Americans need to embrace public transit. We need trains that don’t completely suck in both speed and schedule reliability.
We’re never going to convince a lot of folks to leave their lifted F-150 or massive Suburban behind for a small car. But quality, affordable public transit that is not only efficient but saves money over owning a car would actually make a difference. We’re more likely to be able to get people to just leave the F-150 in the driveway and eventually move away from it.
Much better for the environment, too, and reduces traffic / congestion, etc. I agree smaller cars would be good, but the goalpost should be getting away from the automobile.
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Countries like Japan, Europe and Nordic countries… My man, Nordic countries are Europe and Europe isn’t a country.
we need to push representatives into office that are far more left-leaning and not fucking autocrats who will MANDATE massive increases in taxes on billionaires and legislate much more significant subsidization of public transit
You’re framing it wrong. We don’t need to elect scary commies to massively increase taxes in order to subsidize icky collective things; we simply need to elect Fiscal Conservatives™ who will cease massively subsidizing car dependency. In particular, it’s time to repeal Big Government® intrusive regulations that try to tell Red Blooded Americans© they can’t build a multifamily building on their own damn property or that dictate minimum parking requirements.
This is America, damn it! It’s high time we put the invisible hand of the Free Market back in control!
[insert screaming eagle noises]
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Make it good and people will use it. It’s really that simple.
It’s more complex than that.
The way the US is spread out makes public transit prohibitively expensive and difficult to achieve proper coverage. To make it effective, you would have to shift the entire way we live. Our entire society is built off the concept that everyone has a car.
Add to the fact that building transit is extra expensive in the US and you arrive at the reality that we will NEVER have a working transit system. That’s why the shift to small cars is needed. We don’t have any more room for roads, so we need more cars to fit in the roads we have
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We just lack the leadership needed to implement massive programs like high speed interstate rail.
In fairness the Interstate system was more about air defense than transit.
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Politically you have to get several different groups of people to buy in to make it work. Unfortunately “what it’s about” is the deciding factor in accomplishment.
I mean, I think this is what they’re saying, but yeah.
Yeah. I probably should have been more detailed in my comment, but I did not mean embrace it as it is. I mean investing in it and making it competitive. I don’t think it’s embraceable in its current form.
Embrace public transit? I would if my city and state actually invested in it, cared about it, and actually had lines where my office is. Don’t put this on me. I literally have to drive.
My dude what do you think OP is talking about. That’s what embracing public transit means ya dingus.
I wasn’t responding to OP. Dingus. Another person said “Americans need to embrace public transit.” Ya. Ok. When he said “Americans” doesn’t it seem like he’s implying people, like me need to “embrace it.” I’m responding saying how can I embrace it if there’s nothing to embrace and my elected officials do nothing about adding better public transit? Fucking read. Another person responded in a similar fashion as I did and they responded saying they should have framed it better. Again. Fucking read.
You live in a democracy lol
You make it sound like you’re in an authoritarian state
You live in a democracy lol
That hasn’t been true since the 80s.
Sure doesn’t feel like it a lot of the time
Public transit needs to do what it says on the tin. People won’t choose public transit if it’s the choice between an hour commute each way and a 3 hour each way bus ride.
Americans have absolutely embraced public transit. It’s just that not a lot of cities have robust systems in place, but go somewhere like NYC or Chicago and you’ll see a transit system that millions rely on daily.
CAFE is killing the smaller vehicle. Vehicles are getting super round and boring for aerodynamics. Wheel base is getting longer. Track is getting wider. There’s no such thing as a small truck. Everything is am SUV (“truck”) or crossover (hatchback / station wagon). CAFE allows for less fuel efficiency for wider track and longer wheelbase and trucks over everything else.
Remember how VW got caught cheating on the mileage tests? Remember how every other major manufacturer was caught too?
The govt has set far too high of a standard for mileage, so car companies are making giant ass cars to meet (cheat) CAFE standards. The manufacturers have done everything they can but still can’t meet the standards.
I mean, yeah. Small electric cars, more trains, more public transport.
So I live in the cousin-fuckingly-deep south where 90% of what’s on the road is trying its best to be a monster truck… I drive what looks like a pregnant rollerskate by comparison cuz I don’t want to send half my paycheck into the gas tank.
It’s funny-sad how the folks in the giant trucks get offended just by seeing my tiny car. Every day there’s always at least one asshole in an F-350 or some shit that likes to ride up on my ass cuz I guess it makes them feel powerful? I just drop a mph every couple seconds until either they fuck off or get annoyed enough to pass.
