Checkmate!

> setting has bikes and trains

> still using cars as main form of transportation

It takes time to come to the realization that a lot of what we do is inefficient because that's just what people are used to doing. Some towns survive solely due to coal mining, and they see it as an existential threat if it were shut down. Nuclear power also takes very knowledgeable individuals, years of planning, and many resources to get started. Coal is cheap, dirty, and primitive.

I feel like it would be much more effort to tame a flying creature or magic, with the latter often being displayed as a life-long commitment.

Yahtzee's book Will Save the Galaxy for Food actually covers this, in a sci-fi way. In the future, all transportation is done via Quantum Tunnelling, so guess what job suddenly became obsolete? Space pilots. Space pilots now only exist because people have nostalgia for the old days, reducing pilots to little more than tour guides and adventure holidays.

It's like in those MMOs where you can teleport basically anywhere, but you still have mounts and yes you can travel from one end of the map to the other on your horse, admiring the scenery, or you could just click the coordinates someone pasted into the chat to get to the world boss you're supposed to kill for the most optimum play... Lookin' at you, Guild Wars 2!

Imagine a government so cartoonishly evil and/or stupid that it would develop nuclear technology, then use it to extract fossil fuels more profitably. No need, the USA tried.

You know I just realized I need to get a quick deployment and dedeployment windsurfing parachute to propel my bicycle when the wind is, well, normal here.

has anon considered, that maybe, horses are just extremely fucking cool, and that is why?

World that has nuclear coal energy, but rides magical horses as the main transport.

I'm amazed how in fantasy settings with houndreds of humanized species, all being like horse, oxes, cows, pigs, parrots and what not... but acts like humans and have similar social status as humans.. still, meat is being pushed as the core diet in these worlds. It's so importantt to push this narrative that not even fantasy worlds are safe, even though it just gets weird (and prob really dark) with how that world otherwise works.