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PLACES WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE DRIVEN TO
Says who? Is there some natural law when the universe was created that said mankind are not allowed to drive?
YEARS OF BUILDING CAR INFRASTRUCTURE yet NO DECREASE IN OVERALL TRAVEL TIME
Ok you go and set off on foot on a 200km journey, and a car sets off at the same time to get to the same place, who will get there first?
Want to go somewhere fast? We have a vehicle for that; It’s called a “TRAIN”
Trains are great at moving people / goods between urban areas, but are awful (obviously) for point-to-point journeys. Want to the doctors fast? Can’t exactly get on the the train directly outside your house to the front door of the doctors. I like trains, I use them where I can and always use them whenever I go into the office, but you cannot seriously suggest using trains to totally replace cars, it’s so ridiculous that I’d swear you’ve never even seen one.
“i am DRIVING my…”
Not sure what’s deranged about it? In fact that case is very valid as you’re likely to have a lot of shopping (two weeks worth) that you’d really struggle to carry on public transport. It might have a bit more authenticity if you said it was just to get some bread and milk.
I get the sentiment, we should totally be trying to reduce our car usage and planning our urban environments to favour walking, cycling and public transport, but the fuckcars community on here are totally deranged. Your arguments look ridiculous and aren’t going to convince anyone.
This is one of my favourite meme format for some reason.
Engineers designed these roads, not urbanist.
Traffic engineering isn’t a university program and we’re still using studies from the 50’s to dictate our traffic engineering. It’s civil engineers in NA who are forced to follow outdated policy which maximizes for car traffic flow, regardless of body count or overall flow of poeple across all transit options. Generally, city planners are all for public transit and walkable and bike able cities but have to battle with politicians appealing to suburbanites with cars.
I don’t understand why this is such a hard thing for people and government to understand. Your car isn’t going to a place, you and the stuff you need to carry are. The car is just the means and there are many other means to do so, they just get a lot less attention and funding. Cars and traffic infrastructure have been subsidised for over a century now. Of course cars more developed, and of course we build our cities for cars, we’re socializing cars.
Yes, there are many areas that have been developed so car focused that it’s a necessity to own a car. People living in rural areas will always need personal cars. People in urban and suburban areas probably don’t and should give up their personal vehicles so Farmer can keep theirs.
Traffic engineers are hilariously bad at their jobs in the U.S.
If only public transport was actually a usable replacement for using a car. Hint: It isn’t.
In the next town, the mayoress claims to like bikes, and “reforms” the city. So far all she managed were some cheap fixes like painting bike paths on roads and making some key connections useless for non-bike traffic. Which led to - more car-traffic, as now many cars have to drive nearly once around the city to reach their destination. What it didn’t lead to - a significant move to use of bikes and public transport, as the bike paths are not really safe and mostly patchwork, anyway, and public transport is too expensive and basically useless to anyone from outside the city.
I’m not against a bike-friendly city. But you can have good implementations and seriously bad ones.
And asking people to “stop driving cars” is a very narrow-minded and stupid idea from the start. There are a lot of reasons to drive a car. I mean, do you expect that they stock the supermarkets with cargo bikes? Do you want to force old people who cannot use the tram as it has high and steep stairs for entries to, what, walk into the city? Do you think the plumber or electrician will come to fix your flat with all the tools on a bike?
This “stop driving cars” is an idea cooked up by young and able people who live in the city and usually don’t leave it. Who maybe use a bike to ride to the next shop two roads over, or to university. And who actually can go on even longer rides occasionally, if they must. They have nothing better to do. Those who bear not much responsibility and drive, well, like bikers in a city, feeling overconfident and ignorant of the risk of dangerous driving behavior.
The pedestrian-friendly cities I know often allow vans and trucks to resupply stores on the walking streets, even if normal traffic is disallowed. They’re also encouraged to deliver in the morning.
Trying to point the issue to disabilities is often extremely counter-intuitive; it’s often hard for disabled people to use a car for everything (picture wheelchair transfers every time), as well as walking across huge parking lots or inside megastores. It’s often far better if they can just make it to a small store directly without excessive worry about high-traffic crosswalks. Public transit is often wheelchair accessible by default.
The mindset of completely banning cars is not one I’ve joined up with; as you say, contractors or the slim minority of workers transporting heavy goods should likely still be using cars. But that experience of driving is often terrible when every single person (on their own with no heavy cargo) is using a car for every trip.
