- cross-posted to:
- fuck_cars@lemmy.ml
- greentext@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- fuck_cars@lemmy.ml
- greentext@lemmy.ml
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We all now how
I used to just think of this as yeah sure things are just bigger in America, it’s a huge place with lots of people… but then I realized that the cities with ridiculous numbers of lanes like this aren’t any bigger than cities in the rest of the world. Houston (pictured) isn’t even in the Top 200 biggest world cities.
Everybody wants a back yard, nobody wants buses or trains
I don’t want a back yard. What I want is the noise isolation and the feeling of safety and personal space. I also like having the ability to use that space for personal projects if I want to.
I have seen condos and other urban spaces that are well-built enough to provide the same benefits that I see from a back yard. But they’re very expensive.
My basic point is that people sometimes forget what they really want, and instead focus on something that has given them those benefits.
I wouldn’t mind living in an apartment building, so long as it’s equally co-owned by the people who live in it, and by nobody who doesn’t. And that it has a green space on the property for recreation and a community garden.
I have both (not so much on the train front unfortunately).
It’s the bike lanes! 😡 /s
STAY IN THE BIKE LANE !!
I’m happy to never see wherever the fuck that is.
When you look at old cars, they were simple. Small, just enough power to get around. SUVs are monstrosities that shouldn’t exist.
Old car:
I love the look of older vehicles. I even want a few. I just don’t want to have to drive them anywhere. I’ll be content with a few bikes and a nearby train station.
See, that’s art.
Wildly unsafe for those inside, but art doesn’t have to be practical.
More importantly: wildly unsafe for those outside
Hey found the guy that can point out the exceptions. How hard can I roll my eyes.
It isn’t an exception. The car pictured is still much smaller than modern US cars (I think the pictured one is a US one but not 100% sure)
It’s not smaller than modern cars. That’s a 1960 Licoln Contiental with a curb weight of 5,000–5,700 lbs (depending on the exact specs) and 227 inches long. For reference, a 2021 Cadillac Escalade has a curb weight of 5,635–5,823 lbs and a length of 211 inches.
Let me rephrase to be more precise. Cars of that size are not common anymore in the US, judging from then vs now parking lot photos. I know small cars are still being made; they’re making smaller cars than ever before these days, but that’s not an argument against there being a trend of cars becoming bigger on average over time.
How about a whole parking lot? Do these look especially small to you?
Yes 😭
Ok let’s begin! 🙄🙄🙄
Do you have any evidence your claim is true?
What is that question even? Do you have evidence to the contrary?
That’s not how claims work.
🙄
You could just say “no, I don’t have evidence”.
To be fair you could have pointed to a specific era such as the late '70s and '80s post fuel shortage. '50s and '60s cars are notoriously inefficient solid steel death landships.
See, I think you can point to specific post-war US time periods like that where cars were kinda shrinking. The post-oil crisis cars were one, and post-Great Recession was another.
The companies went right back to oversized metal boxes as soon as they could. This has been true for the entire post-war period.
Even with those specific time periods, I don’t see any move towards really small cars. A 1980 Toyota Corolla is on the large size of small. It’s not like Japanese Kai cars ever had a chance in the US market.
Yes I could add approximately 5653 caveats to everything I say. Let’s begin.
*
That’s some quick counting!
Just one more lane bro
Classic: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0dKrUE_O0VE
The Katy cost a mere $7 billion and it’s still often a glorified parking lot. It’s got less throughput than a single train for moving people, but I’m sure adding another lane will fix it. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/o-F-7Yc-A8U
How did this happen?
Convenience and Capitalism, what a wild duet!
And it’s not even convenient…unless you purposefully destroy existing infrastructure and aggressively promote individualism in your society such that nobody has any other real choice! Walking distance? Never heard of her.
Yeah whats actually convenient is being able to step out your home, jump into the tram, read the newspaper for 15 minutes, jump out and have teleported to work.
