6 ms·

You could always invest in actual public transport & sane infrastructure, rather than relying on clogging the streets up with more cars, autonomous or otherwise

You could always invest in actual public transport & sane infrastructure, rather than relying on clogging the streets up with more cars, autonomous or otherwise? My mother-in-law is in a wheelchair and zooms by on the bike paths faster than I do thanks to her handbike (it's seriously insane how fast people can move with handbikes), and if she needs to travel large distances she hops onto a train instead. The best part of proper infrastructure and public transport is that it makes life for the drivers easier, too!

PorciiVorbesc 7d ago
>You could always invest in actual public transport & sane infrastructure, rather than relying on clogging the streets up with more cars, autonomous or otherwise So what should the disabled people do until that amazing public transport infrastructure materializes, if it ever even does for them at all? Sit at home and wait? I dislike this type of patronizing superficial handweaving advice that is disconnected from the harsh challenges of building more great public transport infra (lack of funds, geography and land ownership issues, nimbyism, public safety concerns, labor/material shortages, government bureaucracy, corruption and incompetence etc). People use cars because they have no better choice. I'd also want my city to build me Swiss levels of public transport so I wouldn't have to drive, but guess what, the infra sucks and the city is insolvent, so that leaves me with little choice for the next decades as 100% nothing will change for the better in this regard, so then car driving it is. I didn't make it this way, it's the way the city management has botched it over the last decades, but it's still on me now to adapt to it, and cars are one of the ways. I agree with you in spirit, that everyone should have great public transport ideally, but when cities are broke and that infra doesn't exist, then that externality is burdened on the individuals because they have no other choice but still need to get to work and other places. Telling them they can "just build more infra" is like telling homeless person they can just buy a house. OK cool, but with what money?
- webdood90 7d ago
  The point is that society's priorities are messed up. Throwing your hands in the air and taking the path of least resistance is never going to lead to change. The world is literally on fire but the average person simply doesn't give a shit because they don't want to be inconvenienced.
  - PorciiVorbesc 6d ago
    >The point is that society's priorities are messed up. People's priorities are putting a roof over their heads and food on the table for the family. Everything else is secondary. > Throwing your hands in the air and taking the path of least resistance is never going to lead to change. NO, but you and him are yet to provide a better solution that leads to an actual immediate change for the better. People aren't gonna sacrifice their lives and become martyrs for a moral cause that does nothing in the end except make them poor while other people and countries get rich while fucking the planet even harder. Europe(EU) sacrificed it's manufacturing industry and a lot of its middle class jobs along with it, in order to "save the planet", and then India and China's politicians and billionaires said "lol, thanks for your sacrifice and outsourcing to us, now we have even more headroom for pollution and growing our manufacturing industries, making you dependent on ours and giving us leverage over you on the international stage; thanks suckers". >The world is literally on fire but the average person simply doesn't give a shit because they don't want to be inconvenienced. People care more about themselves and their family than the planet. Especially when China and India are lighting the planet on fire and billionaires and politicians are taking private jets and yachts to moralize the poor on saving the planet. Again, you need to have them lead by example first.
- tsimionescu 7d ago
  > So what should the disabled people do until that amazing public transport infrastructure materializes, if it ever even does for them at all? Sit at home and wait? No, the point was that instead of cities waiting until self-driving cars become an option to help get rid of terrible drivers, the cities could invest in public transportation today, and get better road safety that way.
  - sanex 6d ago
    [flagged]
    - llbeansandrice 6d ago
