I live in Scandinavia, in one of these walkable cities. Everyone has a car. Why? Because relying on public transport or walking/biking everywhere is not practical. It’s just reality.
That’s fair enough. I also own a car, but I try to use alternative means of transport (bus, bike, walk, skateboard) whenever possible. It’s the prioritisation of cars over all other modes of transport where I have the issue. My city is riddled with car filled streets criss-crossing all over. There’s a plan to take one of the most shop focused streets and make it walkable. It would mean that I would be able to get to work almost the whole way on it. I hope it goes through
I’m not disagreeing with you or most people here for being annoyed by everything being build around car usage. I just don’t see it realistically change. You’d have to rebuild most cities from the ground up and invest ungodly amounts of money into several modes of public transport in every city. It just won’t happen.
I’ve had to use public transport to get to a job I loved in a neighbouring city, due to not having a car at that point. Where a drive with the car would have taken me about 20 minutes one way, the bus+train combo I was forced to use was 1,5 hours including waiting times. It was so draining that I quit that job after 6 months.
If this is the choice you need to make, people will take that car every time because you can’t rely on jobs being available within 20 minutes of walking or public transport, most cities aren’t build to offer jobs+housing+shopping within a small radius for all the people living there.
The part about going to your job is totally valid. Some jobs can be worked remotely or partly remotely now, but that doesn’t apply to all professions, so that is something to keep in mind.
In terms of not being able to realistically change the current cities, many of the best walkable cities prioritized cars first and then changed. It took decades, but they eventually achieved it.
There’s this presentation I found after doing some research on the 15-minute cities conspiracy theory, and it was a really interesting talk about how towns and cities can be changed into slower, more accessible ones. It’s an hour long but there’s a 5 minute segment where it discusses cases where cities have changed from car-based to a more walkable one, in this case Amsterdam and Pontevedra (in Spain).
I recommend checking it out. Here’s a link with the timestamp of the start of the section about those cities:
In the section before this one, he discusses the cost of other transport modes versus cars. Building and maintaining infrastructure for cars is waaaaay more expensive than for other methods, so cost isn’t an issue. I’ve included the slide below.
The way car companies are working around this legislation is why it’s so hard to find and buy smaller sized cars even if there is demand (think smart car size). It also makes our community’s less safe for pedestrian traffic and less enjoyable to walk.
I think fear grips people at every angle and none of us are brave enough to accept bold action for positive change in our society. It seems like most people are just retracting instead.
I vaguely remember that “Ye” (formerly Kanye West) once said something like he formed a think tank to build a city but the thing stopping his team was that “Ye” didn’t understand any of the concepts and he ran it into the ground.
I want public transportation, I think everyone wants it at this point but no no one understands why we need it. They all just want to escape.
(This message was brought to you by the new 2024 Ford Escape: just hit the road and escape to paradise)
There’s no comparison to the personal freedom of having a car versus being dependent on others to ferry you around. That’s why America will always be built around our great car infrastructure. We will never give up our freedom to roam our huge awesome land.
Nothing like freedom like actively removing people from having multiple choices of transit by making illegal to build anything that isn’t dependent on cars.
Nothing like freedom like being forced to spend thousands on a several ton machine to do any task outside your home.
Nothing like freedon like being forced to pay predatory insurance to private corporations in order to be legally allowed to drive your vehicle.
Nothing like freedom like being dependent on oil companies that actively lobby against you in order to drive the vehicle that you are forced to own.
Nothing like freedom like having infustructure that denies poor people and disabled people from participating in society.
Nothing like freedom like having no independence if you are too old, too young, too intoxicated, or too disabled to drive.
Nothing like freedom like being forced to have a license issued by your government in order to be independent.
Nothing like freedom like being forced to use a vehicle that spies on you and collects information such as your sexual activity, immigration status, ‘private’ conversations, location, and much more.
And here again we see the typical attempt to put words in somebody’s mouth. I never said anything about what poor people deserve, that’s your words, not mine.
When you don’t have a substantial rebuttal, you just make up a strawman argument.
IMO everyone, regardless of economic stature, deserves every form of freedom legitimately available in society. For this example, if a poor person couldn’t afford a car I would suggest a cheap used motorcycle. I’ve bought a couple of those, one was $900 and the other was $2500.
This is incredibly insane when you consider the cost incurred to maintain a vehicle. No poor person would do this in the right mind it would be nothing but a debt trap. It’s shameful that public transit is downright near illegal and most metropolitan areas in North America and it is the best solution get over it
You’re overestimating the cost to own a vehicle. My costs are very low overall. I spend about $50 a month on gas or less, and I have no car payments, and my insurance cost is about $100 per month. Total cost of ownership for my 2 vehicles is less than $200 per month, and I can drive them anywhere I want at any time.
