Trains are 100000x easier to electrify and automate than cars, so why does everyone keep talking about electric and driverless cars?
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.
Unfortunately as it stands in some places the infrastructure is awful. Take England for example; catching a train to London takes about 20 minutes for me, however there are often 10-15 minute delays that you now have to start accounting for, you also have to sit in a cabin with someone blaring their music that isn't to your taste. Hopefully you're not in a cabin with a toilet, because it's going to stink of shit.
Now the return journey, fingers crossed it's not cancelled otherwise you have another 40 minute wait for the next train! Last train home is a real anxiety inducing experience, will you be getting that train home or has it been cancelled? This is unfortunately all too common here. Sadly because public transport is for profit rather than a necessary service we have someone trying to do the bare minimum to make that money, and then pay the bare minimum to their staff who don't give a shit. It all begins to unravel and people just have a better experience sat in that morning traffic which is a more consistent and pleasant experience to the public transport.
I'd say it is more about convince convenience. 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).
This can also be achieved by high frequency transit.
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.
If I'm doing a short trip locally in the city, I get that convenience out of my bike. There are times I would have taken a taxi somewhere, but when the app told me how long it would take for my driver to arrive, I just end up cycling there (often rolling past some long lanes of traffic in the process). That process can be even better if a city is built with safe biking paths.
I still would love to see a YouTube channel that takes the audio of car ads, and re-edits it with shots of the car in question just sitting in traffic.
Not to mention that well built mass transit achieves the same level of freedom. You'll wait 5 minutes for the train and away you go.
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.
Big Auto has been destroying any idea of high speed rails for decades. Our trains are complete trash because of car lobbyists.
Muskrat is one of the biggest ones to blame.
And they expand the roads and freeways to have rails literally no place to go
Denver has decent rail, but I have to walk/bike across this insane hellscape of cars trying to kill me for 1 1/2 miles to get to the station
Because as much as trains and buses are great for everyday commuter movement (and having amenities within walking distance is key as well), there's two issues:
Changing the infrastructure and zoning of an existing city is much easier said than done.
Fun how we had zero fucking problem doing it to every city in the country for cars. 🤷
Including destroying neighborhood-after-neighborhood with highway overpasses.
Literally destroying buildings to build surface level parking.
It in that case the people with power wanted the change. They could profit from it, so it came easily.
Once those same people can make money by densifying urban areas into rental hellscapes and monopolizing public transit, you’ll have that. And it will suck.
That’s what rentals are for. Yeah, there’s always going to be a need for low volume cargo transport and emergency response, but ultimately building cities so 90% of trips can be easily and comfortably accomplished via mass transit should be the goal. Nobody is suggesting transit can replace all cars.
The image in the post is of a yogi of some sort stating that electric cars are here to save the car industry first, and my impression of it is that it's suggesting that exploring the idea of electric cars is unwise.
And hell yeah, efficient transit and walkable cities are the goal. But while we're working on that goal, we should also focus on electrifying cars! Tackle the crisis in multiple ways. Because there's no way we're gonna stop using cars overnight, and if we can make cars more environmentally friendly while we taper off of them, that's a win.
Actually most cities had rail laid out and working commuter trains. The car manufacturers bought them up and purposely ran them into the ground to increase car sales. (Think Twitter) they were run like that.
Some cities, yes. LA is an example, right? And how they wrecked the street cars.
But not my city. Calgary was built as a stop on the Trans Canadian Railway, and that still exists, and there's an (okayish) light rail train system here that's slowly been built over the years and not torn down. Fully wind powered, too! Edit: our public transit kinda sucks though, I'm not saying we're great. My commute to the office would be over an hour by transit and twenty minutes by car, I'm lucky I work remote.
A majority of North American cities that have grown within the last hundred years (coinciding with cars) were built from the ground up with cars in mind as the primary form of commute.
Yeah, all of those things weren't problems at the dawn of the steam engine. Those are all problems brought on by the automobile and oil companies designing cities in the 40s.
Lots of places can't support trains either. Kelowna area would not work well because of altitude changes and lakes.
I would just settle for sidewalks, where I live in the USA it's just streets with no sidewalks everywhere. I used to live one mile from where I worked and I could barely even bike there because of crazy car drivers and nowhere to go if someone wasn't paying attention. Rural America is going to be car dependent for a long, long time.
Cities in America too. I'm currently in Charlotte, NC and the amount of times that the sidewalk just ends is a little bit insane.
My daughter can't walk the 1/4 mile to school because it's on a major road with no sidewalk. So we drive her, every day. It's bad for the environment and bad for her health.
Man, I went to England and we took trains (or a bus) everywhere and it was super convenient (and comfortable!).
Thank you for your service.
In Germany electric trains are standard for local public transportation.
Trains only run on a specified track and there isn't one near me. A car isn't bound by a track and can go anywhere.
and there isn’t one near me.
That's exactly the problem that this community wants to fix.
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.
You can't put railways everywhere.
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
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.
Thats not really true and you know it. Cars are like trains, limited mostly to paved roads that need to by built.
Are you seriously trying to tell OP that he's lying about not living near a train? Or are you trying to say that the part about them running on a fixed track isn't true? Either way, this is a really dumb take.
Also, you clearly haven't been to rural areas, where dirt and gravel roads are common. Cars handle those just fine.
But those roads are far more numerous and further reaching than train tracks. Trains go from a to b. Cars can go which ever route you want. And you don't build train tracks around a house.
Nope.
It is, don't be such a little bitch about it.
I have an electric car because I refuse to pay any more money to fossil fuel companies but still need to drive. I use public transport where possible, but many trips just aren't viable.
