Question for the Europeans/ those knowledgeable. When living over there, do you basically have some form of public transit that will just about take you anywhere you want to go?
In my city, we don’t have a subway, but we have trains and tramways and buses (and my city’s super flat and very bike-friendly). I haven’t owned a car in 10 years. My partner sold their car this year because it took them more time to drive around than to take public transportation or their bike.
It’s going to depend on where you are, but there’s usually some form of transit here in Sweden in all but the most rural places. Outside of cities, there’s a decent chance you’ll get a car anyway because the transit is not of high enough quality, unfortunate as it may be.
That being said, where I live in Stockholm, transit takes me everywhere I want to go, including longer distances to visit my family that lives far from Stockholm in the form of decently high speed trains. My bicycle is also a great way to get around the city.
I’m very pleased with not having to own a car, it saves me a lot of money and effort, and my transport time is spent more productively - when biking, I get exercise while listening to podcasts, and on transit I can use my phone freely to do whatever I want. It’s also generally a less frustrating way to get around, not having to be stuck in traffic or spend time, effort and money to park. It’s also basically at no loss of time compared to driving for the majority of my trips. All this on top of being a better option from an environmental standpoint. I’m very happy!
I do own 3 bikes: normal, electric, electric-cargo. Train gets used for everything else. Tram within my city, but the city is small enough that I can reach most of it by bike (say up to 10km). Intercity (or equivalent) for cross-country journeys. Usually that’s faster than going by car anyway, and I don’t have to actively drive but can watch a movie or play games or whatever.
Yeah preatty much … Usualy depends on exactly where you live obviously and its never as confortable as taking the car but if you are and old man with almost all the time in the world you can go grocery shoping, to the barber , visit a local Mountain or lake just by buss …
As an American who spent most of their life in the south, which abhors public transit because racism(wish I was making that up) and now on the west coast, which is better but still woefully behind y’all, this is a fantasy for me
Yeh I think every group of people somehow finds a way to shame public transportation for us it’s about being poor I would really like to know what snob people in the green northen paradise (Norway finland ecc ) use as an excuse to shame it …
“Never” is a massive understatement. Especially in big cities, say Paris itself, it’s a nightmare to drive a car compared to just using public transportation. Even outside of cities it can be much nicer to relax on a smooth train ride rather than have to focus on driving the entire time.
I live in a relatively small city in northeast France, about 10k pop
I can probably go everywhere if I take multiple forms of transportation. However it’s so badly integrated that it’s usually not worth the hassle.
I’m taking my mother, sister and her kids for a week at the beach late june. Direct car trip is like 6-7 hours of mostly highway, probably 40€ of gas and tolls.
Taking public transportation, it’s 10+ hours, the only train line goes through Paris for some fucking reason, it’s 60€ per person, and then I would have no useful means of transportation when we get there. Or maybe we will, idk, it’s impossible to find any useful information about buses trams or anything anywhere.
So I’ll just take my car instead of gambling on the train conductors not being on strike.
I’d love to take public transit, but if you need to travel further than the immediate neighboring cities, it’s just so fucking inconvenient.
Same in Britain really, you can get to most places on public transport but it will generally be slower and more expensive than driving unless it’s a common route
I live in Poland and in big cities that’s not an issue but in cities other than Warsaw and Kraków you still need to check when the bus will depart. For rural areas reliability is an issue. If for some reason the bus won’t come than the next one is in two hours.
Trains are good enough but often delayed. Mostly 5 to 15 min but there is always the odd one out with 24h that is always talked about at parties.
Trams, trolleybuses, metro and cycling paths are good enough. There are bicycle rental networks that work in a pinch.
I live in lyon, here you can go anywhere in the metropolis in bus, tramway and subway or even public bikes. And for france in general I went to see my friend in Rouen and all it took was one train. Once there I could use the public transport again to go anywhere in the city
Yesterday I went to IKEA (i.e. suburb-to-suburb). Google Maps said:
Car: 20 min
Public Transit: 1h20min
Bicycle: 1h
So… Technically it is possible. However no-one does this unless they are forced to by their circumstances. We’ve begun building one tram line and the construction process has gone so catastrophically the entire country knows about it. At this rate the urban transition away from the car will be done by 2250.
I spend time in England and France,.so can answer for mostly one and a little of the second.
For England, the best transportation is usually in the south east, mainly London. In most of the UK, public transport can take you there, but it’s both prohibitively expensive, unreliable for anything time-sensitive, or will take longer than just driving. In Bristol, we joke about how terrible our public transport is by talking about cycling. We cycle more than all cities bar London. Pair that with the fact that our roads are heavily congested AND we’re a mostly hilly city shows that the only option that won’t result in being late for work is cycling…
In (southern) France, it’s quite similar. The price is much better, but the connectivity could be better. You’ll also find that transport doesn’t deal with peak times as well as roads can.
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