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- cross-posted to:
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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/28104349
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A tweet by @BrentTodarian which says “Never forget, the electric car is here to save the car industry, not the planet”100% agree. Unfortunately, with the infrastructure in the US I don’t see us making a move to successfully public transit anytime soon.
ebikes.
I know people thag commute 30+ miles a day. Don’t know if an e-bike will fix that.
I mean, not all solutions need to solve all problems. Really the solution here is a carbon tax, penalizing the creation of CO2eq directly, rather than playing whack-a-mole with various contributing factors. Then, reform zoning laws and start improving transit/urban infrastructure.
The current sprawling state of US cities isn’t something that can be fixed very quickly. But ebikes can do a lot to fill the gap. Ebikes are fast and cheap to manufacture, are democratic, and provide timely transport in an ~15mi radius. Complimenting ebikes, city governments should implement BRT systems. BRT isn’t as sexy as trains, but it could be implemented in a month or two with basically no expense via paint and traffic signal programming. Beyond this, what would be amazing is a bus designed for rapidly loading/unloading ebikes, resolving the last mile problem at both the start and end of trips.
So your friends who live 30 miles from work could ebike to the BRT stop, jump on with their bike, ride across town, unload their bike, and ride to work. Or with the zoning changes, they could simply move closer to their work.
Or they could - get this - continue driving their current ICE vehicle until the built environment is sufficiently reformed. Or buy an EV which is designed to navigate the current auto-oriented landscape. That’s why the carbon tax is important. Ebikes and BRT might not work for all people in all situations. People need to be free to make their own choices about what works best for them, and that may very well be an EV. Certainly the more radical elements in this sub might hate the idea, but no one who actually knows anything about urban design thinks we’re going to be able to snap our fingers and get rid of cars overnight. The point is to make eco-friendly cities that make people happy - and forcing people to commute an hour via ebike in a Michigan winter isn’t going to make anyone happy.
But that doesn’t change the fact that for a great number of people (and an even greater number of trips) ebikes are not only an eco-friendly solution, but an economical and fun one.
yeah no honestly it’s pretty fucking trivial: get a whole hell of a lot of buses (creating jobs) and just run them everywhere.
Every road project the US has built is bus infrastructure that just needs the cars removed from it, all those highways blasted through downtowns would enable extremely fast and convenient bus services.It won’t be as good as proper railways, but holy fuck would it be so much better than what people have to live with now. Instead of highways clogged to a standstill with cars, it’ll be highways with a very excessive but manageable amount of buses.
Not having railways doesn’t mean you can’t have good public transport, it just means it’ll be more expensive to operate.
I’m an American who was lucky enough to live in Berlin for a couple of years. The thing I miss the most is functional public transit, it makes life so much less stressful.
I’m an American who lived in a small city in Japan for a while. The city only had two small railroad stations, and so most people owned cars. Or at least most working adults that I knew owned cars.
HOWEVER, for day-to-day getting around, people rode bicycles, and if that wasn’t an option, then they took the bus. I think their cars were more for getting groceries and for driving their kids around. I’m not completely sure. But you absolutely didn’t need a car.
And if you wanted to travel a big distance to go to another city? Train or bus. I think their highways were all toll roads, and so it was cheaper to take the bus.
Like you said, it was just so “functional”. If you went out in the city in the middle of the work day, you’d see all of these ancient people going around doing their daily business in the city. In America, those same people would be trapped in their houses or forced into segregated senior living because they’re too old to drive. You don’t see them in America, because we discriminate against them.
I will truly never understand why older people hate public transportation so much, they would benefit the most!
It’s not the age, it’s who they are.
Yeah, that tracks.
Being from another country with semi-good public transit, Berlin is a fucking epic place. I can get around city fast and most of the time I have options to choose on how I want to get from point A to B.
Also, hate how people like to dunk on German railroad comparing it to Japan. They fail to realize that German railroad also serves many countries in EU while Japan serves only to itself. It is much easier to plan out railways when your system is locked in one country.
As a German - a lot of our neighbours have significantly better rail. For some of them, delayed trains from Germany are a large cause of delay.
I like our train system, and use it a lot, but there is very significant room for improvement. According to the current statistic, 40% of long distance trains are late.
A lot of problems come from the half-aborted privatisation. The railway was turned into a public company, but the stock was never sold, so it’s owned by the state, but still a AG (plc?) that tries to run a profit.
Other countries aren’t the issue (and in fact switzerland mostly stopped allowing german trains into their network because they were the main reason for delays).
