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
Exactly! This is why I love micromobility and quality public transit so much. With micromobility like electric scooters or bikes, I can zip past traffic in the protected cycle lanes in my city. With the frequent metro service in my city, I know I can show up to the metro station at basically any time and know it’ll be a max 5-minute wait for the next train. And when I’m on the train, I can just chill and scroll on my phone or read a book instead of stressing about traffic. The freedom to think about something that isn’t traffic.
I’d say it is more about
convinceconvenience. You decide when you leave and you leave from your door. You don’t risk being late to work because you missed the train by 1 minute (baring queues, but you get the point).Really depends where you live. In my town I also decide when I leave, and I don’t risk being late because I missed the train by one minute. I’ll just take the next one. More risk of being late because of car traffic.
The problem when people compare cars to public transport is that they compare the current state of public transport in their area. We need to compare what would happen if we were spending as much billions as we do on cars.
This can also be achieved by high frequency transit.
Yeah, if the train comes every five minutes, that’s going to be way more consistent than traffic over time.
Exactly! This is why I love micromobility and quality public transit so much. With micromobility like electric scooters or bikes, I can zip past traffic in the protected cycle lanes in my city. With the frequent metro service in my city, I know I can show up to the metro station at basically any time and know it’ll be a max 5-minute wait for the next train. And when I’m on the train, I can just chill and scroll on my phone or read a book instead of stressing about traffic. The freedom to think about something that isn’t traffic.
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
The worrying thing here is the assumption that we can choose…
The world has 2 billions individual cars. Lithium extraction rate may not be sufficient to make 2 billions cars by 2030… and that’s assuming we don’t need lithium for computers, smartphones, but also not for batteries for the grid (because no solar cell works at night and wind farms are not on demand erther), and… not for electric trucks! Then comes the question of the other metals: copper, nickel, cobalt, …
Trains will not work everywhere for everyone, but not deploying them now and fast will be a severe issue for North America when resources will get scarce.
We need a smart mix of trains, buses, subways, tramways, shared vehicles, bikes, everything but one individual car per person. That era will come to an end because we’re closer to the bottom of our planet’s natural resources stock than the beginning.
There’s not even a real option of keeping gas cars a little while more, as cheap oil is also coming to an end.
The difference between accepting this and “choosing” individual cars is how ready countries will be when resources will get scarce. It may get ugly…
Yeah, unfortunately what people aren’t getting is that continuing car dependency – electric cars or not – is fundamentally not an option. Sure we’ll probably have electric firetrucks and tractors, but having 1 ton of lithium batteries and 2 to 3 tons of steel per person – plus mind-boggling amounts of asphalt roads and parking lots – was never going to be a sustainable option, be it environmentally, economically, or socially.
We as a society keep shoving forwards as if switching to a better transit mix is a choice. It’s not. Car dependency can never last.
Because North Americans were tricked by the oil and car companies in the 50s to think that car ownership was part of being human, and now we’re addicted to sitting in traffic, breathing fumes, and killing pedestrians in the name of muh freedom.
I love trains
Electric cars don’t solve a lot of the root problems of cars. They still require massive amounts of energy to move thousands of pounds of steel. They also still rely on sprawling roads and parking lots.
Absolutely. And the benefit trains have over cars is that you can reduce the amount of other stuff per person needed to get people moving.
For a local train of mine that seats 93 people with empty weight of 54 metric tons, that comes out to ~0.58 tons/person.
My sedan weighs in at about 1.5 metric tons empty, and since I’m the only one that uses it, my weight footprint is ~1.5 tons/person.
Forget about fuel economy too. Trains don’t have traffic (most of the time) to deal with, meaning they can accelerate to coasting speeds and spend most of the ride at best-efficiency. Cars are subject to traffic conditions, meaning efficiency can be as-designed by the manufacturer, or it can be much, much worse on a per trip basis if you contribute to the daily rush hours on freeways.
There is also much less friction on rails compared to rubber on roadways. If demand increases the length of the train can be increased or more trains added. This helps prevent the cycle of needing more lanes (rail lines in this case).
Electric motors are between 95 and 98% efficient, while ICEs are in the 80’s on a good day.
You are aware that electric trains also use electric motors, just like electric cars do, right? And you are aware that electric cars rely on an electric battery while electric trains rely primarily on overhead electric power lines, are you?
That means cars require one extra component and an extra conversation of energy which trains don’t need. Every conversation of energy reduces efficiency of the final outcome. The more conversations, the less efficiency.
Trains use: power lines -> electric motor
Cars use: power lines -> electric battery -> electric motorFurthermore, bigger machines can be built to be more efficient than smaller ones. So bigger motors can use (electric) fuel more efficiently than smaller motors.
I was responding to your assertion about EVs not being much better than ICEs.
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.
Cars can pick me up 10 feet from my front door(my car). No train tracks within 5 miles of me. I would love if their were tracks closer.
Yeah, that’s what the post is about.
B-but think of the iNdIvIdUaL!
Trains: live super densely, it’s great. Cars: chill bro
Trains aren’t 100% the answer, but cars should be the last answer. Still we should electrify cars.
yeah, electricity should just be used everywhere.
most other energy types can be easily and efficiently converted to it, and it makes it easy to increase efficiency.
