In a car I am in constant conflict, constant in risk.
In a plane I am but a commodity, worth only my payment.
In a bus we are a union, to endure together, and one another.
In a train we are a tribe, fortified in goals, interests, as philosophers of old.
I don’t know what buses and trains you’ve been on.
Okay I mayyyy be glossing over the occasional pee stains, bad scheduling, overly expensive tickets, and occasional fella high out of his gourd taking the occasional break from his hazed trance to scream at me because I’m secretly the devil.
Just the colors of life I say.
US public transportation is pathetic, but prior to the 1960’s it was quite extensive only to be destroyed by the oil and automobile lobbyists.
You also need to fix the karen problem that plagues society. I don’t like getting called a slur or “go back to where you came from”, and its very bad when you’re stuck inside the small space as them. (By “karen” I don’t mean just white women, but the attitude of some people, anyone can become a karen)
We really need to eliminate karen mentality.
I really fucking hate that a normal ass female name became a synonym for “entitled person”
Working from home is the best. Not everyone can do it, but those who can, should be allowed to. Return to office isn’t for us, it’s for them.
Working from home is the best.
Very difficult to build class solidarity when you’re atomized to the point of not even seeing one another’s real faces.
You don’t have to do that at work. You can do that at the library, bar, farmer’s market, etc. In fact, I’d rather do it with people near where I live, instead of people that share the other end of my commute.
You don’t have to do that at work.
:-/
The place you spend half your waking hours?
You can do that at the library, bar, farmer’s market, etc.
Do you have a job?
Do you have a job?
I don’t currently. Are you hiring computer programmers? I’ve got 20+ applications sent out via Indeed, but I haven’t found one yet.
Even when I was employed, I still visited the library, a few bars, and the saturday farmer’s market. While I don’t think visiting the bar is necessarily a must, you really should participate in your local library and farmer’s market. Connecting to your community is important.
Are you hiring computer programmers?
We are, in fact.
I’ll shoot you a DM.
Holy shit, if my comment turns into this dude scoring a position at your company, I’m sending you a Christmas card.
I get why you’re digging at them, but there was a period in my life I went to the bar after every workday. Now I have a child. But back then, that’s just how I met new people and socialized. Now I… just don’t really meet new people. Maybe I’ll start meeting other parents soon when it’s kindergarten time, but that’s about it.
I think this depends most on what kind of city you live in. I had an 8 minute walk from office to bar, and a 4 minute walk from bar to home. And the bar was on the way anyway.
I agree, but, this country, unfortunately, is built around cars now, and I certainly can’t walk to work as it would take hours, same with biking.
We need more public transportation, but we also need electric cars.
Walking/biking > public transportation > used EV > used IC with decent fuel economy > new EV > new or low fuel economy IC.
A lot of cities were designed around cars. In Cities Skyline you can just bulldoze entire neighbourhoods and completely change the roads and transit. Unfortunately in real life you can’t easily bulldoze people’s homes, and transit networks can take a decade to build.
Global warming is a problem now, and perfect is the enemy of good enough. We know EVs aren’t the ideal solution, but it’s important part of a solution that involves improved transit, better quality of life in dense population centers AND EVs for neighbourhoods that were built in a car-centric past. Maybe in 100 years the suburbs won’t exist and there won’t be any need for cars, but if we wait 100 years to have perfectly designed transit friendly neighbourhoods we’ll all be fucked.
Yes but much less profitable.
Devilish that capitalism has made profitability synonymous with efficiency
Yes but only if you run it competently.
Source: live in Ottawa.
It’s also collectivizing the solution rather than expecting us each to address the problem on an individual level that doesn’t change the status quo one iota.
Something even easier to implement than public transit is treating e-scooters and e-bikes like first class citizens. Governments love to restrict their speed to make them uncompetitive with cars without an easy legal alternative.
As a cyclist, electric motorbikes are already a thing and belong in the traffic lanes. I’m not sharing a cycle path with idiots doing 40mph.
Yeah I’ve got an e-bike and there’s no way those motorcycles belong in the bike lane. If the motor can send you that fast, it’s no longer a bicycle…
I was thinking of getting an electric motorcycle at one point but a regular bike is so much cheaper and I don’t really need it.
We recently moved to a very bike friendly city in California, and it’s a night and day difference to where we had moved from in Texas. There are bike lanes, and bike racks EVERYWHERE.
There is also a heavily used e-bike/e-scooter service available as well. Its been a genuine game changer.
Separate lanes and bike racks all over the place means that the e-scooters aren’t ditched all over the sidewalk AND the separate bike lanes do not disrupt traffic so the drivers don’t hate them either. We’ve only used our vehicle for commuting to work since moving here. For everything else, we walk, bike, or scooter. Bought a little collapsible wagon for grocery shopping too!
AND the separate bike lanes do not disrupt traffic so the drivers don’t hate them either.
