Image transcript:
Calvin (from Calvin & Hobbes) sitting at a lemonade stand, smiling, with a sign that reads, “Trains and micromobility are inevitably the future of urban transportation, whether society wants it or not. CHANGE MY MIND.”
I like how you assume that society will choose to have a future over self-immolation.
Yeah that’s a bold assumption. My bet is on “it’s going to get progressively worse and never better”. I have yet to be proven wrong. Since the day I was born everything’s been enshittening with only inconsequential cosmetic improvements (lol technology, what a joke).
My plan is to work from home, be completely self sufficient with minimal transport and do all I can do online.
So your definition of self sufficient is to be 100% reliant on Internet infrastructure?
If nothing else, car dependency is fiscally unsustainable. We might go kicking and screaming towards the solution, but eventually people will have no choice but to abandon the financial suicide that is making your city car dependent.
True, and I wish my city would realize it harder, sooner. On the other hand, I just read an article the other day that claims that the collapse of civilization has begun. A lot of societies throughout history perseverated with maladaptive habits after the local environment changed, and thus collapsed. A lot of them didn’t, though, and I hope that we’ll wise up in time.
But yeah, honestly, I’m worried myself that our society is starting to unravel if we don’t get our act together. Unmitigated climate catastrophe may well prove to be the greatest disaster in human history, if you count all the wars, famines, genocide it may cause. I sincerely hope it doesn’t turn out so dire, but so far humanity is stubbornly refusing to do anywhere near enough to stop it. Whether that’s civilization-ending or merely really frickin bad remains to be seen, but it’s also worthwhile noting that collapse doesn’t always mean post-apocalyptic; for farmers in ancient Rome around its collapse, life probably didn’t seem all that different day-to-day.
I’ve thought about that, too. How very rural people way back when may not have known or cared what empire they belonged to. I read years ago about a region France that routinely got double taxed because no one was really sure if they were French or German, and it was just easier to pay your taxes to both collectors than fight it. A society like that, yeah, they may not care so much about the empires collapse. But us? Even in the most rural areas of any ‘western’ country, the difference would likely be huge. No sanitation department, no internet, no electricity. And because, especially in the US, we have never developed a sense of personal responsibility to our communities or any kind of solidarity, we are unlikely to weather that particularly well. There’ll be no spontaneous eruption of communal gatherings and a sense of building a better community. They’ll be bastards hoarding shit and people shooting each other because there’s no one to stop it. :(
That’s wierd. In country where internet was created(on tax money btw) not everyone gets internet.
There’s no getting our act together. We’ve already passed the point of no return. Now we can only try to mitigate how bad it could get.
I don’t think we will take any serious steps toward that, either… I’m worried we’ll pull the Clathrate trigger in my lifetime
A percentage of people will, like they always do. My pessimistic view is that we just need to see how bad it gets before the pendulum starts swinging back the other way
Let me remind you that there are rural areas where people life in farms and need to drive to the factory they work in, there’s no shuttle bus, no train no nothing, and while isolated factories exist this will still be the case. They can’t really arrange a bus that goes to pick up their employees, since the roundabout would make it more gax expensive and some people live in places where a bus can’t even dream to get in.
I wish things improved, and that this became a reality for cities, there’s already cities in holland where getting the car in is prohibited, you need to leave it outside the city, but making car dependency fiscally unsustainable is punishing people that can’t have the privilege to work on other stuff. Imagine electrical technitians, they can’t take a bus/train/tram with machinery, even in a city. I’m all in for improvement and punishment for whim driving, but it needs to be regulated well not to fuck again poor people, because factory workers of rural areas aren’t partcularly rich.
For reference, I live in a mountain area, Europe.
OP mentioned Urban in their post, City in their comment, why do you need to come in with the “but muh rural” argument?
Because apparently I can’t read.
Again, for reference, I don’t even own a car, I WFH and life in a town where public transport is excellent, but most of my family members live in the situation I described. Anyway, even though this post is about urban areas, there are plenty comments talking about cars as a whole, and usually policies done to fix car usage, things like gas prices and such, affect everyone, not only urbanites like me.
