Image transcript:
Calvin (from Calvin & Hobbes) sitting at a lemonade stand, smiling, with a sign that reads, “Trains and micromobility are inevitably the future of urban transportation, whether society wants it or not. CHANGE MY MIND.”
I thought remote work and urban archipelagos, so yeah.
Trains are great but people want their own personal bubble and don’t want to stand around outside waiting for a train especially since the timetable is out of their control
Quite frankly as an American, I think it’s very American to even consider the timetable as out of your control. For a lot of places, the trains come so fast that you’re not even waiting for a few minutes - like most drivers take longer to get settled into their car seat before driving. The sorry state of American transit is absolutely not the pinnacle of transit.
This has been my sticking point with trains. In theory, it sounds fantastic and I’m all for it. The problem is is that Having a vehicle is so much nicer. Air conditioned and private transportation, whenever you want. Listen to what you want, go where you want.
Maybe if the train was much more convenient? I like the idea for travel more.
Air conditioned
Public transit has this technology.
Listen to what you want
Headphones.
whenever you want […] go where you want
Public transit can solve these problems with more frequency and routes. Sometimes public transit goes places private transport can’t!
private transportation
Can’t do this one.
Public transit can solve these problems with more frequency and routes. Sometimes public transit goes places private transport can’t!
Or, hell, just get one of those foldable ebikes that are all the rage these days. Technology is coming for cars just as it came for horses and nobody even realizes it.
Ehh, it’s more like comparing a hostel to a hotel room.
Would you trade your private bathroom for a public one? Considering you already had a private bathroom, going to a public one is a downgrade.
Can’t do this one.
For long-distance travel, sleeper cars on trains are even better – you can’t close the curtains and go to sleep if you’re driving across the country.
For short-distance travel, bikes and scooters!
Great point! Sleeper car rail in Canada is so terrible I tend to forget it exists.
I recently bought a car for the first time in a decade. Driving is hell.
If you look at old maps of streetcar networks in cities (before they ripped up the tracks to replace them with cars), one thing that stands out is just how dense the networks were. For instance, here’s the old Montreal streetcar map:
Versus the modern-day Montreal metro map:
And Montreal has some of the best modern-day urbanism in North America, mind you; most cities are far worse. But it really makes you imagine what our cities could be like if we made many/most streets car-free and just had ultra-dense networks of trams again. Maybe even cargo trams to deliver goods to stores as well. Trains would be ubiquitous and ultra-convenient.
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It’s because we built everything to be car-scale and then the metro states had to adapt to that
Crappy.
This is key. Urban planners and environment folks focus so much on their respective fields and don’t consider dignity enough. Of course we’d all like cheap, fast, sustainable transportation, but not if that means being packed into bench seating, plagued with delays, and sometimes even risk our safety due to other passengers. Trains don’t have to be bad, but the penny-pinching planners often ruin the experience.
I drove through Atlanta at rush hour once. I’ll never go there again, if I can help it. That was kind of the opposite of what I think of when I think of “dignity.”
Move to the city and use a bike? Can’t or don’t want? Not a problem for the city or the people that live in it, you’re a guest, not a resident.
What people want and what is sustainable may be two different things and some people will just have to deal with that. Leave earlier and dress for the weather 🤷♀️
Or, stay at home, and let someone else do the traveling.
Ideal but large corporations and billionaires are not just going to stand by and let the government ban cars
Who said anything about banning cars?
the strawman said it
We don’t need to ban cars, we just need to stop structuring literally everything around accommodating them. Also a difficult task, but far easier than banning cars.
Literally incongruous with how most folks will vote but sure
Because people still vote for money over prosperity.
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Well, you certainly can be poor and need gas money to go to work in a remote factory because you live in a farm in a rural area and there’s no transport, and the most cost effective way is a car.
Nope.
Those super long electric busses will become more popular than trains. They are muuch cheaper to get. You can just send in a new one in case the first one breaks down, etc.
Though we also cant all live nrar these “train stops”?
