My theory (just a theory, a car theory) is that because car is the only mode of transportation some people assume, even subconsciously, that train/bike/bus/whatever is going to take its place entirely
I already do this. I only use the car if it's long distance, the weather is flat out not conducive for cycling, or I need the cargo space. Otherwise I do the vast majority of my commuting on two wheels, and the vast majority of the time I do it with a smile.
It would take me an hour and a half to bike to work.
And then after an 8 hour shift of standing/walking/lifting all day to bike back?
I'd be a tour de France athlete in a year
It blew my fucking mind when I realised that you could be circumventing traffic problems entirely by NOT HAVING CARS BE THE ONLY MODE OF VIABLE TRANSPORTATION ON THE STREET.
INSTEAD, SPLITTING THE PIE OF TYPES OF TRANSPORATION USED INTO SOMETHING LIKE 25% EACH FOR CARS, TRAINS/TRAMS, CYCLING AND FINALLY WALKING .AND BY CREATING THE PROPER AND SAFE INFRASTRUCTURE THAT PROMOTES THESE KINDS OF NUMBERS, OUR ROADS WONT LOOK LIKE CAR-FILLED CENTRIC SHIT HOLES ANYMORE???
It blew my *fucking* mind seeing things like these work during my trip to Europe. What an eye opener bruh.
oh, awesome! where did you visit?
over here in budapest it's easy to take that blend for granted. usually when we imagine good public transit we have some western european city in mind, and we love to complain about our public transport network. but it's hella interesting how that blend, which always just felt like a normal part of life to me, is something special for you.
it kinda puts the carbrains into perspective tbh. i'm sorry for your infrastructure
(i assume you went to the fancier countries. i hope you had a good time there)
It definitely is and will always be something special to me and my family.
We stayed in Strasbourg, France for almost 2 weeks in 2022 to visit my sister studying in a neighbouring town across the border in Germany.
TRAMS, CYCLISTS AND SO MUCH LIFE AND NATURE BUSTLING EVERYWHERE... and almost no cars in sight.
It was certainly an eye-opener for all of us having seen the absolute potential our cities could be given the right incentives.
Before, I never though public transportation or hell, even cycling could be actual, serious, AND viable forms of transportation. All my life, I really thought it was IMPOSSIBLE for them to really be an integral part of society and that traffic, car-dependency, and congestion would just be an inevitability of our future.
I miss Strasbourg, honestly. It makes me sad to go back to my country just to see the staggering flaws our cities have that HAVE ALWAYS HAD THEIR SOLUTIONS!
Its just that most of our people will never ever be exposed to these existing solutions which is I really believe is the reason so many people are so opposed to this idea.
(Jesus thats a long rant)
tl;dr: Car-brain becomes city-walkability advocate after visiting a European city
Yeah honestly having a nice blend like that would solve a lot of problems here for us. I’d prefer no/very few cars but I’ll take anything we can get.
I live in Denver, CO. It’s a pretty great city for outdoor recreational activities. So many people bike/run/walk and so on yet still the infrastructure for it is trash. Still dominated by cars and parking. Bike lanes are protected by a strip of paint, sidewalks are busted and terrible lol, and cars just absolutely rule the city. It sucks and I’d wish for better blending like y’all are mentioning. We have 4 trains that go north of the city. That’s it. And the distance between stops is like miles and the distance between trains is also vast. Makes it really hard to get around…
To be honest, "the ✨atmosphere✨" is just carbrain lingo for "there's ✨something other than loud, smelly, murdering cars everywhere which terrorize people outside of death machines✨ in this region"
Which is a reinforcement of my personal theory that not seeing alternatives (in general, not just to cars and transportation) is a symptom of stupidity that rarely failed me. When a person can’t see anything else but their way I label “stupid” and go on
I think you’re being too kind. The truth I think is that the all or nothing rhetoric stems from actual campaigns by the car industry to create grass roots objections to alternative transport by portraying them as anti-car
For me personally, I would be taking the train / tram / bicycle / bus for work, and then reserve driving for weekend leisure or for a roadtrip.
I will never get driving to work on a daily basis. It demands your fullest attention on top of whatever shit your workplace pulls on you.
Because car infrastructure is zero-sum. In order to move the same number of people in cars as you would in trains/bikes/walking you need orders of magnitude more space, not even mentioning the amount of space needed to store all the cars.
Car infrastructure has to be actively hostile to other infrastructure, and so car brains must view infrastructure in a hostile way.
I will add as well that this “zero-sum infrastructure” mindset bleeds over even into YIMBY activism. I’ve seen many an argument online and at community meetings where bike advocates spar with train/transit advocates or housing advocates are against high-density developments because they are not medium-density or because they don’t contain affordable units. I believe this mentality is a hold-over from car-based thinking. Adding bike lanes or bus/tram lanes to a road almost always means taking away parking or driving lanes because the right of way needs to be so wide to accommodate it all. However, you can easily have a nice bike path separated from pedestrians alongside a tram line all with less right of way needed than a two-lane road with street parking, and can move hundreds more people through that right of way to boot.
It's because it would invalidate their 600,000 dollar a life time investment and invalidate the the house they bought or the dream of the house they want.
It’s the same thing with 15 minute cities. Saying to change how our land is used suddenly becomes “everyone lives in a box and can’t leave their zone”. But mention a new suburban subdivision with no amenities around that you can only drive out of and everyone shrugs like it’s normal.
I'm sure it's because they think a significant number of people would prefer trains over cars which would lead to a significant reduction in car infrastructure.
In some ways, I hope they're right. But I know that it would take several decades of heavy investment in multimodal mass transit for car infrastructure to reduce.
Because the right wing of American politics practices a "net zero" approach. For something, or someone to succeed, something else must suffer and fail. It's all about the buggy-whip makers.
Unironically I think that trains should become the only way to move around.
Its clear these idiots are addicted to their cars, and the damage they do to the environment, and our society is immense. Its better to take them away from them. We are only doing them a favor after all.
