“Giving people more viable alternatives to driving means more people will choose not to drive, so there will be fewer cars on the road, reducing traffic for drivers.”
Concise, easy to understand, and accurate. I have used it at least a dozen times and it is remarkable how well it works.
Also—
“A bus is about twice as long as a car so it only needs to have four to six passengers on board to be more efficient than two cars.”
You can use the same logic to also argue that finding a parking spot will be easier. And if more people cycle there is more demand for separated bicycle lanes, which means drivers don’t need to share the lane anymore with others.
Also, if the car park is smaller due to fewer people driving, it means it will be easier to remember where you parked your car, and you won’t have to walk as far to the destination. It also means you can fit more stuff in the same space, so you won’t have to drive as far to get to the places you want to go, saving you time and fuel!
These arguments are won and lost on the phrasing.
and you won’t have to walk as far to the destination
I enjoy the parking lot walk
Yeah but how does it not boil down to “don’t drive, then you’ll park easy” in an argument?
Someone can logically agree to something but emotionally still hate it.
Logically, car drivers should understand and appreciate the zipper merge, bc it makes traffic better. But emotionally it’s too difficult for them to let someone in ahead of them.
Same thing you can explain about alternatives to cars making traffic better. But when they see money or (God forbid) space on the road going to infrastructure other than cars, it will feel like a zero sum game again.
That is the biggest challenge I’ve experienced in trying to promote alternatives
Opposition to the zipper merge might be a regional thing. Where I’m from, people can zipper merge just fine, especially after the state transportation agency put up a bunch of billboards telling people to do it.
Lmao no cars around here will still form miles long line ups because they all think it’s an asshole move to skip the traffic, somehow not realizing that it wouldn’t be possible to do that if they just utilized both lanes until the merge.
I’ve found that a lot of people see the use of public transport as horrors beyond comprehension, and think cycling would kill them instantly.
But that’s fine, no need to convince them to use mass transit.
The approach is to improve infrastructure - good buses, frequent routes, dedicated bus lanes, trains to feed from the suburbs, subway, etc.
Make it more convenient to use, and people will start using it. But you need to stop designing everything around cars, like every single store can’t be a cube in the middle of a huge parking lot…
You might meet immigrants and poor people there. THE HORROR!!!
People just like privacy and playing their own music without headphones. You are just inventing a caricature.
I certainly love hearing their speaker systems and modified exhausts from thousands of feet away.
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People just like privacy
A car drivng on public roads is only a false sense of privacy.
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Some people like eating ice cream for breakfast. Just because you like something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea or free of long term consequences.
“But I like it” is not a sufficient justification for destroying our living spaces.
What are you talking about? I said they are making up a fake person and you go off on a side rant.
People just like privacy and playing their own music without headphone
You said “people like” and one of my peeves is people trying to justify bad things (eg: cars everywhere, single use plastic) with “but I like it!”
Where did I justify it? I said they invented a person and made no comments on the validity.
…is this an AI?
You said that people like music without headphones and having privacy as a reason, a justification, for taking a car over mass transit.
People get weirdly anti social about public transit. Like, “I don’t want to have to be around other people!!”
Sometimes it’s racism. Sometimes it’s just… anti social.
Personally I think anti-social people can go leave society, and the rest of us can build a better, more cooperative world.
No need to call people who are not overly extrovert “anti-social”.
Personally I think anti-social people can go leave society, and the rest of us can build a better, more cooperative world.
Ah yes… put all the anti-social people into their own society. I’ll call it a “suburb”. We won’t regret making car dependent suburbs.
Tell me you’ve never been assaulted by a drunk guy on a train without telling me you’ve never been assaulted by a drunk guy on a train.
I’ve taken trains daily in the NYC area (not counting the pandemic) for almost 30 years. So, no, your cliché is wrong.
Good for you. I was assaulted on a train from London to Manchester before I learnt how to drive.
I’ve found that a lot of people see the use of public transport as horrors beyond comprehension,
Depending on where you are, this can be just an accurate observation.
