this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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Good luck convincing people who live outside dense population zones to bike 3 hours to work. And "just move" is not an option. Think rents and home prices are bad now? If everyone moved to cities imagine the price gouging.
E: for the record I'm all about public transportation, it's just unrealistic to think we completely ditch cars. They are too useful so EVs make sense going forward
No reasonable people are expecting someone that lives rural to bike into town. Going between rural homes and cities is one of the places where personal cars are unavoidable. Ideally, they drive to the edge of town and park next to a subway station that they take most of the rest of the way.
so few people live in rural areas (as opposed to suburban cowboys who wonder why their :rural area" has so much traffic) that it's a rounding error. like who cares about the middle of nowhere. it's a distraction to even bring it up. this conversation is explicitly about metropolitan areas
Actually, this conversation is implicitly exclusively about metropolitan areas.
I think some people don't get that, because it's never spelled out. (Some know it, but try to argue in bad faith or derail the conversation anyway)
Commuter trains are also an intermediate solution.
I agree, but people still need to get to commuter stations. Plus take towns the size of 400 people who commute 40 miles to work, they aren't getting a train stop for decades, maybe longer. EVs are a good solution for them now.
That isn't really an argument for EVs but rather an argument to build a train stop near them ASAP.
EVs are an interim "solution" at best in the vast majority of cases and the majority of resources should flow to the actual solution instead which is not the case in the slightest.
Right, that was my point. A 300 person town isn't going to get a train station before Missouri's capital city, so we're talking decades before they have access.
So yes, EVs should be the choice for car purchasers, but people should always push for better transit.
Right and that was not my point. The 300 person town should get a train station nearby aswell as Missouri's capital city. I see no reason why one should wait on the other.
If you're telling me that's impossible because there aren't enough resources to do both simulatneously, I can show you an industry that is currently wasting a ton of resources to build poor interim solutions touted as saviours of the world.
I'm telling you that's impossible from an average person standpoint. You don't have a government that actively tries to stop building rail. Midwest states are literally trying to stop federal money from coming in to build rail. We protest, we argue, but people are literally voting against that.
In Iowa they're literally just trying to build passenger rail from the eastern side of the state to Chicago, a couple hour round trip - and their extremely conservative governor is trying to kill the project even though the rails are already there and a good chunk of the funding would come from the federal government. All of your points I agree with, but kindly what the hell else are we supposed to do? We vote, we fight, we protest, but still these idiots vote for more idiots and projects that would literally help us get killed.
So yes, I'm going to push for EVs in those areas for those who actually want to change their habits. I'm not going to actively encourage they keep buying massive trucks that spew pollution, since that's apparently the only alternative you can give us.
I agree with you, I don't know what else you want from me, I agree there should be more rail. But for those who actually want it when no one wants to build it, what are they supposed to do? Driving ice cars is knowingly killing the planet, and EVs is a solution for those people who live in places where their government literally tries to kill public transit.
If you know of a way that we haven't tried that we should be doing, I'm all ears. Short of suddenly receiving 6 billion dollars to go build it myself - I don't know what magical thing you want us to be doing that we're not trying already.
I don't care about this mythical "average person".
I wish man, I wish.
Just because you have it extremely bad in the U.S. doesn't mean the rest of the world is doing great, even if it's quite a lot better. "Quite a lot better" than "extremely bad" still turns out to be "pretty bad".
The reasons for that are a different discussion on an entirely different thing that is a general problem that affects all kinds of sectors and has nothing to do with transport specifically.
I only care about the factually-based way forward, not what a bunch of brainwashed monkeys licking aristocrat arses have to say about it.
Eliminating said monkeys is an entirely separate discussion to me.
That's the part I most disagree with. The people who haven't been brain washed quite as much yet should be desiring the proper solution, not the bad "solution" that will still get us killed.
Presenting BEVs as our lord and saviour will do the opposite of that.
Not once in my argument have I mentioned or implied trucks as a valid alternative to BEVs.
That's the thing, it's not a solution; it's a minor mitigation. It's still killing our living space but not quite as badly. That is obviously preferable but nowhere near a solution.
What I want is BEVs to be seen for what they are, not for what they aren't. As a means to an end, BEVs are okay. They're not an end however and that's what they're widely seen as. That's what I find incredibly dangerous.
So we agree?! That public transit is obviously better, we should push governments to build it, that EVs are not a solution but a temporary mitigation, and that ICE vehicles are bad for our planet.
Why do you continue arguing with me if you agree with me?! I told you I agree with all of your points, you just keep coming after me. I literally do not know what you want from me
Why are you putting so much effort into arguing with me who agrees with, I'll say, 95ish% of what you said, instead of going out and pushing this hard on people who are literally trying to kill public transit? Go argue with them.
