So she’s gonna take Amtrak or Delta to Sandusky, Michigan or two million other place in the country that might be good to visit? Not to mention a walk in the woods in Ontario or sitting on the beach in Padre Island?
Pretty much any tourist destination has public transportation. If it’s a good tourist destination it has transportation specifically aimed at tourists. I spend a lot of vacation time in the Caribbean. I’ve never driven a car there. I get boated/bused around wherever I want to go.
If you don’t need a car for your daily life, then you don’t need a car. On the rare occasions that you need non-public transit, you can get a cab, or Uber, or Lyft, or a tour van, or any number of other options.
It’s economically silly to have a $20,000+ piece of equipment sitting around because you need to use it once a year.
I generally take a 737 down to Florida to start my time in the Caribbean. But I don’t own one. I use someone else’s on the relatively rare occasions that I need one. It’s a lot more cost-effective to give Southwest a few hundred bucks once or twice a year than it is to pay millions to buy my own.
And it’s the same thing with cars. If you need one once a year it’s a lot more cost effective to pay cab fare or rent one than it is to buy one outright and then have to pay to title, insure, and store it.
1 Like
Neither she or I would have any need or desire to go to those places. Most of our travel is on the northeast corridor or the west coast
Huge place to travel which doesn’t require a car is Europe. No car needed.
I rest my case. People are not aware of this vast great land and get tunnel vision based on their immediate surroundings. What a shame Amtrak doesn’t go to Mt. Rushmore, the UP, most of the presidential libraries, and on and on. Yeah I go to Disney every year too but that’s not real. It’s all pretend. Get a license, get a car, get out and see the country for heaven’s sake while you can.
4 Likes
I’m for getting a license, but,if she wants to go to Sandusky (do Sanduskyites want NYers around?) she can rent a car when she gets there.
I didn’t own a car until I was 45. I bicycled up to Canada (from LA), across to NYC, down to Key West, through the middle, etc. I really saw the country.
The trains go everywhere, including a lot of places roads don’t. I also rode freight trains for years. I even rode ‘la bestia’.
Nope, no need. The overarching point to be made is; the unintended consequences of creating laws that encourage people and businesses to move from the city that makes life difficult for them to some area that does not. Detroit and Dayton made doing business and/or living in the city less desirable by the laws, codes and taxes they levied. That encouraged businesses and people to move. Half their tax base left and the cities have all but died.
Residents of Oslo that own their own cars but now must park them outside the city and take public transport in, may find that a reason to leave. I would. Businesses that have interests in Lillestrom or Sandvika that employees must visit for meetings may decide that being outside the city is more efficient for them. Certainly car repair, sales and any other auto related businesses will leave the area. So if 51% decide they want to ban cars from the city center, don’t be surprised if some large measure of the other 49% decide to relocate and take their business with them.
Unintended consequences. We shall see how this plays out.
2 Likes
My niece is getting married to a man from Nebraska. If they choose to live there, we will visit them. I won’t drive, though. We will fly to Omaha and they can pick us up at the airport, or we will rent a car. It’s 1140 miles and over 17 hours to Omaha, and I see no reason to punish myself with that drive. I currently commute to work with a car, but it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t, and didn’t own a car. I would still fly and deal with getting around once there.
I interviewed for a job in NYC before I graduated from college. The cost of parking a car that I would only use on the weekends was so high, that I could commute by taxi and go out every night by taxi and still save money compared to owning a car with the ridiculous parking garage rental. Many people in NYC do own cars, but only because they have off street parking at their homes.
One more thing: it’s a different society there, and they are comfortable with many of the rules they live with. We visited Amsterdam in 2003, and we were not allowed to park our rental van downtown. I would have received a ticket for parking there. I dropped the family and luggage at the hotel and drove to the airport to return the van. Even in 2003 a large European city was comfortable with a partial ban of vehicles in the city center.
I gotta go get something done but I remember my wife’s cousin drove us downtown Oslo to get on the train then picked us up again when we got back. No problem. I guess we’d have to walk that or something now.
Ask the folks though in East St. Louis or even St. louis how much fun it is to live in the central city and of course go walking around there at night without a car and the doors locked. Yeah been there. I vote no.
Personally, I’d like to drive something with a big block Chevy, waving and smiling, through downtown Oslo just to see what would become of me.
But, alas, this is the age of “carbon footprints” and “global warming” - er, I meant “climate change”, so that would be frowned upon.
But you can wear a dress while sporting a pair of testicles and demand to be referred to as “Judy”. As long as you drive a Prius, or ride the bus.
Methinks I was born in the wrong century. 
What the heck. I thought Norway was Viking country?
1 Like
A thread about Oslo and cars forces me to tell this story here again. At a restaurant in Norway (on a business trip) I asked the waiter for “oil and vinegar” salad dressing. Surprising to me, the waiter seemed very worried & concerned that I had made this request … lol … turns out he thought I was asking for vinegar & motor oil on my salad. 
You’d be surprised how many guys in Norway have big block old cars in their garages. They love them. I planned to have a gang of them coming to the back to the 50’s car show last year but schedules conflicted. They would have gone nuts seeing over 10,000 old cars in one spot.
1 Like
The trend of the 21st century is people moving downtown, taking it over. I lived in DC in the '60s, when it was >70% Black, the schools >90% Black. When gentrification was first adumbrated, Mayor Marion Barry said DC’d always be Black. White people’s money put the lie to that. I don’t know what people will do to St Louis, but the 2 likeliest outcomes are that no one will want to move there and it will become poorer or lots of people will and it’ll become wealthier. The cities in which we will make progress in science, medicine, technology, and education will be the latter; the others will become poorer. They will be poorer because they don’t have as much as what the people in the growing cities invent.
I agree that’s what I’d do…But not everyone feels the same. I know people who still go drinking every Friday night. Great…good for them. Doesn’t mean I want to. Everyone has their own interests.
I don’t think this is an issue you and I could ever agree on. I’m a “city” type guy, and I’ve already been to all the cities in the USA that I’ve wanted to see. I’ve no reason or desire to visit any of the countless small towns that make up this country. I’ve no interest in presidential libraries, and I can tour any national monuments not in big cities without ever leaving my living room by using virtual reality tech.
OK, but unless you have actually physically stood on the Gettysburg or Little Big Horn battle fields, you’ll never be able to experience the strange aura that surrounds them. Some things you just have to be there to feel the place.
5 Likes
While on the subject of seeing the area’s of the US. Let me add Big Bend National Park and the Badlands National Park. Those will show you just how tough the settlers were and know we have people complaining they have to push the remote button twice to unlock all the vehicle doors.
Bing , just in case you have not been there yet ’ House on the Rock ’ in Wisconsin is not that far from you.
1 Like
We stayed at one of the cabins and did a night hike with the ranger in the Bad Lands and it was really interesting. Haven’t been to House on the Rock but got a full report from the in-laws. Of course you have to be at Wall Drug to experience that and taste their hamburgers and take in their shooting gallery. They just don’t have this stuff in NYC.
1 Like
Don’t have the Statue of Liberty anywhere near you, either. 
1 Like
It’s interesting, I lived in NYC for 34 years and have never visited the Statue of Liberty.