Originally Posted by benajah

I think there is something else to think about. Last night a friend of mine were talking about me living without using a car, and he was talking about it would just be too inconvienient for him. He has to be at work at 630 am, gets off at 4, needs to pick his kid up from daycare by 415, has to be home by 445, and has to have his other kid at baseball practice by 530. While practice is going on he has to come home, cook supper, get back out there to pick the kid up, etc, etc. For him, the extra fifteen minutes to wait for the train, or extra 20 it takes to ride a bike just does not work.
A lot of Americans are just on crazy tight schedules with really long work weeks and family commitments, etc.
For us to actually go car free as a society would really require a cultural change across all elements of our culture, especially our "work, then have ten different activities packed into every evening" sort of thing, shorter work weeks would help too.
Is it really progress when the average American now works more hours per week than a medieval peasant? We actually do.
I would love to see us, as a society, tone things down a bit, relax more, and have more time to ride bikes, actually hang out with our families instead of just running around all the time, but we need changes across the board.