Upvoting a factually incorrect comment because it sounds nice, and downvoting a factually correct comment because it sounds bad.
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Fuck /fuckcars
They actually want to bulldoze so much, just so we can cram more people in closer together. And no, no one wants to be walking around when its 90+ degrees out, or literally freezing.
Ive never seen any calls to bulldoze anything. We do a lot of complaining about how much was bulldozed to fill landscapes with stroads and parking lots. And dont act like we're not calling for buses and trains as well. Have you stopped and thought about why it's too hot to walk around now?
Now? Its been too hot since the dinosaurs walked the planet.
Ill give you the benefit of the doubt that you mean even if it was pre-global warming cooler it'd be too hot to walk. It's still extended those periods where it's too hot and cold to walk. Plus, again, we also call for buses and trains and trams for your air conditioned travel needs.
Benefit of the doubt? What other intepretation is there?
like denying that the earth has been warming
Oh. Yeah, on second read, I can definitely see how you might get that, I shouldve worded it differently.
"We should allow higher density and missing middle housing to be built and promote alternatives to cars" == "We want to bulldoze everything"?
They throw out all nuance and have absolutely no empathy or consideration that others need to live differently than them. Or hell, need to live differently than them in order to support their own lifestyle. I swear 90% of them have never lived outside the city they were born in.
OK so the majority of people has to cut back on so much, especially a safe environment to get places, just so a few people with a car fetish can keep buying bigger and bigger cars. Got it.
We're very quickly moving to a place where the QUANTITY of people is so high, the QUALITY of their lifestyles have to be sacrificed to cut down on human impact. The impoverished/developing world has very low impact, at huge cost to their quality of life. Who wants to volunteer to live like sub-saharan Africans, or Indians in abject poverty to cut down on human impact? I'm certain they don't want that life - and why should they? I'm sure they would like to travel on a jet to a beach vacation like those in more affluent countries do.
I'm calling this eco-austerity. Instead of publicizing overpopulation and promoting low birth rates, we're expected to belt tighten and give up on quality of life. It's bullshit. We should have <1B people living like kings, not 10B people living like peasants.
Who says you have to live like people sub Saharan Africa?
Just rake a look at how much of the pollution in America comes from the richest 10%. Same thing in Germany. Those people need to seriously cut down. And everyone else needs to reconsider if the 300m trip to the supermarket is really necessary to go by car. Or if it's really necessary to have a fucking 3ton monstrosity of a car. Or if a small car like a fiat 500 isn't actually enough.
You're off by a factor of 4 on the grocery distance for the last 3 places I've lived, and those stores were CLOSE. It's like 100cc of petrol to go that far, 200cc round trip, in lieu of 40+ minutes of fast walking (in which you can only carry limited groceries). I know all about it because I've done the walk many times when I didn't have a car, and it fucking sucks.
I'd say freaking out about 200ccs of petrol to get groceries is an insane degree of austerity, and the fact that people like you are proposing that is evidence of either an irrational need to control impact, or (if justified) evidence that the world is grotesquely overpopulated.
Nobody owns 3 ton cars around here. Mine isn't even 2 tons. In fact it's pretty close in weight to a Fiat 500, while being generally more useful in every way. Everything you're presenting is a strawman/caricature of what you imagine typical suburban car owners to live like. And yes, we should all be driving electric cars, but it's not going to happen overnight.
Edit: damn near nobody on earth would drive to get groceries if the store was 300m/1000ft away. Most people will never be able to live that close to the grocery store, work, or any other place that they routinely need to visit. That's why your example is insane.
Did I talk specifically about your situation? No. But sadly enough I know a few people, that actually do exactl those kinds of trips.
And I have no idea where you live, but in most European cities (!) There's a supermarket at most 1km away. Usually closer.
The closest one to me is 300m. Work is 32 km though. But you know what? I don't own a car. Because there's public transport.
And I live in a city with pretty great public transport. And yet people with way way shorter commuting distances still tend to have fucking big SUVs and drive everywhere. Those are the people I mean.
If you don't even fit in that category, why do you even feel the need to actively defend yourself? That doesn't even make any sense?
It's hard to tell the intent of any poster, and there is a vehement anti-car movement here (and on Reddit) that allows for no exceptions to the idea that living should be done at high density, and without personal vehicles. It's hard to read your intent and beliefs because the things you said before are very similar to what I've heard from the zealots.
I'm trying to make the point that public transit easily misses on serving every origin, destination, and timing efficiently. Usually it misses badly, and my average experience with specific commutes is a 3x time penalty for transit vs driving. The penalty gets worse if done at especially early or late hours. Maybe this is exacerbated by car infrastructure and lower density, but the anti car crowd would have you believe it's intrinsic and not a function of history and preference. At any rate I usually disagree with them on almost every premise.
But that mostly just means that you have terrible public transport where you live. Not that it's inherintely bad.
