This city in Georgia has more golf carts than cars and it is because of design – Jalopnik

The morning rush hour at McINTOSH High School in Peachtree City looks like the start of a charity wave event. Instead of the usual hand-me-down SUVs filling, a sea of ​​golf carts the parking spaces. It is a scene that perfectly records the claim of the city on fame: that this is a place where golf carts surpass cars.

Now let’s pump the brakes a bit. Officially, the claim is more a feeling than a difficult fact. The city has around 11,000 registered golf carts, a respectable fleet, but with nearly 39,000 inhabitants and census data that on average two cars show per household, the number of actual cars is probably considerably closer – if not higher. But to be hung on the figures, the point is completely missing. For almost every trip within the city boundaries – groceries, school, football practice, tondeld data – the golf cart is king. Although a golf cart can offer less privacy than desired on the latter.

This is all made possible by the vast, more than 100 miles of paved multifunctional paths of the city that sew the community together. They even have a telephone app for navigating in the network. This is the backbone of a parallel transport universe that offers a glimpse of what a car-free city, a Dutch word roughly translated into “carolite”, could look like in the United States.

The transformation of Peachtree City in a capital of a golf cart was not the result of a grand, top-down vision. When the city was founded in 1959, there was no mention of a city -wide pad network in the plans. So what has changed? Strangely enough, it was a well-managed accident born from municipal pragmatism a rarity. The very first paths were not built for recreation; They were recorded as part of a deal with a utility company that had to walk through the city.

Of course the residents who possessed golf carts quickly discovered that these smooth, paved paths were a much safer and more pleasant way to make ends meet. They soon started to carry out their own informal ‘Gorilla-like social trails’. The leaders of Peachtree City saw what happened and began to pave and expand the paths formally, respond to the community’s question. The last, crucial step came in 1974, when the city successfully lobbyed the state. The then Governor Jimmy Carter signed a law that specifically exempted the carts of Peachtree City from normal requirements for motor vehicles, so that they legally convert a novelty into a legitimate form of public transport and cement the weird and beautiful identity of the city.

This is of course not what lawless, Golf-Cart theme “Mad Max”, although that sounds nice. All carts must be registered with the city, and there are strict age limits for drivers: 16-year-olds can drive solo, 15-year-olds need a learning permit and everyone between 12 and 14 needs an adult on the front seat. And before you think about making the paths in a personal race track, it is warned: the Police Department of Peachtree City patrols the network in its own fleet of golf carts. As a reminder, golf cart -crashes can also be quite nasty.

Insight into that Peachtree is not the first or even most thorough version of a car-free city, shows that the hunger for a less dominated community is here in the United States. It is a low-tech, on the human screen that works for them, even so close to the busy highways of Atlanta. It is not perfect, but it is theirs – and the locals have clearly discovered how they can make it move.