I dont live near any right now.
Those super long electric busses will become more popular than trains.
Though heavy batteries are bad for energy efficiency and big capacity batteries are long to charge. Well, it can be solved by constantly charging them. This also allows to reduce required capacity, thus reducing weight. Constant charging most efficiently can be done by using wires. Oh, wait. I just reinvented trolley.
Though we also cant all live nrar these “train stops”?
*European disagreeing noises*
We can all live near a train stop. Roads were built everywhere. Train rails are actually not as expensive to build
You’d been trams,not trains. Trains are great at covering long distance quickly, but if they have to navigate tight turns and stop every few minutes then they’ll be pointless.
Not sure why people aren’t talking more about busses here, it would make way more sense to utilize busses for local travel.
The distinction between tram, train and subway is not relevant. There are full trains navigating Paris for example, but also tram and subways. They are all very good, and you can navigate the city without ever taking a bus.
But they don’t handle the 90° corners that are built into so much of the existing landscape.
You wanr to say cars can turn 90° on the spot? Unless you are an Ukrainian farmer, no - your car is not a tank.
No, I’m saying there’s a huge difference between a 15 foot turning radius and a 400 foot turning radius. Trying to put trains in the existing 50 foot x 50 foot road intersections is not going to work without moving a lot of buildings.
15 foot turning radius
Sounds like a forklift. Double for cars, or triple for speeders and idiots.
400 foot turning radius
20 meters at most. 71-931 has 20, and it’s HUGE. Or 65 units of imperialism.
Trains can transport higher loads of people though. So ultimately both trains and busses need to be the priority.
What needs to happen first is fuel price needs to be so high that people are incentivized to
a) switch to public transit no matter how shitty it is because they just can’t afford a car anymore
b) start public transit companies because there is money to be made and the oil lobbies don’t have enough money anymore to lobby effectivelyMy guess is before 2050 nobody will really get anything done because the oil lobby is just too powerful. Would be great though.
What needs to happen first is fuel price needs to be so high that people are incentivized to
Absolutely. The fossil fuel industry recieves billions upon billions of dollars in subsidies every year. Why in the actual fuck are we still paying for something that is actively killing us? It makes no sense. All of the subsidies to fossil fuels needs to be re-routed towards public transportation and green energy.
100% depends on where you’re going and how far journeys are.
For a small inner city area, a subway is great. For a larger urban area, a tram system. For intercity travel, trains. Out in a rural area, buses would be the way, although more remote locations would need government subsidies to be even remotely functional, and even then it may resemble on demand taxis rather than a scheduled bus service.
No single solution will get you all the way there.
No single solution will get you all the way there.
Except for the car, which is why it’s such a popular choice. Also no need to worry about catching the next thing, or buying the right tickets, you just get in and go.
I haven’t heard of any solution or combination of solutions that would be convenient and work in most cities.
Can car move you from bedrom to kitchen? Escooter can.
Yep there’s nothing else as good as having your own vehicle to freely travel wherever you want to on your own schedule and in relative privacy. The rest of y’all can enjoy your trains as much as you want, but there’s no train or bus that comes out to my house in the woods so I’m going to keep driving my car for the foreseeable future. After that it will probably be an electric SUV that I keep driving. I’ll charge my car from my solar power at home and be energy independent.
Doesn’t it bother you that even in cars you don’t have privacy?
No single solution will get you all the way there.
Absolutely. Public transportation needs to be comprehensive.
Subway is just giving space above ground for cars. Since there is no cars, you can just do trams.
although more remote locations would need government subsidies to be even remotely functional
Not that current roads to remote loctions are subsidised
The future is as hazy as literally everything else. Do we have cars where they aren’t needed? Yes Do we have rail systems that are hot garbage? yes Do we have rural area that are sprawling making rail and micro less possible? yes
Will trains and public trans be a staple of the future just like it is today in larger cities? yes.
When I lived in Philly, I took the train everywhere but the grocery store… except when I had leisure time then I took my car… and where I went, and a train or self driving care won’t take me there.
