You are allowed hate something you own and depend on. What I find fuck cars people are about is how much cars are catered for and it’s still horrible to use in a lot of places.
Normally I live in a, relatively speaking, new city - and everything is so bloody far away, sure some things are more centralised but plenty of things are getting built in places with no public transport connections or an easy way to walk to.
For 3 years at uni I lived in a very old town, and everything, just everything, was in the town centre, you could walk everywhere with no issues.
The difference is one place was built for people, and the other was built for cars.
I live in a third world country and have to usually have to take taxis to get anywhere without being a sweaty mess and I’d love to the point where public transportation can get you anywhere in the metro, similar to how Hong Kong (where income taxes are pretty low as far as I know) does it.
A lot. Because our infrastructure and zoning basically demand you buy a car. That’s not the point. The point is to advocate change through local government.
Cars are a form of personal transportation. Personal transportation is great, things like bikes and escooters can get people around very quickly. The problem with cars is that they go too fast, and they take up too much space.
It’s a tragedy of the commons. Cars would be great if they were only used by professional drivers, didn’t require parking, and were limited to how many could fit on the roads without causing traffic. (These are called busses and taxis)
All cities in the 60s and 70s were excited about cars. Even cities that would be considered “anti-car” nowadays, like NYC, Paris, and Amsterdam, were excited about cars and building massive highways. However, what most people realized, is that building enough parking, and building wide enough roads to handle all the cars is really hard (and in some cases, literally impossible). Residents realized that they didn’t want any more of their city to be bulldozed for yet another highway or parking lot, and went fuckcars.
On top of that, this all happened before we understood the impacts of cars on climate change and mental health.
So yes, we built car-dependent places because it was convenient, and now we’re de-carifying those places because it was a terrible decision.
It is just as irrational for me to make the claim I made as you to make yours without evidence. Fortunately the arguments against car-dependent infrastructure planning go far beyond “we don’t like 'em”. The human and environmental benefits of walkable cities with robust public transit and the unsustainability of car-dependency speak for themselves. What other issue of political advocacy would “some people disagree” fly as a reasonable argument? The whole point of advocacy is to shift the tide of popular opinion enough to make material change
I’m not downvoting you btw, but it sounds like the problem here isn’t that you like cars, but rather that you’re a rural conservative who doesn’t like interacting with lower classes.
Ah, well thank neoliberal privatization for that. Thatcher and Reagan fucked their respective countries so damn hard to the benefit of their wealthy friends.
Look up the Beecher report (hopefully I got the name right) to find out what happened to your trains. It was politicians getting bought by car manufacturers.
I wonder how many people will be forced to buy a car to be able to function in society even though they hate the idea owning a car and in any other developed nation they could go car free in an equivalent city because they have better public transport and/or bike infrastructure
Of course I own a car, you need to own one to get anywhere where I live. That doesn’t mean I have to support car infrastructure or be against public transit. I advocate for making public transit services more common and easier to use, and I would use public transit if my supported policies were implemented.
I honestly don’t get their argument. Yes, the current situation is bad and will necessitate using cars, but isn’t that the point of the post? That things could be better? That getting to the reality where cars are not as needed would be great? It’s such a strange attack against people who want better public transportation infrastructure.
Most of us aren’t arguing that a decrease in dependence on vehicles isn’t beneficial or worth the time. We’re tired of being implicitly blamed for just trying to exist in an established system. The very first words in this post are “STOP DRIVING CARS” like we have a choice or that would fix anything or that it’s our responsibility to upend how we live our life for “the cause”.
I wonder how many fuck cars people will buy a car when they finally graduate and get a job and realise they want 1 hr 30 commuting every day instead of 3 hours?
My wife and I own two cars and live outside the most urban parts of our city. I actually love cars, especially when I get to drive a standard transmission. But we both are firmly in the FuckCars camp.
We walk, bike, and use public transit when we can, and we vote to improve the pedestrian infrastructure in our area whenever we can. We love vacationing in places with good public transit, and would live in such places if circumstances allowed.
Part of the frustration in the FuckCars community is the very thing you said in your post. Cities are built around cars, which means every other form of commuting is secondary and therefore worse than it could be. This is what we want to change. Build cities around people. Get rid of massive parking lots, dangerous stroads, etc. If people need cars to get from city to city, or outside of cities, totally fine. But they shouldn’t be necessary for day-to-day in populated areas.
Cities could be so much better, and we know this because there ARE cities that are better. It just takes effort and time.
