4 ms·

and ... one can waste time and money for a few hours every day in it driving to and from work, so that one can then complain about having a shitty life.

gaius 8y ago
Or do the same journey by other means? In a car you have a seat, your choice of temperature and ambient sound, your stuff secured, etc. Infinitely more pleasant that being crammed in like a sardine on the train.
- duncanriach 8y ago
  Or work from home, or start your own business, or travel at different times, or move closer to work and save money, or rent a room near work, or change jobs, or ...
- timellis-smith 8y ago
  I commute daily to work. By car it would take about an hour. Taking the train takes 1:15 (of which 40 minutes is train). However, I can use this time productively (in my case studying). Because of this I'm most of the way in getting the AWS certifications. Taking the car just makes me really grumpy at other cars and people, such that I've often found I'm arriving home in a bad mood. Each to their own, but I wouldn't rule out public transport (even with terrible rail operators).
- jakecopp 8y ago
  Yes it's comfortable, but super space inefficient - 18 feet of road space times a lane for one human. By all means cars are great, until our devotion to them makes us build 12 lane freeways rather than civilized mass transit. Nothing screams civilized country like high speed and efficient trains.
salawat 8y ago
Again, though. That only happens when wages gained from one's job are insufficient to allow time to be spent doing anything else but going to and from work. It is indeed a common phenomena, but the problem is a great deal more complex than the automobile and the road. When you have corporations acting as turbopumps, doing their damnedest to absorb consumer spending power in the name of never-ending growth... It is not surprising that urban road use quite literally sucks the quality out of one's life. I find it interesting that there seems to be so much fascination with modes of transport controlled by someone else in this day and age. I'd think cloud computing and most of the shenanigans tech companies get away with would have caused people pause when it comes to pawning off their control over their means of travel.

gaius 8y ago

Or do the same journey by other means? In a car you have a seat, your choice of temperature and ambient sound, your stuff secured, etc. Infinitely more pleasant that being crammed in like a sardine on the train.

duncanriach 8y ago
Or work from home, or start your own business, or travel at different times, or move closer to work and save money, or rent a room near work, or change jobs, or ...
timellis-smith 8y ago
I commute daily to work. By car it would take about an hour. Taking the train takes 1:15 (of which 40 minutes is train). However, I can use this time productively (in my case studying). Because of this I'm most of the way in getting the AWS certifications. Taking the car just makes me really grumpy at other cars and people, such that I've often found I'm arriving home in a bad mood. Each to their own, but I wouldn't rule out public transport (even with terrible rail operators).
jakecopp 8y ago
Yes it's comfortable, but super space inefficient - 18 feet of road space times a lane for one human. By all means cars are great, until our devotion to them makes us build 12 lane freeways rather than civilized mass transit. Nothing screams civilized country like high speed and efficient trains.

salawat 8y ago

Again, though. That only happens when wages gained from one's job are insufficient to allow time to be spent doing anything else but going to and from work. It is indeed a common phenomena, but the problem is a great deal more complex than the automobile and the road. When you have corporations acting as turbopumps, doing their damnedest to absorb consumer spending power in the name of never-ending growth... It is not surprising that urban road use quite literally sucks the quality out of one's life. I find it interesting that there seems to be so much fascination with modes of transport controlled by someone else in this day and age. I'd think cloud computing and most of the shenanigans tech companies get away with would have caused people pause when it comes to pawning off their control over their means of travel.