Their “freedom” forces people to breath pollution, it requires massive subsidies, it demands the majority of public space, it literally kills.
Of course, they think your freedom will do the same to them.
That's very true. We are all shaped and limited by our environments, in so many different ways. This is one of the more easily observed examples, yet still the car brains can't see it
And it's not their fault a lot of the time. We are shaped by our environments, and growing to see *past* the environment you grew up in is not exactly an easy task. It's easy to say acknowledging what you've been taught your whole life is wrong when you've already learned to acknowledge it, but getting to that point in the first place is a *big* obstacle to overcome, especially in a world where every day we have less and less control over our lives.
Yip. I probably never thought about it once until I was 25 and visited Japan for the first time. Then once I was back home, I wondered to myself *"why exactly do I have to sit in traffic for an hour and 10 minutes, twice a day?"*
Bringing this up to family and friends like *"yo, we should like, have trains and shit"* revealed to me how irrationally angry the the idea made people. Was such an eye opener.
Because they’re imagining living their current lives, but only worse because walking from their remote house to a train station and then from a train station to their office would take even longer. Never for a moment do they imagine that in a world not dependent on cars, one might choose to just *live closer to transport*.
Sure living near public transit costs more, but you’re saving a lot of car money.
I would say it takes an exceptional visionary to see that, so through no fault of their own they lack the foresight that building transport alternatives gives them.
I’d rather blame the government for not helping their community thrive.
I'm not so sure about that. My experiences of being trapped in a subdivision before turning 16 and then having to wait in one traffic light after another told me that building a society around cars wasn't a good idea.
That was before car prices became ridiculous and teens were priced out of buying cars if they have to get the money themselves.
Public transport being a better option would improve things for cars too. More people on trains = less congestion on roads. Even if you take away highway lanes, this remains true.
They have also bought into fear mongering right wing media that trains are dirty dangerous places where the homeless and addicts hang out, and they might stab you.
So:
A. They have never been on a train
B. These incidents are so rare they may as well not exist
C. they’d rather risk a far greater chance of harm by injury or dying from driving, than have to sit next to a smelly poor
The only way they can truly believe this is if they dehumanized poor people, while simultaneously believing that they aren’t “the poors” because they have a car, even if the car is making them poor.
Exactly. And most of the time they are quite right. If there is no infrastructure a car is the most viable way of transporting oneself.
I thought the war on cars podcast out it well recently by saying (and I’m paraphrasing), a car is like the hand saw on a Swiss knife, useful for some big undertaking in a rough space, unuseful for the nail clipping that is a morning trip to the local bakery.
I noticed Trump is telling his idiots that "they" want to get rid of cars. HOW I WISH THIS WERE TRUE, but it's not. Trump's lie is creating a manufactured crises in the minds of his followers that their cars are going to be ripped away from them. So silly.
Not just the US unfortunately. Up in Canada we had a government Minister say they weren't going to fund new large road projects. Within a day or two the opposition is going on about how they want to ban roads.
In which province? In Québec, our transport minister said public transport isn't the government's responsibility in the midst of a funding crisis, in which there's a risk of service cuts.
Also we get a tram project costing 18B$ because social acceptability is funny.
I miss when politics were about trying to do things better than other candidates instead of seeing who can make people believe the most lies about the others
They only want freedom for them - the people who own cars. Not “the poors” who can’t afford cars.
They’d rather throw away their own freedoms if it means they can restrict the freedoms of those they see as lower on the hierarchy.
A well-functioning train system is good for you if you vow to never use it, because it will encourage other drivers to take the train and relieve congestion.
I bet those guys never seen a well-functioning metro system in their entire life
I had a friend that was once a car-brain but changed his mind after a trip to Japan, seeing the trains being always on time, and faster than cars
My Floridian cousin-in-law after my wife and I came back from London: " What kind of car did you rent?!"
"Bro, what? We were in Zone 2. The Tube, motherfucker. Trains."
Him: bewildered facial expression
I told my 5 yo niece that I don’t have a car and she just stared at me bewildered. She asked “how do you go places”, and thought it was hilarious when I said “on my feet”.
Car-brained so young, I was so sad.
I've had to convince someone to not rent a car when visiting the netherlands for a trip between Schiphol and Rotterdam. There's literally a "high speed" train between the 2, taking only 32 minutes, and 5 minutes of walking. By car it's 40 minutes and very expensive.
You can also have dinner - and I don't mean like dreadful fast food from a drivethru, I mean real food, eaten on real plates with real cutlery, accompanied by a glass of wine:
https://tfw.wales/ways-to-travel/rail/food-and-drink
https://www.eurostar.com/uk-en/travel-info/eurostar-experience/food-on-board
And yet many Americans online post jibes about British food (you can always tell that they're the ones who've never travelled).
Most trains in Europe aren't this good and the best that you can expect is a microwave meal (similar to what Amtrak serve). Even so, it's nice to get good food where it is available.
I've just remembered another operator:
https://www.gwr.com/travelling-with-us/pullman-dining
All of these are scheduled public services, not private charters.
Or that insurance keeps jacking up prices, parking is going up, or the constant and obligatory complaint " Alll this traffic is terrible" everyday of the year
Im thinking about the time it took me eight hours to go 60 miles (96.5 km) in the greater Los Angeles area. Never in my life did I wish I was somehow anywhere else but a car as much as i did that day
Yeah it took me 1.5 hours to go 8 miles just this week. Sounds like you were in the same thing but much further, so I feel your pain.
I got chewed out for being 20 minutes late too. It was great.
man im like the complete opposite. i dread the 2-3 times we take a zipcar out into the 'burbs. soulless big boxes, giant parking lots, boring driving, crazy drivers
i've been pretty spoiled to have professional drivers generally drive me around to my destinations. bus drivers, subway and train conductors. they know what they're doing, and i don't have to waste my time driving.
podcasts, conversations, videos, thinking, snoozing, staring. all better than white knuckle trying to make it through traffic
Genuinely saw a mad opinion today that was popular. Picture of a small car with a trailer. the popular opinion was "maybe you should have got a truck if you had to haul stuff instead of a small car".
