my area doesnt even have sidewalks
Because to them, ‘car’ and ‘vehicle’ mean the same thing.
Of all the subreddits we should’ve left on reddit.
This braindead circlejerk never should’ve come here. You are all completely disconnected from reality. Enjoy your larping.
I would argue that those who are disconnected from reality are those who believe in a system that essentially requires every single person to own and operate a 2+ ton piece of heavy machinery just to get groceries or go to school or work.
Imagine thinking all people outside urban areas can exist with a bike and public transportation. Ignorance is bliss, eh?
Well that’s not what I think.
What I think is the majority of people on this planet live in urban areas. In wealthy countries like in Europe, North America, and Oceania, the share that lives in cities is an overwhelming majority. In those areas, who represent the vast majority of the population, we have often systematically gatekeeped access to schools, jobs, and groceries behind a massive paywall that is the ownership and operation of heavy machinery. Urban areas absolutely do not need car-dependency. Rural areas are obviously different, and fixing car-dependency for 80% of the population will actually improve things for rural folks: less suburban sprawl means less encroachment of suburbia into the countryside.
I respect your point but fundamentally disagree with it. Your utopia of having sprawling public transportation networks is not achievable in any realistic timeframe due to many factors, nature being top of the list. You’re also clearly biased in your urban belief. Population growth drives expansion, and you ignored the sections of the planet still booming, lacking proper infrastructure, and growing rapidly in and out of urban areas.
Would this work in Europe,? Sure, but that doesn’t make you correct in applying it world wide.
Most growth in the world is in urban areas. There’s a reason most projections expect the largest cities in the world by the end of the century to be places like Kinshasa, DRC. Much like London grew precipitously during its industrialization, like Shanghai and Beijing grew during their industrialization, now growing stupendously are the cities of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The fact of the matter is most growth globally is occurring in cities.
And yes, poor infrastructure is an issue. When NYC and London industrialized, they built massive subway systems. And if you want to grow with car-dependence, it still requires infrastructure. Instead of railroads, roads. Instead of trains, parking lots. Instead of depots, gas stations and charging stations.
And yes, I agree it will be a massive challenge to rebuild our cities in places like North America, but we already did it once, only about 60 years ago. Our urban freeways were built by demolishing entire neighborhoods. Our urban parking lots came from demolishing dense, historic buildings. Our urban roads came from tearing up massive tram networks. For example, Melbourne Australia has the largest tram network on the entire planet. Why? Because they were the one city that didn’t tear up their system with the advent of the automobile. Before cars, basically all cities in US/Canada/Australia/etc. were built on truly massive public transit networks.
But the beautiful thing about fixing car dependency is it will actually be easier. Instead of demolishing neighborhoods, the main thing we have to demolish is parking lots. The land values in city centers are absolutely insane, and housing will get built if just legally allow it (just look at Santa Monica, where new California housing law saw a historic flurry of housing project proposals). We currently make it literally illegal to do so across the vast majority of our urban land.
Edit: For reference, I was born and raised in American suburban sprawl, so it’s not like I’m some holier-than-though, out-of-touch European who has never set foot outside a transit-rich city. Further, the current model of car-dependent suburban sprawl is inherently financially unsustainable, and it will come to an end sooner or later. We might as well save ourselves the pain of a slow, excruciating collapse like Detroit and choose to go in the direction of a more environmentally and fiscally sustainable model. We genuinely don’t really have a choice.
I was under the impression that most growth was in SUB-urban areas and urban and rural have been shrinking. The sub-urban category is largely made up of small towns and bedroom communities. Even in the best laid out small town the best public transit is a bus with limited stops, since the reason people are leaving bigger cities is mostly cost and ratepayers are unwilling to pony up for real transportation.
In cities, yeah sure. But in rural areas? How is that gonna work without cars?
We need both good public transit in cities and good car infrastructure in semi rural areas. Cars can be extremely useful.
Cars offer nothing but eath an destruction under the guise of freedom. Those who can’t see that are the ones disconnected from reality.
Personally I enjoy cleaner, quieter cities and safer streets, but I guess that’s just nuts, right?
It is possible to block communities on lemmy, if it is bothering you that much.
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Because then they keep the “freedom” of driving, but without the guilt of pollution. That and, I mean, the community is called “fuck cars.” Obviously someone not taking a closer look at the true root of what this community wants (city planning that isn’t car-centric) would just think “but electric cars ain’t bad.”
See and I get the opposite problem.
I wanted to buy an electric motorcycle since I use my old gas bike to make the same trip for work two times a month. The trip is 215 km and only goes though one town (about 45 km from one end). This is easy with most gas motorcycles and I thought that an EV version of a hwy cruiser should have no issue with say a 250 km range (since I stay the night I can charge from a slow plug).
Well let me tell you how frustrating “city” brain is about EVs. I mostly got e-bikes (like a bicycle) tossed at me, and the few that make the cut (Damon HyperSport, for example) are geared like a rocket and all the stats are based on city riding. 200 km max speed and no hwy gearing is stupid, but hey CITY CITY CITY! Where are the non insane vehicles? I don’t want to ride a 0-60 in <3 second monster, I don’t want to be curled up for 3 hours on a crotch rocket, and I don’t want to deal with an app just to charge. We don’t all live in your cities, some that do need to leave said cities, and until a normal non toy like EV vehicle hits the market the wider world will lump it all in the same bullshit pile.
I don’t have the option for a public transit, hell they killed the trains and buses off even if I wanted to do the milk run.
I can’t wait for the REM (bottom left picture) to open, it’s in less than a week!! After so many years, at last.
It’s what having a carbrain does to you.
I just want the vehicles from Minority Report, is that so much to ask for?
What is the advantage of autonomous trains over regular? It seems to me that when driving a train is your job, the autonomy just takes it away.
If we didn’t have capitalism, people wouldn’t need jobs. We could automate jobs away and instead of starving, people would just have more free time
Ok, name a system better than capitalism then
Reduced capitalism, increased socialism.
Some capitalism is okay. But unfettered capitalism is not. We have the latter.
Because I don’t want to stay in the city all the time?
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Let it be known that I do not want to attack you personally. But the notion of electric bikes being death traps is something I can’t take seriously. I could go outside right now and film the street for an hour and watch 50% of bikes going by being electric, not to mention that you’d be hard pressed to find anyone wearing a helmet or protective gear.
Electric bikes here are generally limited to 25kmh (15mph) and the electric motor will stop the moment you go over that speed. Besides, most people generally don’t reach that speed because the largest users of electric bikes here are the over 50.
In my personal experience the problem isn’t so much the vehicle as the infrastructure being made for it. For context I live in the Netherlands in a smaller city (far from Amsterdam).
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25mph != 25kmh
Here the trains and busses are both electric, and the buses charge with overhead chargers at the main bus station.
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What I mean when i say I want a subway system
I see nothing wrong with a complex subway map and it is absolutely not a disadvantage. Try comparing it to a map of the roads maybe? A 2D space served by 1D lines necessitate a mesh-like network to do well, has nothing to do with transit or cars, a comprehensive system will always look like this.
And you memorize literally all the stations and their order if you take transit regularly.
Im not in disagreement. I actually prefer being a sardine in a can than driving.
![[meme] Why do people only seem to mean cars when they talk about electric and/or autonomous vehicles?](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/8b4f07d2-ffe9-468c-a7da-0e970998b67f.png){kind=link}