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
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.
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
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.
Changing the infrastructure and zoning of an existing city is much easier said than done.
Fun how we had zero fucking problem doing it to every city in the country for cars. 🤷
Including destroying neighborhood-after-neighborhood with highway overpasses.
Literally destroying buildings to build surface level parking.
It in that case the people with power wanted the change. They could profit from it, so it came easily.
Once those same people can make money by densifying urban areas into rental hellscapes and monopolizing public transit, you’ll have that. And it will suck.
That’s what rentals are for. Yeah, there’s always going to be a need for low volume cargo transport and emergency response, but ultimately building cities so 90% of trips can be easily and comfortably accomplished via mass transit should be the goal. Nobody is suggesting transit can replace all cars.
The image in the post is of a yogi of some sort stating that electric cars are here to save the car industry first, and my impression of it is that it’s suggesting that exploring the idea of electric cars is unwise.
And hell yeah, efficient transit and walkable cities are the goal. But while we’re working on that goal, we should also focus on electrifying cars! Tackle the crisis in multiple ways. Because there’s no way we’re gonna stop using cars overnight, and if we can make cars more environmentally friendly while we taper off of them, that’s a win.
If a solution involves lining a billionaire’s pockets, he’s unlikely to offer you an alternative.
Electric cars are palatable for most of us because it just involves a straight swap. No lifestyle changes needed. It’s a much easier sell than lugging all your shopping home on the bus.
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Yes. If we had infinite money, infinite time, and the ability to put people into stasis while we tear up entire cities to retrofit them for a train system… that still wouldn’t solve the problem.
Cars haven’t existed forever and we managed to build places around them. There’s no reason we can’t start building everything new around other modes of transport.
If you live in a city, you are done. If you live on the outskirts of a city?..
I live in Switzerland, and none of the problems you mention in the next few paragraphs exist here. I mean frequency of public transport isn’t as good out of the cities, but I can get a bus or train to pretty much anywhere a car can get to, and some places they can’t. The buses are nice and work well, they have priority in the city so they don’t get stuck in traffic. I can get train, tram, bus, or bike to the airport no problem and if I need something bigger than I can carry I’ll just get it delivered. Yes Switzerland is rich but there’s a lot of money to be saved if it wasn’t being spent on cars, car infrastructure, and all of the externalities of driving. It’s also small, but our trains don’t go particularly quickly.
Even then, the vast majority of people in developed countries (and the majority worldwide) live in urban areas. If the people living in podunk towns need to drive, power to them. Focusing on urban areas will have a bigger impact.
But unless you are rich enough to live in the city center, you are still going to deal with a lot of headaches.
And the alternative is being rich enough to afford a house in the suburbs AND a car for every member of the family? Walkable doesn’t have to mean the city centre, and it’s much easier to achieve if you don’t have to kowtow to a bunch of suburbanites who want to drive their SUVs through your neighbourhood.
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First: Your baseline is Switzerland? The 6th highest GDP per Capita (how the hell is Ireland 5th?!?!?!) which ranks 132nd for area.
Please read my entire comment, I addressed this already.
Again, if you live in Tokyo or even freaking New York City (arguably all of New York+New Jersey but upstate NY is REAL republican), you are more or less good. You might be a bit inconvenienced if you don’t live near a rail station, but you’ll probably be looking at a 20-30 minute pre-commute.
The vast majority of people in developed countries live in urban areas, so for the vast majority of people that drive, this isn’t an issue. It is the rich suburbanites who are driving into cities.
Actual poor people are the ones who benefit the most from better infrastructure. Public transport is a lifeline for the homeless, and access to it is the biggest factor in whether they will be able to escape homelessness. Owning a car is really expensive, and The burdens of vehicle dependency fall disproportionately on marginalized people, especially those who are low-income and those who are Black.
More headaches than wet bulb temperature?
Yes, bc no headache when you’re dead.
I was thinking as your brain fries it might hurt, but you’re right! It won’t hurt for long.
Yes. If we had infinite money, infinite time, and the ability to put people into stasis while we tear up entire cities to retrofit them for a train system… that still wouldn’t solve the problem.