I’ve both been poor and owned a few vehicles and $2000 repair bills happen, more than once in the life cycle of a car and much more than I could ever afford if I hadn’t been better off before I pulled the trigger in cars but down take my word for it John Oliver did a great peice on how bad of a debt trap they are on average
I would argue that a fast, frequent and comprehensive public transport system gives you more personal freedom. Being able to easily get around without having to worry about piloting a heavy vehicle, without the burden of maintenance, and being flexible once out due to not needing to worry about where you’re storing your car. Plug the gaps with (electric and/or cargo) bikes for shorter trips and car share for longer ones and you have a much better, more equitable transport system.
All public transport vehicles are heavier than my personal vehicle though. Also public transport doesn’t provide the freedom of choosing any destination that you want, and taking yourself there on your own schedule. That’s what I was talking about.
You aren’t piloting a public transport vehicle, a professional is and you are free to not worry about it.
A frequent and comprehensive public transport system does allow for that freedom, without all of the burdens of car ownership. Bikes and car share can be used to fill in the gaps when the public transport isn’t comprehensive enough.
This is why people hate liberals, and why liberals often migrate over to conservatism: no matter how right you are, there’s always someone happy to crap on you for not being right enough.
Don’t shit on EVs for merely being one of many solutions that all need to be engaged with. It’s not like without EVs, so many people would be rushing to areas of greater density and riding public transit, so your message is not helpful in achieving what you want, and actively angers your allies.
I don’t doubt that that’s the case, but I’m just pointing out (humorously) the absurdity of someone who is purportedly a principled individual who cares about things like climate change, civil/human rights, equality, bodily autonomy and most importantly democracy changing to the side that is openly against all of those things because people can be harsh and nasty on the internet sometimes.
Like, if someone really was so flimsy with their morals that they could bend so easily, did they ever really care in the first place? Or were they just looking for an excuse to blame the other side for their fecklessness?
I hate ignorant conservatives, but you mostly can’t do much about them because they listen to no one. But progressive ignorance is something I feel compelled to correct: progressives pretend to care about things other than their own assholes.
Meaningless meme. Because people see problems with your simplistic stance doesn’t make them Trump. There should be a plan to get there from here, and right now, you guys are removed about EVs, which are part of the plan for getting there from here.
Ah yes conservatism, the famous side of rational thinking and anti-bias thoughts, such as avoiding the perfect solution bias
Your comment having so many upvotes is disgusting
I shit on liberals mostly because of their notions on ‘altruistic capitalism’. As soon as they purchase an EV, they think they’re out there saving the world and most don’t think critically past that.
I think both sides are lacking nuance here. If you shit on people getting electric vehicles or just thinking of getting one because that’s not far enough: fuck you. But also, for people that just switched or are thinking of getting one but then see something like this and slam into reverse and say “I’m gonna support ICE cars till the day I die to spite those overly hostile woke liberals”: fuck you too.
People should be able to take the information in a more nuanced way, and should stop swinging from extreme to extreme which has led to the current fucked state of politics
I really have to agree that it’s posts like this that made me give up on left wing politics, in certainly not right wing but I see no hope for the left until fundermental problems are fixed which I don’t believe politics or media is capable of addressing.
Further I am absolutely convinced a large portion of the loudest voices on climate change are so obsessed because they desperately want it to be the big doom that fucks up all the impressive things other people are achieving.
If you’ve given up „left wing“ politics because of a few things people have said on the internet, I have news for you: You never were left wing to begin with. Also, you’re an idiot.
If pointing out that EVs aren’t a real solution is enough to alienate those “allies” they weren’t really allies at all. It’s also less about individual choice to move to areas with better transit, and more about pressuring the government to install better transit everywhere instead of just funneling endless money to car manufacturers.
EVs aren’t a solution to anything except as a way to trick people into thinking purchasing a car is saving the environment or helping fix society.
If liberals are so shallow that they adopt racism because someone was mean to them online, then I’m glad they’re being more honest. The message is that cars, all cars, are something worth fighting against. Electric cars are not a step in the right direction, they’re not even a bandaid. They’re just something liberals can purchase to make them feel like they’re helping something. They’re toys.
Honestly I would rather if most liberals outright come out as conservative, because it sounds like they’re on the line already. It would be more honest of them.
Adopting EVs is an important step imo. The primary achievement of going EV is reducing oil/gas use. Moving away from cars as a society is a separate goal that can happen alongside this. We can never make gas green, at best net zero. EVs on the other hand can be better, with electricity from renewable sources, to batteries made with better materials. Both things which are happening and actively being researched.
So we can make EVs much better environmentally, and reduce gas demand significantly alongside reducing car use. Because we won’t just stop needing gas magically, so replacing that is important for any transition away from it in the grand scheme.
