The Paywalled version was recently posted, but here is the article of the actual UQ research.
Key points
- UQ researchers recruited 10 car-owning Brisbane residents to go without their vehicles for 20 days
- Participants were asked follow their regular schedules using only public transport, cycling, walking, micro-mobility devices such as scooters, and taxis and ride-share services in an emergency
- Brisbane's sprawling urban layout and public transport limitations were identified as the main barriers to permanent car-free life in the city
Posted by Cafescrambler
25 Comments
A nice study. Women largely prefer to fuck men who have large loud cars. You will never have a car free city. Large loud cars signal certain things to women that turn them on. Car free is a delusional fantasy that absconds from human psychosexual dynamics which direct every aspect of behaviour. And worry not, I wrote this knowing it will get downvoted into reddit hell.
edit:
It is multifaceted but what underpins all aspects of society are brutal primal psychosexual impulses. We attempt to pave over this with the glossy concept of democracy and civilization but at the end of the day women demonstrably choose rich and powerful men. so you will never have a car-free city and you will never have equality. Those ideas are naive and delusional fantasies that are predicated upon systems that are nonexistent. Most women say they want a man with ambition and this is code for a man who is ruthless and dominant in the competition for resources. None of this equates to equality or balance in any sense. Life is a brutal competition and sexual attraction is largely unconscious and communicated via signals of status and hierarchy.
hopefully this comment can reach 100 downvotes in an hour, that will certainly be a great achievement by many redditors!
edit: we cracked 50 downvotes approx 17 mins after the comment was posted. onwards to 100 downvotes my fellow redditors!
edit: almost 40 mins since comment was sent online, downvotes are slowing… sad day for redditors everywhere..
edit: as of 60 mins downvotes are at a clean 80. what an amazing reddit experience! 😜
Is it the hills? Is it the minimum temp of 20C?
No, it’s the residents that are wrong.
ten people, twenty days?
My one person 10+ years says otherwise!
Did they even bloody well TRY?
Water is wet – until further work is done on public transport infrastructure, I doubt many people would opt out of having a car.
Public transport isn’t amazing here, but it’s leagues better than where i grew up. I only NEED the car 1/week, the rest is public transport or biking, personal scooter, or walking. it’s great.
Even as someone who lives car-free, I’m not surprised by this. Changing habits is hard, which is something they mention in the article with how it’s difficult for people to attend things that don’t have good transit connections.
I am encouraged that those in the study seem willing to use alternatives for more trips, especially when seeing how much money they save doing so.
But further solutions will take more time and more changes. In particular, land-use changes and public transit investment.
n = 10
Feels dishonest to even talk about a study this small, hopefully it can at least make some positive change to infrastructure planning
Edit: It seems for this type of invasive, habit changing study this sample size seems appropriate. Thanks for the additional information
If I didn’t need my personal car for work to visit clients, I’d gladly go car-free, and I’m fortunate enough to live in a suburb with very good public transport connections.
The outer suburbs – where most people live – need a huge amount of investment in public transport to make a car-lite Brisbane possible. Even something like a dedicated 24/7 bus lane on all the major arterials that aren’t near a busway. Surely that wouldn’t cost that much to build?
https://preview.redd.it/rtl2x9utioqg1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e33fd0f49dd4fd3cedc79c8ccf3debfe735ce666
Yeah wonder why
I live car free and it’s never been a problem for me.
Exactly why more services like DRT are needed
Brisbane’s the biggest city by area in Australia – 20% bigger than Sydney (the second biggest) and has only half their population. Its a suburb city that will rezone into more high rises eventually, at least in the growing centre, but its just too big for really effective public transport to be a serious replacement year round outside of that centre.
But with rising fuel costs and miniscule public transport costs, it should be a much more attractive offer to people and make them rethink making every journey by car. Brisbane won’t become London or New York, but taking the strain off the roads really is the ambition.
One thing that’s got to be hard for these kind of studies is that people haven’t planned ahead. Like, not short-term planning but long-term planning like where to live and work. Those things aren’t easy to change on a whim.