It takes me 30 minutes to walk to the nearest shopping centre, but 2 hours to get there by public transport, or 5 minutes by car.
As an average citizen, I don't have the means to build or fund new railway lines. I am, however, lucky enough to be able to refuse to drive fossil fueled vehicles and still survive.
Is biking not an option?
I have been using my bike for most short trips.
I've even ridden my bike into the city, then taken a train most of the way home when I realised I'm not as fit as I thought I was.
I've actually solved most of my travel issues by staying home and deciding that I don't actually need to travel. This works less well when the purpose of travel is to get food.
I doubt that a significant portion of the population lives somewhere that just trains and bikes could meet their requirements.
Sounds like a classic example of poorly designed transit. Well designed transit is often faster than driving and should certainly be faster than walking unless your destination is not frequently visited by many people.
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).
energy is a non-issue
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 motor
Furthermore, bigger machines can be built to be more efficient than smaller ones. So bigger motors can use (electric) fuel more efficiently than smaller motors.
This isn't a binary. We need both robust public transportation and electric cars (with an electric grid supplied by renewable energy). Public transportation can't take you anywhere at anytime -- it's all a game of statistics and demand. If 12000 people want to go downtown at 7 pm, and 3 people want to go the opposite direction to get to work to start their night shift, you're going to see buses and trains headed downtown but not the opposite side of town.
Public transportation is best served for commutes and travelling to popular areas, and that's where the majority of emissions are coming from. Cars can supplement with everything else
Aren't buses and trains going back and forth?
They are, but only in specified routes. The issue is the areas they don't hit because there isn't a ton of demand. That said, someone else mentioned a taxi type public transit service, and that would solve this perfectly.
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)
I'm all in favour of trains. I only take the train to work, and it's so convenient I even take my kids to the city via train, to entertainment or shopping. However, even though I live inside the capital city in a Western European country, the train we take is powered by diesel. The government has been talking about electrifying the track for years, and the current estimate is that it will take another decade or more to get it done. There's a single electrified rail line in the entire country, and based on the electrification progress it will take several decades to electrify the rest (if ever). Based on this experience, I'd venture to say that electric cars are far easier to deploy than electrify train lines.
It's very hard to do something if you only talk about it and not actual doing it. But that has nothing to do with technology itself
And politicians are elected on what they say, not really on what they do.
Even on diesel trains they are far far far more energy efficient than cars. Current estimate is that it takes 3.7 liters of fuel to transport 1 tonne of cargo for 100km. That's incredibly more efficient than any car can get. Not to mention cars carry around on average 1.3 persons inside.
Train infrastructure is also significantly more scalable. You can add another train car for passengers at the price of one passenger car and you have increased capacity of that train immediately. Same goes to downsizing. Rails can be easily adapted to have overhead wires. Train wheels are metal as are tracks which means significantly cheaper maintenance and slower wear than asphalt and rubber.
It's nothing to do with ease of deployment. It's all about selfishness of people and their inability to or lack of willpower to change. Even if people switched to motorcycles, which are still ICEs it would still be a lot cleaner for the environment since it would effectively eliminate traffic jams and reduce road maintenance significantly. Not to mention not needing to move 1 tonne of metal for no more than 1 passenger.
Because cars aren't stuck to tracks.
And trains aren't stuck to roads. And planes aren't stuck to roads. And ships aren't stuck to roads.
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.
Did the car industry write this?
I would love to have trains and not need a car. Unfortunately that's still a decade away here in California.
And who knows how long in the Midwest. I can't even take a train from Des Moines to St Louis - I have to go to Chicago by bus first!
Running errands on public transport is an absolute nightmare. Imagine having appointments, hauling bags of groceries and maybe even having a child or pet on a leash, all while trying to catch busses and trains. Public transport is great to get a lot of people to a common place, but that's about it. Its not exactly cheap either. Where I live, a single one direction train ticket costs roughly as much as 2 liters (~½ Gallon) of gas. 2 liters can get me in and out of the downtown area about 3-5 times, depending on traffic. Or once with an hour of parking. If an electric vehicle would fall out of the sky into my lap and the only thing I had to care about is fuel (electricity) I'd definetly would save money and time compared to public transport. Public transport is absolutely necessary, but not the solution for everything.
I see people doing all the things you list on the trains and busses in London all the time.
Doesn't mean it's not a nightmare, and that doing it with a car wouldn't be easier. Try doing this with two toddlers one day, lol, I promise you it's not as easy as watching someone else do it.
I can fully understand your position. People in big and densely packed cities profit a lot from proper public transport and vice versa. Plus the city itself is layed out to function with public commute in mind, I've experienced it personally in New York. I'm from a rural area. Our public transport system can't fully replace cars. The main transit traffic is concentrated around rush hour in the morning and evening. To provide most people with public commute would require an immense increase in busses and train lines, only for 80% to be idle during low traffic hours.
There's often a visual comparison between how many people a full car and bus can carry. Obviously the bus wins. But you rarely see the comparision between the space needed for a single empty car or bus to be parked. Cars can park on the side of the road or have a parking lot on location (even underground). Busses need ports and infrastructure. Trains are an even bigger problem to store. Their ports can easily take up a good chunk of the entire city. That's why there's always a financial incentive to have too little busses or trains than too many. People can tolerate waiting, but can't tolerate higher prices to sustain a surplus on transport.
Also, public transport is often confined to local bubbles. Go outside your bubble and things start to get messy. When I was in High School, we had about ¼ of our class commute every day from one city over. They were either way to early or always late, because one cities train and bus plan wasn't tuned to the others, resulting in people either having to get up about 2 hours before school starts at 7 am to catch a train or run the risk of missing their bus connection to the school. It's even worse if you are crossing train districts and have to buy multiple tickets. When I was in college, some people came from another major city about 40km away. Their district covered half the state therefore their price was ~300€ per month and additionaly they had to pay 90€ per month for our smaller district. And both of those were the reduced prices for students. I could leave my car running idle for 20 days straight for that price.