      My pithy response is the same as people who have told me what to do when I try and advocate for transit. “Move somewhere else.” I don’t find these problems unsolvable. We spend over $200 billion on roads a year. That’s almost $75bn more than the CA high speed rail. That’s project has its own problems but local buses and street cars and road diets would cost minuscule fractions of that number and improve conditions and options for nearly everyone. Cars are clearly not a perfect solution. They are expensive and unsafe. But for some reason transit and buses have to be the perfect solution for everyone upon immediate delivery just to get the tiniest fraction of funding.
      - ETH_start 6d ago
        Good public transit is more than just the infrastructure. It's also the law and order, which is not an easy political problem to fix.
        llbeansandrice 6d ago
        It’s actually quite easy. RTD in the front range in Colorado has drastically reduced issues on buses and the light rail the past couple of years. It wasn’t that hard. I take various forms of transit regularly and I’ve never had an issue more noteworthy than any interaction I’ve had in a car.
- nostrebored 7d ago
  Huge amounts of insolvency is due to supporting this failed urban planning experiment. Urban centers are significantly more economically productive and significantly less expensive. Carism leads people into this trap when they should be advocating for significant expansion of dense cities and transit.
  - PorciiVorbesc 6d ago
    >Urban centers are significantly more economically productive and significantly less expensive. There's no enough real estate in urban centers.
- sensanaty 7d ago
  This is just learned helplessness. The US already spends unfathomable amounts of money and resources on car infra, and there's always some nonsensical defense like "it's just impossible to do it any other way!", as if cars are simply a law of nature. That lack of money can be solved by diverting some of the money going into roads into instead improving public transport infra. The solution should NOT be investing in driverless cars, which are all owned by megacorps and leave people shackled to Google and Elon Musk. You even mentioned another cliche, Geography, but then right below mention Switzerland. Same goes for NIMBYism and everything else you mentioned, how come these aren't issues when building massive 12 lane highways, but adding some dedicated bike paths suddenly turns into a quagmire that rivals the Manhattan Project in scale and difficulty? Utrecht in the Netherlands is a perfect example of reversing course on car-centric designs. They had a canal, emptied it out to build a massive highway, then realized "hey, that's idiotic!" And turned it back into a canal and banned cars from the area completely. It's now a gorgeous city center free of cars, plentiful public transport options, accessible to wheelchair users and kids and literally everyone.
  - binary0010 6d ago
    Americans do not care about biklanes or modifying their cities in that way, they want driverless cars and more large multilane highways/roads so that's what we will get. Americans don't like walking/biking and love cars. It's not really learned helplessness it's just what the vast majority of our country wants. Remember the majority voters voted someone in who specifically campaigned on getting out of any climate change agreements and to bring back coal mining.
    - llbeansandrice 6d ago
      Then why is Amtrak breaking ridership records?
      - PorciiVorbesc 6d ago
        People are poor because of the economy and gave up on their car loans?
redox99 7d ago
Public transport is not the same as cars. It's silly when people pretend like they are interchangeable and it's just a matter of having "better infrastructure".
- tsimionescu 7d ago
  The point is that good public transport makes cars unnecessary for the vast majority of everyday life in an urban setting. And, in particular, it means that taking away someone's license, even for a long period of time, doesn't have to be as crippling as it is in cities that don't have good infrastructure - hopefully leading to society being way more willing to apply drastic driving penalties to repeat offenders.
  - redox99 7d ago
    Unnecessary is a very strong word. It's also unnecessary to have your own private house, sharing it with other people would be more efficient.
    - uv-depression 7d ago
      Private houses aren't killing tens of thousands a year.
      - redox99 7d ago
        You can argue all day whether cars are good or bad. That's not my point. My point is that pretending public transport is equivalent to cars if you have good enough infrastructure is silly. They are different experiences, each with their own tradeoffs. And those tradeoffs matter differently to different people.
        amanaplanacanal 7d ago
        I don't think anybody was suggesting getting rid of cars.
    - 7d ago
IncreasePosts 6d ago
Ok, I have $5000 to invest. What amazing services will be available for that lady now?