Yeah I just don’t see it. If we want to reduce oil/gas use then the goal would be eliminating private car use altogether and providing alternatives. EVs are still a huge machine designed to transport a single person. They’re still a waste, not to mention how much the global south is getting exploited for their lithium.
Cars just aren’t going to save anything. Here, I’ll compromise. Electric bicycles.
For city use I agree with you but if you live in a small town you need a car. You are too far from almost everything you need. And you don’t have public transport.
If you live in a little town in the middle of nowhere you won’t have public transport. It’s too expensive. Private transport it’s the only way to go anywhere from there. It’s a shame but…
Yeah, I’m an angry ball of rage because I live in a white supremacist hellscape where everyone is too smug or too tired to care. I don’t have any thoughts remaining other than the word fuck. The pretense of being thoughtful is a facade. My true self wants to roll in mud and scream obscenities at anyone I think looks too wealthy.
Don’t take it so personally. sure EVs have a role to play but if we’re to be serious about tackling climate change and environmental sustainability it’s going to require massive infrastructure redevelopment projects, not asking everyone to please swap to rechargeable batteries. It’s not about being “right enough” it’s about recognizing a non-solution and also on a policy level a blatant scam. All these EV subsides the liberal Biden administration is throwing out are an obvious hand out to the failing American auto industry to try to keep them competitive and desperate ploy to their quickly dwindling supporters for them to look like they’re doing anything worthwhile on climate change at all.
Having every American buy a new electric car is just going to make a few auto executives rich as hell and not even reduce overall global emissions because those cheaper ICE cars that can’t be sold in America are just going to go to other parts of the world that don’t have EV infrastructure but have plenty of already existing gas stations. And there’s all the emissions of actually building the damn things. No, they need to put their money where their mouth is and build some fucking trains.
I’m not taking it personally: hyper-progressive policies that require achievements in infrastructure change orders of magnitude more costly and complicated than any other event in human history described as “just something folks have to do” as if it’s that easy, as if they’re not just happening because of half a dozen car company CEOs… they just make me queasy that you’re an ally of mine in our desire to fight global warming.
Lmao you are not an ally in fighting global warming if you don’t support major changes in infrastructure. You are taking this way too personally, you’re in a fuck_cars community crying about how we shouldn’t be mean about cars.
You can agree that EV’s are a non-solution while still accepting that you live in a place that’s so fucked up that it doesn’t provide you with an alternative.
No, I’m saying that removed about EVs does what, exactly? The infrastructure change you’re glib about happens how? You haven’t even thought of that. You have a goal, but no map from here to there. You’re still stuck at the fuck cars stage it seems.
Try to actually solve the problem instead of removed about incremental solutions that don’t do enough for your taste.
Infrastructure change at the scale you’re speaking about is not unheard of. The Netherlands did it twice. First because Europe got the shit bombed out of it and building car centric cities was trendy, then second because they realized what a shit idea that was and reversed it.
Sure, the Netherlands was never sparse in the first place, but nobody’s asking for trains to farmer John’s house in Nebraska. If the Netherlands can rework their cities to at least chillax on cars, so can American cities.
I know using the Netherlands as an example is trite, but urban planners literally know the solutions.
First because Europe got the shit bombed out of it
It has little to do with that, actually. There are very few cities that got heavily hit. What was removed and remodelled in the 60s and 70s was way more than the war had damaged and it happened after the major repairs were already done. Even cities and countries the war never really touched got extensive remodelling.
It was a completely deliberate decision to remodel those cities, driven by modernist ideas.
And is there a better solution? And don’t give me that public transportation bullshit, it’s a bad solution in most cases and is already in place anyway.
Then it isn’t good enough yet. People will use public transport when it’s better or cheaper than a car. Dedicated bus lanes to bypass car traffic should be in place, to encourage using busses that create less traffic. Trains should be reliable, frequent, and cheap for longer distance travel. This stuff is all do-able with just a small amount of effort, and has been done and successful in other places, but it requires governments to stuff huffing gasoline.
What kind of public transport? And how is it implemented? The devil is in the details for this stuff.
Free bus tickets do nothing if the buses are stuck in traffic with no bus lane so often that people go “fuck it” and take the car anyway, because it’s more convenient.
Free metro tickets do nothing if the routes don’t go where people want to go.
Free train tickets do nothing if the trains don’t leave frequently enough to have options and/or are stuck waiting for freight trains to pass.
There’s any number of non-monetary reasons that public transport might suck, but there are solutions for them.
The problem is that it isn’t a matter of cars vs busses. It’s a matter of urban design in general.
Public transit gets better as density goes up. A bus that drops you off at a giant-ass Walmart parking lot with nothing else but two drivethroughs in walking distance isn’t very useful. A bus that drops you off in a neighborhood with 4 dozen shops, a dozen restaurants, 4 bars and 3 coffee shops within a 5 minute walk is way more useful.