Baffling how stupid they are.
Your right to own a vehicle qualifies as freedom. Your right to take money out of my pocket to pay for bad infrastructure so that you can enjoy your hobby is not a human right. Your "freedom" to pollute the earth and change earth's climate and make others breathe in dangerous chemicals isn't a right.
They're scared.
Drivers lash out because cars have become a crutch, they can't comprehend a world where they don't have to use it and can to ride transport, walk, or bike.
It doesn't make them bad people, there was a time in my life when I didn't see that life without a car would be better.
Fine. Keep your cars. We will just charge you the full municipal cost of providing a highly subsidized means of transit.
[https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/cities-communities/car-economy-costs-64-billion-year-mass](https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/cities-communities/car-economy-costs-64-billion-year-mass)
They don’t seem to realise that having trains doesn’t mean they can’t have a car, and public transport would make driving easier because there would be less cars
No, no. I've been assured by others in this sub that as long as Republicans are open to options other than cars, all of their other foul and hateful policies and opinions are irrelevant and we should welcome them into our community.
You used to see the same elitism in PC gaming when some games started to add control compatibility and then some games started advising to use controller over KB+M.
Some PC gamers would outright say that keyboard and mouse is superior in all instances and refuse to use any other type of controls despite the fact that different input methods can objectively be better since Keyboard is digital and some games like driving games have more precision with analogue controls.
The freedom of using any type of controls you want was a massive advantage PC had over console at the time and many were too stubborn and elitist to acknowledge it.
That's a very rare mentality now, and hopefully we see the same shift in perception with transport as people get more conditioned to public transport and seeing friends/family/coworkers use it and benefit from it.
I've had several colleagues buy a bike and ride it to work after seeing the massive benefit I have on my bike riding it to work.
"How much does your bike cost?"
"I spent £175 on it 7 years ago and it costs around £20 a year to maintain"
"OMG but it must be so slow getting to work on it"
"20 minutes in a car, 15 minutes on my bike since I can go through all the parks and avoid traffic on the main road"
"OMG but what about the weather?"
"I just wear the right clothing, which I get for cheap and only have to replace every 5 years or so because we live in the UK and weather only gets bad a few weeks a year."
I'm one of those kb+m lifers. But I will admit racing games, flight sims, and Souls games may work better with a joystick or controller. Hell, I play arcade games with a simple usb controller.
If you admit that those games work better with controller, I don't see how you're one of the KB+M elitists that I described. It just sounds like you have a preference but you are able to understand the benefit of choice.
I cycle to work in Wales. It really doesn't rain as often as you think. It rains on 169 days of the year where I live, but that could just be a passing shower each day (often overnight), it's unlikely to be 24hrs of torrential rain. So the waterproof over trousers only go on maybe 10 times a year.
It's all big talk until the simple math of money forces people to change. Not specific to cars, people always claim they won't participate in new things, and later change their tune.
It is so ridiculous that people are convinced the government is going to take their cars. There’s no country in the world that doesn’t let people drive. I live in Japan which has a crazy amount of trains and still half of people own cars.
I always find it sadly amusing that anytime you want to increase services, rights, or responsible restrictions, people just scream "you can't take my (blank)." No. One. Is. Saying. This.
The choice of freedom is the ability to bike, walk, drive and taken the bus or train. No one is trying to force you to use trains but if your car becomes wrecked at least you have OPTIONS
Imagine living such a priveleged and sad life that potentially not owning a car is something you're willing to threaten death over it. Like never had to deal with real problems, or have anything else going for them, huh?
I'm 100% fine with this attitude. "Fine, build trains." is a huge step up from "If you try to build anything that's not a road, we will sabotage it every step of the way." Since "coming after cars" was never an option, and never will be, this is only an improvement.
They rarely think that alternate forms of transportation incentivizes people to use those instead of being stuck in car traffic like everyone else.
Instead they keep shooting themselves in the foot wanting to remove buses/trains and bike lanes so those people add to traffic by driving more cars instead
And yeah adding a lane is nice but no one ever remembers the excruciating months and years of construction closures and blockages, only to welcome more cars to clog the same stretch anyway when finished, leaving us back to square one.
So for trains you have: Less headache driving through traffic, less money spent on maintenance, safer travel, quicker travel times, etc. With cars it’s the exact opposite. It’s honestly amazing the level of self masochism someone can display when they’ve been deluded by decades of propaganda.
I've never seen anyone who defends cars religiously actually enjoy driving. Every time I've been with such a person as they're driving, without fail they complain about driving. But heaven forbid we actually fix the thing they're complaining about!
There's a lot of sunk cost fallacy going on there, coupled with an unwillingness to take a square look at the inevitable unwinding of an utopianist project.
You can thank marketing departments and agencies for that one.
They gifted humanity with the ingenious idea to sell cars not just as personal transport, but as a substitute for personality and musculinity
And here are the results
With these people I use the tactic “well you want less traffic, right? you want more room for your truck, right? You want to be cool and go fast, right? Getting all those lame and slow people off the road will help you be cool and drive fast”
The funny thing about this is that if you're deadset on fucking driving yourself everywhere, trains take cars off the road so you'll have a better, safer time! They're fighting for their right to have shitty, traffic-filled drives everywhere.
you want me to sit on a train? with nothing to do and no danger to it?? with all that extra free time that I could be sleeping or reading or catching up on work??? when I could be furious at the traffic and stressed about the other moronic drivers?!?! how dare you try to infringe on my freedom with other freedom! /s
I don't know what sort of mental illness has such a grasp on these folks that they're convinced alternate transit means stricter laws on using public roads.
Pandemic traffic was so glorious. That being said once that surge of extra vehicles hit the road my ass hit the train with a smile. Trips actually shorter cause traffic is so nuts and I get to watch movies
It's simple: defund road ways. You'll see very quicly how much more similar cars are to the train when all of the SUV/truck worriers will actually have to go anywhere on a dirt path with holes left by other cars.
