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
Big Auto has been destroying any idea of high speed rails for decades. Our trains are complete trash because of car lobbyists.
I have an electric car because I refuse to pay any more money to fossil fuel companies but still need to drive. I use public transport where possible, but many trips just aren’t viable.
It takes me 30 minutes to walk to the nearest shopping centre, but 2 hours to get there by public transport, or 5 minutes by car.
As an average citizen, I don’t have the means to build or fund new railway lines. I am, however, lucky enough to be able to refuse to drive fossil fueled vehicles and still survive.
Is biking not an option?
I have been using my bike for most short trips.
I’ve even ridden my bike into the city, then taken a train most of the way home when I realised I’m not as fit as I thought I was.I’ve actually solved most of my travel issues by staying home and deciding that I don’t actually need to travel. This works less well when the purpose of travel is to get food.
I doubt that a significant portion of the population lives somewhere that just trains and bikes could meet their requirements.
Around 60% of car trips in the U.S. are less than 6 miles. A plurality are under 3 miles, and IIRC, the average occupancy is 1.2 people. That indicates that bikes and walking could do just fine for a lot of people.
I doubt that. Only the US has weird population distribution.
Sounds like a classic example of poorly designed transit. Well designed transit is often faster than driving and should certainly be faster than walking unless your destination is not frequently visited by many people.
Can you point to any examples of “well designed transit”? In my head, I can only see transit being faster than a car if it’s in a densely populated city with small roads and dedicated transit lanes (be it a bus or a train). I don’t know if that describes most of the places people live in the US.
Many cities in europe have succesful transit systems that compete with car times. Amsterdam in the Netherlands is a strong example. As for the united states, some of the denser downtowns with metros will have faster commute times on their metros than by car. It is rare to find well designed transit in America and that is part of what this sub is advocating to change. Most of the existing decent transit in america is relying on whatever lines and zoning survived the mass adoption of the automobile.
Yeah but do you have any examples of good transportation outside of dense urban areas? I can’t imagine a typical American suburb being redesigned in any way that leads to efficient public transit unless maybe we push people into dense apartment complexes. And yeah, maybe that’s an option, but people aren’t going to give up their big houses and yards for the “privilege” of riding public transportation lol.
Don’t get me wrong, I do greatly dislike cars, and I think public transportation is a very good thing to have, but it’s not what’s going to save us from cars.
It works best alongside redevelopment. America is missing the in between of high density to low density zoning. Areas where building can be built 3-6 stories high and built to be flexible Where they can be mixed commercial uses or residential uses. This can create environments much easier to serve with public transit and walkability. This is basically how many older cities were before they started tearing themselves apart for the car.
You are correct in that public transit doesn’t service suburbia well. The car is the ideal solution to its design and thats exactly how it was built. After decades of this pattern and heavily subsidizing this development, the finnancial impacts are starting to catch up. Unfortunately when maintenance and repairs costs are considered, many suburban and strip mall developments cost more to maintain than the generate in taxes.
I live in a small city outside of Boston. We all know Boston has decent (for the US) transit, but consider my town …
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we have two commuter rail stations for people commuting into Boston
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train station in the center of town also
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- bus hub
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- taxi hub
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- bike trail
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- higher density housing
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- “Main Street” with many shops and restaurants, all walkable
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- most local government functions
So I am living in a single family home in a small city, but there’s a bus on the corner that will take me to the town center (or I could walk) where there are many destinations, many connections. A significant number of people already live there where everything is. Unfortunately I still use my car too often, but yes I think my town does transit well even though it is not a major city
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Trains aren’t 100% the answer, but cars should be the last answer. Still we should electrify cars.
yeah, electricity should just be used everywhere.
most other energy types can be easily and efficiently converted to it, and it makes it easy to increase efficiency.
(power production and consumption are separated in electrical cars, so by making your power stations more efficient you make all of the cars that use them greener)deleted by creator
EV’s are so much more efficient that even running from electricity produced by coal, they are significantly better than ICE (internal combustion engine) cars. Just the electricity used to refine enough fuel to drive 100mi would be enough to drive an average EV more than 60mi. (This detail gets conveniently left out when comparing ICE cars to EVs).
We still need to decarbonise the grid, and as that happens, all electric cars (regardless of age) will become less polluting too. Having an unclean grid is not an excuse to keep using ICE vehicles.
I didn’t consider that refining fuel takes energy too. Does the drilling and transport get factored in to that as well?
Thanks for sharing the info!
The numbers I’ve used are only for the refining of the fuel. This video by Mark Linthicum (hosted on the Fully Charged channel) gives an amazing amount of information on the topic.
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.
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.
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?
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
I would love to have trains and not need a car. Unfortunately that’s still a decade away here in California.
I love trains
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).
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.
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 in our current state with everything built around cars, creating a train system to accommodate it all is nearly impossible. Trains work great in a downtown, or centralized area. They are very difficult to build to accommodate our 1x1 grid system that cars use. Or at least that’s my perception of it. Even if the system could be built, it’d have to be manned, it’d have to travel to certain areas at certain times to account for jobs. And it becomes increasingly unwieldy the more requirements you add to it. I wish things had built up along a sustainable train systems instead of cars, but placing a train system in to replace the decentralized nature that cars introduce is a monumental and perhaps untenable task.
It needs some sort of supergrid. Like every 2x2 you can go across and down but in the middle is a train line.
Then it justs needs high density near the stations and park and ride. If anything it’s easier on a grid system it’s harder on an old European style city where this is only one road winding though buildings.
That’s the starting point and everything can go from there.
It isn’t harder in an old european style city. It is just not possible without reclaiming space from cars. But that is impossible to imagine for car brains.
Surtaining car centric infrastructure is an impossible task. There is no counterpoint.
We built a nationwide train system in the early 1800s with labor that barely spoke English and it transformed the American frontier forever. It’s not impossible- it’s not even particularly hard.
Building a train system to connect a few cities across an undeveloped nation is infinitely easier than supplanting an established local road system. I’d go so far as to say replacing the current interstate system would be easier than replacing all local infrastructure that was built up around cars. Live outside a big city and see how communities and businesses are structured. Now think of the logistics involved in ensuring all of that continues to have access. Not to mention you have to convince the general population that they are going to have to walk a lot more and good luck convincing families with multiple children that have multiple places to be at nonstandard times.
It’s just one of those areas that is incredibly hard to replace. Maybe it isn’t impossible. And that’d be great. But beyond the hurdle of the task itself you have to find a way to get mental and community buy in. It can’t be forced on everyone.
Because as much as trains and buses are great for everyday commuter movement (and having amenities within walking distance is key as well), there’s two issues:
- Changing the infrastructure and zoning of an existing city is much easier said than done. Ripping up concrete, tearing down existing business and homes to increase densification, that’s a huge undertaking.
- Trains never replaced the horse drawn carriage. You can never fully eliminate the need for cars because sometimes you need to move something big like a couch. Even if there’s less cars on the road, it’ll never be 0, as this also includes things like ambulances, and fire trucks that can’t rely on schedules.
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![[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}