EWs are important because cars are never going to be replaced by even the best public transport systems. But at least with could reduce the amount of cancer we get from sitting in traffic and breathing commute air. If I could choose, I'd rather have a power plant spit out steam and gas through state of the art filters somewhere in the outskirts, than to be surrounded by combusted gasoline resedue all day.
Part of the problem with American public tranist is cities assume the transit to be directly profitable. Tramsit functions best when heavily subsidized (just like car infrastructure is). The value brought by transit it terms of property value and connectivity will outweigh the cost of subsidizing it.
I doubt the US even has a say in these dissussions. Their intercity train system is mostly commercial to transport goods from coast to coast or border to border. Sparse availability of public trains means spending roughly the same on 48 hours train ride or a 1 hour plane flight. Building a single highway trough dessert heat of the Midwest is already a toll, but building a countrywide train system would, even if subsidized with the full military budget still be a nearly impossible task. Furthermore you have 50% of the population screaming to stop this socialist nonsense. There are enough examples of unfinished train sections that show what happens if money runs out.
And one might ask them self, how did the US get from cowboys and farms to the beacon of technical advancement? The answer is oil and slaves. They played dirty for 200 years and got ahead. So how does the entirity of Europe have a extensive network of rails spanning millions of kilometers? Was it because they where built before unions and labor rights were a thing? Turns out multi continental projects were mostly achieved through human suffering and disregard for safety. None of which goes nowadays to the same extend as back then. If a project isn't finished within one legislative period, why even start? Policaly you won't reap the fruits of your labor.
I know I'm exagarting, but the principle is simple. The early bird gets the worm. Europe has their trains and the US has their cars. Better to let each one figure out their own thing and then share the knowledge.
First lets start with the obligatory mention that thanks to zoning laws in the US you are even in this predicament. My grocery store is like just a few hundred metres from my apartment and on my way from work. Instead of weekly shopping I just do it daily / every other day with just the few things I need for those few days. No for hauling grocery bags. And like you wouldn't go shopping before appointments either...
Also you completely forget to factor in the cost of owning an maintaining a car. A yearly ticket for public transport for me is around 500€. I don't own a car so my expense on public transport is just that 500€ with a bit more for holiday trips etc compared to the cost of buying a car every X years, paying for maintenance, and for fuel.
I'm in Europe, not in the US. You are very fortunate to be living in a way that doesn't require a car. That's not the case for most people. Here, we have a lot of smaller towns and ignoring backeries, they have zero places that sell food. I see a lot of elderly people commute by bus for daily grocery shopping. But in this heat, they are in serious danger spending that much time in barely climate controlled busses and trains. Mostly, somebody from their families swings by once a week to fill up their fridge. The most common scenario is a family, both adults working 9-5, 1-2 children school aged. With children and jobs most people don't have the time to do daily grocery trips. That's why shops are usually overfilled on Friday evenings and Satruday mornings (I worked those shifts in retail). From my experience growing up, a full week of groceries for a mid sized family is impossible to carry by hand. Also from my experience, public transport is a godsend if you live alone and are tight on money. It takes the burden of maintanig a vehicle of your back. But in a family or a close circle of friends, a car is usually a communal workhorse, used by everyone for everything to avoid the hassle of public transport.
People do that all the time on transit, groceries are the biggest problem though.
You're forgetting the cost of buying the vehicle, maintaining it, and perhaps parking it. You can't leave those out and then say driving is cheaper.
I personally consider the price of the car as the privilege of ownership. Its not like you can change the color of the train if you don't like it or throw you trash in the corner. If the train is to slow, you can't put a turbo in it. Plus, you can always sell you car, but you can't sell your used train tickets.
I've owned my car current car for roughly 4 years now. I got it used and it lost about -1,000€ in value. Maintance is incredibly low, roughly -300€ in total. Insurance was the big money drainer with about -2000€ in total, but I got in a couple of minor fender benders that weren't my fault and only resulted in scratched plastic so I got a payout of about +1300€. So in total, if I were to sell it right now, my car my car cost me 500€ annually over the course of 4 years (fuel exluded). Thats a fair price for the freedom a car gives you.
But there are certain situation that essentialy prohibit using a car. Getting to the airport is far easier by bus (my city has a direct line) and you don't have to pay for weeks of parking. Late night bus lines make going out to parties and clubs actually enjoyable, because you don't have to leave your car in a shady part of town over night. Parking is another problem. The US feels like 80% parking space but Europe doesn't have that. The biggest parking area in my city is basically right at the central bus hub. So it wouldn't make any difference time wise to go by car. But thanks to 20 traffic lights, riding a bicycle doesn't either.
Bicyles are like the best extension to public transit. And its highly undervalued. I'd rather have them reduce prices for train tickets that include a bike, than build more train lines. Currently they are nearly twice as expensive as normal tickets (because a bike takes up more space I guess).
Groceries are solved by having smaller but more frequent supermarkets, I can walk to 3 different ones from my house including one that's literally 2/3min walk away (and I live in the countryside), we go daily so we can just carry it back because it's smaller groceries. If bigger, personal carts exist and are gaining popularity around here.
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.
Not only that, but it was American to own a car.
Not every journey is possible with public transport. People will still need to lug equipment about in the electric future.
Trains don’t cover literally every single use case of a car, better keep expanding those highways!
