Or just be me, WFH and never leave the house
If only employers cared. It has been nice, now my employer is rolling out a arbitrary but mandatory 4 days return to office policy. In like 8 years of employment I never needed to be there that much. Whatever, 100% remote job market looks decent for me, hopefully find a better place soon.
I mean, you still need to leave the house for groceries and other stuff
I do the Live From Work, yeah~you could say i’m super rad with all the ladies…no wait, I’m at work :/
Most of the criticisms that come from the right are solvable problems, such as lack of chargers, electricity coming from dirty sources, or lithium mining. We pretty much know how to solve all those at this point. Just a matter of doing it.
Criticisms that come from the left tend to be more fundamental. Things like car-based cities being too spread out, infrastructure costs spiraling out of control, or having the average person operate a 2 ton vehicle at speeds over 60mph and expecting this to be safe. None of those are specific to EVs, and are only solvable by looking at different transportation options.
But solving problems costs money! We need to be transferring those dollars to our wealthy donors, not spending them on public improvements!
The problems you’re describing from vthe right and the left are really the same problems. They’re just expressing their perception of them differently. Infrastructure solutions and spiraling costs are more challenging in less dense areas where the right tends to hold more sway. It isn’t a simple, cost effective answer. Yet.
I tell people yes do get an EV for your next car. But also use this chance to really think about if you need the car at all. Or does every adult in the household need a car each. Our city is trash for everyone having to own a car.
Best is to run your car to the ground. Then get an EV if you must own a car.
Unfortunately mass transit that works for everyone is the enemy of vehicle manufacturers.
And the rich. They need to differentiate themselves somehow from the poor
Optional first class for higher price could be used for this.
That’s a good idea
Live in a not so small town in Germany. I haven’t had the need to have a car after I have been living for 9 years.
I commute with bike to work, take public transport when it’s a farther journey.
Until I have a daughter a couple of months ago. I realize that I really need a car. :(
It’s hard to have a baby without a car. It’s for sleep, for nappy changing, your closet and your pantry. Those first few years especially. If you need one even for a few years it’s totally understandable.
Yeah. It’s very difficult. Going to pediatrician for example. Or if it’s raining. It’s so troublesome to bring a baby with a bike in that situation.
The cargo bike boom has brought us some really decent ways to transport small children and stuff by bike, I actually think it’s quite possible to use is you live in a not so small town. There are accessories to weather proof the cargo area, there are Iso-fix mounts for child seats and once the child can sit by itself it’s usually quite a joy for them as well. These bikes are also protecting the child in case of a fall much better than you would think.
However I really do understand that a car is significantly more convenient. I live in rural Germany and there distances can easily amount to 10-15km one way to run errands such as going to the pediatrician. It’s just a bit much, particularly with a toddler. And the car really does become storage for clothes and all that, you can just park it and everything in there is dry and safe, all that makes the car very attractive. Also a decent cargo bike with kids-friendly accessories will run you as much as a cheap small used car, although only the initial cost of course.
The key to bad weather is decent clothes, and children can easily be weather proofed for the most part. My kid is three now and I’ve seriously considered switching over to a bike, but only to replace the second car that I frequently use because my partner will need one to go to work anyways. But running the car cost me around 250€ every month (I keep track of every expense except cleaning) and that is only as long as nothing major breaks. Upkeep of even a large cargo bike is a fraction of that.
Sounds great! I still don’t think that a cargo bike is very safe. Especially for a baby. :(
It definitely crosses my mind, that I’d do that if the kid is getting older. But definitely not before 2-3 years old.
I haven’t bought a car yet. I’m still in paternal leave so I can manage to do everything. Once I start working, let’s see how well we are doing without a car. :)
I have two kids and use a bike (for ecological reasons). I realize I’m incredibly lucky my area has very good and safe biking infrastructure. Had to upgrade to a electric cargo bike when the second one came about, but I don’t regret at all, it’s more’confortable and safer for the kids. I do own an old ICE car, which I considered replacing with a new EV, but since I drive maybe a few hundreds of kilometers per year, I figured it’d make more sense to keep the old diesel than to replace it.
If I could guarantee that my job is remote forever, or have it written in my contract, I would sell my car.
I live a short bike ride away from the shops. I have some side bags for the ebike I built so lugging groceries isn’t too much of an issue.