(power production and consumption are separated in electrical cars, so by making your power stations more efficient you make all of the cars that use them greener)deleted by creator
EV’s are so much more efficient that even running from electricity produced by coal, they are significantly better than ICE (internal combustion engine) cars. Just the electricity used to refine enough fuel to drive 100mi would be enough to drive an average EV more than 60mi. (This detail gets conveniently left out when comparing ICE cars to EVs).
We still need to decarbonise the grid, and as that happens, all electric cars (regardless of age) will become less polluting too. Having an unclean grid is not an excuse to keep using ICE vehicles.
Because cars aren’t stuck to tracks.
cars are stuck to roads and much less efficient everywhere many people need to go. cars are basically useful where only few people live or work.
I mean technically cars are only stuck to roads if you’re a law abiding citizen.
Roads allow for significantly more freedom of travel than trains because it would be cost prohibitive to build rail networks everywhere a car can reach.
Each mode of transport has its niche and one cannot replace the other.
If you can’t conveniently travel by train, that is a failure of the design of your city, not trains. If the destination a train took you to was walkable you wouldn’t need a car, because the train could cover the large distances, and you could simply walk from the train to your necessary locations.
“City”
This guy thinking everyone lives in urban centers.
Are they going to run a train to every remote village in Italy? Will everyone in Iceland travel to Reykjavik from their farms around the country by rail? Are we going to install rail on every island of Greece just so people don’t have to drive?
Sure, if we can build the infrastructure for cars there, why not trains too. You’re quite closed minded. But also, why can’t you just bike in a village? I mentioned cities because that’s where trains tend to be, genius.
There’s trams, there’s bikes, there’s buses, etc. etc. etc.
I agree yet most countries are determined to use cars, where public transport needs to be.
And trains aren’t stuck to roads. And planes aren’t stuck to roads. And ships aren’t stuck to roads.
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
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.
This always reminds me of the movie, Roger Rabbit. I was a kid and the movie taught me a much deeper/darker lesson than it was meant to teach me at that age. It still irks me.
I used to watch roger rabbit as a kid for other reasons
I think I know exactly what you mean and I was in 3rd grade.
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and there isn’t one near me.
That’s exactly the problem that this community wants to fix.
You can’t put railways everywhere.
But that’s a certain level of naivete. I’ve lived in Europe and in the Western US, and for people who have lived in urban or suburban situations their whole lives, they simply can’t comprehend the vast tracts of land that exist in most of the US. Public transport isn’t viable when your nearest neighbor is at least five acres away.
Well yes, if you live in the middle of nowhere with literally no one else nearby, then public transport obviously doesn’t make sense. But that’s not where most people live.
A large part of the population in the US doesn’t have access to public transport not because it wouldn’t be viable, but because car-centric infrastructure was built instead. And often better designed cities were bulldozed to make room for it.
I was also going to recommend the Not Just Bikes video @Katana314@lemmy.world linked, definitely check it out!
True, but a lot of US real estate, even in big cities, started out agricultural. Those underpinnings are still affecting them today, given that they are less than 300 years old. They just don’t have the history of being piled on top of each other that Europe has. The original American inhabitants didn’t have the infrastructure Europe has had since the Romans, even if their population HAD been so concentrated.
The U.S population density is less than half that of Europe, even today.
Trains could have intercity connections. Walk/bus to the train, ride the train, walk/bus to your destination.
I have metro+train and it already wears me out so much that alI arrive at the office tired. I can’t imagine how I would survive through 3 different transit options twice a day
I do the same and if anything, it just helps me wake up or wind down after a long day. Out of pure curiosity, how does it wear you out?
I don’t know, I could not even imagine the transit switch to be not overwhelming, it’s just way too many changes for me in a short span of time, like too many tasks. go down, wait for metro, try to not miss the stop, get up on escalator, go to platform, wait there, it’s just sucking out energy out of me, if I spent all that time just sitting on the train yes I unwind and I love it but dragging my laptop around and standing and waiting and having to concentrate instead of getting into the flow is disruptive for me. Plus I feel like underground is super dark and dirty and on the bus I get nauseous from so many braking and stopping and all the vibrating from the road
Sure buddy, spend a few hours hopping public transport each day is so much fun.
Cars are superior in every single way, it’s paupers that cry out of jealousy we’re seeing here.
They know cars aren’t the problem, there are industries out there that spew out the equivalent of millions of cars but they don’t bitch about that.
hmmm, do I want to sit in a train, flip my laptop open and do some work, then walk through a park to the office for today… Or do I want to sit in traffic and do nothing…
Tough choice there
no, I absolutely do not want to work on my way to work
Work time starts when I open the laptop. I’m not volunteering that time, since i’m not completely insane. It makes a huge difference whether my workday starts in the office, or in the train.
I’m gonna be real, I’d 100% rather sit in traffic. It’s somewhat relaxing to me.
I hate this trend that we need to be working all the time, even during our commute.
To each their own. I prefer 2 hours of working in the train and 6 in the office to traveling for 2 hours and working 8 hours in the office
it’s paupers that cry out of jealousy we’re seeing here.
Found Andrew Tate’s account
Ugh, vegans.
Those industries don’t pump out their emissions in my city for me to breathe in, nor do they threaten to maim or kill me on a regular basis.
can go anywhere
As long as there’s road, no serious traffic, and fuel stations along with rest stops.
You don’t need a road.
This is your brain or advertisements :)
In reality:
![[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}