There is quite a lot you can do with a cargo bike. And what is still left in deliveries or services, can be done with just a few cars. Those don't need to be driverless. Also I have once moved house using public transport. It isn't fun, but it's possible.
I love good public transport. It's great to not have to worry about parking or having to drive. Good cities, like many in Europe and New York in the US, a car isn't really required.
But out in the countryside, a car is a must. Electric cars are massively better for the environment and way cheaper to run (like tenth the cost with a night rate).
since wen this sub is full of carbrain? like bruh.
It's on the front page and it's got an unbelievably stupid title.
I am amazed as well. Did they just sub every community with the word 'car' in it?
no idea but its just sad. even the reddit version is beter.
Making up slurs like "carbrain" for people who think differently than your echo chamber is fuckin' lame as shit. You look gross from the outside, FYI. Found this post by sorting my "All" feed by Hot, not a member of your echo chamber.
its how they are called on the original sub.
Carbrain can be pretty succinctly defined as thinking this tiny little online community is the echo chamber, and not your entire car-default existence in your car-default country with your car-default parents neighbors teachers transit networks and policies
Because in our current state with everything built around cars, creating a train system to accommodate it all is nearly impossible. Trains work great in a downtown, or centralized area. They are very difficult to build to accommodate our 1x1 grid system that cars use. Or at least that's my perception of it. Even if the system could be built, it'd have to be manned, it'd have to travel to certain areas at certain times to account for jobs. And it becomes increasingly unwieldy the more requirements you add to it. I wish things had built up along a sustainable train systems instead of cars, but placing a train system in to replace the decentralized nature that cars introduce is a monumental and perhaps untenable task.
It needs some sort of supergrid. Like every 2x2 you can go across and down but in the middle is a train line.
Then it justs needs high density near the stations and park and ride. If anything it's easier on a grid system it's harder on an old European style city where this is only one road winding though buildings.
That's the starting point and everything can go from there.
It isn't harder in an old european style city. It is just not possible without reclaiming space from cars. But that is impossible to imagine for car brains.
Surtaining car centric infrastructure is an impossible task. There is no counterpoint.
We built a nationwide train system in the early 1800s with labor that barely spoke English and it transformed the American frontier forever. It's not impossible- it's not even particularly hard.
Building a train system to connect a few cities across an undeveloped nation is infinitely easier than supplanting an established local road system. I'd go so far as to say replacing the current interstate system would be easier than replacing all local infrastructure that was built up around cars. Live outside a big city and see how communities and businesses are structured. Now think of the logistics involved in ensuring all of that continues to have access. Not to mention you have to convince the general population that they are going to have to walk a lot more and good luck convincing families with multiple children that have multiple places to be at nonstandard times.
It's just one of those areas that is incredibly hard to replace. Maybe it isn't impossible. And that'd be great. But beyond the hurdle of the task itself you have to find a way to get mental and community buy in. It can't be forced on everyone.
Because people want a means to travel independently, as in they are in control and not riding with strangers.
/s
That is a luxury that should be severely limited. I hate screaming children on flights, but I don't want us to all start chartering private jets, even if somehow becomes affordable.
The U.S. needs to grow up and get off of its post-9/11 authoritarian kick. Then plane and airport design and system setup can go back to being about the convenience of the flyer and not the obscene hellhole it is now that is driving people away from supporting public transit.
Please keep your garbage ideas away from America. Freedom is more important than anything, and cars are a great enhancer of personal freedom. So I will be keeping my cars and my independent luxuries.
redacted
🤷 I don't actually agree with the sentiment. I am describing how other people feel about it. I don't even own a car. I actually want high speed rails. All I am telling you is that that is how opponents feel about it, and to get what you want, you have to address those feelings, probably in some form of marketing campaign.
Trains are great to connect cities. But a train trip for me will tipically take me will typically take 3 times longer than it would with a car. Last time I had to take the train/bus it took me 6 hours and had to change between 3 busses and 1 train. I could have done the whole trup in 2 hours, no changes and actually same price as I spent on fuel for my car.
And this is in Scandinavia where things run pretty smoothly!
I agree that within cities public transportation is great. But there are people who need cars no matter how many trains you set up or electrify. For us, EV is a good option (when they become more affordable)
This falls apart as soon as high-speed rail comes into play. I've done multiple train trips that outpace car trips primarily cause the train goes faster than the car.
Honestly no matter how fast the trains go, I won't get home faster than when I use my car. You may, and many others may. The train I have to use connects two major cities. That connection is fair I need to change to several busses though to get from door A to B and that messes things up.
Trains are great if you live in the cities they go through but you can't gave trains go through all cities let alone villages
That's because your country has a shitty rail network.
Before there were roads everywhere the car were not as practical.
the thing with trains is they get more inefficient the more tracks there are. Trains are great for connecting a few high spots with high traffic between them, not for everyone's daily transportation needs.
No.. I trains are great to comment A and B. But If you don't live in A or B, the they are not great.. The train network is fair where I live and covers a lot of the country. But still not everyone can use them. The majority of people living in cities can though. It will never cover the needs of all
A car doesn't need a road that's the thing.
[Citation needed] on the 100000x easier part, but nice meme.
Electric cars seem like a stopgap more than anything to me.
I found a source. I hope that helps.
Well that's a topic that intrigued me recently.
Here in France there was already some debates about how worth it was, mostly because it takes a few years to compensate the cost of production of the battery. But in France we think of the electricity as basically carbon-free (our energetic mix is something like 70% nuclear, 7% gas+coal, then "clean" energy)
However, in the world I think something like 70% of electricity production is fossil (with ~40% of coal), I don't get how electric cars are even a thing, say in the US?
Economies of scale. Generating power - whether it's fossil fuels, wind turbines, hydro, whatever - is more efficient at scale. To put it another way, a single 1MW generator will use far less diesel than a thousand 1KW generators. Also, electric cars are insanely efficient compared to combustion engine cars, so even if all your electricity is generated in diesel power stations it's more efficient than burning it inside the car. Additionally, large centralised power stations are better maintained, not constrained by weight and can have offsetting/capture systems attached that are impossible in a car that must, above all else, be small and light enough to move.
Renewables and nuclear are still the way and a carbon-heavy grid makes it take longer for EVs to break even but even then EVs are a no-brainer.
One power station is easier to replace than 1 million cars but takes a fair bit longer. So you swap the cars over right now. You also immediately stop local production of co2 as well as other noxious gases, stop the transportation of fuel and the fuel that THAT burns and you make people more energy conscious not just about the vehicle but their total usage.
Fossil Fuels in a power station are more efficient than a car ever will be. In addition Petrol and diesel vehicles are dirty from day one until they are scrapped. EVs pay off their debt ( in the EU I believe it's less than 20k miles and falling) and then are as close as you can make to neutral but not ride a bike everywhere. As the grid gets cleaner you immediately benefit also.
Many people hate cars and in America you lot have been very lazy about public transport so you lot are way, way behind on a lot of the mass transit stuff sadly. This means EVs are the future. Are they the end point? Probably not. But they're the best we can do right now and this infighting over them is stupid.
We all should be behind anything that moves us to being fully electric as quick as possible, making the transition to public transport if we can but EVs if not. Fire your ire at the coal rollers and V8 5.0 wastes of energy, not the EVs.
I am all for more public transportation in this country, but it wouldn't help me personally. I live outside of city limits- the closest bus line is two miles away. My work is even further outside city limits, a 10-minute drive south of me down a four-lane highway, past farm fields and into an industrial park.
There's just no way public transportation is going to help me there. And even if I didn't have to do it down a highway, there's no way I'm riding a bike there in the middle of winter.
So do please make public transport more available and expansive. Just know that it still won't be a universal solution. Individual transport is needed by some of us.
I plan to get an electric (not a Tesla) for my next car. I currently drive a hybrid.
"More public transport wouldn't help me, because there's no transit access here" seems tautological but ok.
Countries with similar layouts but working public transit would simply build a train line into your industrial park and place bus stops a reasonable distance away from where you live.
At what point is it too rural for that to make sense? I'm surrounded by cornfields.
Public transport only really works in crowded areas. Pretty sure you can easily ditch your car and get around fine in NYC, but in Bumfuck, North Dakota, you are lucky to get a bus once a day.
The reasons for this include a high upfront set-up cost and mistakes in the past.
When public transport was planned out, the population was smaller and the roads were more empty. The current systems might have been sufficiently expansible at that time, but there is just so much traffic and overloaded infrastructure nowadays. In IT fields, you'd say that you have technical debt: you favored an easier solution without thinking about long-term maintainabilty and are now stuck at trying to refactor the mess you made.
And today, public transport also needs to be profitable, of course, which is nigh Impossible. The only way to solve it would be a public transport tax and theb you'll see most of the vocal supporterd fall.
Anecdotal point in case: I live in a rural area in Germany and a friend's dad always complained about how awful public transport is here. At one point, a party put up the suggestion to have a "tax" of 20 bucks per quarter, so public transport could be expanded and free to use for everyone. Friend's dad was furious about that suggestion because "I'm not using public transport, so why should I pay for everyone who does". People just like to complain, not solve the issue they're aggravated about.
Where I grew up there is zero chance anyone is willing to invest in a rail system. They would never make the money back and the local government would not be able to afford it. This is just ridiculous.
I am all for more public transportation in this country
In which country? Sorry, couldn't tell from the context.
My apologies for being an asshole American. I meant the U.S.
Especially since so many US cities are designed around cars.
They were redesigned for cars. Mistakes of the past can be fixed.
Same reason we still have one person take a car if we're going on a scouts camp with bikes or train. There are times were even a perfect public transport system (Luxemburg is up there) can fail you.
Because places like America are so spread out (by design) that rail networks, especially in the Great Plains and Southwest, are viewed as impractical unless all of their population moved to cities or towns in close proximity to rail lines, and Americans tend to take up a large chunk of the bandwidth.
There once was a time we built rail first and the cities appeared along it. The early rail capitalists knew that transit seeds development and that's what built MOST of the major cities in the Americas. Somehow we forgot that and have instead come to believe that transit only makes sense if it connects dense, fully-developed places that already exist. It's insipid, but unfortunately makes it past peoples' bullshit filters routinely. It's just part of the trend of cities in North America to give no shits about their future development.
It's total bullshit, though. Most city downtowns can justify small transit easily. Play with the Tom Forth tool and see for yourself. I recommend looking at bus stops per capita for any place you click; that tells a hell of a story about how over or underinvested a community is in car infrastructure. In most of the world, it's something like 200-400 people per bus stop in a city. In the US, you're lucky to see 1200 outside of a few edge cases.
The fact is, most trips are within a few miles of home. There's a lot of space in the world for cars. They're needed to fill in the edge cases. The truly rural areas. The niche needs of a profession. An unusual living situation, or to provide accessibility, or for so many other reasons. But the default should be transit and bike-ped, as it was for virtually all of human history and as it still is for most people in most cities in most of the world.
When we entertain this "The US is too big for transit" stuff, we're reversing the victim and offender and substituting the solution with the problem. To start with, intercity transit isn't even that important a kind of transit. It's useful and nice, but the kind of trips that happen within a few miles of home are the fundamental ones.