But that experience of driving is often terrible when every single person (on their own with no heavy cargo) is using a car for every trip.
OK, but what would be the alternative? Especially for those living outside and entering the city either for work of for shopping?
When I was young, I went basically everywhere by bike, as I neither has a car, nor could I afford public transport (which would have cost me about 60% of available money). So I went to work and back on my bike (15km each way), and then to university and back in the evening (another 20km each way). Well, that was when I was young. Nowadays, this is no longer an option.
I don’t expect people to commute 20+km a day by bike. A safe bike garage at a P+R place would be nice and reduce at least part of the way by bike, but it does not exist. And public transport, well, at this P+R, there are good connections into the cities, but they have a low frequency and take quite some time, apart from costing a shitload of money for what they offer.
My bicycle commute is 22km each way, and after riding for a few weeks, I was up for riding that plus a loop around the local lake (with a friend), then back home all on a Saturday, after doing that commute every day of the week before
Now e-bikes exist that’s even achievable by quite unfit people
Putting aside that I’ve seen some relatively old people continue to stay healthy on bikes (often as leisure, not utility), generally the hope would be that public transit would cover the needs for longer distances. As you said, many current forms are pretty bad, but that’s because our money is spent (that is KEY - we SPEND the money either way!!) on road maintenance and new parking garages, and of course individually on car maintenance.
We also have these long distances to cover to stores in part because of the big wide roads and parking lots that elongate our trips. As it turns out, civic centers don’t have to be so spread out.
I’d also expect most people not to need to go into the city for all forms of shopping. If you just need groceries for the week, but your town has nothing to offer in walking distance, it almost sounds like there’s a business begging to be built there, even if it’s a two-room local affair.
When I go to the city for shopping or attending a meeting, it is maybe once per month. I’m not stupid enough to do everyday shopping in the city when I have five supermarkets within 10 minutes walking distance. No, when I go to the city, it is usually to visit a few selected highly specialized shops that can only survive in an urban center with an appropriate environment. And I go there to see, touch, feel the goods I purchase in contrast to those who buy online and return every other piece because it either does not fit or whatever. Saves me a lot time, and protects the environment, as less returns are needlessly destroyed.
With our next city, well… spending money on road maintenance basically does not happen. They only repair what would otherwise fall apart, and this only adds to the chaos in this city. And as I said, money to properly reconfigure the city to make it bike friendly is simply not there.
If you just need groceries for the week, but your town has nothing to offer in walking distance, it almost sounds like there’s a business begging to be built there, even if it’s a two-room local affair.
While this sounds a good idea at first, literally tens of thousands of shops of this kind have died in my country in the last years, because there is simply no money to be made. There are a few shops that are run by local groups of volunteers because such a shop would not make enough money to survive otherwise.
There’s no reason to gender the word Mayor, a Mayor is a Mayor despite whatever bits they have.
There you are wrong. The official titel of a female mayor is “mayoress”, so it is “Mr. Mayor” and “Madam Mayoress”. Well, at least in the UK.
Source: I had to deal with them last week.
All correct, and points made that have virtually no rebuttal, so they just downvote you out of spite. Here’s my upvote.
Their comment is missing the point. It essentially boils down to “the current infrastructure is bad” which is entirely what people advocating for less car centric design have been saying for a long time, but instead of using that as a reason to advocate for better they’re using it as a reason not to do anything
No. The reason why they don’t do anything is simply: Doing it right costs money. That cities either don’t have, or don’t want to invest. Turning a car-centric city into a bike and public transport friendly one is very expensive.
That’s changing the subject again. I was saying the commentor was effectively advocating for doing nothing because current infrastructure is poor.
