jaykrownI'm happy that oil prices are going up
You know whose hurt by high prices? Poor people. Guess whose not hurt by them? Rich people.
CerebralHawksExactly. Based on this, and based on OP’s other responses, OP is basically saying “I want poor people to suffer so rich people can make more money” (off of new car sales with more efficient engines, or electric).
So my question for them is: is the income divide not great enough? If not, when will it be?
That’s mainly a problem for car-brained people. There are other modes of transportation, you know.
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 Gonna just go for a spin in my private jet.
There are many regions where alternative forms of transport aren’t very viable. Nearly non-existent public transit and bike infrastructure because everything was designed from the beginning with cars in mind. Zoning requirements that mean everything is spread out and impossible to walk between. Possibly even combined with terrible weather for much of the year.
Places where making changes to fix those issues, increase public options, etc. are met with stiff political backlash, not necessarily from the car people, but just simple conservatives or regressives that don’t think any money should be spent on that infrastructure, often simply because it’s not something they’d use.
but, and I realise this might be a bit utopian, the more people (have to) use alternative modes of transportation, the more the need for better infrastructure will grow. domino effect and all that
Oh definitely, but making those changes requires funding them. And that’s virtually impossible to get voters to approve in some places currently.
Much of Europe has the advantage here with simply existing before cars. Places that can’t fit car traffic, etc. so alternatives are either a requirement or already a higher priority than destroying existing infrastructure to make it fit.
Europe was demolished during the world wars. Both the US and Europe mostly consist of post-WW2 buildings. Europe just chose to build more sensibly.
They really don’t require a lot of money. In an emergency, you can create a bike lane with nothing but a few traffic cones. Then later you can spend the money and put in a permanent install.
Building a city wrong doesn’t mean “alternative forms of transport aren’t very viable;” it means the city was built wrong and that must be corrected.
And make no mistake, that is very viable: the Netherlands already did it. Paris is doing it right now. It is not actually hard, and it is not actually expensive – at least not compared to the long-term societal costs of continuing car-dependency.
because everything was designed from the beginning with cars in mind.
This is a straight-up lie, BTW. All the cities – including “newer” sunbelt ones, like LA or Houston or Atlanta – were in fact built for walking and streetcars first, and then demolished to accommodate cars.
My suburb was built in the 50s, and it’s one of the oldest in my area. Almost half of the homes in the township are from the last 20 years. It was all 100% built for cars, there are zero other options. And moving isn’t really an option at this point.
Yes, it was built wrong. Europe was also mostly built post-WW2. They chose to build better.
That’s mainly a problem for (poor) car-brained people.
Its true! I strongly believe in public transport. Particularly the transport that is also dependent on oil…
Where I live though, if I wanted to get to work without my car it would change my trip time from 45m - 1.5h to about 2h-3h. Each way. I don’t feel like spending 6h travelling so it’s not really a choice for many of us.
At least you have an option. If I wanted to get to work without owning a car I’d have to call an Uber or a friend with a car.
When I started my job last year they straight up told us Uber doesn’t come out there cause it’s too rural and Google Maps still hasn’t bothered updating to list the street the building was built on last year.
Well, in a high gas price environment, workplaces are forced to stop requiring their employees to commute to bumfuck nowhere simply because they can buy land cheap there. Companies that insist on building factories or facilities without any respect for their employees’ commuting needs will simply go bankrupt, fools and their money being soon parted.
No, there aren’t.
Plenty of places have no other option.
People like you remind me of evangelical Christians.
You are all perfectly content to have other people suffer in hopes that a wonderful future will emerge.
If you want to suffer, go right ahead. Don’t expect other people to be miserable so you can feel superior.
yeah, let’s keep things just the way they are and stop hoping that societal changes can be a motor for improvement
all I’m saying is there aren’t alternatives YET, but situations like this could create a positive change in mindset and eventually infrastructure as well. fine by me if you want to be a glass-half-empty kind of person
So when people can’t afford basic life necessities today so poor people starve and go homeless, but that pressure has some unrealized future benefit the current generation likely won’t live to see, that’s glass half-full for you?
I’m hopeful for better too, but I’m not going to be happy about human suffering.
Climate change is an extinction level event. You don’t think that is going to cause suffering? You’re clutching your pearls at the idea of trying to prevent extinction so you obviously don’t care about human suffering.
M137“No, there aren’t.”
Yes, in a lot of the world there are. Your comment disagrees with itself. You can’t say “no, completely wrong” and then say “only in some places.”
You’re just being pedantic.
Obviously, the first sentence was mean as a rhetorical refutation.
Mimicking poor reading skills to make a point smacks of desperation.