By contrast, density makes driving worse. Density means more people are driving the same way you want to go. More people in cars means more traffic on the road with you. Designing for cars pushes you to low density sprawl.
Just building public transit isn’t the solution. Just building public transit in a typical American suburban sprawl makes something about as compelling as a Ford F150 in Vatican City.
You have to fix urban design - stop building stroads and start building streetcar suburbs again.
I mean, step 1 would be forcing the suburbs to pay the actual cost for their own power lines, plumbing and sewage, roads, phone lines, etc. Since as it stands, most of that cost is subsidised by the highly productive inner city, and that infrastructure is far cheaper per-person in dense neighbourhoods than it is in suburban tumours (sure, live out there if you want, but accept that you will either be paying a fortune for the infrastructure upkeep that supports you, or accept lower-class, cheaper infrastructure. I have a great aunt and uncle who live out in the countryside, and they have a dirt road, a septic tank and a rainwater tank, only their electricity and phone lines are comparable to what you get in cities, because it literally does not make economic sense to run paved roads or plumbing out to where they live).
Once people have realised that single-family housing with paved roads, sewage, plumbing and reliable electricity is well outside the economic reach of the vast majority of people, UPZONE. Demolish suburbs to replace them with far denser urban neighbourhoods, ones made up of townhouses, apartment blocks and mixed residential/commercial buildings. Change the zoning laws so that anyone can start a commercial business out of the front yard. Designate parks and other community areas in between your blocks of apartments and townhouses so that nobody is ever more than 15 minutes’ walk away from one. And for those who still want to live out in suburban sprawl, make the transition to being more self-sufficient easier.
Then, you have a city dense enough that you can start running vast amounts of public transport through it. Not just busses, but trains and trams as well. A train is more or less the ideal form of fast transportation along a known, unchanging transport corridor, with far more energy efficiency than anything that runs on tarmac, the ability to hit highway speeds inside city limits, and the ability to be extended almost infinitely. They can also be run from overhead power lines, no need for batteries or internal combustion engines. Oh, and the same lines you run urban rail along can also be used for freight trains, so they can replace both car journeys and freight truck journeys.
When you have dense cities with well-designed and extensive public transport, you can get almost anywhere with just one transfer, your bus/train/tram comes often enough that you’re never at the stop for more than 10 minutes, and even a trip from one edge of the city to the other will rarely be more than an hour. Plus, you don’t have to pay attention to the road, nor pay for fuel and maintenance.
Source: I live in a city where you can sharply draw a divide between the pre-car and post-car zones, and the pre-car zones are mostly like how I describe, while the post-car zones are suburban sprawl shitholes that might have a train station if they’re lucky
Your comment does nothing but make people angry. It’s not helping anything, and will not change the behavior of anyone. When you insult someone, you only make enemies for yourself, and that’s nothing to be proud of.
Take some time and think about what you write and how it can realistically affect the world. Would you not rather make a positive contribution, and improve social media?
“Sure, the planet is unfit for human habitation now, but at least we got to have lawns in front of our houses and meat every day until the world ended”
Stopping climate change requires drastic action, rethinking how we live every aspect of our lives, and the wastefulness of suburbs means they must go, just like the internal combustion engine and the animal agriculture industry. How will you justify to future generations that you left them with a ruined world, all because you and those like you were too selfish to give up your current style of living?
Additionally, they are provably a blight on cities. They cost far more to maintain than they produce, since they lack any serious commercial activity, so no taxes, and the spread-out nature of them means that any infrastructure is far more expensive per person. You wouldn’t even need to actively demolish them, just cut off all maintenance, and watch them rot. Plus, they keep literally bankrupting cities, so often there is no choice, the money is no longer there to maintain them.
Sure, go right ahead and get to work on that plan then. I’m sure everyone in the suburbs will agree to give up their homes and land and move to the dense urban Soviet-style shitholes that you envision as the perfect way to live.
Riot control vehicle lpt :If you just fill the water cannon tank to half full instead of topping up you save quite a lot over time due to reduced litre/km consumption
Emission laws made big trucks easier to produce than small trucks in the US, I miss the days of the short bed pickup. Still like my 98 taco and use it for hauling hay.
Not really, if you’re doing your weekly shop all in one go (especially for a family), it can make sense that your weekly shop can be more than you can carry and thus you need something to help you carry it. I wouldn’t want to lug 4-5 bags of shopping onto a bus where I’m going to piss someone off because I placed them on the seat, nor do I want to try to balance all that on the handlebars of a bike where a single fuckup or pothole I can’t see will lose me lots of money in shopping.
I don’t personally do those sorts of large shops, but people are busy and literally schedule this in their week so it’s not insane.
Or hey, maybe more people could shop online? With well planned routes it could be more efficient than lots of people all travelling to one place.
