Originally Posted by
tandempower
Finally, this leads to the question of whether LCF is really fundamentally about living 'car' free, or whether it's about living without having to own and drive a car. Often we talk about trains and buses as if those are fundamentally different from cars, but trains have 'cars' and buses have motors. So really LCF is about numerous other issues for most people, but if ride-sharing or car-sharing or autonomous vehicles or whatever innovation in automotive technology frees us from the need to own and drive a personal vehicle, and at the same time reduces the amount of cars and pavement, then maybe Ford is onto something and autonomous cars are a reason to revamp the train station.
As we've seen in numerous past threads there is a variety of opinion on what "car-free" means and also a variety of different motivations for wanting to be car-free. Most commonly people want to reduce expense, get exercise or reduce the harmful effects of cars on the environment and/or society. If everybody stops owning cars, but relies on them just as much as ever through widespread use of hired driverless cars, that wouldn't seem like much progress to me.