cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49253586
The "cars mean freedom" meme of the past few generations needs to die so bad. Cars are conformity.
Cars are consumerist. Cars are alienating. Cars kill cities. Cars fucking suck. Electric cars fucking suck too.
I'm not denying some people need one, but when I'm driving a car it's only because I'm out of all the better options.
PS I'm sorry if you reading this like cars, I also like some bad things. But that doesn't make them not bad.
Coming back from my small island devoid of mass transit, I took a Paris->Marseille train and legitimately rediscovered the luxury of cutting through the entire country in 3hrs time without so much as a bump or a honk. No wine was involved though
I took cross country train trips in both the United States and Italy this year, and the difference was striking. Going over 200MPH from Naples to Florence with my pick of several high speed departures per hour compared to riding the Lake Shore Limited and spending over an hour in Buffalo as it couples the Boston and New York legs together because running 2 trains a day is a bit too much for Amtrak.
I will say that the old Amfleets had far comfier seats though!
When I was a truck driver, audiobooks were the reason I absolutely didn't mind traffic jams.
Ironically the Acela in the northeast corridor of the USA does have a bar car where you can buy and drink wine / beer. It is the commute for lots of people, it was Biden's commute when he was a senator.
I love Acela but damn if I don't buy tickets a month in advance it so expensive. We need more light rail infrastructure to drive their price down.
i'm curious how light rail would help the acela? Surely what the acela needs is just.. more departures..
Love the acela! Just got an automatic full refund due to a 2hr delay, imagine that happening on any other form of transport.
This reads as if all Europeans ride trains in Alps multiple times a day. Guys... Nice view might be somewhere in Italy, France or Switzerland. Your typical speed train from Berlin to Frankfurt would have only fields and woods, and occasional city pass-through.
This also applies only to countries where rail network is developed. Take some Baltic countries or some far east Europe countries and your commute from city A to city B in a train would be a mild annoyance at best and a nightmare at worst. You'd also be lucky if train goes more than 3 times a day or if trains go more than just capital to 2nd biggest city. Driving car in these countries is bareable. Also, population density makes it not feasible to connect two cities with a population around or lower than 20k with each other.
Source: Latvian who moved to Germany.
are you saying fields and woods isn't a nice view? lol
Riding into Frankfurt for example can be quite nice tho. You see the skyscrapers in the distance while riding at 250-300 km/h through gently rolling hills dotted with small villages while drinking your free bahnbonus beer...
True: riding trains is not all alpine landscapes dreamrides, but it's often through a nice landscape nonetheless, just not as spectacular. Being in a 1h delayed train still beats being in a 1h car traffic jam imo
I've taken a train through ~~Baltic~~ Balkan countries. Granted it was Croatia to Slovenia, but holy shit the ride toward Ljubljana along the Sava felt idyllic. However even a more mundane urban train commute in Europe would be eye-opening to most Americans. The tweet is being intentionally hyperbolic.
i think you mean balkan
Yes lol thank you.
estonian here, it's lowk chill here.
far east Europe countries
Does Slovakia count?
The shorter routes can be fairly slow. "Finally, we are going fast! The train has reached the top speed of 40km/h!"
Also, some older units can be awful. No air-conditioning is one thing. But I also encountered a different issue. I don't have a noise level meter, but if you're taking something like the old railbus between Zvolen and Horná Štubňa, bring hearing protection. I at least had earphones, but god damn, that shit is loud.
Congrats, you took a train ride through a rural area. Side effects may include: heatstroke, muffled hearing, tinnitus.
I posted this exact screenshot on the fuckcars sub on Reddit. I was hoping there would be people here who understood the spirit and point of the post instead of squabbling over traffic and trains and how often people are in traffic and whether people take trains through the Alps or not.
I'm sorely disappointed.
I posted to reddit
I'm sore disappointed
Well you did this to yourself
Funny cause its true
I think this person has never been to germany
for all that germany is car-brained it's so much fucking better than america it's hilarious to even compare them, when germans consider their public transport "unusably horrid" it's still better service than most of america can even fathom running.
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags: