I feel like we could just sell privately owned, battery powered cars that can ride the rail, which comes with unlimited access to rental cars, trucks, bikes, and scooters from the train station. Obviously there are private garages nearest to the stations such that richer people can exit their private cars, and switch to their private vehicles without dealing with the poors. For a price, of course.
Why would it? most people have never experienced good transit, just transit for those who after a few dwi’s can’t get their friends to drive them anymore. Transit money feels like throwing good money after bad. most republicans honestly embrace this
meanwhile the democrats see transit as getting other people (poor, or at least someone else) off the road so they don’t care if a proposal that wouldn’t work for them becauseemost can’t imangine using it anyway. They alse see getting these someone else’s off the road as green which they hope is enough to solve global warming without having to make changes themself
Democrats also see transit money as a way to bring on jobs or art - either way the more they spend on small segments the better. it never occurs to them that cheap projecs can do more and since transit is about the network that would inthe long run result in transit they would use.
the above is a generalization. there are excaptions on both sides (though more democrats) who care about transit. this probably includes everyone reading this. How do we change the majority is the question. you will probahly cry when you admit the truth of the above.
The thing that never ceases to astound me in the US is that the barrier for entry to public transport is so hilariously low, they have effectively nothing in most places so it’s absolutely trivial to quintuple the amount of public transport users in a few years if they just tried, and yet most places do NOTHING
There is such an unmet demand for public transport that a bus startup should be eminently viable, but nope, no one even seems to be trying.
Meanwhile in europe we already generally have at worst decent public transport and yet companies like flixbus exist, which i don’t even understand how they have ridership when they run routes parallel to railways that take like twice as long while obviously being less comfortable…
flixbus exist, which i don’t even understand how they have ridership when they run routes parallel to railways that take like twice as long while obviously being less comfortable…
Would you mind explaining more? How’s Flixbus?
so the way public transport generally works —in sweden at least— is that the bulk of it is managed by the regional government and uses a zone system (like the oyster cards in london i think). Then ontop of that there’s SJ, the national train operator, which has its own generally separate ticket system that is more traditional where you book a specific departure between two stations.
Then outside of this you also have fully private public transport companies, of which the major ones are VR trains between stockholm-gothenburg, snälltåget which runs night trains from the north to south (sometimes down to hamburg/berlin), and flixbus which runs a bunch of routes throughout sweden.
so the strange thing about flixbus is that it runs a bunch of routes that take you between the same places as the trains can, in a less comfortable vehicle, and absolutely fucking hilariously slower.
For example gothenburg-stockholm is 3-4 hours by train and flixbus takes 6-7 hours.
There are some reasons i can see to opt for flixbus, most obvious being that it does serve places where getting to the trains is otherwise inconvenient and it can be like half the price, but it still astonishes me that a completely for-profit company finds that a sensible thing to operate here.
Wait, how a tunnel can make a profit? Do you have to pay to have a privilege to drive through it?
Its kinda like a taxi! The tunnel has drivers and teslas that will take from one end to the other, tho there is a video on YouTube that walking the distance is faster than the tunnel…
I thought it’s a tunnel that you can drive through yourself to save some time, but turns out it really is just a taxi service that can travel only through these tunnels.
Here’s a video of the whole experience. I would personally just have a walk instead.
You’re right, for example you have to pay to use Kanmon Tunnel
Those tunnels are a death trap. The person who approved it should be investigated
Yeah, EV batteries and very narrow tunnel (so narrow you can’t open the car door apparently) is a bad combination