My supermarket does this: if you go shopping with public transport, then you can ask the cashier to have someone deliver the just purchased groceries to your house for 5 euro
I used to have this handcart and it could easily carry enough groceries for 3 people for 1 week. We’d put stuff directly inside at the counter and then empty it in the kitchen, then fold it up for storage. It was maybe 100 euros? And of course you could also use it for picnics or shopping for other things.
For heavy stuff we’d use delivery or a lasttaxi. Basically a taxi for carrying heavier things.
I don’t think they’re even a solution. They’re just another scam like hydrogen fuel cells were. They exist to keep people from pushing for the real change we actually need… Just like the decade we lost because people bought the hydrogen fuel cell grift last time.
I live in GA outside of Atlanta and rent is already tough. I’ve been to cities with not exactly amazing but serviceable public transportation (various parts of greater NYC and Chicago) and loved them. I’ve tried to use busses elsewhere, though it often meant 3 hours wasted to go to work, with similar time wasted after (hourly buss schedules and multiple transfers).
I have an electric car now, work from home, and try to avoid having to drive much, but there isn’t much more I can afford to do atm. An bike would be nice but even that’ll take money I’m still recovering, and some places I go to even just a couple times a month has no public transportation. I’d love if it did, but I have to use EV for now.
When we lived in L.A., we were near a train station. My wife sometimes took the train to work and sometimes drove. Even in L.A. traffic, it took her half the time to get to work by car because of how far away we lived from where she worked. It really sucked, but that was the reality. She had to get up at 4:30 am to take the train and 6 am to drive. She did carpool, which is better than driving alone, but it’s hard to convince people to get away from cars if you have to make sacrifices to your day like that.
I think when most people decry EVs, we’re not talking about individual EV owners but the system which forces basically everyone to move around by personal vehicle. Sure, they’ll be the occasional person who says, “I bike 28km to and from work at a very physical job where I often work overtime. I have to share the road with traffic. I don’t know why everyone can’t commute by bike,” (this was the gist of a comment I read on reddit years ago). However, most people understand that changes can’t just be personal responsibility.
With the information we have about your life, it sounds like you made a reasonable decision. If you can continue to be mindful about the decisions you make and advocate for a better world when you can, I think you’re doing a great job!
Not really. At all. Like they’re barely even a bandaid.
The issue is a car weighs a couple of tons and it’s being used to move a person who weighs around 100kg.
It’s massively inefficient use of energy.
Even in some fantasy world where the energy used to charge the batteries is all renewable - not even close to reality but let’s pretend - all that lithium and other precious earths are still an environmental disaster.
The answer is mass transit and lower mass vehicles. A lifestyle change is actually required and the thing is it wouldn’t even make people less happy, just that change is so fucking scary for some reason.
Walkable cities are a dream lifestyle and an electric scooter in a walkable city is outstanding. Fuck urban sprawl.
People who give this message like everyone is just choosing to screw the environment for fun make a crapton of assumptions about the forces people face in finding a place to live.
EVs are not limited to personal vehicles though. I absolutely agree on developing mass transit, be it rail or other, and preventing urban sprawl.
But cars (personal vehicles) and other vehicles will always exist (at least for the foreseeable future) and people will still need to haul stuff (garbage collection, artisans, deliveries, movers etc…).
I’d take an electric garbage collection truck over a ICE one for instance. It’s anecdotal but there are roadworks in my neighborhood, and most of the machinery is electric which is very nice. Electric mopeds/motorcycles are also much quieter than ICE ones. You could also electrify buses, airport equipment, port equipment, trains (the diesel ones), mining equipment, etc.
So no, EVs are not the solution but a solution, and their development is a good thing if we want to move away from fossil fuels.
Investing trillions of dollars into dead ends is, however, the enemy of progress. The ressources we’re throwing at replacing existing cars with EV cars would be enough to implement better solutions.
No technology is a dead end, you can’t run trains 30 miles out of town for 6 families already over 500 acres. Just because a technology doesn’t benefit urbanization doesn’t make it worthless.
I’m not opposing the research, I’m opposing the implementation. Spending trillions of dollars because >1% of the population would be inconvenienced as you showed by having to use less developed or more expensive alternative is stupid.
I’d call them less a solution, more an attempt at harm reduction.
And the only things they’ll properly resolve are tailpipe emissions and idling noise. At least one of which is of no concern when dealing with the externalities of car traffic.
If you really want to solve the environmental impact of transportation, you minimise the need for transportation. Put homes and workplaces close together, offer mass alternatives for the pairs where you really do need motorised mobility solutions, and minimise the number of situations where it’s more convenient to take a car. Ban on-street parking and heavily tax off-street parking. Need to park your car in the city? Hope you can afford to pay an arm and a leg. Oh, you can’t? Looks the Park & Ride at the train station two towns over is the nearest alternative. Don’t worry though, the trains go six times an hour and a day ticket is, like, four quid max.
Look mate, if you’re going to shove the “tHe stATeS arE ToO bIG, thus wE cANNot SOlvE The transIt ProbleM” rhetoric on us, please find another place to wallow in your lack of trains while assuming car industry rhetoric as undeniable fact.
Also, your claim has been debunked and reclarified so often that I’m not going to begin to explain just how wrong you are.
You guys are all idiots. A bunch of Europeans lucked into an infrastructure that works with twice the people in half the space, and you act like it was an intentional and smarter design decision in anticipation of a climate crisis. You shipped your most insane people off your continent to become Americans, and their shitty Calvinism has made everything that has always been terrible about Northern Europe even worse.
Now you want to act like anyone who thinks what you propose isn’t exactly easy (or democratic) is some kind of corporate fascist. Fuck off, the lot of you.
Well, that’s not a very productive stance, is it? I thought you thought yourself an ally, yet you just criticise everything here as impossible without producing any plans yourself.
So enlighten us, how do you act on your „desire to fight global warming“?
What I also really want to know is, you posted a video from the Google Photos account of Harry Teasley, claiming it shows your dogs. Are you Harry Teasley, or related to him? Or did you just find this video and thought it was fun to impose as him?
Hello, I’m Albertan. Stop saying this. Our governments maintain roads in between these cities every year, there is no reason they couldn’t have been train lines instead. Roads are far more expensive than many realize.
Once upon a time, all cities were connected by train, and we ripped it all up to build roads instead. Sure, it’s going to cost money to build these up again – that’s what happens when we make a mistake, we have to pay for it in one way or another. But connecting smaller towns and cities is not the herculean impossible task that people seem to want to pretend it is.
There ARE major urban areas in North America. People are not evenly spread out across the landmass equally. Connecting these first is obviously the goal, because that will take care of 70% of the problem already. And always remember not to make perfect the enemy of good - even if we stopped there we’d be in infinitely better shape than we were before.
We’ve done a ton of that. The Acela is great, I’ve ridden it a bunch. But that kind of thing doesn’t scale as efficiently as you would hope. It can serve corridors of people, but not huge continents of hundreds of millions all that well. There are to many places to be.
They’ve done this to our city center. Last time I visited (half a year ago) most of the shops and restaurants had gone out of business and they’re contemplating turning the café/mall area into apartments.
Meanwhile, during the same period of time, a huge car mall has started sprawling on the city edge. It’s a huge shame really. Used to be a very pleasant area to visit and walk around.
Nowadays it’s either take the bus (30+ minutes once every half hour), the bike (30 minutes if the weather is ok and you work up a sweat) or hope there’s parking and pay exorbitant rates (10 minutes).
I used to commute to work via public transit, until they put fees on the commuter parking by the train station as well. Slightly more expensive to drive all the way, but way faster (1/2 the time).
So… yeah. The “fuck cars” attitude of my municipality turned me from someone who travels by foot, bike, bus, train and car into someone who travels almost exclusively by car. I need a car, the rest is optional.
…yeah, i tried the public transit thing for awhile and not only spent at least as much money but also increased my commute by four to six times: totally unsustainable, mostly due to anti-infrastructure politics…
…wherever urban real estate is driven by speculative capitalism, walkable neighborhoods are a luxury reserved for the upper class…
[…] Put homes and work locations close together […]
The best hope for that to have marginal improvement is a move towards remote work, mostly feaseable for white collar activities.
Anything else is constantly pushed outside and away from residential areas.
I know a few stupid examples of very well planned and thought out industrial parks and long time industrial sites forced to vacate because residential were built 2 or 3km away and residents did not enjoy the movement going back and forward (not through the residential areas, mind that) of trucks and other machines or the sounds coming from a factory when the conditions were just right to carry it over the distance. Needless to say companies simply moved away or closed down activity and the previously complaining residential areas became high unemployment areas.
It’s the same absurd reasoning behind people building houses in the middle of nowhere and then demanding power, water and communications connections.
Solution to what though? Emissions are reduced but not eliminated: when accounting for greenhouse gases emitted during production, EVs start outperforming traditional cars only after 5+ years of use (depending on the type of car). And other factors like tyre dust and road maintenance (due to EVs’ higher weight) or resources needed to replace/recycle old batteries are not even included in that balance.
EVs might still be a net positive when compared with traditional cars, but both pale in comparison to public transport and infrastructure oriented towards bikes and pedestrians.
That’s really only because most of our electricity is still produced through fossil fuels. As we move to renewables, that equation will shift rapidly toward net positive much before 5 years. And that’s not accounting for any technological advances (like sodium ion batteries) that happen in that time.
The 5 year figure is from a German study and is based on the German energy mix (which is indeed quite dirty). So yeah, that number will hopefully decrease. But even with that, the “up-front” emissions in EV production are a major issue that is tough to solve and rarely made transparent by EV manufacturers.
