- cross-posted to:
- fuckcars@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- fuckcars@lemmy.world
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Working from home is the best. Not everyone can do it, but those who can, should be allowed to. Return to office isn’t for us, it’s for them.
Working from home is the best.
Very difficult to build class solidarity when you’re atomized to the point of not even seeing one another’s real faces.
Yeah in a world where transit isnt a shit show. In my city transit will take you 2 hours to get home when a car will take 20 minutes
That is exactly why we need better public transit.
Then you better be advocating for better public transit
I live in a small town. The town has a couple vans that old people can call to be driven to the doctor. And like all government services and social safety nets, it’s gonna be gone by the time it’s my turn. If I’m going somewhere, it’s my car, my bike or my feet.
It’s not even just about sustainability. It’s also largely about comfort (public transport is just 10x as comfortable as any car could be), price to the end consumer (public transport is typically much cheaper to the end consumer than cars, and that’s even by a lot), space management (compare how much space cars need vs. public transport) and all these things. it’s not just climate change.
Agree, it’s so much nicer.
No stress about searching parking spots, no cursing people driving too fast or slow… and reliable, fast, affordable and comfortable.
Political will is not even the problem; corruption, ie. corporatism and oligarchs are. They stand in the way of a truly public transit friendly society. None of the oligarchs are part of ‘us’.
And even if we consider cars,good driving experiences necessitate public transit, bicycle lanes, and walkability!
… Have you ever used public transportation in any major city? It is about the only instance in modern age where you are in a vehicle that may be going 50 kph and you are standing. If you are going to be making claims, I would drop that “10x as comfortable” bit.
Comfortable is probably the biggest reason most people don’t use public transportation. With their own cars, they don’t need to wait, they don’t need to worry about whether they are going to be packed like sardines because of the work rush, or forced to even wait for another pass because it got full before they were able to get on, or have to worry about getting cramps from not being able to sit, or having the transit take significantly more because it’s not direct, or pickpockets…
About the only comfortable thing about public transport is if you can get on it during off-peak hours when seats are available, in a route that doesn’t require a lot transfers, that isn’t much longer due to the stops and side-routing, and that doesn’t have a high wait time. All the stars have to align.
In comparison, bikes are probably the better option overall, and it would be epic if public transport started incorporating e-bike/scooter transit along with it. Unfortunately it seems to be quite the opposite where I live due to concerns about Lithium battery fires, but hopefully someone somewhere realizes that that is just a standardization issue.
packed like sardines
Some users smell like them too.
public transport is just 10x as comfortable as any car could be
Yes, nothing beats walking to a bus stop and waiting there in the cold, rain or burning sun, hoping the bus shows up in time or at all. Then stressing, because it being 15 minutes late probably means your connecting train will be gone. Oh yes, there it goes. Half an hour wait with no place to sit. And then repeat this two more times for more connecting trains and buses.
And I haven’t even talked about not being able to sit during train rides, or having to sit on back wrecking seats. Unfortunately I have back issues and after having enjoyed the ‘comfort’ of our public transport I often end up just not being able to stand or sit anymore at the end of the day because my back hurts so bad.
That is my average commute, and as a bonus there ultimately isn’t a difference in price here between taking the car or public transport. To top it off my average travel time is 60 minutes by car, 1.5 - 2 hours by public transport, often depending whether or not the first bus shows up in time.
It would be able to overlook a lot of this if it was feasible to do some work in the train, but with all the fragmentation on my route I never really get anything done.
I really would like to use public transport, as it is more sustainable than my gas guzzler, but each time I try it the experience just sucks so bad.
I’m with you entirely except for comfort. I think the only comfort advantage is that trains can have comparable leg room and you can standup.
I have never been on any type of mass transit where the seats were as comfortable as even a crappy car.
That’s ignoring system dependent stuff like cleanliness or the discomforts of being close to strangers.You can certainly clean more, put in better seats, and suck it up when it comes to strangers, but as it is right now, I struggle to see how you could say it’s more comfortable based purely on the amenities.
I struggle to see how you could say it’s more comfortable
easy, i don’t have to focus on the street for 50 minutes. that’s a big win for me.
Ah, I wouldn’t have called that comfort, more boredom. I still don’t agree on the comfort thing, but at least I can see where you’re coming from.
I’m tall and overweight. Even when I wasn’t overweight the seats have never been wide enough and I almost always have my knees pressed into the back of the seat in front of me. With the seat being too short as well, I usually end up with a fair bit of pain unless I can stand or get a seat without someone close in front of me.
It’s not really boredom, you have that time left to sleep, draw, read, or enjoy the scenery. All the more worth it for public transit.
It also takes cars off the road, meaning fewer and shorter traffic jams. Win in my book.
The seating is more of an issue with cars, I’ve felt. It’s always cramped and big cars are uncomfortable and unsafe. Hassle to park as well, and they end up costing you way more than it’s worth.
Yeah, for me the real status symbol is a bicycle and healthy legs. Or a good public transit card.
I mean, I used to be exclusively a bus rider or pedestrian, so I’m not unfamiliar with them. Sleeping is a bad choice because you can miss your stop, and at least in my experience the scenery is no different than you would get from the windshield.
Did like reading though, since that was relaxing. If I’m being fair though, taking a car for the trip I used to bus is fast enough that I wouldn’t find a book worth it.Does the seat softness not bother you? For me, seat softness and leg room are the two biggest drives for feeling uncomfortable and even the smallest car has more.
To be clear, I’m not saying public transit is bad. Far from it. If it were remotely viable for any of the trips I need to take it would be my go to. I just think that they could put more padding on the seats, make them a little larger, and give a touch more leg room.
You don’t miss your stop with an alarm.
