cross-posted from: https://jlai.lu/post/17684914
I just want cheap and reliable mass transit.
Yes! Fuck this individualistic “you should cycle instead of taking the car” language. We need collective investment in mass transit, because not everyone can bike to work, and even less people want to do it in the rain.
I cycle almost every where, at every weather, but at distances above 30km, it’s just taking too long to be viable for every day tasks or visiting friends and family.
Public transport is neccessary.
The emission savings from replacing all those internal combustion engines with zero-carbon alternatives will **not **feed in **fast enough **to make the necessary difference in the time we can spare: the next five years. Tackling the climate and air pollution crises requires curbing all motorised transport, particularly private cars, as quickly as possible. Focusing solely on electric vehicles is slowing down the race to zero emissions.
Ah thank god we still have 5 years. Now the climate scientists just need to advise the general public to start shooting all the cars through the motorblock because it has been scientifically proven that is the one way we’ll make it.
Published: March 29, 2021 10.59am EDT
OH MY GOD!!! WE ONLY HAVE A YEAR LEFT TO MURDER ALL THE CARS??
Roads and highways would be perfectly fine cycling infrastructure, if we just got the giant motorized death machines off of them.
but they’re not handicap friendly… public transport serves a purpose… edit: I’m not saying keep using cars, I’m saying get more trains and rail… and then free up space for more bike lanes whatever
I think something that gets regularly overlooked is scooters. They can be gas or electric and they will drastically reduce emissions. ICE scooters can do 100 mpg and the manufacturing emissions are going to be a sliver of what a car or truck would be.
I recently bought one that does ~40km on a single charge and doesn’t go above 25km/h and honestly I don’t get why anyone would need more (people living in the hellscape distopya commonly referred to as “the US” need not reply).
Make one that doesnt go BrrrrAAAP ! And I’m onboard:-D
On a serious note, electric; bikes, scooters, cargo bikes, small utilitarian vehicles, busses are the future of the city IMO.
Buy a Japanese brand and it’ll probably be a 4 stroke. The 2 strokes (most of the cheap Chinese bikes) are dirty and noisy, and pollute a lot more. IMO, 2 strokes shouldn’t be allowed on the road anymore.
A part of the prevalence of two stroke engines is ofc they’re cheap and light and easy to service, but another reason people like them is they produce more power for a specific cubic centimetre, and insurance often works with just engine size not type or power.
Yes, I will cycle 15 miles (one-way) to the nearest produce section.
I’m all for bikes in sufficiently urban areas, but they are never going to be reasonable for 90% of America (by land mass, not population).
We need passenger train service (or other mass transit) that can cover lower density areas and still be reliable. (There’s active train tracks within 100m of both my driveway and the produce section, so for me a passenger train would be ideal.)
I would love to be able to ride trains to get places and not have to drive everywhere.
I don’t dislike driving, but if I could fit my schedule around public transit, I think I’d prefer that, most of the time.
Good public transit would be so frequent you wouldn’t need to fit your schedule around it. I live in a place with passable public transit and I never check schedules before leaving the house. I wait 10 mins max (I’m still annoyed sometimes tho)
people who live in 90% of the least densely populated land on earth are… not that many people in the grand scheme of things.
And if you live close enough to civilization to have utilities like power maybe it’s possible to also have a grocery store that’s closer than average distance between towns in germany. Might even be beneficial idk.
My father used to run the grocery store in town. My brother ran it for a bit, too. I don’t know the ultimate reasons it ahut down, but Dad wanted to retire and brother decided it wasn’t worth it to run.
There’s a dollar store in town, and an another 5 min north, and another 10 mi. south, but no produce at any.
I want to move back to a more urban area and be able to walk to a grocery store in 15 minutes, but Dad needs someone to live with him since he is now disabled. (Brother died.)
I remember there was a problem getting wholesale deliveries at the small scale needed to serve this town of barely 300 people.
well yeah, nobody is pretending like it’s easy to fix on a personal level. Just that it’s something we should be able to fix as a society because seriously, expecting people to commute 2 hours for a pear isn’t very smart.
I tend to agree, but maybe fresh produce is just considered a luxury. You can certainly survive without it, canned or frozen goods are available in some amount at the dollar stores, and I can walk to/from them.
