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Usually when someone comes with that argument, I ask them to pick any week date in the past year and then I take a random item on my calendar on that day; I giv
by IMTDb 11mo ago
Usually when someone comes with that argument, I ask them to pick any week date in the past year and then I take a random item on my calendar on that day; I give them the time and address of where I need to be as well as the address of my home and I ask them how long it's going to take me and how much it's going to cost. That's usually enough to bring them down a notch from "train work" to "sometimes train work". (But they tend to forget very often, they need to be reminded regularly for some reason). Do you want to play that game with me to get your reality check in order ?
Western Europe in a VERY dense city BTW.
- dpc050505 11mo agoI'll happily play your game with a bicycle.
- ipaddr 11mo agoGreat lets pick Canada in January. Bring a shovel.
- nickserv 11mo agoThey don't clear snow from cycle paths in Canada? If not then it's an infrastructure problem, not a weather problem.
- aziaziazi 11mo agoSound like a German saying : > there’s no weather problems, there’s clothing problems
- refactor_master 11mo agoJust to add a less opinionated take: https://www.citymonitor.ai/analysis/why-winter-is-a-poor-argument-against-bike-lanes/ https://www.citymonitor.ai/analysis/why-winter-is-a-poor-arg... Personally I've also biked to work (and everywhere, really) in sub-zero degrees many times, because the bicycle lanes are cleared and salted. It's really not too bad. It actually gets a bit too hot even, because you start out by wearing so much.
- halostatue 11mo agoIn cold weather, one should always dress for 5℃ warmer than the temperature outside when you have a bike longer than 5 km. Runners pretty much have to do the same. Your body heat and good layering will take care of everything else.
- thaumasiotes 11mo agoPersonally I've also biked to work (and everywhere, really) in sub-zero degrees many times, because the bicycle lanes are cleared and salted. I used to bike to work in just-above-freezing temperatures. That wasn't so bad. The one time it started to rain mid-journey, that was bad.
- halostatue 11mo agoDon't need one in Toronto within a ½ day or so of the snow stopping for the major bicycle routes (including the MGT). Calgary apparently also does a good job of clearing its bike lanes. And I do my Costco shopping by bike year-round. I think I've used the car for large purchases at Costco twice in the last year. I _rarely_ drive my car anywhere in Toronto, and find the streets on bike safer than most of the sidewalks in January -- they get plowed sooner than most homeowners and businesses clear the ice from their sidewalks. And in Toronto we're rank amateurs at winter biking. Look at Montreal, Oslo, or Helsinki for even better examples. Too bad we've got a addle-brained carhead who doesn't understand public safety or doing his own provincial as our premier.
- stackedinserter 11mo agoLove losing?
- moss_dog 11mo agoAre you arguing that trains are infeasible (due to cost or duration) for certain trips? I'm curious how this changes (in your mind) if "trains" can be expanded to "trains, buses, bicycle", or if you consider that to be a separate discussion.
- echelon 11mo agoI live in Atlanta. The Atlanta Metro has 6.5 million people across TWENTY THOUSAND square kilometers. Trains just don't make sense for this. Everything is too spread out. And that's okay. Cites are allowed to have different models of transportation and living. I like how much road infra we have. That I can visit forests, rivers, mountains, and dense city all within a relatively short amount of time with complete flexibility. Autonomous driving is going to make this paradise. Cars will be superior to trains when they drive themselves. Trains lack privacy and personal space.
- kataklasm 11mo agoThe German metro area "Rheinland" has a population of 8.7 million people across 12 thousand square kilometers. ~700/sqkm vs the 240/sqkm population density of Atlanta metro. Train and metro travel in this metrk area is extremely convenient and fast. It's not that Atlanta (or anywhere else in the United States for that matter) couldn't do it because of vastness, there's just no political and societal will behind this idea. In a society that glamorizes everyone driving the biggest trucks and carrying the largest rifles, of course convenient train systems are "not feasible".
- Ukv 11mo ago> I give them the time and address of where I need to be [...] That's usually enough to bring them down a notch from "train work" to "sometimes train work" [...] Do you want to play that game with me to get your reality check in order ? I don't think the implied claim is that there should be specifically a train to every particular address, if that's what you're counting as failure in the game, but rather that with good public transport (including trains) and pedestrian/cyclist-friendly streets it shouldn't be the case that most people need to drive.
