I know it sounds hypocritical but hear me out. My city’s suburban streets were mostly built in the 1900s and 1910s, before cars were ubiquitous and before streets were built to accommodate them. So like 90% of the streets in the immediate suburbs (I’m talking 1 - 5 minutes from downtown) are either way too skinny to drive on or they don’t have driveways. In a select few streets it’s even both. And so you end up with streets that are littered with parked cars, and a lot of streets are two lane but end up functioning like one-ways. There have been moments where I drive on these streets because GPS told me to, and then I question my sanity because it really feels like a 1-way and yet there’s signs facing me. I mention this because I’m a pizza delivery driver and so I have to navigate these streets at least a few times a day, usually dozens of times if we’re offering coupons in those areas. And every time it becomes far more of a hassle than it has to be just because of how there are so many cars and so many people driving on them. I hate how we’ve built this city that had a downtown where people would walk to and shop around in, but now everybody drives to the superstores on the outskirts and uses the freeway to go to work. It’s like we’ve ruined the act of driving simply by forcing everybody to drive more.
I actually lived in Japan for a period, and while I wasn’t old enough to drive there, I noticed that people seemed to have a far better time driving on their ultra-narrow suburban streets, and I’m willing to hedge a bet that’s because not everything there was car-focused. Obviously once you got out into the rural regions more people drove, but in Tokyo especially people seemed to walk or take the train most of the time.
I wonder if maybe in an alternate universe where we didn’t place superstores and supermarkets and home depots a 1-hours walk away from the old suburbs, and where we didn’t develop this culture that everybody needed a car, would it be a much less irritating and frustrating experience driving around? Hell in that universe I might even be able to get my store’s drive times down a couple minutes.
I understand your frustration. I live in a part of the world where the whole country is car centric.
There are parts in my country where without a car, you are basically handicapped from doing anything, as public transport is non existent, and there is no proper infrastructure for public walks.
So you have to buy a car in order to “survive”. To go to work, to go buy groceries, send your children to school etc. To add to that, you have the monthly commitment to pay for your car loans, or car maintenance.
And because there are so many cars on the road, most of the time there isn’t enough parking space in the suburb areas, so people will double park or even triple park.
“If there is no parking space, we will make our own parking space”, as we use to joke among ourselves.
Also, the overall productivity of our country slows down in my opinion, because everyone is stuck in a jam most of the time. For some people it takes them 1 or even 2 hours in extreme cases to go to work, or come home from work.
This is what happens when the government does not plan ahead, and have a clear vision. This should be planned like 20 to 30 years ahead. Instead, it is now too late for my country to implement all this effectively.
I have somewhat the same issue in my country, albeit not as bad (I’m so sorry you have to deal first hand with poor infrastructure). The vast majority of the streets are ~4 lanes wide, 2 for driving, two for parking. It takes up so much space, and then you have the people that will resist turning just one of those lanes to a cycling lane for whatever selfish reason they have.
There are large parts of my city that are only realistically accessible by bus or car, so I never go there.
I’m in a similar situation and the fallout from the pandemic has done amazing things for my family.
My spouse doesn’t have to drive two hours a day to sit in an office, we get to have lunch together, there’s time to run midday errands. And many things that I didn’t used to be able to do remotely, are suddenly accessible, like talking to my doctor or signing legal documents.
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My teenage son calls hazards the “park anywhere lights”. Magically, I can leave my car blocking an entire street for fifteen minutes because I put the blinky lights on.