Electric cars have very little upsides compared to gasoline cars. They’re basically made for the car industry. Not the consumer.
What we need is more cycling and public transportation.
That statement is just straight out false. Yes electric cars still represent a huge deal of energy needs for producing, but they are much, much more efficient at using energy than ICE cars. If I remember correctly it was something like 40% vs 90% energy efficiency? That’s why if you put several electric cars connected in a row, place them on tracks, externalize the power source, and you get the most efficient way of travelling - trains.
That’s why if you put several electric cars connected in a row, place them on tracks, externalize the power source, and you get the most efficient way of travelling - trains.
Sounds right when said like that, but I think very important factors are missing in that comparison. Maily: energy used per person & space used per person.
Most cars on the road are only transporting one person (the driver), which leaves a lot of wasted space. Trains on the other hand can carry way more people than cars can when using the space amount of space.
I don’t know energy used per passenger but it’s certainly less for train vs car (when both running on renewable energy).
Apparently (I think C02 emissions should give us the same idea if we assume both use clean energy): Eurostar: 6g CO2e per passenger km Electric Car: 53g (one passenger) CO2e per passenger km (or 13g with 4 passengers)
Don’t think a lot of trains are as clean as the eurostar worldwide but it’s possible to be that clean.
Theres many more benefits to trains too such as: You don’t have to drive (browse lemmy while travelling), cheaper, 20x safer, a good train system can save you time, less waste (when your car eventually is scrapped, I’m sure a lot if recycled, but must still be a lot of waste, including energy spent recycling). Probably a lot of other stuff too.
p.s. sorry if i am wrong about stuff im trying to be right ;()
Why do we care much at all about energy consumption if it’s all renewable?
Norwegians and Icelanders need to stop showing off all their hydro and low population density.
Most countires won’t be able to scale up their electricity generation by like 20-50% or so (to accomodate a large switch of transportation energy) without burning a lot more fossil fuel. Or building many large nuclear plants. Or damming up and flooding several large valleys. Fossil fuel is still the cheapest fastest and easiest way to scale up electricity generation - and ramping up the duty cycle of existing power stations is the easiest in the short term.
Maybe if each EV came with enough additional solar and batteries to offset their electricity consumption (especially at peak). This’d increase the costs a fair bit but it’d make them much better for net greenhouse gas emissions.
Note that even in an era of fairly rapidly increasing renewables - from 1980s to now - the overall share of renewables in global electricity generation has not increased much, 25-30% ish last time I looked.
This is because new demand has always come along to offset the new renewable electricity generation. This will continue with electrification of transport, heating, plus all this ai and server farms and stuff, add in general population growth and economic development - I don’t believe the world is going to be able to grow renewables anywhere near fast enough to keep up with all that. Not without some cold fusion type technology leap.
I think we could do it with sufficient investment. But you make a good point, in the short term it will still be a bit before we’re fully renewable.
Come on nobody is that dense. You have to be trolling
ngl you had me in the first half
Unfortunately I live where its cold and raining 99% of the time. They are trying to build a line from where i live to where I work though so it might be bearable to bike the distance to the station in the rain
Summer was unbearably hot, and I decided to commute via a bus with AC instead of a bike, but in september I started using a bike and didn’t stop unless there was pouring or there was snow on the ground.
I even in mild rain I just took my bike. First winter season I used a bike at all, not to mention riding in a full face cover, leather or ski gloves with a ski jacket.
I also researched some motorbike rain pants but we’re in a decade long drought, so far didn’t need them.
One thing tho. If it’s raining you better have disk breaks, the clampy ones just slip on wet wheels. I had to re-learn how to stop safely.
Being waterproof is probably the biggest thing I miss from upgrading to an ebike from an old acoustic bike
Kinda depend on the manufacturer, but the motor should be waterproof. Throttle, the screen, and the connector though, might not. I’m using a conversion kit on my bike and the equipment is those no name cheapo one, but other than the screen condensation after riding through heavy rain, it’s still going strong. You could identify the stuff that need waterproofing and do it yourself though.
I just did my first ebike ride in moderately light rain and so far so good
Cycling would also help to reduce the amount of dangerously fat people. Which is an ever increasing problem.
dangerously fat people
This isn’t a particularly nice phrasing - I think the same meaning could easily be conveyed with some slightly kinder choice of words.