I would bet a lot of that is unfamiliarity. “I don’t know where the route is or how to get to the bus or what the schedule is or how long I have to wait or whether I’ll be able to get home at a reasonable time or how I can pay. “
Some of this is part of infrastructure. Yes, in the US buses are unpredictable, always seem delayed, and it’s tough to figure out where they go. Yes there aren’t very many and service can end early, and schedules tend not to be posted. Sometimes the payment system is one that rare riders won’t be familiar with.
At least some of the time subways are a “more acceptable” form of transit and I believe it’s the predictability, better signage, you can spend time figuring out the fare machine without being on the spot for delaying the transit. Subways even have the reputation of running more frequently than buses. These are all things bus transit could have too
For me, even being familiar with transit near me, it was much easier when I rode often enough to get a monthly pass rather than deal with fare paying
That seems to be highly dependent on where they are.
In some cities, everyone on public transport behaves themselves. They’re clean and there’s no fear that they’ll be harassed or assaulted. Some people really like that and get afraid or skeeved when they think about some public transport systems.
In other cities public transportation riders are expected to “live and let live”. Officials won’t stop you from doing anything unless it presents an imminent danger. Some people love the freedom from that sort of system and hate the idea of someone forcing them to behave a certain way.
There are, of course, many reasons why certain public transport systems are more like one than the other; money, age, geography, preferences, etc. While there are great arguments for public transportation and I’m a huge fan of improving the infrastructure around it, I can also recognize that a lot of people’s actual experience of public transport doesn’t paint it in a good light.
“A bus is only helpful when it actually runs regularly. And by ‘regularly’ I don’t mean one each morning and another one each afternoon”.
I absolutely agree.
But if mass transit had the same investment as road infrastructure gets, it’d be a slam dunk.
somehow even turborural areas here in sweden can manage it, so there’s no reason other places can’t do the same.
the crucial thing is that you don’t have to run public transport literally everywhere, just run robust services between population centres (as many ones as you can manage) and build infrastructure such that people can get to the closest stop and transfer onto the public transport there.
Im actually surprised how well I am able to get to the city from my village. If I drive 3km with my bike to the next village I am able to get to the city every 30 Minutes.
If I drive 20 miles I can pay $10 to park in a lot where my car is guaranteed to be broken into 3 times a year so I can pay $8 to take a bus for the last 3 miles. And it only adds 60 minutes to my commute each way, provided I catch the bus!
Not everyone lives in Europe where cities were located and developed prior to cars and where being outside for 10 minutes isn’t lethaly dangerous in the summers for a significant percentage of the population.
Not everyone lives in Europe where cities were located and developed prior to cars
Cities in the USA also existed before cars. As Not Just Bikes said “cities weren’t built for the car… they were bulldozed for the car”
The cities in the Southern US were essentially built by the invention of air conditioning, which became widely available for residential homes in the 1950s.
Between 1940 and 1960 the US as a whole few 35% with the Baby Boom.
In that same period, Houston grew over 250%, Albequerque grew over 500%, Vegas grew by 800%, and Phoenix grew by 1200%.
The population of Houston in 1940 was 385,000 and it had virtually no metro population outside the city itself. Its metro is now 7 million people.
I know that there are big parts of the world(even in Germany) where public transport is absolutely shit.thazs why I said that I’m quite surprised about how well it works for me. It does add quite some time(45mins with the bus and about 20-25 Minutes with my car), butbit works well for me.
I think the big issue a lot of people don’t understand is that due to housing costs some daily commutes in America cover crazy distances across areas with no transit.
I put 35,000 miles (56,000 km) a year on my car.
Okay, that’s a lot of travelling. I knew that you’re quite fucked in the states, but I didnt knew it was that Bad.
I’m a somewhat bad case even here.
The rent for a tiny 1br apartment in the city where I work starts around $2500/month. For $725/month I can rent a 3 bed/2 bath trailer house about 90 minutes away.
Even without accounting for the extra space, I’m essentially getting paid $30/hr for my commute with the savings, which more than offsets the extra miles and gas.
Can’t get your life back though
I’m essentially getting paid $30/hr for my commute with the savings, which more than offsets the extra miles and gas.