In a perfect world/scenario…which would never happen…
If urban centers immediately dropped their reliance on cars and individual transport systems, then there would be more gas to go to rural centers where individual transportation makes more sense (going to the store) or is mandatory (farm and other industrial equipment) making prices drop for rural gas and urban center be more self sufficient and environmentally friendly.
…one can dream
Urban centers dropping their car reliance isn’t achieved by making it expensive for everyone, but by banning it’s use and increasing the public transport support.
Depends on society. Here in Europe we build more and more railways even though we already have shitloads (compared to US).
But build very slowly. Compare to USSR where shitloads of railways were made in 70 years.
Although “better less, but better”
Well, USSR was a different beast. You can’t build that fast in a democratic society.
After around 1919 and before Stalin USSR was democratic. And from 80-ies to the end. And democracy ended about 1996. Then shooting parlament from tanks, then Eltsin names his successor, then his successor wins, then removal of gubernator elections in 2002-2003, and everything else.
And in comparasion USSR was more democratic than empire except Stalin time. Stalin time managed to be even worse.
Oh wow, the delusion… Mate, you ok?
You want to say that Russian Empire that was monarchy had more democracy? THAT is delusion.
Or you want to say Stalin was good? That is delusion too.
Where did you get the Empire from, mmm? The fuck are you talking about at all?
I especially like that this format of the meme removes the d-bag that is in the original.
Memes are so much better without the backstory. This was the first time I’ve seen it mentioned so I looked it up, and holy shit. Had no idea that was him, I’ve seen the name but not the face.
I’m still not 100% on board with it because it still made me immediately think of that mentally, sexually, and maybe even physically abusive fuckhead.
What is micromobility? I am unfamiliar with this term.
It’s things like bikes, ebikes, electric scooters, monowheels, etc.
Oh I love electric scooters in cities! I always get excited when I visit a city that has those Lime or other brand rentable ones.
I own my own private electric scooter and it’s great. Makes for a quite pleasant commute, especially since I have a route that goes on protected bike lanes all the way from my apartment to my work!
Thanks. that makes sense.
So like motorcycles?
Among other things include bikes, scooters, monowheels, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzd11GMBONg
He’s still with us. Why isn’t he doing stuff today? I feel like he’d be a huge YouTube star if he did his schtick reading Twitter threads or comment sections super fast. Stuff like that.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !micromobility@lemmy.world
good bot
Seems like all posts about e-bikes. Let’s see some pedal power!
I have pedal foldable bike(because I don’t want cramming unfoldable bike in elevator pornography) and regular scooter. I want escooter, but will buy it only after 3d printer.
Cars, but like, Hot Wheels size.
Wasn’t there a toy in the 80s called Micromobiles?
Good job with meme template, everyone needs to start adopting this format and not the one with the conservative fascist chud that abuses his wife.
The more people try to “innovate” transportation the closer it gets to going back to trains. Driverless cars, for efficiency have them communicate with eachother, to accelerate and brake at the same time, for example. That’s just less efficient and more expensive trains.
There’s a massive failure condition for your example - sure, autonomous cars behave like trains when they communicate with each other to sync acceleration and deceleration, but they can also separate themselves from the collective to drive you to the door of your home. In the train metaphor this would be like you sitting in your own train car, and the train car separating from the rest of it and driving you to your doorstep.
Or you could have a train that drops you off either close to your home or close to a bus station that drops off near your home. This would require a walkable city, so it’s definitely not as simple as just building tracks and bus stations. The issue is that Americans are so used to car dependent infrastructure, that when they try to imagine what public transport would be like, they think of it in the context of where they live. That’s why I think so many are opposed to the idea. It’s not an impossible task, it’s just that it’d require money and effort, so it probably won’t happen.
It also won’t happen because not all of us live in cities. The “fuck cars” crowd never has any solutions for rural locations other than “don’t live there” as if rural areas serve no purpose. As long as farms are a thing there will be people out here, either farming themselves or supporting farmers,and things like scooters and trains either won’t work or only partially solve the problem.
Anyone who thinks getting rid of cars is a viable strategy in the US of all places is delusional.
You are talking about a minority of vehicles though. 77% of US personal vehicles are non-rural, hence, fuck them.*
I also don’t think many people want to get rid of every single car everywhere for every purpose. Most cars are personal vehicles in built up areas and that’s where they cause the most problems and make the least sense.
