Cars fulfill a very self-indulgent narrative. ‘I get to decide where and when I travel’, makes people feel “free” snd “important” even when millions of them are silently coming to the same decisions-- like going downtown at 09:00 on weekdsys-- that allow huge efficiency plays.
Notice how many ads feature fantasies of open roads and trips to faraway attractions, not the real world of “I need to sit in rush hour traffic from 6:30 on to get to the Work Factory”
Maybe public transit needs to focus its message on the freedom from drudgery it offers-- you don’t have to be staring at the driver in front of you, scanning the traffic reports
Exactly! This is why I love micromobility and quality public transit so much. With micromobility like electric scooters or bikes, I can zip past traffic in the protected cycle lanes in my city. With the frequent metro service in my city, I know I can show up to the metro station at basically any time and know it’ll be a max 5-minute wait for the next train. And when I’m on the train, I can just chill and scroll on my phone or read a book instead of stressing about traffic. The freedom to think about something that isn’t traffic.
Unfortunately as it stands in some places the infrastructure is awful. Take England for example; catching a train to London takes about 20 minutes for me, however there are often 10-15 minute delays that you now have to start accounting for, you also have to sit in a cabin with someone blaring their music that isn’t to your taste. Hopefully you’re not in a cabin with a toilet, because it’s going to stink of shit.
Now the return journey, fingers crossed it’s not cancelled otherwise you have another 40 minute wait for the next train! Last train home is a real anxiety inducing experience, will you be getting that train home or has it been cancelled? This is unfortunately all too common here. Sadly because public transport is for profit rather than a necessary service we have someone trying to do the bare minimum to make that money, and then pay the bare minimum to their staff who don’t give a shit. It all begins to unravel and people just have a better experience sat in that morning traffic which is a more consistent and pleasant experience to the public transport.
The problem is once they started to turn public transport into for profit, there is little way to turn back. They invite private companies to build the network, do the operation, now how can they go back to be non profit to be a public service to the people ? Unless they do subsidise fares which will look like they are siphoning money from government to private companies. It’s a no winner situation. If the government wants to nationalise the public transport they will have to spend a significant amount of money to buy them off , which may or may not be affordable to them.
Not to mention that well built mass transit achieves the same level of freedom. You’ll wait 5 minutes for the train and away you go.
I’d say it is more about
convinceconvenience. You decide when you leave and you leave from your door. You don’t risk being late to work because you missed the train by 1 minute (baring queues, but you get the point).This can also be achieved by high frequency transit.
Yeah, if the train comes every five minutes, that’s going to be way more consistent than traffic over time.
Every five minutes is not enough, every minute is definitely needed for rush hour. Thankfully, I live in London where tube trains come every minute, yey!
Really depends where you live. In my town I also decide when I leave, and I don’t risk being late because I missed the train by one minute. I’ll just take the next one. More risk of being late because of car traffic.
The problem when people compare cars to public transport is that they compare the current state of public transport in their area. We need to compare what would happen if we were spending as much billions as we do on cars.
If I’m doing a short trip locally in the city, I get that convenience out of my bike. There are times I would have taken a taxi somewhere, but when the app told me how long it would take for my driver to arrive, I just end up cycling there (often rolling past some long lanes of traffic in the process). That process can be even better if a city is built with safe biking paths.
Unfortunately that’s super weather dependent and seasonal. Plus, some of us would be a sweaty mess by the time we biked to where we needed to go.
Bikes don’t have to be seasonal. Some Nordic countries have well maintained and plowed biking networks and they see significant use throughout the winter.
I get heat warnings every other day lately, and unless it’s the rare cloudy day my UV index is at the top of the scale. I don’t worry about snow here, I worry about heat and sun. I don’t see a good solution for that unless you want to build covered bike routes with ventilation fans all through the metroplex?
Because cars aren’t stuck to tracks.
And trains aren’t stuck to roads. And planes aren’t stuck to roads. And ships aren’t stuck to roads.
cars are stuck to roads and much less efficient everywhere many people need to go. cars are basically useful where only few people live or work.
I mean technically cars are only stuck to roads if you’re a law abiding citizen.
Roads allow for significantly more freedom of travel than trains because it would be cost prohibitive to build rail networks everywhere a car can reach.
