Comments by "UzuMaki NaRuto" (@UzumakiNaruto_) on "Can we make cities car free?" video.

Even if you live within walking distance of many things, sometimes you just plain need a car. Try hauling anything even remotely large and bulky on public transit and see how that goes. Or buying a bunch of groceries or anything in large quantity and its going to be a chore.
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@Xambonii When you design cities and suburbs to be large and spacious then that's how things are going to be where you need a car to get around. Get city planners to design better cities so that you can reduce the use of cars without necessarily getting rid of it entirely.
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@geoman798 That would be great, but unfortunately in many suburbs that isn't the case. I live in Toronto and whoever is in charge of zoning and deciding how new neighborhoods are developed they sure as hell don't care about building walkable/bikable neighborhoods instead of areas that require you to have a car to get anywhere in a timely manor. Even in areas farther out that was once farmland that is now being developed where builders and city planners can choose to build however they wish, they still aren't choosing to build new subdivisions that are pedestrian and bike friendly, but rather its still mostly car centric. So if there's anyone to blame its those people for continually building neighborhoods that need cars to get around rather than building with density in mind and making those areas being more pedestrian/bike friendly.
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Europe may end up with fewer cars on the roads in the core of their cities, but it will NEVER EVER be car free because all these ideas are mostly only feasible in the very heart of a city where its most dense and busy and it might make sense to drastically reduce the number of cars in those areas. Outside of that core area for many cities, I don't see why many people would want to drop driving if they can afford it. Drive less? Perhaps, but not drive at all? I doubt it. Also outside of enviromental reasons, why stop driving if you actually enjoy it? If I lived in a city with great transit I would consider driving less, but I would NEVER give it up completely when I enjoy simply cruising the streets and going where I want to go without having to be cooped up with other strangers on a bus, subway etc. and being restricted to where I can go based on where the transit goes.
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@geoman798 That's great if you live near the downtown of a city that has plenty of shops where you can buy fresh groceries everyday if you want, but if you live in the suburbs its definitely more efficient to drive once or twice a week and buy more at once and hence reduce the number of driving trips you need to make.
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@리주민 That's the thing. Not everyone can live close to downtown of a city and be able to walk a few blocks or less to their local street vendors and buy fresh food from them whenever they want to. In many cities once you go outside of the core, things get much more sparse and it becomes a pain to shop more than once a week unless you have a car. If you live in a city that has high density and many areas that are full of local shops then good for you, but for many North American cities that isn't the case where its often a few areas of high density with plenty of stores that you can walk to for shopping and after that it becomes much more empty and isolated outside of those areas. Those are the areas that many people live in that requires them to have a car to get anywhere in a timely manner. And often even if people do want to live in those neighborhoods where you can walk around and not need a car too much, they can't afford it because housing costs are so high and the only way you can find a home that's even remotely affordable is to live in the suburbs. So again I say lay most of the blame on the decision makers who design the cities rather than the people who have to adapt and live in those cities.
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@Futurology Or even better design neighborhoods that don't require much driving or transit to get around to begin with. Build neighborhoods that encourage walking or biking to get to your local store or restaurant or at most only requires a short drive to get where you need to go for your daily needs. Try and get rid of long commutes as much as possible so that you don't need to drive long distances or require expensive public transit to be built.
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I don't want to phase out cars because I ACTUALLY ENJOY DRIVING! I mean if you don't care about or like driving then its no big deal, but for someone who loves cars and driving for the simple pleasure of driving, I would never give it up EVER as long as I can afford to drive. 😊 😊 😊
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@langhamp8912 Oil companies and their products have alot of downsides, but its those very products that has allowed modern civilization to be created and maintained and for people like you to live in comfort and have a relatively easy life compared to people in many other parts of the world. If you really hate oil that much, then why not give up everything oil related in your life and live in the wild like humans did thousands of years ago?
