Some American cities have buses. Some use trams and trains.
And there's one... that uses golf carts. - My name is Vanessa Fleisch and I am the mayor of
Peachtree City, Georgia. It's a small city of about 35,000 people
that is about 20 minutes south of Atlanta. It's asphalt paths, we have
over 100 miles of them. They range from 8 feet to
10 feet wide in some places. They're used for golf carts mostly. We have over 11,000 registered
golf carts in the city. Obviously, pedestrians, bicyclists,
all kinds of traffic is on these paths. Morning! - You do have to register them?
- Yes, you do. The people in the city do register them. - There's someone else approaching us now.
I assume it's like regular roads. You pass on the right and... - Correct.
- Yeah? - Yeah.
- It's a parallel road network, basically. - The majority of the city
is accessible by carts and that's a huge attraction
because parents can pick up their kids at
school if they want to. - And some of the kids
can drive themselves? - Yes, the younger kids or the sophomores
at the local high schools are allowed with their learner's permit to
drive their carts to school. - Wow. - It's a bit of freedom that they enjoy. - And I guess if it's
limited to 20 miles an hour, there's less of a chance of a bad bump. So, this is the high school. - This is. There's parking at the
high school for 615 carts. - That is a lot of golf carts.
Do all the students leave at once here? Is it just a traffic jam of golf carts? - It is a traffic jam of golf carts
and it's not always pretty. - Some of them have a limiter? - They do, but sometimes
they can be removed and they go faster than they
should, which isn't good. - No, that's exactly what I'd have done
at age 15 with my own golf cart. I would have removed the limiter on it. - Some of the carts have
heaters inside them and radios. You can soup them up as
much as you want really. After they saw the popularity
in the '70s what they did was they required, whenever there was
a new subdivision of houses built, that they connected the paths. For the most part, the
cart paths are laid out at the same time they lay out the roads. - So, what are the road rules here? It's like you're in a regular vehicle, you've just got more
paths that you can go on? - Yes, and if there is no path, you are allowed to be on
the road, but that's why we've expanded the paths
because we're trying to keep people off of
them as much as possible. Sometimes people who have never
been here have been caught on cart paths with their cars thinking that that's the right thing to do.
- Wow! - I wanted to take you through a drive-thru.
So up here is McDonald's. - I'm still getting over the fact
that I'm in a drive-thru in a golf cart! - Thank you. - Should point out, not sponsored.
This is not product placement. - The brakes on this are very good.
I'm sorry, it's very abrupt on them. - Better than the alternative. Peachtree City was a
planned community, right? - Correct. - How did it go from
"we're gonna build some houses here" to we're gonna have something that that I don't think any
other city in America has? - It got started originally
as a lake retreat for Atlanta residents. And the people who were here,
basically only on the weekends, they started taking their golf carts on the roads
leaving from playing golf. This whole separate network
came up as a result of that to get them off the
roads on their way home. - So, this was founded in the 1950s. - 1959 by Joel Cowan. He was a college student
when he designed and founded this city. - Wow.
- It's very quiet... See what I mean? - Death wish, good grief! - Along here, this is Lake Peachtree-- - Sorry, I got distracted by ducks. - The Founder, Mr. Cowan
and his cousin were the ones that put up the dam
and spillway originally that made this lake. 100,000 gallons a second goes over this. People do pay taxes to
pay towards these roads. It costs us $1.8 million a
year to maintain what we have as well as the 29 bridges and 29 tunnels. - This is a pretty affluent
city, which I guess is one of the reasons that the
golf cart paths work, but there are a lot of
cities like that in America and I'm trying to work
out why it's worked here and it hasn't elsewhere. - Most mayors when they see or
hear about us and they think "oh, we can do that", well,
they've got older cities, so they really can't. - And I guess part of it is cost. Part of it is you need a
huge amount of upkeep and tax and everything to make this
work, but it's also because you need to set the whole
thing up or it doesn't work. You can't have a quarter of a cart network because no one will buy a
cart and no one will use it. You need to connect everything
or it's not worth it. - Right. - Lovely! Thank you very much. - Thank you. - You can find out more about
Peachtree City in the links in the description. I've just realised there's
no seat belts on this. - No.
honestly this would be a worthy investment just for the best bikelane infrastructure in america. This is exactly what bikelane systems in smaller cities in denmark look like.
Holy shit I live in Peachtree City. That's my library. Life at 15 miles per hour!
I was sure this was going to be about The Villages, Florida.
Since golf carts are battery powered, this is really great. Good for that city.
I grew up in Peachtree city or PTC as the kids say, and the discontinuity, of jumping around the city from one side of the lake to the other really threw me off.
Didn't even have to watch the video to know this is Peachtree City, Ga. Definitely a uppermiddle class area. I had a friend in college from PTC and went to visit a couple of times and it was nuts. We even drove around in his family's golf cart. I think a lot of people in PTC work for Delta. It's really nice, if a little strange at times.
I live here! I like it. About $1k a month for a 800 sq ft apartment. I'd use a golf cart, too, but the Panasonic plant doesn't have a trail yet.
This is peak America
McIntosh Chiefs represent!