They have played us for absolute fools
They have played us for absolute fools
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72 comments
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Here's the thing: I live in a mid sized city in Brazil. As in America, Brazil is very car centric (thanks, Kubitschek). But there's no trains. The capital city of my state has a single urban train line, and I think it's the only in the whole state, that's as big as France.
Your options here are:
- use a car and endure the traffic;
- get a poor planned, crowded and falling apart bus, and endure the traffic, because they rarely have exclusive lanes;
- get a motorcycle, so you can split lanes and get through the traffic, but risking your life and not being able to carry more than one (adult) person and a handful of small items;
- or use a bicycle in this very hilly and mountainous place, with close to no infrastructure to make it less risky.
I chose to use a motorcycle (although I couldn't afford one yet because we're poor), but I understand that for anyone with a family, owning a car is not a choice, it's a necessity (and it's a very expensive one)
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Time to make it a political movement then. Because the people who have any sort of power to make significant changes are politicians.
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First we have to convince people here that this is a problem at all. Most people think that the solution to the traffic problem is more roads, more lanes, cheaper cars, and better buses.
The buses are bad? Just make them better. There are too many cars in the streets? Just make better streets
Buses are that bad usually because they are a monopoly or very close to it. The government chooses which company can do public transportation by rigged licitations, and no other company can do it. Then they have no reason at all to do a good job.
Most people seem to have given up on the idea of more train lines. No company can do it, only the government. Every politician promised it, but adding train lines to an existing city is very hard, so none do
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Agree to all points. Sadly this is prevalent among countries with political corruption (my country included). And these are the countries that have the least buying power for general public and therefore the the societies that would most benefit from public transport and micro mobility infrastructure.
Hopefully having a global discussion helps bring out awareness. My local politicians regard the US as some sort of gold standard, therefore I am hopeful whenever the US makes "fuck cars" infrastructure changes.
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72 comments