*From 2017 NHTS https://nhts.ornl.gov/
oh no, if only someone hadn’t centralized like, a point, say, a station, where people could conveniently access the train of cars…
they could call it a… hmm… TRAIN STATION?
Why cars? Why not buses, trams, trolleys or even bikes?
whoooosh
You reinvented switches.
I think you miss part of transportation system that says system. It’s more than one element.
There’s an argument to be made that driverless cars make more efficient use of our existing infrastructure, namely, roads, and are more adapted to the hellscape of sprawl that we created. Traffic jams could effectively be eliminated if you get rid of people that treat the left lane like a regular traffic lane, people going too slow, people going too fast, etc. It’s not like building more trains is going to suddenly mean that trains are convenient - there is a VAST amount of sprawl, and it’s not going anywhere. It took the steel industry shutting down in Pittsburgh, and 60% of the population relocating, before people got the bright idea that actually living closer in to the population center makes sense and turn small outliers into ghost towns. I’m not against trains, I just think the scale of the problem is larger than most people understand when they say “build more trains.”
The best long term solution for both nicer cities, happier people, and less environmental damage is to overhaul our infrastructure. Don’t build trains in car dependant cities, make the car dependant cities walkable with public transportation that will leave you within a few minutes of your destination. The real reason self driving cars are the “future” is because selling cars has a higher profit margin than train/bus tickets.
Not a foregone conclusion, at all. The average car occupancy now is something like 1.2 people, and self-driving cars might drop that below 1. Time behind the wheel is a cost that people pay for mobility, among other costs, and the Jevons Paradox says that if you make a commodity cost less per unit (i.e. more efficient) we end up using more of it in total, e.g. coal, or lighting. We could have more traffic as people send their empty cars on errands, for example. To get the benefits, you’d have to ban private car ownership. That seems like a heavy political lift, considering that they don’t even expect half of the U.S. private auto fleet to be electric before 2050, and those are available for sale right now.
The bit of the puzzle you are forgetting is the taxpayer-subsidized roads lose half their lobbying funds when electric cars are a thing. Wihtout trillions being spent sabotaging transit and micromobility it starts looking a lot better for cities to buipd a bike path for $1 million thna a highway upgrade for $1 billion
There’s an argument to be made that driverless cars make more efficient use of our existing infrastructure, namely, roads
Buses. It’s almost driverless car with 1/80th of driver per
driverpassanger. Also it’s 1/80 of car per car equivalent.
How to not make a train out of cars:
- Remove driver
- Make them follow predefined path
- Make them accelerate and decellerate together
- Link them together for better space-efficiency
Now you got Certanly Not A Train™.
Why it’s certanly not a train? Because it still has terrible rollong resistance and low material efficiency.
That not true!
For some places rail is too expensive or inflexible. So you need driverless cars, but you can make them cheaper by not having so many of them, instead having really big ones, and since driverless is not ready we hire a human to drive for now.
So sometimes you get buses!
The future of transportation is no transportation.
How many car miles could be saved each year if people didn’t have to go to the office to do their jobs? We were already most of the way there.
That… is silly. Things need to move.
So you expect us to live in a virtual pod with a treadmill and grow all of our own food? And collect rainwater?
Edit: I’m not saying we shouldn’t reduce our need for freight. Growing food in your backyard (half of my yard is good production) reduces the need for freight emissions. And I cycle to work. But drive or fly on holidays, I wish we had a more reliable train network.
They said transporation, not freight. I think they mean you can access everything on foot. But just for your heresay against the pod, your pod was made 10% smaller and your treadmill was made 10% faster.
Freight is just thing transportation, It’s a subcategory so it’s not like it’s not included. It’s silly to act like it’s stupid to think it is.
That point maybe wasn’t very good, probably saying that offices should be closer (also work from home)
How far and how often is the key, on a well planned city people should live close to their jobs and recreational areas, taking away people commuting to work and grouping people with similar destinations together you can solve traffic and give people more mobility.
Not everyone works in an office. Construction, trades, and utility works still need vehicles to work on and create infrastructure out and indoors.
You’ll also have tons of people in rural area like farmers and ranchers that still need vehicles.
That being said most of those vehicles will be electric soon. My company will be moving to electric starting in 3 years.
