This thread takes as a premise that cars are a virus: they are the most wasteful characteristic of modern society. Rather than debating the pros and cons of the private automobile, I would like to discuss steps that can be taken to eliminate it. What are possible alternatives to the private automobile and what can be done to make people feel they need to drive less?

IMO, solutions will come in two categories.

1. Making people feel less "need" to travel. We can debate endlessly whether people actually need to go somewhere or not. Nonetheless, it is evident that people feel a desire to make trips for work and for personal reasons. What can be done to make people feel they need to travel less often. Here are some examples of possible solutions like this.

A. Improve telecommuting software so that people can do all of their work from home.
B. Allow people to send their children to schools that are really local, i.e. within walking distance.
C. Create shopping co-ops that make it so that one person can do all of the grocery shopping for a neighborhood.

2. New forms of transportation that allow people to get from place to place with less ecological footprint. Examples of this might be:

A. A better bicycle: eliminating the private automobile would make the bicycle safer. The next thing to do would be to make it easier to take cargo or kids on a bike. More standardized trailers would help with this. Also, some form of power assist might make bicycling more popular.
B. Better public transit. I live in the densely populated city of San Francisco, which has commuter rail, a municipal railway, and an extensive bus system. However, if I want to get across town without using a car, it's faster to bicycle than it is to take transit. This doesn't make sense. Public transit needs to be expanded to meet people's needs.
C. A small, cheap car alternative. Some sort of golf cart like device might be an acceptable car alternative for some. This would have to be small and efficient enough to not be just another car.
D. What about something like the Segway? When I first heard about the Segway, I thought it sounded pretty silly. However, if we are looking at the Segway not as an alternative to walking but as an alternative to driving, maybe it (or something like it) makes sense for some people.

Another solution to the car conundrum might be: increase the cost of dense energy (i.e. petroleum) so that people do not see cars as a tempting alternative to more efficient forms of transportation. I see this price increase as a positive effect of PO.

Produce more of your own needs.
Reduce debt; less debt means less work=less driving
Internet definitely-most of my income is internet connected
Get rid of car altogether=massive $$$ savings.
Learn to plan ahead; 2 trips to grocery store/year instead of 2-3 times/day
Attitude that no-car=freedom. (exactly the opposite of what "they" want you to believe.
These helped me achieve car-freedom in 1997. And in rural Montana you're on your own without a rig.
Note; some Mennonites just moved near here and reopened the old general store that had been closed for 20 years--and most of their goods, including produce, is CHEAPER than in the big box store in the county seat!!! Go, anabaptists, go!!

Hey, good thread -- if you don't mind I'll link the Segway thread here in case anyone has practical experience with one that they'd like to share.

Segway

I lived in perfect happiness without a car until age 32. I hate cars. Walking/bicycling is possible for most people -- but not all. Going to a no-car society is most likely to succeed if you include a viable plan for people who physically can't ride a bike or walk around town. I like the Segway, which seems to work for some people in that situation.

I also like the idea of tiny little pod-like vehicles that run at 10 mph, just around town. That would work if the roads weren't full of SUV's.

How about making them unfashionable? lol

TBH Even I don't want them banned, however bad they are. I certainly like driving them, but am acutely aware of their downside.

Promotional of their sensible use would be better. But that's rather like the sensible use of drugs, alcohol, cream cake and junk food - easier said than done.

The best way would be to have car free zones and towns. Fashionable places based around sports, walking, local business and low footprint transport like light rail. Localised food and goods production where possible too.

Bit of imagination might do it, but I sense banks and developers are too chicken to take the risk, give it 5 or 10 years.

The anti-smoking movement would be a good model. Get the trial lawyers to hit car companies, municipalities and car drivers with a barrage of lawsuits. Certainly, cars are producing toxic fumes like cigarettes. My brother told me (I don't know if this is right or not) that sampling near high-volume roads shows the soil to be contaminated with heavy metals like a toxic waste dump. Maybe you can file some sort of action with the EPA. Lots for planned roadways and parking lots could be combed for endangered species, no matter how minute. Car manufacturers could also be sued like gun manufacturers, for contributing to the death of human beings. In short, any excuse, no matter how flimsy, should be exploited to entangle automakers/developers/oil companies in litigation. You're bound to run into some sympathetic judges or juries somewhere in the system. Anyway, the goal isn't so much to win the lawsuits, but to use an L. Ron Hubbard style strategy of harassing car culture with the legal system.

