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.”
What is micromobility? I am unfamiliar with this term.
I like how you assume that society will choose to have a future over self-immolation.
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.
We shouldn’t take anything for granted. The US has happily killed it’s cities for decades instead of investing in public transit. If we don’t push for it, car companies and rich people will keep public transportation from ever taking off.
If remote work takes off, and ordering most everything online, I wonder if urban sprawl will get even worse.
The more people try to “innovate” transportation the closer it gets to going back to trains. Driverless cars, for efficiency have them communicate with eachother, to accelerate and brake at the same time, for example. That’s just less efficient and more expensive trains.
There’s a massive failure condition for your example - sure, autonomous cars behave like trains when they communicate with each other to sync acceleration and deceleration, but they can also separate themselves from the collective to drive you to the door of your home. In the train metaphor this would be like you sitting in your own train car, and the train car separating from the rest of it and driving you to your doorstep.
oh no, if only someone hadn’t centralized like, a point, say, a station, where people could conveniently access the train of cars…
they could call it a… hmm… TRAIN STATION?
I especially like that this format of the meme removes the d-bag that is in the original.
![[meme] Trains -- not driverless cars -- are the future of transportation(lemmy.world)](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f6468af5-8151-4b4c-b339-2fa0b0373c3a.webp){kind=link}