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@fuzzyherbivore193 Well its cool you gave up your car, but its not something I would ever do especially since I live in the suburbs. I grew up taking public transit everywhere and it took forvever and it was crap. The one and only thing that I miss about it is seeing random hot girls on buses and the subway every so often. 😊 😊 😊
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@maximilianopena Every so often I haul something fairly large and with regards to groceries I buy in bulk everytime there's a sale which is why my food bills are so low even though I have a ton of stock in my house. For example I probably bought like 60+ cans of Campbell soup for cheap in the last couple of weeks during various sales and it would've been hell to carry it home on a bus or something instead of sticking it in my trunk and driving it home.
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@pandabear-k7e Sure it probably is, but nothing will ever beat the convenience of having a car and the freedom that comes with it. Unless you can't afford to own a vehicle there's really no reason not to in the majority of cases. As I said the best reason to not own a car is if you live downtown or some other similarly high density area where everything you need is easily accessible by walking, biking or transit. Otherwise car all the way.
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@latenightthinker4737 Good thing that will never happen. Cars are just too convenient and intregral to life in many parts of the world.
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@latenightthinker4737 'Every country in East and Southeast Asia is planning to follow in Europe's footsteps to slowly faze out the need for cars.' Is that why China is building mega project after mega project of thousands of km of new highways, bridges and tunnels all over their country these days even through the roughest terrain imaginable? Seriously go search 'Chinese highways' or something on youtube and see how many massive projects they have going on for building vehicle infrastructure and then comeback and tell me that they're 'fazing out cars'. 😄 😄 😄 Also I'll bet you a billion dollars that cars will still be with us in huge numbers in 50 years from now. Maybe they'll be mostly electric by them or something, but the majority of people won't ever want to give up their cars if they can help it especially those people who love to drive and don't see a car as simply a tool to get you from A to B.
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@pavld335 Again blame the city planners, the mayors and anyone else who signs off on allowing car centric subdivisions to be continually built and all the developers who keep lobbying for those kinds of neighobrhoods to be built. If all of them would collectively choose to build more pedestrian/bike friendly neighborhoods then we would have much more of those kinds of areas by now. Instead we don't because whether because of corruption or some other reason our city planners etc. keep green lighting detached/semi-detached housing on a huge scale rather than going for more density and it forces people to get a car to get anywhere.
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@pavld335 Of course I want a solution, but as I said that solution has to come from the top namely for city planners, politicians and builders to all stop being idiots and start building for the good of society and its population rather than what's easiest and makes the most money. You can't put all the blame on the general population when no one wants to build more high density communities that are pedestrian/bike friendly that people can feel comfortable in raising a family in. Even if people want to buy that kind of housing it doesn't exist in many cities. So if you want change, ask our planners, leaders and builders to change first and lead from the top down.
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@Mr.Beanyuwu Of course it can be done, the question is can it be done efficiently. Maybe in Mexico things are closer together and you have more dense neighbourhoods so that you can walk or take short trips to get your shopping done. Where I live in Toronto, unless you live downtown where the population is most dense, the farther you go away from downtown the more difficult it gets to get where you want to go without taking forever. I use to live closer to the center of Toronto and I use to only take a short trip to some neighbourhood markets to do my shopping or else I would take transit to downtown and get my shopping done since I was already there. However now that I've moved out into the suburbs, things that take a couple of minutes drive can take 10 mins to walk. There's like at least 4 supermarkets that are probably 10 mins or less driving from my house and I could visit a couple or all of them in one efficient short trip. Or else I can spend several hours to visit the same supermarkets by bus and haul all my groceries and other stuff manually. Yeah I think I know which method of travel I'd rather choose.
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@Fru1tpunch The problem is when you buy what you need, you need to go all the time to shop and its not something everyone wants to do. Also it makes it harder to bulk buy when food is on sale and that means you're wasting money when simply buying what you want when they go on sale can save you alot of cash every year. That alone can offset a decent amount of cost in owning a car in addition to convenience.
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@candyh4284 Well tell that to North American city planners and politicians to design our cities to be different than they are now. Until they change there's not much people can do but adapt to whatever environment they create for us.
