You are allowed hate something you own and depend on. What I find fuck cars people are about is how much cars are catered for and it’s still horrible to use in a lot of places.
Normally I live in a, relatively speaking, new city - and everything is so bloody far away, sure some things are more centralised but plenty of things are getting built in places with no public transport connections or an easy way to walk to.
For 3 years at uni I lived in a very old town, and everything, just everything, was in the town centre, you could walk everywhere with no issues.
The difference is one place was built for people, and the other was built for cars.
I live in a third world country and have to usually have to take taxis to get anywhere without being a sweaty mess and I’d love to the point where public transportation can get you anywhere in the metro, similar to how Hong Kong (where income taxes are pretty low as far as I know) does it.
I wonder how many people will be forced to buy a car to be able to function in society even though they hate the idea owning a car and in any other developed nation they could go car free in an equivalent city because they have better public transport and/or bike infrastructure
A lot. Because our infrastructure and zoning basically demand you buy a car. That’s not the point. The point is to advocate change through local government.
Cars are a form of personal transportation. Personal transportation is great, things like bikes and escooters can get people around very quickly. The problem with cars is that they go too fast, and they take up too much space.
It’s a tragedy of the commons. Cars would be great if they were only used by professional drivers, didn’t require parking, and were limited to how many could fit on the roads without causing traffic. (These are called busses and taxis)
All cities in the 60s and 70s were excited about cars. Even cities that would be considered “anti-car” nowadays, like NYC, Paris, and Amsterdam, were excited about cars and building massive highways. However, what most people realized, is that building enough parking, and building wide enough roads to handle all the cars is really hard (and in some cases, literally impossible). Residents realized that they didn’t want any more of their city to be bulldozed for yet another highway or parking lot, and went fuckcars.
On top of that, this all happened before we understood the impacts of cars on climate change and mental health.
So yes, we built car-dependent places because it was convenient, and now we’re de-carifying those places because it was a terrible decision.
It is just as irrational for me to make the claim I made as you to make yours without evidence. Fortunately the arguments against car-dependent infrastructure planning go far beyond “we don’t like 'em”. The human and environmental benefits of walkable cities with robust public transit and the unsustainability of car-dependency speak for themselves. What other issue of political advocacy would “some people disagree” fly as a reasonable argument? The whole point of advocacy is to shift the tide of popular opinion enough to make material change
Yep most car owners whose cars are not unreliable pieces of shit do enjoy their cars. I’ve been careful over the years to only buy cars that I would enjoy driving and owning. Zero regrets about any of my 5 car purchases. I only sometimes regret selling a couple of them.
Of course I own a car, you need to own one to get anywhere where I live. That doesn’t mean I have to support car infrastructure or be against public transit. I advocate for making public transit services more common and easier to use, and I would use public transit if my supported policies were implemented.
I honestly don’t get their argument. Yes, the current situation is bad and will necessitate using cars, but isn’t that the point of the post? That things could be better? That getting to the reality where cars are not as needed would be great? It’s such a strange attack against people who want better public transportation infrastructure.
Most of us aren’t arguing that a decrease in dependence on vehicles isn’t beneficial or worth the time. We’re tired of being implicitly blamed for just trying to exist in an established system. The very first words in this post are “STOP DRIVING CARS” like we have a choice or that would fix anything or that it’s our responsibility to upend how we live our life for “the cause”.
I used to visit fuck cars, back when I was on Reddit. I own two cars, and I look forward to a time when I only need them to tow a trailer and/or go on holiday
I’m in Germany. That’s how long it takes with the trains to get to my Workplace. And I still rather work from Home because I don’t have to travel 3 to 4 hours a day.
Holy shit you guys have bad infrastructure. Even worse than ours.
I also generally rather use the train despite its problems. Especially when I’m not sure if I will be drinking or taking other drugs.
Not really, the images and travel descriptions you’re reading here are the exception, not the rule. The US has great infrastructure, just not for public transportation as there isn’t enough centralized usage and the locations are far apart. It would take me 4 hours to go to work by bus, but it takes me 25 min by car.
That sounds like it’s a vicious cycle. There isn’t any public transport so there are no people using the public transport which causes public transports to be bad, so there isn’t anybody using it
Cool. I’ve been working for 8 years, commuting in the range of 10-15 km to my various places of work throughout that period, with the exception of the pandemic period during which I worked remotely.
