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The US needs so, so, so much reform. Especially regarding public transit. In most parts of the nation anything that isn’t a car stuck in traffic is for poor people who are also disregarded across volumes of needs issues.
We’re falling back to where we were in the great depression, and it still seems nothing short of violence and bloodshed will stop our ownership class from exploiting the rest of us.
Even in those cities with it, public transportation is failing. The systems are archaic and outdated.
This is why we Americans may be happy to hang out and chat on /c/fuckcars, and try to vote for sane transportation policies, but then also be like lol no I can’t actually get rid of my car.
Every big American city you’ve ever heard of is solid “car” except for the heart of New York. Now just imagine what it’s like for the folks in rural areas or even in the suburbs of medium cities.
This is a pretty sparsely populated country on average, and it’s all designed assuming everybody is in a car. Sidewalks and bike lanes get sprinkled around where there’s room and desire for them.
Actually many European cities would be green as well. For example Munich still has a modal share of 34% cars. However none of the other options has more then that with walking and public transport being at 24% each and cycling at 18%. You could very much live without a car though.
i like how alaska is included in this like the majority of it is populated lmao.
of course it’s only “walkable” you have to hike over mountains and through forests to see it
Alaska is the place where you generaly live close enough to walk to work, live in a big city, don’t commute, or don’t work.
That last option actually works in rural areas because subsistance makes hunting/fishing a viable option.
brother… The red part of alaska is half in the the arctic circle. The majority of the alaskan population lives in the little pullout coastline bit, afaik.
Literally nobody lives in the northern part except for longhaul truckers, and hunters.
though to be fair, im sure some portion of the population lives in a walkable area, i just think it’s mostly disingenuous.
I believe it, I just wonder what edge case makes this possible?
Like is it people living on farms, or oil rigs?
i think it’s probably the fact that alaska is a really rough environment, and cars are generally not fond of those.
Like i said the majority of that doesn’t have people living in it, so it’s literally only walkable because there is no infrastructure what so ever. It’s just cabins in the middle of nowhere.
The coast line i think is walkable primarily due to the unique economy and residential housing structures. You’re not going to move far from where the work is in a place like alaska, you don’t exactly get that luxury, so you’re automatically in a more walkable “economy”
i believe a significant portion of the alaskan economy is fishing. Farming to my knowledge basically doesn’t happen at scale, oil is another significant portion, but then again, that probably requires vehicles, so.
This is the home of car culture and it’s the reason the climate change movement has seen such little traction. 80% of this problem could be solved by a decent intercity rail network combined with light rail and cycle paths in the densely populated areas. Sometimes a car is the only solution but everything looks like a nail when your only tool is a hammer.
What’s that orange paradise in the northeast coast?
USA should play a bit of OpenTTD or other public transit simulators on their country map to get some ideas ^^
Honest question. Does everyone in this instance live in a major city?
A large majority of the United States lives in a city or urban center.
Most people live in cities.
81% of people in America do.
NYC here. Don’t think I’d want to live anywhere else, at least not in the US.
Not everyone, but most people live in major cities. And any city that is big enough to “justify” building stroads is absolutely big enough to justify having walkable communities connected by light rail or bus
It’s not only major cities that ought to have good public transportation. Basically everything except small villages and rural communities would have all that in a sane world.
But yes, over 80% of the population of most developed countries live in a city.
im not and i don’t want to, but i support the vision.
I don’t, if that question really is honest. (But also not in the US)
But you really shouldn’t be surprised, most people live in major cities.
All but two of my ADULT family members in New York City drive. Even though they have access to the best public transit in the country and finding a parking spot can be a chore. The rest of us (as in Americans outside of The Big Apple) are required to drive.
Which instance?
If there’s more than one, I’m going to server transfer…
Please God, I want to wake up in a walkable sustainable world without car dependency and without capitalism
I have to drive 50 miles to work one way. Chartering a bus or a uber is just too expensive and i aint walkin it
I’m surprised the Chicago area isn’t orange/red…
I do walk to work when I can, but right now I’m sitting here stuck because it’s pouring (like it does every afternoon/evening in the summer here). If I could have brought my car, it would be waiting for me in the covered parking garage!
Getting an electric bike this month and that will let me arrive not sweaty, but it won’t solve the getting home in the rain. There are actually THREE separate bus routes I can take from my house to work with about a block of walk on each end but whenever I could bus or bike I could walk, once I leave the house I never feel like spending the fare, it’s only a mile.
In the other half of the year it’s easy to get here without a car but only because I refuse to work anywhere that is not on a bus line and close by.
Here, the city tries but unfortunately transit is run by the county not the city.
