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Chiming in from Los Angeles, USA to say wow, must be nice living in a modern society that prioritizes public transit and peoples' ease of movement. I know, I kn
by kr2 1y ago
Chiming in from Los Angeles, USA to say wow, must be nice living in a modern society that prioritizes public transit and peoples' ease of movement. I know, I know, it comes with trade offs of living in an authoritarian state, but the absolute abysmal state of infrastructure in this country is maddening. Ever been on a train in Denmark or Japan or Switzerland?
- wonnage 1y agoSeems like the form of government doesn't really matter, you can find examples from literally any end of the spectrum of better public infrastructure
- petesergeant 1y agoSuffrage is at the top of the hierarchy of needs, with decent infrastructure, decent wages, and public safety being much more fundamental needs for many people. There’s a reason that so many Filipinos, Indians, and Pakistanis choose to work in the Gulf.
- GrqP 1y agoThank gawd for self driving cars…
- sidibe 1y agoI hope the end state of self driving will be buses or vans doing on demand routing like Uber Pool is supposed to be but on a larger scale and maybe with fewer points for pickup and drop off.
- riffraff 1y agoWhen I took an operations research class our teacher mentioned they had done a study on Rome's traffic and the best solution (optimizing for travel time etc) was mini-buses (~20 people) serving shorter routes. Alas, nothing came of that study, and traffic in Rome has not improved in the incurring ~30 years.
- dgellow 1y agohttps://www.moia.io/de-DE/mitfahren/standorte https://www.moia.io/de-DE/mitfahren/standorte
- sampton 1y agoI don’t know. This check and balance thing is not exactly working out here.
- jmcgough 1y agoTruly the worst of both worlds that we now have authoritarianism without good public transit.
- chvid 1y agoI don’t see what this has to do with authoritarianism. If anything it is an example of the opposite.
- sandworm101 1y agoAuthoritarian regimes traditionally touted public transit. From "he made the trains run on time", the German autobahn (which actually predated a certain party) to the lavish halls of the Soviet subway stations, to China's highspeed rail networks, public transit is just a thing that strongmen like to do. And absolute power certainly helps when you want to plow a road/rail/bridge through a neighborhood. I watched an in-flight documentary about the architecture of soviet rural bus stops. Each one of them looked like it cost most than the neighborhoods they serviced.
- chvid 1y agoI just find this crazy - you can have good public infrastructure without be authoritarian.
- grumpy-de-sre 1y agoBut you cannot have good public infrastructure without a strong state (strength on its own isn't authoritarianism). A lot of western governments are rather weak, I swear baumols cost disease and spiraling social/retirement/debt spending has crippled their ability to provide for the public.
- astrange 1y agoIn the US, it's mostly because the urban planning field was extremely embarrassed about "urban renewal" (rightly so) and switched to a new ideology that just completely forbids ever doing anything in case it's bad for anyone. It's also partly because they read The Population Bomb in the 70s and literally decided to ban housing/transit in order to stop people from having kids.
- drstewart 1y agoNo, but tell me about the trains in Canada or Australia or New Zealand instead. Curious what high speed, modern trains these nations have compared to China, or are they more backwards?
- __m 1y agoThey don't have high speed trains
- supertrope 1y agoAnglosphere countries are highly car dependent.
- viraptor 1y agoThis is a silly comparison. How many cities can China connect with trains vs Australia's 7 cities spread over almost 4k km in both axes... It's not as much "backwards" as requirements are vastly different. Melbourne-Canberra-Sydney could be useful and is getting started now, but I wouldn't expect more for decades.
- drstewart 1y agoChina is so much more modern, progressive, and advanced than Australia
- stickfigure 1y agoMexico City has excellent public transit without the authoritarianism.
- viraptor 1y agoSo does Melbourne. (Yes you can nitpick lots of things, but overall it works and gets slowly improved)
- pjmlp 1y agoI love Mexico, had a very nice time there and would return, however there isn't without issues including authoritarianism, even if it comes from armed groups instead of the goverment.
- stickfigure 1y agoI don't think it's fair to consider cartel crime as authoritarianism. Usually crime is associated with inadequate government authority. Which is definitely an argument you could make about Mexico... but it's very different from China.
