I grew up in the suburbs. Or. Well. It's complicated. I grew up in a place where almost everyone commutes out of the city slash town for work, but still has medium density semi walkable construction with corner stores, and public transit that's just barely usable.
I grew up being driven around everywhere, and I absolutely hated it. Sitting in the back of the car, with my parents blabbing endlessly between themselves, looking at highways and stroads out the window.
I cherished the rare occasions when me and my grandma would take the bus; or when my other grandma would take me and my cousins on a day trip using the train, as a nice li'l tourist attraction.
I initially went to school a short walk away from home, but for high school I had to go to a school in a part of the city slash town that really, **really** wishes it was the US. But I could still take a bus there relatively conveniently (compared to, say, the actual US)
And I remember how in 11th and 12th grade, when all my friends started getting drivers licenses, everyone fully expected me to get one too. And my parents were entirely willing to foot the bill. But I refused.
It wasn't just the really intensive college-while-still-in-high-school thing that made me refuse. It was, among other things, also this feeling of refusing to be part of the problem.
Public transit is capital g Good for everyone, I thought to myself, and I will continue to use it.
And it definitely is, and so I definitely did.
Some years later I also found myself living with a health condition that made me have to use medical weed every day for most of the day. And as we all know, it's kinda dangerous to operate heavy machinery while *blazed out to outer fucking space.*
So I kept on bussing and training and biking and taxiing.
When people would ask me why I paid exorbitant downtown Tel Aviv rent, at some point I realized the best answer to give to people isn't "I feel like I fit in" or "I like the dense city atmosphere" (both of which were true) — but rather "I can't drive".
Everywhere in this country that isn't downtown Tel Aviv, is planned for car centrism, for motor vehicle as default, for SUV supremacy; and everyone knows that; and therefore, everyone accepted my can't-drive explanation without question.
But as always in life, things eventually changed. I had to move back in with the folks at some point; back to the kinda-sorta-suburb where I grew up; I started to feel physically better enough to stop using the cannabis; and... I decided to take the plunge.
I became a part of the problem.
I got my driver's license.
For years I'd been building my identity around not-driving. I worked at a company that makes a public transit app. I lived in downtown, where owning a car is impractical at best. I'd come up with almost two-hour bike routes snaking around parks and alleyways to visit my parents on the weekends, just so they wouldn't come pick me up with a car.
On weekends, Israel has no proper public transit. And I'd learned to tolerate at first, and eventually grew to actually **like**, taking the jitney/marshrutka, the monit sherut: the weird creepy 10-passenger vans that operated semi-legally on weekends. I learned to appreciate the drivers going twice the speed limit, and the passengers loudly yelling "Driver! Can you stop at the intersection please??", passing crumpled 20-shekel bills forward and change back.
I prided myself on my encyclopedic knowledge of bus routes and train lines, of bike paths and safe streets to ride in, of walking routes and where the sidewalks don't end.
I built an identity around not driving.
In March and April of last year I traveled around the US for the first time in my life. I was still very cannabis dependent, and made sure to stick to visiting legal states; and during that trip, going to a furcon in what felt to me like the middle of nowhere comma Michigan; riding transit around LA; plugging my ears to be able to ride the elevated train in Chicago; riding Amtrak across most of the west coast — an idea firmly planted itself in my head: to come back to the US one day, with a driver's license.
I definitely didn't expect the opportunity to learn to drive to come up so quickly, but an unexpected (and very welcome) improvement in my physical health came less than a year after I landed back in Israel.
And thinking back to my trip, and thinking forwards to a future trip, I decided that this is it. This was the sign I'd been waiting for. As Hillel the Elder said, "Don't say 'When I have the time, I will study', for you may never have the time".
I got the necessary medical bureaucracy in order, I passed my written exam on the rules of the road (which, to be fair, I already knew most of, thanks to biking for over a decade) and I signed up with a driving instructor.
I did my required bajillion hours of driving lessons, on a diesel stick shift kia, with my instructor telling me amazing and absurd stories, yelling at me for throwing the clutch, and making me listen to radio news about the rise of ethnocratic populist fascism; but I did it. I passed on my first exam.
And so, I started driving.