People with respiratory/allergy problems may be very enthusiastic about "no car zones".

Yes -- this at least has a model in Europe, where a lot of the "old town" sections of cities are car free zones. In my town this suggestion keeps coming up, to make one section of main street pedestrian only. It keeps getting shot down, though.

Our community is also investing a lot in building sidewalks. It does seem to be making a difference, with more people walking longer distances from town.

And where do you plan on doing with the suburbanites? For the purposes of this little 10 question post, we=suburbanites.

1.We are going to need trains and buses in order to get to work.

2.We are going to need jobs that involve something other than expanding the sprawl.

3.We are going to need a way of sending our children to school.

4.We are going to need a way to get to the malls and transport our good back home.

5.We are going to need a way to get transport children who aren't old enough to walk or bike to soccer practice.

6.We are going to need a new model for a street layout that allows us to get out of our side streets without becoming hopelessly lost.

7.We are going to need a way to get to medical centers in an emergency.

8.We are going to need to move all of the important buildings (town officies, post office, police+fire stations) into a central locations

9.We are going to need a different model for our houses that allows small scale farming and wood harvesting.

10.And lastly, We are going to need another justification for living (jk, ).

Let's not reinvent the wheel .

http://www.carfree.com

Just wait for Peak Oil and beyond. Most people won't be able to afford to keep their cars on the road.

Could someone here please provide a clear, concise, and unambiguous definition of "automobile"? Seems to me we need that before we can get down to the real nitty-gritty.

My answers:
3.School buses or schools within walking distance. Older children (teens) bicycles or public transport (or walking).

4. Home deliveries from stores, trailer after bike, neighborhood store within walking distance. This is crucial point, not everyone goes to work, e.g. retired people, but everyone needs to eat, and groceries are heavy. Actually, there also have been grocery stores on wheels (like vans or buses) making regular rounds in rural places here in Sweden. Before "all" households had their own cars.

5. Why do they have to go to soccer practice? Can't they kick a ball with the neighborhood kids on the local street (now empty of cars)? Or go around on inlines, or play softboy or play hide-n-seek, or play basket ball or...

6. Must be a unique American problem. Even rats can learn to find their way in mazes, so eventually humans can learn to walk complicated routes. But today there is GPS. And isn't possible to build short cuts
through backyards to make more direct routes? Or just allow people to cross other people's lawns? How about signs: "To the bus stop"?

7. Ever heard of ambulances?

1. That only requires improving the bus network and perhaps train timetables. Perfectly doable.

2. I thought it was residences, not jobs, that expanded the sprawl.

3. School buses are the standard method in Europe.

4. Small grocery shops can be a solution. Another is delivery vans.

5. They can play locally with other local children or use a bus.

6. Put gnomes to identify houses

7. Don't you use ambulances there?

8. Or create other offices wherever they are needed.

9. I thought they already had gardens. Use them.

10. Gardening.

A private automobile is a motor vehicle owned by a person (or household) and used by the owner, primarily for getting places and transporting own household goods.

A truck or lorry that transport goods that are not for the driver's personal use, is not a private automobile. And a tractor, ambulance, taxi, firetruck, police car is not a private automobile

A SUVs might be classified as a "light truck" in the US, but it is a private automobile according to my definition. So is a van with 7 passenger seats if used by the owner for transport her/himself and his/her relatives and friends. If used by an organisation to transport handicapped people it is not a private automobile.

However, one thing I have trouble with is motorcycles and scooters. I think they should be regarded as small private automobiles. Certainly a mass of scooters, like in Rome, is just as bad as a mass of cars for pedestrians and neighborhoods!

nocar

Scooters, eh?

Okay, there's one definition. It says in effect, that anything with wheels *and* a motor with which it propels itself, is an automobile. Therefore including what we ordinarily call motorcycles, scooters, etc. Question: what about mopeds and what about electric-assisted bicycles?

Anyone else have a clear, concise, and consistent definition to offer..?

It's important we end up with some kind of consensus about the definition here, else there's no way to end up with a clear policy.