Dortmunds new trams were intentionally bought without AC (www1.wdr.de)

submitted 9 hours ago by 7bicycles@hexbear.net to c/urbanism@hexbear.net

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The funniest argument and the reason I share this is that since the utilities company that provides the tram service has a ratified goal of becoming CO2-Neutral eventually, they've elected to not buy ACs since they'd consume about 7 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year and ACs aren't sustainable. I assume the 50°C tram is gonna be a big hit as per transportation in the upcoming summers.

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[-] AstroStelar@hexbear.net 30 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

The fact that the municipal utility company (DSW21) has opted against installing air conditioning for these reasons is being criticized by, among others, the Dortmund Green Party, led by their parliamentary group spokesperson Kathrin Lögering. This, in turn, angers the DSW21 operations manager. He argues that, along with other parties in the Dortmund city council, the Greens in particular have consistently pushed for the utility company to become CO2 -neutral "by a certain date ." However, he maintains that installing air conditioning is anything but sustainable.

Meanwhile, earlier in the article the first argument the utility company gives for skipping AC is saving money, which fuels my theory that "systainability" is a fig leaf for the real reason that is infrastructure spending and austerity.

[-] 7bicycles@hexbear.net 21 points 8 hours ago

I think in this specific case it's more the deeply entrenched thought that AC = bad. Cars were always an exception here once AC became a standard thing but the country is still building new hospitals without AC.

[-] ourtimewillcome@hexbear.net 14 points 7 hours ago

the reason this line of thinking is so entrenched is because all major german societal organisations and political parties are so deep in the car industry’s pockets that they might as well be front groups.

[-] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 10 points 8 hours ago

Each article vaguely related to heatwaves has to include a paragraph about someone being surprised that the Green party is favor of ACs and has been for a while.