I don't think it's impossible, but being in the suburbs makes it an uphill battle. Most suburbs in the United States are built very very intentionally to accomodate car and discourage other modes of transportation. Cul-de-sacs and winding roads only make sense with cars. The logistics of having a bus serve an area like that don't make sense, and even walking these winding, dead-end streets is a much bigger chore than, say, walking on relatively straight streets that try to connect point A to point B efficiently.
That said, I currently find myself in a suburb, and bicycling is actually okay. I can bike out of my neighborhood to reach the main streets, and there are actually pretty decent bike commuting paths once I reach them. If you're wanting to haul things like pets and lumber, recent cargo e-bikes can haul a lot. They're expensive, but they exist if that's a priority for you. I think bicycles can be a pretty decent option for people in the suburbs, at least sometimes. Plus, bikes are just fun!
That said, using my car less is a big goal for me, so I sometimes take the less convenient option. My longterm goal is to find a way to leave the suburbs and live in a city, though, so I can be much less card-dependent.
Cul-de-sacs are designed to frustrate cars! It is NOT at all hard to make something like that very walker friendly - just add paths for pedestrians and bikes that slip between the homes in strategic points, and now to drive somewhere you have to go around a whole square mile, but to walk it's direct.
And many suburbs in the USA are actually technically their own towns, some older, some younger, and you can walk around just fine if you plan a bit and want to.
After all, if you live in a town of 10k people almost by definition you can walk everywhere that is available.
I actually have it worse, I live directly on a 35mph (where people regularly do 50+) semi-main "stroad". The only nice thing is the fire department is also on this road, so it gets priority plowing. We get semi-trailers and dump trucks on it.
Walking with the dogs the approx 400' to the nearest cul-de-sac is a harrowing affair. Bike riding is so intimidating that my bike hasn't even gone outside in months. Yeah people ride on it but it's way outside my comfort zone.
Pretty much all of suburbia needs to be magically terraformed, for any of these things to be feasible.
> If you're wanting to haul things like pets and lumber, recent cargo e-bikes can haul a lot.
I don't think you realize how big a 3/4 x 48 x 96 is. I can't even fit it in my Forester without ripping it lengthwise and driving with the hatch propped.
That is the real problem. Suburbs are mostly dense enough to support good transit, but you can't get good transit into cul-de-sacs. The bus takes too long getting down each one, and if you live in the next one it is a waste of time going down it - while if you do live down that one it has to because you don't live in walking distance of a road they can get down. No cul-de-sac alone has enough people to support the bus.
A subway could be dug under everything, but the $$$ are too high. A gondola system could potentially go between houses and so serve a few cul-de-sacs before coming out at a suburban station - this looks like the lowest cost answer, but it still isn't cheap.
You don't need to get into the bag-ends. You just need to let the last mile be walking, and make lots of walking paths that feel like shortcuts.
Then the busses can stay on the straight main roads while all the cars go get lost in the culled sacs, while people walking or on bike have direct paths.
Some studies show people will walk 3/4 of a mile, which is about 15 minutes. That's a "circle" that is 1.5 miles across, which is a an area of about 1132 acres (Ignore that straight roads don't have circles; pretend the "extra" area is support stuff, shops, whatever). 1132 acres of single family housing is 13,000 houses if "close", upwards of 20,000 units if we go to townhomes/rowhouses.
13k dwelling units all within a 3/4 mile walk from the edge; that should support at least one bus.
> Most suburbs in the United States are built very very intentionally to accomodate car and discourage other modes of transportation. Cul-de-sacs and winding roads only make sense with cars. The logistics of having a bus serve an area like that don't make sense, and even walking these winding, dead-end streets is a much bigger chore than, say, walking on relatively straight streets that try to connect point A to point B efficiently.
Well, one could make an on-demand share taxi/microbus service that serves between those cul-de-sacs and the closest avenue that is served by full size fixed-route scheduled buses.
That said, I currently find myself in a suburb, and bicycling is actually okay. I can bike out of my neighborhood to reach the main streets, and there are actually pretty decent bike commuting paths once I reach them. If you're wanting to haul things like pets and lumber, recent cargo e-bikes can haul a lot. They're expensive, but they exist if that's a priority for you. I think bicycles can be a pretty decent option for people in the suburbs, at least sometimes. Plus, bikes are just fun!
That said, using my car less is a big goal for me, so I sometimes take the less convenient option. My longterm goal is to find a way to leave the suburbs and live in a city, though, so I can be much less card-dependent.