Each mode of transport has its niche and one cannot replace the other.
If you can’t conveniently travel by train, that is a failure of the design of your city, not trains. If the destination a train took you to was walkable you wouldn’t need a car, because the train could cover the large distances, and you could simply walk from the train to your necessary locations.
“City”
This guy thinking everyone lives in urban centers.
Are they going to run a train to every remote village in Italy? Will everyone in Iceland travel to Reykjavik from their farms around the country by rail? Are we going to install rail on every island of Greece just so people don’t have to drive?
Sure, if we can build the infrastructure for cars there, why not trains too. You’re quite closed minded. But also, why can’t you just bike in a village? I mentioned cities because that’s where trains tend to be, genius.
There’s trams, there’s bikes, there’s buses, etc. etc. etc.
Sure, I’ll just bike through 4 feet of snow to get to town. Roads don’t need to fall within specific tolerances to operate either, like tracks. Have you ever been to the country? Anywhere that snows? You sound like “city folk” to me and you throwing around “closed minded” and “genius” when someone else brings up a contradictory point makes you sound more like “city asshole”. Maybe keep the conversation civil, eh?
There are several alternatives to trains. It was the appropriate example for cities. This is dead simple. If you’re gonna be a condescending, mocking asshole all while completely missing the point, you’re gonna get some sass. Simple as, fuck off if you can’t handle it.
Why can’t you just bike in a village?
It’s not about biking in a village. It’s about biking out of a village to a denser urban center. The place where the trains are.
You’re quite closed minded.
I think it’s closed minded to assume that trains and bikes can replace all utility of cars, or that cars will never be in a state where the impact on the environment is negligible.
there’s buses
That’s just a big fucking car.
If the infrastructure exists for cars, it can exist for trains.
1 bus > 25 cars. Or how many ever it seats.
Btw, I’m pretty sure places that are that remote rely on planes. Some parts of alaska are like that if I’m remembering correctly.
I agree yet most countries are determined to use cars, where public transport needs to be.
Did the car industry write this?
I love good public transport. It’s great to not have to worry about parking or having to drive. Good cities, like many in Europe and New York in the US, a car isn’t really required.
But out in the countryside, a car is a must. Electric cars are massively better for the environment and way cheaper to run (like tenth the cost with a night rate).
Big Auto has been destroying any idea of high speed rails for decades. Our trains are complete trash because of car lobbyists.
Muskrat is one of the biggest ones to blame.
And they expand the roads and freeways to have rails literally no place to go
Denver has decent rail, but I have to walk/bike across this insane hellscape of cars trying to kill me for 1 1/2 miles to get to the station
Cars can pick me up 10 feet from my front door(my car). No train tracks within 5 miles of me. I would love if their were tracks closer.
Because North Americans were tricked by the oil and car companies in the 50s to think that car ownership was part of being human, and now we’re addicted to sitting in traffic, breathing fumes, and killing pedestrians in the name of muh freedom.
since wen this sub is full of carbrain? like bruh.
It’s on the front page and it’s got an unbelievably stupid title.
I am amazed as well. Did they just sub every community with the word ‘car’ in it?
no idea but its just sad. even the reddit version is beter.
Making up slurs like “carbrain” for people who think differently than your echo chamber is fuckin’ lame as shit. You look gross from the outside, FYI. Found this post by sorting my “All” feed by Hot, not a member of your echo chamber.
its how they are called on the original sub.
Carbrain can be pretty succinctly defined as thinking this tiny little online community is the echo chamber, and not your entire car-default existence in your car-default country with your car-default parents neighbors teachers transit networks and policies
OK sure, you’re the majority. Let me know when you succeed in remodeling all the metropolitan areas of America with your great influence.
Until then, I’ll be happily driving around to wherever I please in my cars or on my motorcycle.
Yeah, I’m not sure you read that correctly, but you did switch from ‘oh no I’m being bullied’ to ‘haha nobody cares nerd’ so maybe you did figure it out. Anyway, nobody cares that you have a car, it wasn’t even your choice to get one.
haha nobody cares nerd
Yeah what is going on? Seems like every other comment is full on car-brain-cars-are-freedom insanity. No enough orange pilled people here. Is the opposite of the orange pill the sad grey pill?
wtf are you saying?
