destructdisc

You're not wrong, but Sabine Hossenfelder is not a good source for well, anything (except physics, which she has excellent grounding in).

No I get that, but there's this prevailing sentiment that cars are somehow more necessary in rural areas because...they're not worth serving with transit or something? I don't know. I think it's ridiculous. Big cities should obviously have excellent transit and non-car infrastructure but so should small towns and villages

Funny you should mention Asian countries, considering both I and the author of the tweet in the screenshot live in an Asian country. We do use individual transport -- but it's not cars, it's usually motorbikes or scooters. The "meme" (actually a serious opinion from someone who studies urbanism and transport for a living) is aimed at manufacturers and governments (like mine) who are pushing electric cars that most people can't afford (and that people in rural areas definitely can't afford) to the exclusion of public transit, which practically everyone can afford.

I don't think you'll find anyone with a lick of sense in here that's advocating for zero cars -- just that the way the system is currently set up prioritizes cars above everything else when it ought to be the other way around -- cars ought to be the very last resort instead of the first option most people go for. Taxis absolutely have their uses, and yes they should be cheap, but not so abundant as to divert people from using mass transit like buses or trams

The money wasted in electric car subsidies is much better spent on mass transit and cycling and pedestrianization initiatives, all of which move far more people at much less cost per person. Electric cars are being posited as the solution (as opposed to drastically improved mass transit) because that's the only way auto companies can stay relevant and maintain their supremacy

I think the confusion stems from the fact that the actual vehicle that the Brisbane Metro rolling stock is based on is also called a Hess LighTram. There's a good chance that this is also going to end up just being a BRT like the Brisbane Metro, or (maybe) an adapted guided bus system. We'll have to see, it's still extremely early days for this project. Honestly I'm just glad they're considering something like this, we have precious few modernized transit options in any of our cities.

I'm on the web interface so I do actually see the headline in the body (plus the beginning of the article itself), but I think maybe it doesn't show up on other clients?

There's also a water metro for offshore islands in the city

Oh, my bad -- I thought the headline showed up in the post too!

I live in Mumbai -- while the commuter trains have lots of room for improvement, they do run at ~3 minute headway for most of the day, and that's on tracks shared with the national rail network. I'd expect a metro system with its own dedicated tracks to be able to do even better, at least at peak hours.

Just to be clear, I'm not complaining -- 5 minutes is pretty great, and the Mumbai Metro system (separate from the commuter trains) is also worse at about ~6 minutes -- but even so, I was hoping this system might be able to achieve times like the Paris or Moscow Metro

I think the point being made is that having to drive everywhere makes people even less kind than they usually are, as borne out by road rage incidents

This is Line 2A on the Mumbai Metro. The train sets were built locally by BEML, but Alstom supplies the signaling infrastructure.

I should also mention that only two of the four operational metro lines in Mumbai currently have bike infrastructure. It's pretty annoying