this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
743 points (95.7% liked)

Fuck Cars

9817 readers
30 users here now

This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.

This community exists for the following reasons:

You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.

Rules

  1. Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.

  2. No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.

  3. Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.

  4. No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.

  5. No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.

  6. No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.

  7. No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.

Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

What can you get to within a 15-minute walk of your house?

A recent YouGov survey asked Americans what they think they should be able to get to within a 15-minute walk of their house.

Of these choices, I can currently walk to all of them from my apartment, aside from a university (no biggie, I'm not currently studying, although there is a Tafe within walking distance), a hospital, and a sports arena.

How many can you get to with a 15 minute walk from your house?

#fuckcars #walkability #urbanism #UrbanPlanning @fuck_cars #walking

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Brendanjones@fosstodon.org 21 points 9 months ago (6 children)

@ajsadauskas @urlyman @fuck_cars Why on earth would anyone answer ‘should not’ to a bus stop being within 15 mins? How are they thinking you get to the bus stop, by driving?!

Also, as a Dutchie, the amount of ‘should nots’ for a bar within 15 mins is killing me. I understand it, but it points to such a lack of imagination about what a city can look like. I have at least 20 bars within 15 mins walk of home and I’m not in the city centre 😄

[–] CurtAdams@urbanists.social 9 points 9 months ago (2 children)

@Brendanjones @ajsadauskas @urlyman @fuck_cars Indeed. Bars should *only* be in a 15 minute walk. You should never need to drive to a bar!

[–] ajsadauskas@aus.social 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

@Brendanjones @urlyman @fuck_cars You need to keep in mind we are talking about a country here where a not insignificant proportion of the population thinks walkable neighbourhoods are a deep state conspiracy...

[–] urlyman@mastodon.social 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)
[–] MNByChoice@midwest.social 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

That article is worthy of its own post.

The average American walks less than 75 miles a year - about 1.4 miles a week, barely 350 yards a day.

Edit: Be the change and all that... I created a post and thanked you. Cheers

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Good read. ~~Bill Bryson is British though, so he grew up with a generation accustomed to not seeing public transport as a dirty word.~~~ Edit: Nope, he just has a good british accent. nvm,

When I visited LA, I was amazed at how good the public transit system there is. A bus driver would literally wave people through if they didn't have the right fare, and would literally wrangle wheelchair users into their seat at the cost of their own backs. Yet, there was always this feeling that the people who used the bus were less than scum....

... no other country has this stigma when it comes to using public services.

[–] DrBob@lemmy.ca 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I lived in LA for a few years...without a car!

The transit system was great for me because I worked at a Uni and got direct service door-to-door. It worked just all right for my wife. It was convenient for her, but she worked downtown in a professional office. The kind where people wore suits and the senior people still wore ties (in LA!).

Buses were clean in the morning and full of people headed to work, but on her return trip they would be be...fragrant with a different clientele. This isn't meant to be classist, but she didn't feel safe and was worried about cleanliness. Our drycleaning bills were high.

We were told we could manage for a couple years because we didn't know anyone and so we didn't get invited anywhere. It was true. All of our trips were to popular, well serviced destinations.

That was prescient advice because eventually we did meet people and started getting invited to dinner parties etc. where buses simply didn't run. And a car was purchased.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I think safety is a huge thing. As a woman, I can imagine feeling less than secure in such a setting. As a man, it seems okay though

[–] PedestrianError@towns.gay 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

@tetris11 @DrBob Women make up the majority of US public transit users whether or not they feel less safe using it than men do so maybe instead of trying to get rid of transit the society should try to be less misogynistic?

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I had no idea, I assumed men used transit more, but you're right:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/715212/public-transit-use-gender-transit-mode-united-states/

Getting soceity to be less misogynistic seems like it might be the right way forward indeed (or in any case)

[–] PedestrianError@towns.gay 3 points 9 months ago

@tetris11 One of the many reasons our transit systems suffer from disinvestment while our roads suffer from overinvestment is that transportation planning decision makers are disproportionately white, male, and abled and all of them make enough money that driving is at least an option for them if not a job requirement.

[–] Nemo@midwest.social 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

No, it's an insignificant portion.

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Prolly ~30%

Not the majority, buy enough to e significant

[–] Nemo@midwest.social 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

You pulled that number straight outta your ass.

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online -1 points 9 months ago

30% is pretty consistently the number of right-wing fascists in the US (people who actually want Trump in office)

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Honestly 15 minutes is way too much for a bus stop. If it's more than 10 minutes walk away it might as well not exist, and the target should always be under 5 minutes.

[–] TimWardCam@c.im 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

@Zagorath @Brendanjones In the UK one of the magic numbers planners used for bus stops (or did a few years ago when I was in the loop) was 400m

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 points 9 months ago

Yeah 400 m is the goal here in my city of Brisbane, Australia, too. That's where I was aiming when I said 5 minutes, since a walking pace of about 10 minutes/kilometre is pretty reasonable and 5 minutes gives you a little bit of buffer on that.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Some people think the "wrong sort of people" will come to a neighborhood if there's a bus stop. Like they're going to get on the bus, break into your house, and get back on the bus holding your tv.

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yes, an architect in NYC intentionally designed bridges to be too low for busses to pass under them to keep busses out of some neighborhoods.

Because fuck the poor.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You're probably talking about Robert Moses? Park commissioner, city planner, huge asshole. There's a huge book called The Power Broker that's a fascinating history of him and the city.

It also mentions a part where one of his lead engineers came to him and was like "if we build it like this, it'll cost basically the same and if we want to put train tracks in the future it will be easy. If we build it your way , it'll be impossible to put a train here without a ton of expensive work".

Moses went the anti-train way on purpose.

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 2 points 9 months ago
[–] urlyman@mastodon.social 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

@Brendanjones I miss passing Dutchies (as in Dutch people), on Dutch streets or in Dutch bars, on the left or the right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pass_the_Dutchie

@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars