this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
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Fuck Cars

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A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

ITT: a bunch of people who like having to spend half their life driving and are upset they can't spend more

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I definitely don't like it at all, but I'm just a worthless underpaid factory schmuck so I have to live far from work because anything close is pretty much my entire paycheck just for rent...

The US really needs to find a better way to solve this issue, but since we're all "rugged individualists" things just get built where the owners want and nothing needs to make sense for anyone... Where I currently work most people have to drive an hour each way just to get here. Logistics for deliveries are horrendous. It makes no sense to have a factory where this is, but that's what the owner wanted...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Tough to drive less when the world around you discourages anything other than cars lol. DOT needs to do more than just warn congress.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I think it’s a start. I’ve seen more and more from the feds and local governments about the infrastructure/walkability issue. It moves at a snail’s pace but that’s the government in general. My guess is that if you can align the people making federal policy to allocate federal money for public transit projects and high speed trains and such, you can incentivize local governments to use more dense mixed-use zoning laws and drum up local support for public transit projects where people aren’t stuck in a car all day.

I lived in Nashville when Barry proposed and mulled over their now doomed spoke and hub suburban train project between bang sessions with her security detail at the graveyard. It was frustrating that local businesses bitched and moaned and doomed the city to be another shitty Atlanta, so we have to understand the hurdles and the politics involved. Fortunately I have some faith that Buttigieg does but it’s admittedly frustrating when everything related to climate change is already too little too late and it’s moving so slowly to the point that we are only in the early stages.

So many cultural things have to change too. Penalizing big truck and SUV manufacturers is a start. Nobody needs one of those damn things.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

DOT is half the problem, department of TRANSPORTATION but they only really care about roads or cars. It was also DOTs that ripped out peoples homes to pave highways into city centers. They caused a signifcant amount of this problem and they should be responsible for creating some solutions.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

https://www.transit.dot.gov/

DOT is trying to fix things, at least somewhat, but can’t build transit unless Congress allocates money. Also m, they can only implement political priorities: what happens without “Amtrak Joe”?

DOT can advise that towns and cities change zoning to encourage denser population centers and transit-oriented development, but they can’t actually do anything about it. That’s all under local government

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

so how the hell am i supposed to get anywhere in this suburban hell hole im stuck in then? the government itself created this damn infrastructure and now we're all just stuck here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Catch-22, don't build Suburbia (aka don't live in and pay for it) AND drive less. On a positive note, using public transit and sharing space has the opposite effect.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Once again, many governments refuse to build anything except suburbia. This isn't just a simple matter of personal choice. City planning, roads, transit, density, and taxation all need to be addressed to build our cities better again.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

And it took a century of constantly expanding population to build it out this way. We don’t have a century to fix it, nor do we have a quickly expanding population to drive it. We have to somehow fix things in place

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Suburban sprawl makes owning a car a necessity. If we're going to significantly reduce the amount of driving Americans do, I think most people are going to have to give up on the American dream. Most people are just not going to be able to own their own, detached single family home in the suburbs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The american dream is half the problem. Most suburban neighbourhoods cost more to maintain and repair than they generate in taxs. They are unsustainable and simple rises in taxs would need to be too steep for most of them. Many cities repair an old neighbourhood with the profits from selling land/development fees for a new neighborhood, somewhat like a pyramid scheme. The american dream was doomed from the start because it was always unsustainable, from an environmental, economical, and social view.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I'd say it's more than half the problem. It's just too expensive, too inefficient, and just not sustainable. It must go, and once it does, suburban sprawl will go with it. Once that goes, higher density housing and mixed use development will become the norm, and when that happens, owning a car will become not only unnecessary but impractical, for many.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Depends on where you live but making walkable/micromobility friendly cities more common is critical for sure. I'm fortunate enough that I can bike to work every day, same for groceries and general medical stuff.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

lol fuck this personal responsibility shit, fuck over rich people than we will talk. I do support public transit.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

I think we're all lucky you're not one of the rich people.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago

Spoiler : USA Congress does not care

How a Congress that applauded a war criminal could give a #### to Climate Change -_-