[NickPollard]

I have a 4 year old and an 18 month old, and I don't own a car (nor does my partner).

We rent a car ~10-20 times a year, but that's usually for vacations or trips out of the city to visit family. Regular weekly family life we use buses, the underground (metro), trains, or sometimes taxis.

We are considering eventually getting a car, but we've managed for 4 years with children to not need one and it's not been an issue.

(I live in London, United Kingdom)

[mystifyingpoi]

Sure, it works in your context, you live in a city with 9 million people and you sometimes rent a car - fine. I live in a city 100x smaller. I literally don't know a person that doesn't own a car, or at least has access to a car.

The context actually get far more granular than it. I lived without a car for 25 years of my life, buses and trains were enough. But all it takes to require a car is having a home 3-4 km from the city center bus stops (which probably covers >50% of population). Unless someone likes walking 1h one way in -10 deg in winter to get to work each day.

[kccqzy]

A city 100x smaller is a city with 90k population. That's half of the population of the Upper West Side. And the UWS has an area of only 5 square kilometers. Unless you specifically choose to, you are not going to walk 3-4 km.

You don't live in a city. You live in a suburb.

[esarbe]

This is a problem with city design, not city size.

That's exactly what "making cities work for people instead of cars" is all about.

[mitthrowaway2]

It sounds like your city is about the same size as the city featured in this article, which has a population of 83,000.

[Earw0rm]

-10deg winters are certainly going to put a stop to much walking or biking, regardless of whether that's Celsius or Fahrenheit.

Not much of Europe ever gets that low though. Edinburgh occasionally overnight, but it's rarely below about -4c / 24f during commute hours. Berlin mostly the same, Stockholm's maybe the only big European capital that gets to "walking for an hour stands a serious chance of killing you" temperatures for days at a time.

[jajko]

London has abysmal transport situation - any time I needed to traverse through city, it was 3+ hours of buses and trains/subway mix. Of course doing the same with car would be even worse.

Imagine when people don't live in such shitholes, and spend weekends travelling ie to nature or mountains or culture or history or whatever, on non-congested roads. Heck, imagine going to nature even evenings after work, ie for rock climbing. Public transport would be 2-3x that travel time, if possible at all. Also, much more expensive compared to a single car drive, even when accounting all taxes, maintenance and purchasing costs of a car.

Thats how most of Europe lives. City center folks can keep their car-free existence, just please for god's sake don't force it down everybody else's throats like that's the only way to live.

Some people would happily lose half of paycheck to avoid such life, exactly because they spent part of their lives in city centers and know very well what lifestyle they reject, if they can and can afford it. Quadruple that for families with small kids, like my own.

[ndsipa_pomu]

I don't understand how you can spend 3+ hours getting around London. I live in Bristol and when we go to visit London, it takes about 3 hours including the train all the way from Bristol to London. Getting from A to B in London is probably 30-40 minutes tops using the underground.

[mystifyingpoi]

> Thats how most of Europe lives.

THIS. Europe doesn't end on Paris. People visit huge metropolies and base their judgement on this, which really skews the perspective.