Not every journey is possible with public transport. People will still need to lug equipment about in the electric future.
Trains don’t cover literally every single use case of a car, better keep expanding those highways!
There is quite a lot you can do with a cargo bike. And what is still left in deliveries or services, can be done with just a few cars. Those don’t need to be driverless. Also I have once moved house using public transport. It isn’t fun, but it’s possible.
Lol I grew up where it’s 100 degrees in March. No one is riding a bike much less pulling a cargo trailer to work. You have no idea what you are talking about.
so what, did nobody live or work in africa or the middle east or the american southwest or australia or spain or anywhere else where it gets really hot before cars were invented? were people just like “i have stuff to do but it’s too hot to walk, guess i’ll just die”? and then what of people who live in places where it doesn’t do that, which is statistically most people?
also, worth noting that freeways and asphalt create the urban heat island effect, which makes hot places even hotter.
And they have cars in those places.
Before cars were invented we had horses.
and they have cars in those places
you can be generally certain that i’m aware of that
before cars were invented we had horses
…and trains.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union_of_Railways
ya they really connected every place in africa.
OK, I’ll grant you that this argument was not super well formed on my part. I can say with confidence that trains built the United States, including the places in the southwest that I alluded to, and HSR currently connects Spain to an alarming degree. China and India also have considerable rail networks, though China’s is to my knowledge more modern and in more active development. That being said, the main point I was making is that dense, walkable development was the only option in these places prior to the car, because how else were you going to get around your local area? And people clearly hauled stuff in those days and in those climes. Clearly doing so without a car is possible, if the development patterns allow for it. Those places currently lack those development patterns, and thus that is not an option in those places at this time, but that’s a result of policy decisions made by leaders in those areas (and the auto industry).
Now, to provide an actual counterexample:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Switzerland
Now, you might protest when I bring up Switzerland that Switzerland is small. And in terms of geographic area, you’re not wrong. But Switzerland is also ferociously mountainous, and much of their rail network had to be tunneled under the Swiss Alps. Connecting LA to San Francisco via the Central Valley with HSR, like CAHSR is doing, is considerably easier than connecting two much closer cities in Switzerland with regular-speed trains was prior. The same goes for:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen
as well as the broader system of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Japan
and, as I alluded to,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Spain
is applying the same principles in the birthplace of taking a nap in the afternoon because it’s too hot to exist. Yes, I can link Wikipedia articles too.
Oh, and also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island exists in deserts too. It’s not that it’s an “island of heat” surrounded by pleasant temperatures, it’s that whatever temperature is around it, the paved/urbanized area is hotter. And this is exacerbated by current suburban development patterns, again, even in deserts.
I definitely can’t travel across the country with all my music gear on a bike.
think of how much faster you could get across the country with all your music gear in your car if all of the other people on the road who aren’t schlepping all of their music gear across the country, which is statistically almost all of them, were on bikes or trains instead
Oh no, not equipment. Surely nobody has ever moved equipment on a train.
But how do you transport equipment from the train station to the location equipment needs to arrive at?
Depends on how much equipment you’re talking about. The vast majority of tradespeople could have a rolling toolkit on a pushcart. For everything bigger there’s likely to still be commercial road freight.
When you can’t carry it all in one go a train is useless.
I am all for more public transportation in this country, but it wouldn’t help me personally. I live outside of city limits- the closest bus line is two miles away. My work is even further outside city limits, a 10-minute drive south of me down a four-lane highway, past farm fields and into an industrial park.
There’s just no way public transportation is going to help me there. And even if I didn’t have to do it down a highway, there’s no way I’m riding a bike there in the middle of winter.
So do please make public transport more available and expansive. Just know that it still won’t be a universal solution. Individual transport is needed by some of us.
I plan to get an electric (not a Tesla) for my next car. I currently drive a hybrid.
I am all for more public transportation in this country
In which country? Sorry, couldn’t tell from the context.
My apologies for being an asshole American. I meant the U.S.
“More public transport wouldn’t help me, because there’s no transit access here” seems tautological but ok.
