As a European, I come from a country where the cities were built before the car was invented, so we have narrow roads, which are ample for what I considered to be normal-sized cars. But the cars here are absolutely huge! Below is the one we hired when we moved house a few weeks ago:
I don't know if this is purely a DC thing, or a general US thing, but the standard of driving here is absolutely terrrible! If I had a pound (or dollar) for every time I've seen a massive SUV fail to stop at the right place at traffic lights and be 2 full car lengths past the line, I'd have enough to buy a new lens for my camera. As a pedestrian or cyclist, there is nothing more annoying than having a massive car blocking the crossing, although shouting at them seems to be socially-acceptable here. However, this is a completely moot point because, well, there are no pedestrians and very few cyclists. Although it's illegal in the state of Maryland, I see many people driving whilst sending text messages and we even saw a guy with a laptop open on his dashboard. Absolutely crazy!! Which explains why so many cars have obvious signs of bumps and scrapes.
The public transport system here is bloody good - you can track the buses by GPS from your smart phone / computer so that you can time your arrival at the bus stop with minute-accuracy (did I mention that USians like convenience?). The bus is also cheap, with a $1.50 flat rate. However, it seems that, in general, only poor people use public transport - tell someone that you've walked more than a mile or got a bus, and they ask "Oh, is your car broken?". Quite a bit of the suburb we live in doesn't have any pavement (or sidewalk, if you're that way inclined), because there doesn't seem to be much demand. We live about 1 mile from the metro station, and people genuinely have asked us how we get there if we don't drive.
So far, we've resisted the American dream and have refused to buy a car, instead using our trusty Bromptons to get about. Alas, this whole country is built around the automobile and is massively spread out. Although the public transport system is great, it's only useful for ferrying people around places where they can be good capitalist-consumers and buy more stuff to keep the economy afloat. Ah well. I think a lot of people who know us are placing bets on how long it will be before we break and get a car - at least that's good motivation to hold out!
However, we did spend several hours yesterday trying to convert our driving licences to US ones. I refused to surrender my UK licence to get only a provisional licence here, so I now have a learner's permit and Dom has to supervise me for 60 hours driving over 9 months. The state of Maryland only recognises Candian, French and South Korean licences! Obviously there've never seen people driving in France!! Or perhaps that's the point!? Maybe countries like the UK and Germany have too many standards for driving, so our licences aren't recognised as we'd expect too much skill from other drivers!?
Of course, in this crazy country of extremes, nothing is quite so clear cut as I've laid out so far. At the NIH, where I work, there are 15,000 employees and the number who commute by bike regularly is only 600. Quite shocking. So although cyclists are very much the minority, they are a very vocal minority and have managed to get quite a lot done. There are some absolutely stunnnig trails connecting most of the different urban and suburban centres, so my 5 mile bike ride to work consists of being surrounded by stunning trees in Rock Creek Park and trying not to run over deer. Dom has a 15 mile cycle, and most of that is also off road with the excellent Capital Crescent trail, which connects Silver Spring to downtown DC. There's also a funky scheme called Zipcar, where you can hire cars by the hour - the scheme operates quite a bit like the Boris Bikes in London.
Although it's quite tricky to avoid buying a car, so far so good. Hopefully we can get by without one... our tune may change once the winter kicks off properly (still T-shirt weather there!), but we'll see.
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