Damn, that’s a lot. I can absolutely understand why you choose to drive that long. U would absolutely hate it, because you loose awful amounts of time on the streets, but is a good deal.
What a lot of people also don’t understand is that automobile-oriented zoning and development is one of the major factors driving up housing costs. In a nutshell, you pay a lot of money for housing in exchange for the privilege of driving long distances to it.
The opposite is true in my case. The long drive is what keeps my life affordable. Rent in town would be quadruple the cost for 40% of the living space. The long drive decreases my cost per square foot by an order of magnitude.
And the zoning in town has zero parking requirements. I know all about it because I work in the development department.
I essentially get paid $30 an hour for my commute with the savings and have a much bigger house.
That’s great for you, as an individual, but the fact is that that same pattern of distance vs. affordability holds true all over the U.S. Actually, I mean distance vs. cost. Here where I live, housing gets cheaper further from the central city, but the economic and population growth is still pushing the cost up out of the affordable range even for the “cheap” stuff.
When I worked at the local grocery, I had a cheap apartment because of long tenure and luck. All of my co-workers, though, commuted in from outlying communities. Not only did they pay half of their income in rent, but then they had car expenses on top of it.
the cities with the worst infrastructre are the ones that predated cars then were forcefully ripped up and paved. my town museum has pictures of people on horses and old timey big wheel bikes going peacefully down what is now a 6 lane road with no bike lanes and a sidewalk on only one side.
And now imagine all the people who are physically incapable to ride a bike for 3km, and where the village with a bus every 30 minutes is a mere fantasy.
If you want I could drive from my Village. My local administration arranged a service where they have a car that drives you to bus stops to improve access to public transport, but I don’t want to book that, because you usually need to book it some time in advance.
I just learned the other day that 40% of the residents of my city (Madison, Wisconsin) can’t or don’t drive. Apparently, this is a bit greater than the U.S. ratio, but not by much. So you’ve just articulated a really good reason to abolish cars.
For people in the cities, no problem. Outside, abolishing cars before you even think of creating viable means of transport is putting the cart before the horse.
I’m certain that my grandfather’s mobility scooter from back in the 1980’s could have covered 6km in day (there and back). I looked up the specs now, and there are mobility scooters that can go 40 miles. So, the alternative already exists. If folks can’t ride a bicycle 3km, a mobility scooter will do just fine.
I don’t know what it’s like in other places but I tend to find that in cities with an actual dedicated serious transportation agency, busses run every hour at minimum. Even regional busses in the small city where I attended university ran 6-8 times a day per line for three very similar routes. Local busses ran every 20-40 minutes depending on time of day. That’s shocking good for a city of 50,000 in America.
It might surprise you, but there are people living outside of large cities.
The point seems kinda moot outside of cities.
Are you expecting a bus stop outside every farmhouse? Who’s going to ride it, cows?
Or in a small town where everything is reachable on foot within fifteen minutes anyway and the road has like 2 cars per minute? Regional bus service that takes you to nearby towns that comes a few times a day is probably as good as it gets.
Regional bus service that takes you to nearby towns that comes a few times a day is probably as good as it gets.
And exactly that makes people drive in cars into the cities.
You’re coming at this from a perspective that suggests people should have alternatives to cars, or maybe even that people deserve alternatives to cars. And that’s fundamentally not how a shocking number of people think. Heaven help you if you suggest things like low cost fares for the poor or even free access to public transit.
Most people I have found care relatively little about the topic. They drive and think in terms of driving only because that is the context they have been exposed to their entire lives, and there’s not really their fault.
If someone really is that deep into the rabbit hole then nothing you say will change their mind, so don’t waste your time.
One of my coworkers believes bicycles cause car congestion. All car congestion, even the stuff on highways.
A lot of people choose not to live in the city with good transit because housing is too expensive, so they live in the 'burbs. All that extra money means they can get a fancy new car lease. They drive into the city and because cars are allowed everywhere 24/7 there is no reason for them to look for alternatives in high traffic zones.
Have you ever considered that for many people not living in the city this “extra money” simply does not exist?
I’m convinced that everyone else on Lemmy is so poor that purchasing the device they use to access this site was one of the worst financial decisions available to them.