I agree. I just wanted to say that I really hope this meme completely replaces the original one, so we won’t have to look at Steven Crowder’s face as much going forward.
By the time those thing will have taken over, something else will be in their place. For certain values of ‘trains’, ‘urban’ and ‘micro mobility’, your claim will likely be true, but ithat is too vague to talk someone out of if that’s simply your stance.
I rented a car with adaptive cruise controle a month ago and it felt like riding a train. Driverles cars could work if they aren’t personal possession.
Counterpoint: Society will collapse to the point where cities, let alone trains and microtransport, will no longer be available or viable.
When this point of infrastructural collaps is reached, cars won’t help you much either.
The post is about trains though
In that scenario, I think analog bicycles will be essential for getting around between places, albeit using the actual roads and stuff.
Fuel would likely either be extremely rare IMO or a military luxury
I agree. There just won’t be trains running for a very long time if ever again, is all. Maybe a couple centuries minimum while humanity recovers from whatever toppled it.
What I’m saying is even if that car was part of a network of attachable cars, the maintenance of the infrastructure needed to accomodate those cars is still way more expensive. This is not even getting into the discussion that if you have enough cars to need a highway (let alone enough to start attaching self-driving cars to each other), a train is more feasible. Period.
I will agree with you that the train is not the be all and end all. Good bike infrastructure (separated bike lanes that are connected through a planned network), light rail/trams and buses all have their place. What I disagree is the use of cars in urban and suburban centers/ corridors. There is no need. The only people that should use private vehicles are delivery vehicles, emergency vehicles, and those that live in impossibly remote areas that are very much disconnected from urban centers - areas that are hardly surrounded by a self-sustaining community.
Also, trains and light rail have already been automated. The tech is already here.
I like how you assume that society will choose to have a future over self-immolation.
Depends on society. Here in Europe we build more and more railways even though we already have shitloads (compared to US).
But build very slowly. Compare to USSR where shitloads of railways were made in 70 years.
Although “better less, but better”
Well, USSR was a different beast. You can’t build that fast in a democratic society.
After around 1919 and before Stalin USSR was democratic. And from 80-ies to the end. And democracy ended about 1996. Then shooting parlament from tanks, then Eltsin names his successor, then his successor wins, then removal of gubernator elections in 2002-2003, and everything else.
And in comparasion USSR was more democratic than empire except Stalin time. Stalin time managed to be even worse.
Oh wow, the delusion… Mate, you ok?
You want to say that Russian Empire that was monarchy had more democracy? THAT is delusion.
Or you want to say Stalin was good? That is delusion too.
Where did you get the Empire from, mmm? The fuck are you talking about at all?
Yeah that’s a bold assumption. My bet is on “it’s going to get progressively worse and never better”. I have yet to be proven wrong. Since the day I was born everything’s been enshittening with only inconsequential cosmetic improvements (lol technology, what a joke).
My plan is to work from home, be completely self sufficient with minimal transport and do all I can do online.
So your definition of self sufficient is to be 100% reliant on Internet infrastructure?
Internet infrastructure is best infrastructure humanity made. To be fair, this is only infrastructure entire humanity made.
Eh, I guess? Partially. I have stores nearby that I can go walking, and WFH so yeah internet reliant, but I’m a programmer so that’s already a given anyway.
I did say self sufficient with minimal transport though.
Yeah…being a programmer, it doesn’t matter if WFH structure falls because around the same time most technology might fall. We just gotta hope that it’s multi-decades away at this point
I live mostly this way. I have an electric car but I live in a very dense urban area and don’t drive much. Looking to get myself an ebike or scooter to use as my main mode of transportation.
If nothing else, car dependency is fiscally unsustainable. We might go kicking and screaming towards the solution, but eventually people will have no choice but to abandon the financial suicide that is making your city car dependent.
