this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
576 points (93.6% liked)

Fuck Cars

9807 readers
71 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Trucks were invented in 1890s. By 1900 the world's population was 1.6 billion, 5 times smaller than it is now.

But population numbers aren't the only thing that has changed since then.

A hundred some years ago FDA didn't exist. You could buy eggs, meat, etc. from your local farmers and butchers. Now, you need licenses and to comply with a whole bunch of different codes. Fewer people can comply with those, so the average distance things need to be shipped has increased.

There's, also, a lot more things nowadays that were never possible to produce locally (or even just close by) to begin with. Semiconductors, medications, even fine fabrics for clothing require fairly complex processes and logistics. You can't just plop a fab or a lab in every large-ish city - that is going to be even more of a nightmare to supply with resources necessary to keep it running, than shipping final product from somewhere else far away.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

All of those are phenomenal arguments for heavily reinvesting in our freight rail.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Trains are great and they're definitely underutilized in the modern world, but the thing they excel at is getting stuff from point A to point B (like a warehouse), not spreading it around across thousands of different destinations.

Building a light railway to each and every walmart, target, 7eleven, etc. it's just not practical in any way:

My city, for example, has a relatively extensive tram system. You can get around most of the city by it and there's quite a few stores that are right next to tracks, so, theoretically, something like that could be used to deliver goods within a city.

However, it's, both, way louder than cars and trucks (I used to live right next to a railway) and every time a tram or its powerline break, the entire line stops. You can't, exactly, drive around a broken tram when you're on rail.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Rail can't realistically be connected to everyone's house. You always need a solution for that final mile.

For smaller stuff, a (cargo) bike is a perfect solution.

For heavier stuff, like a mobile work place or a 40ft steel beam, you will always need something else. Right now the best option is a (small, electric) van or truck. For that you will need at least some roads. You can prevent them from being accessible to anything but professionals who absolutely need access. But you will still need a limited amount of them.

Perfect is the enemy of good. Being a zealot about this, is self-defeating and won't convince enough people.