PorciiVorbesc 7d ago

>You could always invest in actual public transport & sane infrastructure, rather than relying on clogging the streets up with more cars, autonomous or otherwise So what should the disabled people do until that amazing public transport infrastructure materializes, if it ever even does for them at all? Sit at home and wait? I dislike this type of patronizing superficial handweaving advice that is disconnected from the harsh challenges of building more great public transport infra (lack of funds, geography and land ownership issues, nimbyism, public safety concerns, labor/material shortages, government bureaucracy, corruption and incompetence etc). People use cars because they have no better choice. I'd also want my city to build me Swiss levels of public transport so I wouldn't have to drive, but guess what, the infra sucks and the city is insolvent, so that leaves me with little choice for the next decades as 100% nothing will change for the better in this regard, so then car driving it is. I didn't make it this way, it's the way the city management has botched it over the last decades, but it's still on me now to adapt to it, and cars are one of the ways. I agree with you in spirit, that everyone should have great public transport ideally, but when cities are broke and that infra doesn't exist, then that externality is burdened on the individuals because they have no other choice but still need to get to work and other places. Telling them they can "just build more infra" is like telling homeless person they can just buy a house. OK cool, but with what money?

webdood90 7d ago
The point is that society's priorities are messed up. Throwing your hands in the air and taking the path of least resistance is never going to lead to change. The world is literally on fire but the average person simply doesn't give a shit because they don't want to be inconvenienced.
- PorciiVorbesc 6d ago
  >The point is that society's priorities are messed up. People's priorities are putting a roof over their heads and food on the table for the family. Everything else is secondary. > Throwing your hands in the air and taking the path of least resistance is never going to lead to change. NO, but you and him are yet to provide a better solution that leads to an actual immediate change for the better. People aren't gonna sacrifice their lives and become martyrs for a moral cause that does nothing in the end except make them poor while other people and countries get rich while fucking the planet even harder. Europe(EU) sacrificed it's manufacturing industry and a lot of its middle class jobs along with it, in order to "save the planet", and then India and China's politicians and billionaires said "lol, thanks for your sacrifice and outsourcing to us, now we have even more headroom for pollution and growing our manufacturing industries, making you dependent on ours and giving us leverage over you on the international stage; thanks suckers". >The world is literally on fire but the average person simply doesn't give a shit because they don't want to be inconvenienced. People care more about themselves and their family than the planet. Especially when China and India are lighting the planet on fire and billionaires and politicians are taking private jets and yachts to moralize the poor on saving the planet. Again, you need to have them lead by example first.
tsimionescu 7d ago
> So what should the disabled people do until that amazing public transport infrastructure materializes, if it ever even does for them at all? Sit at home and wait? No, the point was that instead of cities waiting until self-driving cars become an option to help get rid of terrible drivers, the cities could invest in public transportation today, and get better road safety that way.
- sanex 6d ago
  [flagged]
  - llbeansandrice 6d ago
    My pithy response is the same as people who have told me what to do when I try and advocate for transit. “Move somewhere else.” I don’t find these problems unsolvable. We spend over $200 billion on roads a year. That’s almost $75bn more than the CA high speed rail. That’s project has its own problems but local buses and street cars and road diets would cost minuscule fractions of that number and improve conditions and options for nearly everyone. Cars are clearly not a perfect solution. They are expensive and unsafe. But for some reason transit and buses have to be the perfect solution for everyone upon immediate delivery just to get the tiniest fraction of funding.
    - ETH_start 6d ago
      Good public transit is more than just the infrastructure. It's also the law and order, which is not an easy political problem to fix.
      - llbeansandrice 6d ago
        It’s actually quite easy. RTD in the front range in Colorado has drastically reduced issues on buses and the light rail the past couple of years. It wasn’t that hard. I take various forms of transit regularly and I’ve never had an issue more noteworthy than any interaction I’ve had in a car.
nostrebored 7d ago
Huge amounts of insolvency is due to supporting this failed urban planning experiment. Urban centers are significantly more economically productive and significantly less expensive. Carism leads people into this trap when they should be advocating for significant expansion of dense cities and transit.
- PorciiVorbesc 6d ago
  >Urban centers are significantly more economically productive and significantly less expensive. There's no enough real estate in urban centers.
sensanaty 7d ago
This is just learned helplessness. The US already spends unfathomable amounts of money and resources on car infra, and there's always some nonsensical defense like "it's just impossible to do it any other way!", as if cars are simply a law of nature. That lack of money can be solved by diverting some of the money going into roads into instead improving public transport infra. The solution should NOT be investing in driverless cars, which are all owned by megacorps and leave people shackled to Google and Elon Musk. You even mentioned another cliche, Geography, but then right below mention Switzerland. Same goes for NIMBYism and everything else you mentioned, how come these aren't issues when building massive 12 lane highways, but adding some dedicated bike paths suddenly turns into a quagmire that rivals the Manhattan Project in scale and difficulty? Utrecht in the Netherlands is a perfect example of reversing course on car-centric designs. They had a canal, emptied it out to build a massive highway, then realized "hey, that's idiotic!" And turned it back into a canal and banned cars from the area completely. It's now a gorgeous city center free of cars, plentiful public transport options, accessible to wheelchair users and kids and literally everyone.
- binary0010 6d ago
  Americans do not care about biklanes or modifying their cities in that way, they want driverless cars and more large multilane highways/roads so that's what we will get. Americans don't like walking/biking and love cars. It's not really learned helplessness it's just what the vast majority of our country wants. Remember the majority voters voted someone in who specifically campaigned on getting out of any climate change agreements and to bring back coal mining.
  - llbeansandrice 6d ago
    Then why is Amtrak breaking ridership records?
    - PorciiVorbesc 6d ago
      People are poor because of the economy and gave up on their car loans?

redox99 7d ago

Public transport is not the same as cars. It's silly when people pretend like they are interchangeable and it's just a matter of having "better infrastructure".

tsimionescu 7d ago
The point is that good public transport makes cars unnecessary for the vast majority of everyday life in an urban setting. And, in particular, it means that taking away someone's license, even for a long period of time, doesn't have to be as crippling as it is in cities that don't have good infrastructure - hopefully leading to society being way more willing to apply drastic driving penalties to repeat offenders.
- redox99 7d ago
  Unnecessary is a very strong word. It's also unnecessary to have your own private house, sharing it with other people would be more efficient.
  - uv-depression 7d ago
    Private houses aren't killing tens of thousands a year.
    - redox99 7d ago
      You can argue all day whether cars are good or bad. That's not my point. My point is that pretending public transport is equivalent to cars if you have good enough infrastructure is silly. They are different experiences, each with their own tradeoffs. And those tradeoffs matter differently to different people.
      - amanaplanacanal 7d ago
        I don't think anybody was suggesting getting rid of cars.
  - 7d ago

IncreasePosts 6d ago

Ok, I have $5000 to invest. What amazing services will be available for that lady now?