Japan has dedicated tracks for their shinkansen (and afaik for low speed passenger trains as well), whereas in germany ICE, IC, all regional trains, and freight trains share the same network. Different speeds on the same track lead to delays much faster as trains have to wait to be overtaken etc. The network is also operating above capacity (which has the obvious upside of better coverage/more frequent trains, but still we need more capacity). Many parts of the network are also simply old and have not been maintained well - we still have some manually operated signals ffs.
None of this is easy to fix and overall the railway network is still very good in an international comparison, but the neglect of the past 30 years is very obvious and has led to a lot of problems.
Also, hate how people like to dunk on German railroad comparing it to Japan.
That’s fine. Compare it to France or Italy then and it still comes out severely lacking.
But I’ve not had the pleasure of staying in Berlin long enough to become familiar with the transit. I’m sure it’s spectacular.
No it doesn’t. German ICE are a lot more affordable than French TGV. The price difference is really enortif you book a few weeks in advance. German ICE are more comfortable vehicles too, French TGV double deckers you’re a sardine in a can. German ICE serve every big-ish city quite well, centre focused French TGV serves 1 city extremely well, many other smaller big-ish cities are served more poorly.
I truly loved it so much! Plus if you drink a little too much you can just nap on the ring for a lil bit!
I try, I really do, to use public transit whenever I can. But a large majority of the time it will cost over twice the cost of driving, take over twice as long, and the final stop will be over a mile from my destination. Two of those caveats I could probably live with; all three makes it a non starter.
Admittedly, I live in a car centered American city.
Parking is way too cheap.
Thats exactly why so many people think EVs are the only solution. They have never actually experienced fast, efficient, convenient, and clean public transit. The vast majority of the US thinks public transit equals an hourly bus thats never on time and reeks of piss, and thats a fair view because for many thats all they have ever been offered.
We’re in Japan right now and I’m so angry about how amazing their infrastructure is. We’ve been all over Tokyo, and now down in Odawara and took a day trip up into the mountains of Hokone and every single thing has been facilitated by public transit. We looked at taking an Uber once at the end of a very long day to avoid more walking, but even then decided hitting up the train again was worth it when we saw the Uber cost.
I have an EV and I love it, but if the Bay Area in CA could have this level of usable public transportation I’d drop my car in an instant. Instead if I want to visit friends that are 4 miles away from me I can either drive for 7 minutes or take a 90 minute bus trip with two transfers.
Yup! I left the US for Denmark and the public transit was a driving (pun intended) factor. We went from a bunch of vehicles (3 cars and 4 motorcycles) to bicycles and taking the train and I absolutely love it
Yes. The problem is cars in general
Me waiting for one of the only two buses that go though my town per day
Sounds like they need to add more buses.
I have a 45 minute commute because rent is double in town.
I’m saving up to eventually move into town anyway because I value my time and I hate living in rural areas with a deep passion because its full of morons. But still, an electric car would probably significantly mitigate my CO2 output in the mean time. Though I’m driving a small hatchback anyway so its already relatively fuel efficient.
Removed by mod
I’m curious does all cars to you include things like work trucks? I mean company work trucks/vans not some guy that just likes trucks.
I should have clarified this is about individual vehicles
I mean, yeah, that’s the point imo. You concentrate the emission to a specific area and then have emission control in that particular structure, than just have emissions everywhere.
At least that’s the plan.
Unless you have sustainable electricity production and battery recycling set up, EVs are not substantially better for the environment compared to ICE cars. Raw materials for lithium batteries have an enormous ecological footprint. Energy transmission & charging losses mean that if you’re using fossil fuels (especially coal) to produce electricity, in terms of raw CO₂/km EVs are only 10-30% more efficient than gasoline-powered cars. Doesn’t matter how much pollution control you slap on there, greenhouse gases are kind of the main problem here and carbon capture on fossil power plants is mostly a greenwashing scam and doesn’t work.
Sure, EVs are a bit better for the environment in almost all cases, but if you compare that with efficient public transit it’s a bloodbath.
That’s before you even start considering other issues with cars, like all the microplastics released from tires, the noise (yes, EVs are also really noisy at speeds >30km/h), the financial and environmental cost of covering our cities in asphalt, the societal damage caused by car-centric infrastructure, the amount of parking space they need, the psychological stress they cause to everyone around them, and finally just how fucking dangerous they are. If you consider all of those, it’s insane that we still allow people to bring private vehicles into densely populated areas at all. Cities should not have private cars, period, doesn’t matter if they’re battery-powered or self-driving or whatever. In fact I’d go as far as to say almost no human settlements with developed infrastructure should have them.
Cars are good for one thing: traveling medium distances in places with little or no infrastructure. For everything else better modes exist.
