We should really be investing more in public transit, it’s way better than electric cars and could be way more convenient if implemented properly
It all starts with fixing the zoning code. Cars will always be “more convenient” if we keep destroying our cities to make space catering to them.
Design a city around electric wheelchairs and you’ll have a system accessible to everyone.
Conveyor belts everywhere ♥️ no need for electric wheelchairs.
Dunno of you’re being sardonic, but that would actually be smart.
What about people with a fear of wheelchairs?
Checkmate atheists!
Go start a public transport company. If you’re right the market will reward you :)
Market forces don’t work for every industry. Car transportation included, think how roads exist.
Yeah I just- put that in another comment. Made a funny crack about privatising roads to incorporate the true cost of infrastructure with tolls lol. Might incentivize more people to use transit.
That’s not really how that works.
When it comes to public transportation, they rarely pull a profit on their own. What they do is drive the economy in the places they go, make a city more accessible to everyone (further driving the economy), and cut costs for the city in other places. They’re a loss leader to save money and improve quality of life in a multitude of other areas by huge margins.
Everything is profitable if you raise prices. In a way you’re just offsetting a certain segment of the populations transportation costs to everyone else under that system. Maybe you could privatize the roads too and use the tolls to fund more buses which operate at a profit. Its fun think of insane libertarian free marker solutions to such problems :) Cars might be less appealing if people had to pay the associated infrastructure costs on a per km basis.
The US government subsidizes farmers by a huge amount because for every dollar they spend they get a dollar and some change back in value. This happens all across different sectors and is beneficial for everyone involved. The farmers get a new pond for free and everyone else in the US gets a reliable, cheap supply of food. It’s a win/win.
Public transport is the same way. It needs to be cheap so everyone can afford it, otherwise you leave huge swaths of the population without access to their basic needs, or you cut their already short supply of money even shorter. There’s a reason progressive tax rates are ubiquitous across the world. By supporting public transport, you send people to places they produce value or spend money, increasing taxes earned across the board, while simultaneously reducing the cost of maintaining the roads because there’s significantly less wear and tear. It’s also CHEAPER to use public teansport. Cars are goddamn expensive! Repairs, insurance, the cost of it in the first place! A ride on the bus is like $2. You’d have to TRY to ride it enough to make it more expensive.
I digress. The point is that you indirectly get more out of it than you pay into it.
We’re at a point (and have been for a few decades) that just taxing cars isn’t going to fix the problem. We’ve demolished cities to replace them with vehicle infrastructure. If you tax cars without fixing the walkability, all you’ve done is make people pay more in taxes. You have to have the infrastructure before you can incentivize using it.
The reasons for farm subsidies are… Debatable. If you keep food cheap people don’t notice currency debasement as much. Personally I think it might make more sense for prices to rise to a point where farmers are profitable without subsidies. Those subsidies are value extracted from the tax payer anyway… You’re paying for it.
You’re right too in that buses and trains are a lot cheaper and should always out compete cars. How much do you think fares would have to rise to make public transport self sufficient ? Make it so it funds its own expansion and service improvement.
The Toronto Transport Commission is my local example. From what I can napkin math they get about 1 billion dollars in subsidies per year from the city (maybe some provincial and fed money too… I rounded up generously). They collect a little over 700k fares a day. Wouldn’t take much of an increase with like almost 250 million fares a year to close that gap.
Privatize the roads and have cars users pay their share of that infrastructure cost and get the burden off of working people and I bet a small share increase would be pretty affordable.
The farm subsidies are to ensure enough farms are profitable enough to have an excess in the event we lose a ton of farmland or crop. If something happened we would not bounce back fast enough if we did not have excess, and excess would not happen if the free market pushed prices so high or low that the change in demand caused people to stop farming.
On the subject of bus fares, it’s not that simple. If bus fares increase, some people will stop riding the bus and switch to cars or other forms of transport (or not go at all) which will likely reduce fares and possibly increase congestion which would slow down the busses which would cause less people to ride them which would…
I’m not saying that’s exactly what would happen, I’m just saying you have to be careful. People only ride the bus when it’s more affordable or more convenient
Ideally taxes are progressive, whereas food price increases are always regressive. That is to say that taxes affect the rich more, and food prices affect the poor more.
