads to work in winter. Those roads can also be used by bikes. And if you plow bike paths and bike lanes, just like we do for cars, cycling in winter is usually no big deal. Sometimes while cars are slipping down I can observe cyclists being able to climb the same slope. Or they just push the bike up on foot and continue on their way.
I use my bike in winter and can assure you that it is working.
Addendum: I am a simple man. When is starts snowing I just sit by my window and watch cars struggle to go uphill. In fact, I record it.
Also, just to continue on your points. It's not -30C every day and snow here is usually plowed within a few hours, AND removed within a few days. Extreme weather is extreme, and one should avoid driving in during heavy snowfall anyway. So either you're on a bike, or in a car that you must dig out of a snow bank, or using public transit, if the weather is extreme, everyone is going to have a less than perfect day.
It can't be -30°c 2m of snow for 350 days a year, right?
That's what I said?
Also why 350 days?
Because your concern seems to be disproportionately weighted on extreme weather?
Didn't I day spring fall and summer are ok?
If that isn't your intention, then i'm sorry, but i'm not the only one getting the same vibe, and i genuinely not sure why you bring out extreme condition where other mode of transport doesn't work either.
No worries, I'm just as confused, lol
Ok, I guess some people are willing to bike in extreme weather.
I've never tried it, but I don't think I'd like to be out in -30 + windchill on a bike instead of in a heated car.
I'm all for better public transit though.
I do 65 minutes in the morning to work, and 80-85 coming home.
I think you'll find most !fuckcars members will also be big advocates for zoning reform that enables more people to live closer to their work. Nobody should be living a 65 minute drive from their work unless it's purely by choice. They shouldn't even be a 65 minute bike ride away from their workplace.
I know, unless you absolutely need the job and it's the only one that accepted your offer.
In my case however, the company lied to me; they said at the start I can shift to full remote over time, but 4 months in and they're saying that I need supervision to work (even though no one helps me with anything all day).
So I got fucked.
To be clear, I am in no way blaming you here. The fact that most people have to live a long way from their workplaces is a result of restrictive zoning laws that mean there aren't very many homes near the centre of cities (where most jobs are located for practical reasons), and what homes there are tend to be very expensive. Better laws would make it so more people are able to live closer to work if they want to.
No worries, I understood your point.
But isn't it better to have homes further from the heart of Main cities? I prefer the quiet of living in an area that only has residential housing.
A totally reasonable question, but in summary, the answer is no, it's not better.
There will always be some people who do prefer to live rurally, that's true. And they should have that option. But most people prefer the amenities of a city. The problem with how the US, Canada, and Australia do things currently is that the majority of the living area is "suburbia", which tries to provide the peace of rural living with the amenities of a city. But it ends up doing poorly at both.
It's particularly bad for people who cannot drive, like children, teenagers, and people with certain disabilities. Car-dependent suburbia is extremely restrictive on them compared to being able to, for example, hop on their bike a ride to their friend's place, or to soccer practice.
You might say you want "only residential housing", but isn't it more convenient if there's a cafe within walking distance? Or a community pub/tavern you can grab some food at? Isn't it better to be able to stop off at a grocery store on your bike home from work, or the walk from the train station, than to have to take a dedicated weekly car drive to a large shopping centre 10–15 minutes by car away to do a single large shop (and hope you don't forget anything on that weekly shop, or you'll have to make a dedicated trip especially for that one thing!)? Wouldn't most people be better off if they can walk or cycle conveniently to nearby sports clubs, community centres, etc. in order to partake in their hobbies and leisure activities?
There are also economic reasons behind it. More dense places like I'm describing have enormous economic benefits. People spend more in the local economy when they walk or cycle to shops, rather than driving. Because when driving they're more likely to go to a big box store on the periphery where the profits go to a large national or multinational chain rather than a local business. Denser living costs a lot less for the government, because the cost of infrastructure like electricity lines, sewerage, and road maintenance are much, much lower than in lower density suburban or rural areas. And it makes the building and operation of public transport networks more feasible and affordable.
It's also cheaper for the people who live there. Having a shared wall means you lose less heat in winter, reducing your heating cost. Being able to walk or ride most places means you don't need a car, or maybe your family which would have had 2 cars now only needs 1, which dramatically reduces your transportation cost. (Seriously, an average car costs tens of thousands of dollars per year in petrol, maintenance, and the upfront cost. It's a huge financial burden.) And, obviously, because of the above paragraph, your personal council tax/rates bill will be lower.
I'm not talking about everyone living in soviet-style concrete blocks, either. The ideal form of development is medium density. 2–3 storey townhouses and duplexes, 3–5 storey comfortable walk-up apartments. With modern building standards these are incredibly comfortable and quiet.
That would be nice, being able to go home for lunch as well