- cross-posted to:
- fuckcars@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- fuckcars@lemmy.world
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Working from home is the best. Not everyone can do it, but those who can, should be allowed to. Return to office isn’t for us, it’s for them.
Working from home is the best.
Very difficult to build class solidarity when you’re atomized to the point of not even seeing one another’s real faces.
Yes, though not always as accessible.
The problem with electric cars is two fold as far as I understand it:
- The electricity it uses is not sustainable.
- It has lots of tracking etc and in some cases remote control.
While the power source that generated the electricity is not necessarily sustainable, power plants should have more at scale Features to limit the pollutants than a traditional petrol engine.
Or at least the power plants should if one lives in a civilized society…
civilized society
I’m sorry sir but such a thing does not exist, I fear you must have dreamed it.
The problem with EVs is that in almost all ways other than local pollution they are just as bad as ICE vehicles. They
- need massive amounts of asphalted space for roadways and parking
- use this space very inefficiently and cause traffic congestion at any given spike in traffic
- drive urban sprawl and thus make housing less sustainable (more sewage,water supply, electric supply, heating, roads/person required)
- urban sprawl stretches everything far apart and makes public transit much less feasible so people who can’t drive cars struggle to get places, for example kids can’t walk to school or take public transit, instead must be driven
- are loud (because tyres rolling is the driving source of noise)
- are dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists
- their dangers and tendency to cause traffic congestion inhibit other, more efficient and sustainable modes of transport so that when not regulated properly, they take over all of the streetscape as is evident in most western places
This is a general complaint about vehicles, not necessarily EVs, and extends to trucks, motorcycles, and basically anything that gives humans more range than their feet.
This position would probably be best directed at the city planning office.
This is a general complaint about vehicles, not necessarily EVs
Yes, that’s like the whole point of my post, being E doesn’t fix 90% of the issues caused by individual motorised transport vehicles. And city planning can’t do anything about these inherent issues either, they can merely decide to make good, sustainable cities or car friendly cities. Good city planning policies stand in direct contrast to the amount of cars expected to be driven.
And I’m saying this not to shit on EVs, they must clearly replace ICE vehicles as soon as possible, but to warn that they will not fix the unsustainable state of affairs in transportation. Loads of people appear to actually believe they do and that’s sort of dangerous. We’re not gonna fix jack shit if we just transition these vehicles to being electric while further increasing car dependency and sprawl. We’re gonna make it even worse.
Bus lanes and light rail!
I have never heard anyone claim EVs are loud before.
They are loud. Not when they drive slowly, but when they pick up speed. The wheels make just as much noise as an ICE.
My comment is not about what people claim about EVs but how they actually are.
so that sentence you wrote is not a claim?
Correct, it’s a fact
deer god give me the confidence of an idiot on the internet.
Also, those tires on asphalt are one of the leading contributors to environmental pollution from all the shedded microplastics.
YES, can’t believe I forgot that point.
I’d say long term, neither of those should be problems
The electricity it uses is not sustainable.
Many EV users also go for solar panels to alleviate energy costs. Also as a country’s electrical grid modernises, it should make use of a greater share of renewables given they’re cheaper than the alternatives now.
It has lots of tracking etc and in some cases remote control.
Slightly less certain, but I’d hope this kind of thing is legislated away at some point. There’s also always customer choice, there will be manufacturers that compete on the privacy angle if enough of us care
The main problem with EVs is it doesn’t solve any of the problems inherent to cars being treated as the main mode of transportation in a given area. Places like that will see EVs as the solution compared to an alternative of investing into better public transit infrastructure.
Infrastructure that is basically inevitable, since we know now that any town/city that eschews anything but car transit will ultimately bankrupt themselves on road maintenance alone.
the wear of the tires constantly pollutes the environment with synthetic material dust (rubber, plastic, etc). much more so, than from buses, because every car has to move more of its weight around per passenger.
I would suggest different downsizes:
- EVs are much heavies, and they wear down the road, and everything else
- tire particles are going to be the next problem after fossil fuels
Solution: trains, more trains, even more trains.
What about electric public transit? EV buses are becoming quite popular in Korea.
