alt Hacker NewsIt’s not uncommon to see the car debate come up in threads like these. As someone who lived in central London for over a decade without a car and recently moved out where not having a car is incredibly inconvenient, I’ve experienced both realities.
Only yesterday, I drove into London and walked nearly 20k steps to visit the various locations on my itinerary. Not every inch of a space need be a road, but banning cars and insisting everyone walk or use public transport also isn’t the answer. We need roads adjacent to large, pedestrianised areas.
The specific problem with the UK is how London-centric and unreliable our transport infrastructure has become. Not to mention driving can be incredibly fun! Much more so than cycling when it’s pouring with rain, you’re going to a fancy event, or have a large amount to move.
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I wouldn't say driving in the rain is fun, it's just slightly less bad than cycling maybe. I look around and don't see many people having fun in cars, it's mostly just anger, frustration and an inability to break the cycle. The only ones having fun are the fictional characters in the adverts. I think the sooner we stop pretending it's still fun and start treating it like the chore it is the better.
That's a thing I noticed in these discussions but also in real life developments: one party/group has strong opinions on what would work for them, probably even based on valid data, so they get elected/nominated and start implementing them - in complete ignorance of the valid data and opinions of the _other_ groups/parties. So they might reach (some of) their own goals while trampling the others' goals, so there's unhappiness and they get replaced with a new party/group which proceeds with the same losing approach just in another direction. Heck, nobody seems to be able _in_practice_ to join and overlap the expectations of the entire community and try (at least) to build a neighborhood for all its members. And it's frustrating.
With some exception e.g. London as you mentioned, councils have gone out of their way to make taking cars into town inconvenient, but put zero effort into making it easy to get there any other way. Result is that people prefer either out of town shopping centres with free parking or shopping online.