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@latenightthinker4737 That's fine. Check back in a couple of decades and see how cars are very far from disappearing still and then see what you have to say. Of course China has invested billions in various forms of transport, but they didn't spend countless billions on building infrastructure for vehicles for nothing. They did it because they know that its still the most convenient form of transportation for many people and that its a necessary investment to make.
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@latenightthinker4737 Cars will never disappear. Only evolve. Maybe in a few decades we'll perfect autonomous cars that will drive people around without people needing to be behind the wheel, but thinking that cars will go the way of the horse and carriage? Yeah no. Not now, not ever. Not when it connects so many people in a way that public transit never could in a feasible and practical way and not when it provides millions of people the freedom of movement that they would otherwise not have if they had to rely on public transit to get them around.
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@l0ndon429 Well that's more likely to happen in Europe than it ever will in places like North America where the land is plentiful and even if we should be increasing density here its not going to happen anytime soon. Its unfortunate but that's the way it is and will always be here.
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I live in Toronto and in the last 10-20 years lots of parking lots, plazas, gas stations in downtown have been torn down and have had huge condo buildings taking their places and guess what? Condo prices have STILL went up by a huge amount in that time. The point is more housing stock doesn't equal lower prices when that housing is being bought by investors and foreigners who want to park their money in something. Also tons of Airbnb and other rental units are taking up those units as well which means people actually wanting to buy to live in those condos are having a hard time doing so because its so expensive. As for retail spaces, its the same story. More space doesn't mean more small retail when the prices to lease are so high as landlords aren't giving small business any discounts which is why so many are going out of business during the pandemic. Only people who can afford those high prices are major big box retailers.
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@barvdw Apartments even if they might be more profitable in the long run, require more effort to maintain and you have to become a landlord. Why would developers do that when they can build some big houses or an entire subdivision, sell them all, make a nice profit and then move on to the next project? Also when we're talking about affordable housing, you're often not dealing with the nicest most peaceful people which causes another problem of crime and violence. Who wants to deal with that when you can move to a nicer, more quieter neighborhood and most of those issues? A few years ago our government decided to build a few new safe injection sites in different downtown neighborhoods promising they wouldn't impact those communities much and now we see that those facilities simply bring in all the drug addicts to the area and they drop their needles and crap all over the place and crime and violence is up in those areas and people feel less safe there now too. The goal of taking addicts off the street and keeping drug use away from the public did the exact opposite. And getting back to transit after having had a car for 20 years now, I would never go back to public transit unless I absolutely had to even if it were a top notch system. If I were living near downtown then that would change things, but other than that I would never give up my car simply because I love driving and its always going to be more convenient and comfortable. Pretty much the only thing I miss about public transit is the random pretty girls I would see every so often during my commute. 😄 😄 😄
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@mohamedaminekoubaa5231 Car share might be a good alternative for some people depending if they live close to a place that has carshare vehicles nearby don't you think? If you live somewhat far away from the nearest carshare place do they deliver the car to you or something? Also it still doesn't beat the complete convenience of having your own vehicle if you can afford it. The simple fact that you can use it at anytime you need it to go where you want to go is the biggest advantage of owning your own car. If I want to just buy a couple of coffees at the local McDonalds, do I really want to go through the trouble of using carshare or getting it delivered? The bottom line is convenience is the biggest advantage of owning a car especially the further away you live from dense areas. I think the best way to eliminate at least a decent portion of car trips is to simply build larger condo units to make it more appealing to raising a family and for people looking for more space and also to have more self-contained communities where you can have many services and stores be a short walk, bike ride or at most a short drive away. Unfortunately I doubt developers will ever want to build large condo units again like they use to when they can build tiny units and still sell them at a high price where I live.