In most of the world, it’s something like 200-400 people per bus stop in a city. In the US, you’re lucky to see 1200 outside of a few edge cases.
Hmm I couldn't reproduce this, which places did you check? I've checked most of the larger cities in Europe and the US. They all seem to have similar numbers, around 800-1000 people per bus stop.
I've also noticed that larger population densities usually have less bus stops per population. Which makes sense, as rural areas tend to rely more on buses because they don't have access to trams or subways. Plus, for higher population densities you need less stops per population, because doubling the amount of bus stops only reduces walk times to the nearest stop by 30%, assuming an equal spread (Circle Area = Pi * Radius²).
You'd think. But the truth is throughout the West and Midwest, almost every town has or has had a rail line.
So what's gone wrong? Pretty much the same thing that's gone wrong with America in general, big corporations realized shipping to big cities is way more profitable than carrying passengers from small towns. Particularly because most people prefer a car over the train.
We have a ton of dead rail lines just waiting to be revitalized.
I think the link below compliments the video above. It it from the same channel. This seem to be a compounded issue. https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0
From the end of the video:
Though, I admit, actually fixing American and Canadian cities after they were destroyed by car infrastructure and rebuilt to be car-dependent is a very daunting task, and I'm personally not even convinced it can be done in the foreseeable future, which is a big part of the reason why we left North America for a better city in the Netherlands in the first place.
In case it's not clear, I'm not against trains, buses, trolleys, trams, and bikeable, walkable cities. Far from it. But regardless of whether cities used to be connected by rail and were bikeable, as stated in the video, they aren't anymore, and haven't been for generations in many cases. So what's the solution in the meantime, while we wait for the slow churning bureaucracy to get its head out of its butt?
And even within those cities, they are vast stretches of suburbia, without the density that makes rail and mass transit systems practical. Rail as mass commuter transit works better the more dense a city is (conversely cars work worse). So if you wanted to try to massively reduce cars as an answer to the climate crisis, you'd first need to rebuild all of these cities that were largely built after cars were a thing. Which is even more impractical than electric cars.
Would be AWESOME if we had more dense cities and rail connections like Europe, though! We need the next generation of city planners to encourage more density in our (non Northeastern) American cities.
Yeah there is zero chance the poster is from the US or anything that isn’t a major city. Electric cars aren’t perfect but they are a hell of a lot better than an ICE.
Batteries used gives you150 ebikes for every e-car
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
there's more roads
Which, by the way, would not be there like without a government making it so. And if those governments went "nah" to the idea of a stroad and any highway expansion beyond 6 lanes, and threw it all into railways in the '70s, the USA may have had a bullet train network today that'd make Germany jealous.
It's the path of least resistance. If public transport was more effiencent and faster, people would opt for that.
But then you're also dealing with the weather, or some people like the privacy or they enjoy driving their own car. Or not having to worry about time tables and waiting.
All these factor in, and that's why many prefer cars.
and that's what I'm talking about, selfishness and short termed thinking
B-but think of the iNdIvIdUaL!
Because trains are massively inconvenient to anyone that isn't living in AND traveling to the most dense of urban areas.
American Suburbs are a plague.
The Dutch do suburbs right. You shouldn't have to own 2 cars to be a functional family in the USA.
Idk man, it seems convenient.
As always depends where you live. I live in Frankfurt am Main and travel to my parents in Poland who live in a 3k village with a train. One change in Berlin, one in Poland in a smaller city to a very local train which takes me to 4km from their home, where they finally do pick me up with a car.
With a car it would take at least 12h (been there, done that when I moved), similar amount of money for gas and I would have to take a day off from work, which I don't have to do on the train, because I work remotely on the way. I can also shit without stopping or eat on the train if I have a fancy. How is this inconvenient?
I made trips to Italy, France, Austria, Romania and ofc Poland with trains. And at least half of them were to not urbanized areas at all (for example France was to Port-en-Royans, population 817 people, when I got off around 5km from destination) and the only inconvenience is that you need some effort with planning.
Tautological. The proposal is to stop designing communities to make public transit massively inconvenient to them.
Now look up what percentage of people live/work in dense urban areas.
Some of the comments in this thread are bizarre.
"I can bike everywhere I need to go. Everyone should just do that and then we don't need cars"
Yeah, but thos is fuckcars. They want everyone living in giant towers in super dense urban areas.
People associated "freedom to go anywhere" with cars but it's a disguised argument. For the most part it's about not traveling with others. To a degree it's also about status symbol but for the most part they want to be alone and dictate their own schedule. If they really cared about freedom to move wherever they would get offroad motorcycles and never need to pay for parking again.
That's a very narrow view of things.
There are plenty if trains and buses where I'm from, and they still don't cover enough land area, let alone come along often enough and go largely in the direction I need to go to be useful.
Cars are about freedom and convenience. Being anti social is a secondary choice, and a perk.
No they are not. Public transport always needs improving, but getting to close where you need to be is always possible. Cycling after that or using some other sort of transport is possible. Even if you do want to ride your own vehicle to desired location, motorcycles are always better than cars. Even more convenient since you can filter through traffic jams, don't need parking spaces and spend less fuel.
No, I literally just want to be able to go somewhere when the trains aren't running. You can try and put words in detractors' mouths all you want but it's clear you'll only jam them full of lies.
Yeah, but no train takes me from my front door to my job/the movies/my vacation place. And my car works even if the state decides to shut down the trains/buses.
What if the state decides to shut down oil supply? Or the electric grid? That logic applies to cars as much as trains. Those all rely on government oversite, even when privately owned.
We decry the government, claiming it's inept. We listen to and vote in people who say the government is inept. Then when those we just voted in do a horrible job we then point at the mess and say, "see the government doesn't work". It's a self fulfilling prophecy.