Cities could be so much better, and we know this because there ARE cities that are better. It just takes effort and time.
And eminent domain, to take the land to build that infrastructure. And money. Lots and lots of money. And way more time than you think. Effectively having to level homes for miles, grade the surface and then, finally getting to build this utopian vision of public transportation, which will then need to be fed, sorry, maintained, by taxes that will shoot through the roof. Then, the displaced will need a place to stay, so enter yet more eminent domain to take more property to build vertical, because there is a finite amount of land. And this would be jn just one small to mid sized US city.
Look, I’m happy for anyone who’s happy in how they do their daily. You chose it, and it works for you. Some people don’t chose that life, and it doesn’t work for them. I respect your way of life, it should only be fair that you respect mine. I’m not driving a 3500 turbo diesel that gets 12 gallons to the mile, stomping on the gas “just because I like the sound” and throwing cheeseburger wrappers out the window.
Difference is, I’m not trying to force my way of life on others…
I’m in Germany. That’s how long it takes with the trains to get to my Workplace. And I still rather work from Home because I don’t have to travel 3 to 4 hours a day.
Holy shit you guys have bad infrastructure. Even worse than ours.
I also generally rather use the train despite its problems. Especially when I’m not sure if I will be drinking or taking other drugs.
Not really, the images and travel descriptions you’re reading here are the exception, not the rule. The US has great infrastructure, just not for public transportation as there isn’t enough centralized usage and the locations are far apart. It would take me 4 hours to go to work by bus, but it takes me 25 min by car.
That sounds like it’s a vicious cycle. There isn’t any public transport so there are no people using the public transport which causes public transports to be bad, so there isn’t anybody using it
It is to a point, but when you reach that point it’s just not feasible to have public transportation. The city I work in has a light rail train, it has a robust busing system, but people also travel from 20+ different small towns around this one and at a certain point that system breaks down. If I were to take the bus I would still need a car to get to the next small town where the bus stop into the large town is.
The fact is that the most of the US isn’t designed like old world cities which were built with public transportation and foot traffic in mind.
Infrastructure can apply to different things, you can have great infrastructure for cars, but not trains. You can have well maintained power lines, but poor internet connectivity. You can have a robust water utility, but a mixed storm and sewer system.
If you’re gonna point out one bad part of infrastructure and say all of it’s bad then idk what to say for you.
You can go from London to Edinburgh by car (412 miles) in 7.5 hrs or by train in 5.5 hrs.
You can go from Richmond to Charleston by car (432 miles) in 6 hours or by train in 13.25 hrs.
Cool. I’ve been working for 8 years, commuting in the range of 10-15 km to my various places of work throughout that period, with the exception of the pandemic period during which I worked remotely.
Not once have I driven a car to any of my jobs. A mix of public transportation and cycling has covered all of my needs, and I wouldn’t have saved any time by opting to drive.
This invalidates this terrible comment, so let’s not keep repeating.
Hi, im 26 years old and i have the money to get a car and make enough money to Use the car.
But i dont have one, i use every day the train to get to work. 5 min with bike to the trainstation 31 min with the train, 5 min on foot to my work place, 5 min back to the trainstation, 22 min back with train and 10-15 min with my bike home.
With a car I would need 38 min (gmaps).
I pay 49€ in month and can use bus or trai In whole Germany.
With a car it would be 66km per day. The car of our family uses 6,5 L/ 100km 66km = 4,29L × 20 (workdays) =85,8L * 1,82 (price per liter fuel)= 155,61€ and that is only the fuel with out the tax for the car insurance and not the wear out and without the 2 year controll checkup.
And with that I can say train is faster and cheaper for me so I don’t need a car.
Tried that. If you want to rent for the weekend you waste a bunch of time picking up and dropping off the vehicle. And say you are using it for camping, you have to pack all your stuff that same day then unload everything before drop off. There are also restrictions as to where you can take rentals, like gravel roads are off limits. Just some examples
Yeah, no. I have a car and I hate driving it. I hate others having cars and driving them. I hate public transport being ignored over car infrastructure leaving them completely impractical. I hate our cities being ruined in order to work around cars, when metros are underground, and trains are overground but take way less space since they can take in way more people and transfer them way faster. I hate car accidents being one of the leading causes of death in my country. Fuck cars
These people are ridiculous. They want to gaslight people who have to drive into thinking we’re bad people and when we call them out on the fact that there is no public transit infrastructure built they’re just like “well all people have to do is build the infrastructure!” Bitch where? And who? And how do we make them? And with what money? I’m so sick of hearing “you should drive a smart car because it makes sense for my DINK ass and I know what’s best”. My home is in an ocean of suburbia. They gonna just bulldoze a whole swath of homes to install a rail? They’ve been talking about installing a rail from DFW to Austin/Houston for the past 40 years and there was even room for it once upon a time. You can’t just say the magical solution is to just “build trains”. We don’t love our cars, these fuckcars people are just lunatics. As you point out the vast majority of them are almost certainly children. The rest are fortunate enough to have never experienced a place with poor public transit.