Oh, they usually still hate them. In there minds, that’s a lane of traffic that got taken away. For those people, I usually like to point out an unused sidewalk and complain that those damned pedestrians are also taking away perfectly good driving space.
Speed while moving is almost never the most important variable in local transport time, waiting is. Just slow down. The same is true for cars.
It’s important for safety. Bike lanes are not common, and I don’t want to be stuck going 15mph on a road where the cars zoom past at 35mph or more.
I doubt speed is an adequate consideration here. Especially considering lack of dedicated protection like helmets and other coverings. Access, usability, price (assuming rental), and dedicated protected lanes for travel are much more important, but harder to manage.
I am even more
hostile to capitalismsustainable, I use a bike.My friend’s work is over an hour from his house by public transport—if public transport is working, and it’s a weekday. If it isn’t working well, if it’s late, if it’s a weekend or holiday, then it’s closer to two hours (or more).
It’s 15 minutes max by car.
And he lives in a place with good public transportation.
Until we improve how public transportation runs, so that it really is designed around how people need to get from A to B, cars are going to be the more popular choice.
Bikes combined with public transit usually cut down those times massively. And to ask—good, or good by usa standards? Cities in Germany or japan are impressive with how fast you can get places by train.
Also-- people being unwilling to trade a bit of convenience in exchange for a better world is a major part of the problem. I got off my car and started biking for everything, and it was easy. More people could easily do the same. Combined with trains, I can go very far.
No, it’s not good public transportation. Good public transportation is faster and cheaper than a car. That’s terrible public transportation, just because other places are even worse it doesn’t mean that one is good.
Well, ‘good’ by US standards.
Wish we had Japan standards :(
Yes but that is never going to happen without putting restraints on the auto industry, which puts big money into preventing public transit from being built, and if its already exists, to destroy it.
Car culture is killing us. I get you’re trying to be pragmatic but more is necessary.
I really hate that shit. To suburbs? Sure, that’s acceptable cox public transportation prioritizes high density areas.
To city to another city and public transportation takes double of driving? That’s bad design. Infrastructure that prioritizes cars no matter the population density is not sustainable, whether that’s shown as car traffic or massive deficit to keep roads maintained
If its 15 mins by car it’s likely a gentle 30 mins ride. A small vespa or motorbike has to be better than a car for that sort of distance - we need to avoid thinking car is the only private transport solution
That doesn’t work when the weather in the winter is always below 0c
Yes, it does. Don’t be a naysayer when you haven’t tried it; it isn’t as daunting as it seems
For him it’s more the heavy rain and lack of safe bike paths… but that’s another discussion.
Holy crap does it ever not.
Speaking from past lived experience trying to get to work in -30c weather in my old city, and the once-every-half-hour bus is either full, late, or broken down. FORGET that noise.
It’s definitely better where I am now l, but vast swaths of cityscape in my country are massively underserved, and I would assert that calling it “daunting” is comically trivializing the daily stress of trying to make a schedule happen in those cases.
Just telling someone to buck up and endure that is extremely condescending; you’ll win so few allies to your cause with this approach (which I, incidentally, support). You’re basically saying their time is of little to no value, and what they want to accomplish with it doesn’t matter. And time is the only true non-renewable resource in your life, kids.
So, I say thee: nay.
Holy crap does it ever not.
Speaking from past lived experience trying to get to work in -30c weather in my old city, and the once-every-half-hour bus is either full, late, or broken down. FORGET that noise.
It’s definitely better where I am now l, but vast swaths of cityscape in my country are massively underserved, and I would assert that calling it “daunting” is comically trivializing the daily stress of trying to make a schedule happen in those cases.
Just telling someone to buck up and endure that is extremely condescending; you’ll win so few allies to your cause with this approach (which I, incidentally l, support). You’re basically saying their time is of little to no value, and what they want to accomplish with it doesn’t matter. And time is the only true non-renewable resource in your life, kids.
So, I say thee: nay.
I’m not speaking without doing. I’ve done as cold as it gets in my city, which is admittedly short of -30c, probably closer to -23c. This is about bikes, not buses. (But honestly goes for both!)
People aren’t going to like being told it. But I’m ever of the opinion that people who whine when told they’re wrong are not ever going to be the ones changing in the first place. They merely sit there, in the comfort of the car, justifying their decision by pretending the gas guzzling environment harming and dangerous vehicles are somehow justified by the small amount of lightly discomfortable weather and short bikeable rides.
You’re basically saying their time is of little to no value, and what they want to accomplish with it doesn’t matter
It’s not of little value. It’s the amount saved by driving is not worth it. For them and for others.
Bikes would be even worse imo. Your uphill battle just got much steeper. You’re also not helping anything by making the sweeping generalizations you seem to enjoy making.