Not once have I driven a car to any of my jobs. A mix of public transportation and cycling has covered all of my needs, and I wouldn’t have saved any time by opting to drive.
This invalidates this terrible comment, so let’s not keep repeating.
Hi, im 26 years old and i have the money to get a car and make enough money to Use the car.
But i dont have one, i use every day the train to get to work. 5 min with bike to the trainstation 31 min with the train, 5 min on foot to my work place, 5 min back to the trainstation, 22 min back with train and 10-15 min with my bike home.
With a car I would need 38 min (gmaps).
I pay 49€ in month and can use bus or trai In whole Germany.
With a car it would be 66km per day. The car of our family uses 6,5 L/ 100km 66km = 4,29L × 20 (workdays) =85,8L * 1,82 (price per liter fuel)= 155,61€ and that is only the fuel with out the tax for the car insurance and not the wear out and without the 2 year controll checkup.
And with that I can say train is faster and cheaper for me so I don’t need a car.
Tried that. If you want to rent for the weekend you waste a bunch of time picking up and dropping off the vehicle. And say you are using it for camping, you have to pack all your stuff that same day then unload everything before drop off. There are also restrictions as to where you can take rentals, like gravel roads are off limits. Just some examples
Yeah, no. I have a car and I hate driving it. I hate others having cars and driving them. I hate public transport being ignored over car infrastructure leaving them completely impractical. I hate our cities being ruined in order to work around cars, when metros are underground, and trains are overground but take way less space since they can take in way more people and transfer them way faster. I hate car accidents being one of the leading causes of death in my country. Fuck cars
These people are ridiculous. They want to gaslight people who have to drive into thinking we’re bad people and when we call them out on the fact that there is no public transit infrastructure built they’re just like “well all people have to do is build the infrastructure!” Bitch where? And who? And how do we make them? And with what money? I’m so sick of hearing “you should drive a smart car because it makes sense for my DINK ass and I know what’s best”. My home is in an ocean of suburbia. They gonna just bulldoze a whole swath of homes to install a rail? They’ve been talking about installing a rail from DFW to Austin/Houston for the past 40 years and there was even room for it once upon a time. You can’t just say the magical solution is to just “build trains”. We don’t love our cars, these fuckcars people are just lunatics. As you point out the vast majority of them are almost certainly children. The rest are fortunate enough to have never experienced a place with poor public transit.
I didn’t. Even when I lived an hour away from my job, it was about as fast by train as driving, and I could spend that time productively or relaxing instead of concentrating on.
If it takes twice as long without a car, that’s a problem that should be solved!
I’m 46, the parts of my life where I haven’t needed to use a car every day have been great for my physical and mental health … now I live too far from work I use a little 125 motorbike to commute, and it’s still much nicer than having to take a car. When I am forced to take a car, the one I have is small and economical.
I didn’t start figuring this out until I was 30, maybe you need a few more years to mature enough to throw off the consumerist mindset?
Traditional pre-car villages were all walkable and all had their own train station. They sprawled out and lost their train stations when cars came around.
I live in a village with about 1000 residents and I have to say that it’s ok to get everywhere. It just becomes a problem if you want to drive back late or on Sundays because the bus doesn’t come at that time
To the nearest train station I need around an hour when I walk. Usually that’s not needed though. After that it’s another hour to the nearest large city
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You are allowed hate something you own and depend on. What I find fuck cars people are about is how much cars are catered for and it’s still horrible to use in a lot of places.
absolutely.
Normally I live in a, relatively speaking, new city - and everything is so bloody far away, sure some things are more centralised but plenty of things are getting built in places with no public transport connections or an easy way to walk to.
For 3 years at uni I lived in a very old town, and everything, just everything, was in the town centre, you could walk everywhere with no issues.
The difference is one place was built for people, and the other was built for cars.
I live in a third world country and have to usually have to take taxis to get anywhere without being a sweaty mess and I’d love to the point where public transportation can get you anywhere in the metro, similar to how Hong Kong (where income taxes are pretty low as far as I know) does it.
let me translate what you just asked
A lot. Because our infrastructure and zoning basically demand you buy a car. That’s not the point. The point is to advocate change through local government.