PS: I’m a utility worker, and we take our work vehicles home foe weather emergencies, so the transportation line is a little blurred for me
Yeah, you still need to transport items, and people that do things with their hands, but surely in most first world countries, these things are a minority of road traffic.
If you can get those chokepoints out the way, from dystopian 10 lane traffic jams to an overcrowded tube train, everything else would run so much smoother.
I would totally love not to be in a traffic jam, especially while on the clock as I don’t get paid for the drive time to and from work.
Yeah, you still need to transport items,
Well, cargo bikes are a thing. You can transport whole fridge there.
Construction, trades, and utility works still need vehicles to work on and create infrastructure out and indoors.
That didn’t stop people before cars. Back then people built small railways if we are talking about construction.
farmers and ranchers that still need vehicles.
They need specialized equipment. They need heavy equipment.
That being said most of those vehicles will be electric soon.
A car is a car. Another motor doesn’t turn car into magic.
That didn’t stop people before cars. Back then people built small railways if we are talking about construction.
We wouldn’t be having this conversation if it weren’t for vehicles like mine keeping up the internet infrastructure up.
There’s also no fucking way you going to put train tracks everywhere to keep up infrastructure. That sounds really fucking stupid
They need specialized equipment. They need heavy equipment.
This statement makes me feel like I’m responding to a 14 yr old with no life experience. Not even going to bother answering it.
A car is a car. Another motor doesn’t turn car into magic.
Electric vehicles have no emissions so there’s no reason people can’t use them specifically for work.
PS: You can respond but I’m not going to bother with you. There’s no point in having a discussion with someone with illrational and militant about their ideals
There’s also no fucking way you going to put train tracks everywhere to keep up infrastructure.
There’s also no fucking way you going to put ashphalt everywhere to keep up infrastructure.
That sounds really fucking stupid
Yep. Didn’t stop from building roads.
Electric vehicles have no emissions so there’s no reason people can’t use them specifically for work.
You are correct, vehicles. Car is not the only type of vehicle, it’s one of many. And what I was saying emissions is not the only problem of car.
You can respond but I’m not going to bother with you
Ok.
There’s no point in having a discussion with someone with illrational and militant about their ideals
Indeed. See, there are topics we agree upon.
That didn’t stop people before cars.
Standard of living was much much worse back then.
They need specialized equipment.
They also need to get to stores and see friends and family. Asking people to go back to insular homebound living for farm living seems unreasonable.
Another motor doesn’t turn car into magic.
However, if electric, it’s no exhaust, options for flexible energy sources, and hopefully long lived and recyclable batteries. If you are more upset about cars getting in the way of walking, then enjoy the walkable communities that exist today. Unfortunately they tend to be pricey.
They also need to get to stores
Well, ok. On farms cars at least make some sense.
However, if electric, it’s no exhaust, options for flexible energy sources, and hopefully long lived and recyclable batteries.
Yes, but they still take space, instane car infrastructure is still there and crashes still happen.
What about groceries, various errands? it’s definitely not just going to the office is the only reason people get around with cars.
Basically in countries with more micromobility, they have smaller grocery stores. There will be one on every corner and you can just walk to it.
I see you mentioned suburbs. Yeah. The thing keeping shops and homes far apart in that case is zoning laws. And also building code dictating single family housing. In a more dense suburb in amsterdam or chicago you might have some rowhouse apartments but the first floor will be for shops, and one of those shops willcbe your nearest grocery store.
Trains(or cargo trams if you want fancy) for delivery to store and your eleven for delivery from store to home. Or ebike. Or bus.
It’s a discussion about the bulk of transport and commutes. Distributors don’t need to follow a centralised system.
You still need to drive to do all these things, that’s often a considerable distance though if you live in suburban areas since everything is far away.
One argument that keeps coming up in favor of cars that the United States is big. Well, if it’s big, we have plenty of room to build things close to where people live. It’s only zoning laws that force things to be unnecessarily far away.
Yes that was my point, not that we need cargo trams.
And it’s not just US that has this issue although there is taken to the extreme.
Many suburban areas in Europe have the same issues but the advantage is that many of them were built around small villages that they have ballooned so there was something that could give local services for residents already.
