this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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Haha, I've lived that life for about 80% of 4 decades already in several small towns and out in the woods far from town. Public transport is mostly non-existent, and people live all over the place where there is nothing but a narrow winding road with no sidewalks. It's generally only the city center where the buildings like courthouses and banks are located that are walkable in the average American small town. Basically there's no option but cars for these small towns.
When you go on about how they should all be built up into an urban paradise with sidewalks and buses and trains going everywhere, it overlooks the fact that we already don't keep up the infrastructure that we have well enough. There is no money to just rebuild everything into the version you imagine would be ideal.
That sounds like the most backward design even of a rural area. This is not a dichotomy between cities and towns complete with pedestrian bridges and electric crosswalks, it’s also about planning that amounts past random, long-distance scattering of destinations.
I’m trying to even understand how you claim those towns become unwalkable, since that’s not due to lack of development - it’s a matter of overdevelopment of roads with wide lanes. A small grid of old buildings with dirt between them is perfectly walkable. If someone built those stores 4 miles apart from each other all in different directions, then even for car users that’s a design failure.
If you insist there is no money to develop anything in those towns or re-plan the environment, that’s an unfortunate diagnosis for the area, but that also means EVs won’t work there because of lack of charging infrastructure, and the town will die out since nothing is being maintained. Let’s keep the discussion to just places that at least have enough money to reconsider their 8-lane stroads.
That's unfortunately the truth in most American rural towns. Take my town and their grocery store. My town back in the day apparently had a great town square, vibrant, very walkable. Over the years it's become more delapidated due to neglect, and businesses don't want to open there. Our grocery store left the downtown area so they could build a new one on the outskirts of town. People love it, it's bright, big, huge even, and of course, plenty of parking. So they think it's an absolute win. Except it's not. It was the town's only grocery store and now rather than having a walkable store from all the houses in town, everyone now gets in their car and drives 2 miles out of town, parks in the massive parking lot, and walks inside.
This is how commercial has all happened in small towns. It's left the downtown which you're right, would be very walkable, and has moved outside of town. On top of that, it's extremely anti-pedestrian, so even if there would be a bus added eventually, it would still require walking 1/4 mile from the bus stop across a parking lot just to get to the entrance of one of the stores.
The entire thing is ridiculous, and you're right for not understanding it. The only way it makes sense is if everyone is brainwashed into thinking that "it's better that I get to get into my car, drive 2 miles, and pick up my groceries, put them all in my car, drive 2 miles home, then bring them all inside"
I will say EVs do work there, and it's not because of charging infrastructure, but because everyone forgets that you can charge your car at home. Most residents are single family homes with 2, 3, hell even 4 car garages. Each space could have a charger, and every home could have solar added. Places like grocery stores can add chargers. In that small town we (for some reason) had 6 gas stations for our 15k people. They could be mandated to add some chargers, but even then, if everyone charged at home it's like leaving your house on a full tank every day. Very few people seem to think that way.
Transit is by far the superior option, but we're talking decades, centuries to hook up these small towns. In the short term, EVs will lower our dependence on fossil fuels at least.