Im just gonna ignore the overall stupidity of going “The market will solve it” and instead point out the fact that a public transit company would almost definitionally be under the umbrella of the government. Private transit company is the term youre looking for.
The problem is that citys are built around cars.
The first question is not how people can reach shops by foot, or with public transit. The first step is always to build streets to stuff and later figure out if you can might fit in a bus route, or maybe a cycling lane.
In the USA at least. In Europe it’s everything but perfect, of course, but at least we have some public transport in cities and between them.
But yeah, the bike paths here in Austria are just getting bigger since some years again - and every cm seems to be a hard fight…
Cities were not built around cars, they were bulldozed for the car.
Cities were built to be walkable, and had trams for everything else. Then we invented the car and General Motors essentially took america by the balls and forced everyone in americs to become dependant on the car
And Goodyear.
Fuck that blimp.
You’re whining about something that happened decades before any of us were even born.
US cities are built around cars now and that is the only life most Americans have known their entire lives. You have to fix that problem first to get what you want.
Im not whining about anything? I was just pointing out that saying cities were built around cars is just not true.
Im in agreement with you that we need to make our cities walkable again by building proper walking infrastructure and public transportation in our cities. But i disagree with OP that the way to fix it is by building more streets to things lol
The problem is that destinations are spread too far apart for walking, viable transit, etc. because the zoning code forces developers to build low density and massive amounts of parking.
I can spend 17 minutes driving to work, or 1.5 hours catching buses. Easy choice for me.
Right, that’s why we need to stop subsidizing streets and roads, make users pay the cost of them, and put the tax money toward transit. It’s really impossible to ask anybody but the most devoted to make extremely inconvenient choices. Certainly, there are some lunatics who’d drive a car even if it took 1.5 hours, but most people would choose the 17 minute bus.
Cheaper, sustainable, safer, better for mental health, better for non-drivers (children, elderly, disabled). It just makes sense.
I really underestimated the effect on my mental health. My commute takes double the time now but that’s alright because since switching to public transit, I’m getting to work and back home much calmer.
You are right, if a bus ride was 17 or even 30 minutes to work I would take the bus. But in my area a bus ride is 2 hours one way.
I also had a commute of about 17min with car. The same route with an electric bike takes me 35min. I’m not out of breath with it and I still have some exercise. I still take my car when it rains.
Alot of people forget that just becuase a bus commute works for them doesn’t mean it works for everyone.
Alot of people have a legitimate reason for owning a car, and if we want then to use public transit then we need public transit to fit their needs in travelling.
But if there was more demand for public transport, don’t you think they would increase the supply?
And if there are more bus lines, you would only need like 30 minutes instead to get to work.
“The only factor I care about is my own personal convenience. Nothing else will influence my choices that affect others.” That’s you.
Literally no one is going to quadruple their commute as a good deed. Right or wrong.
People are struggling for free time from capitalistic slavery as it is.
Sure, I’ll just take the…
Oh wait, I’m in the US and they would have rather destroyed the planet than set up public transport
Oh wait again…
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40 minutes is a long ride, true. Maybe buy a foldable bike or a bike rack for your car, park your car outside of the city and reduce car traffic by riding from there to your workplace by bike? It sure would make this city a better place.
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You’ll also keep fit and you won’t have to spend time stuck in traffic!
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park your car outside of the city
I like this kind of scheme, it should be promoted more maybe if it’s not being pushed much
40 minutes is a warm up, not a long ride.
It is if you have to do it twice every single day. Going to work shouldn’t take longer than 20 minutes.
No it’s not, I used to cycle 1 hour one way without any issues. Every day. Including during cold European winters in -20. 40 minutes is nothing special.
