r/fuckcars / Not Just Bikes / Urbanists / New Urbanism / Car-Free / Anti-Car - People and grifters who hate personal transport, freedom, cars, roads, suburbs, and are obsessed with city planning and urban design

[Yamamura]

Another person has stated a possible reason that they never outgrew their college years, when most of what they needed was within walking distance away.

Some of them are also quite young (at least the ones who are in high school that talk about playing their Switch). At that age I imagine it's not hard to get them upset and redirect their frustrations at something. I remember a kid in high school while growing up who was really into the whole atheism thing when that was big. He could never really explain how religion directly affected him, but generally believed that the world would be in some sort of technological utopia if it was abolished.

 

[Baraka Obama]

You could blame any number of things and be partially right.

Youth is a big part of it of course. When you're young thinking about the world and how to change everything it's easy to think you know better and with a few "well, ackshually"s you could upend everything.

Personally, I would place some of the blame on absolutely miserable cars with shit interiors like the Toyota Matrix or Nissan Versa or Toyota Camry that are fucking everywhere making driving a total chore rather than a pleasure. If you have a nice car, something that is pleasant to be in and drive, you won't start wishing you were on the side of the road huffing it in the rain instead.

 

[quaawaa]

Induced demand is a good thing:




It's actually "latent demand" (only for trains though):



A German gets downvoted for pointing out that their government wasted billions on "green energy" and doesn't have any money left for infrastructure:


You can get a plane ticket from Rotterdam to London for €14 which is bad because it's so cheap that no one wants to spend €80 to ride the train:


A duality of posts:



Someone made the joke we all wanted to make:

Source (Archive)

 

[LaxerBRO]

Induced demand is a good thing:
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It's actually "latent demand" (only for trains though):
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A German gets downvoted for pointing out that their government wasted billions on "green energy" and doesn't have any money left for infrastructure:
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You can get a plane ticket from Rotterdam to London for €14 which is bad because it's so cheap that no one wants to spend €80 to ride the train:
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A duality of posts:
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Someone made the joke we all wanted to make:
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Source (Archive)

It might have to do with how many trains a line can handle at a single time or the turn around for said trains. Additionally, it's this better as it's more efficient?

What about all those photos they post:

Don't they want to be efficient with sixty people inside public transit?

Look how happy this fellow is on a bus from Hobb's End.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

What's interesting is that for both foreigners and rural rednecks is that the smaller grocery store is not a Trader Joe's style urban "vee know vat you vant and you vill buy it" type place, but in fact is much more like a minature Walmart, with one item of each category.

A bit late, but there are tiny grocery stores in both urban areas and rural areas alike where they effectively stock items, usually taller shelves and some creative use of space (and never cheap for both) but they don't waste space and time with random bullshit like Trader Joe's and yuppie stores.

Maybe call this a random deep thought, but I've been thinking about their rational behind why they believe urbanism will make them happy and solve their problems. I think this has to do with them seeing the Netherlands and Europe by extension as exotic. To them they're already unhappy back home maybe because of the state of their lives, having no prospects being young and not being able to afford anything. If you feel unhappy you start to just look around you. And the most common thing people see in their day to day lives are cars. So that mentally gets attributed to their grievances with the modern world. Which is probably what happened to Jason while working at ATI being stuck in traffic for most of his adult life feeling like he's been robbed.

To some degree you could say we spend a portion of our lives stuck in traffic, but then we also spend it standing in line or sitting on the toilet as well. Truly I do think that if these some of guys moved to somewhere they're forced to bike or take the train and the novelty of riding a bike becomes mundane again they'll start to attribute their frustrations to these things instead. "I hate the train, I spend a quarter of my life stuck around people who smell bad and barely get anywhere because there's always a delay".

I used to go on road trips when I was younger, and invariably these would involve larger cities, especially if a relative lived there. Houston, Austin, Orlando, Baton Rouge, San Antonio, and Dallas were some of the cities included in that. (Washington DC, too, though we didn't actually drive there.)

All of them included an allure that wasn't available back home. New restaurants, interesting things to see and do, and cool highways. And yes, some of that DID include rail! While it's true that my hometown didn't have a whole lot going on, there was very much a "grass is greener" attitude that lingered into my college years and the years immediately following college. Now while I contend all of those cities have gone downhill since the early 2000s in varying capacities, none of them made me really happy and I've felt that as a whole were vastly, vastly overrated. Part of the reason that if you're poor a lot of what make cities attractive to many is locked out, like better grocery stores and restaurants, things to do, major attractions, and so forth.