I can’t say I have heard it before from countless others (to precisely no avail), but regardless, best of luck in gathering momentum for your cause.
Bikes are not even half as hard as you think they are.
best of luck in gathering momentum for your cause.
Thankfully, there’s already significant momentum, bike lanes and transit are growing stronger.
Holy crap does it ever not.
Speaking from past lived experience trying to get to work in -30c weather in my old city, and the once-every-half-hour bus is either full, late, or broken down. FORGET that noise.
It’s definitely better where I am now l, but vast swaths of cityscape in my country are massively underserved, and I would assert that calling it “daunting” is comically trivializing the daily stress of trying to make a schedule happen in those cases.
Just telling someone to buck up and endure that is extremely condescending; you’ll win so few allies to your cause with this approach (which I, incidentally l, support). You’re basically saying their time is of little to no value, and what they want to accomplish with it doesn’t matter. And time is the only true non-renewable resource in your life, kids.
So, I say thee: nay.
I know people that cycle all year round and where I live it is decidedly colder and snowier than that all winter.
It does for me (southern uk) but to be fair doesn’t often go beyond - 5 and.im driven by something more powerful than environmentalism - cheapness! :)
Edit: I see you said constant below freezing, yeah fair point, that would tip the balance
Depends on population density. Even if there was passenger train service on the existing lines here, a lot of people would need a vehicle to get to the station, and I don’t think public buses / vans could cover all the roads at a reasonable schedule.
But, also, you don’t have to get very dense before public transport is better than individual vehicles for intracity trips.
If public transit was valued by the local government, the city would be built in a way to make that work ok. If cars are valued, the city is built to be driven in.
I could see some very well-meaning folks in local government being boxed in by citizens on one side that make their luxury SUVs and even more luxurious pickup trucks into major parts of their identities, and then the various layers of government above them driving the standards that make all of our towns samey-looking stroads. I’m in the US if that wasn’t obvious, and the car-centrism runs deep.
I’m a middle aged dude and my house was build multiple decades before I was born. Back then my neighborhood was designed 100% for cars. They even put in drainage ditches that precluded the addition of sidewalks. But several years back the township did paint a walking path down one side of my street.
The new neighborhoods built in the last decade are mostly the same as far as being car-only. They usually have sidewalks and you will see people taking walks or children playing. But it’s only local recreation, to walk the dog or to visit a neighbor. If you need to go to the grocery store, it’s time to hop into the 2-3 ton family vehicle.
I will give my local government and developers credit though, that some recent projects have been to create what look like islands of walkable community. I have look through the businesses and see if they have groceries and the like. From what I’ve seen the neighborhood seems to be densely packed expensive apartments and townhomes that were rapidly built en masse, and then in the center there’s a grassy field and some breweries and restaurants and stuff. So possibly some very American designs going on there.
From what I’ve seen the neighborhood seems to be densely packed expensive apartments and townhomes that were rapidly built en masse, and then in the center there’s a grassy field and some breweries and restaurants and stuff. So possibly some very American designs going on there.
I used to live in one of these kind of complexes. It was even next to a river with a nice little 2 mile trail along it. At first I thought it would be cool to live within a short walk of things. There was a convenience store that was quite nice. However, the owner told me that the complex told them they couldn’t sell nicotine products “to keep homeless out”. That shouldve been a red flag. Then the convenience store closed in favor of a fancy coffee shop. Then a fancy German restaurant with outdoor seating. Suddenly I felt like I lived in an outdoor mall. The site for that apartment complex was previously used for the states death row so I guess it’s still an improvement from that.
eww, yeah I can see that happening and a lot of people liking it too.
Even though our suburban neighborhoods are designed to be pro-car and anti-community, the one nice thing about the single family home and little fenced in yard setup is that I can keep some natural beauty close by.
I agree, by the time you really deserve the term “city” you should provide public transit as a community good and it can be made so that most people want to use it.
I’m in the “city” of Cove, Arkansas. It’s a 15 minute drive to the nearest produce section, and I have to work remotely because there aren’t computer programmer jobs within a reasonable commute.
At low densities, EVs are the way to go. The more dense, the more public transit makes sense.
I do still wish passenger rail service was restored along the line through here to the county seat; there are days it would save me a drive.
Even if there was passenger train service on the existing lines here, a lot of people would need a vehicle to get to the station
BIKE. BIKE TO THE TRAIN STATION
Also, local bus that runs on the train timetable. Brings people to and from the train as well as the shops. Ideal.
It also solves the problem at the other end where I’m 4 miles from my office.
Trains don’t make it easy to get bikes on but that’s easily resolved also
Yup. Here in Chicago we now have bike racks inside the trains so you can bring your bike into the city on the metra, as well as allowed in all trains including the colored lines outside of peak hours
While a lot of people can, some live far away, or have small kids, or the weather doesn’t allow it, or…
There is no one single solution, every bit helps, and often they help each other.
