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lmao 'better collaboration across european borders'

I mean we should always be working towards more progress but the EU has been collaborating in a peaceful manner never seen before in human history, and to hold EU citizenship gives you privilege over pretty much the entire rest of the world. Public infrastructure is super advanced compared to shitholes like the US.

Currently live in Portugal and the rail network sucks. Talk of a high speed link through Spain but Spain doesn’t want to play ball. Central Europe has great rail but move to the edges and it’s absolute ass. (Have lived in Germany and France where the situation is much better)

I'm not a victim of car infrastructure, I'm a beneficiary of it. I'm glad we have roads I can drive on to get to stores and work and interesting venues for entertainment. I live in a nice rural area with woods surrounding my house. All this discussion about "car centric" everything seemingly assumes that city life is the only life from the start, and that's not the case. I would never want to give up my awesome rural life for a stifling crowded city.

Care to explain? Is that based on electricity average generation, or manufacturing, or something else? Tesla chargers are often powered by renewables even if the surrounding grid is not

I wonder if it's worth it to build electric trains.

It's not that clear-cut. It is instantly worse for the environment but over the lifetime of the vehicle likely won't be, especially considering the low price of wind and solar are making energy refills more environmentally friendly every day.

No it's not EVs are 60% less polluting than fuel vehicles, it's irrelevant if you buy it used because it's history is part of its impact.

The over arching problem is there's too many vehicles on the road, most people including Americans when they drive only drive up to 3 miles.

then we'd better get started!

That's why we should start today.

I think the goal is to have public transport (where needed) to improve quality of life and to design cities/towns for people rather than cars. 15 minute cities, accessibility, walking paths, bike paths, etc. and public transport would be supplementary or for longer distances. There are some really good YouTube channels about urban design like Not Just Bikes and City Beautiful to name a couple that have some really great vids on the topic.

That is literally the issue. "While they suppress our medicine" refers to how lots of cities are designed car centric now.

Adam Something has an amazing video on this.

Because its a net benefit for the vast majority of daily use cases.

Why would literally anyone not support that.

And i dont mean nobody can ever drive anything again, its just silly to day "i dont support the extension of public transport"

what if you lived in a place that was designed right, such that it wouldn't be a massive loss to your quality of life if you went car-free or car-lite?

what if the place you live right now was designed right, such that it wouldn't be a massive loss to your quality of life if you went car-free or car-lite?

I think the cost of engineering a suspended tram network would be undercut by simply having them underground!

But I think the fact you've gone for effectively a car network, just with different infrastructure, highlights something interesting about the way we think about how we need to get around. We prize autonomy very highly, and so for people that do there's a few ideas (that have in a few places been implemented already!) that you might find interesting.

The key problem with cars is that, once you've invested in owning one, it's just very efficient to use for everything. So if we want to move away from cars, we need to address every type of trip, rather than just some. High speed rail and timetabled buses address those long distance, city-city journeys, or commuting from suburbs to the city centre. What isn't addressed are those 'short hops' that people want to make, e.g. within suburbs

For example, in some places we're starting to see the proliferation of demand-responsive public transport. The idea is you have what is effectively a minibus with an attached app, and people book the route they want to take on the app. An optimal route is then calculated for the day to pick people up and drop them where they need to go. This is ideal for certain trips people couldn't take on a car -- for example, going to the hospital and undergoing anaesthetic that prevents driving after -- or for allowing people in suburban areas to get rid of cars entirely if they only need them for irregular, one-off trips.

Another example is e-cargo bike rental. In the suburbs it's often sensible to do a weekly shop as the supermarket is a fair distance away, and it's impractical to do so by bus. So what we're starting to see in some places is e-cargo bikes (basically an electric bike with a big trailer) scattered around suburbs to allow people to rent them for a short time to do their weekly shop.

Finally, there's car share services like co-wheels, that allow for short term use of cars for trips like holidays or visiting rural areas that would otherwise require a car.

Each of these addresses different types of journey that aren't well addressed by traditional types of public transport, and with the emphasis on efficient networks to deal with climate change and air pollution we may well start to see more of these in the long term.