Countries with similar layouts but working public transit would simply build a train line into your industrial park and place bus stops a reasonable distance away from where you live.
At what point is it too rural for that to make sense? I’m surrounded by cornfields.
Lots of people in fuck cars communities are black and white about it. They’re very unwilling to even discuss compromise. They’ll say the city needs to build a subway system under all the farmland.
can you point me to that? because i spend a lot of time in these communities and have never actually seen that
I think it’s fair to say absolutely 0 cars is also a problem. But we could use a bit more public transport, and less cars than what we currently have. Especially where we know many people move “in mass”, like cities in rush hour.
You tell me; your community was likely first built by having a train line drawn out to it in the frontier era, and later had the tracks scuttled due to obsolescence and overt state support for the motor vehicle alternative.
Rural rail has been done and is still done in pretty much every country that’s not the USA. If you’re a farmer, there’s a lot of rationale to having rail built out to whatever market terminal you sell your product at. It’s not unheard of for farmers to build out small private rail lines across the farm to transport goods, equipment, themselves, etc.
I don’t know a country as spread out as the U.S. that has practical rail in all rural areas. Certainly not Canada or China or India.
Canada is carbrained like the US, but China and India actually have extremely profuse rail networks.
China and India have vast rural areas with no trains.
The U.S. The U.S. was that country. The country was built by train.
Oh, and 80% of the population lives in cities!
And that 80% of the population should have robust public transit.
Then there’s the rest of us who don’t live in cities. The train never went out to farmer’s fields in the hopes of picking up people here and there who happened to live between them. That’s nonsense.
Where I grew up there is zero chance anyone is willing to invest in a rail system. They would never make the money back and the local government would not be able to afford it. This is just ridiculous.
People who make this argument never seem concerned about how their local government can afford to maintain its suburban stroads and all the supporting infrastructure they require, which is all ludicrously more expensive per person than the same infrastructure in walkable/transit-oriented development. Not to mention the cost imposed on people living there who would not have to own a car, even in small rural towns and villages, if the development patterns were different.
Said development also can be, was always historically, and in many places still is, compact and transit-connected. Switzerland has an incredible train system connecting all of its tiny mountain villages with its cities, but even America used to have the same thing before the auto and oil industries hijacked the government. There’s even a rail museum in Sacramento where you can learn about that history, and there’s documentation of the compact, walkable downtowns we used to have before we bulldozed them to build parking lots.
You’re probably right about the state of things in your hometown, as that is how things currently are in most of America, but your assumption that it has to be that way and would be more expensive if it was otherwise is ahistorical, contrary to economics, and defeatist.
You are the one who is making silly assumptions. My home town has HORRIFIC roads and sidewalks. They cannot afford to fix anything and the heat and dirt destroys everything. You do not understand what it’s like in a rural town in the US.
What we should be focusing on instead of just saying FUCK CARS, is creating the best versions of each. If you put in a rail it’s the best version. If you put in a bus, it must be the best version, and all cars should be electric.
I actually agree that public transportation should be the standard but I also live in a place we call reality and this black and white thinking is never going anywhere.
My guy, do you not hear yourself? Your home town has HORRIFIC roads and sidewalks, they cannot afford to fix anything and the heat destroys everything, but the solution is to dump more money into road infrastructure that costs way more and makes the heat worse due to the urban heat island effect?
And where did I engage in black-and-white thinking? Literally my entire point was that better things are possible if you look at places that do things differently than we do. If you think I was engaging in black-and-white thinking, then you’re the one who didn’t understand what I was arguing.
I never said anything about dumping money into more roads. You fucking guys just pull shit out of your ass to try to sound superior. LOL there is no URBAN HEAT ISLAND where I grew up. It’s in the middle of a fucking desert. The roads do nothing to make it hotter. It’s HOT. IT’S A DESERT.
The roads and sidewalks in my hometown are falling apart and in terrible shape and still NO ONE is going to do what you are suggesting. It’s ridiculous and you are just wasting your breath trying to get people to abandon their cars. They are all farmers there and they need their vehicles.
Well, if your solution isn’t to prioritize rail transport and reduce the amount of paved surface around, then I fail to see what else you could be suggesting besides further investing in roads.