At first my dad insisted on making sure I can *actually*, ***really*** drive. As he puts it, a driving instructor doesn't really teach you to drive. They teach you to pass a driving exam, which are two different sets of skills.
So he taught me how to properly handle curves, how to brake smoothly, how to understand other drivers' "body language" on the road; as well as amazing Israeli driving tricks such as "passing from the right" and "going above the speed limit but only just enough to not actually get fined" and "entering intersections on a yellow light because Israeli traffic signals are programmed to give enough leeway".
And after that, off I went.
I remember the first time I drove completely on my own. That day, I went to visit a....... friend...... (That's a lie. But I'll keep that lie for the narrative.) I went to visit a "friend". And afterwards I also met up with my brother who lives nearby; and that evening I went to a sign language event; and I came back home to the suburbs at night.
And every single leg of that trip surprised me with how little time it took.
Case in point, if I'd taken two or three buses back home from eastern Tel Aviv at 10pm, it would've taken me **at least** an hour and a half, with walking and waiting times factored in. But walking back to the parking lot, driving home, and parking my mom's car in the designated parking spot under our building, took me less than 30 minutes.
Let that sink in. It took less than ***A THIRD*** of the time that public transit would've taken me. ***LESS THAN A THIRD*** of the time I was **USED TO**.
When I got in the car and saw the navigation app's estimate I wanted to fucking scream.
I always knew Israeli public transit was shit. I had made videos about how it's shit. I read reports about how it's shit. I lived for several years with a friend who's internet micro famous for his blog posts and twitter threads about how it's shit.
But on that night, I felt like an entire decade's worth of wasted commute time had been stolen from me. Only then did I begin to realize just how much time out of my short tenure on this earth had been taken away from me by awful urban planning.
Since that day: I've taken the opportunity to visit my grandmas grave in a kibbutz somewhere out in wherever; I visited a friend who lives in a detached town slash exurb in the middle of nowhere; I've been able to MEET FRIENDS on the WEEKEND (remember: no public transit on weekends!); I visited family 120 km (75 miles) away on a whim; I went to the strip mall to watch movies on a whim; I went to get my earlobe gauged on a whim.
All of a sudden, I can just... GO PLACES, and it takes me a REASONABLE AMOUNT OF TIME, and ZERO PLANNING.
I can go places, and I KNOW THERE'LL BE A WAY BACK HOME NO MATTER HOW LATE I STAY.
I don't need to check schedules for when the Last Bus is; I don't need to run to the train because the next one's only in two hours; I don't need to risk death, or worse, injury, riding my bike in 50 km/h (30 mph) streets just to go to the mall.
All of a sudden, I am part of the privileged majority, the motorists, around whom all of the public space has been deformed and mutilated to fit.
And it makes me feel so bad.
Every time I take my car into downtown Tel Aviv, I can't help but feel like I'm only worsening the problem.
And of COURSE I take the car; because despite bumper-to-bumper traffic on Ayalon, and despite having to look for parking, and despite HOV lanes and bus lanes — it's still somehow faster for me to take the car than to take any form of public transit from where I live.
Now that I can drive, suddenly it feels like a god damn no-brainer. Do I walk in 30C (90F) weather to a bus stop with no shade; spend over an hour inside the bus in bumper to bumper traffic; feel like puking because the bus driver floors the gas and floors the brakes every time traffic steps forward slightly; walk in the sun next to baking hot asphalt and sweat my ass off; and never be entirely sure if I can get back home at night?
OR
Do I get in the car for about an hour; listen to some podcasts; and pay, like, 10$ for parking at a garage downtown?
One of these choices is infinitely better than the other.
I'm just doing what generations of urban planners want me to do; I'm just taking the path of least resistance; and yet, it makes me feel so evil to do so.
Back when I couldn't drive, and lived in downtown, I despised these people who come in from the suburbs with their SUVs, complain about how hard it is to find street parking, honk at me when I'm on my bike, pollute the air I breathe, and noise up the sounds I hear.
But now; now that I became a part of it, I finally understand the incentive structure that led them, and now leads me, to clog up the city with what feels like millions of cars. And as long as this entire country is set up to punish anyone who dares to use public transit, I know I'll never go back.