Threateningly chubby?
Problematically plus-sized?
suspiciously reddit-worded?
Increased exercise won’t reduce the number of fat people. Fat people are caused by hormone levels typically due to diet. If you increase calories burned and do not address the hormones, fat bodies will simply increase caloric intake to maintain the balance.
Cardiovascular health and strength improves with increased activity. And these are great health benefits. But diet is the way to reduce the amount of fat one is carrying.
They always ignore the rest of the world. Sure you can bike ride in yor little university town built from riches pillaged from the world but the rest of the world? You want India and Africa to ride bikes? Did they include the absolute infrastructure update in their calculations?
“Cars are more accessible for poor people” is certainly a take that someone could have.
Cycling and related infrastructure are orders of magnitude cheaper.
I have an EV and I still agree with this. An EV is better than an ICE vehicle but it is no substitute for designing cities around people - footpaths, cycle lanes, recreation, public transport etc.
what do you use your car for? like piano transportation?
I am actually considering getting an EV for transporting my Cello :/
It’s unfortunately not possible to reliably transport it by bike (strong winds, icy conditions on my rather hilly ride to the city). Makes me miss out on re-joining an orchestra.
Everything else (groceries, work,…) would still be by bike, just… That.
instrument transportation is a legitimate usecase for a car
All I need now is the knowledge, sense of balance, and confidence to ride a bicycle
do you have a bicycle?
Had one as a kid, with training wheels that weren’t on right, and I never felt safe on it. Constantly felt like I was going to tip. Gave it away to a friend years later.
Bought another one about 10 years ago, never rode it, my wife did something with it idk.
As a kid I mostly did scooters, also had a razer scooter a few years back that I would use to commute when I lived near work, but these days arthritis in my knees makes that less fun.
I tried one of those electric scooters, and didn’t feel safe on it, decided to walk instead. Which I’m a pretty fast walker, even still now with the bad knees.
Wish they’d make narrow trikes, which I think I’d do better on, but most of them are like 2-3 feet wide in the back which is way too big for most purposes.
I used to cycle 7 km to work, but now, after moving to suburban village, there is no way to go other way than car. Especially with small kid. Unless you are fit enough to do 25 km every day by bike and risk your life (and potentially kid’s) on the street between cars. So no, there is not realistic to “fuck cars”. I am speaking from European perspective, probably US has the car things much more fucked up.
risk your life (and potentially kid’s) on the street between cars
I dunno, boss, seems like a plenty good reason to say “fuck cars” to me.
Yes, I can be pissed by cars for that reason, but will this make them disappear or make less needed? Sure, many people could go by bike not the car and they are just lazy bastards, but some just need a car
Did the 2x12km for theee years, only got ran down once.
I did have beast legs though :-)
I had to fix the tyre tube every week (cost similar to LPG fuel) until I started to pump for almost maximal pressure. It was fucking frustrating, also without proper infrastructure, riding a bike is not fun at all
Did you have those slim “racing” wheels? Up the tire size just one size and you’ll be way better off.
I got myself an old mountain bike, works wonders in the city with all the potholes and crap.
Not racing, but trekking tyres. I suppose the mountain bike tires are far better (the city crap bike roads can be worse than mountains I think).
I don’t think you realise how much you’ve been fucked by car. I presume you move out to the suburb not because the city council decided to exile you and never let you stay in the city, you move out because you have a car and can drive 20+km toward your destination, which then mean everything is so out of your way you have to use car to do everything. So no, you’re the one that got fucked by motonormativity and yell “cum inside”, you don’t get to then deny everyone a better solution.
I moved out by rent prices and because no one wanted to rent a flat for family with two small kids, not because of car 🤦🏻🤦🏻🤦🏻this is one of dumbest hypotheses I’ve ever heard
dumbest hypotheses
most people that prefer suburb did just that.
Your argument basically just boiled down to “it doesn’t happened to me so it shouldn’t be the case for everyone”, what kind of self absorbed argument is that even?
I don’t think you realise how much you’ve been fucked by car.
So it wasn’t for me?
Idk, you decide? Not sure why you’re here against the idea when it’s not even about you.