It’s ALWAYS capitalism, people STILL don’t get this (I can’t blame them they got propagandized into believing capitalism is the holy economy or some stupid shit)
I mean, the answer is in the line right above the question.
Well now it’s fascism
America has LUNGS and ARTERIES whereas
Europe has mere wimpy BRONCHIOLES and CAPILLARIESThose arteries are pretty congested, cars are ld cholesterol, trains are hd cholesterol, and we are eating a diet of trans fat up in here.
America, fuck yeah
Our entire continent has been given almost wholey over to the automobile, and despite it being a wasteful, ultra expensive, and inefficient way of transporting people and goods, because of entrenched interests we cannot well improve on it with even interstate freight and passenger rail being opposed by oil companies and car companies and probably Road repair companies and everyone else.
A real popular government would rally the population to overcome those entrenched interests and make a viable Interstate freight and passenger rail, it will not get any easier in time and it has to be done.
It would be a proper use of borrowed money as it would pay for itself many times over and lower the cost of living and doing business and make the us more competitive.
Without needing automobiles we could have higher standards of living with vastly lower expenditures.
This biggest argument i see is people somehow think things like transit will remove their freedom of mobility, when in reality it vastly improves mobility, especially for those who can’t or don’t want to drive.
My grandmother was trapped inside her house for years at the end of her life. All she could do was wait for people to visit her because she couldn’t drive.
When I lived in a small city in Japan, if I went out during the day, there were ancient people all over the place who had taken the bus into town.
Anybody who would say that the American way of throwing elderly people to the wolves is better… Well, anyone who says that is just an inhuman monster, aren’t they?
Relying on the automobile has made us exceptionally vulnerable. At any time our only means of achieving an income can be removed. We spend magnitudes more money than we could otherwise and everything from building infrastructure to support so many cars everywhere, to the cost of cars and repairs, too the ability of others to take that away from us at a moment’s notice.
With designed cities we could have housing on a direct line to our business sectors on a public transit, which would free up a substantial portion of our income, while if the housing was constructed intelligently and fairly we would free up the better part of half of our costs to live.
Also remote work could Free People from the commuting nightmare in White Collar work.
“Cars are freedom!” … so long as you register it with the government, insure it with a private insurance company, carry a photo ID from the government. Where a train you just pay and get on, or a bike you just ride.
Modern American society, mind you
Even though the USA is clearly the worst, still almost all countries have about twice as many people driving as taking other forms of transit, and in many more, the majority. So the image applies to the majority of people in most countries.
If you add up the India bars, you’re quite far away from 100 % still… Mass NEET is the answer I guess.
Even the Netherlands. poster child of biking 😔
I mean, 40% of the population biking to work is nothing to sneeze at, compared to the US’s 6-or-so %
I wish the statistic include motorcycle/moped, then show the statistic from Asian country like Taiwan or Philippines or Malaysia, car and motorcycle have equal share on the road yet it still a fucking mess here(at least in Malaysia).
Most Asian countries are now on motorcycles of all sizes and even larger e-bikes.
Modern US American society, mind you.
American society is 99% in on it, but many other places are trying to go there too.
We’re mostly going the other way in Western Europe
Not particularly quickly in most places, mind, but we’re heading in the right direction on that at least
If you take that exit and then a right at the light, you have one of the narrowest and most faded bike lanes around (assuming they haven’t fixed it yet)!
How is that picture 1200x0, but I can see it?
Edit:oh wait they just named it that. I’m not always smart.
Only in US
Canada too. Europe was adopting it, but their Continent is already too population dense for the ponzi scheme of car centric design to really take off.
“Cars” were the “superior” invention to rail, so wide spread adoption was attempted in most places.
TIL Australia doesn’t exist.
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What of it?
Pretty sure car centric design is everywhere.
not to the same degree everywhere, most European cities do have plenty of infrastructure for cars, but also plenty for public transport; I live in a city where it’s possible to get everywhere without a car, which is why I don’t own one
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