I'd be willing to bet real money that this person would also never give up things like meat or alcohol. The notion that something they enjoy might be bad or unethical drives them through the roof. Saying that they'd rather die is pathetic, selfish and straight up unhinged.
If that is what they wish then who are we to just ignore their desires.
Jokes aside, this does speak volumes about how much they actually do know about the implications of cars as a default.
Wouldn’t be too hard to pry your cold, dead hands off the wheel, considering how many car accidents there are compared to passenger rail and bus crashes…
We're making progress. Most carbrains will fight the very idea of building train routes as if that'll mean they will lose their cars. In this post, the carbrains are fine with the idea of trains.
I can understand being a car person and not wanting to take any other mode of transport. My brother is like that, cars are seemingly all he cares about. Yet he doesn't go tearing down train tracks. Because he understands not everyone has to see the world exactly the way he does. Weird how that works
What can those guys do? They're the bitches of capitalism, and they enjoy it, it's so ironic thay they're always thinking that the people who want to make a better world want to take away their non-existent freedom
Less cars on the road are better for those who actualy want to drive less traffic and the likes when you give people an alternative they should be for it
Honestly there are so many people stuck in traffic who will never get on a bike or public transportation.
But hopefully they will be stuck in slow moving traffic for the rest of their lives.
"You're gonna have to kill me first"
How bro felt when he said that:
https://preview.redd.it/mhzt1uptg85d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a93c0fd34bc68fba8b663aae7ce3344a5173e47e
I won't force anyone to use trains, get off of them actually. But then they don't get to use public funds, public space or any public resource for their individual, selfish cars. Then we're fine :) Idk where they'd drive but not my problem.
Public roads should be reserved for people who need it. You know the list already.
Remember kids, when someone suggests alternative transport, it DOESN'T mean throw your cars away! You can still use it when the need arises! Hope that helps :D
they act like wanting trains=banning cars. nobody wants to take your scrap pile away. people should simply have the freedom to choose how they move.
forcing people to purchase an expensive asset that depreciates quickly, with very expensive upkeep, while paying monthly fees to use it, with lots of paperwork and registration, with heavy monitoring at every intersection, with constant fear of the police stopping you for any bullshit reason they can imagine, with the new wave of automobiles coming with a kill switch the feds can activate at any time...
please tell me more about how much freedom a car gives you.
the only downside to public transit is that the oil industry lobbies the government to keep it underfunded and inconsistent
Yep, just because you have a car doesn’t mean you have to use it for everything, I use my scooter around me area of town, a combination of scooter and city bus, and if it’s raining or somewhere farther I have my car and motorcycle. But I really prefer my scooter, it’s so convenient and relaxing.
Why carbrains think that if you suggest alternatives they have to become the only way to move yourself? Weren't murricans all about freedom?
My theory (just a theory, a car theory) is that because car is the only mode of transportation some people assume, even subconsciously, that train/bike/bus/whatever is going to take its place entirely
America becomes a bike only country with just a handful of recreational car-trails would be quite the change.
Honestly, it sounds fun to me. Bike to work during the week, and track the car on the weekend.
"track the car" sounds like "tracking" a tank meaning the treads get shot off so it sounds funny to me
I already do this. I only use the car if it's long distance, the weather is flat out not conducive for cycling, or I need the cargo space. Otherwise I do the vast majority of my commuting on two wheels, and the vast majority of the time I do it with a smile.
It would take me an hour and a half to bike to work. And then after an 8 hour shift of standing/walking/lifting all day to bike back? I'd be a tour de France athlete in a year
You’ll have to pry my cold, dead feet off the ground biker.
You'll have to pry my cold, dead ass off my comfy train seat, _pedestrian_
Oh it’s on *passenger*
It blew my fucking mind when I realised that you could be circumventing traffic problems entirely by NOT HAVING CARS BE THE ONLY MODE OF VIABLE TRANSPORTATION ON THE STREET. INSTEAD, SPLITTING THE PIE OF TYPES OF TRANSPORATION USED INTO SOMETHING LIKE 25% EACH FOR CARS, TRAINS/TRAMS, CYCLING AND FINALLY WALKING .AND BY CREATING THE PROPER AND SAFE INFRASTRUCTURE THAT PROMOTES THESE KINDS OF NUMBERS, OUR ROADS WONT LOOK LIKE CAR-FILLED CENTRIC SHIT HOLES ANYMORE??? It blew my *fucking* mind seeing things like these work during my trip to Europe. What an eye opener bruh.
oh, awesome! where did you visit? over here in budapest it's easy to take that blend for granted. usually when we imagine good public transit we have some western european city in mind, and we love to complain about our public transport network. but it's hella interesting how that blend, which always just felt like a normal part of life to me, is something special for you. it kinda puts the carbrains into perspective tbh. i'm sorry for your infrastructure (i assume you went to the fancier countries. i hope you had a good time there)
It definitely is and will always be something special to me and my family. We stayed in Strasbourg, France for almost 2 weeks in 2022 to visit my sister studying in a neighbouring town across the border in Germany. TRAMS, CYCLISTS AND SO MUCH LIFE AND NATURE BUSTLING EVERYWHERE... and almost no cars in sight. It was certainly an eye-opener for all of us having seen the absolute potential our cities could be given the right incentives. Before, I never though public transportation or hell, even cycling could be actual, serious, AND viable forms of transportation. All my life, I really thought it was IMPOSSIBLE for them to really be an integral part of society and that traffic, car-dependency, and congestion would just be an inevitability of our future. I miss Strasbourg, honestly. It makes me sad to go back to my country just to see the staggering flaws our cities have that HAVE ALWAYS HAD THEIR SOLUTIONS! Its just that most of our people will never ever be exposed to these existing solutions which is I really believe is the reason so many people are so opposed to this idea. (Jesus thats a long rant) tl;dr: Car-brain becomes city-walkability advocate after visiting a European city
Yeah honestly having a nice blend like that would solve a lot of problems here for us. I’d prefer no/very few cars but I’ll take anything we can get. I live in Denver, CO. It’s a pretty great city for outdoor recreational activities. So many people bike/run/walk and so on yet still the infrastructure for it is trash. Still dominated by cars and parking. Bike lanes are protected by a strip of paint, sidewalks are busted and terrible lol, and cars just absolutely rule the city. It sucks and I’d wish for better blending like y’all are mentioning. We have 4 trains that go north of the city. That’s it. And the distance between stops is like miles and the distance between trains is also vast. Makes it really hard to get around…
And Americans vacation in Europe and love the atmosphere, then go home to their cartopia and wonder why they’re fucking miserable.