The roads and sidewalks in my hometown are falling apart and in terrible shape and still NO ONE is going to do what you are suggesting.
That sounds like their problem, then.
It’s ridiculous and you are just wasting your breath trying to get people to abandon their cars. They are all farmers there and they need their vehicles.
Want to show me where I’m “trying to get people to abandon their cars” without qualification? Sure, I’ll encourage someone who lives and works in San Francisco to get rid of their car, because the development patterns there already allow for it, and anybody who owns a big fuck-off truck but doesn’t haul anything bigger than groceries can definitely get rid of that shit. But in suburbia, I have no problem with a person owning a car, nor does anybody else here: the system they inhabit has made alternatives nonviable. Once development patterns shift to accommodate alternatives, once going car-free is a viable option, then you talk about that. Nobody here argues for individual solutions to our systemic problems.
Public transport only really works in crowded areas. Pretty sure you can easily ditch your car and get around fine in NYC, but in Bumfuck, North Dakota, you are lucky to get a bus once a day.
The reasons for this include a high upfront set-up cost and mistakes in the past.
When public transport was planned out, the population was smaller and the roads were more empty. The current systems might have been sufficiently expansible at that time, but there is just so much traffic and overloaded infrastructure nowadays. In IT fields, you’d say that you have technical debt: you favored an easier solution without thinking about long-term maintainabilty and are now stuck at trying to refactor the mess you made.
And today, public transport also needs to be profitable, of course, which is nigh Impossible. The only way to solve it would be a public transport tax and theb you’ll see most of the vocal supporterd fall.
Anecdotal point in case: I live in a rural area in Germany and a friend’s dad always complained about how awful public transport is here. At one point, a party put up the suggestion to have a “tax” of 20 bucks per quarter, so public transport could be expanded and free to use for everyone. Friend’s dad was furious about that suggestion because “I’m not using public transport, so why should I pay for everyone who does”. People just like to complain, not solve the issue they’re aggravated about.
Public transport only really works in crowded areas
You have this backwards. Areas become dense due to the presence of public transport, not the other way around. Infrastructure comes before population, not afterwards. This remains true even in car-world, because even drivers won’t really travel where there’s no meaningful roads to do so.
Bumfuck, North Dakota is Bumfuck, North Dakota specifically because of the lack of investment in transport, not because it “doesn’t work”. If Bumfuck convinced someone to pull a spur off of the old Great Northern Line that runs through northern ND, it might grow into something much larger.
Especially since so many US cities are designed around cars.
They were redesigned for cars. Mistakes of the past can be fixed.
Same reason we still have one person take a car if we’re going on a scouts camp with bikes or train. There are times were even a perfect public transport system (Luxemburg is up there) can fail you.
Yeah, but no train takes me from my front door to my job/the movies/my vacation place. And my car works even if the state decides to shut down the trains/buses.
You seem to have a serious case of car brain, which is odd because you are commenting in the fuckcars community
This meme is on the startpage, so many people outside of the typical c/fuckcars community will comment.
eh, it’s a quite shitty extremist meme.
Just like EVs and Autonomous cars aren’t a magic bullet to solving traffic, the trains aren’t either, they are an important part of a well-rounded public transport network and an effective part of distribution networks, they are not magic bullet (train)
What if the state decides to shut down oil supply? Or the electric grid? That logic applies to cars as much as trains. Those all rely on government oversite, even when privately owned.
We decry the government, claiming it’s inept. We listen to and vote in people who say the government is inept. Then when those we just voted in do a horrible job we then point at the mess and say, “see the government doesn’t work”. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy.
I can make my own electricity at home to charge an electric car. Can’t do that with a combustion engine unless you run ethanol.
Or diesel
Public transit good, but in america public transit is not well funded and only really available in big cities. I think sadly it will be years before americans can give up the independence of being able to have transportation direct from point a to point b. Consider that in rural areas it could be a 30 minute drive to get groceries with no transit options. As long as americans are going to drive cars, we can at least try to make them electric vs ICE.
I will continue to vote for public transit initiatives and if we had a bus or train system in my town I would use it. I have a fuel efficient ICE car but trying to buy electric as soon as I can afford to buy something that isn’t a telsa pile of crap.
