• 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.