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.
I’d say it is more about convince convenience. 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).
Yeah, if the train comes every five minutes, that’s going to be way more consistent than traffic over time.
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.
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.
Big Auto has been destroying any idea of high speed rails for decades. Our trains are complete trash because of car lobbyists.
And they expand the roads and freeways to have rails literally no place to go
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. 🤷
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
![[meme] Trains are 100000x easier to electrify and automate than cars, so why does everyone keep talking about electric and driverless cars?(lemmy.world)](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/11c37658-7c32-4cc2-b12c-6ced348bd09d.png){kind=link}