Small kids doesn’t stop you from biking lmfao. It just changes what setup of bike you need to have.
the weather doesn’t allow it, or…
The only weather that would prevent it is a hurricane and you shouldn’t be driving in one of those either.
Spoken like someone who hasn’t had to deal with kids. Or worked a job with a dress code.
There’s weather I would prefer a house over a tent. Similarly there’s weather I would drive in that I wouldn’t bike in (even with a raincoat).
If you can’t stand the slightest inconvenience to yourself for a better world, the world will never improve.
I think distance is a pretty good reason not to. Just not wanting to is a fair excuse too, honestly. A car is convenient.
That said, at the point where the weather prohibits going by bicycle, in my experience at least, you generally just don’t go anywhere because it’d be perilous in a car as well. I recall when I visited Kiruna some years ago, other than the cars, most people I saw were getting around on kicksleds and bicycles. Even saw a couple of dog sleds.
As for kids, what I’ve generally seen here are three options; chariots (can usually hold up to two kids), parcel shelf seats (one child), or the kid bikes themselves. I was taught to ride a bicycle at three, and at seven I biked to and from school on my own.
Granted, in the U.S. I can see this not happening on account of everything being so bloody spread out that you need a car, and even if you did put up with the distance, the infrastructure isn’t there; you can’t go on the motorway with a bicycle. Urban planning over in the states is abysmal.
Overall agree. The weather I had in mind was mainly rain, super hard to avoid when biking, a non issue in a car. Wind can be unpleasant as well.
I prefer to arrive at work/school/shops not sopping wet, and it sometimes rains.
I, personally, could bike or walk because the station would be particularly close to my residence. But, there are others in the county where to get to the closest station they’d be biking much further than they are currently healthy enough to accomplish.
Bikes are not a good option at this density either.
I prefer to arrive at work/school/shops not sopping wet, and it sometimes rains.
Raincoats! I have a nice yellow raincoat that folds up and inverts into its own pocket, turning into a little square you can tuck away in a bag or something. It’s super convenient.
Okay but what if I’m sopping wet with sweat from the heat and I also smell bad now.
Unless the general stink of the any large concentration of humans will overpower it.
I prefer to arrive at work/school/shops not sopping wet, and it sometimes rains
If only science could devise some sort of way to keep you dry in the rain. One day, perhaps
A car does it pretty well!
Caring about convenience over the environment and health is exactly the problem. They’ll get healthy enough.
This is a very ablist view.
Ablest is when pro environment . Yeah no. It’s easy to create exceptions for the small portion of the population who is fully incapable of biking. Less car dependency will allow those who can’t drive to get around far more safely, actually leading to more mobility for people with issues like legal blindness that prevent them from driving but not prevent them from other multimodal forms of transit
“They’ll get healthy enough” is an albist view, no matter what else you might believe in.
It’s strictly true. It’s not ablest. The overwhelming majority of those who cannot have no serious underlying reason as to why not
We’ve been trying to get a LRT in a 400k population area for decades and can’t make it happen. There’s even an old unused rail line with right of way all the way from the biggest nearby municipality that causes all the traffic problems to downtown.
They still don’t think it’s enough people to warrant the upgrade/conversion costs.
They have been adding bus only lanes between downtown and that area though including in town and on the highway, but they’ve maybe only connected half the highway with bus only. That has been helping, and more frequent busses on it.
That plenty of people! There’s probably only 30k in my entire county.
I think part of the concern is ridership outside work commutes, but I think it’s more if you build it they will come kinda thing.
But something like this doesn’t need to be profitable. It can be a service. Need to get away from the thought that it all has to be profitable.
A universal building exemption would push a lot of things in the right direction
Given the price of electric cars, I’m expecting the electric vehicle for the masses will have two wheels.
In South Korea u see a lot of electric unicycles and hoover boards. I think the west should adopt that way more. Good public transport + clean personal transport for where it’s needed. There are even laptop sized transport solutions that u could store in your backpack. The Honda Motocompacto is also really cool!
It already does. Where I live, you can just rent an electric scooter by the minute/kilometer. Just grab one from the street, scan it in the app and go. Plenty of people who never bothered to get drivers licenses or just haven’t bought cars, have electric scooters.
Electric bicycles seem a bit more efficient and comfortable, but scooters are soooo portable. Easier to fit on trains, buses, hallways… And even in your car. Have a car and an electric scooter? Drive to another city, park the car in a lower density area, take your scooter out and go. No longer dependent on intercity transit times, and yet you save a bunch of fuel (because city consumption > highway consumption) and nerves (because fuck city traffic) and don’t have to work about expensive and crowded city center parking…
Anyway, new electric scooters start at like 300 EUR for Chinese ones that probably spy on you somehow. Ones with more range and power cost a bit more.