Because they give people a lot more freedom than trains --- if you own a car. If you don't own a car but live in a society where everybody else has one you are kinda screwed.
I know it is not necessarily your opinion, but cars don't give freedom to people - even if you own one. You pay so much for your car, the society pays a lot for the infrastructure, this infrastructure takes away the freedom from people (especially children) to live and move outside, when you drive you can (should) do nothing else, it's reputation as individual way of transport blocks expansion of public transit, ... every aspect of a car is taking freedom away from you. A car that gives people freedom is a marketing strategy and the opposite is true.
I can go out drinking, text, work, chat, and sleep on my commute without being arrested or viciously murdering someone. Sounds like I have more freedom here.
Taxis or rental cars, or bikes for last mile connectivity, duh
It's all part of the broader solution.
Self driving electric cars will likely replace the role of traditional taxis. That's why they are being developed, taxis aren't a replacement for public transport and neither would fleets of autonomous vehicles. High speed rail should replace flights, public transport and bike lanes in denser population areas replace cars, and autonomous vehicles replace taxis for where public transport routes aren't available or viable.
Instead of owning an expensive car, which sits unused most of the time, you would call up a self driving car which would scoot to your location, take you where you need to go, then go do the same for someone else. We wouldn't need anywhere near as many vehicles and nowhere near as much parking infrastructure if this takes off.
The cars could all head to a depot out of town when they need recharging or maintaining. There are plenty of efficiency benefits when it comes to traffic too. The vehicles could all communicate so you wouldn't have traffic jams, and traffic lights would only need to operate for pedestrian crossings as the vehicles could flow around each other.
There's a lot of benefits to the approach. The pain points will be whilst there are still human drivers getting in the way.
Public transit good, but in america public transit is not well funded and only really available in big cities. I think sadly it will be years before americans can give up the independence of being able to have transportation direct from point a to point b. Consider that in rural areas it could be a 30 minute drive to get groceries with no transit options. As long as americans are going to drive cars, we can at least try to make them electric vs ICE.
I will continue to vote for public transit initiatives and if we had a bus or train system in my town I would use it. I have a fuel efficient ICE car but trying to buy electric as soon as I can afford to buy something that isn't a telsa pile of crap.
You ever try taking your new mattress and bed frame on a train?
Always hated that argument for big cars. You buy a new bed/mattress/big furniture like once a year. Delivery is maybe 50 bucks. The extra cost of a car big enough to transport that stuff is in the thousands. Somehow everyone gets upset when confronted with delivery fees while being perfectly fine with dishing out cash for a car. Redo the fucking math.
I have a car, and there was no chance i was gonna try and fit it in my hatch back.
that basically means this argument boils down to "every single person needs a truck large enough for a mattress" which is bloody insane
I think that’s a bit of an oversimplification of the argument
I use my car to transport my bike, surfboard, skis, dog, lawnmower, buy furniture, buy lumber etc for projects, and more. It just can’t be beat in terms of convenience. For repairs around the house, gardening, etc, it’s a must-have.
A 1998 CR-V does all that and it cost me $2500. Bomb-proof b20b also, I love it. I don’t think you can beat that in terms of convenience.
I’m all for trains and buses (electric busses would be great!) but the utility wanes when lots of people bring stuff. I used to have a 45 minute bus commute, and the bus had racks for bikes. I’d bring my bike to do the 5 mile trip to and from bus stops at both ends. But lots of people wanted to do that, and you’d have to be early in line to get your bike on the bus, otherwise you had to wait for the next one. I can’t imagine people trying to bring 2x4s or potted plants on the bus! Or their pets, another issue altogether.
While I understand and agree with your sentiment, there are a lot of cases where delivery simply isn't offered. Also, I'd appreciate a less agressive tone as we are intending to have civil discussion.
I agree that public transportation, infrastructure , and zoning laws need a massive overhaul to promote more walkable and pedestrian-friendly cities, but it's not realistic to eliminate privately owned cars entirely. They will always exist, so it's best to ensure these cars are as efficient as possible.
Funnily Ive got downvoted for bringing the same argument against replaceable phone batteries in another thread. Like, just pay a tech once every few years to do it for you.
No but I've never owned a vehicle that could handle a mattress and frame. I assume there'd still be delivery options. If it's not new then there are U-Haul rentals and movers still. It's not like most people need a vehicle that size. Yes I know some do and there are always edge cases but having a vehicle that size for moving something large once every X years shouldn't be a deterrent to mass transit.
I don't know if you're making this argument for outside the US, but renting a U-haul is pretty cheap if you stay within city limits. It really only gets expensive if you're actually moving. Occasional needs should have occasional solutions!
I did, on a trolley bus. Blocked an entire exit, but we timed it just right as to get on a mostly empty one and not inconvinience lot of people
Simple - Tracks vs Road ratio.
cars don't need to be driverless to be electric. i'm in favor of public transport but as long as we're in the long process of building it out it's still a lot better to have electric cars than gas guzzlers, with drivers still included.
there is a doctrine here where you fuck up a less optimal but easier solution just to force the world to adopt the better one but it's a shitty thing to do. public transport and electric vehicles aren't exclusive. in fact, for lower density stuff we will need buses and those should be electrified too.
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
Because as the wiseman said, somebody just wants to sell more cars.
We 100% need more trains. But in rural America, we need cars to do anything.
The frontier was built with trains. They did this 180 years ago. Why do we pretend that's incompatible with rural areas in 2023?
This has got to be the worst take in the entire thread. Congratulations!