Why not use an umbrella
Apparently you mistake rain for something different from what I mean by rain. An umbrella would not avail, and would be a lightning rod. A raincoat does not work either. My glasses get all rained on too then I can’t see. It’s a big rain with wind and lightning, goes in all directions, not a gentle rain shower in a downward direction. I’m sure there is specialized gear that would work, I just am not that committed.
A Florida rain, not a London rain.
I grew up with public transport and now drive the car daily. Car is so much more convenient.
I don’t understand what’s all the fuss is about. Like it’s impossible to haul a lot of groceries in the bus and u have to wait in the cold for the bus to come. And sometimes there are a lot of people and u are like sardines there.
Car is so much more convenient.
(Okay before you read this, this assumption is for Cities only. Rural areas do not apply at all lol. Suburbs are also still part of cities)
This is actually an effect of creating a car centric infrastructure and city planning revolving around roads and parking.
You have to imagine for a moment what an entire city would look like without cars as the core transportation method. For starters, suburbs wouldn’t be a thing, everything would be spaced about 4-8x closer, large supermarkets would be rare, especially grocery stores, pedestrian and cyclist traffic would be the most common form of transportation, and then busses/streetcars, and then trains.
You would likely be getting groceries more frequently, but it would be an average 7 minute walk to your local grocery store, and a flat 3 minute cycle if you don’t want to carry any groceries and put in even less effort than walking. Busses and trains would be reserved for mostly commercial traffic like traveling to work, city center, or other neighborhoods.
There are plenty of real life examples of cities and entire countries that are developed like this. Netherlands is always brought up, but places like Sydney follow this planning despite also having a lot of cars. Even several US cities were like this in the early 1900-1940s.
The reason busses and trains absolutely suck in the USA, is that it is treated as secondary transport. Busses are rarely running with enough frequency to make them viable, and they have to travel the same distance and use the same roads as cars, because every neighborhood was designed to accommodate cars first. There should be almost no need to get on a Bus to do grocery shopping.
Same logic applies to trains. Lots of people drive first to take the train, which makes it much less effective. Also the USA hasn’t properly invested into rail for like 70 years, so every system you see is slow as hell and never on time.
You’re the first person I’ve seen on the various fuck cars communities I see to actually acknowledge rural areas exist, good job. We can’t all just walk everywhere.
Yeah one of the reasons I brought up Sydney is because there’s an entire massive rural area of Australia with people living in practically the middle of nowhere.
Which is why they have their infamous truck trains that drive for days just to transport supplies around.
But when you hit the city, the landscape instantly changes. It’s almost cool going from seeing outback trucks to JDM wrx and evos everywhere, lol. I assume it’s because only gear heads and enthusiasts keep cars around because they have metro, busses, and a water ferry that takes you around.
It’s not “I want public transportation because public transportation is fun”, it’s “I want good public transportation because it’s better for the environment and society and urban planning and etc etc etc”
It’s not “I want public transportation because public transportation is fun”,
Public transportation is kinda fun though. It’s great to relax and read a book or social media instead of staring at the backs of cars and cursing.
I love trains, personally, but I despise buses and subways. Trains are so peaceful. I could ride on a train all day.
Walkable cities are even better. I used to drive daily and then I moved close enough to walk to work with conveniently located grocery stores. Didn’t drive much at all for years and THAT was convenient. Never sit in traffic and just stop in the store and pick up a few things on your way home from work. As long as I have to be working that is as close to livin’ the dream as possible for me.
Cars don’t scale.
As soon as there is real traffic, cars become inefficient trains.
If you’re somewhere that doesn’t have much traffic yet, it’ll seem fine, but that doesn’t always last.
If you can make a bicycle work, that’s much healthier and cheaper to own and operate for all those people that can’t afford a car, or don’t want to be indentured to it. Cargo bikes even work fine for groceries, depending on your family size.
It has a bad reputation cause it isn’t well funded, I do agree buses aren’t perfect but in my city they come often enough and there is actually plenty of space to rest so it is not a traumatic experience
Besides the fact that underground trains take care of most transportation
Driving these days is just being stuck in traffic for an hour at a time then wasting 20 minutes searching for a parking spot and being late for work.
You should move. I live in a rural area and I don’t know wtf would I do without vehicle
Most people can’t afford to move.
Yes vehicle important
Another demonstration of how NYC is the only real city in America and anywhere else is a suburb larping as a metropolis.
You can’t call yourself a metropolis unless half the population uses public transit: change my view.
Why isn’t public transport popular in the US? It’s cheaper, it’s cleaner, it saves time, it’s overall better if done right.
Well part of it is this conspiracy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
But mostly you can blame Eisenhower for wanting to make US cities harder to nuke, racism for making suburbs appealing for segregationists etc.
