Indeed. I live on the edge of the populated center of a regional hub town of about 12K people, with about 7500 in the "urbanized area". The old Walmart used to be closer, but the new Walmart is only 5 miles away, easily reachable by bicycle (although the don't have a proper bicycle rack).
I am just a little over a mile from the center of town, with an Amtrak station that will take me directly to NYC, Philadelphia, and DC, if I need to travel outside the area. Amtrak is even building us a new train station right now.
If you can arrange things where you live in town and work in town, then it's easily possible, even in a rural area, to live without a car. I'm an elected representative in my town's government, and I sit on the town Planning Commission, and we are working for better bicycle infrastructure all the time. We have funding for 25 new bicycle racks on town properties in the downtown area this year.
If you like cheese and beer, you'll be perfectly at home in Vermont.
I was born in NYC and have lived in Center City Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Seattle. I'm definitely a City Girl.
Hahah, one of the guys I work with is from Vermont, and keeps telling me, "Man, you'd fit right in back home!" Hahaha
We'll see how things shake out over the next few years. It's been getting a bit too warm over winter, so I barely get much snow, anymore. I want to head north on account of that. I love the Midwest, but Chicago/Madison/Minneapolis seem to be creeping their politics further and further out, trying to turn is into some kind of California of the Heartland or something...which then makes some of the other states get reactionary, and want to be some kind of Texas of the Heartland.
We've always been solidly moderate and practical, so it's been a frustrating change. I'm no ideologue, but it seems like as America bifurcates across their "teams" of the political theater, everyone wants to pick one team or another :/
I just want moderates where you can't tell which party they're from, haha. That's what we used to have.
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geeeze, hope you don't think I drive like that.
Both of those things are really dangerous for sooo many reasons, especially going too slow
Interstate speeds here are 70mph, people go nearly 80
~ Rolling into throttle instead of stomping on it, saves gas.
~ Lifting and coasting (without much loss of speed) into slower areas or Stop Signs, saves gas
~ Gathering extra speed before big hills keeps the car from down shifting going up the hill, that saves gas
~ *cannot recommend this* although if in an area with no one around,
just yielding safely at Stop Signs keeps from coming to a complete stop,
that saves ALOT of gas
= Basically, smooth driving will save you Gas
If you ever watched the BBC show "Top Gear" (the first few seasons were good), they had a bit about "Christian Driving," where they'd try to drive really casually and smoothly. To the frustration of Jeremy Clarkson, it was actually even FASTER to get places than speeding.
I've found essentially the same thing. BUT, it's because I spend more time moving, and less time sitting at lights, because the lights are timed for the speed limit - you end up getting to places faster.
Not defending the people who do this but since semis can't stop as quickly as cars it's a bit less dangerous following them closely. Just don't follow any closer than maybe 100 feet behind.
Also, I think the people who do this don't do it to save money. It's more about bragging rights.
Really that disclaimer could be an entire diatribe. We should be designing and using much more efficient vehicles in general, as opposed to trying to save pennies by drafting.
When I was younger, I'd draft behind semis for the funs of pumping up my mileage. While I'd generally agree cars stop a LOT faster than trucks, I think the bigger danger was that it took FULL, CONSTANT concentration to draft, because IF they did start to brake, you have still a very narrow window of reaction time.
It's also not great for the truck drivers, because they want to know who is around them. After hypermiling my MPGs up to about 75mpg, to see if I could, I pretty much stopped doing this, realizing it was definitely not an issue of IF there was an accident, but WHEN.
This was going to happen sooner or later. RTO was indefensible even prior to rising fuel prices. My sister had to go back three days a week. She says she's doing exactly the same things she can do at home. Hopefully we'll return to remote work for any jobs amenable to it permanently now. RTO was all about control, plus management which doesn't know how to manage a remote work force.
Fully remote jobs make hiring a nightmare, so fully remote has mostly disappeared. There are less remote jobs today than before COVID. COVID destroyed remote work. It became an
entitlement to a certain percentage of the workforce, and they're entitled attitude makes them less desirable as employees (THEY shouldn't have to do anything they don't want to - at the job they're being PAID to do. Only the "other people" should have to do gross things like going to work, dressing like an adult, etc.). That was fine when hiring was tight, but the pendulum has already swung. The sooner people realize the WFH fantasy of COVID wasn't going to last, the sooner we can all move on.
Sure, some particular jobs work just fine as WFH jobs. They were remote before COVID, and will stay that way. Those people also tend to become progressively weirder from the isolation (and increasingly less professional), but hey. Fully remote is NOT expanding, and it's NOT going to increase.
Now, the good news is that
hybrid work is here to stay, and it is expanding. First, it makes the hiring process INFINITELY better, plus you get to have both the advantages of in-office AND remote workers. It's truly a win-win. Tons of jobs you'd never expect to have a WFH option might now have 1-2 days remote work.
On the upside, with the economy on shakier ground,
out of sight, out of mind is a very real problem, and it's WAY easier to lay off "the name on the list" than "John whose kids love fishing." People build networks through relationships. Sure, productivity is important, but it's not the end-all-be-all for most work. Not everything is measurable, and many important things cannot be measured. So, show up, be friendly (you don't have to be friends with anyone, though), and be helpful. You'll be higher on the "do not layoff" list than the dude hiding out in his basement. Also, you'll maintain those real world people skills - especially the professional ones. It'll probably actually end up helping you down the road.
If anyone is working at a job where going into your workplace is completely insufferable, PLEASE...just start applying to a new job. Life is too short to be that miserable. Even if you don't personally like the people you work with, working in person allows for much better collaboration and relationship building, so take advantage of that.
Sorry, I spend all day at work talking to people about these kinds of things, mostly trying to get people to come to terms with the world we live in, and not the world they wish they lived in, so I've just had to have this conversation - that no one wants to hear - like a billion times in the last couple of years, haha.