My work is near by a train stop, but there's very little way for be to get there. There isn't a bus or walkway, so I'd need to Uber or bike. The other issue is that it would make my one hour commute about two hours, which is infeasible for me currently.
I agree, but just to clarify a minor point: small rural towns are actually some of the most walkable and bikable because they were built before cars. If youβre staying within a rural town, you donβt need a car.
Imagine how much cheaper cities could be if 2/3rds of the real estate wasn't parking? Also, moving doesn't necessarily mean going to New York. It can also just mean moving closer to your job in a small town. Which would also be easier if you could turn all the parking lots into homes.
Also, if commercial investors had not cornered the housing market, and the government didn't subsidize absurdly high loans.
The problem is not the people who live far from decent public transport but those people who live in the city and uses it every day, on city, all roads are always for vehicles like cars and trucks, instead to be for pedestrian and for bikes. On bad connected places a car can make sense but most of the people in city have cars when they rarely go outside, they could rent a car and would be cheaper for them for those days they need to move away. About EV, I think we still have the same problem, but the waste it generates keeps on ground instead flying on air.
You summarized perfectly the problem I see with the "fuck cars" crowd. They never acknowledge the need for cars in some cases. America's population centers are definitely large cities where public transportation SHOULD be championed, but there has to be an acknowledgement of the rural population (around 15% in America I believe) where cars are a necessity.
The rural population isn't the issue, it's suburbia which is where the majority of the US population lives.
It's not dense enough for public transportation to be viable and it's zoned in a way that makes pedestrian traffic a non starter.
Suburbia causes a lot of problems. I understand why it exists - owning a house with a yard is nice. I personally wouldn't want to give that up to live in an urban environment if I didn't have to
but why should that 15% derail conversations about the vast majority of the rest of the country?
Because the 'founders' made the Senate and house to be anti urban
It shouldn't. There should be acknowledgement of the exceptions.
So no one should ever be able to have a conversation without patting you on the head for being a special boy at the end of every sentence?
More like no one should be demonizing those who do need cars.
Well it's a good thing no one is doing that then, isn't it? Why does everyone feel the need to make up problems to whine about?
For crying out loud I live in a small town and need a car. Do you think I don't deserve access to decent public transportation?
People do do this. Just because you don't, doesn't mean no one else does. I've had discussions with multiple people trying to convince me that anyone who drives a car is evil.
Not what I said, but go ahead and make your absurd conclusions. Just for the record, I'm 100% for public transportation, EVs, renewable energy, and getting off the fossil fuel tit.
If we're ever going to pull people along the path to that future, we have to accept and acknowledge the exceptions. Not all the time, but don't ignore it like most articles I've read on the topic. I believe division occurs when people feel they are being ignored.
Honestly, I'm part of that 15%, and I feel more excluded by people pretending we can't have mass transit just because my neighbors like big trucks than I am by people in cities not bringing me and my concerns up every time cars are mention.
Rural communities got along just fine before the invention of the automobile. In fact, most of the people who have ever lived have been rural people without cars. The idea that we can't have small walkable towns connected to decent mass transit is just incredibly stupid, and it pisses me off when everybody just assumes it's unsolvable, moreso when it's people who actually live here and should know better.
I agree with the idea of small communities being interconnected with a massive distribution of public transit. I would love to walk everywhere from my daily necessities, but still making it easy to get to larger social centers for other needs. I think that should be the goal we strive for as a society.
That's just not true. The movement is about boosting alternative transport. It's not about eradicating cars.
What does the picture represent?
The prevalence of red dots in northern America, apparently.
And Central American and Gulf island dots.
Well spotted.
Population density
So the implication here is that we can't get rid of cars everywhere, so we shouldn't reduce the use of cars anywhere?
Nope, not at all what I said. The OP made it sound like there was no practical reason for EVs and I gave one.
By all means humans should cut back on... well, everything.
The OP said nothing at about reducing the use of cars, and what's more, people make the same objection about rural people needing a car to get to town even in discussions explicitly about creating walkable cities. Even if we read into the question an implication that we should ditch cars, where does the idea come from that it must happen everywhere, all at once? The argument feels disingenuous.
reform zoning at the state level and put in protected bike lanes literally everywhere. also kind a lot of people can do a little biking. I can so some trips by bike in by inner ring suburban area
How much of the population lives in those areas? I can't imagine it's more than 10%.
Good luck convincing people to give up their horses for these new fangled "automobiles." Did you know this "gasoline" is highly flammable? A horse go go anywhere you can, and doesn't need a "road." Who's going to pay for, build, and maintain these "roads" anyway?
Brought to you by Herman Luddite, Horse Breeder.