I used to do a 40 minute bike commute twice a day. Once it becomes part of your routine those 40 minutes are easy to conquer. Now I do the same distance by speed pedelec in 25 minutes. I’m faster at work now than when I used to go by car.
If you can’t make the trip safe though, than you shouldn’t. But you can, like me, start out on nice days and incorporate into your days as a workout just to try an see.
You’re allowed to drive if there’s no other infrastructure connecting point A to point B. This post is dumb because it lacks nuance. There are some cases where driving makes sense. If you live in a city where other options are safe and reliable, you should use those instead. And if you live in a city where there should be safe and reliable options but there aren’t, well that’s what you should be really upset about.
Nobody is trying to get rid of cars for those in rural areas, as that’s unfeasible. The ONLY place people genuinely care about cars existing is in cities where they can be built and changed to be walkable. I shouldn’t NEED a car to get to a grocery store. I shouldn’t NEED a car to get to work. I should NEED a car to get to anything fun to do. This is a feasible goal.
It’s about choice. I have no choice but to have a car. I don’t want a car. I am forced to have a car because the alternative is… There is no alternative, right now.
It’s about the freedom to have the choice to not drive.
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I live in Minneapolis which is one of the more walkable cities in the US and it’s still not fantastic. I have to walk 30 minutes to the nearest bus stop with only 1/3 of it on sidewalks. After that I can get to downtown (or anywhere but suburbia) on the busses and metro, but it’s pretty slow
Doesn’t you rural area come with horses or donkeys?
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Fresh eggs for breakfast?
By forcing your elected officials to work on a public traffic infrastructure that could get you to the city in 30 minutes.
“How am I supposed to maintain all my privilege and continue a lifestyle that emulates a landed aristocrat?” Fucking move to the city like the rest of us exploited working class assholes. If you can’t afford to live in the country without externalizing the expenses on other people, then you can’t fucking accord to live in the country. Suck it up.
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Question. How did they move that sign there?
In case anyone wants to correct a corrupted sign that the department of transportation hasn’t gotten around to: https://www.safetysign.us/my_weblog/2011/07/instructions-on-how-to-hack-electronic-road-signs.html
This is a hack of matrix boards like these that I can 100% get behind.
The comments on this post are such a joke. The name of the community is literally ‘fuck cars’ and people are getting bent out of shape because we’re posting about our dislike of cars.
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I like cars. They’re comfortable and convenient.
I like trains. They’re comfortable and convenient.
I like trains too. Unfortunately they rarely go anywhere I need to go where I live. In Toronto they also sadly win out in the homeless urine category over my car.
I like most trains, but fuck that one I took up to Washington. I was on that thing for 36 hours and my ass started chafing 5 hours in, admitedly I think that train was built when Nixon was president and last updated under when Clinton was president.
You can like cars, go ahead. What I don’t like is that I’m forced to have one to complete each and every task outside of my house. I am forced to have and use a car for everything. I WANT to take a quick walk to a shop for milk, not take a 15 minute drive to a big box store, a seven minute walk across its ridiculous parking lot, then do it all again in reverse. Why am I forced to have a car each and every day without fail in order to survive?
If you really want to you can structure your life in a way where food is close to home… did that through college. Paid for cabs for groceries … Walked and used transit or my bike. Was pretty miserable in Canadian winters and not very convienent. Plus pretty expensive… You can do it. Or just admit you like cars :) as long as most people secretly actually like cars and use them then society will be structured in a way to accommodate that. The world’s a big place and in order to have most of the things you need really close isn’t really entirely realistic.
You paying for cabs to get groceries is not “not needing a car” that’s still needing a car to do anything. I’ve been to enough countries in Europe personally for extended periods that I know it’s feasible to have a completely 100% walkable life. WALKABLE. Not “I still need to pay for a cab to get groceries.”
It’s completely realistic for most of your basic needs to be met within walking distance in the world today. Sure, you may want a car to get to some specialty shop across town or to go to some other place more quickly. But that a choice you can decide to make over public transportation.
My only complaint is that I’m absolutely, 100% FORCED to have a car in order to survive. This is absurd and a uniquely American problem.
