Half of all dutch people own cars (10,062,194 cars / 17,904,421 people). The majority of people still ride bikes or take public transport to move around except when they need to take their car. For comparison, a majority of americans have a car (259,238,294 cars / 333,287,557 people). Note that the denominator includes children in both cases.

You're not asked to give up going to the wilderness.

Regarding scheduling, in my eyes public transport where the mean time between busses is not under 15 minutes is not public transport. Running after a bus is a signal that the frequency is too low. "I need to leave five minutes ago to take the bus I intended" should be followed by "if I leave now I'll be a few minutes early for the next one".

You are right, I was not asked to give up going to the wilderness; I just want to go to the wilderness of my choosing and not be constrained by someone else's transportation.

Funny thing about scheduling. I have to plan to leave an hour earlier than I need to, and even then, I'm frequently late. Yet, my hyperfocus kicks in when I sit in the car and go through the rituals of "I'm driving now." The vigilance can be exhausting, but usually only bothers me when I'm leaving an observing site at 3 o'clock in the morning or I'm driving at twilight in deer country.

Whats a bike? It is it a human powered bicycle or a motorcycle?

Talking about the Netherlands. Regular bicycle.

Successful transit means a very regular schedule and ponctuality.

Your first point does not apply to, say, Switzerland. Missed your train? Just wait 5-10 minutes. 30 if you're in bumfuck nowhere.

Living with ADHD also increases your chances of getting into a car accident substantially. I can't find the numbers now, but the increase is non-trivial and there are some clear mechanisms (inattention, impulsivity and risk-seeking behaviors).

ADHD is a big part of the reason I don't drive. I'm lucky enough to live in Berkeley which is very walkable with decent transit, and I would hesitate to move anywhere more car-oriented exactly because I have ADHD.

Yeah, ADHD does affect one's ability to drive safely. On the other hand, I've been driving for over 50 years. I've had one accident that I was responsible for. Various other vehicles have been involved in five other accidents where the other driver backed into my parked car.

I think the reason I've been hypervigilant about safe driving practices is that my father owned a rigging company, and I was driving forklifts and stake trucks in the yard from about 13. I understood the impact a vehicle could have on other things, people included. Living in that world from about age nine on teaches you to be obsessive about properly securing a load (Molding machines, air handling units, lathes, etc.).

I've often thought people would be better drivers if they started their driving experience with the motorcycle safety training course curriculum and drove for a year on motorized two wheels, taking up the lane and keeping up with traffic.

When I was younger I was lucky enough to live somewhere rural where I got into a couple of single car accidents that I walked away from. Now my ADHD hyper focus is super attentive when driving.

1: This "ADHD" issue is because you've never seen properly ran bus system. I used to live in big European city, riding bus to work everyday, and I never even knew the bus schedule. I did not have to. They would come every 15 minutes, or every 7-8 minutes during the rush hour. So I could just show up at the stop anytime and be sure that a bus will appear quite soon. Zero advance planning required.

The ADHD issue is because I always think I can get more done in the time before I need to leave, and I end up hyper-focusing and missing the leave time. Another ADHD factor is that if I don't sit and watch every stop go by, I am likely to miss it because I'm reading and not paying attention. This is not a problem when driving.

But when you drive you can't read.

Thus you get more done when using public transport. Nowadays with phones and portables you can even read your email and work rather than justb read the newspaper as commuterts did 20 years ago.

Yes, and that's a good thing. Because if I'm on transit and I read, I miss stops, sometimes as many as four or five. Then my day is really fucked. I literally have to sit there and count off every single stop. With driving, I don't have that problem. I have internal mapping and external GPS to remind me what I need to do next.

As for getting work done, back when I was an employee and using transit, two factors kept me from doing work on the transit system. First, my employer already got enough uncompensated labor from me. I wasn't going to give them any more. Second, I use speech recognition, and dictating company confidential information in a public setting is unwise at best.

Yup, can relate. And not having to get behind the wheel, defrost, maintain the car, park, ... This is so relaxing.

1. Makes sense.

2. This is why non-car-centric countries don't ban cars. If you're that kind of person (and not everybody is), you buy a car. You may not use it beyond these wilderness activities though.

3. Trains.

Good points. A few years ago, I visited a friend in Estonia, and even though he was in Tartu proper, they still drove almost everywhere. Essentials were only available by car.

Trains are an interesting subject. For them to be useful, you would need to have rails covering the same destinations and paths as the highway system. One should also be aware of network effects when adding another layer of transportation services, including how they affect the distribution of services and residences. From experience, we know that roadways encourage spread because they allow you to cover a greater area with little time cost. Rail will likely encourage denser development and a higher cost of living due to a greater influence of rent-seeking entities.

One of the tensions one would need to explore is the tension between the need/desire of a chunk of the population to keep their distance, keep their living space separate from others, and be acoustically and physically isolated from them, while still needing services a 30-minute drive away.

> For them to be useful, you would need to have rails covering the same destinations and paths as the highway system.

Its funny to me that you suggest that trains need to cover what they highway system covers. When of course trains existed first and already covered many more places then highway system ever covered in most places. And with buses countries got the opportunity to cover things away from train-station and that was really not all that expensive even in rural areas.

Its just that in some countries, many of these trains were removed and the countries focused all their finances on new highway systems. And often demolished large part of productive cities to achieve it. For more so then trains ever did.

> Rail will likely encourage denser development and a higher cost of living due to a greater influence of rent-seeking entities.

No actually when you do it properly, then rail makes it so you can have a dense core around each station where you have everything you need locally while also having access to a city center in a short time.

While you subburb example misses that all subburbs are massively subsidized and make negative money. Its the poor people in the cities that are paying extra to finance these subburbs. Urban3 has done tons of analysis of this. The subburbs are the rent seekers, you just don't think of them that way because you see it as 'normal'.

There are plenty of examples, for example how in the 60s Sweden used subway trains to build massive amounts of housing alone those new lines.

> between the need/desire of a chunk of the population to keep their distance

You can have that, but you will find that once you properly account for the cost, people are much less willing to spend that money. That's why before extensive zoning codes, minimum lot sizes as requirements, parking minimum, free street parking, free highways people lived closer together. And of course the massive federal top down intensive given subburban development Post-WW2, along with the redlining of cities. All these are hidden cost on society that you simply hide and put on county, state and federal taxes.

Why are you assuming that it's a binary A or B?

I want good public transport in urban areas as I don't want to take the car, but I still own one for many uses.

I hate it to be mandatory to live.