It’s worth noting that car centric infrastructure is extremely expensive as well and requires constant upkeep. Bike infrastructure can often be made incrementally by simplying just requiring new/updated road to have bike lanes for instance
That is part of how the Netherlands got really good bike infrastructure and how a number of cities are getting better at it
EDIT: I should also mention that the car centric deisgn of many suburbs in particular is a large contributer to why they don’t have much money to begin with. The upkeep costs start to pile up and make the regions net negative for the local government’s income
The more a place is car centric, the higher these costs for upkeep will be (more traffic causing more damage in more places)
It’s worth noting that car centric infrastructure is extremely expensive as well and requires constant upkeep. Bike infrastructure can often be made incrementally by simplying just requiring new/updated road to have bike lanes for instance
Well, try that in a city environment. It might work with some of the main roads, but we are not in Cities:Skylines here where houses move or are automatically replaced when you install a wider road. I may have to add that here is not the US where many roads are so wide that you need a car to get to the other side ;-)
More than 80% (give or take) of the roads in cities here are so narrow that two (small) car lanes plus the pedestrian sidewalks are basically “it”. The road in front of my house is, IIRC, between 5.4 and 5.8m wide - without having a sidewalk. Try adding a bike path here. And if you turn basically each and every side road into one-way roads in order to add bike paths might lead to serious acceptance problems.
The more a place is car centric, the higher these costs for upkeep will be (more traffic causing more damage in more places)
Well, while I won’t contradict your notion that more traffic causes more damage, I’d ask you to keep in mind that one truck does as much damage to a road as 40000 cars (yes, it is that much, the damage factor is x4, with x being the relative mass, and the calculation base being a normal European car, not a six ton American pickup). So, as long as you want to have your supermarket stocked and your amazon order delivered, the damage created by private cars is simply irrelevant.
For the first part, yes that will vary place to place. That’s why I said “often”, but it’s a viable method in quite a large number of locations. Especially in those which are currently some of the worst places for walkabilty/biking/public transit at the moment. Places with narrow streets are generally speaking more walkable to begin with. There are still other ways to make improvements anyhow
For the second, I am also talking about the quantity of roads (the more places part). More car centric places are going to have more roads to maintain in general.
But it’s still worth mentioning that car centric design can still can lead to trucks being used in places where there are viable transportation methods like trains (this applies more so for longer distances than just delivery to houses but a number of cities do have highways that run through them).
Thanks.
Rather, his “arguments” are so stupid, it’s difficult to chose how to completely destroy them.
Chose one and give it a try. I don’t mind seeing you fail.
Are you braindead or just a rightwinger? It’s difficult to tell, sometimes.
Have you ever heard about other countries existing? Not everywhere is a car-centric shithole.
I don’t live in that car-centric shithole. So much for assumptions.
And I take calling me “rightwinger” as a serious insult.
There are cities in my country that managed to strike a good balance between cars and bikes. E.g. with continuous bike paths and stuff like that. But most cities here have two problems: They simply jump short with bike paths and leave safe bike access as a crazy patchwork on the city map, making it more or less useless. And they keep public transport back because it actually costs money.
I’ve nothing against bikes. Occasionally I rant against stupid and irresponsible bikers, of which there are too many, and that give normal bikers a bad name. I would love to see bike-friendly cities, but I also see cities stumbling around like a beheaded chicken when it comes to implementation.
So, as long as public transport is no usable alternative, a city has to deal with cars as a means of people coming into a city as workers and customers. The alternative would be a city that completely relies on local people. Might be environment friendly, but simply not realistic. They just don’t have the purchase power to keep a cities businesses alive.
I live in the country and shop for two weeks. OP can eat a dick. Unless they are into that, then they can eat something they don’t like.
I hate point 2 and 3.
I have an avarage travel of 45-55 minutes from my home city to the city I work in. By car and by train, while the train is usually on the slower end. It takes about 20-30 minutes to get from my home to the train station by taking the bus or riding the bike. When taking the bus I also have to factor in about 15 minutes between arrival at the station and departure of the train. Then there is another 20 minutes from the train station at destination to my place of work. So it takes me 40-65 minutes longer taking the train… twice a day, making it 1:20-2:10h a day (when Im lucky bc trains over here have frequent delays). One hour ish doesn’t sound like much? Well you’ll feel it if you working 11-12h a shift or a 9-10 hour a day in a normal 9 to 5 job (starting work at around 7 a.m.).
Then there is a neat little think called night or late shifts. There is no way I’m gonna take the train here. They either take an hour longer or the bus at my home city does not drive anymore on the way back.
Demand better public transportation. Demand functioning trains and frequent bus and tram connections. But do not tell people that need to take the car for whatever reason, that they should just take the worse option and make them feel like the problem.