If you rented or bought a house close to a grocery store you’d mostly be able to do it. European cities were built when horse and carriage were still the best option. I think if city centres were designed to be car free and have everything organised to be walkable that’d be great for people who want that… There are certainly a lot of situations where someone needs to have a car … Here and in Europe.
If you rented or bought a house close to a grocery store you’d mostly be able to do it.
Very expensive to do. Also due to zoning laws you’d have a hard time living near a grocery store since they’re literally not permitted to be next to each other in most places.
Yes, there are a lot of situations where someone would need a car. However, the difference lies in how big “a lot” is. Right now, pretty much everyone needs a car to survive unless they’re deep in a city center. This should not be the case.
If you like cars so much you won’t mind paying for it instead of forcing the rest of the country to subsidize 50% of your little hobby.
A world where roads and public transit are all operated as for profit ventures without any tax ? Man now you’re talking … I’d love that
i like turtles
Me too
They did a 10 year revision of the data here in the UK and found on average over 1000 kids were killed as pedestrians by cars. I think I remember another study where they tried to evaluate how children of different ages understood traffic. Most kids under 8 didnt really see the cars coming, slightly older kids struggled to assess oncoming vehicles of speeds over 20mph but slow traffic made it easier for them to cross. Kids who did the old Bikeability training were even better at understanding traffic and assessing the risk, but that scheme was cut nearly 10 years ago under PM Cameron.
You can get more recent info on these stats and others over at Brake’s website
The British people conceive of the bike as an exotic machine used for Olympic time trials. We would never actually use one to go to the shops. This is fundamentally a nation of bigoted Dunning-Kruger morons that keep voting for the people who don’t build cycle paths and other progressive policy. Every day we fall further into irrelevance. These people think that if we act like Victorians we will achieve the success of that era, meanwhile the rest of the world has moved on.
I once had a Labour councillor tell me that “the car is progress, nobody needs a bike now!” That was only a few years ago just after the 2012 Olympics.
Amazing. Like a 1960s throwback, the Mark Lamarr of dystopian politics.
Jay Foreman has some nice (and very funny) video’s about why Cycling isn’t more common in the UK in his series Unfinished London.
What purpose does this serve other than alienating the people you’re trying to get on your side?
You have to have the alternatives in place before you can convince people to make a change.
Buses already take hours vs. minutes and any road construction that closes stops & routes down adds time and distance to an already long commute.
If you want people to choose your option, you have to make it an option worth choosing.
It’s more like a chicken or egg problem. No alternative without masses knowing about the problem. It took me 25 years to see what we sacrifice for cars. Maybe this flashy billboard approach helps to shorten that time for someone else.
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Cars raped my father!
They turned me into a newt!
Do you know where we are?
Are you incorrectly assuming I’m being facetious?
You seem to not understand the nature of this community.
And you seem to think my comment was facetious when it wasn’t. Humorous, but still in the spirit of fuck cars.
No, I feel your comment was genuine, yet ill conceived.
They’re just trying to get to work, what is this attempting to accomplish
Lmfao, this is a completely nondisruptive protest, it literally does nothing to stop people from getting to work.
In the UK, we’ve been having protests which actively disrupt traffic, which gets people going “why can’t they protest in ways that affect oil refineries/politicians etc” except people were doing that prior with no media coverage, and since having gained media coverage and then doing that, they get criticised for protests targeting politicians…
What this goes to show is that disruptive protesting will get media coverage, and that many people will pay lip service but will inherently lose their shit over people protesting if it even has the slightest chance of disrupting someone’s day.
The best media coverage is gathered by Led By The Donkeys and none of their actions were disruptive. Most British protesters are just attention whores.
Making people aware that many child deaths are preventable for example. Car accidents are the leading cause of death for kids 4-15 years old.
Okay so… they still need to get to work. Are you missing that essential point.
I don’t understand this comment. Are you saying this is trying to stop them from getting to work? (It isn’t.) Are you saying cars are the only way they can’t get to work. (It isn’t, though many places we need to invest more into other options.)
