- cross-posted to:
- microblogmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- microblogmemes@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49253586
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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.
I think this person has never been to germany
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.
Love the acela! Just got an automatic full refund due to a 2hr delay, imagine that happening on any other form of transport.
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 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
I’m disappointed in the community here on Lemmy because the reaction has been even worse here than it was on Reddit
The common thread here is communities of chronically online people keep letting you down.
I’d suggest something else but I don’t know how to interact with people in meat-space
Is a tricky place. Even of the people I like I find every single one of them disappoints me in some way
Now I’m curious what kind of elucidating conversation you were hoping to find under a good ol pile on post. I got exactly what I was looking for.
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.
estonian here, it’s lowk chill here.
I’ve taken a train through
BalticBalkan 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.
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.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
Riding a train through the alps also can mean sitting in a dark tunnel seeing nothing but your fellow riders.
Beats sitting in a car in a dark tunnel below the alps though.
Get beaten by standing on top of them, watching the stunning nature.
Despite common issues with Deutsche Bahn, I generally had quite a good experience with them and delays happened rarely. The only one I can remember is over 1h delay because one wagon laot power and pasaangwrs had to be reseated which meant less space to seat (still found a seat).
I once took flixtrain and will take it no more. Slower, fucking loud as fuck especially near exit area, and quite uncomfortable seats. Cheap but fuck it, I’d rather overpay.
I do own a car and few times a year I drive to NRW to visit my parents. Time wise it is the same. And price wise if I go with my wife - it is slightly cheaper. I do use Waze which helps avoid major traffic jams. It still sometimes leads us in one but never more than 20min.
I commute the city by bycicle and Deutschlandticket. Local transportation companies work good 95% of the time. 4% of the time they don’t but they usually have a good reason. 1% of the time tram/bus/train comes 3 minutes early and annoys the hell out of me.
I can’t go by train back to Latvia. Either plane, bus or by car. Cheapest is by bus but once I drove 15h in a bus and I have promised to myself to never go by bus more than 8h. Next best thing is by car. Over 1000km is about 15h with all the stops but it is still cheaper than flying. Flying is fine, short and fast. But then I end up in Rīga and have to take train 6hay goes like 3 times a day. Or I have to rent a car and only rent for a week will be more expensiver than driving my own car to and back to home. Plane tickets are expensiver than fuel too. So plane and renting a car is extremely expensive.
I rarely use car. It usually stays parked for days or weeks. But i won’t get rid of it. It is a useful tool to me and accomplishes things that planes, trains and trams can’t. It is also fucking nuts how expensive it is just to own one but it brings too much worth on my life.
Yeah flixtrain is a no go for more than 1 or 2 hours: fucking loud indeed, no airco, not enough working toilets!
I’ve travelled rail in many European countries and overall to me DB ist a pretty good price for what you get.
Perhaps, one day, by 2040 or so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_Baltica :)
One can only hope, but experience shows that corruption doesn’t dissappear in one night 😭
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.
First off fuck you my honda accord is my friend and we have carnal relations every other friday.
And there’s nothing stopping me from cracking open a cold one when I’m stuck in traffic so I don’t see the difference.
The only good car driver. You’re allowed because you seem to actually be enjoying yourself.
based
I don’t understand why it’s an either/or thing. I’d listen to audiobooks whether I’m in the car, or on a train. Even on a train, I’ve got hours to kill.
Yesterday I heard someone criticize a book as something to be listened to “while folding laundry,” as if that’s some crack against the book. What’s wrong with listening to an audiobook while doing chores? It makes the chores go by quickly.
It could just be you’re a better auditory processor than me, but I don’t get much out of a book if in multitasking.
I do like reading legit novels on the train though, if the tracks are smooth enough
Even listening to an audiobook is a worse experience in a car though, because you’re distracted from it, I would hope, by paying attention to traffic. And of course, there’s also lots of other things you can do in a train that you can’t in a car: read non-audio books, watch videos, play video games, take a nap, etc. Depending on what kind of work you do, it might even be possible to do some work and go home earlier. Even as a passenger, doing most of these things in a car is a good way of getting car sick.
The point is that almost always, the time spent on a train is of considerably higher quality than the time spent in a car.
I drive a LOT for my job, and I listen to a LOT of audiobooks, podcasts, comedy specials, etc. Also music.
And occasionally I find heavy traffic to be distracting from an audiobook, but 90% of the kind of driving where you’d need an audiobook is long distance highway driving, not rush hour traffic, so it isn’t an issue. Besides, people listen to the radio all the time, so what’s the difference?
I took a train instead of driving once, and I won’t do that again. It essentially took the same amount of time, but it was so boring. I couldn’t stop when I wanted, eat what I wanted (Amtrak food is terrible), etc. And it cost about the same as fuel costs for driving anyway.
Huh that’s interesting, because when I’m taking the train I feel like I am already “stopped” because I’m just chilling doing whatever I want. Must be a personality types thing.
Funny cause its true
Very few Europeans can afford to take a train through the alps
My tickets earlier this year were only €30 each way. Sure it would be expensive to supercommute by high speed train, but for a day trip into the city to go hit a couple of museums that’s perfectly reasonable
What percent of the European population lives a few hours from the Alps via train?
I’m caught in traffic for more than 5 minutes maybe .5 times a year.
Unless you commute during rush hour in a big city it just isn’t that bad. Y’all need another hill to die on. This one just doesn’t resonate.
Good for you! However, many people live in big cities and need to commute to work precisely at rush hours.
No one drives because there’s too much traffic.
Removed by mod
The irony is so thick with this comment…
Their fault. Just move out of the cities. They suck ass.