I hate cars. I hate driving. And I love taking the train or taking the bike within my city. But sometimes I just have to take the car. That is not my fault tho, since public transportation is not the main focus of politics over here. And thats what needs to change globally.
How likely is it that your home and work are 20 minutes away from train stations because your region prioritizes cars?
Its not just likely, thats the case. But living in the inner city is expensive here. And thats the case in most of the country.
I tried taking my family out on a weekend on transit. 40 minutes wait for a bus that had any room, an hour to travel 10km, and it cost us $10 each way for the family. I live in a major city but our transit is trash. It’s not fit for a city of this size.
That sounds horrible. Public transportation is such a vital thing for citys to function properly as a place to live and not just work in. And dont get me started on small towns or the countryside where not owning a car basically means you’re fucked. I cannot wrap my head around how politicians just fail to see this. Climate change might be the most urgent, but by far not the only argument for better public transportation.
It’s not fit for a city of this size.
Tokyo would like to have a word with you. It’s not public transit in and of itself that is the issue, it’s the implementation.
I think you read that wrong. They aren’t saying public transit doesn’t work in a city that size, but the public transit in their city isn’t up to the standard it should be for a city that size.
You’re right, I see it now. My bad!
When I switched from using the bus to going by bike, i cut my commute time by more than half. If I were to take the car, it would halve again. Public transport is great, and necessary. But it will never be faster than a personal car for anything but large distances.
If I rode my bike to work, my shift would be over by the time I got there. I’m really starting to like the idea of biking to work.
I’m in Vancouver, while the system needs some improvement, the skytrain gets me right to the airport, with trains every few minutes. No parking nonsense. Driving, with traffic, is much longer. Bussing has some express routes so the trips aren’t so many stops also. until the system wxpands develooment the consideration is looking for a place nearer a stop or station.
A bike is faster in my city if you are decently fast, but a bus or trolley is faster than cars during rush hours, because we have public transit lanes, so while everyone in their tin cans is stressed yelling at the dumbass who just cut them off im breezing past, listening to a podcast, meditating or catching a quick ten minute nap before work.
Nearly every city on the planet with a subway system disputes your bullshit.
So what? Subways requires a minimum amount of people to be viable. Outside of major urban centres they are useless.
Guess where most people live and want to live?
I think the point here is that suburbs and cities have such dogshit public transit and bike infrastructure that people do everything by car. Nobody is telling those who live in rural areas to bike 30km to get groceries.
It sure is nice that everyone gets to live in New York, London, and Washington.
A better solution is to reduce how much people need to travel. Instead of building trillion-dollartransit systems so people can to to the office we should be taxing the everloving shit out of office spaces for jobs that can be worked remotely.
Why not both? I live in Stockholm and work from home. I have amazing trains that I could take to work, and I’ve never had a commute longer than 40 minutes. But a 0 minute commute is still shorter than 5minute commute.
Because not everyone can live in fucking Stockholm.
An apartment within 40 miles of my office in the city costs 5x as much per month as where I live. I can’t get a fucking pizza delivered to my house, much less a bus. And unless I want to smell like a gym at work the 5+ months a year it’s over 100° outside, I need to drive to the nearest bus station if I want to take transit. So I’m already having to drive and park somewhere. Then I have to pay to park at the bus station and pay again to ride the bus that drops me off 9 blocks from my office, where I’d have to walk the rest of the way.
All told it’d add 2-3 hours to my commute and be more expensive than driving.
But if 100% of the work I do is on the computer at the office. The real solution is to not have the fucking office at all.
There are obviously other systemic problems. Cities being designed around cars isn’t the only one.
But your rage shouldn’t be directed at the people who want to make public transit options suck less.
His solution isn’t to make it suck less. His just says how great it is to live somewhere that was designed around walking because when the city was established that was pretty much the only option.
The Southern US is designed around cars because until fairly recently it was very sparsely populated, so everything had to be designed around cars and air conditioning in order to develop. It was the correct decision at the time, and changing it now is much more difficult than simply saying “be like this city that was established before the steam engine.”
Yeah that’s definitely a challenge, and I believe it is a failure of city planning.
My condo is worth $300k and is within 15min of central Stockholm. The housing crisis is definitely a problem around the world, but European cities that don’t have the missing middle problem are in a much better place.
Back on topic, even if you could work from home, it would still take you over an hour to go grocery shopping or buy a pizza, which is a huge problem. Both of those things are within a 15 min walk for me.