If I would take a car to work, it would take me at least (!) 50 minutes (depending on traffic, usually longer). With public transport plus bike I'm at 65 minutes. So just a bit longer, but delays are pretty uncommon (maybe 3 minutes every now and then). Plus I can relax, read or watch a show. And it's incredibly cheap thanks to the Deutschlandticket (49€, but 14€ of that is payed by my employer). Only for fuel (not counting insurance, tax, repairs etc.) It would cost me at least 180€.
So yeah just this tiny delay is okay in my opinion, considering what I'm saving (money, environment, worries about a car...)
And I never said, it's the ultimate solution. I'm just saying especially those huge as cars are a fucking monstrosity more or less. Because easily 95% of users don't even need such a huge vehicle. They just want it. And don't give a fuck what that entails for the environment and for other people. (especially looking at pedestrian and bike safety).
More people should just really consider if the car they chose is really what they NEED and if every trip they are taking with it is truly necessary.
Maybe you happen to be on a route that runs well from home to work without lots of stops and no need to change lines. Can you find a destination in your city that would require a change of bus or train and incur a larger time penalty? What if your job was located there instead?
I think most people buy sensible vehicles but there are certainly people who have a truck fetish that is not justified. Unfortunately it creates an arms race where all cars get larger because there are very real risks of a collision with a larger vehicle.
I do. But I still live in the south, and my work is outside the city, to the north west of it, to be exact.
The average is 40 minutes commute time (for my city). So I'm already quite a bit off.
And yes, of course, if I lived in the south east of the city it would take me 1,5 hours at least by public transport. 40-60 minutes by car on average. But I wouldn't move there, as that is too far off.
But most of these other possible places would mean, that I would most probably also always have to drive through the city center or take a big detour outside of it. Both possibilities aren't actually preferable. So again I wouldn't live there and at the same time work at the same company.
I just need to look at one of my brothers. Lives relatively close to the center but still a bit south of it. Could take 2 subways in 30 minutes (including walking) but still decides to take the car most days where he has to drive through heavy traffic, that takes him at least the same amount of time.
So no, a lot of people aren't that sensible. They just do what they are used to and often enough even vehemently go against even the possibility of changing that with weird as excuses (smells terrible weird people, always packed, always delayed etc.) Which for most times of day and most routes just isn't true.
Just take a look at the available cars nowadays. You can barely even buy a smal car, as those aren't even produced in such a variety anymore. Because 1. People keep buying the big SUVs, and 2. Manufacturers can make way more money with those than with small cars.
Hell, in Germany they are actively debating making parking spots bigger, because the cars keep getting bigger (btw look at carsized they have a great visualization for this), instead of simply reglementaing how big cars can get, before they are either forbidden or so heavily taxed that it's just not worth to buy something large.
I generally agree with you about fuckcars. They're sanctimonious assholes. But when it comes to housing, suburban sprawl is always bad.
This is exactly the point I've been making to them. I think it's a bunch of people who have never lived outside of a major city, or grew up in new-construction actual suburban hell like Phoenix, DFW, Vegas, most of FL etc. Try old Midwest small city suburbs by comparison. Maybe parts of the northeast.
They probably couldn't afford a car after used car prices spiked sometime between 2000-2010, and never experienced the freedom and autonomy. They can't imagine not being into a downtown club scene - it hasn't dawned on them that they will probably grow up and hate living in a congested apartment world and might want to stretch out in a bigger house in a quiet neighborhood. It's never occurred to them that not everyone works from home and their spouse may need to take a job 20 miles in the opposite direction.
Do you sell your house because your job changed? Get divorced because your partner's job changed? You can't have ALL of the employment in easy reach by public transit from your home. This ideal-city with perfect transit and no commute is a handwave. UNLESS you live in a sufficiently small town that has everything but hasn't blown up yet - and those aren't dense enough for transit, and require personal vehicles.
Public transit is also more inconvenient than convenient even if you give it a maximum advantage in density and stipulate that the trains will run 24/7 and frequently (NYC).
It's just inexperience with life or being an urban loving weirdo who can't imagine that other perspectives exist. I want to spend all of my free time in places you couldn't service with transit. They can't even imagine it.
And no, no one wants to be walking around when its 90+ degrees out
That's why they want shade, goober.
Even with shade, it's hot.
You sound like such a baby.
We're all babies here. Every. Single. One of us. Bebe.
We sure are but I'm not throwing a hissy fit at the thought of being outside.
Yeah, they're pretty much ACAB now but cars instead of cops.
EDIT: Before anyone even says it. Bad cops suck. Cars do not suck. Big lifted trucks are ass. I wish I could make a 4 wheeler street legal.
Cars absolutely do suck.
I make a living out of my car, so in my case, I'll just have to disagree.
If a good amount of drivers walked or took public transit/bikes instead, wouldn't that make your job easier?
Of course, sure. Problem is, I'm in the Detroit Metro area so good luck prying the F150s out of people's hands around here. Second off, with the plans fuck cars has there'd be areas where I'd have to park and walk to deliver stuff. I already have one outdoor mall I deliver to and it fucking blows having to park and walk all that way because 99% of the time I'm marked as late because it takes so long to deliver shit there. I'm not a slow walker either.
So yes, less traffic would be nice. Will that ever happen in this particular city? Hell no.