The biggest shift is learning you wouldn’t shop the same way you do with a car. With a car you go to a big supermarket and load up a trolley. Spend over a hundred for a week’s worth and drive home. With a bike you kinda just buy as needed for the next couple days. You do more trips throughout the week which is kinda nice too. Forces you to get out of the house more. Benefit I realised when doing this was vegetables were less likely to just die out in the fridge since I bought as needed. Which meant I spent a little less overall.
Do you have access to food, stores, etc using public transport? How do you go about buying stuff and bringing it back home?
Your car will be worth less the longer you hang on to it. You can sell it and hang on to the money until your company tries to get everyone back in the office.
This is likely not going to be the case for the classics (old->modern-day). A Honda Jazz will lose it’s value, a classic Aston? Less likely - even static some of them are works of art.
Ok but what if the Aston isn’t cared for properly and left out to rust? Then the price will go down!
Is my bringing-up-a-small-edge-case helpful? Does pointing to 1% of situations refute the general case or further the discussion in any meaningful way?
Simply pointing out that not all cars will depreciate in value. Well maintained ones should continue to hold their value until oil prices and taxes make them out-of-reach for the average citizen. Let us not forget that 80 percent of vehicles are bought in the second-hand market… Nobody has raised the prospect of killing that market off yet in a policy sense (of which I am aware).
Best is to run your car to the ground.
Absolutely not if you have an older ICE car with bad gas mileage and/or a diesel. Even getting a NEW EV would be better for global warming and the health of your fellow humans than continuing THAT shit show.
Of course, as per the OP, bicycle and mass transit is still much better than any EV, but the really bad emissions cars should NOT stay on the road until their “natural” death unless absolutely necessary.
I don’t understand. I thought there’s more emissions being made from the creation of the EV and its lithium battery than using the remaining life of a gas beater.
They offset the Co2 used in production at around 40k miles, but the batteries are extremely recycleable as battery banks for solar systems, or as raw material for new batteries since it is already out of the ground and they have processes to recycle it now. The gas burned by a car can never be recycled or reused and is extremely inefficient in moving a vehicle. Not to mention the toll extracting fossil fuels is having on this planet. EVs get almost 200 mpg equivalent because of their efficiencies of motors and aerodynamics.
The idea is the concentration of lithium production can be more controlled (and recycled?) as opposed to leaving gas guzzlers out on the road. Plus the distribution of gas to gas stations and such.
As much as I want an EV. My country is just not set up for a smooth transition to EV yet. Until then it’s best to just not give the auto industry more sales and run what you have until you’re realistically ready.
People don’t want to change the status quo or inconvenience themselves slightly in any way for the greater good. People want a magic drop in replacement that magically “fixes/solves” the environmental crisis and allows life to continue on as is. (So they don’t have to take “yucky” public transit)
What really needs to be known though is life has to somewhat drastically change so we can make the world a healthier place for generations to come in the future.
You’re being downvoted because you’re right. I’ve had people argue that EVs still aren’t a good alternative because they may require a bit more effort every once in a while. Like, charging for 30 minutes at a charger on a long road trip vs just gassing up. Other than that they are pretty much a drop in alternative and people still balk at them.
Then trying to get them to use public transit instead? Doesn’t even matter if it’s more convenient, they’re stuck in their ways and will refuse to change ever.
Get out of your ruts people. Just because “this is the way things are” doesn’t mean it’s the best way. Ffs the amount of midwesterners who come to my city to visit and think we’re being “unsafe” by using the train, just get out of your mindsets.
get out of your ruts
But thinking critically is hard and I’m lazy!
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Well either you could move to a different location if you want to, convince your community and local politicians to build better infrastructure, or realize that you are a minority, an edge case that usually is not adressed in these talks because a few people in remote locations using a car doesn’t hurt if we could get rid of car dependency in densely populated areas where the vast majority of humans live.
Vote to allow more dense, mixed-use, transit-oriented development as well as more and better public transit. In many cases there’s a chicken-and-egg problem of NIMBYs blocking new, denser development because of fears of bringing too much traffic, but the public transit that would allay those fears isn’t built because there’s not enough density.