True, and I wish my city would realize it harder, sooner. On the other hand, I just read an article the other day that claims that the collapse of civilization has begun. A lot of societies throughout history perseverated with maladaptive habits after the local environment changed, and thus collapsed. A lot of them didn’t, though, and I hope that we’ll wise up in time.
But yeah, honestly, I’m worried myself that our society is starting to unravel if we don’t get our act together. Unmitigated climate catastrophe may well prove to be the greatest disaster in human history, if you count all the wars, famines, genocide it may cause. I sincerely hope it doesn’t turn out so dire, but so far humanity is stubbornly refusing to do anywhere near enough to stop it. Whether that’s civilization-ending or merely really frickin bad remains to be seen, but it’s also worthwhile noting that collapse doesn’t always mean post-apocalyptic; for farmers in ancient Rome around its collapse, life probably didn’t seem all that different day-to-day.
I’ve thought about that, too. How very rural people way back when may not have known or cared what empire they belonged to. I read years ago about a region France that routinely got double taxed because no one was really sure if they were French or German, and it was just easier to pay your taxes to both collectors than fight it. A society like that, yeah, they may not care so much about the empires collapse. But us? Even in the most rural areas of any ‘western’ country, the difference would likely be huge. No sanitation department, no internet, no electricity. And because, especially in the US, we have never developed a sense of personal responsibility to our communities or any kind of solidarity, we are unlikely to weather that particularly well. There’ll be no spontaneous eruption of communal gatherings and a sense of building a better community. They’ll be bastards hoarding shit and people shooting each other because there’s no one to stop it. :(
That’s wierd. In country where internet was created(on tax money btw) not everyone gets internet.
There’s no getting our act together. We’ve already passed the point of no return. Now we can only try to mitigate how bad it could get.
I don’t think we will take any serious steps toward that, either… I’m worried we’ll pull the Clathrate trigger in my lifetime
Ever read Mother of Storms by John Barnes?
A percentage of people will, like they always do. My pessimistic view is that we just need to see how bad it gets before the pendulum starts swinging back the other way
Let me remind you that there are rural areas where people life in farms and need to drive to the factory they work in, there’s no shuttle bus, no train no nothing, and while isolated factories exist this will still be the case. They can’t really arrange a bus that goes to pick up their employees, since the roundabout would make it more gax expensive and some people live in places where a bus can’t even dream to get in.
I wish things improved, and that this became a reality for cities, there’s already cities in holland where getting the car in is prohibited, you need to leave it outside the city, but making car dependency fiscally unsustainable is punishing people that can’t have the privilege to work on other stuff. Imagine electrical technitians, they can’t take a bus/train/tram with machinery, even in a city. I’m all in for improvement and punishment for whim driving, but it needs to be regulated well not to fuck again poor people, because factory workers of rural areas aren’t partcularly rich.
For reference, I live in a mountain area, Europe.
OP mentioned Urban in their post, City in their comment, why do you need to come in with the “but muh rural” argument?
Because apparently I can’t read.
Again, for reference, I don’t even own a car, I WFH and life in a town where public transport is excellent, but most of my family members live in the situation I described. Anyway, even though this post is about urban areas, there are plenty comments talking about cars as a whole, and usually policies done to fix car usage, things like gas prices and such, affect everyone, not only urbanites like me.
In a perfect world/scenario…which would never happen…
If urban centers immediately dropped their reliance on cars and individual transport systems, then there would be more gas to go to rural centers where individual transportation makes more sense (going to the store) or is mandatory (farm and other industrial equipment) making prices drop for rural gas and urban center be more self sufficient and environmentally friendly.
…one can dream
Urban centers dropping their car reliance isn’t achieved by making it expensive for everyone, but by banning it’s use and increasing the public transport support.
What is micro mobility? I’ve not heard this phrase before.
Based
Good job with meme template, everyone needs to start adopting this format and not the one with the conservative fascist chud that abuses his wife.
![[meme] Trains -- not driverless cars -- are the future of transportation](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f6468af5-8151-4b4c-b339-2fa0b0373c3a.webp){kind=link}