However, I think this is less "grass is greener" and more to the point that these people are fundamentally ungrateful. Houston and Dallas adding light rail "isn't good enough" because it doesn't function like it does overseas or that people still drive cars or that the stations still have parking around them.

 

[Midwit]

I think that this redditor may have forgotten that all these people are there for an event that only happens once every four years and that it's not at all indicative of the normal traffic going through that station outside of commuter hours.

Part of the reason that if you're poor a lot of what make cities attractive to many is locked out, like better grocery stores and restaurants, things to do, major attractions, and so forth.

Yeah, the people who frequent barcades and ethiopian restaurants aren't the ones who live in tower blocks and have a chippy tea as a treat every once in a while.

 

[An Sionnach Seang]

You can get a plane ticket from Rotterdam to London for €14 which is bad because it's so cheap that no one wants to spend €80 to ride the train:

€80 is what you'd pay to take the ferry from Harwich, which is an 8-hour crossing (the other ferry, from Hull, is a 16-hour crossing and more expensive)
if you want to take the train all the way, Eurostar tickets are upwards of €300, not counting onward connections and a lengthy diversion through Belgium

 

[Meriasek]

Maybe call this a random deep thought, but I've been thinking about their rational behind why they believe urbanism will make them happy and solve their problems. I think this has to do with them seeing the Netherlands and Europe by extension as exotic. To them they're already unhappy back home maybe because of the state of their lives, having no prospects being young and not being able to afford anything. If you feel unhappy you start to just look around you. And the most common thing people see in their day to day lives are cars. So that mentally gets attributed to their grievances with the modern world. Which is probably what happened to Jason while working at ATI being stuck in traffic for most of his adult life feeling like he's been robbed.

To some degree you could say we spend a portion of our lives stuck in traffic, but then we also spend it standing in line or sitting on the toilet as well. Truly I do think that if these some of guys moved to somewhere they're forced to bike or take the train and the novelty of riding a bike becomes mundane again they'll start to attribute their frustrations to these things instead. "I hate the train, I spend a quarter of my life stuck around people who smell bad and barely get anywhere because there's always a delay".

I think there's a certain romanticism attached to the urban life, stemming from various sitcoms and so on taking place in urban environments. You know the type, where you got attractive, quirky young people living together in charming urban apartments from where they go out to cute bars in their neighbourhood and meet their friends and have parties and such, and they rarely have to take the car anywhere and if they do, it's often awful. They're never shown commuting or getting groceries or having piss seeping in under their front door, just fun quirky urban life.
And it is appealing, at least in concept. Have everything within reach, never waste time just driving somewhere, have a rich life where you meet interesting new people from all walks of life all the time. Be connected to people. Remove the cars and suddenly the streets are quieter, you got more space to walk and cycle, and all the cute little restaurants can do more curbside dining.
Isn't it so cool?
The reality, of course, isn't like that for the most part. The quirky sitcom life isn't reality, you will need to get groceries and you will need to do some form of commute and waste time on the metro. And the metro in the sitcoms are clean. You can't smell them. When Seinfeld meets a guy getting naked on the subway it's funny, but when it happens in reality, it won't be. It won't be a calm, collected, fat white exhibitionist, it'll be a cracked out homeless dude who will try to masturbate unto your shawarma.
They see the real urban world and how it doesn't line up with the sitcom utopia, and they attribute it to cars. Because the sitcom reality doesn't involve cars, but cars are prominent in reality. They are loud in the cities, and they're required in the boring, decidedly unquirky suburbs and rural areas. They must be the problem.

As for the Eurostar, I'd like to see how they'd "add one more rail" there. They're aware it's a 50 km tunnel under the English Channel, right? They're not just gonna add a few more lines through there, and there's an upper limit to the frequency.

 

[Seymour Duncan]

Maybe call this a random deep thought, but I've been thinking about their rational behind why they believe urbanism will make them happy and solve their problems. I think this has to do with them seeing the Netherlands and Europe by extension as exotic. To them they're already unhappy back home maybe because of the state of their lives, having no prospects being young and not being able to afford anything. If you feel unhappy you start to just look around you. And the most common thing people see in their day to day lives are cars. So that mentally gets attributed to their grievances with the modern world. Which is probably what happened to Jason while working at ATI being stuck in traffic for most of his adult life feeling like he's been robbed.