And so what happens is places get stuck in a trap of perpetual car-dependence, which is bad for the environment, bad for the economy, and bad for social equality (cars are super expensive and thus a particular burden on lower income folks, and many people with disabilities simply can’t drive).
The only way to break the cycle is for people to recognize what’s happening and intentionally vote their way out of it.
“Vote to allow more dense, mixed-use, transit-oriented development as well as more and better public transit.”
But I don’t want that. My neighborhood is great, and I don’t want to turn it into my local small city or my local big city. Plus, what you’re describing is very expensive, and taxes are already high.
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On bike those distance are fine. Ebikes exist also. Either way I’d rather life and society adjusted itself to a slower commute than the danger and depression of car based transportation infrastructure. I used to ride my hike one hour to get groceries and an hour back. Those who are disabled can ride the bus and train. A lot of changes need to be made. Infrastructure and people need to change. I’d rather have a car free safe road for walking and riding my bike. We will all live longer to just from exercise and safer travel in general.
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I’m convinced a lot of the fuck car people are people in their 20s with no kids who live in the city where they can heavily rely on good public transport and not have a need to travel too far.
I totally get the sentiment but it’s just not practical for a lot of us. To get people away from cars the local authority would need to practically fill the roads with small extremely regular buses that go all over the place. You’d never wait more than a couple of minutes outside your house for a bus to arrive to go somewhere.
Try arguing that people should bring their own bags to the grocery store. Responses get hilarious quickly.
Inconvenience is mild to say the least. If i had to commute by public transit or bike. it would increase my commute from 15mins to well over 3hrs on foot, 1hr on Bike 4hrs public transit with obnoxious transfers instead of just a nice easy loop or stop nearby, no , no. has to take multiple routes, change buses, stamp tickets…at that point, ill just get an oil change every so often. my cars are paid in full. Ownership means something. Convenience.
In some cities, e.g. Vienna, public transport already beats cars. For playing your own music I have some mid/low-range noise cancelling and can watch movies
some cities like Vienna. whats the population of Vienna? How many people Live Not in Vienna? Cars to the rest of us make sense.
If I could hop on a train from the country side or ride my bike 20m on a dirt road or ice and winter to get to a store I’d be happy but that’s not happening
Could happen soon, has happened before in most places.
If you live in a city or its suburbs maybe, I live a 20 minute drive away from civilization. Not going to get public transit out there any time soon unfortunately.
I’m the same, the typical answer I get told is to move lol
They act like I don’t want to live in the woods
If I could hop on a train from the country side
Yes please!
This reminded me of that Caojiawan metro station built in the middle of nowhere lol
Spoiler
Please govt start doing what the US railroads did in the past, why is expanding train structure approached with such scepticism outside of asia 😭 public transport should not be viewed as a profit machine IMO
My nearest city has got the right idea by making public transport in general more like a right - I can bike 30min from my village to free (staffed) bike parking, and get around on the city’s free shuttle bus.
There’s another shuttle (or, BRT as it skips loads of bus stops) free for hospital workers and paid for everyone else, which jumps between various shopping/housing areas, hospitals and main train station. I used to take it a lot as the drivers could freely divert off route to skip traffic, due to not needing to stop at every single bus stop. Sadly it gets very packed at multiple times of day, wish it was a tram or metro sometimes TBH
Caojiawan metro station
That station was just built ahead of other development (which is a sensible thing to do), this is what it looks like now:
I’m entertained by the fact that everyone gets hung up on how EVs are still not totally green because the electricity comes from coal fired plants or that there’s still manufacturing emissions and stuff…
It’s like, yeah, but compared to an ICE car, which has all the same problems (environmental cost of manufacturing the vehicle, mining and refining the fuel, transporting it, etc) but EVs don’t actively pollute nearly as much during use, and they speak as if these are of equal environmental cost, and they’re not. Additionally, ICE vehicles need a lot more oil to operate that needs to be changed and disposed of every few thousand miles.
It’s like doing less harm isn’t valuable to the people arguing against it, but then again, those are probably the same people who drive their V8 truck to get groceries.
Plus there are plenty of people, like myself, who live in areas where the electricity comes from mostly renewable sources.
Me too. I’m pretty well surrounded by nuclear and hydro-electric here in southern Ontario.
A yes, renewable nuclear energy.
Somewhat renewable through breeder reactors.
