A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
A two hour commute in an electric car is still two hours in crushing, soul destroying traffic. People ask me why I take a train and a freeway bus for my two days on campus, and I ask them why not? My drive is three minutes from my house to the train.
But in suburban Southern California, public transit is "for freaks and losers." That was deliberate marketing.
It just sucks if 10 minutes by car/a little more by bike become 45 minutes by public transit, once an hour until 8pm.
same for norcal, around bayarea, constantly getting the nagging, why arent you driving instead of taking the bus.
Need to pick your battles tbh.
If you tell every driver to give up driving, the planet ain't getting saved.
Need to pick your battles tbh.
Trump admin cuts $60M for bullet train. Can railway from Dallas to Houston still happen?
The high-speed rail project intended to connect Houston and Dallas in just 90 minutes.
We literally cannot build trains in this country because we self-sabotage every opportunity.
Houston is getting $4B to redo I-45 but can't be spared $60M on state mandated planning for an already established rail route.
This isn't a question of abolishing cars. It's a question of abolishing trains which we appear dead set on doing.
You can't really expect a man advised by the CEO of the world's most valuable car company to make a decision in favour of public transport.
And frankly the man would cut his own dick off if he thought it would be of use to the poor.
In any case, the real alternative to cars was staring us in the face all through COVID. How many people wake up every day, jump into 2-3 tons of their own personal metal, drive for an hour, only to sit staring at the same screens they were looking at through Remote Desktop for 18 months, then do the same thing to get home?
But we can't have that forever, because fuck us.
You can’t really expect a man advised by the CEO of the world’s most valuable car company to make a decision in favour of public transport.
He literally also had a rail company that he'd been plugging for over a decade.
the real alternative to cars was staring us in the face all through COVID. How many people wake up every day, jump into 2-3 tons of their own personal metal, drive for an hour, only to sit staring at the same screens they were looking at through Remote Desktop for 18 months, then do the same thing to get home?
There's material benefit to second and third spaces when collaborating on large, long term projects. And suburbanization is as much at the root of the two hour commute as simple office work.
That said, sure. Telecommuting does quickly what infrastructure improvements would need decades to accomplish.
But we can’t have that forever, because fuck us.
Everything has to be in the service of the short term profitablity of landlords.
I agree. My boyfriend and I were forced to buy a car some years ago because public transport in our area kept cutting budgets to the point that he would have to get up at 3.30-ish in the morning in order to get to work at 8.
We were avid users of public transport for our whole lives and wanted to support it until we were no longer given a choice, but to cave. If I have to go somewhere nowadays, he drives me because of how shit public transport has become in our country. It is genuinely pathetic. He made this decision on both of our behalf after a longer train ride of mine ended in me being stuck on a train station an hour away from home at 2 in the morning, having to wait for the next train home at 4.30. He jumped in the car and came and got me and that was one of the last times I used public transport. Really sucks when you want to support it, but it doesn't want to support you.
Nice. A flase dichotomy so the right can cut EV subsidies as well as not spending on public transport.
When I have a full disk and have no storage space left. I open a program and see a visual representation of the largest files taking space. I clear them out first because its easy and quick.
For some reason, when we have too much CO2 going into the atmosphere, we see the visual representation of who is polluting the most, and take care of the smallest, little fragmented space. We don't select the larger chunks like industry, aviation, marine transport, we pick each individual car and press delete.
Look, cars have to change and Americans will have to be dragged kicking and screaming but It kind of pains me when someone looks at an old car someone is driving, using it way past its intended lifetime, and tells them they are the problem. While being perfectly fine taking an airplane twice yearly and ordering shit from china, shit they will forget they ordered before it actually arrives..
That because the big files right now are the OS. Just deleting system32 isn't a good idea, but moving to a more efficient system is difficult. So we do the easy thing and delete old PDFs, and maybe some old games. But the system needs to be changed, and the sooner the better.
We don’t select the larger chunks like industry, aviation, marine transport, we pick each individual car and press delete.
In fairness...
The nuclear powered cargo ship is already here.
And as China is the premier builder of trans-Pacific cargo ships (1,500 to 1,700 ships per year, which is more than the US has built in the last ten) this is technically getting addressed.