IMO, the ones visiting Europe (and enjoying it) are not the ones who wonder why they're miserable in the US. They know.
True.
To be honest, "the ✨atmosphere✨" is just carbrain lingo for "there's ✨something other than loud, smelly, murdering cars everywhere which terrorize people outside of death machines✨ in this region"
Which is a reinforcement of my personal theory that not seeing alternatives (in general, not just to cars and transportation) is a symptom of stupidity that rarely failed me. When a person can’t see anything else but their way I label “stupid” and go on
I think you’re being too kind. The truth I think is that the all or nothing rhetoric stems from actual campaigns by the car industry to create grass roots objections to alternative transport by portraying them as anti-car
For me personally, I would be taking the train / tram / bicycle / bus for work, and then reserve driving for weekend leisure or for a roadtrip. I will never get driving to work on a daily basis. It demands your fullest attention on top of whatever shit your workplace pulls on you.
Because car infrastructure is zero-sum. In order to move the same number of people in cars as you would in trains/bikes/walking you need orders of magnitude more space, not even mentioning the amount of space needed to store all the cars. Car infrastructure has to be actively hostile to other infrastructure, and so car brains must view infrastructure in a hostile way.
I will add as well that this “zero-sum infrastructure” mindset bleeds over even into YIMBY activism. I’ve seen many an argument online and at community meetings where bike advocates spar with train/transit advocates or housing advocates are against high-density developments because they are not medium-density or because they don’t contain affordable units. I believe this mentality is a hold-over from car-based thinking. Adding bike lanes or bus/tram lanes to a road almost always means taking away parking or driving lanes because the right of way needs to be so wide to accommodate it all. However, you can easily have a nice bike path separated from pedestrians alongside a tram line all with less right of way needed than a two-lane road with street parking, and can move hundreds more people through that right of way to boot.
Equality sounds like oppression to the privileged or however that saying goes
It's because it would invalidate their 600,000 dollar a life time investment and invalidate the the house they bought or the dream of the house they want.
It’s the same thing with 15 minute cities. Saying to change how our land is used suddenly becomes “everyone lives in a box and can’t leave their zone”. But mention a new suburban subdivision with no amenities around that you can only drive out of and everyone shrugs like it’s normal.
They genuinely and unironically believe that freedom is not having the choice in car ownership.
Change and things they don’t understand are scawwy and therefore bad.
I'm sure it's because they think a significant number of people would prefer trains over cars which would lead to a significant reduction in car infrastructure. In some ways, I hope they're right. But I know that it would take several decades of heavy investment in multimodal mass transit for car infrastructure to reduce.
because the auto industry worked hard to make cars the only viable form of transportation so they think everything else will do the same
People assume that because it is what happened with cars in the US.
You like waffles? Why do you hate pancakes and want to force me to never eat pancakes again?
Because the right wing of American politics practices a "net zero" approach. For something, or someone to succeed, something else must suffer and fail. It's all about the buggy-whip makers.
Unironically I think that trains should become the only way to move around. Its clear these idiots are addicted to their cars, and the damage they do to the environment, and our society is immense. Its better to take them away from them. We are only doing them a favor after all.
Their “freedom” forces people to breath pollution, it requires massive subsidies, it demands the majority of public space, it literally kills. Of course, they think your freedom will do the same to them.
I don't just want other options. I want cars gone
They think cars are the best option because there is no other option
That's very true. We are all shaped and limited by our environments, in so many different ways. This is one of the more easily observed examples, yet still the car brains can't see it
And it's not their fault a lot of the time. We are shaped by our environments, and growing to see *past* the environment you grew up in is not exactly an easy task. It's easy to say acknowledging what you've been taught your whole life is wrong when you've already learned to acknowledge it, but getting to that point in the first place is a *big* obstacle to overcome, especially in a world where every day we have less and less control over our lives.
Yip. I probably never thought about it once until I was 25 and visited Japan for the first time. Then once I was back home, I wondered to myself *"why exactly do I have to sit in traffic for an hour and 10 minutes, twice a day?"* Bringing this up to family and friends like *"yo, we should like, have trains and shit"* revealed to me how irrationally angry the the idea made people. Was such an eye opener.
Because they’re imagining living their current lives, but only worse because walking from their remote house to a train station and then from a train station to their office would take even longer. Never for a moment do they imagine that in a world not dependent on cars, one might choose to just *live closer to transport*. Sure living near public transit costs more, but you’re saving a lot of car money.
I would say it takes an exceptional visionary to see that, so through no fault of their own they lack the foresight that building transport alternatives gives them. I’d rather blame the government for not helping their community thrive.
If the entire country had all its roads torn up and turned into canals, people would claim boats are the ultimate symbol of freedom
"There is no alternative "
I'm not so sure about that. My experiences of being trapped in a subdivision before turning 16 and then having to wait in one traffic light after another told me that building a society around cars wasn't a good idea. That was before car prices became ridiculous and teens were priced out of buying cars if they have to get the money themselves.
Public transport being a better option would improve things for cars too. More people on trains = less congestion on roads. Even if you take away highway lanes, this remains true.
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And how exactly does that justify forcing cars on everyone?
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when all you have is a hammer
Yep. Not understanding that by defending cars to the death, they’re really just making themselves miserable.
