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?
That’s an unfortunate aspect of global warming I don’t see talked about a lot, as more places approach wet bulb, any kind of physical activity outdoor will become deadly.
I would’ve expected winter time to invalidate options of bike transport, but in city areas where the snow doesn’t stay down, it doesn’t end up happening as much. You’d of course want to bundle up for the weather, but then it’s not so bad. NJB has even talked about how there are some areas of the world that have permafrost under them, and they still prefer bikes. Rain, in my experience, is just miserable either way, so I’d usually prefer the flexibility to go when a downpour has halted rather than keeping a dedicated roof-mobile around to force my way through. That said, buses have been great for rain too, so again, flexibility.
The sweaty mess remark matches with my experience when I was unused to cycling, and when going uphill. The former becomes less true after even just a week or two of experience on the pedals; I didn’t even need a ton of acclimation after recovering from a leg injury. The latter may be a symptom of poorer city planning - which prefers bikes treading flatlands for long distances. It shouldn’t end up being tiring when you’re basically moving your legs in a walking motion at a low pace (traveling for chores is naturally going to be very different from the Tour de France).
At my old job we had showers there, so in the morning I’d just grab a quick bite and pedal off with my change of clothes in my backpack, and shower when I got there.
Because cars aren’t stuck to tracks.
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
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).
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
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.
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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Not every journey is possible with public transport. People will still need to lug equipment about in the electric future.
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.
deleted by creator
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.
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.
“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.
Because they give people a lot more freedom than trains — if you own a car. If you don’t own a car but live in a society where everybody else has one you are kinda screwed.
I know it is not necessarily your opinion, but cars don’t give freedom to people - even if you own one. You pay so much for your car, the society pays a lot for the infrastructure, this infrastructure takes away the freedom from people (especially children) to live and move outside, when you drive you can (should) do nothing else, it’s reputation as individual way of transport blocks expansion of public transit, … every aspect of a car is taking freedom away from you. A car that gives people freedom is a marketing strategy and the opposite is true.
To be fair, cars are the best option in a landscape designed, subsidized, and built for cars. Most people lack the mental capacity to imagine anything different. An GPS monitoring ankle bracelet is “freedom” if your only alternative is prison.
I agree, but let’s not rest on the thought that there is no alternative to the heavy car use all around the world. We got here by choice of a few and manipulation of many and it is reversible. At least if you are not living in the US, that case is hopeless.
I can go out drinking, text, work, chat, and sleep on my commute without being arrested or viciously murdering someone. Sounds like I have more freedom here.
Taxis or rental cars, or bikes for last mile connectivity, duh
It’s all part of the broader solution.
Self driving electric cars will likely replace the role of traditional taxis. That’s why they are being developed, taxis aren’t a replacement for public transport and neither would fleets of autonomous vehicles. High speed rail should replace flights, public transport and bike lanes in denser population areas replace cars, and autonomous vehicles replace taxis for where public transport routes aren’t available or viable.
Instead of owning an expensive car, which sits unused most of the time, you would call up a self driving car which would scoot to your location, take you where you need to go, then go do the same for someone else. We wouldn’t need anywhere near as many vehicles and nowhere near as much parking infrastructure if this takes off.
The cars could all head to a depot out of town when they need recharging or maintaining. There are plenty of efficiency benefits when it comes to traffic too. The vehicles could all communicate so you wouldn’t have traffic jams, and traffic lights would only need to operate for pedestrian crossings as the vehicles could flow around each other.
There’s a lot of benefits to the approach. The pain points will be whilst there are still human drivers getting in the way.
Batteries used gives you150 ebikes for every e-car
B-but think of the iNdIvIdUaL!
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.
![[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}