The US has a lot of places that are car-dependent. You can live in walkable areas, but those can also have much higher cost of living. Where did you end up on that spectrum for where you live right now?
The US has a lot of places that are car-dependent. You can live in walkable areas, but those can also have much higher cost of living. Where did you end up on that spectrum for where you live right now?
I live in a place with a totally free bus system!
It is fucking awesome, there is no stupid card, no people being hassled who can’t pay… and I find when I go out without driving I am just less depressed to the point that I will now go out of my way to walk and ride the bus since I feel less like a ghost fading away in a shockingly expensive metal bubble that is always breaking or costing money when I do…
I live 10 min bus ride from a very walkable ~50,000 person towncenter, it is a massive quality of life boost for me.
Seriously, move to Olympia! Or advocate for free public transit in your city/hometown! It makes everything so much more walkable especially not needing a card or other nonsense, just walk on and go.
Also when the US economy screams to a halt, the only service industry heavy places that will weather it will be places in local, accessible, walkable downtowns that are easy and pleasant for people to get to rather than ANOTHER process of getting in a car, driving 25+ minutes, sitting in traffic and scrambling for parking and then repeating the process to get home when you are tired.
Same thing goes for employment, jobs that employees can get to through public transit will be FAR more desirable jobs as even if an employee drives most days for the convenience, figuring out how to get to work when their car has problems is 1000 times easier when they can rely on mass transit as a sure backup even if it is annoying and not ideal. Getting a job that REQUIRES a working car every single day to access is a massive liability and added stress on an employee in comparison. …and before you say “but what about Uber?” the thing is… that ALL has to be priced into Uber costs too, it just hides all of that behind “somebody’s elses problem”.
People in the US are utterly cornered economically by the 1% and as much as we are hopelessly addicted to cars, THE ONLY place people in the US will have to budge in trimming down their costs will be getting rid of their cars… it really doesn’t matter that nobody is thinking about it or wants to or that US culture is still entirely based around getting a massive inefficient SUV/pickup as a symbol of making it… USians will simply not be able to afford having a car in the very near future, if they can even afford it now as it is. Then what? Walkability is suddenly an existentially necessary anchor for a community to even exist.
I wish public transit were just free, I’d rather just pay taxes and not worry about cards. I think there’s some amount of “but what about homeless people”, and some amount of “but we can’t lose money on it” sentiment. At least we’ve got it though and we’re expanding it.
Honestly my advice is just leave, if people cannot get over the fact of homeless people using something that is free and will deny it to everyone because of that, there is a deep sickness to that place.
I like Oly because it is known for having homeless people by the surrounding area, which means a whole lot of people don’t come here who I would never even want to interact with anyways. I have never had an issue with the homeless on the bus system or otherwise shrugs. Cost of housing of course is awful though…
Also on the money note, it is a bunch of nonsense, the vast majority of funding for bus systems DOES NOT come from tickets/faires, people just like the idea of nickel and diming people using the bus system because they think they deserve it, the reason most bus systems charge faires is really that stupid and petty. When you use the bus you are saving money for everybody around you, you reduce congestion, wear on the roads, risk of accident and many other benefits people typically don’t factor into the “cost” of having a bus system.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/briefs/public-transportation-us-driver-health-and-equity