Still, nuclear energy has a very good carbon footprint (unlike coal plants) and the public image of them being polluters was a joint disinformation project by Greenpeace and the oil companies in the early 2000s. Greenpeace backpedaled hard on their stance in the recent years.
It’s like, yeah, but compared to an ICE car, which has all the same problems (environmental cost of manufacturing the vehicle, mining and refining the fuel, transporting it, etc) but EVs don’t actively pollute nearly as much during use, and they speak as if these are of equal environmental cost, and they’re not. Additionally, ICE vehicles need a lot more oil to operate that needs to be changed and disposed of every few thousand miles.
None of that is the real problem with electric cars.
The real problem with electric cars is that they’re still cars, which means they embody the same arrogance of space as regular cars. In other words, they take up too much space – both while driving and while parked – physically forcing trip origins and destinations further apart and ruining the city not only for pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders, but even also for the drivers themselves.
(That last link is from the perspective of a car enthusiast, by the way.)
I’m not going to argue with you on that point, I think cars are too big in the first place. With electric vehicles they can be reconfigured to ebikes or something much, much smaller. but I’m only mentioning the ICE vs EVs cost of manufacturing and how “green” they are. It’s a step in the right direction; it’s not the whole journey. Walkable cities and more compact designs of metro areas is still something that needs to be done, but it’s an entirely separate argument to the one I was making.
As someone who primarily drives because I live in a small suburb in the middle of a farm region, I’d be happy to park at the edge of a larger city and walk/bike/e-scooter/transit my way into the city. I think transit costs and the costs associated with most of the bike/e-bike/scooter services to be a bit high, given that I just drove to the city in the first place, but that’s a minor gripe among the plethora of other issues it could and would likely solve to have the city more pedestrian friendly.
Personally, given where I live, I’m more or less obligated to have a car, and if that car is a PHEV or full EV, would benefit the world overall; maybe not by a lot, but certainly more than using ICE vehicles to get around.
I just visited the US and I was dumbfounded how insane your city planning is. Like you literally can’t just make a short shopping trip on foot. You’d have to walk half an hour to even reach basic stores because the sprawl is so bad (City in CA with about 100k inhabitants) and then there are parking spaces everywhere. Like atleast half to 2/3 of the land space is used for parking. And ofc most parking is planned so they can accomodate everyone which means they’re always atleast half empty.
I live in Canada, we’re not any better. And for someone who lives here, it doesn’t make sense to me either.
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Also, charging from the electrical grid means EV’s immediately get future improvements in CO2 usage when the grid improves its mix of power sources.
Larger engines (such as those in power plants) are also generally more efficient. And RVs don’t use oil to drive the oil to where the car can get oil - we have the grid (a modern wonder of the world) to do that for us.
They will continue to astroturf any and all arguments no matter how stupid to see what sticks. We must continue to refute these idiotic claims and progress towards cleaner air
Environmental impact is still less than ICE, yes, but until we figure out a better way to process lithium and make batteries last longer hybrids still have a smaller environmental impact over the lifetime of the vehicle. Eventually we need to cut out petrol entirety of course, but until we get clean batteries the better short-term solution is hybrids when a vehicle is strictly necessary, and bikes or waking in all other cases. An electric motorcycle might be a good short-term solution too, but as of now battery manufacturing is unacceptably dirty. But as you said, it’s still better than ICE. I just think hybrid would be better as a transition while the technology is improved.
Actually hybrid cars aren’t more green than electric cars. As much as electric cars aren’t perfect, they are by far the greenest option. Don’t trust oil lobbies :)
I agree that battery tech needs to be better. We also need to put in the work now to improve the grid so that when there’s wide scale adoption, the grid won’t collapse under the strain.
For the most part it’s a transit issue… we simply cannot move that many watts of power.
For the rest of it, and hybrids versus full electric vs bikes vs walking, that’s a much larger discussion, since not everyone will be able to adopt something more green than a highly efficient vehicle (whether hybrid or EV or otherwise)…
My main point is that they’ll argue dumb crap like manufacturing, that causes so much pollution, and say it in a way that almost seems like they think that ICE cars are better for that, somehow?
It’s like, we know it’s not “carbon neutral” or whatever… it’s just carbon massively reduced and that’s the point Carl.
