cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49253586
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2026
514 points (98.3% liked)
Fuck Cars
16136 readers
1082 users here now
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is romantising trains a bit much. For most people there is no viable connection via public transport to work. If you have a good connection there are typical public transport problems: delays, homeless people, crowded, constructions.
OK so imagine this: a place where public transport is effective, highly valued and prioritised, and runs 24/7, and where people in need (poor, sick, unemployed, elderly, etc) get a free transit card so they can go to healthcare visits, look for jobs further away from where they live if there aren't any nearby, visit friends and family etc without worrying about the transit costs.
Is that not worth aiming for? Worth building? Compared to cars, there's all of the benefits and none of the drawbacks.
Now imagine you live in a place like that and someone replies to you online, saying basically "you're romanticising, I don't have good public transport so I don't care for it, and I'd rather be stuck in a traffic jam than in a train delay anyway". Really?
You're right, I've never had to deal with any of those while driving. Can you imagine construction workers closing a road? Crazy, just never happens.
On my recent trip to rural Canada this seems to actually be the line of thinking in some parts. They literally reverted many roads and highways to gravel because they couldn't keep the pavement sufficiently maintained
The United States is not the centre of the world. If you can't travel check out YouTube videos of Japan, China, or Europe transit for example. You'll see 'Merica is still stuck in the 20th century while the world has moved on to the 21st century.
Setting aside that train delays are usually no worse than usual auto traffic jams (and even when delayed are still less delaying than a car jam), and that being slightly crowded on a train is still far more pleasant due to being able to relax and read a book or nap, and the fact that I (in the Netherlands) never really see homeless people on the train...
... do you think homeless people don't deserve to travel anywhere? They have no right to see their friends or family in other towns, or to visit a medical specialist that isn't where they are? How else would you suggest the poor travel (other than obvious answer that you wish they didn't exist in the first place)?
Homeless people aren't a public transport problem even if homelessness can become visible in public transport systems. Delays, crowded and constructions are common in other forms of transport as well.
How many jokes do Americans make about being stuck in traffic because of construction? Apparently, that kind of delay doesn't count.
In your shitty 'Murican cities, sure
Plenty of places in the civilised world have great train networks that move millions of people every day
I moved to a modern city in Europe. The main train station averages 300,000 people per day. Just that one station!
My old city in the US had a top rated bus network for a mid sized city. It handles a total of 800k rides per month. So, my new city does in one station almost a whole months worth of transit as my old city handles in 48 hours.
The scale of how real infrastructure works is beyond the ken of most American's experience. They just don't know they're living in a terrible system.
Americans are relentlessly propagandized about how great we have it, and I guess our best option is to believe it, because the alternative is to cry over just how deeply shitty so much of the country actually is.
It truly helps the rich when the average adult reading level hovers around 5th grade and we'll over 60% of Americans have never had to learn about logic, ethics, critical thinking, or how rights are earned by a strong citizenship.
When the public is just ignorant of how to do basic thinking, what the history of liberty is, or how rights are earned & kept by the People by taking collective action against the rich you get a crumbling society sliding back into serfdom.
And when they're told, they throw a tantrum and invent reasons why it's bad
Shitty take.
"Most people"
Your personal experience and opinions are not the bar to measure anything of value. Open your mind and get to know the world outside your shit filled bubble.
I take trains often. Sure sometimes there are delays, often <5min and you still make your connection. Homeless people? Not that I've noticed. Crowded, maybe. Constructions, yes but I'm usually not impacted by it. When I use the car, all of them are much worse, so yeah...
Complete devoid of reality take. America is stuck in the past while the rest of the world has moved on.
Being a developed nation is a moving target. It requires continual investment, reform, and infrastructure updates to maintain.
The US gave up investing in itself in 1980 and has barely maintained its 50 year old infrastructure since then. It's not a developed nation, but the husk of one zombieing along while the wealthy steal everything they can.
💯
I have never not had a viable connection to work.
You’re going to have a hard time getting a sensible viewpoint across here, unfortunately.
“If I can downvote this guy, maybe their view point will go away without me having to actually address their concerns.” is how yall look rn
anything constructive to add or just here for the epistemology?
Quite juicy how your comment shows up below five opposing and quite sensible responses.
You haven't raised any concerns, what exactly did you expect people to address? Literally the only thing you did was whine about people having a different opinion and strongly suggesting your view is the only "sensible" one. There's nothing to discuss there.
Learn to read who OP is before you respond, friend.
Ohhhhhh do fuck off, yank
Case in point^
Go fondle a cheeseburger, or a rifle, or a motorbike that can't go around a corner
Maybe it's because this is the Fuck Cars comm and they (much like you) completely failed to read the room?
Yeah, some places have shitty infrastructure, but it doesn't have to be bad, that's kind of the fucking point around here.
You mean “echo chamber” instead of room, right?