1249
10000 passengers per hour
(feddit.de)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
1249 points (94.1% liked)
Fuck Cars
9821 readers
19 users here now
This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.
This community exists for the following reasons:
- to raise awareness around the dangers, inefficiencies and injustice that can come from car dependence.
- to allow a place to discuss and promote more healthy transport methods and ways of living.
You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.
Rules
-
Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.
-
No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.
-
Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.
-
No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.
-
No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.
-
No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.
-
No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.
Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
As always, the problem with commuter trains is the last mile. If you work in the city, there is probably some form of bus or subway, but if you work in an unwalkable suburb, you'll need an Uber for that last mile which cuts into the benefit.
We shouldn't be building unwalkable suburbs
We already did.
And continue to do so, that is what should get stopped.
So we should continue catering to their needs, thereby encouraging the construction of more unwalkable suburbs?
There are a lot of things we shouldn't do that we already did.
that's not a problem with trains it's a problem with unsustainable land use
Yeah lol
"Nobody builds suburbs you can walk in without rolling an ankle or getting hit by a car" "Yeah man that's the fucking trains fault"
Agreed, but it still an obstacle to wider adoption of trains.
@themeatbridge @sexy_peach Commuter driving has the same 'last mile' problem, but it's parking.
The photo doesn't include the $250 million worth of carparks for those 10,000 cars that has to exist at the other end of the highway.
I agree with you, but employers are solving that problem by leaving densely developed places for suburban and rural locations. This contributes to sprawl and compounds the complexity of the problem. All because public transit can't solve the last mile problem.
We need adaptive infrastructure and regulated development to coincide with public transit, but at least in the USA, I might as well be talking about flying to Mars on unicorn farts.
Regulatory capture isn't just a thing that happens, it's the very foundation of our political system. Like a house grown from fungus, it's not "corrupted" because the corruption is all there is.
The problem is the unwalkable suburb that doesn't make any sense. It never made sense either.
It's not only bad for commuting. It's a mess for groundwater, pollution of all type (noise, microplastics, air, etc.) It has an impact on the wildlife including reproduction, on plants, etc.
It's just a bad use of space? No, it's bad socially by isolating people. It creates urban traps. I will stop here otherwise I will continue on the fact it's a myth created by the capital...
surely you can bike 2 miles in the burbs? One of the upsides of suburbs being so painfully sprawly is that barely anyone lives there, so you shouldn't have a tremendous amount of traffic on those 2 miles to the train station.
And even if you'd fear for your life biking there now, it's not like you need to build bike paths along every little residential street to fix it, start with the largest most high-traffic roads and build your way down until people feel safe biking to the train station.
Sure, but then you have to carry your bike with you on the train. There is no workable solution to suburbia that doesn't involve cars because it was designed and built around them. Unfortunately, they're now home to tens of millions of people, and any quick solution would most likely end up hurting a lot of them.
Bike parking at the train stations. You bike to the train station, lock the bike up, take the train, take the second bike from the destination train station, bike to the office. See videos on how the Dutch do it. Even with multiple bikes it's incredibly cheap in terms of money as well as climate impact compared to even the cheapest cars.
Lol you could easily buy matching ebikes for less than the price of a half way reliable car these days
just park the bike???
y'all keep inventing problems that don't exist.
Actually, you can leave a bike at the bike garage near the station or rent one on a monthly basis. That's what they do in Japan.
does not work in the US. bike theft is too easy.
They have cameras and a guard and you lock it up. Not the problem you think it is.
Well, in the Netherlands and at least some other EU countries most train stations have a bike rental system that works by just using a card to unlock the bike for a couple of Euros for 24 hours. So there is a possible solution.
Many people here use that system. It's also possible to buy a (second-hand) bike and park it at the station where you need it, if you'd like.
Edit: Didn't see the post below.. but exactly that.
I agree carrying the bike on the train is a problem, but there are a solutions like e-scooters and bikeshare.
not quite, suburbs are more dangerous for bikes because cars are used to wide smooth roads and do not look for bikes.
Or just have a parking lot/garage, or bike the last mile...
My nearest bus stop is four miles away and I would definitely die if I tried to ride a bike there. These roads are crazy dangerous.