Literally yes to all of that. Do you work in an America and work a job?
How does a sign stop them from driving to work? Also, you can choose to live closer to your work and bike or walk or take public transportation.
Regardless, this is to convince people to speak up and ask for improvements to alternatives rather than letting people act like driving is the only option. Its the only reasonable option to a lot of people in America particularly, but it isn’t the only option possible, and it’s also not the cheapest or most reliable. It will stay the only option if people don’t realize we can have something better if we work towards it.
So, you clearly don’t have a job in America. You really be saying “choose to live closer to your work” during a housing crisis and where people are stuck renting forever lol. You are incredibly out of touch with reality.
You are simultaneously saying “they have to have a car because they don’t live anywhere near work because there’s not enough housing” and “we shouldn’t try to reduce our car dependence so that we can use the now-unnecessary parking lots for housing”
Dude, what is your issue. I gave several options and said that driving is the only reasonable option for many people currently, but they need to work for making other options available, because they are possible. I do live in America by the way and understand the realities plenty, which is why I said people need to work for better solutions. This is a fucking sign though, which isn’t blocking anything, and you’re arguing they need to shut the sign down because it hurts your feelings because you aren’t taking another option and aren’t doing anything to fix things.
Walk. Get a different job. Move closer to work. So many options that don’t involve killing children. But you’ll just throw your hands up because “they still need to get to work!”
Believe me, I don’t like cars either but this is a dumb as hell response. Just get a different job lol, is that your response to solving cars? I hope I don’t have to tell you how ignorantly stupid of a response is, who are you even sending that message to? Yes, work is a requirement of living, so it literally is a hands up situation because it’s a requirement. Must be nice in your mom’s basement to not have to work and understand the real world.
Also equating driving a car to child killing is fucking unhinged. I don’t know if you think this is some sensational eye catching response to prove a point, but it just makes you sound irrational and crazy to the point where you’re going to get laughed out of the room.
They could get to work via public transit (safer, cleaner and faster), if it actually got the same funding as cars got.
We are causing children to die and get paralyzed out of convenience. Sure, people need to get to work but with how things are now it comes at a steep price.
If most people drive then it has massive negetive consequences for both drivers and non drivers. Roads, parking and infrastructure all have financial costs, opportunity costs and negative externalities and take up valuable land in cities. Climate change is just the icing on the cake. Cars also cause noise pollution, stress, traffic and make cities less safe.
Public transport and biking don’t have these problems and per passanger cheaper when taking in account public and private spending.
Unfortunately you can’t fit all this on a small led billboard so I guess we have to settle for whatever this guy did.
Personal transport also has massive benefits. Try transporting a few sheets of drywall on public transport. Try moving a sick person to the hospital. Try living outside of an urban centre…
Taxis and deliveries exist for moving drywall and sick people. If time is of the essence then an ambulance is better. People who live outside of an urban center would probably like convenient public transport instead of going downtown in a car and trying to find parking.
Sure if you live in suburban US you have to drive anywhere to get to anything and in my opinion that sucks pretty hard. It doesn’t have to be that way forever though.
How many times are you moving drywall or transporting sick people to the hospital anyway?
Well two of probably a dozen or more requirements a week right? Your solution is “pay someone else with a vehicle” and after a certain number of times that makes less sense than just having a vehicle. Also imagine being a single mom who works with like 5 kids… Trying to manage that with paying for cabs or trying to use a bus…
For non urban people like me you unfortunely need a vehicle to get everything. I vastly prefer public transport if I’m going into a major city because parking is a major inconvience and expense.
Public transport in areas with low population density is unprofitable and poor service … Too few vehicles so long waits between pickups. My town has literally a single cab … Better be the first person to call if you need a ride to work …
Yeah it would be great if everyone wasn’t forced to have a car in order to get to work. Thanks for agreeing!
You are.
I would if I could right now and I’m going to move next year to a place where I can sell my car and forget about it.
