Uber was supposed to help traffic. It didn’t. Robotaxis will be even worse::px-captcha

  • sugartits@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Again, lack of investment. If I tie your legs together and race you, it doesn’t prove that I’m faster than you. Cars have had an extraordinary amount of money invested into their infrastructure. If we invested a fraction of that into trains, they’d be faster.

    And yet I still wouldn’t be able to get to where I need to be without numerous changes and all the other downsides you are conveniently ignoring.

    My car is electric.

    Where does your electricity come from?

    My solar panels.

    When my solar panels won’t be enough, the electricity from my supplier is 100% green energy sources (mostly solar and wind is my understanding)

    It doesn’t matter if it comes from petroleum, natural gas, sunlight, wind, whatever

    Yes it does. Of course it fucking does. If it didn’t you wouldn’t have asked how I charge my car and we’d all be using steam still.

    You are rapidly losing credibility with this nonsense and off topic gibberish.

    Air conditioned, comfortable faux leather seats that didn’t have stains on them, I got sit down for the entire journey, I wasn’t bothered by strangers, I went directly to my destination.

    Who bothers people in public transport?

    The aforementioned crackheads. I’ve literally seen violent crime whilst taking the train before. I’ve had idiots approaching me (and others on the carriageway, I wasn’t singled out) begging me for money, or food or asking if I want to buy or sell drugs. I even saw one moron hit the emergency stop on a train because he wanted a cigarette and the train wasn’t stopping soon enough for him.

    Public transport can have all those things

    Except it can’t. It won’t ever match the comfort of my car and the fact I can go directly from where I am to where I want to be in the vast majority of cases. Unless you are literally going to build a rail track or a bus route from my house to everywhere I want to go (which is absolutely the case for roads in the vast majority of cases) then it will not compete. It just won’t.

    I’ve taken the DC metro many times. I used to live in the area. I was never bothered and it was always relatively clean.

    Lucky you. I’m very happy for you.

    You’re comparing your experience with an under-invested in system to an over-invested in one and saying the over-invested one is better. No shit. No one is arguing with that. We’re saying it could be significantly better if the investment was put in.

    And you’re completely ignoring the core points I’m making and going off on irrelevant tangents. Feel free to actually start reading what I wrote at any time.

    I’ll make the point one last time: It’s not a question of investment as investment won’t fix the inherent downsides of public transport which private cars do not suffer from

    My car is clean, safe, comfortable, I get to choose the company I keep, and I can get directly to where I want to be in one go. Public transport, whilst I concede it has some advantages (something which you cannot do for the car for some reason) simply cannot compete. It’s not “lobbying” or “propaganda”, it’s the simple fact that the private car has significant advantages over the alternative, which is the real reason that people are choosing it.

    If you reply with irrelevant off topic nonsense again, I shall ignore you. I don’t mind debating this but when you reply with the mindless drivel that you have been and basically ignoring the points made, I won’t waste my time any further.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago

      It doesn’t matter if it comes from petroleum, natural gas, sunlight, wind, whatever

      Yes it does. Of course it fucking does. If it didn’t you wouldn’t have asked how I charge my car and we’d all be using steam still.

      It’s so easy to make things sound dumb when you remove context. Energy is energy. If you spend more to do the same amount of work, that means it’s less efficient. If the measure of productivity is people moved, trains are more efficient. It doesn’t matter what form the energy is generated from, it can all be measured as energy.

      I’m done. You’re purposefully engaging in bad faith argument tactics.

      • sugartits@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’m done. You’re purposefully engaging in bad faith argument tactics.

        I’m doing nothing of the sort.

        You’re the one that tried to reframe the argument around energy usage when it was originally “public transport would be universally better if we just invested more”. An argument which is fundamentally flawed, which I have proved is fundamentally flawed and you have no response to.

        You simply cannot acknowledge that there are tangible benefits and advantages to private transport. You have not conceded or even acknowledged a single point which I made where cars clearly have an advantage.

        All of you’ve done is repeatedly ignore all the points I’ve made, shifted your argument from investment to energy use for some reason, pulled out one paragraph to which I was calling out your irrelevant argument shift, and then somehow cried about it and said you don’t want to play anymore because you simply have no response to facts presented.

        THAT is bad faith argument. I hope the irony of this isn’t lost on you.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          You’re the one that tried to reframe the argument around energy usage when it was originally “public transport would be universally better if we just invested more”. An argument which is fundamentally flawed, which I have proved is fundamentally flawed and you have no response to.

          Reframe it? Efficiency was one of the first things I mentioned. Most modern trains are electric, just like your car. Their usually still diesel in the US because we haven’t invested anything in the infrastructure in decades.

          You simply cannot acknowledge that there are tangible benefits and advantages to private transport. You have not conceded or even acknowledged a single point which I made where cars clearly have an advantage.

          The benefit is point-to-point travel, but good public transport can do that too, especially with things like bike rental and stuff. Cars make it worse, if not impossible though because we have to spend at least as much space for every business on parking. Most places literally have minimum parking laws, where some estimate of maximum occupancy is used for requiring parking spaces. Get rid of cars and we can have places a lot closer so public transport stops will be closer to where you want to go.

          I guess there’s also the benefit of never interacting with anyone, though I’d personally say that’s a negative. I think a lack of interaction with people who live in the same area as you with similar problems to you has been a major detriment to the US. It’s part of why things are so polarized. People sit alone at home, alone traveling to work, mostly alone at work, and then back. Additionally, denser spaces and public transport allow for third places to succeed. They can’t exist in a suburb hell scape.