It also moves most of the population that is produced away from where people live and so out of their lungs.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Canada really stifled its non-car mobility when it basically cut all intercity rail service after WWII though, especially for the interior and west coast. We used to have a pretty good train network for getting between nearby cities like Calgary and Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver, Kelowna and Vancouver, and even Victoria and Nanimo. We don’t even have a proper Vancouver to Abbotsford commuter rail despite them being right next to each other. There were obviously even longer routes like Toronto to Vancouver but that can’t really compete with planes so no real surprise they went (I don’t count that one Via Rail tourist service as a proper Vancouver-Toronto line). Pretty much the only remaining part of Canada with decent intercity rail is on the Toronto Ottawa Montreal corridor, and it does get decent ridership because of it.
Also, within many Canadian metro areas, which if you live in one you’ll most likely stay inside of it for the vast majority of your daily travels, you could actually reasonably live without a car depending on where exactly you live and what you have to do. I for one live in the Vancouver area and don’t own a car. I take the bus and metro almost everywhere, and on the rare occasion I need to go somewhere that’s straight up without public transit access I just take an Uber or something. I think the fact that many of the largest Canadian cities are investing now more than ever in building more public transit, and those projects are more often than not praised by residents with high ridership to back it up is a sign that there is a high demand for non-car travel at least within urban areas. And even for smaller towns, the infrastructure is already there for good bus services like most small towns in Europe have, and if we want to go beyond that and upgrade particularly high demand routes, streetcars and tram-trains are also tried and true options for lower density urban areas. Canada even had plenty of streetcars before we decided to rip them up.
I get that this doesn’t really help people in rural or remote Canada but if we can work to reduce the need for cars in a city, where the majority of people live, that’s still a win and sets a precedent for future transit expansion into lower density areas. Non-car dependency isn’t an all or nothing deal for the entire country.
Obviously there are many challenges to Canadians finding car free alternatives. If you’re in a situation where you do need to own a car, then you need to own a car, and you shouldn’t feel bad for that. But I think that simply saying that there is no other way in Canada or that we’re just hopeless and doomed to car dependency forever due to our population density is missing a lot.
I will also recommend the YouTube channel RMTransit for really good Canadian public transit content.
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.
Bikes are great right until you have to do large grocery shopping
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I was expecting the bakfiets video, but the old Amsterdam grocery stores one is good as well.
WTF kind of public transport are you used to? 😂
Bikes also aren’t great for snow, heavy rain, or extreme temperatures.
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.
And then there’s the salt, which destroys the cars…
There’s no bad weather, only bad clothing
Or it snows.
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.
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.
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.
Tis the problem of car centric sprawl no?
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.
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.
That argument will be thrown at every god damn step we make towards a better planet. It’s not valid.
Electric cars will not save the planet. Electric cars will save the car industry.
But they’re a whole lot better for the planet than gas cars. And cars won’t go away till we make alternatives. Which we should do as quickly as possible, but will still take a while.
… so long as you’re not leasing them, the lifetime energy cost is night and day.
The current rhetoric against EVs is reminiscent of the rhetoric against nuclear power. Yes, it’s not great. Yes, it’s not renewable. However, it gives us more time to more deeply address these issues. The successful anti-nuclear Green Peace campaigns against nuclear have done immeasurable damage to the environment in the long-term (I’m now convinced they were a big oil sock puppet all along). The same could be said for the anti-EV crowd, but the “EVs are sexy” campaign seems to be gaining more traction this time round.
Make no mistake though, the “EVs are just as bad” is a myth perpetuated by big oil.
If you can do a bike, then please do a bike (or a scooter, or one of the many options). If you can’t, then an EV is a good choice. If you can’t afford an EV. But never, ever, lease.
Cars are simply not a good method of individual transportation, regardless of what energy they consume. Theyre just too big.
It’s not good enough. Cars are a bigger problem than their immediately obvious issues like pollution.
??? I hugely disagree that cars are a bigger problem than green house gas pollution. I can live in an unwalkable city. I probably can’t live on a +4°C earth.