Also, incidentally, the premier electric car manufacturers are almost entirely East Asian. The only functional airplane manufacturer is French. Heavy industry in the US is on the verge of total collapse (outside AI and Bitcoin mining).
The US plan to cut emissions is basically just Degrowth.
Always important to remember in this debate: electrification of transport is not just about carbon and climate. It's about public health, not to mention public sanity.
The filthy noisy combustion engine was never compatible with dense cities, which is where most people live these days. Anyone who has been to one of the few places in the world where urban transport has been completely electrified will testify to the difference it makes to be free of the internal combustion engine. It's night and day.
Let's not lose sight of the wood for the trees.
Motorway noise won't be reduced by electrification:
Graph:
Car noise sources, ICE drivetrain with a notchy transmission.
The little table about cars and trucks compares the crossover speeds above which tyre noise surpasses drivetrain noise.
Meaning: The constant traffic roar in the suburbs will continue, because at dual carriageway speed, eliminating drivetrain noise has minuscule effect on total noise.
Urban planning won't be improved:
Heavy metal pollution will be reduced:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1352231012006942
As, Hg and Se exhaust emissions were dominated by fuel combustion while Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn exhaust emissions were dominated by lubricant oil combustion.
Microplastic pollution will increase:
This is nitpicking.
My point was that electric cars, as a drop-in replacement for ICE cars, increase the quality of life in cities. And substantially.
Go to Shenzhen and you will see what I am talking about.
The overall energy issue is irrelevant to that. The motorway noise issue is irrelevant to that.
Also: the graph you post on particle pollution, with its title "far more particles", is misleading. It refers to tyres specifically. But particles also come from brakes and, of course, combustion. The overall increase is minimal, and very dependent on the speed of the vehicles - which can be reduced in cities.
Particles aside (it's an issue, yes), EVs emit zero gases. They are hugely quieter at lower speeds. The difference it makes in cities is big and real.
Motorway noise won’t be reduced by electrification.
They will in slow speed zones. Motorcycles are the worst offenders
Urban planning won’t be improved.
Surely, but the image you show depict 2 entirely different situations. Trying to compare them is dumb. It also has serious implications.
Microplastic pollution will increase.
Sure. That's something, but not the only source of pollution.
That's a problem, but small/micro particles aren't the only metric. The gases released by exhaust are also a real problem for people that walk nearby cars, and they're in a big quantity in certain cars.
But yea, balancing all of this is complicated.
Does having heavier electric cars with no exhaust but more tire usage (because heavier cars) so more particles in the air beneficial? I don't believe we have serious studies about this, but it could change the meta.
Hear me out here, less cars regardless of their enegry source will reduce both exhaust and microplastics. We don't have to trade one for the other when we can build alternatives that don't produce either.
Particulates are bad, sure, but they're not what's causing climate collapse.
Climate collapse should more accurately be called global ecological collapse. Emissions are only one part of the problem, and the hyper focus on emissions allows other problems like plastics or habitat destruction to go unsolved. They’re all connected though. Our ability to fight climate change is intricately connected to how healthy the global ecology is.
I agree on mass transit. Highly recommend Adam Something's youtube video on why self driving cars will increase traffic and waste. Its not a solution for cities large or small. Rural communities may see benefits but they pose weirder problems.
Because at least in the US the airline and car industries hand shake to stop commuter trains.
The west coast regions also have an additional problem where the slopes will need massive amounts of tunnels for high speed rail and are complicated by a lot active geologic zones. So while its the best solution (trains) its expensive but Japan managed to do it. Its not going to be cheap or quick to build the needed infrastructure. Add in most people are heavily invested in car infrastructure when they buy a car. So there's a public will barrier here built out of billions of garages, cars, and driveways sold.
People also pose "flying cars" etc as a solution. Piloting air vehicles requires air traffic controllers and communicating on an extreme level in addition to pilot licenses and security problems. Its not also not a serious answer to transportation.
Also for flying cars, when a non-flying car breaks down suddenly, it can be a dangerous situation but you just need to avoid hitting anything until your momentum is lost and generally have options (brakes might lose power assist but could work, if they don't there's still emergency brakes, and if those also fail, there's engine braking if you have transmission control, or steering back and fourth to lose momentum via turning friction, and once you're going slow enough, even colliding with something stationary can help).