What are u people smoking, cars are awesome.
NYC metro is bankrupt and unmaintained. They can’t even build a link to JFK.
The state should give the city the metro instead of raiding it to save ski resorts upstate.
Also you should either block this community yourself or be banned for it. Fuck off car shill.
I don’t see the rule that says I’m not allowed to disagree with this channel.
In fact your rhetoric violates rule 1 and 3.
Driving is more fun when there are more viable alternatives. I don’t like driving, but it’s my only real choice where I live so I do it begrudgingly, and you have to share the road with me. Think of all the people who don’t want to drive (on account of it being dangerous, costly and/or mentally taxing) suddenly not being in cars, and how much traffic that would free up for you to zip around instead!
Also, calling a public service “bankrupt” is really weird to me. How many tax dollars are we spending on public highways and freeways again? Do suburbs, which are designed to be car-dependent, provide a net gain or net cost in tax revenue to cities?
Sorry it’s a fact
https://gothamist.com/news/a-48-billion-debt-is-crushing-the-mta-paying-it-off-could-disrupt-the-future-of-nyc-transitI’m not arguing that in better world this should not be the case. But in current capitalist reality it is the case.
They are legally not allowed to file for bankruptcy
50% of Boston’s workforce commutes using the T every day, but it doesn’t show up on the map. I’m assuming because most of those stops are in outlying towns and, therefore, only make up a minority of the commuting workforce in each area. According to the federal government, the T is the third best public transit system in the US due to it being the fastest average commute out of any by at least half an hour, only outclassed by the quality of DC and Seattle (I believe, might be Portland that’s #1? I’d have to look again).
That’s just an example of how useless the map is. You can’t look at it at this scale and only pay attention to the top most used transportation from a county level. New York City shows up because it literally is those counties, geographically, nearly edge to edge.
Ok! As per the marriam-webster definition of a metropolis:
the chief or capital city of a country, state, or region,
the city or state of origin of a colony (as of ancient Greece),
a city regarded as a center of a specified activity,
a large important city.
As per Cambridge:
a very large city, often the most important city in a large area or country.
Collins:
A metropolis is the largest, busiest, and most important city in a country or region.
Britannica:
a very large or important city — usually singular
Oxford:
A very large urban settlement usually with accompanying suburbs. No precise parameters of size or population density have been established. The structural, functional, and hierarchical evolution of global metropolises is rooted as much in the past as in the present: modern information and communications technology may be more advanced than the 19th-century telegraph, but the processes and outcomes are much the same (Daniels (2002) PHG 26). ‘[Berlin’s] wealth of facilities, as well as their scatter across the metropolis, can be understood only in the light of the city’s history and, paradoxically, its troubles.
Longman:
a very large city that is the most important city in a country or area
You:
NYC but only if half the people use public transit
I don’t think they were being literal or looking for a dictionary definition. I think they were saying the definition of a real city should hinge on the use of mass transit.
Personally I think anywhere that’s car dependent isn’t somewhere I’d want to live.
Then they should have said that
I think of it more as transit is a characteristic of a functioning city. You can’t scale well without it.
not OP, but according to some of those definitions (cambridge, collins, longman), NYC would be the only metropolis in the US, as it is the US’ largest, busiest, and most important city.
It goes by region. LA, San Diego, Chicago, Sacramento, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Detroit, Charlotte, Tulsa, San Antonio, Dallas, Atlanta, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Denver, etc… all fall under the definitions of a metropolis. And the most important city in US is not NYC, it’s Washington DC. NYC is just the most populated and industrialized, DC trump’s it in significance because that’s the epicenter of trade, labor, and industry policies
Cries in Massachusettsan.
DC Trump’s it in significance
Looks like you need to post about politics less.
Lol. Wut? Talking about DC doesn’t mean I’m talking about politics
Nah buddy I grew up in Atlanta you can’t convince me it’s a metropolis.
There’s a nice little downtown core and then 99% suburban sprawl. Fuck that
Just like every city on the planet.
All those definitions use “city”. Does the definition of city require the kind of density that would make relying mostly on self-owned cars impossible? Depends, in america no, in other countries maybe.
Does the definition of city require the kind of density that would make relying mostly on self-owned cars impossible?
Ooooo, self-moving goalposts, nice!
Oooo passive aggressive people on lemmy, nice!
No. “City” is a legal designation for an inhabited area. Some legal frameworks place a minimum population requirement for designation as a city but none (AFAIK) require a population density value.
For example, Oklahoma City is the largest city in the US by land area (or it was a few years ago) because the city limits were drawn that way. Population density was and is very low but it’s still a city.