Purposely living somewhere that’s well connected with public transport or bike routes. Living near work, friends, groceries, etc makes a big difference. When we bought our home, there were a few things we looked for: (1) Along the same train line as our workplaces. (2) Distance to train station. (3) How hard to get onto bike path from our home. (4) Closeness of local shops.
We’re very lucky that our workplaces were both on the same train line and reasonably well connected to the bike paths (we work in Toowong fwiw), so we only had to get housing to suit (rather than both housing *and* work).
Not surprising that they found school and extra curricular activities challenging, to a degree of needing someone with a car to do it for them. This won’t go away without a proper school bus system, similar to what US has and more extracurricular based in schools. Outings and getaways is arguably the perfect candidates where you could use a Uber or a rental with the cost offset by not having a car
Was going to a supermarket when it’s 30+ degrees outside considered a reimbursable emergency?
I only really need to drive once a week since I live on a train line and work in the city but it’s a 30 minute drive that would take more than an hour on public transport (on a perfect day). As soon as you have to get anywhere with connecting buses/trains/etc it adds significant time to the commute.
What a pointless study, 10 participants out of millions? Are those participants varied in age range, demographic, and stage of life?
54kms on public transport will take me 1hr 49minutes plus my own travel to the stations which is approx 10-15mins each way.
Total for one way is 2hrs so minimum 4 hours a day.
I hate driving so much 🙁
It’s understandable… I live about 17kms out of the city catching the bus to the city takes about an hour, during peak hour catching the bus is often quicker than driving.
There is a pub 3.5kms from me which by car takes just under 10min, walking about 30-40mins and by bus 1.5hrs .
This is part of the issue with public transport in Brisbane, the majority of it all just goes to the same central location. The main focus is to connect the suburbs to the city rather than connecting suburbs to one another.
Commuter cycling also isn’t easy, footpaths in a lot BCC areas can barely comfortably fit two people walking and often have cracks and lifted up pavers. If you’re cycling you are usually are going to end up on the road at some point and often this starts to mean crossing multiple lanes of traffic to get to where you want to go…not overly safe for someone just peddling around to the shops for some milk.
Then you’ve just got the footpaths themselves, so many areas in Brisbane where footpaths just end for no particular reason with no detour other than walking on the road. Then when detours do exist it’s just an extra 2-3km to get you to your destination that was just 500 meters down the road at the start of the detour.
Without a car Brisbane becomes incredibly disconnected and inefficient.
I was gonna buy an eScooter, but it seems that they’re incapable of handling the hills that would take me to woolworths on one side, or the convenience store on the other side.
Brisbane is hilly and I couldn’t want to rely on public transport. My doctor is a 2 minuute drive away, but too hilly to scoot there. I could catch a bus, but it would require taking an infrequent bus from my street and transfering to another bus
When I lived in Highgate Hill during Covid I found it quite doable. Could walk down to South Bank for most recreational activities including pubs and restaurants. Was fortunate to work from home during that period. It was a very pleasant time
We live car free in Brisbane, but we have carefully set our lives up to suit that lifestyle…
Some recent apartment projects have an EVshare car scheme as part of the common property assets. The cars are provided as a “transport as a service” model and live in the basement. Residents book and pay for the use of the cars on an app.
I think this model is a great idea for locations well serviced by public transport and/or in walkable suburbs. Walk, e-scoot or public transport for journeys that suit, hire the car for when you need it.
Next election needs to be fought on PT. Brisbane’s population has exploded and we can’t keep pretending that buses are a solution. Lines everywhere are at capacity and coverage is shit.
We need a rapid build out of rail based transport in the urban core and middle suburbs with radial and cross town rapid transit. We need to be planning on the level of early 2000s Beijing or risk being choked in road congestion for another 20 years.
Remember what happened to petrol prices during lockdown.
outside of city living having a car is pretty much a must, you can do it without but when you need to turn a 30 mins drive into an hour and half commute… you are just gimping yourself. Our transport system outside of the city is is basically just a welfare travel system you only use it when you dont have a better option.