Also Germany
As long as they’re being purchased as a replacement for buses that are either at the end of their life or being donated to smaller communities, then sure. This said from the perspective of an American whose city, state and federal governments refuse to fund the public transit that we already have. (╥_╥)
It’s also collectivizing the solution rather than expecting us each to address the problem on an individual level that doesn’t change the status quo one iota.
US public transportation is pathetic, but prior to the 1960’s it was quite extensive only to be destroyed by the oil and automobile lobbyists.
And if they’re hadn’t thrashed the railcars, the cities might look wildly different.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
Thing is, we are where we are now. We can’t just tear down all the cities and start over. We have to deal with what we’ve got.
I mean, Europe hasn’t torn it’s cities down (well not all of them and not for rebuilding purposes anyway) despite managing to utilise good public transport.
Then again guess your point is rather that American cities were built stupidly car centric and that somehow those can’t be replaced with any sort of public transport?
My friend’s work is over an hour from his house by public transport—if public transport is working, and it’s a weekday. If it isn’t working well, if it’s late, if it’s a weekend or holiday, then it’s closer to two hours (or more).
It’s 15 minutes max by car.
And he lives in a place with good public transportation.
Until we improve how public transportation runs, so that it really is designed around how people need to get from A to B, cars are going to be the more popular choice.
Bikes combined with public transit usually cut down those times massively. And to ask—good, or good by usa standards? Cities in Germany or japan are impressive with how fast you can get places by train.
Also-- people being unwilling to trade a bit of convenience in exchange for a better world is a major part of the problem. I got off my car and started biking for everything, and it was easy. More people could easily do the same. Combined with trains, I can go very far.
No, it’s not good public transportation. Good public transportation is faster and cheaper than a car. That’s terrible public transportation, just because other places are even worse it doesn’t mean that one is good.
Well, ‘good’ by US standards.
Wish we had Japan standards :(
I really hate that shit. To suburbs? Sure, that’s acceptable cox public transportation prioritizes high density areas.
To city to another city and public transportation takes double of driving? That’s bad design. Infrastructure that prioritizes cars no matter the population density is not sustainable, whether that’s shown as car traffic or massive deficit to keep roads maintained
If its 15 mins by car it’s likely a gentle 30 mins ride. A small vespa or motorbike has to be better than a car for that sort of distance - we need to avoid thinking car is the only private transport solution
Like ~15 years ago I heard peter singer saying that the emissions from the lifetime use of a car were lower than those from making it, so you should only ever buy a second hand car.
That was before widespread EVs though.
I often wonder how long you have to use a 2nd hand gas car for, before the emissions outstrip those of making a brand new EV.
I got a 2019 used nissan leaf in 2020 (the lessee didn’t like it), but it looked new. My coworkers tripped over themselves to tell me that the production of a vehicle is worse for the planet anyway. Then, when I explained that it was used, they all responded that the electricity was probably dirty anyway. I charged it at the company garage or at my town’s public spots, both of which were solar powered.
You always get FUD about EVs from people who don’t like the idea that they might be responsible for unnecessarily harming the planet and their neighbours through their actions and would far rather believe that you’re just as bad as them. It’s BoTh sIdES but for polluters.
My old petrol car consumes 4.5L/100km. New Hybrid EVs consume 4.5L/100km because it takes a lot to move the heavy hybrid system.
Solution: I use public transport a lot unless I can’t. That’s my hybrid mode of transport.
Public transport is always king but you are also supposed to plug in the hybrid vehicle.
Also they’re blatantly not comparing like for like.
For example, the Toyota Yaris has a petrol-only version that get 4.6 to 5.8L/100km, whereas the (non-plugin) hybrid version of the exact same car gets 3.8L/100km, so all this guff about “it takes a lot to move the heavy hybrid system” is clearly FUD.
Nothing you do as an individual will ever be as bad as the commercial fishing industry.
Wrong! I could become the president and nuke the world. Boom, worse than industrial fishing.
Hahaha!
Oh, sorry. I meant
MUAHAHAHAHAHAH!
Except the president cant just ‘nuke’ the world. They can give the order, but theres a whole chain of command that actually fires the nukes.
Until he fires and replaces the chain of command with podcasters.
I don’t think now is the time to be arguing for the effectiveness of guardrails.