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… where you live. Where I live (in central Europe) we have a subway every 2-3 minutes and you’re at worst 2 blocks away from a stop. It all depends on the infrastructure. A subway cant be stuck in traffic…
Yep. Here in Berlin traveling to my old office (when I didn’t work from home all the time) with the S or U-bahn took 30-35 minutes and by car/taxi about 40-45 minutes due to the traffic.
Berlin is one of the few german cities where public transport is done right. In cologne, where I lived, there are a lot of stops, but the inferstructure is just realy bad. They managed that trains get stuck in traffic too sometimes. And for some reason they trains only arrive in a 10-30min time window. So if you want to follow one line it’s relatively fine, but if you have to change trains you have to be lucky. In the city center still faster than driving though.
Also, trams/streetcars in Zurich have right of way and the red lights change for them. Which is completely logical considering how many more people you can fit in them than a few cards at a red light. The problems with public transit in North America are a function of our car infrastructure.
Just say central european city.
I too live in central europe and the bus line i could take from my town to the town i work in takes 1 hr to get there and back, at the end of my day the bus only departes one hour after i’m finished with work so i have to wait for the bus the same amount of time i need for both ways with my car.
They should really say a European city with a subway. Not all cities in Europe have a subway.
It was pretty obvious from my comment that I live in a European city with a subway…
I didnt say my comment applied to all European cities either.
Cool lemme just build a train really quick to my work, great idea
Like I get what this is saying and all, and I will vote for anyone who supports this kind of thing, but telling me not to drive my car is not the solution.
Trains are good for short distances, like going to work.
When you compare trains to planes, why would you take a train for a long distance journey? It takes much longer to get there and it’s also more expensive.
Lemmy is just as circlejerky, overly sensitive, cliquey and dogpiley as Reddit.
car apologists are seething
Great meme and even better because its true.
Imagine getting driven everywhere and still choosing doing it on your own. These people need Steam Decks, I tell you.
I love cars and I love driving but commuting by car just sucks in every possible way.
I dispute every way. There is nothing like listening to music in your car. It sounds better.
Y’all need some better headphones
deleted by creator
invest in good headphones then
Okay I’ll walk 19 miles to work.
Sure, those are the only two options.
Ok I’ll catch two buses and a train. Or three buses. I’ll only have to wake up at 5am everyday and go to bed at 9pm after returning home at 8:30. Totally viable.
If only there was something with two wheels
Ride a bike for a 38 mile round trip every single day to another city and back when there is no bike lane connecting said cities?
Bikes just aren’t viable for anybody who sweats like a bitch.
Can’t sing along at the top of my lungs though, which is the only place I can because the walls of my apartment are too thin.
Driving to and from places is way more relaxing than being on transit imo. Transit has always been significantly more stressful for me and never lines up with when I need to use it.
People like you admitting driving is relaxing is why I find car-centric places stressful. You are driving a 2 ton heavy machinery. You should be stressed and alert.
Stressed means you make more mistakes. Calm and collected, as well as relaxed is the better way to drive. You’re less likely to make mistakes or poor decisions when relaxed.
Stressed drivers are dangerous and unpredictable.
For me it’s the other way around. Public transit is more relaxing since I can just sit down and relax and don’t have to deal with all these idiots that drive like they have to arrive at their destination half an hour ago.
Depends on your cars sound system
It does but there is something about the combination of driving and music that is magical.
I feel you. But I’d rather reserve this for when I want to drive and don’t have to.
We were not supposed to go to the moon! Years of building rocket infrastructure and yet nobody other than a select few people have gone to the moon!
Stop building rockets!
Stop doing physics! Motion was not meant to be analysed.
convert that speed from nautical miles to miles please
let me calculate the snap, crackle and pop of that missile
Statements dreamed up by the utterly insane.
Yeah I want to go to the shops and back faster than a trip to the moon thanks.
To be fair going to the moon wasnt about going the moon. It was about proving you could deliver mutual destruction wherever you wanted through general rocket superioririty
And yet very few people actually get to launch nukes these days. One rule for them and another for us.
ye but what if i have to go to a tiny village that has no public transport nearby
Yet again, this is not a meme. This is an idealogical pamphlet. I don’t even disagree with the message. But it’s not a meme.
