Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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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.
here in sweden we have also have this unique invention called a "handcart" that lets you transport more things while walking
how is anyone supposed to carry more than 5 gallons of water by hand? or bulk flour? large watermelons? half cows of meat?
Why would you need to carry 5 gallons of water or half a cow of meat? Are you living in the post apocalyptic world? You typically get water from the tap in your house and buy meat from the cow pre butchered.
bulk meat is typically cheaper than non bulk meat (around here it's about 20% cheaper) and a few percent of the population doesn't have a connection to the water company.
Not to mention, cargo bikes are a thing.
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.
Ah yes; the cargo bikes everyone carries in their car when they have to lug a ton of groceries home
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.
With the post indicating that it was a kid’s birthday, I thought the same thing. They may be buying supplies for an entire party. Walking home in summer heat carrying a cake (that should probably be refrigerated) doesn’t sound easy, but add in the kids (are they big enough to help carry things? Or are the kids so little that they need to be carried?) and the rest of the supplies the family bought, and it easily adds up. Then we have roads that aren’t designed for walking, no public transit options, and who knows how far they had to travel to get back home.
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
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.
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
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.