- Ability to get a vehicle on-demand (say within 5-10 minutes) 24/7/365, anywhere in Upstate NY, from cities to boonies.
- That vehicle would need to allow me to transport large goods, bulky goods (to an extent), lumber <6', flammable solvents
- also needs to accomodate 2 medium dogs
- I'd need dedicated bike lanes to the nearby shops and groceries before I could even attempt to use that as an option. There's stores only a few miles from me but the roads to get there are treacherous
There's more but those are the bare minimums, and I don't see that changing any time soon.
I live in a dense city. I have a grocery store next door. I have car sharing cars in my street I can rent. This is feasible, because we're so many people within a few minutes walk. In a suburb this is impossible. Would be far too few people per shop or car.
You're kinda part of the problem talked about in an other comment here: you can't even visualize how things could be different. Basically you could only give up your car if you could live exactly as before..
But why can't your lumber get delivered? Do you need a car with huge dimensions just for the off chance you one time the next five years need to carry something big? Why not then rent something for the occasion?
Why do you constantly need to drive your dogs? Again, the reason is probably rooted in a car centric society. The solution isn't to fix all your needs, just without owning a car. The solution would be to make you able to do your hobbies and live your life without the gigantic sprawl.
Recently there's been a surge of 5-over-1 apartment complexes replacing old businesses and houses along my suburb's main road. Great, more dense housing, that's good. The main road has painted bike lanes in the middle of town, and dedicated multi-use paths further out in each direction. For some of these complexes, they had to tear up the road and sidewalk to add safe entrances. Not only did they NOT add more multi-use paths, but they actually approved the buildings to be closer to the road than ordinances typically allow, making a multi-use path unlikely to ever be put in.
Most sidewalks you see are set back from the road already, leaving a grass median for snow collection, etc. You can put a bike path in that area, if anyone cares.
The main commercial thoroughfare which runs north-south and would be the ideal place for one since it has Walmart, Aldi, Depot, pizza places, etc, doesn't even have a sidewalk. That's how ass-backward this area is designed.
I need to import this whole place into SimCity, bulldoze and redo huge swaths of it.
It does take a bit of will and time, but it's a great thing to grumble about at the council meetings; around here all new developments have to have a sidewalk plan (it's not required to be "both sides" but most do that anyway) and connect to the bike paths. They even had a fundraiser a few years ago to raise money to make a connector path, which is quite nice; every business had a little "bike path" jar and it got done.