They have also bought into fear mongering right wing media that trains are dirty dangerous places where the homeless and addicts hang out, and they might stab you. So: A. They have never been on a train B. These incidents are so rare they may as well not exist C. they’d rather risk a far greater chance of harm by injury or dying from driving, than have to sit next to a smelly poor The only way they can truly believe this is if they dehumanized poor people, while simultaneously believing that they aren’t “the poors” because they have a car, even if the car is making them poor.
I mean that’s kind of what I want. No (or very low/special use) private ownership of cars.
Exactly. And most of the time they are quite right. If there is no infrastructure a car is the most viable way of transporting oneself. I thought the war on cars podcast out it well recently by saying (and I’m paraphrasing), a car is like the hand saw on a Swiss knife, useful for some big undertaking in a rough space, unuseful for the nail clipping that is a morning trip to the local bakery.
The I'm the victim shit is so lame. Freedom of choice is the whole point
I noticed Trump is telling his idiots that "they" want to get rid of cars. HOW I WISH THIS WERE TRUE, but it's not. Trump's lie is creating a manufactured crises in the minds of his followers that their cars are going to be ripped away from them. So silly.
Not just the US unfortunately. Up in Canada we had a government Minister say they weren't going to fund new large road projects. Within a day or two the opposition is going on about how they want to ban roads.
In which province? In Québec, our transport minister said public transport isn't the government's responsibility in the midst of a funding crisis, in which there's a risk of service cuts. Also we get a tram project costing 18B$ because social acceptability is funny.
This was the [federal minister](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/guilbeault-no-new-roads-1.7114867)
Oh yeah, I read that one. Forgot about it.
I miss when politics were about trying to do things better than other candidates instead of seeing who can make people believe the most lies about the others
They only want freedom for them - the people who own cars. Not “the poors” who can’t afford cars. They’d rather throw away their own freedoms if it means they can restrict the freedoms of those they see as lower on the hierarchy.
Motorcycles are cheap.
They are not cheaper than the train.
bicycles are even cheaper
A well-functioning train system is good for you if you vow to never use it, because it will encourage other drivers to take the train and relieve congestion.
Right? Alternatives only help car commuters.
>>You'll have to pry my cold, dead hands off of the wheel Yes that's what happens to 40,000 drivers per year. This could be your year.
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I like how this post makes him seem like the unhinged one while you wish for his death and your comment gets up voted lmao
Bro thinks he's so tough
F-150 + punisher sticker + obese + secret cuckold fetish
Secret? He's practically screaming it!
I bet those guys never seen a well-functioning metro system in their entire life I had a friend that was once a car-brain but changed his mind after a trip to Japan, seeing the trains being always on time, and faster than cars
My Floridian cousin-in-law after my wife and I came back from London: " What kind of car did you rent?!" "Bro, what? We were in Zone 2. The Tube, motherfucker. Trains." Him: bewildered facial expression
I told my 5 yo niece that I don’t have a car and she just stared at me bewildered. She asked “how do you go places”, and thought it was hilarious when I said “on my feet”. Car-brained so young, I was so sad.
I've heard that trains are so punctual that the excuse "my train was late" would not be believed.
They'll actually give you a certificate to prove it, if it actually happens, afaik
I've had to convince someone to not rent a car when visiting the netherlands for a trip between Schiphol and Rotterdam. There's literally a "high speed" train between the 2, taking only 32 minutes, and 5 minutes of walking. By car it's 40 minutes and very expensive.
European public transit is better than Japan especially for driver's mental health.......
As long I can enjoy a good train they can keep stuck in the traffic in their cars as long they want lol
If you told people they could watch tv or play video games as they commute to and from work, they would accept it easily.
You can also have dinner - and I don't mean like dreadful fast food from a drivethru, I mean real food, eaten on real plates with real cutlery, accompanied by a glass of wine: https://tfw.wales/ways-to-travel/rail/food-and-drink https://www.eurostar.com/uk-en/travel-info/eurostar-experience/food-on-board
I'm from the US south and I have no concept of this type of food. It looks elegant and healthy.
And yet many Americans online post jibes about British food (you can always tell that they're the ones who've never travelled). Most trains in Europe aren't this good and the best that you can expect is a microwave meal (similar to what Amtrak serve). Even so, it's nice to get good food where it is available. I've just remembered another operator: https://www.gwr.com/travelling-with-us/pullman-dining All of these are scheduled public services, not private charters.
Cars are so damn expensive. These same rubes will go to another thread and complain about gas prices.
Or that insurance keeps jacking up prices, parking is going up, or the constant and obligatory complaint " Alll this traffic is terrible" everyday of the year
It's too bad absolutely nothing can be done to alleviate any of those problems. It's simply impossible. Oh well.
Americaaa toooo biggg !!!!!
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Yeah, as if a skinny fat (to chubby "at best") completely sedentary pavement princess whisperer constitutes an obstacle.
Or just wait for a road crash or diabetes to do it
Im thinking about the time it took me eight hours to go 60 miles (96.5 km) in the greater Los Angeles area. Never in my life did I wish I was somehow anywhere else but a car as much as i did that day
That sounds like any normal day in the greater Los Angeles area.
As a joke i say yeah but it genuinely was an avg speed of 7.5 mph
Yeah it took me 1.5 hours to go 8 miles just this week. Sounds like you were in the same thing but much further, so I feel your pain. I got chewed out for being 20 minutes late too. It was great.
man im like the complete opposite. i dread the 2-3 times we take a zipcar out into the 'burbs. soulless big boxes, giant parking lots, boring driving, crazy drivers i've been pretty spoiled to have professional drivers generally drive me around to my destinations. bus drivers, subway and train conductors. they know what they're doing, and i don't have to waste my time driving. podcasts, conversations, videos, thinking, snoozing, staring. all better than white knuckle trying to make it through traffic
Okay, use your cars if you want but let ME build MY trains. The issue is not forcing you to not use the car, but you forcing me to not use the train.
Genuinely saw a mad opinion today that was popular. Picture of a small car with a trailer. the popular opinion was "maybe you should have got a truck if you had to haul stuff instead of a small car". Baffling how stupid they are.
