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Old 01-16-06, 09:39 PM
  #118  
Cyclepath
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Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Willimantic, Connecticut
Posts: 499

Bikes: '70s Puch sport tourer, '90 Peugeot Success.

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Originally Posted by Roody
These are good points, and everything you mentioned would make it more difficult, maybe almost impossible, to be carfree.

BUT:

People who live without cars choose where they live with these issues in mind. We have learned to "think outside the cage," as I say in my sig, to solve these dilemnas. If they cannot be solved, buy a car if you must, then use it little as possible as you continue to search for better solutions.

Also, many of these issues would not have been problems 75 years ago, before we simultanously dismantled our public transit system and began the migration to the suburbs. Believe it or not, salesmen used to travel on trains and so did athletic teams. People had schools, stores and other needed services a couple blocks from their homes. and delivery servies were also more common.

Many carfree people are strong political advocates for better transit and more livable cities. Working to improve the infrastructure is just one more way to think outside the cage.

I suggest that you scroll through this forum to discover some of the creative solutions that we have come up with. We are starting to get a pretty good data base here that might be useful or interesting to you.

BTW, I was reminded that even in the 1960s, American family life was a lot simpler than it is now. We had one car, but school and youth activities were available in the neighborhood, and the soccer mom was definitely far in the future.

Good points, Roody. By the same token it was not some amorphous "we" that dismantled US public transit, - it was big business which did so (also it was the corporate State that created the suburbs by financing the highway system & subsidizing returning vets with home loans (Republican socialism & social engineering):

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/dem.../auto.history/

http://64.233.161.104/custom?q=cache...22360742341876
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