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@singleturbosupra7951 There's a couple of things. First you need to force developers, city planners and politicians to change the way they decide to build cities before anything else. Maybe if they changed then some people might be more open to living in higher density areas that require a car less often. Second as much as the idea of living in higher density areas is good for alot of reasons, many people including myself kinda don't want to and prefer to live away from tons of not so great people. I wouldn't have a problem with living in Tokyo in an apartment for example, but would I want to do the same in downtown Toronto which is my city? HELL NO. The city streets here aren't super dangerous, but they're not super safe either and there are also many inconsiderate and not so nice people that I'd prefer not to be my potential condo neighbours. And this relates to transit as well where I'd rather not share a ride with violent and/or not so stable people. And also I just plain LOVE to drive. Not only for convenience, but for just the plain joy of driving around and I'd NEVER want to give it up completely. Drive less? Sure. But give up my car? I'd prefer not to as long as I can afford to drive.
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@punnequraq If you buy a good, reliable car major maintanance issues should be minimal and the biggest expenses should be insurance and gas in most years. Also big objects isn't the main reason for having a car. I mean its nice to have say an SUV or something and be able to haul larger objects from time to time, but the main reasons to drive are convenience and efficiency. As had been said many times, unless you live in an area that has great transit, its almost always better to drive. This is especially true if you want to visit several different places in several different areas. Transit will almost NEVER be quicker than to simply driving to those places all in one trip versus trying to go to all those same places by transit. If I lived in a city like Tokyo where public transit was fast, reliable, safe, clean and widespread enough to get you to most places then I would have no problems living without a car, but sadly many if not most places in the world have transit like Tokyo especially in North America and hence cars are still the best way to get around.
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@jellybeansi Car share might be a solution if it were more widespread. I don't think in many places especially in the suburbs you'll have many convenient car share locations setup so that it makes sense for people to go and use it. Also it still doesn't solve the problem of people simply wanting to take spontaneous quick trips that may require a short car ride and yet doesn't need a car rental. To me the best solution is to still build better neighborhoods that have good density and is people friendly. That's a better solution than almost every other option including public transit that's often not as good as people think it is and that's not including the cost of running the system which is often money losing.
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@langhamp8912 I agree with you that we need to do much more to keep the planet clean and safe for humans and all other lifeforms, but simply saying 'we need to get rid of cars' isn't the answer and it won't ever happen anyways. Why not think of other solutions to the problem like building better more livable cities that require less car travel and less transit and on a larger scale, stop increasing the human population so dramatically so that we continue to consume resources at a massive rate? ' Right now, because of people like you, we are heading for an outcome where eventually only a small fraction of people can live on this earth at a greatly reduced lifestyle. ' Well is it really our fault that many nations who are poor are usually run by corrupt and incompetent people who also allow their populations to grow out of control? Maybe if more poor nations in the world would control their population growth much better and made better choices for their countries they could have better standards of living for their people as well.
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@l0ndon429 Boston simply moved their traffic from above ground to below it with the massive tunnels they've built for vehicles. Go look up the Big Dig and see for yourself what that project was all about. 'Los Angeles 2030 has a clear vision of reducing emissions and encouraging active transport. San Francisco has taken moves to pedestrianise major roads. ' Goodluck to LA in trying to hit those emission goals. If they can do it good for them, but I'm not holding my breath on that one. 'Austin has a $7 billion plan to create a complete and comprehensive with a new light rail, new electric bike fleet, expanded bus services, all electric bus fleet and new and expanded commuter lines, and so much more. ' Its one thing to create all those things, its quite another to convince people to give up their cars to use all those bikes, buses etc. if its not convenient for them to do so. I'm sure people living in downtown Austin will likely adopt to using those things more, but people living in the suburbs? I doubt they'll switch over anytime soon. 'And yes, some cities have continued to build more highways and worse, but the general trend is very clear. Things are changing, they’re not ‘the ways things will always be’ as you describe.' The trend is people who live in the city core and around those areas will use transit and other means of transportation more while everyone else will continue to drive if they can afford to because it will likely remain the most convenient form of transportation for decades to come.
