this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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No I haven't lived in rural America but most Americans haven't either. Most live in the suburbs, cities or towns. It's like saying people need to eat less sugar and we should stop using it for every food and people saying "what about the diabetics who need sugar" yeah they do but that's not the majority of people. We can make exceptions for them while also overhauling our food industry to remove this thing that's causing health problems for most people.
As for the mountain bike scenario ideally you would take a train to a town near the trail and then the town can have a shuttle up to the mountain. If we did fully invest in public transit this wouldn't add too much to your trip and has some other benefits.
This would be good for the park and wildlife in general as less traffic would make it easier for animals to migrate. Less roadkill
This would lower the amount of development needed in the park as parking lots wouldn't be necessary.
It would make mountain biking more accessible for people who don't have a car or can't drive.
It would make it more social, you could meet people on the shuttle on the way up, if there are regulars then a community could form.
It would reduce the amount of air and noise pollution.
Yeah maybe there are are 2000 mountains, but how many have mountain bike trails? If there are trails then there is probably some organization maintaining them like the state or national park service who can also run the shuttles. Shuttles are also pretty cheap and can stop at multiple trail heads based off requests. You can also rotate where the shuttles go each day / week so if there's a more obscure trail/mountain then you can just wait until it comes up in the schedule. The towns would also probably want to run the shuttles as well since it will bring business to the area.
Ok, let's assume we want less people on the mountain, what gives you the right to go to the mountain then? Because you can afford a car? That doesn't seem fair. Also most people have a car so it's not restricting that many people. If we say only 30 people should go to the mountain a day that's way easier to enforce if we say only 2 shuttles of 15 are allowed. It's also fairer as who gets to go is just determined by whoever signs up first, as opposed to whether someone owns something.
I think many people would like to socialize. There's a loneliness epidemic and many people are looking for friends but don't know where to meet them. If I was looking for friends with common interests like mountain biking the shuttle up would be a great place to meet them. Just because I want to get away from civilization doesn't mean I want to get away from socializing, I hike regularly with groups of people and they mostly enhance the experience. If you aren't into that that's fine too, just put on your headphones ignore everyone and set off on the trail solo, nothing stopping you from doing that.
For the last point like I said usage can be controlled, even better then cars, but assuming the same usage a shuttle is less pollution then multiple cars. If like you said there are 5-6 cars at a particular trail head then one shuttle carrying all those people will cause less air and noise pollution and make it safer for animals.
It clear that you and I will never agree, but fortunately it doesn't matter because your pipe dream will never happen!
I'll drive my car and hike/bike these mountains every weekend and keep on loving the freedom and peace of mind that I get to live with. 'Cause Murica.
It will eventually have to happen, cars, including evs, are not sustainable, at least at the current levels of usage. If you look at any climate report looking into it the choice is between Americans driving a lot less or severe climate change. I hope murica will make the right choice but the more we tie cars to ideas of freedom and peace of mind the harder that choice will be. It will be tough to fight considering the tens of thousands of hours of car ads most Americans are exposed to pushing that narrative, so it will require just as much reinforcement on the negatives of cars, traffic fatalities, CO2 emissions, airborne micro plastics from tires, maintenance and repair costs, obesity, sprawled cities, etc.
It may not happen in our lifetime, or at least when your healthy enough to bike/hike , but eventually we'll have to transition away from personal cars. Id prefer to build towards that future now for the reasons listed above but if you want to delay that's fine, you'll just have to explain to your grandkids why you did.
No kids, don't give a shit.