The main source is battery production and related to the mining and refinement of their raw materials (source, source). The exact emissions are hard to quantify. That being said, the lifetime emissions of battery EVs are still significantly lower, so it’s still a net benefit. For a bigger picture, you can check the references here and here.
As much as I celebrate metros… This city is built in the middle of a desert and only exists because of an immense amount of oil being burned to power gigantic desalination plants. It is hardly sustainable even with a metro.
Honest question. Does anyone here have enough humility to understand there’s a similar checklist of things an automobile solves?
Now it doesn’t mean it’s the right solution but particularly in North America due to lack of XYZ automobiles are king.
It’s very easy to go “hurr durr automobiles bad” but do you understand the multitude of reasons why we use them? All the things that need to be improved or fixed before we entertain the alternatives?
Saying this as a car owner who takes public transit far more than other car owners.
For the appearance of XYZ we need a policy and cultural change, and for that we need to be very vocal about how stupid and inefficient cars are (i.e. hurr durr automobiles bad).
And I’ll tell you right back that people don’t care about your list here. You want to get people onboard start pivoting the conversation. “yaytransit” is far more positive and forward thinking than “fuckcars”.
In fact, the responses I’ve gotten already are a good indication of how deluded this community is. You’re not here to promote change, you’re here to scream into the wind.
So I guess consider that more a failing on my part.
And I’ll tell you right back that people don’t care about your list here.
You != People
“yaytransit” is far more positive and forward thinking than “fuckcars”.
Huh, it’s almost like there is room for more than one community and angle to achieve things.
Do you know what brought change to the Netherlands, which was an extremely car centric country once? Riots. Pure and simple „fuck this shit“ riots in the streets.
how deluded this community is.
Sure, everyone who disagrees with you is „deluded“.
So I guess consider that more a failing on my part.
Riots and protests don’t need your approval or applause. They happen because the majority of people are too complacent. If everyone was already aboard we’d just do those things, you know. You probably don’t understand this, because you never stuck out your neck for anything in your life.
I’ve noticed that people often imagine that they know what kind of person I am, because in their minds it makes it easy to build up a strawman version of a person that fits their preconceived ideas of the “bad guy” that’s opposed to their dumb ideas. Here you go again, doing that. But in reality, all you know is that I made fun of your idea of rioting against cars.
People can read your other comments as well, you know? Your account is a textbook about insecure masculinity, Mr. „I am the man other men wish they could be“ 😂
“Does anyone here have enough humility to understand there’s a similar checklist of things an automobile solves?”
Firstly, this feels a very confrontational way of phrasing the question. It carries with it the assumption that you are right and everyone else is wrong, which I don’t feel is a helpful way of approaching a discussion.
Yes, of course people realise that car ownership is the only viable solution for individuals at the current time. You have engaged with a community who are passionate about and engaged in urban planning, so they are going to be more switched onto the challenges than most.
The entire point is that on their own they are not a sustainable solution long-term. They are hugely inefficient energy and space-wise, their infrastructure causes massive damage to the communities they carve through (see this Guardian article for a breakdown of some NA case studies), and they currently cause a huge amount of environmental damage.
So, the question becomes: how can we remove the need for car ownership? There’s a host of ideas, from better high speed rail links to eliminate long-distance trips, to micromobility and demand responsive transport for short-distance, to better constructing our cities to begin with to allow for amenities to be walkable. Are we going to eliminate car use in rural areas? Of course not; there’s no point running a bus service for a village of 10 people and a goat. Can we eliminate 99% of car trips for those in built up areas, improving air quality, walkability, and accessibility? That should absolutely be the goal.
Yes. Nobody is suggested we should ban all cars everywhere.
Cars are incredible. I do trips to remote places all the time that would be impossible without cars. There’s no better way to transport 5 people and their gear for a week to a place that’s 100km from the nearest small town.
But for 1 guy commuting from the suburbs to work in the city every day in their SUV? Fuck that, the system is broken to even entertain that as a possibility.
Oh man, waiting an hour or so for a bus in -30℃ weather is great. Then the bus is inevitably late because it’s Edmonton (where public transit doesn’t seem to get public funding) and you get to enjoy the great outdoors for another thirty minutes. I’m surprised I still have my toes…
I’m so glad my parents gave me their old truck so I don’t really have to deal with that shit any more.
