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.
Ring roads are what kills villages, though. A lot of them, like the one I live in, don’t have enough population for businesses to survive on their own. We need that road that goes through it to bring customers to the businesses. If a ring road was built, all the businesses would just move there. You see this all over America; town centers dying while these big ugly “power centers” with more parking than actual stores proliferate near the highways.
As it is, with a rather touristy road going through it, my village fares pretty well. There are all the necessary businesses (grocery store, pharmacy, bank, etc.), plus a couple seasonal restaurants, and it’s still walkable with a nice sidewalk for the whole length of the village. Said sidewalk actually sees a lot of use, and it’s kept clear of snow during the winter. Would it be nicer if there were fewer cars? Sure. But I wouldn’t want it becoming a ghost town.