So suppose we don’t like cars and want to not need them. What are the transportation alternatives for rural areas? Are there viable options?
Edit:
Thank you all for interesting comments. I should certainly have been more specific-- obviously the term “rural” means different things to different people. Most of you assumed commuting; I should have specified that I meant more for hauling bulk groceries, animal feed, hay bales, etc. For that application I really see no alternative to cars, unfortunately. Maybe horse and buggy in a town or village scenrio.
For posterity and any country dwellers who try to ditch cars in the future, here are the suggestions:
Train infrastructure, and busses where trains aren’t possible
Park and rides, hopefully with associated bike infrastructure
No real alternative and/or not really a problem at this scale
Bikes, ebikes, dirtbikes
Horse and buggy
Ride share and carpooling
Don’t live in the country
Walkable towns and villages
Our greatgrandparents and the amish did it
A lot of you gave similar suggestions, so I won’t copy/paste answers, but just respond to a few comments individually.
I agree, those are obviously issues in many areas. But infrequent, unreliable, overcrowded public transport is a result of political decisions, whereas the car congestion is a result of geometry!
I also think it would be good if more places of work had staggered or flexible hours. So that, e.g., some staff work 8-4, others 9-5 and others 10-6. That would spread out the single hypothetical ‘rush hour’ into three busy hours. I’m not sure how exactly you could implement that at scale, granted. Possibly if governments started to do it, it would catch on in the rest of the world of work.