The dutch are laughing with their bikes with the massive storage box thing

Walking to my grocery store and back would be an all day affair and I'd have to have help hauling everything because I'm married with two kids, so our two week grocery bill runs between $200 and $300 depending on what all we need. My closest Walmart is 25 miles away. My closest local grocery store is about 7. And there is no public transportation here.

I hate cars and love walkable cities as much as the next guy in this community, but this comparison is just nonsense.

If the only thing you do and are comparing is 4 trips a month to the grocery store that is in walkable distance you are not spending $200 a month on gas and probably also less on maintenance and stuff. And if you are only doing that you also don't need the newest and best car.

I feel like this type of bad faith analogies just hurts the message.

Once again a post about zoning laws instead of cars.

here it’s more like this:

don’t own a car no store in reach ??? starve

This is assuming you live in a walkable town or neighborhood. I remember a reddit post (can't find it anymore) of a guy trying to walk less than 2 miles to an appointment in Orlando. He followed Google Maps directions down the shoulder of a highway that led to a dead-end, backtracked, tried again, and finally made almost all the way to his destination, which was on the opposite side of a 6-lane highway Google wanted him to cross.

I've only ever visited the theme parks in Orlando, but I experienced one intersection I had to share with cars. I spent every walk sign waiting for cars making a turn to yield. Even though I had the right of way, literally none of them did, until I finally had to run across the street because the cars at the red light, who could see I was 1/3 through the intersection, floored it the second their light turned green. Sure, fuck all of those car-brained drivers who refuse to yield to pedestrians, but also fuck that city for not fining drivers for shitty behavior, or at least changing their traffic lights so all cars have red lights when pedestrians have the walk sign.

Anyway, point is, personal choices are important, but they can't overcome the systemic issues created by car culture without collective action. And Orlando sucks ass.

I lived next to a little natural grocery for a few years. Prices were about 20% higher than the ordinary grocery and maybe double what I'd pay at Costco. At first I was resistant because they seemed to be overcharging so much. Overtime I talked to the employees and realized the savings I made on time and not needing a car more than made up for the higher price. Plus they had to keep prices high because shoplifting was very common.

I started figuring my time and car expenses into future shopping trips and now I don't mind paying a bit more for the local co-op.

Here on Copenhagen:

• Buy a bicycle for 4000 dkk.
• Bike less than 1 km to arrive at Netto/Rema 1000/lidl/Coop 365.
• Buy a kanelsnegle for 8 dkk.

Ok let’s flip this to cherry pick my example.

Don’t need a car most of life, get to 40 and upskill and become a software engineer. Job market is terrible due to saturation and I suck at interviews so can only take a job 40 miles away from home.

No problem.exe. I can take 2.5-3 hour commute each way 5 days a week.

Fast forward a few months and I’m just dead on my feet, do nothing but go to work come home goto bed get up and repeat.

Decide this can’t continue. Can’t afford to move to the bougie town where I work so decide I need a car finally.

Save 12-15 hours per week and it’s not too much more expensive than taking a Metrolink and a train to work with 30 mins of walking too. Plus all the meals you need to eat out of the house when you’re out for 14 hours in a day.

On my days off I’ll take the tram 20 miles each way to go rock climbing but some people actually do need cars and they shouldn’t be made to feel bad for it.

Let green text guy live his own definition of an ideal life, but it would be a pretty pathetic life for me if the only place I ever had to go was the grocery store.

This is also coincidentally how the math works on big box stores.

• Big box parking lot/strip mall opens
• Save $100 on groceries annually
• Pay $150 extra in taxes and gas to maintain and drive on an additional 10 miles of road
• Local options shut down, prices go up, and it takes 5 extra minutes to get to box store with increased traffic.
• Box store eventually closes due to not being in suburb anyway.

If it weren't for weather I wouldn't have a car. Sure, 90 minutes by ebike is a serious time commitment, but I'd save so much money a year it makes sense as a part time job.

But fuck riding a bike on ice for two months lol

Buy a 5000 lbs truck to haul less groceries than cyclists do on bikes.

Anon obviously has never been to Costco. No way you can leave that place without parting with $100

That can be a long, painful walk depending on where you live. Even with public transportation, there are stretches (say a mile or more) where you're caring at least 20 lbs of groceries. Without a backpack or a cart, it's quite the pain.

You don't go to Costco to save money, you go so you have an excuse to buy a box of instant ramen.