We shouldn’t take anything for granted. The US has happily killed it’s cities for decades instead of investing in public transit. If we don’t push for it, car companies and rich people will keep public transportation from ever taking off.
If remote work takes off, and ordering most everything online, I wonder if urban sprawl will get even worse.
I find it funny how there are often lots of people that live in the US that would love to move somewhere like the UK, while there is also someone in the UK that would love to move to the US.
While the former is far easier than the latter, I wish that there was a “The Holiday” style visa where you could swap status with someone for a year.
Yeah, I live in a conservative state, and the state department of transportation stepped in and blocked my city from adding a few blocks of bike lanes. They want to get rid of everything “public;” transportation, schools, health, etc.
But even if its star trek type, it’s still good, just need to convince people to use it, climate crisis is averted! Who cares if they are the same person after teleportation, as long as my teleporters sell and I make a profit! 😈 insert evil CEO laugh
(I wont use star trek type teleporter btw, I mean unless I wanna die)
As a thought experiment, do you know if going to sleep kills you?
You wake up in the morning with all the memories of life before sleeping, but do you really know if that was you living that life? What if your consciousness dies each night when you fall asleep, and a new consciousness is formed in the morning who thinks it’s you?
It’s not even overnight. Neurologically speaking, consciousness ‘drops out’ briefly roughly every 90 seconds (IIRC), as the brain attends to other tasks. It’s spooky to see people who have impaired working memory; it’s like they completely ‘reset’ after a short period. Here’s an example. It’s a new consciousness formed from your memories that thinks it’s you, every minute and a half.
Thinking of which, I’d image it’d be used for military use way before commercial. Militarized teleporters sound pretty terrifying. Move someone’s torso over one foot, or put micro bombs inside people or vehicles.
Yeah, never going to happen. Most of us don’t like to live like sardines in a tin can, sharing 4 walls with other inconsiderate assholes.
Fuck city living. Fuck the city. Fuck densely packed consumer culture bullshit. Fuck public transportation. Put up as many roads as you can, give me 4 wheels and a place to visit.
City living just exacerbates the problem with corporations owning everybodies housing, and the expectation of everyone coming into the office every day. Move education, work, etc online and be done with the need to travel into a city at all.
All it would take is a couple thousand city-dwellers to move out into rural America and America’s republicans would be eradicated, moving us towards actually electing politicians that believe in sound scientific policy, etc.
But instead, all the uneducated slack jawed yokels are out living in nature, meanwhile people who don’t even SEE trees or wildlife are on the internet proclaiming how much they love the earth and how we need to save it. Fucking come out here you cowards!
I live in the middle of nowhere and drive race cars on the weekend, I think we agree on a lot of things. I love having plenty of space, not a fan of close neighbors, apartment living or any of that shit.
I still want cheap trains and micromobility though. Every once in awhile I need to go into the city and taking my ebike in on the train is so much better than driving. Also even if you still drive like normal, it would go so much smoother if all the city folks stuck to the train and got off the roads.
Not saying cars should be more expensive, and definitely not saying city living is the way, but having better options for city folks only helps the situation for the rest of us.
No one is forcing you to live in the city, but at our current population plus the current growth, it makesmore sense to have to majority of people live in cities and use public transportation. We cannot all live rurally, it’s just not doable. And isolating ourselves to everything online is not good for most people’s mental health- through we should all have a choice in that.
And if you want to continue having a “place to visit” everyone needs to take a more environmentally friendly approach to travel. Fewer roads and smaller private vehicles alongside increased public transit to wherever isn’t too remote to service.
Memes are so much better without the backstory. This was the first time I’ve seen it mentioned so I looked it up, and holy shit. Had no idea that was him, I’ve seen the name but not the face.
You know what’s interesting? I’ve never paid more than £150 for a ticket to fly anywhere in Europe. Paying thousands sounds completely bonkers to me. I bet I can fly from London to the US cheaper than $1000.
There are several Portlands in the US, so I’m not sure which one you’re talking about, but I guess if it’s the one on the West Coast, then it’s about the same distance as from London to Tenerife. That would cost me £68 one way booked two weeks in advance. I remember flying from Frankfurt to Tenerife for free. Yes, free. But that was a long time ago, hard to find deals like that these days… But man, $800, what the fuck?
I own my own private electric scooter and it’s great. Makes for a quite pleasant commute, especially since I have a route that goes on protected bike lanes all the way from my apartment to my work!
I have pedal foldable bike(because I don’t want cramming unfoldable bike in elevator pornography) and regular scooter. I want escooter, but will buy it only after 3d printer.
He’s still with us. Why isn’t he doing stuff today? I feel like he’d be a huge YouTube star if he did his schtick reading Twitter threads or comment sections super fast. Stuff like that.
It’s a relatively new term to refer to extremely small and lightweight vehicles generally used for short-distance rides. Things like bicycles, rollers, very small electric vehicles like e-rollers, e-bikes, segways etc.
Trains are great but people want their own personal bubble and don't want to stand around outside waiting for a train especially since the timetable is out of their control
What people want and what is sustainable may be two different things and some people will just have to deal with that. Leave earlier and dress for the weather 🤷♀️
We don't need to ban cars, we just need to stop structuring literally everything around accommodating them. Also a difficult task, but far easier than banning cars.
This has been my sticking point with trains. In theory, it sounds fantastic and I’m all for it. The problem is is that Having a vehicle is so much nicer. Air conditioned and private transportation, whenever you want. Listen to what you want, go where you want.
Maybe if the train was much more convenient? I like the idea for travel more.
Public transit can solve these problems with more frequency and routes. Sometimes public transit goes places private transport can’t!
Or, hell, just get one of those foldable ebikes that are all the rage these days. Technology is coming for cars just as it came for horses and nobody even realizes it.
If you look at old maps of streetcar networks in cities (before they ripped up the tracks to replace them with cars), one thing that stands out is just how dense the networks were. For instance, here’s the old Montreal streetcar map:
And Montreal has some of the best modern-day urbanism in North America, mind you; most cities are far worse. But it really makes you imagine what our cities could be like if we made many/most streets car-free and just had ultra-dense networks of trams again. Maybe even cargo trams to deliver goods to stores as well. Trains would be ubiquitous and ultra-convenient.
This is key. Urban planners and environment folks focus so much on their respective fields and don’t consider dignity enough. Of course we’d all like cheap, fast, sustainable transportation, but not if that means being packed into bench seating, plagued with delays, and sometimes even risk our safety due to other passengers. Trains don’t have to be bad, but the penny-pinching planners often ruin the experience.
I drove through Atlanta at rush hour once. I’ll never go there again, if I can help it. That was kind of the opposite of what I think of when I think of “dignity.”
Quite frankly as an American, I think it’s very American to even consider the timetable as out of your control. For a lot of places, the trains come so fast that you’re not even waiting for a few minutes - like most drivers take longer to get settled into their car seat before driving. The sorry state of American transit is absolutely not the pinnacle of transit.
By the time those thing will have taken over, something else will be in their place. For certain values of ‘trains’, ‘urban’ and ‘micro mobility’, your claim will likely be true, but ithat is too vague to talk someone out of if that’s simply your stance.
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