I love trams, but in my city they’re often slower than busses. And we still have a ton of old rolling stock with no wheelchair access.
I always prefer trains, but I no longer live near trams or trains. Instead I’ve got four bus routes, two of which go on the freeway just after the stop near my place. I’ve made it to my destination in under 10 minutes on that bus, it would normally be 20-30 minutes on a good day though.
And owning a truck in the the US, I feel, is a status symbol for many that purchase them rather than any need for carrying/towing stuff. So extra pointless.
Edit: And even if so, they don’t need to be so big.
I’ve noticed on facebook, that every anti-EV clown out there seems to think everyone is towing on a daily basis too.
The irony is, that the people who drive these large trucks are actually the people who tend to require the least towing capacity. In fact, I’ve maybe only ever seen 1 or 2 of those large Utes here in Australia actually tow anything remotely big. And for most tradies, Vans are actually a far better option than Utes anyway (much more secure)
That’s still much better though. Lots of people die from lung cancer and other lung related illnesses due to pollution in cities. Also, if emissions are concentrated somewhere else it’s more economical to treat them, instead of being spread out in an urban area.
This whole crap that something has to be 100% perfect to be a proper solution has to end. I’m against the use of cars, but let’s be seriously, they will never go away.
Exactly, also electricity from fossil fuels is still cleaner, the process at the plant is way more efficient and way more scrutinized (check every car and every producer and every user or check plants, which works best?)
They eliminate a part of the emissions, since one big engine (like a power plant) can be run more efficiently than many small engines (in individual vehicles).
Similarly, transporting electricity through wires creates less emissions than transporting fuel with trucks. Both serve the purpose of refueling other vehicles.
Even coal powered EVs are better than gasoline cars.
I drive as little as I can these days, but I used to drive a lot in Chicago. Talk about aggression! It’s like a game everyone is playing and you get points by being the biggest asshole who.
I live in Portland now and driving here for the first time was a real eye-opener. Still terrible in it’s own ways! But at least the drivers seem to want to cooperate for safe trips all around, for the most part.
Oh wow! I wouldnt have guessed Portland would be any safer to drive than anywhere else, despite its reputation for being unique at… Well literally everything else. 😅
/s is not actually entirely accurate in this case. Here’s an article on how US residents are trying to live in their cars by finding “safe parking lots” to reside in: theguardian.com/…/safe-overnight-parking-lot-slee…
So in the richest nation on Earth, cars do double as housing.
The /s was for the “Checkmate” bit 😂 Technically, of course you can use your car as a dwelling. But it’s certainly not an answer (or at least, not a serious one) to a lack of housing supply, I think we’ll all agree.
(US Here) Even my more progressive friends won’t go downtown because every business doesn’t have free dedicated parking. Street parking is free for the first hour and when I still drove I had lunch with no problems that way 1000 times, but nope unless where they’re going has it’s own dedicated parking lot, they aren’t going.
So why is this? The answers so far seem unsatisfactory, since things like phones, SUVs and car-centric infrastructure are on the rise in other countries as well, without that staggering rise in deaths.
I spent about 3 minutes browsing the report linked in the article, and am rather less confident than before. For example, on pages 25 and 26 they look at the share of SUVs in deaths and sales. And while both figures are rising, the bodycount from non-SUVs has gone up as well.
The answer is probably not a single factor anyways. Can anyone make a more or less informed guess what might explain the US being so bad?
I can imagine them being cheaper and I only would use people to transit other people when you can have 40 people or so. Where security on big vehicles like bus or train need more caution. A person driving a single person feels like a waste of time or smth. Driverless cars could also be more efficient in routing.
Yes! And you know what, at that point, given the size of a minimum viable car, we could use some kind of algorithm to match people that are going similar places, and put them together to be more efficient. And I bet we’d find that a lot of the large scale transit patterns are common large parts of the population, so we could even use some kind of segregated, higher speed, more frequent vehicle for that.
While we’re at it, we might as well just warehouse some of these vehicles around places where the common cores end and start, and then we would only have to match one end of the trip.
I think that the solution is automated rail transit. Being in a dedicated place with lower likelihood of encountering people removes nearl every issue that self-driving cars have. Being automated means that 24/7 schedules are possible. If there are enough trains and high enough saturation, need for cars and even taxis is removed.
One train transports 100s of people, the driver is a fairly low proportion of the cost. And there’s other members of staff that are required even in a fully automated system. (network monitoring, security). Removing the driver is a nice step, but it doesn’t fundamentally change the economics of rail transport. If a route is uneconomic, that’s going to be the case without a driver too.
Removing the driver mainly removes barriers to running late - meaning things like drunk driving can be significantly reduced since transit in the US is virtually non-existant at drunk’o’clock, effectively pressuring people into bad decisions when their judgement is the poorest.
If a route is uneconomic, that’s going to be the case without a driver too.
Infrastructure is vital to economic and other activity. It needs to be treated as an investment or necessary cost, not a business. Doing otherwise inevitably results in collapsing bridges, toxic spills, and other symptoms of neglect as corners are cut to maximize profit.
We’re in agreement that night trains are a good thing, but you should push for them whether or not your trains are driverless.
You misunderstand my use of economic. Everything has a cost and a benefit which can theoretically be calculated, with infrastructure like transit that benefit extends beyond fares. Typically governments will do this calculation when deciding whether to pursue a new project, they include all the planning, construction, running costs, and externalities e.g. climate impact, and all the benefits from fares, economic activity, new opportunities for industries and development, ect. This produces a cost benefit ratio. In my research with transport, the best value projects are local safety improvements like cycleways, sometimes the ratio is as good as 10. Large public transport projects are maybe 1-2, and large motorways are usually less than 1. My point was a train driver is a small cost that isn’t going to significant affect this. Of course, this analysis often gets ignored and the overpriced motorway gets built anyway.
Paved roads disrupt rainwater movement as they physically block water from permeating and also have fast flowing storm drains. They have been shown to significantly reduce groundwater replenishment and increase the speed and volume of run off into rivers and streams, which exacerbates flooding risks.
Doesn’t look too bad in this light, it’s the even daylight where the idea of it doesn’t show. I think it’s ugly but can look cool in certain light like this, the top section bright and the lower shadowed. Should have been a concept car cause of obvious reasons producing it at scale.
Part of me respects a design that can be so provocative. It shows how people care about design, and reminds me how boring and “nothing” a lot of the objects we interact with on a daily basis are.
This kind of post on here gets auto praise. There are specific buzz words/images/brands/rich people you can use on Lemmy to be praised how they’re saying people praise Elon.
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