Designing a city to be hostile to cars takes more vehicles off the road than trying to push people into electrics. Less cars (of any type) in the city means less health hazards means billions saved means billions to use on climate change research. Please don’t forget that tires are the major polluting factor right now, not exhaust gasses. I strongly believe this is more effective than trying to slowly push people into electrics which will still pollute the air with microplastics and make a ton of noise when they race through the city. Lithium is also not particularly clean to mine, so I’d prefer it was used to make batteries for bikes and other similarly sized vehicles. The world does not have the mining and processing capacity to support converting everyone to an electric car.
I usually visit my closest city for one of two reasons: 1) I have some kind of appointment or 2) I know some who lives there. Right now I’m able to drive there and park on the street. What should my alternative be once the city is “hostile” to cars? Remember, I live 30+ minutes away by car and take a highway to get there.
I think co2 ghgs global warming is by far the biggest environmental catastrophe coming our way. So the most important factor will be how will it impact co2 emissions.
As I said, we should make alternatives to driving in cities as quickly as we can. But that will still take a while. What are you suggesting in the mean time? Not going places?
EVs are much better than gas for minimizing co2 emissions. I think we should encourage them as a transitional solution till we have trains and walkable or bikeable cities.
I think we should encourage them as a transitional solution till we have trains and walkable or bikeable cities.
This is my problem. I don’t think we’ll ever reach that point when we accept half-solutions. It wouldn’t take more than a single decade to uproot our city design if we had any ambition left, but alas.
Our disagreement is that I think the societal cost of cars is more than you think, not that I think electric cars are a bad transitional step. But I also think that we live under an economic model that will kick, fight and scream the whole time we try to uproot such a massive portion of it, being the oil industry. It’s possible we just can’t fix it at this point except by radical change. I don’t have ultimate solutions, I’m just wary of electric cars because lithium mining is just as bad as oil drilling from a different direction and electric cars will kill just as many kids in the street as combustion cars.
By all means make electric vehicles- just please not cars.
You’re still lugging around 1500 to 2000 kg of steel, glass & plastic to move around little more than your butt. You can do something more efficient than that, assuming the infrastructure is rigged up to handle it.
Yup, not ideal. But the available infrastructure is the key point as you said. A lot of places in the US there just isn’t an alternative.
The problem is that the real way to cut down on emissions would be to accept that not every good can be available at any time and that’s a bitter pill to swallow.
We have tuna caught in South America, hauled to Thailand for canning and hauled back to the US to be sold. Turns more profit than local catches because the megacorporations can save a couple bucks on worker salaries. And that is just an example, it’s not just the food industry, hauling shit to hell and back and back to hell and back is common practice.
Doesn’t even have to be unavailable at times. They could can it in north America if they wanted to. Outsourcing jobs (read: exploring foreign countries and their workers) should be heavily taxed if not banned in most industries
You mean exploiting, right? :)
But I can’t put a 75” TV and a 48 pack of Pepsi on the back of a bike duh.
This is my usual trip to the store so I feel your pain!
I can. The Pepsi can be strapped to my rear seat, and the TV can go in my surfboard rack. My surfboard is 81 inches, so the TV should fit. For more cargo room those kiddie carriers that tow behind, carry more than just kids.
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And then a tornado hits, harder
And then an asteroid hits
Tarps, how do they work???
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“My mom helped me install the Bicycle Pegs, Hop on Babe. Let’s go to the pub, did you bring money, imma bout to get wasted on buy one get one Mich Ultras. If your dad gave you big bills this time then i want to get a Pabst Blue, ya hurd?”
Meanwhile, basically every Dutch students “dates” by bike, and most of London dates via the Underground.
oof. imagine attracting a quality mate with your inability to be independent or have ownership of anything meaningful. No wonder you all hate America. :D
I remember saying it about 10 years ago:
You can see the culture shock in how progress works across different countries:
Japan, let’s build a shockingly fast and quiet train! USA, here’s an electric car that drives itself.
Would have been great if stanley Meyer was still alive.
It would be great if our public transit system in the US was funded enough to actually be useful for more than just occasional, highly specific trips.
Came to say the same. Where I live (Bay Area), we have a train system that works great if you are in a supported area. If not, I don’t imagine the bus system is very convenient. I want something like the NYC subway system. I want it to be inconvenient to drive, compared to regular trains. I’d never drive to San Francisco because it’s a hassle. I want all destinations to be like this (by making the alternative more attractive, not by making driving worse).
This reminds me, I need to work on getting a bike.