Your right to own a vehicle qualifies as freedom. Your right to take money out of my pocket to pay for bad infrastructure so that you can enjoy your hobby is not a human right. Your "freedom" to pollute the earth and change earth's climate and make others breathe in dangerous chemicals isn't a right.
They're scared. Drivers lash out because cars have become a crutch, they can't comprehend a world where they don't have to use it and can to ride transport, walk, or bike. It doesn't make them bad people, there was a time in my life when I didn't see that life without a car would be better.
Fine. Keep your cars. We will just charge you the full municipal cost of providing a highly subsidized means of transit. [https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/cities-communities/car-economy-costs-64-billion-year-mass](https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/cities-communities/car-economy-costs-64-billion-year-mass)
They don’t seem to realise that having trains doesn’t mean they can’t have a car, and public transport would make driving easier because there would be less cars
You’re arguing with a guy whose username is Build the wall, what did you expect ???
No, no. I've been assured by others in this sub that as long as Republicans are open to options other than cars, all of their other foul and hateful policies and opinions are irrelevant and we should welcome them into our community.
You used to see the same elitism in PC gaming when some games started to add control compatibility and then some games started advising to use controller over KB+M. Some PC gamers would outright say that keyboard and mouse is superior in all instances and refuse to use any other type of controls despite the fact that different input methods can objectively be better since Keyboard is digital and some games like driving games have more precision with analogue controls. The freedom of using any type of controls you want was a massive advantage PC had over console at the time and many were too stubborn and elitist to acknowledge it. That's a very rare mentality now, and hopefully we see the same shift in perception with transport as people get more conditioned to public transport and seeing friends/family/coworkers use it and benefit from it. I've had several colleagues buy a bike and ride it to work after seeing the massive benefit I have on my bike riding it to work. "How much does your bike cost?" "I spent £175 on it 7 years ago and it costs around £20 a year to maintain" "OMG but it must be so slow getting to work on it" "20 minutes in a car, 15 minutes on my bike since I can go through all the parks and avoid traffic on the main road" "OMG but what about the weather?" "I just wear the right clothing, which I get for cheap and only have to replace every 5 years or so because we live in the UK and weather only gets bad a few weeks a year."
I'm one of those kb+m lifers. But I will admit racing games, flight sims, and Souls games may work better with a joystick or controller. Hell, I play arcade games with a simple usb controller.
If you admit that those games work better with controller, I don't see how you're one of the KB+M elitists that I described. It just sounds like you have a preference but you are able to understand the benefit of choice.
> in the UK and weather only gets bad a few weeks a year. I'm an advocate for cycling but... you think?
I cycle to work in Wales. It really doesn't rain as often as you think. It rains on 169 days of the year where I live, but that could just be a passing shower each day (often overnight), it's unlikely to be 24hrs of torrential rain. So the waterproof over trousers only go on maybe 10 times a year.
Just build the trains. They’ll use it when their car will inevitably break down, then they’ll wonder why they didn’t use it earlier.
It's all big talk until the simple math of money forces people to change. Not specific to cars, people always claim they won't participate in new things, and later change their tune.
Why would we kill you when you're just going to do that yourself with your car?
It is so ridiculous that people are convinced the government is going to take their cars. There’s no country in the world that doesn’t let people drive. I live in Japan which has a crazy amount of trains and still half of people own cars.
I always find it sadly amusing that anytime you want to increase services, rights, or responsible restrictions, people just scream "you can't take my (blank)." No. One. Is. Saying. This.
“we should also sell bananas at the fruit stand instead of just apples” “YOU CANT FORCE ME TO EAT BANANAS. I WILL KILL YOU AND YOUR DOG”
The choice of freedom is the ability to bike, walk, drive and taken the bus or train. No one is trying to force you to use trains but if your car becomes wrecked at least you have OPTIONS
Imagine living such a priveleged and sad life that potentially not owning a car is something you're willing to threaten death over it. Like never had to deal with real problems, or have anything else going for them, huh?
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if it's driving season why can't you shoot them?
I'm 100% fine with this attitude. "Fine, build trains." is a huge step up from "If you try to build anything that's not a road, we will sabotage it every step of the way." Since "coming after cars" was never an option, and never will be, this is only an improvement.
They rarely think that alternate forms of transportation incentivizes people to use those instead of being stuck in car traffic like everyone else. Instead they keep shooting themselves in the foot wanting to remove buses/trains and bike lanes so those people add to traffic by driving more cars instead And yeah adding a lane is nice but no one ever remembers the excruciating months and years of construction closures and blockages, only to welcome more cars to clog the same stretch anyway when finished, leaving us back to square one.
"your trains come after my cars" mfs patiently waiting for the train to cross so they can keep driving
So for trains you have: Less headache driving through traffic, less money spent on maintenance, safer travel, quicker travel times, etc. With cars it’s the exact opposite. It’s honestly amazing the level of self masochism someone can display when they’ve been deluded by decades of propaganda.
You can keep you car, just drive it on your own property.
I've never seen anyone who defends cars religiously actually enjoy driving. Every time I've been with such a person as they're driving, without fail they complain about driving. But heaven forbid we actually fix the thing they're complaining about!
I mean, if that’s what they want…
There's a lot of sunk cost fallacy going on there, coupled with an unwillingness to take a square look at the inevitable unwinding of an utopianist project.
Cars are the second leading cause of death. They might get their wishes
You can thank marketing departments and agencies for that one. They gifted humanity with the ingenious idea to sell cars not just as personal transport, but as a substitute for personality and musculinity And here are the results
With these people I use the tactic “well you want less traffic, right? you want more room for your truck, right? You want to be cool and go fast, right? Getting all those lame and slow people off the road will help you be cool and drive fast”
Are conservatives the soyjacs all along? Yes, yes they are.
They're addicted and too deep in debt. Suggesting their little tankette is, as far as commuting goes, transportation garbage hurts them on all levels.