With flying cars, maybe it can glide, assuming it even works like that and isn't more of a helicopter or just using some kind of thrusters. Plus, if you're falling to your death anyways, you might not have the presence of mind to try to optimize what you do hit with what control you do have to minimize damage to others. Hell, the safety feature might even be ejecting and leaving it to fall wherever, while hoping none of the other flying cars hit you or your parachute, or fly close enough to mess with the airflow in a way where the parachute might fail.
And that's not even going into how much more energy it takes to fly vs roll.
Flying cars don't make practical sense. And where they do, we already have helicopters.
The conservatives where I live shit blood absolutely any time any changes are made to roads to make them even slightly more pedestrian and bus/bike friendly. Preventing accidents/deaths and generally having a more usable, inviting environment for anyone that isn’t a car is unacceptable if it adds even a second to their commute. Go live on the fucking highway if you like it so much.
It's funny because adding more non-car options tends to make using a car more pleasant. But conservatives aren't known for being smart, correct, or good at long term thinking.
Every car commerical shows the fantasy of being the only car on the road.
It's so ludicrous. and consistent that when you know to look for it, it's actually hilarious.
People do not like traffic. They already hate most cars, cause they're only driving one.
Controversial take (for this community): Electric personal vehicles were the catalyst for the electrification of commercial vehicles. So while it doesn't address the problem of car-centric infrastructure, EVs have had a net positive impact on the environment by converting fleet vehicles to less polluting options as well as taking diesel trucks off the road.
Plus, even if you reduce the number of cars by 50% you still need to replace the other 50% on the road so the EV industry needs to grow
I often wonder how the emissions generated by producing and shipping a new electric vehicle compare to just keeping your old ICE vehicle until it rusts to pieces. Like how long does it take to break even from that?
It depends how quickly you put on miles (and which study you base the calculation on). For most EVs, they break even with the emissions of an ICE car at about 15k miles. By 200k, the EV emitted 52% less emissions compared to the average car.
If the electric grid is powered by more renewables in the future, that would jump to 78% less emissions at 200k.
Even if every car on the road was electric, the world will still become an ash pile in 50 years.
It's more blaming the people for the problems of the rich, who will never be seriously regulated. It's easier to blame all of us.
Electric cars are not a "green solution". Because of all the associated costs to produce and maintain them:
The battery requires rare minerals that are to be mined elsewhere (Africa, China, south america...), in abject conditions.
The host country needs to deploy charging stations, plugged to the grid, which has a high cost in copper, contributing to point above.
The internal wiring of the car also increase the cost, contributing also to the first point.
And what to do of all the defective/old batteries ?
I'm not disagreeing with the post, but mass transit is completely non-existent where I live. We have so far to go.
Sure, some places basically require personal transport. Some of it because it is really rural, some of it because it is build to require cars (which is something that can be changed, although it takes time). The problem with cars being the default for everything in everyones mind is just, that possible alternatives aren't even considered and thus even more car requirements are locked in for decades to come.
You can't get rid of cars, not everywhere and in many places not right now. But you have to start and look for alternative ways to manage things so you can reduce the need over time.
Don't know where you live, but to put this into perspective: it's the same situation here and I live in The Netherlands (outside of the major cities). Even in a rich, flat country, the size of a post stamp, we cannot make mass transit work outside of larger cities. I agree that we need mass transit, but it's only one solution for the mobility puzzle. Cars also fit in there as a puzzle piece, especially in areas where the population density is lower.
So from my perspective, no, cars aren't just for the rich.
I also live in the Netherlands and live in a commuter town of 80k inhabitants. There are a lot of bus routes in this town but they are all designed for commuters going to Amsterdam or for people going to the town center. If I want to visit a friend on the other side of town by bus I have to take multiple buses and waste a lot of time on waiting. I usually take the bike when I visit them since that’s faster than going by bus. But if I have to bring lots of things or it’s raining heavily or I know that I’m going home after midnight I take the car, since public transportation is just not a good option to take. Or if I want to visit another town that isn’t on route to Amsterdam it takes me twice as long to get there by bus compared to taking the car. Majority of homes in this town have a car since public transportation or the bike doesn’t satisfy every transportation need they have. And I rather want all these cars to be electric since that is conducive for the air quality.
It’s just not cost effective for a town this size to have dedicated bus routes that connect every corner of town to each other. And it’s even worse for smaller towns.