And you’re being willfully ignorant when you ignore the main point, that for many drivers there are no good options.
People in dense cities who only drive are car brained. People who live where there are zero other options are simply getting to the store or to work the only way they can.
People who live where there are [legitimately] zero other options – i.e., actually rural – are a negligible minority. 80% of the population has no excuse, and trying to “whatabout the other 20%” is a strawman argument.
80% sounds very high. Do you have any data to support that? I see rough estimates closer to 50/50. Mass transit isn’t viable outside of Metro areas and a lot of people live far from big cities.
www.census.gov/…/urban-rural-populations.html
Despite the increase in the urban population, urban areas, defined as densely developed residential, commercial, and other nonresidential areas, now account for 80.0% of the U.S. population, down from 80.7% in 2010. This small decline was largely the result of changes to the criteria for defining urban areas implemented by the Census Bureau, including raising the minimum population threshold for qualification from 2,500 to 5,000. The rural population — the population in any areas outside of those classified as urban — increased as a percentage of the national population from 19.3% in 2010 to 20.0% in 2020.
They’ve even tried to prop up the rural population counts by changing the definition, but it still only manages to be 20% anyway.
You can live in a densely populated city and still need to travel long distances regularly though… Especially if you’re poor.
But the key is that that isn’t a legitimate need because driving is the only reasonable way to solve the problem; it’s an illegitimate need caused by a failure of politicians to allow correct city planning and infrastructure.
I work in many different locations. Some of them remote. I often bring large equipment with me. More than that, my work days tend to be anywhere from 10 hours to 16 hours long, typically with a lot of manual labor included. Some of my commutes can be 2 hours one way. I’ve worked plenty of those 16 hour days with 4 hours of driving added on top. The thought of riding a bike or running the public transit gauntlet (which, will typically double or quadruple the commute times in my area) is repulsive.
I think you’re massively over-simplifying this issue.
Guess what: you’re that special snowflake who has a legitimate need to drive. The vast majority of people are not like you.
Just like pearl-clutching about rural people, bringing up arguments like yours to try to make excuses for why the majority “have to” drive is bad-faith whataboutism.
Providing counter-arguments you clearly haven’t considered is not a bad-faith argument. Lobbing insults and strawman arguments (I never made the case that the majority of people have to drive) is arguing in bad faith.
I think there’s some nuance missing here.
I’ve lived in suburbs where the nearest public transit was 4 or 5 miles away.
The majority of the USA lives in what is considered rural suburbs. Aka the nearest place for work is more than 10 miles.
That’s a lie. Why are you lying?
Suburbs count as urban, not rural. www.census.gov/…/urban-rural-populations.html
I literally provided you data that shows that the majority of workers drive more than 10+ miles…most people are not in the middle of cities. Period. Stop trying to make it sound like the majority of the usa is in dense cities.
I mean…the census can define whatever it wants to define, but the rest of us still have to live in the real world.
Sure, you can call my satellite suburban neighborhood “urban”. But it’s 3 miles of twisting, turning roads just to reach the nearest convenience store. The nearest bus stop would be at least 7 miles away.
Maybe we shouldn’t rely solely on the Census Bureau in this regard? Perhaps a transportation authority of some sort would be able to provide better measuring stick for this particular discussion?
Your three replies to me keep talking about how things “are.” I’m talking about how that’s fucked up and has no excuse to be that way.
I DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE EXCUSES. 80% OF AMERICANS SHOULD HAVE ACCESS TO TRANSIT, AND THE FACT THAT A LOT OF THEM DON’T IS WRONG.
The suburbs were a mistake, and must be fixed. The “it is what it is” argument is nothing but a lazy goddamn cop-out. I don’t fucking want to hear it, and you shouldn’t either! Demand better.
If you don’t want to hear other people’s opinions, then you will never get your way. You will always be unhappy. Nothing will ever be good enough. People want to be heard. They like validation. And they definitely follow emotion before logic. But you can’t change the system without the help of other people, even people you don’t 100% agree with.
I speak from the heart and I speak with empathy. I FEEL YOU. I’m frustrated, too. I’m fed up.
Through the last few years, I’ve been thinking about moving out of the country. In terms of places that I can make a better life for myself, the pickings are slim. The USA isn’t the best country out there, but it’s not the worst by far. I’m openly LGBTQ, which automatically limits my options. I don’t have a lot of money, so Western Europe is too pricey. Etc, etc…but, yeah, eventually I’ll pull the trigger and just leave.
