Mastodawn

Cory Doctorow Jun 26, 2024

EVs won't save the planet. Ultimately, the material bill for billions of individual vehicles and the unavoidable geometry of more cars-more traffic-more roads-greater distances-more cars dictate that the future of our cities and planet requires public transit - *lots* of it.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/26/unplanned-obsolescence/#better-micetraps

Pluralistic: Cleantech has an enshittification problem (26 Jun 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Peter Brown Jun 26, 2024

@pluralistic two unintended consequences of the move towards electric vehicles is that they are at their best on short journeys, not travelling transcontinental.
And they are also at their best at speeds under 40 miles an hour, becoming very greedy over 60.

Both of these factors will help modal shift to mass transit across longer distances and should help to reduce average traffic speeds.

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Brianary Jun 26, 2024

@peterbrown
@pluralistic
The US needs much more investment in rail before we can stop using cars, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, where train service is perfunctory at best. I really hoped this would be a major benefit of Biden in the White House.

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Morgan Aldridge

@brianary @peterbrown @pluralistic It seems odd to say, but New England too! Vermont, for example, only _finally_ re-opened the western rail line to Amtrak a year or two ago. That left a single rail line serving southeast to central to northwest! We're a tiny state, but towns are located in small valleys between several mountain ranges, so long travel times by car (or bus in rare cases) to the few rail stations are necessary. I can't imagine New Hampshire & Maine are much better.