Batteries used gives you150 ebikes for every e-car
I dunno what country you are from, but here in the US of A, the monopolies that own all the train infrastructure make sure to keep trains as public transportation as cost prohibitive as possible.
This always reminds me of the movie, Roger Rabbit. I was a kid and the movie taught me a much deeper/darker lesson than it was meant to teach me at that age. It still irks me.
I used to watch roger rabbit as a kid for other reasons
I think I know exactly what you mean and I was in 3rd grade.
Now I want to go watch Roger Rabbit to know what you’re talking about.
Spoiler alert- the villain buys the transit system and shuts it down, basically steals a town it served, and plans to demolish the town so he can build a freeway over it and profit.
In case you need a hint, it was Doom’s plan.
It’s not remotely easier. Trains carriages are easy to build, but the infrastructure is not. You have to move and extend roads, demolish buildings, lay the rails, build bridges, if you go underground there will be lots of digging and engineering work to protect nearby buildings, and don’t forget about maintenance. It is only profitable when the population is high enough and people have the need to travel to set places en mass. Otherwise it is just fantasy. If you live your whole live around any city Center, I can understand that you are not going to drive . But plenty of people lived in a tiny town of population under 10000people .
Oh well if all our transport needs to be profitable maybe we should stop paying for public highways out of income tax funds, and stop subsidizing car and oil companies, and stop funding refinery and pipeline projects, and stop zoning with parking minimums, and all the other features of our nationalized car infrastructure.
Please explain to me: how is it possible to build a new highway through Berlin but so damn hard to build a railway through rural area?
Well for one roads are relatively cheap tarmac is almost fully reusable and is already mostly oil industry waste.
Rail lines are much more restrictive than roads in where and how you can build them. they can’t turn as sharply or have that high of an incline.
Also a good portion of most llarge city populations don’t live in the city but commute. Not all of them commute to the same few areas so of course on city exits there will be a bottle neck but it thins out relatively quickly as people fuck off in multiple directions. I guess you could reduce congestion by not allowing most car in the city and having large car parks in key point outside the city. But I’m not a civil engineer or whatever deals with traffic.
I think people who say this truly don’t understand how vast and how challenging it truly would be to service all rural areas. I live and work in a mountainous area. My “town” has a population of 300 people at 7 thousand feet elevation in a very dense forest. I’m 30 minutes drive to the nearest store with several thousand feet of elevation change. Putting a rail line here would be absolutely ridiculous and we’d have to cut ancient trees down and get creative in the civil engineering to even make it possible. There are often earthquakes and landslides, just to make it more challenging. This would all be just to service a small number of people. This is just one tiny example of how it isn’t practical in all cases. I’m all for increased public transportation and highly support it. I’d ride the train when practical if there were one. But I’d still need my vehicle to get to job sites and haul what I need to regularly haul. I’m convinced many people here have genuinely never been out of the city and simply can’t comprehend it. It isn’t so black and white.
Let’s consider how many people living in Berlin vs population density in rural area. It is not building it itself that is challenging but the efficiency of building such a massive network to serve a few people. It is no different than building a helipad to them. Rail maintenance is a costly work. Rails have to be replaced, tuned every now and then or trains will derail. Underlays needs to be replaced. Why bother building a multi hundred million dollar project to serve the few people in rural areas? Do you think trains does not cost energy?
Are the train going to take 1-2 passenger in rural areas every station? How do people even get to the stations? Are they going to drive? Will they question the point of driving to train station and wait half an hour for the train instead of driving to where they want? Once they get off the station, how are they going to get to their final destination? Not everything is near a train station.
There are different kinds of people living in different parts of the country so just to say no cars for everyone is exactly the same as saying people should all drive and ban all public transport. We need a mixture of both for everyone to get to work efficiently. In all the bigger cities, public transport is a crucial component. Not so much in less densely populated areas.
I think OP just did
As I don’t have much time, let’s meet at your level: no, he didn’t.
Simple - Tracks vs Road ratio.
![[meme] Trains are 100000x easier to electrify and automate than cars, so why does everyone keep talking about electric and driverless cars?](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/11c37658-7c32-4cc2-b12c-6ced348bd09d.png){kind=link}