“Just buy a house”
Only losers buy. Just squat in an unoccupied house.
This is romantising trains a bit much. For most people there is no viable connection via public transport to work. If you have a good connection there are typical public transport problems: delays, homeless people, crowded, constructions.
OK so imagine this: a place where public transport is effective, highly valued and prioritised, and runs 24/7, and where people in need (poor, sick, unemployed, elderly, etc) get a free transit card so they can go to healthcare visits, look for jobs further away from where they live if there aren’t any nearby, visit friends and family etc without worrying about the transit costs.
Is that not worth aiming for? Worth building? Compared to cars, there’s all of the benefits and none of the drawbacks.
Now imagine you live in a place like that and someone replies to you online, saying basically “you’re romanticising, I don’t have good public transport so I don’t care for it, and I’d rather be stuck in a traffic jam than in a train delay anyway”. Really?
You’re right, I’ve never had to deal with any of those while driving. Can you imagine construction workers closing a road? Crazy, just never happens.
On my recent trip to rural Canada this seems to actually be the line of thinking in some parts. They literally reverted many roads and highways to gravel because they couldn’t keep the pavement sufficiently maintained
Homeless people aren’t a public transport problem even if homelessness can become visible in public transport systems. Delays, crowded and constructions are common in other forms of transport as well.
How many jokes do Americans make about being stuck in traffic because of construction? Apparently, that kind of delay doesn’t count.
In your shitty 'Murican cities, sure
Plenty of places in the civilised world have great train networks that move millions of people every day
I moved to a modern city in Europe. The main train station averages 300,000 people per day. Just that one station!
My old city in the US had a top rated bus network for a mid sized city. It handles a total of 800k rides per month. So, my new city does in one station almost a whole months worth of transit as my old city handles in 48 hours.
The scale of how real infrastructure works is beyond the ken of most American’s experience. They just don’t know they’re living in a terrible system.
Americans are relentlessly propagandized about how great we have it, and I guess our best option is to believe it, because the alternative is to cry over just how deeply shitty so much of the country actually is.
It truly helps the rich when the average adult reading level hovers around 5th grade and we’ll over 60% of Americans have never had to learn about logic, ethics, critical thinking, or how rights are earned by a strong citizenship.
When the public is just ignorant of how to do basic thinking, what the history of liberty is, or how rights are earned & kept by the People by taking collective action against the rich you get a crumbling society sliding back into serfdom.
And when they’re told, they throw a tantrum and invent reasons why it’s bad
I take trains often. Sure sometimes there are delays, often <5min and you still make your connection. Homeless people? Not that I’ve noticed. Crowded, maybe. Constructions, yes but I’m usually not impacted by it. When I use the car, all of them are much worse, so yeah…
Setting aside that train delays are usually no worse than usual auto traffic jams (and even when delayed are still less delaying than a car jam), and that being slightly crowded on a train is still far more pleasant due to being able to relax and read a book or nap, and the fact that I (in the Netherlands) never really see homeless people on the train…
… do you think homeless people don’t deserve to travel anywhere? They have no right to see their friends or family in other towns, or to visit a medical specialist that isn’t where they are? How else would you suggest the poor travel (other than obvious answer that you wish they didn’t exist in the first place)?
Shitty take.
The United States is not the centre of the world. If you can’t travel check out YouTube videos of Japan, China, or Europe transit for example. You’ll see 'Merica is still stuck in the 20th century while the world has moved on to the 21st century.
“Most people”
Your personal experience and opinions are not the bar to measure anything of value. Open your mind and get to know the world outside your shit filled bubble.
I have never not had a viable connection to work.
Complete devoid of reality take. America is stuck in the past while the rest of the world has moved on.
Being a developed nation is a moving target. It requires continual investment, reform, and infrastructure updates to maintain.
The US gave up investing in itself in 1980 and has barely maintained its 50 year old infrastructure since then. It’s not a developed nation, but the husk of one zombieing along while the wealthy steal everything they can.
💯
You’re going to have a hard time getting a sensible viewpoint across here, unfortunately.
“If I can downvote this guy, maybe their view point will go away without me having to actually address their concerns.” is how yall look rn
anything constructive to add or just here for the epistemology?
Ironic that your comment is does not add anything constructive.
You haven’t raised any concerns, what exactly did you expect people to address? Literally the only thing you did was whine about people having a different opinion and strongly suggesting your view is the only “sensible” one. There’s nothing to discuss there.
Learn to read who OP is before you respond, friend.
Ohhhhhh do fuck off, yank
Case in point^
Go fondle a cheeseburger, or a rifle, or a motorbike that can’t go around a corner
Thank you for continuing to prove my point. Your family is very proud of you. Those also were some nice stereotypes, do you have any more? Do black people or gay people next.
Quite juicy how your comment shows up below five opposing and quite sensible responses.
That’s what happens when you call out an echo chamber. Funny of you to ignore all of the dogpiling that happens in this community. Community is pretty cancerous, but fun to come in and point that out when a post comes by my feed.
“If I can downvote this guy, maybe their view point will go away without me having to actually address their concerns.” is how yall look rn
Your comment showed up below five responses addressing their concerns. That number has since grown.
I haven’t seen much dogpiling here (other than some responses here in these comments), because I usually don’t post nonsense.
fun to come in and point that out when a post comes by my feed
Oh and nice of you to directly point out that you’re here just to troll people.
Maybe it’s because this is the Fuck Cars comm and they (much like you) completely failed to read the room?
Yeah, some places have shitty infrastructure, but it doesn’t have to be bad, that’s kind of the fucking point around here.
You mean “echo chamber” instead of room, right?