I didn’t. Even when I lived an hour away from my job, it was about as fast by train as driving, and I could spend that time productively or relaxing instead of concentrating on.
If it takes twice as long without a car, that’s a problem that should be solved!
I’m 46, the parts of my life where I haven’t needed to use a car every day have been great for my physical and mental health … now I live too far from work I use a little 125 motorbike to commute, and it’s still much nicer than having to take a car. When I am forced to take a car, the one I have is small and economical.
I didn’t start figuring this out until I was 30, maybe you need a few more years to mature enough to throw off the consumerist mindset?
Traditional pre-car villages were all walkable and all had their own train station. They sprawled out and lost their train stations when cars came around.
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You are allowed hate something you own and depend on. What I find fuck cars people are about is how much cars are catered for and it’s still horrible to use in a lot of places.
absolutely.
Normally I live in a, relatively speaking, new city - and everything is so bloody far away, sure some things are more centralised but plenty of things are getting built in places with no public transport connections or an easy way to walk to.
For 3 years at uni I lived in a very old town, and everything, just everything, was in the town centre, you could walk everywhere with no issues.
The difference is one place was built for people, and the other was built for cars.
I live in a third world country and have to usually have to take taxis to get anywhere without being a sweaty mess and I’d love to the point where public transportation can get you anywhere in the metro, similar to how Hong Kong (where income taxes are pretty low as far as I know) does it.
A lot. Because our infrastructure and zoning basically demand you buy a car. That’s not the point. The point is to advocate change through local government.
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I’m sure you’ll get there. Just keep educating yourself.
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The infrastructure came first. It was specifically lobbied for to force people to buy cars.
Cars are a form of personal transportation. Personal transportation is great, things like bikes and escooters can get people around very quickly. The problem with cars is that they go too fast, and they take up too much space.
It’s a tragedy of the commons. Cars would be great if they were only used by professional drivers, didn’t require parking, and were limited to how many could fit on the roads without causing traffic. (These are called busses and taxis)
All cities in the 60s and 70s were excited about cars. Even cities that would be considered “anti-car” nowadays, like NYC, Paris, and Amsterdam, were excited about cars and building massive highways. However, what most people realized, is that building enough parking, and building wide enough roads to handle all the cars is really hard (and in some cases, literally impossible). Residents realized that they didn’t want any more of their city to be bulldozed for yet another highway or parking lot, and went fuckcars.
On top of that, this all happened before we understood the impacts of cars on climate change and mental health.
So yes, we built car-dependent places because it was convenient, and now we’re de-carifying those places because it was a terrible decision.
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People outside of your bubble largely dislike cars.
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It is just as irrational for me to make the claim I made as you to make yours without evidence. Fortunately the arguments against car-dependent infrastructure planning go far beyond “we don’t like 'em”. The human and environmental benefits of walkable cities with robust public transit and the unsustainability of car-dependency speak for themselves. What other issue of political advocacy would “some people disagree” fly as a reasonable argument? The whole point of advocacy is to shift the tide of popular opinion enough to make material change
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I have plenty of friends and family in the us and Sweden who own cars. I dont know a single person who enjoys driving to work.
My point still stands, cars are nice for the first 10k people to drive, but they fucking suck for the other 40k+ people in your city.
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well aren’t you a peach
I’m not downvoting you btw, but it sounds like the problem here isn’t that you like cars, but rather that you’re a rural conservative who doesn’t like interacting with lower classes.
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You can’t take the train before the tracks are laid down.
Go to Europe my friend. You can go from Madrid to Barcelona for $30 on a train that goes over 300 km/h.
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Where? Have you tried going outside?
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Ah, well thank neoliberal privatization for that. Thatcher and Reagan fucked their respective countries so damn hard to the benefit of their wealthy friends.
Oh we’re talking about developed countries but I understand the confusion.