- pjmlp 1y agoI think the people that unfortunately where born on the wrong Mexican state would be of a different point of view. For them we are comfortably discussing semantics on an Internet forum.
- dyauspitr 1y agoNow we just have incompetent, horrifically corrupt authoritarians hell bent on dragging us back to oil and coal.
- olalonde 1y agoLos Angeles feels like countryside compared to Shanghai though.
- kubb 1y agoThere’s a lot of excuses but in the end America can’t live in the future because of its culture. People will say stupid stuff like "oh it’s because we pay for their defense", or "oh it’s because we have freedom", or "but but this would never work here, because we’re really different than anyone else". But actually? It’s because we’re used to this shit and change makes us uncomfortable. We also really only care about ourselves, not our broader community. Have you ever wondered why we have vertical gaps in public bathroom stalls? Inertia. There’s no reason to have them, but nobody cares enough to improve it. A better design isn’t more expensive or more difficult, we just don’t want it enough to make it happen. We’re stuck in a local maximum.
- stackbutterflow 1y agoIronically China used to have public toilets without doors. Only separators to your sides. It was more than 10 years ago, I don't know about now.
- jychang 1y agoUh, "we" ? From someone who uses quotes „like this”? ... https://i.imgur.com/swpYbpv.png https://i.imgur.com/swpYbpv.png
- crummy 1y agoMaybe they're an immigrant?
- mulmen 1y ago> Have you ever wondered why we have vertical gaps in public bathroom stalls? You mean the gap between the floor and the walls? Isn’t that for ease of cleaning?
- kubb 1y agoYou mean horizontal, at the bottom of the door. That one can be justified by ease of cleaning. I mean vertical at the side of the door. You can literally make eye contact with the occupant as you walk by.
- supertrope 1y ago>ease of movement >authoritarian state China has high speed rail. When you enter the train station security checks your national ID then screens your person and belongings. Buying a ticket requires scanning ID. Going from the station down to the platform requires scanning ID. On the train sometimes police come aboard and check everyone’s ID. When you get off the train you have to scan ID. Riding the bus or subway was one of the very few things that does not require scanning national ID or registering an account linked to national ID. However if you ride a bus into Beijing there are checkpoints requiring everyone to get off, get searched and show ID.
- m4r1k 1y agoOn the other hand, you guys are early on in the authoritarian journey. We shall see a few years down the line if and how things get ugly.
- vachina 1y agoYou seem to get quite hung up on ID
- mrtksn 1y agoAFAIK it’s the same in places with high security risks, like Turkey&Israel. I despise this, not because I’m worried about the government but because it makes me feel restrained to act in a specific manner because this is not my space and I’m being watched. It’s dehumanizing. In most of the Europe you feel like you own the place even if there are many rules. In Eastern Europe it’s even better, you feel free and nobody is watching you. The government and the wider system feels non-existent(which is the other end of the spectrum and can result in unmaintained infrastructure but it does have its charm).
- pjc50 1y agoFortunately Greyhound in the US are resisting ID sweeps on their buses.
- chvid 1y agoI have been on trains in Denmark a plenty and our public transport planning is slow and bureaucratic. We could learn from this example - both in major cities and areas where demand is too scattered to justify regular routes.
- keiferski 1y agoI once rode the bus across LA. Years and dozens of countries later, it is still probably the single worst public transit experience I've ever had. It wasn't because of the bus itself, or the routes, or anything like that. But because the willingness of people to tolerate one passenger screaming, threatening others, refusing to move for a handicapped woman, etc. American public transit is a cultural problem, not an infrastructure one.
- geremiiah 1y agoDude, I have only ever rode busses in Europe, but such incidents are bound to happen, even in the most posh areas of the continent.
- keiferski 1y agoThese incidents happen on a regular basis on public transit in California, and on that trip similar things happened to me a few other times. It's not comparable to European transit systems at all.
- bluGill 1y agoOnly because in Europe so many more people ride transit. The number of people who will be like that is generally fixed per population, and so if you have a lot of other (normal) people riding they a smaller %.
- kjkjadksj 1y agoAs a daily commuter on la metro bus and rail these incidents aren’t as common as people make out online. Nor do they ever really affect you when they happen.