Anyway, moral of the story is that stupid-big vehicles are here to stay in the US, at least in the regions occupied by Y’all Quaeda. Their trucks are one of their few sources of self esteem.
…I’m really tempted to find one of those rubber testicle things that the cowboys like to put between the rear wheels of their trucks, but like a comically tiny one, color it like the trans flag, and hang it on the back of my tiny car just to annoy the rednecks on the road. …although here, that’d probably get my car or myself shot.
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Or, please, trains.
Same with EV’s, this stuff will save the car industry but not the planet.
We need to figure out how to rebuild our infrastructure and our ways of thinking such that we don’t need individual hunks of carbon toting us around.Or just not buy so many ugly ass SUVs/crossovers/minivans/god the list goes on.
I usually ride my bike, but my daily driver was a Honda Fit before I started getting back into cycling and ebikes. Good little car, I kinda miss it.
That’s me right now. I walk/bike when I have to go in to work, and have a Fit for when I need a vehicle otherwise. I wish I could go smaller, but I don’t want to buy a new car until I need to.
Whenever I’m in the States I hate the fact that everything is a 20 minute car ride away. I understand why road rage can be a thing if you spend so much time in the car.
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If anything this means Europe’s cities just can’t accommodate cars, because they weren’t built for them. The weird thing is that American cities were built for cars and yet still can’t accommodate cars. Traffic, lack of parking, road rage… it’s a huge mess, and it seems like the more you commit to cars, the worse it all gets. That’s the trouble with cars. They just don’t work.
I don’t really understand this comment though. It doesn’t take thousands of years to achieve urban density. And what does America’s sprawl have to do with loving large cars? You don’t need a huge car to drive medium distances.
You don’t even need a huge car to travel huge distances.
You need density to support a train system. You need a large number of riders to make it economical and you need them living within a reasonable distance of the stations. The US is very spread out. You can blame cars for that but that is the world we live in. The US is also very big with large rural areas, the western US didn’t even really develop until trains came out in the 1869. Europe was built around compact cities based on horses and walking long before cars.
I agree that we are too car focused and it has become a sort of arms race, build more roads, more cars, more roads, etc.
America exists because of the train, which it has since abandoned
Vancouver runs trains through SFH development. Montreal does too. Hell, so does London.
You’re an untravelled idiot and it shows.
Uncalled for antagonism. Boooo.
Don’t say stupid shit if you don’t want to be called out for it 🤷♀️
Public transportationdoesn’t have to be economical, it’s a service.
The focus on cars is emotionally driven. The car symbolizes freedom and independence. Besides this it’s a huge status symbol. And the industry is working hard to keep it this way. The lack of decent public transportation is by design.
the western US didn’t even really develop until trains came out in the 1869
The western US didn’t really develop until the government started giving land that had already been ceded to indigenous peoples and couldn’t actually support dense settlement to white settlers, at the behest of railroad companies who needed an artificial reason to build railroads in the first place.
USA didn’t start building bullshit suburbs until 1950s. before that it was dense cities.
I totally get that fact. I also think that it would not be bad to copy some things from other countries to make the cities in the States more liveable without car dependency. There’s enough space to do that.
At the very least we could link cities with rail systems. Don’t put a million stops on them either though. Try taking Amtrack from DC to Boston and you’ll see what I mean.
just have more than one set of tracks and you can have a regional and express service train!
Passenger trains exist in the U.S. They used to be popular. Then planes and affordable automobiles put them out of business. If you don’t live in a dense urban area, you almost certainly have a car, meaning you aren’t beholden to train schedules and destinations. If you are in an area where you get by without a car, an Uber to the airport gets you to your destination much faster.
I agree and disagree with this. I don’t think the US inherently must be car centric because it’s big. But I do agree that Europe has superior pedestrian infrastructure because it developed for most of its history without cars. Auto and oil industry lobbying has instigated the situation in the US, but their agenda was only achievable because the technology existed to make large scale changes to the terrain, mass produce vehicles, etc. It’s very likely that there were people throughout Europe’s history who tried to monopolize bridges or horse wagons or other forms of transport, but the technology wasn’t sufficient for it to materialize. Warsaw was destroyed during WWII and rebuilt, and it’s developed to be very car-centric compared to other cities in Poland and Europe.
Unfortunately it’s zoning that caused most of this issue. Not size. Dense residential was disallowed for not entirely un-racist reasons, so it spread out enormously instead. On top of car companies lobbying in various ways to make cars essential.