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Cars are a form of personal transportation. Personal transportation is great, things like bikes and escooters can get people around very quickly. The problem with cars is that they go too fast, and they take up too much space.
It’s a tragedy of the commons. Cars would be great if they were only used by professional drivers, didn’t require parking, and were limited to how many could fit on the roads without causing traffic. (These are called busses and taxis)
All cities in the 60s and 70s were excited about cars. Even cities that would be considered “anti-car” nowadays, like NYC, Paris, and Amsterdam, were excited about cars and building massive highways. However, what most people realized, is that building enough parking, and building wide enough roads to handle all the cars is really hard (and in some cases, literally impossible). Residents realized that they didn’t want any more of their city to be bulldozed for yet another highway or parking lot, and went fuckcars.
On top of that, this all happened before we understood the impacts of cars on climate change and mental health.
So yes, we built car-dependent places because it was convenient, and now we’re de-carifying those places because it was a terrible decision.
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People outside of your bubble largely dislike cars.
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It is just as irrational for me to make the claim I made as you to make yours without evidence. Fortunately the arguments against car-dependent infrastructure planning go far beyond “we don’t like 'em”. The human and environmental benefits of walkable cities with robust public transit and the unsustainability of car-dependency speak for themselves. What other issue of political advocacy would “some people disagree” fly as a reasonable argument? The whole point of advocacy is to shift the tide of popular opinion enough to make material change
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I have plenty of friends and family in the us and Sweden who own cars. I dont know a single person who enjoys driving to work.
My point still stands, cars are nice for the first 10k people to drive, but they fucking suck for the other 40k+ people in your city.
Yep most car owners whose cars are not unreliable pieces of shit do enjoy their cars. I’ve been careful over the years to only buy cars that I would enjoy driving and owning. Zero regrets about any of my 5 car purchases. I only sometimes regret selling a couple of them.
The infrastructure came first. It was specifically lobbied for to force people to buy cars.
You can’t take the train before the tracks are laid down.
Go to Europe my friend. You can go from Madrid to Barcelona for $30 on a train that goes over 300 km/h.
The car industry lobbies to tear up public infrastructure, dingus.
Of course I own a car, you need to own one to get anywhere where I live. That doesn’t mean I have to support car infrastructure or be against public transit. I advocate for making public transit services more common and easier to use, and I would use public transit if my supported policies were implemented.
I honestly don’t get their argument. Yes, the current situation is bad and will necessitate using cars, but isn’t that the point of the post? That things could be better? That getting to the reality where cars are not as needed would be great? It’s such a strange attack against people who want better public transportation infrastructure.
Most of us aren’t arguing that a decrease in dependence on vehicles isn’t beneficial or worth the time. We’re tired of being implicitly blamed for just trying to exist in an established system. The very first words in this post are “STOP DRIVING CARS” like we have a choice or that would fix anything or that it’s our responsibility to upend how we live our life for “the cause”.
THAT is what pisses us off.
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I used to visit fuck cars, back when I was on Reddit. I own two cars, and I look forward to a time when I only need them to tow a trailer and/or go on holiday
Oh look, you are this guy
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Yeah, buddy, widely used meme can perfectly answer your “well-thought out” “criticism”. Maybe it’s a comment on your position, eh?
I’m in Germany. That’s how long it takes with the trains to get to my Workplace. And I still rather work from Home because I don’t have to travel 3 to 4 hours a day.
Holy shit you guys have bad infrastructure. Even worse than ours.
I also generally rather use the train despite its problems. Especially when I’m not sure if I will be drinking or taking other drugs.
Not really, the images and travel descriptions you’re reading here are the exception, not the rule. The US has great infrastructure, just not for public transportation as there isn’t enough centralized usage and the locations are far apart. It would take me 4 hours to go to work by bus, but it takes me 25 min by car.
That sounds like it’s a vicious cycle. There isn’t any public transport so there are no people using the public transport which causes public transports to be bad, so there isn’t anybody using it
“great infrastructure, just not for public transportation” sounds to me like another way to say “shit infrastructure”
Ah, yes. Minimizing other people’s arguments by implying they don’t have jobs.
