Cars fulfill a very self-indulgent narrative. ‘I get to decide where and when I travel’, makes people feel “free” snd “important” even when millions of them are silently coming to the same decisions-- like going downtown at 09:00 on weekdsys-- that allow huge efficiency plays.
Notice how many ads feature fantasies of open roads and trips to faraway attractions, not the real world of “I need to sit in rush hour traffic from 6:30 on to get to the Work Factory”
Maybe public transit needs to focus its message on the freedom from drudgery it offers-- you don’t have to be staring at the driver in front of you, scanning the traffic reports
Because many of us live in places where you must use a car, there are no alternatives
In such places electric public transport is nothing but a pipe dream
I dunno what country you are from, but here in the US of A, the monopolies that own all the train infrastructure make sure to keep trains as public transportation as cost prohibitive as possible.
I love trains
Public transportation in America is typically a magnet for crime.
I’ll take a hard pass on being trapped in a tube with my assailants.
Because trains aren’t economically viable for the vast majority of the US, and where they are economically they are the topic of conversation.
As far as why the conversation would center around the US, that’s just the regular American-centric tilt english conversations generally lean towards. Most of Europe has their shit together in some topics like this (public transportation, for instance) and the US is a huge consumer of automobiles and no one if building mass transit between the middle of nowhere to the other middle of nowhere where we could ‘efficiently’ move individually insignificant numbers of people at a time.
Because people want a means to travel independently, as in they are in control and not riding with strangers.
/s
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Big Auto has been destroying any idea of high speed rails for decades. Our trains are complete trash because of car lobbyists.
Why is it that trains are always proposed as the alternative to cars? I, for one, really want PRT to succeed. It seems to be the best middle ground between efficiency and convinience.
Removed by mod
because in lots of countries there is effectively no public transport culture existing, and car companies take advantage of that. it’s really just about car culture and taking advantage of people in my opinion
In some countries it’s also more efficient to drive.
that’s just because public transportation wasn’t made to be as efficient
People here are saying a lot that cars are convenient because there’s more roads… like… let public transport run on those roads? People seem to literally be unable to realize that things are the way they are now solely because you refuse to believe they can be in any other way and don’t solve problems because “it’s not practical”. Short termed thinking runs too much
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Public transport do run on the roads, too. It’s not “private car only”.
never said it’s private car only, but i did use wrong wording, sorry. what i meant was, those are the same roads public transport runs on, so the “cars can go anywhere” point kinda falls unless we’re talking offroading. mildly inconveniencing, but that’s just a tradeoff, it’s the entire point of fuckcars
![[meme] Trains are 100000x easier to electrify and automate than cars, so why does everyone keep talking about electric and driverless cars?](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/11c37658-7c32-4cc2-b12c-6ced348bd09d.png){kind=link}