Comment by andrepd
3 years ago
Sparsely populated rural areas are really the only place where personal autos make sense. Long distance highway travel is better serviced by train. And transportation inside the city is better serviced by literally anything except a car (bikes, e-bikes, subway, trams, scooters, walking).
Even cities with decent public transport networks (such as Prague) tend to have a problem with tangential relations. Most lines go from some periphery to the center and to another periphery. If you need to travel between two peripheries, you have to be somewhat lucky to have a line connecting them at your disposal. Going through the center and back to the other periphery is possible, but usually takes too long. (e.g. 1h 30 min instead of 15 minutes by car).
> Sparsely populated rural areas are really the only place where personal autos make sense
This might be true, if rural areas and densely populated uran areas were the only 2 states, but there's a lot of intermediate density in between
Having kids makes car sharing very unattractive. Finding car sharing with enough (and high quality) car seats can be quite challenging. And as much as I like public transport, with kids using the car is often much faster.
How do you get around the sparsely-populated rural areas at either end of the highway?