A golf cart is a reasonably fine way to get around in certain circumstances. It’s slower (and safer) than a car and more spacious than a moped. Sure it still runs on petrol (except maybe in the future it might run on electricity! Or hydrogen?) but it provides a mobility that we don’t often talk about because we don’t often build places where golf carts add a safe mobility option. Should we?
My friend, Louis Pappas—co-founder of Electric Avenue—put me onto a New Yorker article from a few years back entitled “Retirement the Margaritaville Way” (The New Yorker, Nick Paumgarten, 03/21/22). I also didn’t not go to Margaritaville in Times Square last night. The good life didn’t escape even this exasperated one, but I do want to take time to talk about mobility outside of the traditional sense and how the future might look without a dominant car culture.
People covet three-car garages, for their golf carts and motorcycles—there are a lot of both in Margaritaville—but most have two-car garages.
Retirement-style communities—often age-suggested (or limited) at 55 and up are popular for their ability to provide popular services and a certain lifestyle all at once. Community is one thing—but how do you make these little satellite places work? Cars are just not practical to travel the 500 meters these residents used to walk. Bikes can’t hold more than one (or two) people. The answer, of course, is golf carts (and motorcycles?).
Just something to ponder on a Friday afternoon. One of the challenges of Villages-style communities is the definitional isolation of a “satellite” community. If you do have to leave, a golf cart won’t work. But will a bus? A bus network? Or is the relationship between older-focused suburbs and their cars and roads too far gone?