I’m huge into going green, going mass transit, and everything else, however, most people cannot fit into one worldview, which is why this is more nuanced than your meme suggests.
As an example
The Midwest in the states does not have mass transit, so they have to drive. So trains and bikes are out. Hybrid still uses gas, and for the vast majority of them they will be on the freeway, so a hybrid is basically the same as an ICE car anyway, so yeah, I’ll push them into getting EVs if what they’re doing is commuting. However than it gets more nuanced to “is this for roadtrips”, because then maybe hybrid is better.
Which is why again I say it’s a person-to-person basis. For you maybe a hybrid is the only option, but saying EVs are wrong for everyone is a very naive approach.
If you’re aiming for a huge change anyway (buying new EVs for everyone, installing chargers everywhere) why not consider the other one - adding more transit and bike lanes? It’s not an easy shift either way - but one involves various unknowns and unforeseen difficulties. The other has been put to use across the world already.
Because we have people spread out all across a massive landscape in the USA, it’s not ever likely to be feasible to build public transport to reach everyone. No, we don’t all live in the big cities and we never will.
Personal transportation will always be a necessity for Americans, except for those who choose to live inside large cities that do have public transport. EVs with Sodium ion batteries would vastly improve our emissions and eliminate the problem with sourcing Lithium batteries’ minerals.
What do you mean “not ever likely to build public transport”? That is literally how the West was first settled, and the reason many of those towns exist. We already had train networks, and abandoned them only because of car trendiness.
I’ve read accounts from people who actually live in those small towns - even if they exist a long way from cities, they’re still generally walkable (because of the low traffic volume in the area). Any place where each individual home and store has been spread out such that literally every trip for any purpose necessitates private transport is just forcing its own worst-case scenario and would benefit from a redesign either way. As long as there’s any kind of civic center with a few stores, it becomes reasonably practical to at least have a bus route.
I’ve read accounts from people who actually live in those small towns
Haha, I’ve lived that life for about 80% of 4 decades already in several small towns and out in the woods far from town. Public transport is mostly non-existent, and people live all over the place where there is nothing but a narrow winding road with no sidewalks. It’s generally only the city center where the buildings like courthouses and banks are located that are walkable in the average American small town. Basically there’s no option but cars for these small towns.
When you go on about how they should all be built up into an urban paradise with sidewalks and buses and trains going everywhere, it overlooks the fact that we already don’t keep up the infrastructure that we have well enough. There is no money to just rebuild everything into the version you imagine would be ideal.
That sounds like the most backward design even of a rural area. This is not a dichotomy between cities and towns complete with pedestrian bridges and electric crosswalks, it’s also about planning that amounts past random, long-distance scattering of destinations.
I’m trying to even understand how you claim those towns become unwalkable, since that’s not due to lack of development - it’s a matter of overdevelopment of roads with wide lanes. A small grid of old buildings with dirt between them is perfectly walkable. If someone built those stores 4 miles apart from each other all in different directions, then even for car users that’s a design failure.
If you insist there is no money to develop anything in those towns or re-plan the environment, that’s an unfortunate diagnosis for the area, but that also means EVs won’t work there because of lack of charging infrastructure, and the town will die out since nothing is being maintained. Let’s keep the discussion to just places that at least have enough money to reconsider their 8-lane stroads.
That’s unfortunately the truth in most American rural towns. Take my town and their grocery store. My town back in the day apparently had a great town square, vibrant, very walkable. Over the years it’s become more delapidated due to neglect, and businesses don’t want to open there. Our grocery store left the downtown area so they could build a new one on the outskirts of town. People love it, it’s bright, big, huge even, and of course, plenty of parking. So they think it’s an absolute win. Except it’s not. It was the town’s only grocery store and now rather than having a walkable store from all the houses in town, everyone now gets in their car and drives 2 miles out of town, parks in the massive parking lot, and walks inside.
This is how commercial has all happened in small towns. It’s left the downtown which you’re right, would be very walkable, and has moved outside of town. On top of that, it’s extremely anti-pedestrian, so even if there would be a bus added eventually, it would still require walking 1/4 mile from the bus stop across a parking lot just to get to the entrance of one of the stores.
The entire thing is ridiculous, and you’re right for not understanding it. The only way it makes sense is if everyone is brainwashed into thinking that “it’s better that I get to get into my car, drive 2 miles, and pick up my groceries, put them all in my car, drive 2 miles home, then bring them all inside”
I will say EVs do work there, and it’s not because of charging infrastructure, but because everyone forgets that you can charge your car at home. Most residents are single family homes with 2, 3, hell even 4 car garages. Each space could have a charger, and every home could have solar added. Places like grocery stores can add chargers. In that small town we (for some reason) had 6 gas stations for our 15k people. They could be mandated to add some chargers, but even then, if everyone charged at home it’s like leaving your house on a full tank every day. Very few people seem to think that way.