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@l0ndon429 The point is Boston didn't so much as reduce traffic by a ton if any as they chose to simply bury it instead. So I don't know how they're reducing car usage by alot rather than moving it elsewehre. As for LA lets see how things trend in the next few years before calling their measures a success. 'But as you say, people will generally use whatever is convenient for them. Being able to take a commuter train to work everyday for a significant minority of people might mean they get a smaller car instead of a larger one, or go from 3 cars in the family to 2, all important steps and yes these changes will take decades. ' Unless Austin has some expansive transit plan, most people are still going to choose to drive than to take transit which will often if not most times take more time to get anywhere let alone going to multiple destinations in one day. That's the beauty of having a car that I and many others wouldn't ever want to give up which is the ability to go wherever you want to go, when you want to go with few restrictions. I can originally make a plan to go from A to B, but along the way perhaps I see C and decide to drop by for a quick visit first. Then after I visit B, on my way home I decide to visit D and E for abit before finally heading home. All that can be easily and efficiently accomplished by driving to all those places while it would often be very difficult and time consuming to do the same on public transit. And really in many cases no matter how much transit you build, it will never reach the level of ease and efficiency with getting from A to B as you can with a car.
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@barvdw While I agree that local ideas are possible, those solutions are mostly for those particular areas and I doubt it can become a national solution. Alot of the things mentioned like more bike infrastructure, more density and increased transit etc. mostly works in big cities and it would likely be pretty expensive to build and maintain outside of those dense areas. I live in Toronto which is Canada's largest city and outside of Toronto itself, once you get into the suburbs transit becomes very unprofitable and inefficient. When I was living near downtown many years ago taking transit while abit inconvenient, wasn't too bad and it made sense to use it when it was cheaper than driving and I traveled to downtown regularly. Now that I've moved into suburbs that are farther out, taking transit is pointless when its hugely time consuming and inefficient. Again blame the city planners for not continuing to build density and instead turning to building much more housing and spacing stores and services so far apart that makes a car the most efficient way to reach them. Right now I can drive to most stores in my area within 10-15 minutes and do one trip to reach them all and do my shopping in them all within a couple of hours. If I were to attempt to make the same shopping trip relying on transit, it would take me most of the day and wouldn't even be able to carry home a half of what I could carry in my car. Also with regards to building more housing, there's constant building of houses and condos in Toronto and its suburbs and its never ending here. The problem is much of that isn't affordable. Who wants to build cheap housing for people when you can build high priced properties for people with money and for investors, both foreign and domestic? Maybe if Canada stopped allowing so many foreigners to buy up property at will as investments, perhaps Canadians who actually lived here could afford some of that new housing that keeps being built.
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@barvdw I agree that less traffic would be ideal, but I'd say there are other ways to accomplish that than simply saying less cars is the only way to do it. For example building more self-contained communities where many of your services and stores are located in or near a neighborhood so that you can either walk/bike to those businesses or take only a short drive to them thereby lowering the amount of time a car is using the roads and leseening the traffic. Another thing we can do to lower the traffic significantly is simply improving the traffic timings of lights at intersections and building more roundabouts. It pisses me off to no end to see the light in front of you go green only to see the light ahead of you turning red, stopping your progress and creating unnecessary car traffic and this is especially true at night when a main road has a red light while cars are piling up and you see a small road getting a green for 20 seconds with barely any cars going in that direction while you wait for no good reason. How easy would it be to simply designate major roads to have traffic light piriority and give them the bulk of the time where the lights change to promote more continuous flow of traffic on these main roads to keep cars moving. Even better would be to build more roundabouts in new subdivisions so that traffic will be even more improved without the use of traffic lights and saving on electricity and traffic light costs as well. Simple changes like this can vastly improve traffic flow immediately with relatively limited effort compared to changes like building massive transit projects that would take forever to implement and have less impact than one would believe those kinds of projects would have in the suburbs.
