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trains rule
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2026
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They usually advise you not to get out of your car for the exact reason they advise you not to get off the train.
I'm not sure what's exclusive to trains about breaking down in the middle of nowhere. It's not exactly trivial to get a replacement car either, nor is repair somehow instant.
I get what you're saying, but it's way less one sided than you're trying to convey. My car once broke down on the freeway in a city. I had to wait more than an hour for a tow and then walk home, which took two hours. Had to get random coworkers or friends to take me to work while my car was repaired over the next two weeks.
Oh, and traffic jams are routine for cars.
Nothing is gained by pretending there's no downsides to any mode of transportation. They all have them. In aggregate though, most people would be better off if we had more available than just "car".
I'm not comparing the inconvenience of both situation from the breakdown to the cost of repair.
I'm talking specifically about getting stuck in train on a hot day. Is that really so difficult to understand?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/22/rail-passengers-travel-heatwave-train-services-chiltern
Have you ever seen red heat alert advisory telling people to drive only if necessary and take precautions? I haven't. Why do you think they issue those for trains but not cars?
https://www.gbnews.com/lifestyle/cars/weather-air-con-postpone-car-journeys-warning
I literally just searched for it and trivially found them.
They're specifically saying vehicles without air conditioning, while also discussing worsening road conditions, increased risk of breakdown, and a general need to limit travel.
They issue the warnings for trains and not cars because train rails expand in the heat, meaning service cancellation is more likely and deferring optional travel reduces stress on the system.
Any time there is stress on a transit system they advise people to skip using it if necessary.
Your position is not hard to understand. It's just one-sided because you're only considering the downsides of one method, and not considering what the same situation looks like for the other.
Exactly. They are talking about driving a car without AC. The rail one is talking about taking a train with AC.
Again, I'm not comparing the two modes of transportation and all their aspects. I'm not even saying that trains are bad and cars are better. I just pointed out that being stuck in a train during a heatwave is a terrible experience. It does happen and is a real concern for people in Spain. I personally know claustrophobic people that avoid trains for that reason and prefer to take a bus. The big difference for them is that they can get out of a broken bus while you can't just leave the train whenever you want. Many people don't like being stuck.
Those are all simple facts but people here are so adamant that trains are better in every way they can't accept them. They will instead argue that you can in fact open windows and doors in a train (you can't) or start talking about the total repair time of a car (irrelevant).
It's not exactly irrelevant when you brought up repair time and alternative transportation.
I feel like you didn't read your own article. The AC on the train doesn't really factor into their warning.
They advised people to avoid the train to avoid congestion of the system because trains travel slower when the rails heat up.
They advised people to defer car travel because roads will be more congested due to heat causing mechanical issues in car engines. They also said if you don't have ac that it could be actively dangerous.
Listing a big list of cons for one and then saying the other one doesn't have them really makes it seem like a comparison, particularly when it doesn't seem like an equally applied standard.
Ok, you're right. Whatever you're trying to say about cars vs trains is true. Statistically they are equally dangerous during heatwaves. Shit, let's even say cars are more dangerous. And take longer to repair. And are more expensive. You can even say trains never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down. I don't really care about all this. We only started talking about it all because people like you are not able to accept that being stuck in a hot train is a shitty experience. You can't admit that while you can exit a car you can't exit a train whenever you want. You have to talk about everything else because for some reason this simple fact ruins your world view. I don't know why and, frankly, I don't care.
If you don't care, why are you putting so much effort into arguing it and getting so defensive?
You're acting like no one is understanding or accepting what you're saying. I responded to you saying a train malfunction leaves you stranded in the middle of nowhere for hours, and a car malfunction doesn't. Which is a a preposterous statement.
You then followed up with an article about skipping optional travel due to possible delays and capacity issues and took that as evidence that the air conditioning was the problem.
You haven't shattered my world view, you've made a shitty argument and then gotten sad when people said it was shitty.
Because obviously no one is. Even you're still talking about "being stranded" while I very clearly explained I'm talking about not being able to exit the train. For some reason you can't admit that people get stuck on trains.
The only thing that made me sad is realizing how many people don't know how trains work.
Ah, I see what happened. You had a point about one thing. "No ac on train bad, and if they don't let you off it's very uncomfortable".
You backed that up with a bunch of stuff that didn't make sense. People responded to that stuff, and you got pissy that no one listened to the part you cared about.
Can you see why maybe I would respond to statements about being stranded when that's most of your comment? Why an article about train congestion is confusing if your point is "stuck on train bad"?
You can't get too upset when people respond to the words that you say instead of the points you wanted them to pay attention to.
That's fair. To my defense, this discussion would look different if I didn't have to reply 50 times that actually no, you can't open windows in trains and no, you can't just get out. It's easy to lose track of all the replies when most of them are nonsense from people that never saw a modern train. I don't think I "got pissy" about your comments regarding cars. They sounded reasonable, just off-topic.
Rewinding to the very beginning, what here doesn't make sense? Many train tracks are fenced and not close to any infrastructure. It can be very difficult to move people to a bus because of it. It's pretty much impossible to put people on another train (because trains can't overtake other trains). You pretty much have to fix the issue before the train can leave which can take many hours. With a car/bus you're right next to the road, you can be easily towed or replacement bus can be sent. At least that's the reality where I live.
Mostly I disagreed with the comparative ease you implied for mechanical troubles with cars. I've never had or heard of a tow truck getting there that fast outside of things like highway blocking accidents. Holding up the time of repairs and alternative transportation as specific downsides of trains also felt off, as did the remoteness.
https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/amtrak-passengers-stuck-for-hours-on-stranded-train-near-battle-creek/
This is a story more like what I imagine with a train breakdown. The "middle of nowhere" was a half mile from a road, ten from a city and near enough to a city that they got busses in a few hours. It's by no means nice but it's not quite "stuck in a mountain pass for the winter".
In my experience cars often go to places far more inaccessible, so it seems odd to single out trains.
To me the biggest difficulty would be the slowed information flow. When my car breaks down I know exactly how much I can do to repair it before I call or start walking. I have no idea where the mechanical assessment of the train is so I don't know when to bail.
Edit:
Oh, right: they put fences around the train tracks? They don't do that here that I've seen outside of junctions. Much bigger fences around the highways.
Where is here? In Spain high speed railway is fenced:
We're talking barbed wire. But you're right, in different places the trains and tracks are different so breakdowns are handled in another way. Where I live railway very often looks like this:
or this:
You're not walking people out of there. I don't know people who remember car breakdown as a traumatic experience. I do know people who had very unpleasant experiences in trains. That's all. Trains are great, we should be investing in trains and promoting them but there are limits to what trains can do.
Heh, "here" is the US. We built roads next to nearly all of the train tracks and we don't have high speed rail.
A pretty normal arrangement:
This is what freeways look like in a lot of cities:
Either that, or elevated. When you get to the suburbs they tend to start putting up sound barriers:
You can also just be on a road so remote that it takes forever for someone to even notice you.
We have a lot of people die every year trying to walk off the highways from getting hit and, in the winter particularly, there's messaging about not leaving your car because of the danger.
As a result of all that, this is the most light-hearted way of describing how the comment landed: