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.

  • Spzi@lemm.eeEnglish
    71·
    10 months ago

    Just mentioning ‘carpooling’ because no one did yet.

    • kingludd@lemmy.basedcount.comOP
      31·
      10 months ago

      That could work. I’ve been thinking for awhile that if everyone around here were on some kind of uberlike carpooling app, we could combine trips into town.

      • LucyLastic@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        10 months ago

        Already got that here, it’s the village WhatsApp group. Doesn’t line up perfectly, but there’s a lot of car sharing going on :-)