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Look up the Beecher report (hopefully I got the name right) to find out what happened to your trains. It was politicians getting bought by car manufacturers.
The car industry lobbies to tear up public infrastructure, dingus.
let me translate what you just asked
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Nothing there said you’re American.
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Because China doesn’t exist or anything. Or Russia, or Australia.
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Is anyone seriously denying the U.S. is a repressive country or that it’s status as one is really relevant?
Is Australia a repressive country?
Isn’t most of the global south repressive despite the fact that they’re walkable by necessity?
Or are you just here to pick a fight because you want to live in Paris but can never afford to with your shitty McDonald’s wages?
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Of course I own a car, you need to own one to get anywhere where I live. That doesn’t mean I have to support car infrastructure or be against public transit. I advocate for making public transit services more common and easier to use, and I would use public transit if my supported policies were implemented.
I honestly don’t get their argument. Yes, the current situation is bad and will necessitate using cars, but isn’t that the point of the post? That things could be better? That getting to the reality where cars are not as needed would be great? It’s such a strange attack against people who want better public transportation infrastructure.
Most of us aren’t arguing that a decrease in dependence on vehicles isn’t beneficial or worth the time. We’re tired of being implicitly blamed for just trying to exist in an established system. The very first words in this post are “STOP DRIVING CARS” like we have a choice or that would fix anything or that it’s our responsibility to upend how we live our life for “the cause”.
THAT is what pisses us off.
Oh look, you are this guy
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Yeah, buddy, widely used meme can perfectly answer your “well-thought out” “criticism”. Maybe it’s a comment on your position, eh?
My wife and I own two cars and live outside the most urban parts of our city. I actually love cars, especially when I get to drive a standard transmission. But we both are firmly in the FuckCars camp.
We walk, bike, and use public transit when we can, and we vote to improve the pedestrian infrastructure in our area whenever we can. We love vacationing in places with good public transit, and would live in such places if circumstances allowed.
Part of the frustration in the FuckCars community is the very thing you said in your post. Cities are built around cars, which means every other form of commuting is secondary and therefore worse than it could be. This is what we want to change. Build cities around people. Get rid of massive parking lots, dangerous stroads, etc. If people need cars to get from city to city, or outside of cities, totally fine. But they shouldn’t be necessary for day-to-day in populated areas.
Cities could be so much better, and we know this because there ARE cities that are better. It just takes effort and time.
And eminent domain, to take the land to build that infrastructure. And money. Lots and lots of money. And way more time than you think. Effectively having to level homes for miles, grade the surface and then, finally getting to build this utopian vision of public transportation, which will then need to be fed, sorry, maintained, by taxes that will shoot through the roof. Then, the displaced will need a place to stay, so enter yet more eminent domain to take more property to build vertical, because there is a finite amount of land. And this would be jn just one small to mid sized US city.
Look, I’m happy for anyone who’s happy in how they do their daily. You chose it, and it works for you. Some people don’t chose that life, and it doesn’t work for them. I respect your way of life, it should only be fair that you respect mine. I’m not driving a 3500 turbo diesel that gets 12 gallons to the mile, stomping on the gas “just because I like the sound” and throwing cheeseburger wrappers out the window.
Difference is, I’m not trying to force my way of life on others…
I’m in Germany. That’s how long it takes with the trains to get to my Workplace. And I still rather work from Home because I don’t have to travel 3 to 4 hours a day.
Holy shit you guys have bad infrastructure. Even worse than ours.
I also generally rather use the train despite its problems. Especially when I’m not sure if I will be drinking or taking other drugs.
Not really, the images and travel descriptions you’re reading here are the exception, not the rule. The US has great infrastructure, just not for public transportation as there isn’t enough centralized usage and the locations are far apart. It would take me 4 hours to go to work by bus, but it takes me 25 min by car.
That sounds like it’s a vicious cycle. There isn’t any public transport so there are no people using the public transport which causes public transports to be bad, so there isn’t anybody using it
It is to a point, but when you reach that point it’s just not feasible to have public transportation. The city I work in has a light rail train, it has a robust busing system, but people also travel from 20+ different small towns around this one and at a certain point that system breaks down. If I were to take the bus I would still need a car to get to the next small town where the bus stop into the large town is.
The fact is that the most of the US isn’t designed like old world cities which were built with public transportation and foot traffic in mind.
That’s simply poor route planning, which could be solved by better bus funding, leading to more buses with more stops and more frequent trips.