If you use it every day and can afford it, maybe look at brand electric bikes! They’re a bit like bikes, but sturdier and on bad/rainy days and whatnot it really motivates to have the motors help. They’re almost like motor scooters, if you ever had one.
Is ebike theft an issue? I’m paranoid about my push bike that I have no idea how I’d leave an ebike out.
Yes it is but you can get cheap insurance, just like you would get for a motor scooter or a car.
Yes, although I try to take precautions to prevent or catch it. For shopping I carry two u-locks and a wheel wire for my loaner ebike, and on my personal dutch-style non-e bike I rely on the built-in lock and chain.
Out of the several years I’ve owned my personal bike, there has been one attempted theft (they made off with my light, action cam, and bike computer) and that was during an hour long shopping close to midnight.
Look into whether your area has secure bike parking, such as within train stations with key card access, maybe ones attached to your local authority’s office, or even run by any local bike charity of some sort.
I personally have left my loaner ebike locked up in train station keycard storage overnight while visiting another city, there are cameras everywhere which is reassuring, and the bike was untouched when I returned for it. On a separate occasion I left some of my clothing on the locked up ebike to dry, and they were exactly how I left them when I came back to ride home.
Nowadays I just try my best not to use general public access bike parking lol
Edit: should also mention that I keep all my bikes indoors now when at home. Last time I kept my old one out, cats kept pissing on & scratching the wheels, and it rusted so badly
They’re definitely something I’m looking at. 🙂
I’ve gotten to use a class 3 direct drive before, and it was nice. Ideally, a gravel e-bike is what I’d target.
I’d kind of like to get something I can use all around since I would only have one, and my area has some nice bike trails.
This reminds me I need to finish repairing mine
I bus nearly everywhere but I’m lucky I’m in a city and have access to transit. Build more transit!
Imagine if all the posting just to shit on biking and public transit just rode a bike or something instead of sucking on a tailpipe for dear fucking life.
Imagine if people understood that not everyone lives where they can ride a bike or take public transit.
Stop blaming people for being born into a country that essentially requires cars.
Imagine if people who said “We CaNt JuSt TeAr DoWn CaR iNfRaStRuCtUrE fOr TrAnSiT” understood that’s EXACTLY what we did for cars. 🤷
Stop worshipping your tailpipe and crack a book sometime.
I as an individual can’t just go and start tearing up roads and install a light rail system. So until there are enough people voting alongside me to change our car dependent infrastructure, I’m going to have to use a car if I want to go anywhere.
That’s not worship, it’s a necessity.
The worship is in your incessent need to defend the fossil fuel addiction at all cost, your inherent absorption of driving into your sense of being so you’ll dedicate your time to attacking people who want more and better options for EVERYBODY instead of questioning why you can’t have nice things in the name of Big Oil.
THAT’S worship.
I live somewhere that never had anything but car infrastructure. Should I ride my bike across a 5 line intersection to go to the mall? And before you suggest my local government install a light rail from my house to the mall, I’m surrounded by farmland.
You’re ignorant.
Ah, the argument of the uninformed with no leg to stand on. Imagine if you put half the energy you put into fighting advocates of alternative transportation into literally anything useful. 🤷
Enjoy your blind worship of big oil.
My blind worship because I live where public transit isn’t good, and I’m not biking 45km one way to the store?
Again, you’re ignorant. You’re fighting nothing. Grow up.
And gas prices would drop
Not possible where I live, not enough public transport, not enough bike lanes and too far to travel Daily
Yeah I have zero public transit, no bike lanes, no sidewalks, no shoulders on the road - just two fast curvy lanes and a ditch. The last time I walked to the corner store I had three people stop and offer me a ride because it is too dangerous to even walk. Forget biking, no one is that stupid here. Well maybe a couple, I’ve seen bikes painted in memory of dead riders on the side of the road.
Sounds like you live in a garbage area
That’s what they all say. I usually assume people are just to lazy to ride their bike or feel like public transport is too much of an inconvenience. Nobody ever wants to “downgrade” and thus this planet is utterly fucked.
Pro tip don’t assume
Yeah, never begrudge people for driving since they often do because there is no reasonable alternatives. Begrudge people for not voting for more public transport, better (denser) zoning, and removal of mandatory ridiculous parking requirements.
