I recently wrote about how difficult it was to drive and park in the old city of Split, in Croatia:

Lina pointed to a small gated parking lot, which her hotel actually owned. An actual parking lot! Even better. It was on my left, and I thought I could simply make a left turn in, and voila. But the alley was too narrow for that. Instead, she guided me to make a right turn into an intersecting street, reverse into the parking lot very carefully (there was a cement wall on one side of the entrance), maneuver back and to the right between two cars at the back of the lot after clearing the cement wall, and then pull forward into a spot on the other side of the wall.

It sounds easier than it was. Whatever subtle maneuvering Lina expected me to make, I was unable to, and I couldn’t understand exactly what I was doing wrong. Learning to drive in the American suburbs does not prepare you for this sort of thing. After three failed attempts to back into the lot without slamming the car into the cement wall, both of us were a little exasperated.

“You’re trying to park in the old city,” she said, as if it should have been obvious to me that I was going to have a hard time. Hey, I’m not the one advertising free parking. But nonetheless she was very nice and helpful. “If you can’t do it, I can try,” she said, and I very gladly let her take the wheel.

Lina was one of the owners of our very small hotel in Split, located on a narrow, car-free street. That was a bit of an adventure for someone who basically never even has to parallel park.

But in contrast to the difficulty of bringing a car into a city, I found that the expressways in Croatia were really great. They were in very good condition—every bit of asphalt looked almost new—and there were frequent speed limit signs (I’m still annoyed at my automated speeding ticket in Italy) and lots of easily accessible gas stations.

Driving these highways was a breeze. I have to confess that I actually enjoy driving—I just think the place for it isn’t in the urban core, and I don’t think driving should be a prerequisite for doing just about anything. Highways are good, and so are local streets, where cars are accommodated but not prioritized.

People online sometimes say “ban cars,” and what they mean, to the extent that they mean it, is to deprioritize cars in the urban cores or downtowns. Any serious urbanist is fine with highways, as long as they don’t ruin cities. If as an American you have trouble visualizing that, it looks like what I saw in Croatia.

Here are a few shots of the expressways (taken by my wife, while I drove). We didn’t just drive a small and possibly unrepresentative part of them either. We drove from Dubrovnik to Split (two hours), from Split to Rovinj (five hours), and Rovinj to Zagreb (three-ish hours.)

And here’s a view out the side window:

And a bonus view of the border crossing with Bosnia we had to cross to get from the southern part of Croatia into the northern part! That’s an interesting story.

You can tell from these photos how good the condition of the road surface is. These expressways are heavily tolled, which probably accounts for their good condition. But you can also see they’re only two lanes in each direction at most, which suggests they aren’t built for as much capacity as much of the U.S. Interstate system. That’s interesting; in fact, I’m only just noticing how narrow they are. Probably narrower than some suburban residential streets in America. One of our tour guides up in Rovinj suggested that commutes of 45 minutes or so were intolerably long. Just looking at these roads, I don’t think lots of people drive long distances on them every day.

The other thing that really impressed me was the gas stations. They were every 25-30 miles or so, with little exit and entrance ramps. Unlike the American Interstate system—unless you have one of those rare rest stops/travel plazas—you can pull into the gas station right off the expressway, and then get right back on. No getting off at a random exit, finding a gas station or fast food joint, then trying to navigate back to the on-ramp.

And there are enough of these roadside gas stations that if your tank is running low, or you need to hit the restroom, the next one will be there soon enough. Transit advocates have a saying: frequency is freedom. Same thing here. What a physical and mental relief it is to know what you need is going to be there, and to take that worry off your plate. Sometimes I think we conflate distress with taking responsibility.

But the gas stations. They’re not just gas stations. They’re little complexes that also have convenience stores, very nice, large, clean restrooms, and even little restaurants with some outdoor seating! It’s really interesting that Europe does car-free cities and highways so well. As I hint at above, I don’t think that’s contradictory; it’s actually complementary.

Here are a couple of shots of a typical highwayside gas station complex:

I just didn’t expect I’d come home from a European vacation with an appreciation of old, classically urban cities and incredible highways. We could take some urbanism lessons from Europe, but we could also drive better.

Related Reading:

The Car and Car Dependence

Night Driving

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