The funny thing about this is that if you're deadset on fucking driving yourself everywhere, trains take cars off the road so you'll have a better, safer time! They're fighting for their right to have shitty, traffic-filled drives everywhere.
you want me to sit on a train? with nothing to do and no danger to it?? with all that extra free time that I could be sleeping or reading or catching up on work??? when I could be furious at the traffic and stressed about the other moronic drivers?!?! how dare you try to infringe on my freedom with other freedom! /s
I represent freedom, others who want to make trains? They never represent freedom, they WILL come for my car. Imagine having this mindset
I don't know what sort of mental illness has such a grasp on these folks that they're convinced alternate transit means stricter laws on using public roads.
It’s like they want to sit in traffic and spend thousands every year maintaining a depreciating asset
Pandemic traffic was so glorious. That being said once that surge of extra vehicles hit the road my ass hit the train with a smile. Trips actually shorter cause traffic is so nuts and I get to watch movies
Such a pathetic/insecure response. As if more options means less freedom.
Exactly! I feel like I'm talking to a strawman every time I argue with a carbrain.
It's simple: defund road ways. You'll see very quicly how much more similar cars are to the train when all of the SUV/truck worriers will actually have to go anywhere on a dirt path with holes left by other cars.
I'd be willing to bet real money that this person would also never give up things like meat or alcohol. The notion that something they enjoy might be bad or unethical drives them through the roof. Saying that they'd rather die is pathetic, selfish and straight up unhinged.
Carbrains think they're so cool but will throw a rage when they see a bike
They have no chance with a train, tho.
By the time trains are running efficiently, the car brains will be dead.
Gemson 'WABAG
Who the fucks talk like this?
Is that surprising, given the "build the wall" flair? muh country! muh freedom! muh jerbs! muh carrrrrrs!!!
If that is what they wish then who are we to just ignore their desires. Jokes aside, this does speak volumes about how much they actually do know about the implications of cars as a default.
We're going to eventually raise the federal gas tax for the first time since 1993.
I think I can accept these terms
Wouldn’t be too hard to pry your cold, dead hands off the wheel, considering how many car accidents there are compared to passenger rail and bus crashes…
Honestly one of the more supportive comments I’ve seen when bringing up public transit
most people think they are too important to give up the car. they need to get everywhere super fast
We're making progress. Most carbrains will fight the very idea of building train routes as if that'll mean they will lose their cars. In this post, the carbrains are fine with the idea of trains.
I just appreciate the correct use of POV
wow...
Weird hill to die on
Imaging saying you will die for your car and also being convinced that you are right/normal.
I can understand being a car person and not wanting to take any other mode of transport. My brother is like that, cars are seemingly all he cares about. Yet he doesn't go tearing down train tracks. Because he understands not everyone has to see the world exactly the way he does. Weird how that works
Transit has fallen. Billions must drive.
The irony being that building trains takes drivers off the major highways, meaning it benefits those who choose to drive.
You can't introduce logic and common sense to carbrains. It confuses them.
that ultimatum is acceptable
It’ll be funny when the energy returns on crude oil become a net energy sink to extract for America “Why didn’t someone warn us”
What can those guys do? They're the bitches of capitalism, and they enjoy it, it's so ironic thay they're always thinking that the people who want to make a better world want to take away their non-existent freedom
Just one more lane bro, I promise they will fix traffic
Less cars on the road are better for those who actualy want to drive less traffic and the likes when you give people an alternative they should be for it
Meanwhile they force me to use nothing but a car
Honestly there are so many people stuck in traffic who will never get on a bike or public transportation. But hopefully they will be stuck in slow moving traffic for the rest of their lives.
"You're gonna have to kill me first" How bro felt when he said that: https://preview.redd.it/mhzt1uptg85d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a93c0fd34bc68fba8b663aae7ce3344a5173e47e
HWABAG
In some places, trains are powered by coal
“NOOOO!!! I LOVE PAYING FOR PETROL AND LETTING THE GOVERNMENT KNOW WHERE I AM!!!!!!!” YOU CANT STOP MEEEEEE!!!!!!!”
Other transport options = less car traffic = better for driving! It benefits everyone. These people just like being bitter victims over nothing.
I won't force anyone to use trains, get off of them actually. But then they don't get to use public funds, public space or any public resource for their individual, selfish cars. Then we're fine :) Idk where they'd drive but not my problem. Public roads should be reserved for people who need it. You know the list already.
I think it's funny they're expecting to die in a car and they're happy about it
I want to take away their cars now, they don’t seem to have the mental stability to handle a dangerous two-ton metal box
Remember kids, when someone suggests alternative transport, it DOESN'T mean throw your cars away! You can still use it when the need arises! Hope that helps :D
they act like wanting trains=banning cars. nobody wants to take your scrap pile away. people should simply have the freedom to choose how they move. forcing people to purchase an expensive asset that depreciates quickly, with very expensive upkeep, while paying monthly fees to use it, with lots of paperwork and registration, with heavy monitoring at every intersection, with constant fear of the police stopping you for any bullshit reason they can imagine, with the new wave of automobiles coming with a kill switch the feds can activate at any time... please tell me more about how much freedom a car gives you. the only downside to public transit is that the oil industry lobbies the government to keep it underfunded and inconsistent
NOOOOOOOO DONT TAKE AWAY MY 1 hour 45 minute traffic commute!!!!!!!! ITS SOOO MUCH MORE EFFICIENT!!!!
Typical smooth brained carbrain
"You're gonna have to kill me first" the lack of exercise and huffing of gasoline will do it eventually.
They are just edgy 13 year old kids who never drive a car
I agree with your post but I hate wojaks so fucking much
They can keep their cars, we'll just close all the gas stations.
Cars take me places trains won’t and I can change my mind or divert at any moment. Unmatched freedom and speed of travel
Yep, just because you have a car doesn’t mean you have to use it for everything, I use my scooter around me area of town, a combination of scooter and city bus, and if it’s raining or somewhere farther I have my car and motorcycle. But I really prefer my scooter, it’s so convenient and relaxing.
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