The median house price in the US is >$400,000. Rent around here for a 2bd is 2500, and I don’t even live in a place with mass transit.
Unless you’re buying a new phone every month, it’s not affecting your ability to buy a house or rent an apartment in a city.
That’s the old way. There’s no real difference in pricing now until you move into the exurbs. For more and more people it’s better to pay a bit more and not have to commute while having easy access to the city’s amenities.
A “bit” more? Have you seen rent levels in the last few decades?
Rent must be incredibly affordable in the US from what I’m reading here.
I live in Melbourne, Australia - and I couldn’t afford anything within an hours drive of the city.
I don’t understand why people are so married to the thought of driving to and from work every day. You just worked 9 hours, and you want to drive through rush hour?
Yea, I have been lucky to get an appartement near my place of work, only 5 min by tram. And I cant imagine having to spend in total 1-2 hours driving to and from work every day. It feels like such an incredible waste of time, when the only thing you can do is listen to music/radio/podcasts. I want to read, play my steam deck or just work on my laptop.I dont want to fight with traffic and havong to concentrate on not killing myself with the tons of metal with which Im urgently rushing around with.
So you don’t have to work, and therefore no need to commute? Lucky you. Normal people still have to work for a living.
And here it is. The only other option you can think of is to be unemployed. You’re so tied to the thought of a driving commute you can’t even imagine anything else.
You’re so tied to the thought of a driving commute you can’t even imagine anything else.
I am not tied to a driving commute. The point is that for a lot of people, a commute by public transport or bike simply is no viable alternative. As long as you dwell in the city center 99% of your life, you will not encounter this, but outside the city, public transport is a joke.
Then you agree we should change that?
Indeed. If you have a miracle cure to fix that, feel free to apply it.
Not acting like it’s impossible would be the first step. Advocate for it at every level.
They want to either live in walking/biking distance of work, have a mass transit system that gets them to work, or work remotely.
Normal countries don’t require every person drive to get to work.
Normal countries don’t require every person drive to get to work.
There are a lot of jobs - the majority, even - where WFH is not an option. A baker is not making the bread at home. And those people are often forced to change employments for a number of reasons. And they simply cannot just chose where to live due to financial constraints.
All this “fuck cars, use bikes and public transport” is just a dream of a wealthy white collar society who has lost the touch with reality.
I’m not against bikes and public transports. On the contrary. But unless those two options are actually viable, condemning cars is just a stupid idea. You cannot expect people to up their commute from 30 minutes one way to 3+ hours, just because the city dwellers don’t like their cars.
The point seems to have gone quite a long way over your head. The person above is advocating for a system where transit/active travel is the easy option. Not one where you have to up your commute by 500% to do the right thing.
It’s not, “just use transit”, it’s “please make it easier to do so”.
It’s not, “just use transit”, it’s “please make it easier to do so”.
Exactly my thoughts. The current situation is decidedly different, though. I would not mind public transport being an alternative, but at the moment, in many places, it simply is not.
what? only rich people drive to work lol, poor people take public transport because that’s hilariously much cheaper, especially since all the cheap housing is in cities.
Here, it is the opposite. Housing in the city is becoming a luxury.
All this “fuck cars, use bikes and public transport” is just a dream of a wealthy white collar society who has lost the touch with reality.
Do you think ~90% of the 30 million people in Shanghai are all white collars who lost touch with society? What about 99% of Singapore?
You cannot expect people to up their commute from 30 minutes one way to 3+ hours, just because the city dwellers don’t like their cars.
These places public transit, including intercity, is far, far superior to driving, so people use it. In America, our public transit is garbage, so people don’t use it.
Do you think ~90% of the 30 million people in Shanghai are all white collars who lost touch with society? What about 99% of Singapore?
Those places are so densely populated that they can afford a good public transport system. But look at other cities in the world - or, more precisely, their environment - and you will soon see a serious lack of public transport once you leave the cities. Yes, people are living there.
These places public transit, including intercity, is far, far superior to driving, so people use it.
