• Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Public transport is awesome…

    It just doesnt always go where everyone needs to go

    Bikes are great right until you have to do large grocery shopping or get to a place far away.

    I cant do without a car where i live.

    • Liz@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      You live in a place designed around cars, that’s the problem. Society worked fine without cars for a good long while. We could have adopted trains, bikes, and buses without the car and things would be going swimmingly. The idea is to fix our bad town planning so that it’s reasonable to get to any destination using any mode if transportation.

      • Polar@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        You live in a place designed around cars, that’s the problem.

        Exactly. Then Europeans downvote people who say they need a car, because their country/city/state/whatever has terrible planning or public transit.

        Not my fault I need a car. Stop blaming me. I didn’t design the city. I didn’t plan where the public transit will go.

        Do you really think I love paying $1200+ per year for insurance, $120+ per week for fuel, and $20,000-80,000 for a new vehicle when mine borks itself?

        • GreenM@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I partially agree but you forget that every country = its people and people can either not give a crap or start complaining. Politics are same everywhere, they want to secure their position, so they will follow those who are heard. Otherwise they will follow their own interests.

          • Polar@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            It’s not as easy as people complaining, though. What are people going to do? Move to a city in 2500KM away in the next province over, because that province has slightly better infrastructure?

            No, they’ll complain, nothing will be done, and they’ll stay where they are because they have friends, family, and a job here.

            I understand that it’s easier to do in a lot of European countries, but I can literally drive for over 25 straight hours, and still be in my province in Canada. It’s nearly impossible to do any kind of proper public transit, and it’s not feasible to move over it.

            • GreenM@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              The way you put it is misleading. If you want a change, you have to act to be heard. If you get enough people to be heard, things will start to change. Also historically AFAIK Canada had car alternatives, but people like you decided not to use them. So there was no incentive to keep them.

        • rgb3x3@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Nobody is blaming the American people. It’s the car corporations that bought and dismantled light rail and train systems and lobbied the government to build cities around the car.

          And now the American people are so brainwashed into thinking owning a car is freedom and public transit is “socialism” that they will fight tooth and nail against anything that is against their “freedom” to be forced to own and pay for a car.

      • Iron Lynx@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You live in a place designed around cars, that’s the problem.

        Worse: they may live in a place bulldozed to make way for cars. Plenty of car-dependent places used to have good places for walking, good transit services, all that jazz, but it was all torn down to make room for cars.

    • GreenM@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      In my city public transport is free, anyone can get anywhere else via train or bus cheaper than via car, there is even bicycle dedicated road that goes trough city and connects dozens of neighboring towns and cities but I admit that car is just so much more convinient to use. It’s all about comfort or fear of loosing one, rether than it would be impossible to give people alternative to use.

    • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Man I was gonna type something about how it’s because your city is designed around car centric infrastructure and density and cargo bikes and shit but honestly there ain’t no way I’m gonna say anything to you that hasn’t already been said.

      • DeprecatedCompatV2@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        I think there’s this misconception that the US is basically NYC or dirt-road farmland, and the reality is that there’s a lot of in-between. I live <20 minutes from the closest mall by car, yet even transportation or food delivery apps (e.g. uber, uber eats) essentially don’t serve my area, so forget public transportation.

        • Iron Lynx@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Most of the in-between is closer to the dirt-road farmland. Even if you live “in a city,” there’s a big chance you’ll be living a long walk through some car-dependent wasteland to the nearest anything that isn’t a house, with near-zero care, effort and/or space given to anyone who’s not in a car.

          • DeprecatedCompatV2@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            It can depend. Sometimes sprawl is car-centric because it’s heavily developed with no alternative, but sometimes there’a a lot of undeveloped land in between things.

    • HarriPotero@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      My car is in the shop for some tricky troubleshooting.

      I’ve been doing my weekly grocery shopping with my foldable bike and dog trailer. I live in a rural area, so it’s a bit of a trip. I don’t particularly enjoy it, especially the hauling the load home. It would probably be bearable with a bit of electric assist on the bike.

    • Primal@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Bikes also aren’t great for snow, heavy rain, or extreme temperatures.

      • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        Bikes are better than cars in snow, however. A fat bike’s tires ‘float’ across the surface of the snow, like snowshoes, and can handle any snow depth. Regular mountain bikes and commuter bikes with knobby tires handle a few inches of snow quite well, because the knobs capture snow between them, and snow sticks to snow. Cars, on the other hand, need a vast expenditure of effort to plow the snow off the road surface, so they don’t slide around in a few inches of snow, or get stuck in deeper snow.