You want to convince people how wonderful things would be if only we do it your way? Then run for office. Seriously. If you are this passionate about changing the status quo, if you are 100% sure that your way is the right way, that’s what you should be doing. Change the world for the better, my friend, even for a brief moment. It’s more than I’ve been able to accomplish in a lifetime.
This might be true in some European countries, but it’s not in the US. You don’t have to be rural to not have public transportation options.
You don’t have to be rural to not have public transportation options.
But it does mean the lack of public transportation is illegitimate.
How so? It doesn’t exist. I can’t just will it into existence. It legitimately is not an option.
VardøgorEven in suburbia public transport is perfectly viable. You can set up networks of high-frequency stops places decently far apart, so the average person is maybe half a mile from the nearest stop. Then people can use micro-mobility options like scooters to cover that last mile.
And if there aren’t bike lanes or places for people to safely ride scooters? A city can create those overnight with a few traffic cones. There’s just no political will to do so. When gas is $7 a gallon, that might change.
Don’t know where you get your figures, but my research says otherwise.
45% of Americans have no access to public transportation at all, particularly in rural and outer suburban areas.
And, while 55% have access to public transit, it’s often not running when/where they need it to go. Or it might take hours of their life from them. Public transit isn’t such a great deal if it turns a 15 minute commute into 90 minutes. That’s an extra couple of hours per day of your time, unpaid and unproductive. It adds up.
But, this is the way the transit system is designed in the USA. It’s no accident that public transit is so inconvenient. Major car companies lobby against public transit, and the politicians gladly trade their integrity for a campaign contribution.
45% of Americans have no access to public transportation at all, particularly in rural and outer suburban areas.
And the primary reason for this is that gas is cheap and that there’s little political demand for public transport. Public transport sucks because only the poorest of the poor use it. In places where the working and middle class use it, it actually provides decent service.
Good public transport and low gas prices are mutually exclusive.
Are car brained people going to be the only ones affected by rising food prices due to an increase in transportation costs? How about those that don’t have any other means but to drive to work to make a living because public transportation isn’t available and buying an EV isn’t an option?
It’s not just an issue for car brained people, it’s also an issue for narrow minded people, such as yourself.
Oh no, rising food prices could be real. But that doesn’t mean other things should be expensive as well. There is always a chance to cut personal costs elsewhere - like transportation, for instance.
What I do believe is that it could be the thing that’s needed to push for better infrastructure and public transportation, but that won’t happen if you just look at it as if you’re only a victim and can’t do anything about it. If people can get vocal and push their (local) government to look at alternatives, you could achieve a lot. If you just want to sulk in a corner acting like “oh it’s bad and there’s nothing that can be done”, then you’re the narrow minded one. Look at the opportunity it brings and that could be solved in the medium/long term. Okay, you have a short term problem, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be solved. You said in another comment “because alternate options just pop up over night”. No, they don’t, but if you expect every problem to be fixed over night, you’re gonna have a very difficult life.
Oh no, rising food prices could be real. But that doesn’t mean other things should be expensive as well. There is always a chance to cut personal costs elsewhere - like transportation, for instance.
What I do believe is that it could be the thing that’s needed to push for better infrastructure and public transportation, but that won’t happen if you just look at it as if you’re only a victim and can’t do anything about it. If people can get vocal and push their (local) government to look at alternatives, you could achieve a lot. If you just want to sulk in a corner acting like “oh it’s bad and there’s nothing that can be done”, then you’re the narrow minded one. Look at the opportunity it brings and that could be solved in the medium/long term. Okay, you have a short term problem, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be solved. You said in another comment “because alternate options just pop up over night”. No, they don’t, but if you expect every problem to be fixed over night, you’re gonna have a very difficult life.
It’s a problem right now and getting worse. Long term goals for change are good, but in the best circumstances that takes years of planning and implementation.
People can cut personal costs, but that shouldn’t have to be done. That’s simply a work around for people to survive, but we’re here to live. I could turn my heat down to 50° in the house, but I shouldn’t have to live in discomfort to make ends meet. I could eat just rice and beans but I should be able to afford a balanced diet. Some of us can’t just cut costs on transportation because there aren’t any other options. Saying to just costs is a lot like victim blaming.
Oil products are used in a lot more things than just cars. But, you’re right. I’ll just ride a bike next time I have to travel 70 miles for one of my regular gigs.
Yeah, in a major metropolitan area.
Trains are cool! There’s like two train tracks that go through town and they only carry freight. There are no passenger trains anywhere around here.
We also have buses. They don’t come within 5 miles of me. Also a non-starter.
I guess it’s cool to hate cars if you live with your parents, but for those of us with bills to pay, we gotta go get that bread. But uh, have fun with your online gaming or whatever. It’s just not sustainable for most of us.