I’ll direct you to another of my posts rather than having two going.
https://lemmy.one/comment/3795505
“great infrastructure, just not for public transportation” sounds to me like another way to say “shit infrastructure”
Infrastructure can apply to different things, you can have great infrastructure for cars, but not trains. You can have well maintained power lines, but poor internet connectivity. You can have a robust water utility, but a mixed storm and sewer system.
If you’re gonna point out one bad part of infrastructure and say all of it’s bad then idk what to say for you.
You can go from London to Edinburgh by car (412 miles) in 7.5 hrs or by train in 5.5 hrs.
You can go from Richmond to Charleston by car (432 miles) in 6 hours or by train in 13.25 hrs.
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Ah, yes. Minimizing other people’s arguments by implying they don’t have jobs.
This is a bad comment that you should probably delete.
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Cool. I’ve been working for 8 years, commuting in the range of 10-15 km to my various places of work throughout that period, with the exception of the pandemic period during which I worked remotely.
Not once have I driven a car to any of my jobs. A mix of public transportation and cycling has covered all of my needs, and I wouldn’t have saved any time by opting to drive.
This invalidates this terrible comment, so let’s not keep repeating.
Hi, im 26 years old and i have the money to get a car and make enough money to Use the car. But i dont have one, i use every day the train to get to work. 5 min with bike to the trainstation 31 min with the train, 5 min on foot to my work place, 5 min back to the trainstation, 22 min back with train and 10-15 min with my bike home. With a car I would need 38 min (gmaps). I pay 49€ in month and can use bus or trai In whole Germany. With a car it would be 66km per day. The car of our family uses 6,5 L/ 100km 66km = 4,29L × 20 (workdays) =85,8L * 1,82 (price per liter fuel)= 155,61€ and that is only the fuel with out the tax for the car insurance and not the wear out and without the 2 year controll checkup. And with that I can say train is faster and cheaper for me so I don’t need a car.
Congrats for living somewhere where that’s viable
Where I live in in Canada you can’t even expect the bus to show up at all, nevermind on time
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Renting is a concept that exists, just in case you were unaware.
Tried that. If you want to rent for the weekend you waste a bunch of time picking up and dropping off the vehicle. And say you are using it for camping, you have to pack all your stuff that same day then unload everything before drop off. There are also restrictions as to where you can take rentals, like gravel roads are off limits. Just some examples
Yeah, no. I have a car and I hate driving it. I hate others having cars and driving them. I hate public transport being ignored over car infrastructure leaving them completely impractical. I hate our cities being ruined in order to work around cars, when metros are underground, and trains are overground but take way less space since they can take in way more people and transfer them way faster. I hate car accidents being one of the leading causes of death in my country. Fuck cars
These people are ridiculous. They want to gaslight people who have to drive into thinking we’re bad people and when we call them out on the fact that there is no public transit infrastructure built they’re just like “well all people have to do is build the infrastructure!” Bitch where? And who? And how do we make them? And with what money? I’m so sick of hearing “you should drive a smart car because it makes sense for my DINK ass and I know what’s best”. My home is in an ocean of suburbia. They gonna just bulldoze a whole swath of homes to install a rail? They’ve been talking about installing a rail from DFW to Austin/Houston for the past 40 years and there was even room for it once upon a time. You can’t just say the magical solution is to just “build trains”. We don’t love our cars, these fuckcars people are just lunatics. As you point out the vast majority of them are almost certainly children. The rest are fortunate enough to have never experienced a place with poor public transit.
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You’re a moron that never heard about other countries existing. It’s okay, you’ll probably learn about them when you enroll for 1st grade.
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I didn’t. Even when I lived an hour away from my job, it was about as fast by train as driving, and I could spend that time productively or relaxing instead of concentrating on.
If it takes twice as long without a car, that’s a problem that should be solved!
I’m 46, the parts of my life where I haven’t needed to use a car every day have been great for my physical and mental health … now I live too far from work I use a little 125 motorbike to commute, and it’s still much nicer than having to take a car. When I am forced to take a car, the one I have is small and economical.
I didn’t start figuring this out until I was 30, maybe you need a few more years to mature enough to throw off the consumerist mindset?
I have never had a commute longer than 40 min each way. I had a 5 minute commute once, too.
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If your city and region got rid of cars, you could have that, too.
Not if they’re living on the the village
Traditional pre-car villages were all walkable and all had their own train station. They sprawled out and lost their train stations when cars came around.
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