To some degree you could say we spend a portion of our lives stuck in traffic, but then we also spend it standing in line or sitting on the toilet as well. Truly I do think that if these some of guys moved to somewhere they're forced to bike or take the train and the novelty of riding a bike becomes mundane again they'll start to attribute their frustrations to these things instead. "I hate the train, I spend a quarter of my life stuck around people who smell bad and barely get anywhere because there's always a delay".

Also when they bite the bullet and go to Europe to see the fabled Old World cities in person, they'll just tool around the tourist infrastructure that's explicitly designed around you having a good time. They're comparing the boring daily grind of their carbrain states to trying to pick which restaurant they should walk into after being five beers and three tourist attractions deep before it's even 5 pm, thoroughly convinced that it's Big Oil keeping them down instead of being oh so slightly biased from being able to avoid the drab reality bits.

 

[quaawaa]

Someone wrote a good article debunking Strong Towns:

This private information is unavailable to guests due to policies enforced by third-parties.

Source (Archive)

Chuck's weak response:

This private information is unavailable to guests due to policies enforced by third-parties.

Source (Archive)

/r/StrongTowns comments (Archive)

The guy who wrote the first article is an urbanist who wrote articles advocating for a land value tax (archive) and new American commuter rail lines (archive), so Chuck can't even handle internal criticism.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Speaking of land value tax someone get me the details on how fucked up (or not) Georgism is. Urbanists throw it around as the panacea to all problems more than A&H throws around TND.

 

[quaawaa]

Speaking of land value tax someone get me the details on how fucked up (or not) Georgism is. Urbanists throw it around as the panacea to all problems more than A&H throws around TND.

A land value tax is property tax where you're taxed on the potential value of your land instead of the actual value of your property. So if someone wants to build a 100 story skyscraper on your land, then you have to pay the same taxes that the skyscraper would and if you can't afford to or don't want to pay, then you have sell your land.

It should be obvious why density advocates love it and why everyone else is horrified by it.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

It should be obvious why density advocates love it and why everyone else is horrified by it.

So it’s the complete and total antithesis of Prop 13 got it.

Also I think niggers literally don’t understand how property tax is allocated. It’s not “your property went up in value you get taxed more” unless ONLY your property went up - the amount needed is found for the county or whatever, and then allocated to the properties based on their valuation. So if everyone’s value doubles but the budget stayed the same, the dollar in tax remains the same as the percentage drops.

 

[BulkForceFive]

To some degree you could say we spend a portion of our lives stuck in traffic, but then we also spend it standing in line or sitting on the toilet as well. Truly I do think that if these some of guys moved to somewhere they're forced to bike or take the train and the novelty of riding a bike becomes mundane again they'll start to attribute their frustrations to these things instead. "I hate the train, I spend a quarter of my life stuck around people who smell bad and barely get anywhere because there's always a delay".

Lots of them DO live in the bughive of their dreams, and they still love trains and buses and biking even being exposed to the reality. They will just continually blame the lack of perfection on the same problems even as those problems diminish towards zero. Jason does this often with stuff like the bike accident statistics, he's never wrong about something he just pulls the ERMM ACKSHUALLY card out.

Part of it is immaturity and fear. I used to want to not own a car and live somewhere 'downtown' and just walk or take transit everywhere. because I was scared to drive and couldn't fathom how simple and cheap car ownership is. I still think living in a trendy downtown area would be 'neat' but the scales have fallen off my eyes in terms of seeing all the problems involved and how you can be effectively 'trapped' there, even with a vehicle.

I think there's a certain romanticism attached to the urban life, stemming from various sitcoms and so on taking place in urban environments. You know the type, where you got attractive, quirky young people living together in charming urban apartments from where they go out to cute bars in their neighbourhood and meet their friends and have parties and such, and they rarely have to take the car anywhere and if they do, it's often awful. They're never shown commuting or getting groceries or having piss seeping in under their front door, just fun quirky urban life.

Great post, 100 percent, media shapes our thoughts and culture to a large degree, although I wouldn't say Hollywood is 'urbanist'- it does use attractive urban settings heavily. There's a whole avenue of thought to explore about how a big swath of pro-urbanites are lured in by a dream sold to them by movies and TV.

