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.

  • feck_it@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Aren’t dirt bikes a viable alternative unless it rains? They are made for difficult dirt roads if I am not wrong.

    • Bargearse@mastodon.au
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      @feck_it
      Electric MTBs are even better. I used to to live down a 7km rural dirt road with no neighbors. 7km was to our village of 50homes. It’s how I got about.

      If the village has regular bus services running through to the city, it’s all I would have needed.

      @Trekman10 @fuck_cars