cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/c/fuckcars/p/550765/meme-choochoo
I want a teleportation device that either gets me to my destination instantly or deletes me from existence.
A catapult on every rooftop!
my dads idea: Ban cars inside cities have giant parking houses around the cities public transport - free - that comes by every 5-10 minutes
This one is actually a pretty good idea. Eventually we get rid of the parking garages too and cover everything with railways.
I live in the Seattle area and while this stuff isn’t free it’s under $10 to park and ride both ways. Trains run every 7 minutes and the train will take you maybe five minutes extra if there’s no traffic. If you’re coming or going from the stadiums it’s faster and cheaper than driving to one of the lots close to them. Trains are pretty clean too, it’s a pretty great rail line
5-10 minutes is forever in some places
We haven’t banned cars, but my city did put a park-and-ride lot at each end of its one BRT line. It’s pretty great, now the haters get to complain that BRT is a failure because nobody rides it, AND that it’s useless because those lots are always full.
Saw this yesterday, instead of Atlanta building a new airport that could take away Delta’s dominance, the CEO suggests vertibirds for shuttling people to the airport. This totally ignores the fact that the public transit MARTA goes directly to the airport
I’ll do you one better: I DON’T MIND CHECKING A GOD DAMN SCHEDULE. HELL, LET’S GET WILD AND MAKE THAT MFER PAPER I LITERALLY DGAF. Cuz I got that dawg in me!
You’re not thinking car-first. You need neuralink to fix that. /s
While I agree in principle with the OP, I feel I must point out that that wouldn’t completely make cars unnecessary. There are still remote or sparsely populated areas (a lot actually in my country) where comprehensive public transport is impractical or next to impossible. I’d say we have use for both. Especially so if self driving means being able to summon a car when you need one without needing to own one. Or would that actually count as public transport then…?
comprehensive public transport is impractical or next to impossible
That’s how we used to do transit before cars were invented. The US had a railway line to even the most remote farms. USSR had amazing railways that interconnected almost everything despite being the biggest country on earth by a wide margin.
Generally the trick is to build densely populated walkable towns where you don’t need a car for daily activities, and connect them with railways. In that case, it doesn’t matter what the overall population density is.
Even for sparsely populated land, if you can build an asphalt road wider than 2 lanes, chances are you can also build a small commuter railway there eventually. It would also be cheaper overall, if you consider externalities like everyone having to own a car, car crashes being a lot more common than rail crashes, and of course CO₂ emissions and the climate change that comes along with them. And that’s besides the socioeconomic benefits of letting everyone have a way to travel, rather than only those with financial means to maintain a car and the ability to drive.
Cars are sometimes necessary, but it’s like 1% of what they are used for currently.
Yeah, well said. I agree with you on that, sometimes cars are still needed
Yeah, you’re never gonna live without trucks and vans either, you need those for the last few kilometres of the logistics chain. Still, we should reduce the remaining cars by half at least, and I’m saying that sitting in a train that goes so frequently that I don’t have to check a schedule.
Don’t say “cars as default”, say “built around people, not cars”
Best we can do is make everything more gas dependent by canceling windmill projects.
I want people to keep some communities light hearted
Yeah i dont know if this fits shitpost
um doesn’t this already exist in Europe and Japan?
Yes.
Barcelona resident here. I pay 22€ for an unlimited month transit pass (that’s a discounted price that will probably go up). I can ride any underground, bus or commuter train inside the metropolitan area. I own a car to go outside the urban zone but I barely use it.
When I have to use my car in town (because I’m going to buy something that cannot be carried easily otherwise) I recall how much driving in the city sucks.
I’m actually thinking about sellling my car and using a rental service if I want to take a road trip.
Idk what the other dude is talking about. It definitely exists some places.
Source: live in Copenhagen, don’t own a car.
No. Not really.
Cars are very common and walkable cities have been largely accommodated for the car.
Live in Stockholm, don’t have a car, can get around fine. Still want a car, but not for the city.
I went a year without driving in America ; its aweful
Yeah, I don’t know how anyone survives there without one.
that makes sense bc I did die
RIP in peace 🪦
I came back
Russian train
That’s a Velaro
The Russian version of it though
Portland’s pretty good about this. The whole city is laid out in a pretty uniform grid, and the busses and trains come frequently and cover a really wide area. Getting around the city is a piece of cake, and the transit pass works the exact same regardless of which vehicle type you ride.
It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty damn close!
Sorry, best we can do in the U.S. is fuck all.
So, London basically?
I think self driving cars will help tbh. Only way it will happen.
Less parking. Solves last mile problem.
How will that help? By some studies, about 30% of traffic on downtown city streets is drivers circulating looking for street parking. With self-driving cars, they could cause congestion by circulating all day instead of parking.
I’ve seen stuff about sharing them so there’s less cars parked and people just get dropped off and it takes the next person. But taxis already exist and haven’t solved the problem so I don’t think self driving cars are the answer there.
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