- _carbyau_ 11mo agoCars are so flexible. It's the answer to so many questions outside "how to move one or two people from A to common destination B". Need to move 3 or 4 people? Driving the car may be cheaper. Don't want to get rained on? Or heatstroke? Or walk through snow? Or carry a bunch of stuff, like a groceries/familyWeek or whatever else? Or go into the countryside/camping? Or move a differently-abled person? Or go somewhere outside public transport hours? Or, or .. or. Are there many cases where people should take public transport or ride a bike instead of their car? Obviously yes. But once you have a car to cover the exigent circumstances it is easy to use them for personal comfort reasons.
- mr_toad 11mo ago> Cars are so flexible. They’re also a joke when it comes to moving large numbers of people. I can’t imagine the chaos if everyone leaving a concert at Wembley Stadium decided to leave by car.
- flerchin 11mo agoYou wouldn't have to imagine it if you visited Dallas. AT&T stadium has roughly the same capacity as Wembley, and no public transit at all.
- tomrod 11mo agoDallas would look very different if they emphasized public transport. Outside of downtown it is so sparse, many of the suburbs suffer from crumbling infrastructure because it turns out pipes made to last 30 years do poorly after 40 to 50 years when all the low density suburbs have aged out and there is no remaining land to subsidize the infrastructure ponzi scheme. Fort Worth is worse for this! Strongtowns is definitely worth a listen.
- littlestymaar 11mo ago> and how much it's going to cost Depending how expensive is gasoline in your country, when using a car people underestimate the cost of a travel by a factor two to five, because they don't count the depreciation of their vehicle's value and the maintenance cost (and sometimes even insurance price) driven by the kilometers ridden during the trip.
- seanw444 11mo agoThe average European mind can't comprehend freedom of movement across vast amounts of open nature.
- prayerie 11mo agoI’m pretty sure we can comprehend it, we just usually enjoy said freedom of movement in nature on our feet rather than sat in an SUV.
- seanw444 11mo agoGood luck reaching the good remote spots from a train.
- cruffle_duffle 11mo agoHonestly people really just dont understand how far apart things are. And yeah the good remote spots are a 4 hour drive from the city (and you aren’t even half way across the state at that point). The forests and wilderness of the PNW are much, much, much, much more remote and wild than virtually anywhere you’d go in Europe. Like not even close.
- asielen 11mo agoGreat so train to major destinations and then rent a car from there.
- _carbyau_ 11mo agoIn the future, I hope this becomes a thing. As cars become more commodotised and self driving taxis can be ordered easily maybe there'll be competing mass fleets? Or have a "car-cabin-without-engine-and-wheels" and treat it like a packet on a network of trains and "skateboard car platforms".
- virgildotcodes 11mo agoIt seems like people are just talking past each other here. The fact is that 99% of driving is not done by people in the process of visiting remote nature destinations.
- hitarpetar 11mo agoskill issue
- croes 11mo agoBy that logic cars work also turns into sometimes cars work. Ever heard of traffic jams and have you compared the number of fatal car accidents vs fatal train accidents. Not to mention the negative effect on air quality with many cars in dense cities. Cars main advantage is flexibility and that’s it. For times were the place and time usually stays the same like work, trains are a valid option.
- Mawr 11mo agoReally? This is your go-to argument? And nobody's pointed out to you before how bad it is? Well then. Do the opposite thought experiment for me: Pick any two points of interest on the map and see how well connected they are with roads. Keep doing it until you find somewhere not accessible via car. See the issue yet? We've paved over the entire planet to the point that you can get anywhere you'd like with a car. We have not done so whatsoever for any other mode of transportation. Pedestrian walkways come close but we prioritize vehicles over those too. The investment into public transport & cycling infrastructure is a statistical error in comparison to roadways. So no shit it's more convenient for you to take a car than a train, that's the entire point―it shouldn't be. A 20 lane highway should be a train track, intra-city roads should be dedicated to bikes, not cars.