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.”
Idk how the train will pick me up living in the middle of nowhere. Sure, trains are practical where civilization lives, but it’s just far too rural for trains here.
In the United States, I don’t know how you’d accomplish this. It would be impossible for almost all rural neighborhoods unless we’re going to build a grocery store within walking distance of most homes.
This is one of those liberal (I rarely leave my home) notions whose heart is in the right place but is ultimately stupid.
This comment seems to be based on the false presumption that cities and settlements cannot be transformed, however they can
They can, but it’s a multi trillion dollar century plus endeavor that well require eminent domain millions of properties in order to make enough space for the conversion. Infrastructure still needs to go some place, and you need to replace millions of sfh with apartments. My city doesn’t even have any land left to build more train lines. It’s just 30 miles of gridded small lots.
The suburbs are inherently compatible with trains and really any public transportation. They were quite literally designed around the car and the expectation that everyone would have a car.
Unless you plan to bulldoze the suburbs and then force everyone to move into higher density areas your anti-car dreams are never going to happen.
Although there are many American cities that could get much more anti-car and public transport would work. LA could theoretically not be such a car city with the appropriate infrastructure built in.
Why are the anti-car people anti-self-driving car? With self-driving cars we could mostly eliminate private car ownership.
The suburbs are inherently compatible with trains and really any public transportation. They were quite literally designed around the car and the expectation that everyone would have a car.
New suburbs get built and they can be built differently. Not to mention that the current suburbs in the US aren’t made to last the next hundred years, like stone houses in Europe are. They can, have to and will change.
The Work from home trend for example is a huge change. If you work from home and do not have to drive to work and back, you do not want to drive the same amount anyway just for grocery shopping. You want to use the free time won, by stepping outside of your home and go on a walk, sit in a café and meet people in your suburb.
Why are the anti-car people anti-self-driving car?
If a human makes a mistake while driving, we call for self-driving cars.
If a self-driving car causes an accident, we call for the road to be more catered to self-driving cars.
Self-driving car is still too many cars rotting on the road, unused most of the day, heating up cities and taking up space and resources, when a bus can replace hundreds of them.
A self-driving car is still a car, and it can’t do what humans can do: People make billions of good decisions every day that help avoid accidents. We just don’t recognise them because we focus on the bad decisions that cause accidents. Self-driving cars will never be able to make those good decisions, so having lots of them will only work if the roads are designed more for them. Then we will have roads that are like train tracks with all the negative characteristics of today’s cars on top, when we could just have trains and busses all the benefits that come with them.
10 or 20 years from now when you’re taking a nap or jerking off or eating fried chicken or playing Call of Duty while a self-driving car (you can call it an “automated transportation pod” if the word “car” triggers you) takes your extremely drunk self right to your front door you’ll think it’s fine.
I live in a 15-minute city. I take the bus home, now and in 20 years time when I am 77 years old, only with the help of a walking aid, but luckily our buses already have low entrances to allow disabled people to get on. I also stay with friends when I drink and come home the next day, and I do not need or want to eat or play games on the way home, and I especially do not want to masturbate in a car, automated or not, I want a nice and comfortable place for that. I prefer to look out of the window and experience the journey and stop and eat something. That you seem to basically live in your car, maybe except when you need to shit, is car brain thinking for me. A car is not a place to live, it’s a means of transport with a lot of flaws, I’d love to see your face when you’re jerking off in your automated car while it decides to drive you right into fresh concrete, onto train tracks or into the nearest river.
I do not own a car and never have, and I have survived well. If the world doesn’t recover from car brain, we won’t survive as a species. Automated transport is the future for buses and trains, not individual transport, which will always be worse in every way, only topped by flying taxis, which are even dumber.
Funny side note: Saudi Arabia has started building the most idiotic “city of the future” you can build: The Line, but they also killed the car, because even they realised that cars, automated or not, are not the future and you can only get around in this futuristic place by walking or by train.
Tbh, as someone living in rural community all i want is decent public transportation of any sort. Like, it would be nice to have trains or escooters but, we don’t even have busses ( though that having been said i don’t how busses would get out here without it making tarc fare more expensive) or making bikes or scooter ( e or otherwise) a viable option in my area or making walking a more viable option. Admittedly i don’t know how they would do the last one but, the others they’ve been trying to do for awhile. I’m hoping that this not only made sense but, actually was on point.
The US (and much of europe) needs to realize that car centric planning is not the solution to mobility problems, it’s the cause! Suburbia could be more walkable if a few steps were taken during planning:
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narrower roads (less wasted space, slower driving speeds, shorter distances)
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Pedestrian paths that connect cul-de-sacs and streets (quicker access to higher order roads for pedestrians)
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mixed use zoning/town houses (bring destinations to the people)
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no mandatory minimum parking requirements for businesses (same advantages as my first point)
I’m going to make the argument against trains for everything, despite being a huge fanatic for trains.
Trains are the most efficient transport method per tonne-km over land, yes. However from certain operational standpoints trains can make less sense than existing solutions.
When distance between stops for heavy rail becomes too short, you lose quite a bit of efficiency. Trains themselves aren’t a one-size fits all solution as there are various types that each need their own form of investment (which is a lot $), when roads are compatible with both personal transport and large trucks with little investment by the transporter (govt pays for road maintenance).
Rail companies right now are chasing profits and neglecting operational improvements. In the US, hauling a long, LONG, old and slow train loaded with bulk aggregate, oil, grain, chemicals is more profitable than aiming for JIT capability that is more feasible with trucks. A complete change in societal incentives is necessary to bring back the usefulness of railway in all types of transport. Second, the North American way of railroad companies owning the tracks dissuades a lot of innovation and new firms from entering the market, unlike the “open road” where there are many competing OTR freight companies. None of the Big Six would like my idea of a nationally controlled rail/track system.
Electric motors are now capable of >90% regen, so the braking energy argument against short stops doesn’t work anymore (and the energy during motion strictly less than a rubber tired vehicle with a worse aspect ratio so long as the trip is no longer).
The amount of rail needed for short distance distribution networks could still be prohibitive in regions designed for road though. Even then one could still argue that the total infrastructure costs are lower by moving the destinations slightly given how much roads cost to maintain.
Well, streetcars could be an option for high density corridors but they will lose money in low density, low ridership areas.
Roads always lose money, so that’s still a win. Travel speed and coverage may be a limiting factor though.
![[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}