Cars and eating meat are some of the largest polluters on the planet, and driven entirely by consumers. The commerical fishing industry exists because you buy the fish. Do not mistake that every individual is part of the problem and we all need to work together to improve reality
Yeah in a world where transit isnt a shit show. In my city transit will take you 2 hours to get home when a car will take 20 minutes
Then you better be advocating for better public transit
That is true, which makes it so weird to get so much backlash from advocating for good transit in the first place.
Also driving by bike is often times overlooked. In my home town of 10k the supermarket has a us sized parking lot and is located right in the center… Its cheaper for you and others, healthier for you, others and the earth and its safer for others.
It’s not so much the advocating for good transit, it’s the using it as an attack on EVs. There’s no reason we can’t have both.
That is exactly why we need better public transit.
I live in a small town. The town has a couple vans that old people can call to be driven to the doctor. And like all government services and social safety nets, it’s gonna be gone by the time it’s my turn. If I’m going somewhere, it’s my car, my bike or my feet.
That’s great if public transport goes from near where you are to near where you want to be, in a reasonable time.
For me that’s not the case. Anywhere I want to go takes 27 changes over at least 5 hours for a net distance of three miles; it’d be quicker to hop backwards blindfold on a bent pogo stick.
people who argue for public transport argue for better implementation of it (and also city planning that supports it). the idea isn’t for everyone to just stop using cars in favor of public transport even if the public transport system is absolute shit. it’s for systemic support of public transport in such a way that commuters would willingly choose it over being stuck in traffic in their little metal boxes for hours.
it’s a criticism of the system, not the people.
That’s what decades of car centric urban design does to everyone; any transportation other than a car is treated as a second class
While there’s something to that, it’s also a difficult fact that rail is just harder than roads, and by extension more expensive. You have hills? You are going to need to do tunnels and bridges for the rail because you can’t turn that sharply and you mustn’t have more than 1.5% grade. For road, just snake it around and up and down the hills.
You have a source and destination that not many people will be using? It’s cost prohibitive to run a whole train or bus to cover that route.
Now it’s one thing when the population distribution was based around settling around the harsh realities of needing to be along viable transit paths, but when a great deal of the population settled with the assumption of roads, you are going to have a hard time sorting out transit routes without mass resettlement.
Of course, if you apply mass transit to cities and nearby areas you’ve gotten the worst of the troubles solved and it’s viable for mass transit. But cars are just part of the equation for longer hauls.
Three miles is like the Perfect distance to ride a bike. Why even get into a car?
Well, if op is from the US, it’s probably because our infrastructure makes cycling way more dangerous than it needs to be.
Thats true. :(
Biking three miles takes about 15 minutes, you should do that instead
You also need to fix the karen problem that plagues society. I don’t like getting called a slur or “go back to where you came from”, and its very bad when you’re stuck inside the small space as them. (By “karen” I don’t mean just white women, but the attitude of some people, anyone can become a karen)
We really need to eliminate karen mentality.
I really fucking hate that a normal ass female name became a synonym for “entitled person”
A lot of cities were designed around cars. In Cities Skyline you can just bulldoze entire neighbourhoods and completely change the roads and transit. Unfortunately in real life you can’t easily bulldoze people’s homes, and transit networks can take a decade to build.
Global warming is a problem now, and perfect is the enemy of good enough. We know EVs aren’t the ideal solution, but it’s important part of a solution that involves improved transit, better quality of life in dense population centers AND EVs for neighbourhoods that were built in a car-centric past. Maybe in 100 years the suburbs won’t exist and there won’t be any need for cars, but if we wait 100 years to have perfectly designed transit friendly neighbourhoods we’ll all be fucked.
In a car I am in constant conflict, constant in risk.
In a plane I am but a commodity, worth only my payment.
In a bus we are a union, to endure together, and one another.
In a train we are a tribe, fortified in goals, interests, as philosophers of old.
I don’t know what buses and trains you’ve been on.
Okay I mayyyy be glossing over the occasional pee stains, bad scheduling, overly expensive tickets, and occasional fella high out of his gourd taking the occasional break from his hazed trance to scream at me because I’m secretly the devil.
Just the colors of life I say.
Hate to break it to you, but you’re a commodity on the train and bus too.
Very true, but a happy commodity.
Yes but much less profitable.
Devilish that capitalism has made profitability synonymous with efficiency
Horses are even more sustainable and renewable. And tasty if done right.
