I’m getting a lot of ‘but my car is more convenient’ arguments lately, and I’m struggling to convey why that doesn’t make sense.
Specifically how to explain to people that: Sure, if you are able to drive, and can afford it, and your city is designed to, and subsidizes making it easy to drive and park, then it’s convenient. But if everyone does it then it quickly becomes a tragedy of the commons situation.
I thought of one analogy that is: It would be ‘more convenient’ if I just threw my trash out the window, but if we all started doing that then we’d quickly end up in a mess.
But I feel like that doesn’t quite get at the essence of it. Any other ideas?
Cars really are more convenient on an individual basis. It’s not ideal for the environment and getting stuck in traffic is a pain in the arse when it happens, but for the individual it provides greater benefits than public transport.
In the UK it’s cheaper than public transport, it’s much more reliable, it’s healthier (not being in close proximity to those who may be harbouring a flu), and it affords people the freedom to travel somewhere that public transport can’t get you sufficiently close to.
Personally I feel that the best step is to reduce the need for people to travel. If people don’t need to be in offices then don’t enforce policies to get them back in. That’ll reduce car usage as well as public transport.
You see this is the exact thing. The point is to FUCKING REDUCE the need for cars, not to shove everyone who has a driving license in gas chambers and mass burning every vehicle.
Concerning that people can’t even relay this simplest thing
Not realizing this is my objections to many posts here … too many people just want to punish drivers or car owners, without understanding that you’re needlessly creating hardship for the very people you’re trying to “save”, while also making your “15 minute city” utopias less desirable. The reality is that cars are usually (in the US) the most convenient option from the perspective of the driver. How can we change that? How can we give them other convenient options?
Changing this perspective is important, because getting rid of cars is likely a long drawn out process (and doesn’t apply everywhere). People do need cars most of this time. Let’s work with that, and try to fix our specifies so they use cars less and less
If more poeople had your perspective, I wouldn’t be constantly tempted to block this community. On my other account I did block after about 2 weeks. I have a bicycle, electric cars and work from home, but I can’t bicycle my 4 year old to swim lessons two nights a week 25 miles away. I have other kids and other time obligations you know? Doing the best I can, but it takes a car for now.
And that’s not your fault. It’s the fault of the infrastructure. It’s like trying to blame individuals for where they get their electricity from. Or how their sewage is handled. You as an individual aren’t in control of those things that’s a problem that must be resolved at the infrastructure level
There are limitations for the infrastructure. Not all people live in a nice organized way to facilitate vaguely cost effective mass transit routes. The volume of people particularly interested in the same 25 mile trip he is making at the same time may be like 3 or 4 people total, if that. Even if you had a bus route that connected, at least many of the legs would likely be an almost deserted bus, which would frankly be worse than the couple of cars it would keep off the road, in that scenario. It only makes sense if you can get some scale of passengers. In some areas, this is easy, but in many areas there just isn’t enough demand for specific points of interest to justify some larger scale transit.
My area has been going hard on walkable and mass transit, to some rather pleasant results. Unfortunately, about half the people in the general area cannot be reasonably served, because there are just too many sources and destinations and relatively little commonality to exploit. It’s great for those that are being served, but sometimes there just isn’t a good answer without forcing people to relocate their homes and businesses to an arrangement where mass transit actually could work.
Congrats you have discovered what’s called a systemic issue
The fact remains that “resolve the infrastructure” can’t work in a lot of the places where infrastructure doesn’t yet exist without mass forced relocations. So sure, the distribution of people and likely destinations may be a “systemic problem”, but one for which “build more infrastructure” is an inadequate answer.
Also, for a lot of places, the problematic scale of cars doesn’t come into play, so you don’t need to fix those. Energy is best spent identifying where the scale of cars does present an issue, refining that infrastructure, with a plan that includes how people transition between “car land”, “mass transit”, and “walkable”. In a place where it’s rural, then instead of a particular 25 mile trip being 2 or 3 people in a car, it would hypothetically become 2 or 3 people in an otherwise vacant bus, likely having to waste energy stopping at empty stops just in case, to stay on schedule. This is way worse than a car when so lightly loaded (particularly since the circuit may have the busses driving around vacant).
Most folks discussing “issues” on Lemmy are just angry and impotent (I don’t mean sexually).
They have no ability to build the world they want, and no way to positively vent their frustrations.
So they come here and just say shit like “guillotine the rich” and " fuck all cars"
Just how it goes, but it doesn’t reflect reality.
I agree, the premise of the question is “how can I make them realize they are wrong and their car isn’t convenient?” Particularly in an internet context, they are probably right that their car is more convenient, because they are driving places where you may never have been. There are places where cars suck and it’s best to find ways to keep the cars out of it, and places where even the best, well intentioned ‘non-car’ plans are not viable. Just need the right plan for the right context and the right facilities to let people gracefully be able to move between the two.
I think the convenience very much depends on the journey you want to make. To travel from London to Edinburgh by car means several hours where you can do nothing but hold the steering wheel. If you go by train, you can spend the time usefully … or sleep. If you’re talking about commuting, well, driving into most cities during rush hour means sitting in traffic jams every day, not just occasionally.
I agree it can depend on the journey. Convenience can be different things to different people, if two people are travelling from London to Edinburgh by train that could cost around £240 one way, as opposed to driving which could cost around £80 one way. I’d say the cost savings there are convenient for the two people and depending on their budget could outweigh the convenience of one of them being able to sleep on the journey.
Commuting is another matter, if cost of commuting by public transport was cheaper, reliable, personable and generally a more pleasant experience then more people would do it. Once again it also depends on the journey!