The scenery is certainly different. You don’t always see roads, you look at the side.
The seats are pretty comfy in train and bus, enough leg space too. I do agree with you that more padding and extra leg space would be always welcome, though.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on the seats. It’s just not comfortable from my view. A cheap office chair would be an upgrade. We almost certainly live in different areas with different buses, so it’s not really something we can compare specifically.
Completely different scenery is pushing it a bit. I can pretty much see whatever I could see out of the bus window through the windshield, and for the most part it’s not what you would call “scenic”. I don’t live in the country nor do I live in a big enough city for interesting architecture, so it’s just a long suburban and urban sprawl of slightly run down houses and low grade commercial along the bus routes. We’re not talking some run down dystopia, but there just isn’t much interesting to see, at least more than once.
I don’t think an alarm would help me not miss my stop. The buses here are reliable, but not regular enough to set an alarm for arrival times. I was always worried they’d show up early and I’d miss it, and that sucked when the weather was bad.
US public transportation is pathetic, but prior to the 1960’s it was quite extensive only to be destroyed by the oil and automobile lobbyists.
And if they’re hadn’t thrashed the railcars, the cities might look wildly different.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
Thing is, we are where we are now. We can’t just tear down all the cities and start over. We have to deal with what we’ve got.
I mean, Europe hasn’t torn it’s cities down (well not all of them and not for rebuilding purposes anyway) despite managing to utilise good public transport.
Then again guess your point is rather that American cities were built stupidly car centric and that somehow those can’t be replaced with any sort of public transport?
It’s also collectivizing the solution rather than expecting us each to address the problem on an individual level that doesn’t change the status quo one iota.
Horses are even more sustainable and renewable. And tasty if done right.
It’s amazing how much it takes for some to reach the conclusion that systemic change is both necessary and requires… systemic change. As in systems changing. As in greater change than your individual decision to ride an EV or ICEV or public transit. Change that would make it exponentially more intuitive for you to choose the most sustainable one of those options.
Especially if mass transit is not feasible for you, this post is not to shame you or call on you to try and do it anyways. It’s a recognition that riding mass transit is not feasible or intuitive for most people, and a call to make mass transit available to more people rather than investing all that time and energy into the wild goose chase of EV adoption.
The crying indian really did a number on us.
A lot of cities were designed around cars. In Cities Skyline you can just bulldoze entire neighbourhoods and completely change the roads and transit. Unfortunately in real life you can’t easily bulldoze people’s homes, and transit networks can take a decade to build.
Global warming is a problem now, and perfect is the enemy of good enough. We know EVs aren’t the ideal solution, but it’s important part of a solution that involves improved transit, better quality of life in dense population centers AND EVs for neighbourhoods that were built in a car-centric past. Maybe in 100 years the suburbs won’t exist and there won’t be any need for cars, but if we wait 100 years to have perfectly designed transit friendly neighbourhoods we’ll all be fucked.
My friend’s work is over an hour from his house by public transport—if public transport is working, and it’s a weekday. If it isn’t working well, if it’s late, if it’s a weekend or holiday, then it’s closer to two hours (or more).
It’s 15 minutes max by car.
And he lives in a place with good public transportation.
Until we improve how public transportation runs, so that it really is designed around how people need to get from A to B, cars are going to be the more popular choice.
Yes but that is never going to happen without putting restraints on the auto industry, which puts big money into preventing public transit from being built, and if its already exists, to destroy it.
Car culture is killing us. I get you’re trying to be pragmatic but more is necessary.
Bikes combined with public transit usually cut down those times massively. And to ask—good, or good by usa standards? Cities in Germany or japan are impressive with how fast you can get places by train.
Also-- people being unwilling to trade a bit of convenience in exchange for a better world is a major part of the problem. I got off my car and started biking for everything, and it was easy. More people could easily do the same. Combined with trains, I can go very far.
You also need to fix the karen problem that plagues society. I don’t like getting called a slur or “go back to where you came from”, and its very bad when you’re stuck inside the small space as them. (By “karen” I don’t mean just white women, but the attitude of some people, anyone can become a karen)
We really need to eliminate karen mentality.
I really fucking hate that a normal ass female name became a synonym for “entitled person”
What about electric public transit? EV buses are becoming quite popular in Korea.
The nearest major city to me has had electric buses since 1940. There are power cables overhead and poles that link the bus to the grid. No need for expensive flammable batteries that need extensive charging.
OK, well, that’s nice in a city. I’d love to see them try and get a tram up the mountain here, though.
As long as they’re being purchased as a replacement for buses that are either at the end of their life or being donated to smaller communities, then sure. This said from the perspective of an American whose city, state and federal governments refuse to fund the public transit that we already have. (╥_╥)
Also Germany
Electric cars are a type of vehicle. Public transit is a type of transportation system that include many different types of vehicles and can include electric cars.
You’re comparing apples to orchards.
They aren’t doing that, you are. The apples to apples comparison that they are making is our current transit system; with the cars being fully electrified but otherwise as it exists today; versus a transit system that prioritizes mass transit (and walking and biking) over personal vehicles.
Electric cars are a solution to save the auto industry, not the climate.
Maybe in your bubble it’s common parlance that “electric cars” = “electrifying mass private vehicle infrastructure”, but from the outside, that’s not a straightforward interpretation.
I’m just letting you know the most good faith interpretation of this post, in case you missed it. I’m not interested in arguing about “common parlance”
Yes but much less profitable.
Devilish that capitalism has made profitability synonymous with efficiency
I agree, but, this country, unfortunately, is built around cars now, and I certainly can’t walk to work as it would take hours, same with biking.
We need more public transportation, but we also need electric cars.
It’s great to see that Skeletor and all his “likes” will be switching from gas cars to public transit.