I agree this kind of post may play in favour of ICE manufacturers and oil companies but I disagree with the comparison you make between EVs and tobacco patches. EVs are produced and sold in order to replace ICEs in the exact same segment. They do not impact peoples lives significantly and will not change anything in the way cities and activities work now. The example you give is the epitome of a work/life organization which was only made possible by the massification of individual motorized transportation, with all the negative externalities listed in the OP. Yes individual cars are going to be needed for many reasons in the future. But we need to work collectively to make them less convenient and less needed in everyday life.
oh buzz off with your weird essay filled with jabs and fallacies and bad faith. actually I just reread it and I have to ask: what the fuck is wrong with you? you’re acting like a white guy who hears two black people talking about racism and leaps in to say “stop calling me racist!” you think this post is calling you out? what the actual fuck is wrong with you?
NO ONE IS SAYING YOU ARE PERSONALLY MORALLY WRONG FOR DRIVING A CAR TODAY IN 2024
that’s the whole fucking gist of this entire guy’s essay, folks. he thinks criticizing EVs is a personal attack on him and people who don’t currently live in walkable cities
So the entire metric for ‘shithole’ to you is based on how many people ride electrified trains? Really? Nothing about, say, their economy or their standard of living or their record on human rights or anything like that?
And the country with the flawless human rights record is what? Iceland because there’s no one to oppress since everyone’s related to everyone else? Great. The rest of 200-some other countries are shitholes by that measure. Again, not the best metric.
Let’s talk about your country now. Where do you live? Will you even volunteer that information?
I am now deeply curious about the deleted comments. All countries have their flaws and past mistakes, Canada's no exception, at the end of the day. The thing is what we're doing now to improve and reflect on these mistakes of the past going forward.
The problem with electric cars is that they’re a distraction. They make people think they’re part of the solution when they’re only partly addressing one of the many problems cars cause. I’m not against people buying them assuming that they’re in a position where they need a new car, but advocating for electric cars as a solution is wrong. I read the OP like this, not how you read it.
Ever wonder why this thing can only go 55 MPH? Yup, my Magnum dong! Nothing slows down a truck like moving around that hunk of meat, let me tell you! Now about our date.
My favorite part about this sub is how everyone acts like the entire world is able to just stop having a car and be able to carry on normally about their lives as if cars haven’t been forced into nearly all infrastructure plans globally since this inception. Like it’s every citizens personal choice that nobody built a functioning transit system in the many decades before they were born, or that the place they can afford to live is too far from the place that pays the wages they need to live is too far to bike or bus to.
Like, push for fewer cars and less car centric design, but also stop being a fucking cunty dick about it.
Oh I’d love to hear your explanation for why it’s irrelevant, and what crucial oversight I’ve made that you’ve managed to in your extensive 16 hours on Lemmy.
Ur comment is irrelevant to this post, as this post is merely talking about the inefficiencies of electric cars. It has not even mentioned the humans driving these cars. Had that been the case, your comment would’ve been relevant.
This post is an attempt to dispel the myth that electric cars are somehow better than ICE cars. Do you see why your comment is dumb?
Your reading comprehension and understanding of English vocabulary is about on par with your lemmy account age.
Til things like “urban sprawl” are inefficiencies inherent to electric cars, and the lengthy list of these inefficiencies are definitely not drawn parallel to ICE in order to suggest that people should instead drive neither as the underlying theme of the post, particularly given the theme of the sub, which I am able to observe because I’ve been here longer than 16 hours.
Your reading comprehension and understanding of English vocabulary is about on par with your lemmy account age.
Are you really trying to discredit someone else’s argument by using their “lemmy age”? Like… are you trying very hard to be this guy?
Now I’ll still assume that your argument is in good faith and respond accordingly. So let’s recap.
The post listed the inefficiencies of electric cars besides ICE cars. The underlying message was that electric cars only solve a very very small problem that ICE cars have, but still possess most of the issues of ICE cars. Hence, we need a much better alternative (trains, wink wink).
To this, you replied saying that this community unfairly criticized car owners. According to you, the infrastructure is the biggest one to blame rather than car owners. Which I would only partially agree (as most car owners still support car centric infrastructure). Of course, if there’s not train in your city, you can’t ride one! But you definitely can lobby for one. Your implicit biases against this community due to those one or two crazy posts skewed your perception in weird ways.
This post is most definitely directed at the tech bros (or the Tesla fanboys), according to whom the solution for GHG emissions from the transportation sector is electric cars. I hope that you agree that this is a dumb argument. This post merely makes fun of this argument. This community is not a monolith, you know… It is thus very important to take the context of every post within itself.
You could’ve argued against/for this idea. Instead, you put up something weird and irrelevant like “this community is dumb for blaming car owners”. You might be right, but it just diverts away from the topic of discussion. Why not create your own post explaining your position? It’s like going to a post saying “We need to increase the minimum wage” on a lefty community and commenting “but the lefties are commies”. This MIGHT be true, but it is not at all relevant to the discussion itself, is it?
Diesel trains are much more environmentally friendly than EVs. Diesel emissions become less of a problem when one engine carries hundreds of people. And diesel doesn’t even pretend to be good for the environment.
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