Good point! I usually hear sincere arguments that we have to drive because everything is so far apart, and so I took it the wrong way. My apologies.
You make a good point but it’s hard to agree. I don’t like home, and would prefer not to work in my own home. I want to see the world, I like to travel. Perhaps if my life had more social mobility I wouldn’t be so starved for literal mobility. I have a car, could go drive anywhere. But it’s not real freedom.
These are the jobs AI will replace first.
LLMs are not AI.
If you can train an AI to take the stream of nonsense I am given on a daily basis, and not only turn it into software but also the software they needed rather than what they actually described, then that AI is fucking welcome to my job…
mfs in 1923: “Cars will never replace trains and horses because there’s whole swaths of the country with no highways or gas stations!”
True. Then came ethyl alchohol. Then came alchohol ban, that basically subsidised oil industry.
I’m going to make the argument against trains for everything, despite being a huge fanatic for trains.
Trains are the most efficient transport method per tonne-km over land, yes. However from certain operational standpoints trains can make less sense than existing solutions.
When distance between stops for heavy rail becomes too short, you lose quite a bit of efficiency. Trains themselves aren’t a one-size fits all solution as there are various types that each need their own form of investment (which is a lot $), when roads are compatible with both personal transport and large trucks with little investment by the transporter (govt pays for road maintenance).
Rail companies right now are chasing profits and neglecting operational improvements. In the US, hauling a long, LONG, old and slow train loaded with bulk aggregate, oil, grain, chemicals is more profitable than aiming for JIT capability that is more feasible with trucks. A complete change in societal incentives is necessary to bring back the usefulness of railway in all types of transport. Second, the North American way of railroad companies owning the tracks dissuades a lot of innovation and new firms from entering the market, unlike the “open road” where there are many competing OTR freight companies. None of the Big Six would like my idea of a nationally controlled rail/track system.
The suburbs are inherently compatible with trains and really any public transportation. They were quite literally designed around the car and the expectation that everyone would have a car.
Unless you plan to bulldoze the suburbs and then force everyone to move into higher density areas your anti-car dreams are never going to happen.
Although there are many American cities that could get much more anti-car and public transport would work. LA could theoretically not be such a car city with the appropriate infrastructure built in.
Why are the anti-car people anti-self-driving car? With self-driving cars we could mostly eliminate private car ownership.
inevitability the future of urban transportation
I don’t know, I think you’re forgetting the possibility of us all just dying.
Nope.
Those super long electric busses will become more popular than trains. They are muuch cheaper to get. You can just send in a new one in case the first one breaks down, etc.
Though we also cant all live nrar these “train stops”?
I dont live near any right now.
Trains can transport higher loads of people though. So ultimately both trains and busses need to be the priority.
100% depends on where you’re going and how far journeys are.
For a small inner city area, a subway is great. For a larger urban area, a tram system. For intercity travel, trains. Out in a rural area, buses would be the way, although more remote locations would need government subsidies to be even remotely functional, and even then it may resemble on demand taxis rather than a scheduled bus service.
No single solution will get you all the way there.
No single solution will get you all the way there.
Except for the car, which is why it’s such a popular choice. Also no need to worry about catching the next thing, or buying the right tickets, you just get in and go.
I haven’t heard of any solution or combination of solutions that would be convenient and work in most cities.
Yep there’s nothing else as good as having your own vehicle to freely travel wherever you want to on your own schedule and in relative privacy. The rest of y’all can enjoy your trains as much as you want, but there’s no train or bus that comes out to my house in the woods so I’m going to keep driving my car for the foreseeable future. After that it will probably be an electric SUV that I keep driving. I’ll charge my car from my solar power at home and be energy independent.
Doesn’t it bother you that even in cars you don’t have privacy?
Can car move you from bedrom to kitchen? Escooter can.
No single solution will get you all the way there.
Absolutely. Public transportation needs to be comprehensive.
Subway is just giving space above ground for cars. Since there is no cars, you can just do trams.
although more remote locations would need government subsidies to be even remotely functional
Not that current roads to remote loctions are subsidised
What needs to happen first is fuel price needs to be so high that people are incentivized to
a) switch to public transit no matter how shitty it is because they just can’t afford a car anymore
b) start public transit companies because there is money to be made and the oil lobbies don’t have enough money anymore to lobby effectivelyMy guess is before 2050 nobody will really get anything done because the oil lobby is just too powerful. Would be great though.