Personally, I would place some of the blame on absolutely miserable cars with shit interiors like the Toyota Matrix or Nissan Versa or Toyota Camry that are fucking everywhere making driving a total chore rather than a pleasure

People say "oh nooo, the automakers are discontinuing their sedan lines in favour of TRUGGS"... my guy, they gave up making interesting and fun sedans years ago, they're just lowering the casket into the ground at this point.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Part of it is immaturity and fear. I used to want to not own a car and live somewhere 'downtown' and just walk or take transit everywhere. because I was scared to drive and couldn't fathom how simple and cheap car ownership is. I still think living in a trendy downtown area would be 'neat' but the scales have fallen off my eyes in terms of seeing all the problems involved and how you can be effectively 'trapped' there, even with a vehicle.

it gets into philosophy and shit, but it's really just a form of the incel complaints in a different way - "I'm not happy and the rest of the world should change so I am happy" - not realizing that happiness is an inside thing and you become happy by bettering yourself and learning to live with the things you cannot change.

 

[Meriasek]

Great post, 100 percent, media shapes our thoughts and culture to a large degree, although I wouldn't say Hollywood is 'urbanist'- it does use attractive urban settings heavily. There's a whole avenue of thought to explore about how a big swath of pro-urbanites are lured in by a dream sold to them by movies and TV.

I know it definitely influenced me. I hate metropoles, never been to the US, but shows like Friends, HIMYM and Seinfeld made NYC look soooo cool.
It makes me long to see a city I rationally know I'll hate, and yet I'd have videos of people walking or cycling or straight up riding the subway in the NYC on in the background sometimes. And that allure then also extends to big cities in general. It's just that feeling of "the big city, so many opportunities, such a rich life". Even though a lot of those sitcoms mainly take place in only a handful locations (the [usually] two apartments of the protagonists and the bar or cafe the protagonists hang out in, and minor locations depending on plot) the amount of quirky adventures the protagonists have makes it all extremely appealing, because real life is exceptionally dull compared to the 20 minutes of sitcom life, obviously.
I think there are kinda two archetypes of sitcoms. The "Young Hot Urban People fucking around" type (Friends, HIMYM, Seinfeld [ok, not that young...], New Girl, Two Broke Girls, Big Bang Theory...) appealing more to the teen to mid 20s demographic, and the "Surburban or rural family being hilarious in their house" type (Married with Children, Roseanne, Home Improvement, Modern Family, Unhappily ever After) appealing to both the younger and older demographics.
Or, instead of "appealing to" it's more like "being more relatable to".
Btw., now that I think about it, most of the "family sitcoms" I listed are from the 90s aside from Modern Family, while the "Hot Urban" ones are more often from the 2000s and later. Am I just missing the more modern "family" ones? Or was there a bit of a shift in what was produced more?
Anyway, it really is fascinating how much TV shaped the perception of "the big city", and I do absolutely believe that this is what a lot of urbanists, especially those who don't actually live in cities, influenced.
I'm gonna take a week off from work and write down a dissertation in "Critical Media Studies" or some other inane bullshit studies on this topic. Easiest PhD ever.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

I'm gonna take a week off from work and write down a dissertation in "Critical Media Studies" or some other inane bullshit studies on this topic. Easiest PhD ever.

People have absolutely ZERO idea how much media and advertising affect their worldview; even someone like Null who hates advertisers (but nowhere near enough) doesn't realize just how much his worldview is affected by it; and if that's the case for him, normies are fucked.

 

[Peristaltic Pump]

There's a conflict to be resolved on r/fuckcars: Is posting about bikes fatphobic?
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Link / Archive

There are 200+ replies to the thread, and most of them are redditors proudly announcing they are, in fact, fat.

Spoiler: Examples of fat people

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There is a fact checker on deck. It is a mystery how humanity could have ever cracked the code on exercise being healthy without heckin studies. Science is truly amazing.

Here are some people "weighing in" with their opinions. The consensus seems to be that bikes are not fatphobic. The problem is the misconception that losing weight is related to better health.
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Fortunately, there is a centralized resource available for this marginalized group.
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"All Bodies On Bikes".
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Link / Archive
This site includes a blog, a podcast, where to find plus-sized cycling clothing, recommendations for parts to reinforce your bike, and guides on understanding bicycle weight limits.
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Patrick Tomlinson rode his bike across Milwaukee to murder a man, and still had enough stamina to flee from the scene without being caught, so no, saying that bikes are fatphobic says more about you than it does fat people, bigot.

 

[quaawaa]

Jason is visiting New York City:

Source (Archive)

 

[Maurice Maine]

Decent explanation as to why vehicle fatalities are on the up, TLDR it's all the EPA's fault.