The whole point of this sub is advocating for changing that and getting rid of car centric development.
Right, but it's like a support group for depression that provides advice like "have you tried not being sad?"
You can't fix car-centric development by pointing out all the ways in which the world would be better if everything were different. You need to have a plan, a pathway from point A to point B, and point B needs to be accessible from point A. Anything less is just ineffectual whining.
An easy improvement would be protected bike lanes along those roads
To be sure, that would be a quality of life improvement, but it wouldn't actually solve the problem where I live. It's too hilly and we have too many rainy and snowy days to reliably commute via bike. I love the nearby bike trails, and my neighborhood is great for taking the kids for a ride. But a two hour ride over a mountain for a 9 AM office meeting is a non-starter.
Okay, maybe it won't help you, but there sure are people who don't commute 30+km each way and could use some part of the bike lane. Also, ebikes exist
Weather and hills really are not the main issue, I live in Switzerland. We have plenty of hills and shitty weather ;)
I live in Pennsylvania, which is more than two and a half times the size of Switzerland, and that's just one state. You cannot take an ebike from Philadelphia to West Chester, PA, nor would it be safe on country roads at night.
An ebike would be fun for getting around town, but it doesn't replace a car. You know the old saying, Americans think 100 years is a long time, and Europeans think 100 kms is a long distance. I drove 52 km to tonight to a farm for a party, and while I did pass a few horse and buggys (Amish country) there is zero chance that happens at all unless I have a car.
My experience (minus the Amish, probably) is fairly typical for Americans. Most of us commute at least 25 minutes by car each way every work day. I don't, because I work from home, but I still drive almost every day to sports practices, dance classes, music lessons, or visits to the grandparents. I own a bike, as does every member of my family, but we only ride recreationally.
I'm not saying a car never makes sense. But Americans go out of their way to justify using a car and refusing anything that might change that. Most people live near urban center probably in suburbs. Those are just very bad land use, but with some small changes, bikes could be reasonable to get to a somewhat close bus or train station.
Protected bike lanes, as I said.
Are those all 50+km away?
Sports and grandparents, yes 50-60 km, dance and music lessons are about 30 km each with occasional 100km trips to performances.
I agree that we do not have land use optimized for bikes. That's been my thesis from the beginning. We can not easily reallocate suburband land use to make it possible to navigate via bike and public transit. Adding protected bike lanes to country roads would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to widen, and that's before we start considering the legal costs of buying all of the land it would require. And then what? You still need to reconfigure the land use itself to create concentrated commercial spaces, because it's no good if I have to ride 30 km to the grocer and then 70 km in the opposite direction to the shoe store if I want to do two errands in a single trip.
As I've said, you're underestimating the enormoty of the problem and the distances we travel for normal things.
Maybe, but on the other hand, some villages are so small here (couple of hundreds of residents), but they have rather frequent (hourly or more) transit. Furthermore, suburbs are definitively dense enough for buses and bikes. In between, investments for transit are needed. And sure there are areas where it is probably not feasible to do so, but only few people are affected.
dude if people can find the money for cars they can absolutely find the money for an e-bike. the "but hills" argument died like at least 5 if not 10+ years ago.
I can't fit two kids and a dog into an ebike. I can't even take that on the highway, or use it if it rains. So I need a car, and an ebike is a luxury.
@themeatbridge @Swedneck most families will find it hard to do without a car, but then most families (at least where I live) have more than 1 car. Rather than being a luxury the 1 car + N e-bikes setup is cheaper and often more convenient for local trips, which tends to be quite a significant proportion. We access school, library, pool, shops, doctors, cinemas, our workplaces etc via e-bike. With kids. Sometimes in the rain. Sometimes with a dog.
How do you get kids and a dog on an ebike?
The library is close, but up a treacherous windy road with no room for bikes and cars that drive too fast. We have walked there, but we'll usually drive to rhe nearby park and then walk.
None of the other locations you mentioned are accessible via bike, even e-bike, in less than an hour ride time. Do you really make sick kids pedal a bike to the doctor?
Where I live, the train station is smack in the middle of all the big employers!!
There just isn't actual service to the station....
Why did it become unwalkable?