What needs to happen first is fuel price needs to be so high that people are incentivized to
Absolutely. The fossil fuel industry recieves billions upon billions of dollars in subsidies every year. Why in the actual fuck are we still paying for something that is actively killing us? It makes no sense. All of the subsidies to fossil fuels needs to be re-routed towards public transportation and green energy.
making consumables more expensive just makes them cheaper for the rich. poor people in areas with inadequate public transit will largely just keep driving and become poorer (maybe some of them will switch to the inadequate public transit, then they’ll be even poorer, and it likely won’t improve the transit systems either).
tax the rich in proportion to their wealth., spend it on better public interest transport infrastructure
Those markets can’t run on the rich alone. And yeah it will make rural poor people poorer. That’s actually also the goal. Urban sprawl should be stopped. Why do people need to build houses and villages out in bumfuck nowhere and then complain when amenities and authorties are shitty out there? These people should imo be forced to make a hard decision because if they can’t afford gas anymore they will move closer to a city since the move is more affordable than paying for gas. Hence prevention of sprawl and reducing of gas use. The only people that can stay are the ones that a) are rich and b) require it for their work (e.g. farmers) or c) ones that can work locally without driving around.
We can all live near a train stop. Roads were built everywhere. Train rails are actually not as expensive to build
But they don’t handle the 90° corners that are built into so much of the existing landscape.
You wanr to say cars can turn 90° on the spot? Unless you are an Ukrainian farmer, no - your car is not a tank.
No, I’m saying there’s a huge difference between a 15 foot turning radius and a 400 foot turning radius. Trying to put trains in the existing 50 foot x 50 foot road intersections is not going to work without moving a lot of buildings.
15 foot turning radius
Sounds like a forklift. Double for cars, or triple for speeders and idiots.
400 foot turning radius
20 meters at most. 71-931 has 20, and it’s HUGE. Or 65 units of imperialism.
You’d been trams,not trains. Trains are great at covering long distance quickly, but if they have to navigate tight turns and stop every few minutes then they’ll be pointless.
Not sure why people aren’t talking more about busses here, it would make way more sense to utilize busses for local travel.
The distinction between tram, train and subway is not relevant. There are full trains navigating Paris for example, but also tram and subways. They are all very good, and you can navigate the city without ever taking a bus.
Those super long electric busses will become more popular than trains.
Though heavy batteries are bad for energy efficiency and big capacity batteries are long to charge. Well, it can be solved by constantly charging them. This also allows to reduce required capacity, thus reducing weight. Constant charging most efficiently can be done by using wires. Oh, wait. I just reinvented trolley.
Though we also cant all live nrar these “train stops”?
*European disagreeing noises*
I don’t disagree but there are two points that spring to mind.
- This is an inevitable future, but I think it’s very far off. In order to make this viable towns and cities would need to be radically different.
- How would large item courier services operate after that modification?
The cities were radically different before we decided that a car should be able to go anywhere.
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People are calling for radical change to their cities as they realize the poor economics of urban sprawl and suburban development. You do have a good point though as transit, density, and mixed zoning all work best when used together.
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The shift to transit and walkability will actually make exisiting roadways and highways less congested and better serve any delivery vehicles using them. We won’t rip out all existing roads, but we will stop building a new lane every 5 years.
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Like every other huge factory before cars: connect to railways. Or tram network if you are in city.
I think you’re making it out to be a bigger problem than it really would be. Nobody is going to push personal and commercial vehicles out, but there would be a lot less of them, they’d only be as big as necessary, and they’d be more environmentally friendly.
Society wants it, companies don’t
That is why we won’t adopt trains and why we haven’t yet
Can we get light rail and trams in there?
The focus urban transportation is a good one imo
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That’s a nice idea. The trams in Melbourne work really well.
I would personally bet on boats… (or even fins)
Mom’s gonna fix it all soon.
Mom’s comin round to put it back the way it ought to be
![[meme] Trains -- not driverless cars -- are the future of transportation](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f6468af5-8151-4b4c-b339-2fa0b0373c3a.webp){kind=link}