Fun how we had zero fucking problem doing it to every city in the country for cars. 🤷
EDIT: lol so the !fuckcars on lemmy.world is just pro car drama addicts, got it.
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We did it over multiple centuries
My brother in Christ we haven’t BEEN HERE for multiple centuries. Fun watching people give zero fucks that their defense of the status quo doesn’t make a damn lick of sense or even adhere to basic knowledge of reality.
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OOOOHHHHHHHHH You’re comparing apples to turnpikes and claiming it a win. Gotcha. Have fun mate.
Well said.
Actually most cities had rail laid out and working commuter trains. The car manufacturers bought them up and purposely ran them into the ground to increase car sales. (Think Twitter) they were run like that.
Some cities, yes. LA is an example, right? And how they wrecked the street cars.
But not my city. Calgary was built as a stop on the Trans Canadian Railway, and that still exists, and there’s an (okayish) light rail train system here that’s slowly been built over the years and not torn down. Fully wind powered, too! Edit: our public transit kinda sucks though, I’m not saying we’re great. My commute to the office would be over an hour by transit and twenty minutes by car, I’m lucky I work remote.
A majority of North American cities that have grown within the last hundred years (coinciding with cars) were built from the ground up with cars in mind as the primary form of commute.
But not my city. Calgary was built as a stop on the Trans Canadian Railway
Calgary had a pretty extensive Streetcar network around downtown once upon a time.
https://saadiqm.com/2019/04/13/calgary-historic-streetcar-map.html
Hey neat!
Just goes to show how history gets erased. Hopefully the green line gets built and we’ll have even some of this coverage back.
Yeah, all of those things weren’t problems at the dawn of the steam engine. Those are all problems brought on by the automobile and oil companies designing cities in the 40s.
Lots of places can’t support trains either. Kelowna area would not work well because of altitude changes and lakes.
I would just settle for sidewalks, where I live in the USA it’s just streets with no sidewalks everywhere. I used to live one mile from where I worked and I could barely even bike there because of crazy car drivers and nowhere to go if someone wasn’t paying attention. Rural America is going to be car dependent for a long, long time.
I love trains
Man, I went to England and we took trains (or a bus) everywhere and it was super convenient (and comfortable!).
Thank you for your service.
In Germany electric trains are standard for local public transportation.
Trains only run on a specified track and there isn’t one near me. A car isn’t bound by a track and can go anywhere.
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.
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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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.
Electric cars don’t solve a lot of the root problems of cars. They still require massive amounts of energy to move thousands of pounds of steel. They also still rely on sprawling roads and parking lots.
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?
This isn’t a binary. We need both robust public transportation and electric cars (with an electric grid supplied by renewable energy). Public transportation can’t take you anywhere at anytime – it’s all a game of statistics and demand. If 12000 people want to go downtown at 7 pm, and 3 people want to go the opposite direction to get to work to start their night shift, you’re going to see buses and trains headed downtown but not the opposite side of town.
Public transportation is best served for commutes and travelling to popular areas, and that’s where the majority of emissions are coming from. Cars can supplement with everything else
Aren’t buses and trains going back and forth?
They are, but only in specified routes. The issue is the areas they don’t hit because there isn’t a ton of demand. That said, someone else mentioned a taxi type public transit service, and that would solve this perfectly.
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)Sadly most electricity production is via coal or gas. What’s needed primarily is to use less of those, for all reasons and uses. EVs just shift fossil consumption to where people don’t see it.
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 would love to have trains and not need a car. Unfortunately that’s still a decade away here in California.
And who knows how long in the Midwest. I can’t even take a train from Des Moines to St Louis - I have to go to Chicago by bus first!
I’m all in favour of trains. I only take the train to work, and it’s so convenient I even take my kids to the city via train, to entertainment or shopping. However, even though I live inside the capital city in a Western European country, the train we take is powered by diesel. The government has been talking about electrifying the track for years, and the current estimate is that it will take another decade or more to get it done. There’s a single electrified rail line in the entire country, and based on the electrification progress it will take several decades to electrify the rest (if ever). Based on this experience, I’d venture to say that electric cars are far easier to deploy than electrify train lines.
![[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}