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@FIVEFIVEFIVE-v1p Blame city planners for creating the problems to begin with. I'm in Toronto and if you live downtown then not owning a car is fine because everything is close to you. If you live farther out then it gets more difficult and if you live in the suburbs it becomes almost a necessity if you don't want to take forever to get anywhere. Where I live I'm within 5 mins driving distance of two supermarkets for example. It would take me about 20 mins to get there by bike. Not that bad, but it does become a problem when you start carrying a fair amount of groceries and things get even worse during the winter when you have to battle the cold and the snow. About 15 years ago when I lived elsewhere and before I got my first car, I use to take 15 mins to bike to a supermarket near me and let me say it was HELL doing it in the winter. Once I got my car it took less than 5 mins to get there and driving opened up a whole new world that I didn't even realize. All the places that for years would take forever for me to get to by bike or transit all of a sudden only took 10-20 mins. Going to several locations in one trip was so easy and fast. Driving to one of my friend's house took only about 30 mins by highway while back in highschool when I went over to his place by transit took almost 2 hours. Really unless you live somewhere with really good transit and with stores near you, there's no reason not to drive if you live elsewhere when its just plain so much faster and convenient.
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@jesseperez4185 I'm going to dispute you on the its cheaper to eat out in Japan part. Unless you're buying the best and most expensive ingredients there's almost no way that its cheaper to eat out than it is to cook one meal and then eat the leftovers for several days. I do that all the time. Make one batch of food that will last me for a few days so that I only have to cook like 2-3 times a week at most. No way doing that is more expensive than eating out or getting food deliveries all the time and its definitely more healthier too. Also buying in bulk DOES save money and now with inflation making everything more expensive it makes more sense than ever to see if there's anything on sale each week and then stock up on it rather than buying a little bit that will only last you a day or two. Seriously try comparing prices from your local grocery store and your big box store and in many if not most cases food will be cheaper at the big box stores. I want to support small business, but at the end of the day saving money is my main concern when as I said everything including food prices are going up. Also if the goal is to reduce the number of cars on the road, how exactly are we doing that when you have so many delivery vehicles on the roads driving everywhere to bring stuff to people's doorsteps these days? Its like moving factories overseas so that your land and air doesn't get polluted, but land and air elsewhere in the world gets polluted instead. The same with deliveries where you make one less trip in your car only to be offset by someone else having to make that trip for you and you're paying them a few bucks to do it. At the end of the day pollution is still created just not by you personally so that's suppose to be better? 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
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@You can eat in class!! Unless where you shop has consistently low prices, why would you shop frequently and pay more? I'm in Toronto and smaller grocery stores sometimes have deals, but its the bigger supermarkets where I buy in bulk when something I like goes on sale. For example I love my Campbells Chunky Soup. Small grocery stores might have it, but they sell it at high prices. On the otherhand I can just wait until it goes on sale at a big supermarket and drive there and buy several dozen cans and stock up for long term. That's the advantage of being able to drive to where the deals are especially with recent supply chain issues that are driving up the prices of many things. Personally I would love to live in a neighborhood that is more pedestrian and bike friendly, but thanks to our crappy city planners and developers who keep building crappy car centric subdivisions this won't happen anytime soon until they change their ways. So as much as I would like to drive less to get around, where I live its simply not possible and transit isn't the answer here either.
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@grassytramtracks The way things are in North America isn't ideal, but its become that way because of the size of our lands and also the decisions made by our politicians and developers. I don't think people from other parts of the world who live in high density countries appreciate just how large North America is and how difficult it is to get around the country. Increasing density within our cities would be great, but when you have so much land available people just tend to naturally spread out and our city planners and politicians never chose to change that. Also as great as it would be to live in higher density areas, most people can't afford to buy or even rent in those areas anymore because of how insanely expensive housing has gotten. I think there are tons of people who would love to live in the city, but most can no longer afford to and living further out is the only answer.
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@grassytramtracks In many cities of North America, if you live within walking distance of many stores, many people probably aren't going to be able to afford to live in those areas as housing prices go up. Many people DO want to live in the city or around areas that have higher density and have services and stores near them. The problem is that in many areas, places like that are going up in price quickly and its outstripping people's wages so that they have no choice but to live elsewhere.
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