I really hate driving but it takes me 30 min to drive somewhere where public transportation takes me 2 hours. Driving saves me 3 hours a day.
If public transportation was good, I wouldn't drive.
this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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Fuck Cars
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A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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That is exactly the point of this meme. The resource allocation for building car infrastructure has been massive since the '60s while transit has been left behind as it is way less of a oppurtunity for car manufacturers and oil companies to profit from it and yeah, they do have a saying bigger than yours when it comes to deciding your country's politics. (See ~~corruption~~lobbying)
But it means rebuilding cities. We should absolutely do it, but entirely reworking how everyone gets around is gonna take a while even best case scenario. But that's why we should get started now!
We already bulldozed and rebuilt our cities for the car, so there's certainly no reason we can't do it again. It should be easier this time, though, as the main things we have to demolish are parking lots and stroads, not entire city blocks of dense housing. See Cincinnati below:
Legalized bribery.
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In an alternate world you’d complain cars can never work because there isn’t enough space for them on roads, and there’s never any parking when you arrive. (Oh, and accidents)
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Welcome to Fuck Cars!
It's a dead-simple concept that can be applied to everything: public money should only be used for public services. If the private sector is viable, it shouldn't need public money to prop it up.
Public money should fund public transit. No public money for private transport infrastructure.
Public money should fund public schools. No public subsidies for charter and private schools.
Public money should fund public health care. No public funding should be wasted on propping up a wasteful private healthcare industry. ACA wastes so much money buying insurance for people when we could just build public hospitals and public clinics.
It's not that private industry shouldn't exist. It's just that private industry, conceptually, shouldn't need to be propped up by social funding. But currently it is. And it's a tremendous waste of money. Public money should only fund public programs. So simple.
Aren't bike lanes technically "private transport infrastructure" though?
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I work for an auto company. I can tell you they don't want mass transit because it hurts profits. They would much rather jack up the cost of vehicles, offer deals on leases, and keep people locked into getting a new vehicle every few years. Just keep the machine running and fuck anything except their profits. You will see how shady the auto industry is once the strike happens next week
I like the concept of 15 minute cities/suburbs. You can get anywhere you need within 15 minutes, whether by public transport, bike, walking or car.
Isn't the point of a 15 minute city that you can get anywhere within 15 minutes without a car?
(By the way, from a European standpoint it sounds really funny that 15 minute cities are not a reality for you. Like, why would you ever build a city differently in the first place?)
It's pretty disingenuous to claim that your city founded in 1300 has tight streets and isn't car-friendly because people in 1300 were really big on public transport.
And the answer is that cities grow descriptively rather than prescriptively. They generally add what is in demand/what they need piecemeal, and most US cities really grew in the 20th century.
That's why NYC, for example, has significantly better public transport than most of the nation - it's one of the oldest cities
This is also why moving to mass transit is a hard sell. It's expensive and there is less demonstrated need and more forethought behind the switchover.
Not to mention that the US has far, far more land than Europe. It's hard for many to imagine having to drive 3 hours just to get to a major city.
There’s an few distinctions about American culture as it relates to car culture.
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America had/has a lot of land
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Much of this is/was vastly underdeveloped right outside of urban hubs, unlike Europe/related which benefits from a tighter interconnected network of cities that more immediately benefit from mass transit systems
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In the US post-WWII middle class and privileged were often sold an idea of peaceful suburban lifestyles away from urbanized areas
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Car manufacturers marketed this successfully as a way to encourage families away from city life and thus build a more solid reliance on their vehicles
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City planning was therefore often built around a suburban-city sprawl rather than a cohesive urban community designed around efficiency
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Because bikes are a way too efficient (on the short distances) and long lasting products to be lucrative. Public transportation as well didn't guarantee the same annual income of fresh money that the car market do.
I got an ebike and rode 130 miles (note my ebike is 250w and geared) on the trail that I live near. Haven't taken it out since last month because they started construction (resurfacing+replacing 2 bridges) that will last until next year.
I'm in a small town and the construction blocks both ways (meanwhile, the road alternative is often unshaded with grass/ditches on the sides, with at least one last-section I was on a few times before to get to another house having 40mph (though sparse) traffic). The trail made further journeys possible without complex navigation (and I'm not aware of many closer destinations due to the rurality).
Also my town has a railroad but no train-station (so no passenger rail) so I guess it's rather fitting. Although at least the trail is getting fixed (also the trail used to be a rail).
This is a perfectly fitting example if you think what would instead happen if instead there were needed to be done construction on the road (they would do half lane at the time to allow traffic, or they would only work at night and reopen the road for the day, ft. Your tax money going to construction workers night shifts). As long as car drivers are seen as special requirements kids its always going to be made artificially easier to drive rather than commuting in other ways.
Just to be clear, my point (aside from that being rural sucks for transportation+there was only 1 option in this situation) is that the problem is infrastructure and planning rather than the vehicles themselves.
EDIT: And yeah, I don't know why they didn't split the job up into at least 2. [A to B] and [B to C] rather than [A-C] (and more sections could've probably been done when it comes to the resurfacing). Seems as if this were a sudden change after delays too.
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Yeah but how are we supposed to capture an entire nation of consumers and entrap them into paying for our products forever with that?
because politicians cash extra money when car manufacturers make more money than public transpsort manufacturers (trains, buses)
You would need much less material and that's bad for economy.
Or to reframe it: the economy is bad for the environment.
Even if we kept the car way of life (not saying we should) doesn't it seem like there are way too many cars being produced? Like how many new cars do we really need every year? I honestly do not know the numbers, I'm just saying it sure seems like this many brand new cars don't need to exist.
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Holy shit can you imagine? If we'd take all the investments that are done on a yearly basis for cars and we stuff that in trains, busses and bikes and their infrastructure?
We'd get walkable cities, cities would get more tax income, we'd all get healthier, we'd have tonnes of money left for parks... and we'd actually for once really do something to stoo climate change to boot
Ahhh to dream...it's so nice. The world could be so pretty if people just weren't such dumb egocentric assholes.
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