People act like widespread rail in the US is some hugely impossible task, but it’s literally how the US was made.
I’m in rural bumfuck US and every town in a 40 miles radius is interconnected by rail lines that have existed for over a century. Its how these places were able to exist and grow. Even today some of these places survive because of the industrial benefits of abundant railways, but commuter rail is completely absent.
Not to mention that trolley cars were ubiquitous in nearly every city in America prior to car hegemony.
Funny you mention car hegemony, because GM (et al) did collude to dominate public transportation in major cities
This is literally the plot of “who framed Rodger Rabbit”
Leftists 🤝 Cowboys
RETVRN to wild west
Truth nuke! I live the boonies and roads are almost always packed. And seeing some boomer scoff at hsr in the northeast or California as literally impossible pisses me off.
If every other country can pull something like this off except for burgerland, then just admit burgerland sucks in comparison.
They fucking connected the whole goddamn country with rail in the 1800’s!!!
I’m annoyed that it’s not out of the realm of possibility that non-car transport could be officially labeled radical and gay and I could get harassed by cops just for riding my bike
With ebikes taking off, at least the local police have adapted using electric mountain bikes. I’d prefer they not exist at all but if they exist it’s nice that they aren’t driving illegally in a heavy vehicle reinforced to ram other ones. Right now high speed chases are the American equivalent of gladiator fights and the cop cars do whatever they want on the road and across greenspace. My ambient safety goes up if they’re just crashing bicycles.
However they don’t care at all about bike theft or crime against cyclists. We have organised chop shops sending the parts out of state, but even the open ones are ignored for weeks. It’s our local boomers who lose their shit over ebikes and cyclists more generally. Nextdoor is just a million Martin Luthers listing 95 reasons why they’re mad and why they should get to kill cyclists for making them mad.
I was going to argue that it’s good that e-bikes exist but then I realised you were talking about cops
I’d much rather they have to use manual penny farthings to punish themselves for existing. To me it’s just the same logic as giving them military-grade weapons or batons. They’re still the same horrible people with the baton but they’re more limited in their collateral damage. The most dangerous traffic hazards here are their cars.
I agree with you lol, I just like ebikes for non-cop civil mobility
“Riding a bike” has become a reliable enough social marker for someone cops would love to harass, that I’m surprised that it doesn’t already happen constantly. Especially if they want to just make up laws-of-the-road on the fly to justify it.
Back when I commuted by bike, I got harassed by cops all the time. But more because where I live, non-car transport is considered “poor and therefore probably criminal” rather than “radical and gay”.
Car brained people think people who ride bikes are all lycra wearing millionaires
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without gas stations, how will americans eat their sandwiches? there would be mass starvation.
lmao
“Whether you’re eating one on the go while heading to a miserable job, avoiding several outstanding warrants for failure to pay child support, or just don’t value yourself very highly, our sandwiches are slapped together in a way that’s guaranteed to make you wonder exactly why your body needs to continue on.
Japan has entered the chat
I spent 6 years in Japan, and while I loved and used the rail, I can not explain how sad I was upon returning to the US and having to experience driving any distance here. There is nowhere to stop along the highway for restrooms and, of course, no shokken restaurant. I want my katsu curry! Imagine the despair when I eagerly drove towards the circle k sign, only to realize upon entering the doors that there was no omusubi to be had.
Bucceecide
Travelling in a highspeed train becomes unremarkable pretty quickly.
Passing another train on the next track that goes the same speed in the opposite direction is still kinda exciting ngl.
Getting on a lowspeed train in a super old carriage with a load of friends in one room feeling like you’re in murder on the orient express mogs though
When it gets unremarkable, you can entertain yourself with a book, or a show, or just zone out completely, which is nice from time to time. Doing any of these in a car is deadly.
I will take unremarkable over necessarily stressful
I’ll never forget passing a car on the freeway and seeing an asshole reading a big hardcover book while in the driver’s seat of a Tesla sedan going 120 kph. both hands on the book.
I don’t want to have to drive on the same roads as these idiots, let me take a train
The worst thing about driving is literally everyone else. You have to trust that the drivers around you are not the dumbest people alive.
How long would it take because I fucking hate driving and I fucking loved being on trains.
Everytime I get a beer and a vegan currywurst at 200kp/h I start believing in good things again. Ya gotta use the amenities. Have a piss at breakneck speed. Just walk a bit to stretch your legs while doing either. Get a nice nap in for a bit. Shit rules.
Someday we’ll be judged for cars like we can laugh at the 1920s stupids irradiating themselves for pep. The box that poisons me is my most expensive possession and the single fail point for my entire life. I must tie my sense of personal freedom and masculinity to my poison box. If I poison myself more, it’s very loud like a bird’s mating call and all my neighbours know I am the big man. I’m willing to sacrifice all of my neighbours to the box that poisons me, including myself if it means they can buy a louder and more masculine car that they park next to mine.
it’s true. for 20 years i have made personal/professional sacrifices to move toward less dependence on a car. this seemed to me the most logical and clever choice by far, and it has generally been treated as an amusing eccentricity. also bizarrely unmasculine by the really indoctrinated.
paying more for a shittier place, moving across country for the lower paying job in the medium COL area where the shittier, but convenient places aren’t all snapped up. it’s been a whole set of major life decisions that run counter to the prevailing ideology of bigger, bolder, and better.
along the way i meet people of the same mind as me. older, committed bike commuters and all-in pedestrians, but they are maybe 10-15% at most. many are still “i love my car, my commute is my relaxation”, which is so wild to me.
or, more understandable (but completely fragile), people who wanted something nicer with more space to have a family and all they could afford was something that only works with a personal conveyance to carry them to work / material needs on a daily basis.
i am rapidly closing in on a permanent situation where i can get to everything i need (except like a twice yearly appointment) with a little baby electric scooter/e-bike in less than 10 minutes. its just barely in my affordability range, it is going to require some major investment of money and my own sweat to get right. but I’m here for it, and i feel like im just barely making it in time since ill be reliant on shipping to get the various building and household infrastructure materials to make it right (safe/potable water, electrification, serious kitchen garden, etc). so really im like a few years yet from some kind of resiliency. i have been talking to my family about this for over a decade, and it never seems to pierce the veil.
i don’t know what to say to people who are behaving like oil/fossil energy shocks weren’t on the menu for the foreseeable future. i know many people are actively lied to by the media apparatus in the US, and many have never seen how other people, outside the US, live without cars. hell, shitloads of people can’t even afford to live anywhere and are stuck living wherever they can find shelter.
but i just don’t get how so many people of means haven’t noticed that this is always where things were going to take us… expensive fuel is just the beginning.
maybe if fossil capital wasn’t such a powerful political project, we could have transitioned more calmly into a transitional arrangement like electric cars and electric freight. but the decision makers have foreclosed on that and locked us all into possibly the most difficult and uncertain future.
or, more understandable (but completely fragile), people who wanted something nicer with more space to have a family and all they could afford was something that only works with a personal conveyance to carry them to work / material needs on a daily basis.
This is a pet peeve of mine here in germany where many people claim they were forced to buy a home out in the boonies (well, what qualifies as that here anyways) due to prices but if you add up the car costs on the mortgage they totally could’ve
I’m in the same boat of taking jobs I can safely bike to and only considering moves to cities I can’t afford with better bike infrastructure. Once I saw what micromobility represented as a liberatory technology, my ebike became the thing that defines me living in the 21st century. That bike infrastructure is collapse insurance and the literal road to degrowth that rehumanises people toward our value system. I can’t think of another individual consumer technology that acts as a reeducation camp for American brainworms.
“A car represents freedom,” they told me.
I’m beholden to the petroleum industry for the stuff that powers my car. I’m beholden to the company that insures my car. I’m beholden to the bank that gave me a loan for my car. I’m beholden to people in the trades that can repair my car. My car chains me to so many people who genuinely do not give a rat’s ass about freedom.
I was lucky enough to have been born with two feet and a heartbeat. Those come with almost zero operations and maintenance cost. Far less expensive than a car. And there are places I can go on foot that I could never go with a car. They represent freedom only on the surface.
I’m really glad that I didn’t start driving until my mid-20s. Before I found Debord and knew the word for it, walking everywhere was a constant dérive for me. I’m only an urbanist because walking and public transit turned cities into slow-motion exploration of whatever stood out to me until I saw the relationships behind it. The psychogeography stood out so much more than I could safely observe while driving. I love micromobility because it takes that same feeling, makes it much more accessible with better infrastructure, and increases the speed/carrying capacity just enough to make it on par with urban driving. Now every grocery run is a chance to explore something new in parks and wilderness areas, with a much broader spectrum of my neighbours safely maintaining their independence with whatever kind of vehicle works best for their body.
A friend (who told me about Fifthworldproblems, IIRC) and I used to do dérives all the time. We called it Shambling. It wasn’t until much later that I learned about the dérive and psychogeography and how it intertwines with ideas about magick.
I miss it.
This year I want to start organising formal ones between municipal greenspace workers having a union drive, the local DSA’s environmental justice committee, and regulars in the parks who have a daily personal connection to those landscapes. It seems like a really powerful tool for achieving something like Pedagogy of the Oppressed’s model and normalising holistic radical conversations.
It’s still crazy to me that even some nowhere country like hungary has better passenger rail than the US
The destruction of rail infrastructure in the US is a deliberate political project, just as it’s a deliberate political project in Germany to at least make sure that trains aren’t competitive with cars for most situations.
Making sure the trains are never on time is actually antifascist praxis. /s
the trains have never been on time, but they also took the 9€ ticket from us
It’s so cool that they are now spending about as much money to bring down fuel prices by like 20% for 2 months instead of ticket prices down by 90% for a year.
i have feelings about this that i can absolutely post on public spaces without having to add “in Minecraft”
Uzbekistan has more electrified railways than the entirety of USA.
I was going to say that Hungary probably has a higher highway density than most of the US too but no that’s mostly on par
Hungary? Why don’t they get something to eat
The legacy of socialism, buddy.
🎵 METAL! Imprisoning me! 🎶
🎶 All that I see: Infinite Traffic! 🎵
🎵 I cannot move! I cannot drive! 🎶
🎶 Trapped in an Accord, Honda my holding cell!! 🎵
“Excuse me ma’am, I’m a police officer named officer Honda Element, and I demand to have this car for free.”
“Sir you’re wearing the top ramen clothes from Target.”
Actually the alps are pretty good at slowing down trains. Here in Switzerland the top speed is around 200 km/h (or 125 mph).
But yeah, the freedom is real. I’m going to Prague soon. Will probably watch a movie, read some manga, and then get a full nights sleep on the way, to arrive refreshed.
And the two tunnels through the Alps currently under construction (Lyon-Turin, Brenner Base Tunnel) are still only for 250km/h (150mph)