Americans don’t want small cars, and honestly, I don’t think its a problem.
Super insightful thoughts from exactly the problem with the US.
They are tricked into wanting big vehicles.
No one is tricking them, they want them. It is a self image thing, like the giant offroad trucks I see around me all the time with the winch and all the accessories that spend 99.9% of their time going shopping.
A self image that has been instilled through years and years of highly targeted, and highly researched ad campaigns.
People “want” these because they believe they need it, because the ads told them they need it. Then the other men who own those vehicles proceed to shit on the men with smaller trucks, and those insecure enough to bend over get the big truck as well.
I don’t see this truck culture in Europe. I don’t see people buying stupid vehicles to go offroading full of expensive gadgets and so on. While I’m sure it exists in small pockets it is by no means the level it’s at here. (In Europe it’s probably more for sports cars anywho)
Point being, no one wanted those SUVs until the car companies told them they want those SUVs.
No need for a trick. Bigger vehicles feel better to drive. And space isn’t much of a concern in America.
“space isn’t much of a concern in America” is one of the dumbest things I’ve heard in a while! What the fuck does that even mean? Like I get we have a large country but it isn’t all roads and parking lots… yet
All the wasted space is part of the reason why car traffic, public transit, walkability, and road quality suck so bad here. Zoning laws are basically forcing us to build single family household suburbs. We need dense, mixed use cities that have work and shops closer to homes, with many options for public transit servicing every street. Instead, we’re paying to build and maintain roads to connect homes that are orders of magnitude less dense, meaning it’s more expense per land area and less income from its users as well. Suburbias needs to turn into downtowns, and we need to build bike lanes, trains, subways, streetcars, and bus lines instead of more car lanes.
Makes sense for overweight drunk Americans. Bigger vehicles accelerate slower, aren’t nearly as nimble, consume more fuel($$$), don’t stop as well, destroy roads faster, consume more wear parts. Overall a net loss.
Granted they fit fat people better
I’ve heard this plenty of times, but are you using that field? Are you using that forest? This road that road? Are you using the parking lot in Seattle when you live in Georgia?
“We have the space for bigger vehicles” does not make sense when we have to drive farther and farther to reach things that are useful for us. (Also sprawling development destroys local ecosystems, and along with that, natural resources.)
While I would’ve agreed with you a few years ago, it’s just not a realistic thought process when most people live their day-to-day lives in an area about the size of Luxembourg.
Big vehicles are a huge waste of valuable resources that could’ve been used on other things, such as infrastructure, public transport, smaller vehicles. Etc.
On a country perspective America is indeed big, but cities usually become denser as they grow, and in some decades will become a traffic nightmare just like old European cities are.
edit: not to focus about all the problems that bigger cars carryBigger vehicles feel better to drive.
If you like body roll, yeah. Otherwise they are worse overall.
I’d rather drive something smaller and more fun than some big lumbering hunk of metal and plastic.
Especially with how tall vehicles here are getting.
I’ll stick with my Jetta and you do you, short king.
Then you see the jacked up trucks, they weren’t high enough already
Bigger vehicles are less likely to feel the bumps in the shitty roads we have because everybody drives big vehicles that wear down the roads 10x as fast.
So let’s all buy 68 Bonnevilles and convert them to EVs.
Been driving a Honda civic for years.
Small, pink cars?
I like it. Reminds me of a movie or something.
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It does, these days.
Hatchbacks for life!
But yeah. Even our station wagons and hatchbacks are closer to “small SUVs” these days. Some of that is marketing and some is just reality.
I drove sedans for over a decade and increasingly grew uncomfortable with tires and axles literally at my eye level. These days I drive a Subaru Crosstrek which is a “crossover SUV” but is actually, literally, a hatchback imprezza on a lift kit (which is more like a normal suspension because the imprezza is a lowrider for some reason). I feel considerably higher up than my old Camry and now I just have bumpers at my window level.
But when I see people in those tiny efficiency vehicles or small sedans? Those mother fuckers aren’t going to survive a collision with the ever increasing number of giant dick compensating pickup trucks on the road. I don’t care how good your airbags are. When you are up against a monster truck, you are getting crushed.
I still refuse to buy a “real” SUV. But there is zero chance I go below the “crossover SUV”/“raised hatchback” ever again in this country. Rented a car on business a few weeks back and… traffic was a lot more anxiety inducing than it usually is.
I’m doing my part.
