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.

  • frankPodmore@slrpnk.netEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I had a friend who was killed by a motorist while walking on a country road, so I’ve given this some thought. The key principle for safety is to keep cars away from more vulnerable road users.

    So, there are the same basic options: better public transport infrastructure, and well-signposted, properly maintained footpaths and bike lanes are the most obvious.

    As for driving from the countryside into urban areas, you can have ‘Park and ride’ schemes, which are common in parts of the UK. You drive your car to a bus station at the edge of the town, and the bus takes you the rest of the way in. That minimises miles driven and keeps cars out of urban areas, where they’re especially inefficient.

    • Syudagye@pawb.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      I live in a place where what you are describing is already implemented, and it does make a lot of sens, but there is still some issues:

      • Since most people work in the same time period of the day, public transports are a nightmare in the morning and at the end of the day.
      • Country side bus exists, but in my town there is 3 per day. So you need to spend the day at the city if you use it.

      So there is still a lot of people that prefer to use their car to go to work or simply to go to the city, which causes insane congestions on the main road around the urban area at some points in the day.

      • frankPodmore@slrpnk.netEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        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.