That is totally fine. I was not talking about city dwellers, they do have access to public transport in most cases. I’m especially talking about the people not living in the city centers.
That’s not actually true. Our decentralized system of roads and cars is actually more expensive than a robust rail and bus system. And I’ve been to other places, in Europe and South America. They all have better developed mass transit. You don’t need to be South Korea. You just have to be willing.
As a car guy myself (barely), I think it’s crazy that people are against mass transit.
Trains, teams, and busses are better by every conceivable metric, if your departure and destination is within like 20km of city outskirts. That’s almost all traffic. If govts and people invested as much into mass transit as they do into roads, it’d be a no brainer. So much faster, and safer, and more convenient.
Let cars just be for rural folks and hobbyists.
Usable mass transit 20km from the city? Now that would be nice. But it is still science fiction for most people. Today you are lucky if you have working mass transit just inside the city limits.
This is on the bases that mass transit got the kind of investment that road infrastructure currently enjoys.
It’s a commentary about spending priorities.
there are places other than america you know
I am definitely not talking about America. Other countries can have f-up-ed public transport, too!
Assuming that they’re thinking about it logically, not as an identity issue. If they’re not, the double-think is incredible. My city is about to launch an BR(ish)T transit system, and some of the NextDoor comments are wild. One woman is convinced:
- The BRT platforms in the median are dangerous because they’ll get too crowded for everybody to stand inside; and
- BRT will be a failure because nobody will ride it.
In my experience, carbrains usually think that nobody will use the alternatives at all, so it’s just a waste of space and money that could be spent on cars, and that traffic congestion is the result of corrupt politicians pocketing all the tax money that could magically fix it in some unspecified way.
I do “cars should not be the default”. It seems to resonate with people.
A bus is about twice as long as a car
??? You’ve either got tiny buses or are driving stretch limos
A 2025 Toyota Camry is 4.84 m in length. A typical US school bus is 10.5 m in length. The school bus is 2.18 times as long as the car.
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Probably an American posting.
The buses around here are 40 feet long. A Toyota Camry is 16 feet long; a Chevrolet Silverado 1500 is just over 19 feet long. Add in 4 feet of buffer distance when stopped, and the bus is longer than 2 Camrys, but shorter than 2 Silverados. Take the average of cars on the road, and it’s legit to say that a bus is about twice as long as a car.
Y’all either circle jerk on hating cars/car culture or try to meaningfully convince people to move away from car culture. This community will never convince “carbrains” in its current state. Accept that and have fun circle jerkin’ or pivot and try to change minds.
Asking “why doesn’t this group we actively shit on supporting our thought process?” or “how do we get them to change/agree?” is silly.
Welcome to social media, not sure where you’ve been all this time lol
Like you are going to have a choice? Economically, we can’t continue down the road of a car dependent society.
Oh the car companies know. They’re helpfully starting up subscription services for cars. And when cars go self-driving they’re going to make the subscription a rideshare like service. Coming full circle back to the trolley cars they killed.
But it’s so satisfying.
I want a “Carbrain” bumper sticker…
Your argument doesn’t work to make anyone stop driving cars, though. It just makes them pro non-car in the sense of freeing up traffic so they can drive their car quicker. It doesn’t make themselves take anything besides their car.
You don’t need to convince anyone. People will convince themselves if they are given the appropriate environment. This is about convincing them to support the construction of that environment.
Think about New York. It’s subject to the same cultural influences as the rest of the US but public transportation use remains high because the infrastructure is good and competitive with driving.
Honestly, if this gets people to advocate for me effective public transit so I can take it, I am fine with that.
People are stupid and biased towards the current state of things. Even if they support you now so they can drive their car better, if there’s a good bus route or whatever in five years they’ll probably use it.
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The solution to that is to… not tell them that you want to take their car away. Because if you are a rational urbanist, you don’t.
Not in my experience. They mostly want to take public transportation away because of taxes. Of course they don’t realize that cars cost them way more in taxes between gas subsidies, needing wider and more roads, needing more police to deal with traffic, property damage, and deaths rather than real crime, etc… Not to mention higher insurance rates as traffic increases and maintenance costs.
Tried it doesn’t always work