It’s not remotely easier. Trains carriages are easy to build, but the infrastructure is not. You have to move and extend roads, demolish buildings, lay the rails, build bridges, if you go underground there will be lots of digging and engineering work to protect nearby buildings, and don’t forget about maintenance. It is only profitable when the population is high enough and people have the need to travel to set places en mass. Otherwise it is just fantasy. If you live your whole live around any city Center, I can understand that you are not going to drive . But plenty of people lived in a tiny town of population under 10000people .
Oh well if all our transport needs to be profitable maybe we should stop paying for public highways out of income tax funds, and stop subsidizing car and oil companies, and stop funding refinery and pipeline projects, and stop zoning with parking minimums, and all the other features of our nationalized car infrastructure.
Please explain to me: how is it possible to build a new highway through Berlin but so damn hard to build a railway through rural area?
Well for one roads are relatively cheap tarmac is almost fully reusable and is already mostly oil industry waste.
Rail lines are much more restrictive than roads in where and how you can build them. they can't turn as sharply or have that high of an incline.
Also a good portion of most llarge city populations don't live in the city but commute. Not all of them commute to the same few areas so of course on city exits there will be a bottle neck but it thins out relatively quickly as people fuck off in multiple directions. I guess you could reduce congestion by not allowing most car in the city and having large car parks in key point outside the city. But I'm not a civil engineer or whatever deals with traffic.
Let’s consider how many people living in Berlin vs population density in rural area. It is not building it itself that is challenging but the efficiency of building such a massive network to serve a few people. It is no different than building a helipad to them. Rail maintenance is a costly work. Rails have to be replaced, tuned every now and then or trains will derail. Underlays needs to be replaced. Why bother building a multi hundred million dollar project to serve the few people in rural areas? Do you think trains does not cost energy?
Are the train going to take 1-2 passenger in rural areas every station? How do people even get to the stations? Are they going to drive? Will they question the point of driving to train station and wait half an hour for the train instead of driving to where they want? Once they get off the station, how are they going to get to their final destination? Not everything is near a train station.
There are different kinds of people living in different parts of the country so just to say no cars for everyone is exactly the same as saying people should all drive and ban all public transport. We need a mixture of both for everyone to get to work efficiently. In all the bigger cities, public transport is a crucial component. Not so much in less densely populated areas.
I think OP just did
You're right, but it depends on the infrastructure already set up. In areas with high rail density ( like here in Europe ), if you can use the existing rail infrastructure, electric trains would be amazing.
Been seeing a big push for trains in Florida and California lately, hopefully things with Amtrak go well and we see more lines implemented in the future
In cities, yeah. Outside cities, impossible
But I'd love to rent autonomous electric cars to move
Switzerland's rural villages are mostly still compact and built around train stations. Just because you're not packed in with a ton of people and stuff doesn't mean that the people and stuff you do have needs to be super far apart.
Granted, stuff is super far apart in the US because that's how we've built it. My point is that we didn't have to do it that way and it isn't impossible to do it better.
I get it. Personally I don’t like small villages but yeah, what they have in the US is not good either (I’m in Italy). My ideal future is few mega cities with everything in it and no need for “cars”. And raw nature outside those
I was possible back in the day. My grandfather used to go from 200 inhabitants village in France to Stuttgart in Germany just by walking and taking train. It was possible back then in the 60s, it think it is now.
Beautiful, but not really feasible nowadays. We need a clean tech to move faster
What they did before cars were ubiquitous was "whistle stops" the train would whistle outside of town to indicate it was coming, and would stop for anybody at the platform otherwise it would continue on without stopping, much like how most buses operate today.
Smaller interurban lines also operated "flag stops" where it would stop when flagged down by a passenger otherwise it would keep going
With EMUs (electric multiple units) and modern signalling service could be brought to small towns fairly cheaply. Most small towns in the US are about 20 miles apart, so hourly service at ~50MPH could easily be provided with a single track mainline and passing sidings only at stations by having one train in each direction every 30 minutes.
The problem is so much money is invested in road infrastructure that investing a similar amount into an equally extensive rail network is simply unfathomable
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.
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.
trains are the most efficient way of moving between cities.
want to move around the city itself? just hop into an underground train.
and for shorter distances (like grocery stores and stuff) you can usually just walk.
and for shorter distances (like grocery stores and stuff) you can usually just walk.
Sometimes. Depending on your neighborhood, it might be a ridiculously long walk to get to the grocery store. At my parents' house it is a 30 minute walk with up to a 200ft change in elevation to get to the nearest grocery store.
City planning needs to allow for grocery stores to be better spread out within neighborhoods.
Now try moving between two cities where there isn't a train line because it isn't financially viable.
My hometown to the city I work in (and have an apartment in, I don't drive this distance daily) is about 4 hours on the trains and maybe an hour wait depending on which two trains you take.
Driving this is about an hour. The train takes this long because you first have to take a train in the literal opposite direction for 100 km. The government will never build a train line because there isn't enough demand and whichever government were to waste money on this would end about as fast as one that tried raising the price of vodka.
There IS a bus line, but holy hell are those seats bad. I had back pain for 3 days last time I took one.
It's a meme, not a comprehensive list of types of guided vehicles. No one is excluding them, nor should they.
Have you ever lived in a big city?
At some point trains are the only logical way to get around. They move far more people than cars or even buses. Bikes are good but only take you so far.
Having said that DRT started near me in my small city and it's awesome. That and trains are the ideal (with loads of bike lanes).
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...
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
Trains, busses subways and trams with room for bikes. Bike and walking infrastructure along roads and in cities. Secure bike parking both publicly and at home. Frequent and flexible busses. And a wide variety of easily avaliable rental cars.
Trains: live super densely, it's great. Cars: chill bro