This is a bad comment that you should probably delete.
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Cool. I’ve been working for 8 years, commuting in the range of 10-15 km to my various places of work throughout that period, with the exception of the pandemic period during which I worked remotely.
Not once have I driven a car to any of my jobs. A mix of public transportation and cycling has covered all of my needs, and I wouldn’t have saved any time by opting to drive.
This invalidates this terrible comment, so let’s not keep repeating.
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The point is your generalization is disingenuously dismissive and insultingly reductive
Hi, im 26 years old and i have the money to get a car and make enough money to Use the car. But i dont have one, i use every day the train to get to work. 5 min with bike to the trainstation 31 min with the train, 5 min on foot to my work place, 5 min back to the trainstation, 22 min back with train and 10-15 min with my bike home. With a car I would need 38 min (gmaps). I pay 49€ in month and can use bus or trai In whole Germany. With a car it would be 66km per day. The car of our family uses 6,5 L/ 100km 66km = 4,29L × 20 (workdays) =85,8L * 1,82 (price per liter fuel)= 155,61€ and that is only the fuel with out the tax for the car insurance and not the wear out and without the 2 year controll checkup. And with that I can say train is faster and cheaper for me so I don’t need a car.
Congrats for living somewhere where that’s viable
Where I live in in Canada you can’t even expect the bus to show up at all, nevermind on time
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Well its only a problem if its night and im drunk. A car wouldnt help except there is a not drunken driver.
Renting is a concept that exists, just in case you were unaware.
Tried that. If you want to rent for the weekend you waste a bunch of time picking up and dropping off the vehicle. And say you are using it for camping, you have to pack all your stuff that same day then unload everything before drop off. There are also restrictions as to where you can take rentals, like gravel roads are off limits. Just some examples
Yeah, no. I have a car and I hate driving it. I hate others having cars and driving them. I hate public transport being ignored over car infrastructure leaving them completely impractical. I hate our cities being ruined in order to work around cars, when metros are underground, and trains are overground but take way less space since they can take in way more people and transfer them way faster. I hate car accidents being one of the leading causes of death in my country. Fuck cars
These people are ridiculous. They want to gaslight people who have to drive into thinking we’re bad people and when we call them out on the fact that there is no public transit infrastructure built they’re just like “well all people have to do is build the infrastructure!” Bitch where? And who? And how do we make them? And with what money? I’m so sick of hearing “you should drive a smart car because it makes sense for my DINK ass and I know what’s best”. My home is in an ocean of suburbia. They gonna just bulldoze a whole swath of homes to install a rail? They’ve been talking about installing a rail from DFW to Austin/Houston for the past 40 years and there was even room for it once upon a time. You can’t just say the magical solution is to just “build trains”. We don’t love our cars, these fuckcars people are just lunatics. As you point out the vast majority of them are almost certainly children. The rest are fortunate enough to have never experienced a place with poor public transit.
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I didn’t. Even when I lived an hour away from my job, it was about as fast by train as driving, and I could spend that time productively or relaxing instead of concentrating on.
If it takes twice as long without a car, that’s a problem that should be solved!
I’m 46, the parts of my life where I haven’t needed to use a car every day have been great for my physical and mental health … now I live too far from work I use a little 125 motorbike to commute, and it’s still much nicer than having to take a car. When I am forced to take a car, the one I have is small and economical.
I didn’t start figuring this out until I was 30, maybe you need a few more years to mature enough to throw off the consumerist mindset?
I have never had a commute longer than 40 min each way. I had a 5 minute commute once, too.
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If your city and region got rid of cars, you could have that, too.
Not if they’re living on the the village
Traditional pre-car villages were all walkable and all had their own train station. They sprawled out and lost their train stations when cars came around.
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Tradition: 5 min bike to village station, 15 min train to local city, 15 min train to neighboring city, 5 min bike to destination, cost 2€
Modernity: 1 hour of focused labor in traffic, 5 min walk through parking garage, cost 20€
I live in a village with about 1000 residents and I have to say that it’s ok to get everywhere. It just becomes a problem if you want to drive back late or on Sundays because the bus doesn’t come at that time
To the nearest train station I need around an hour when I walk. Usually that’s not needed though. After that it’s another hour to the nearest large city
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