Transit is by far the superior option, but we’re talking decades, centuries to hook up these small towns. In the short term, EVs will lower our dependence on fossil fuels at least.
They say, as I know people in the midwest who commute 1.5 hours each way to the city for their job and then turn around and drive home. I have a friend who lives in a town of no shit, 400 people.
There’s no bus that goes there. It’s 30 miles from the nearest “city” of 15,000, and he works another 20 miles past that.
You can survive without cars
Sure, they’ll just not eat, not work, and not do anything. Dude I’m all for urbanization and adding mass transit, but you’re going to be hard pressed to add rail routes or even bus routes to not just that one town of 400, but all the other thousands of tiny towns. Hell even the town of 15,000 doesn’t have a rail route. Hell even the state capital is missing a rail route. Let alone commuter options.
I’m not saying America is an exception, I’m saying you’re naive for thinking your one opinion will work for everyone, and that the problem is more nuanced then you understand.
That’s why I brought up Cali HSR. It’s been over a decade of planning and building that, and that’s connecting two of the largest cities in the country, and you’re just casually saying “Just build it everywhere”. Like yes we want that too, but the realities of building that would be centuries of work.
Yes, which is why I’m downvoting you.
I’m huge into going green, going mass transit, and everything else, however, most people cannot fit into one worldview, which is why this is more nuanced than your meme suggests.
As an example The Midwest in the states does not have mass transit, so they have to drive. So trains and bikes are out. Hybrid still uses gas, and for the vast majority of them they will be on the freeway, so a hybrid is basically the same as an ICE car anyway, so yeah, I’ll push them into getting EVs if what they’re doing is commuting. However than it gets more nuanced to “is this for roadtrips”, because then maybe hybrid is better.
Which is why again I say it’s a person-to-person basis. For you maybe a hybrid is the only option, but saying EVs are wrong for everyone is a very naive approach.
If you’re aiming for a huge change anyway (buying new EVs for everyone, installing chargers everywhere) why not consider the other one - adding more transit and bike lanes? It’s not an easy shift either way - but one involves various unknowns and unforeseen difficulties. The other has been put to use across the world already.
Because we have people spread out all across a massive landscape in the USA, it’s not ever likely to be feasible to build public transport to reach everyone. No, we don’t all live in the big cities and we never will.
Personal transportation will always be a necessity for Americans, except for those who choose to live inside large cities that do have public transport. EVs with Sodium ion batteries would vastly improve our emissions and eliminate the problem with sourcing Lithium batteries’ minerals.
What do you mean “not ever likely to build public transport”? That is literally how the West was first settled, and the reason many of those towns exist. We already had train networks, and abandoned them only because of car trendiness.
I’ve read accounts from people who actually live in those small towns - even if they exist a long way from cities, they’re still generally walkable (because of the low traffic volume in the area). Any place where each individual home and store has been spread out such that literally every trip for any purpose necessitates private transport is just forcing its own worst-case scenario and would benefit from a redesign either way. As long as there’s any kind of civic center with a few stores, it becomes reasonably practical to at least have a bus route.
Haha, I’ve lived that life for about 80% of 4 decades already in several small towns and out in the woods far from town. Public transport is mostly non-existent, and people live all over the place where there is nothing but a narrow winding road with no sidewalks. It’s generally only the city center where the buildings like courthouses and banks are located that are walkable in the average American small town. Basically there’s no option but cars for these small towns.
When you go on about how they should all be built up into an urban paradise with sidewalks and buses and trains going everywhere, it overlooks the fact that we already don’t keep up the infrastructure that we have well enough. There is no money to just rebuild everything into the version you imagine would be ideal.
That sounds like the most backward design even of a rural area. This is not a dichotomy between cities and towns complete with pedestrian bridges and electric crosswalks, it’s also about planning that amounts past random, long-distance scattering of destinations.
I’m trying to even understand how you claim those towns become unwalkable, since that’s not due to lack of development - it’s a matter of overdevelopment of roads with wide lanes. A small grid of old buildings with dirt between them is perfectly walkable. If someone built those stores 4 miles apart from each other all in different directions, then even for car users that’s a design failure.
If you insist there is no money to develop anything in those towns or re-plan the environment, that’s an unfortunate diagnosis for the area, but that also means EVs won’t work there because of lack of charging infrastructure, and the town will die out since nothing is being maintained. Let’s keep the discussion to just places that at least have enough money to reconsider their 8-lane stroads.
That’s unfortunately the truth in most American rural towns. Take my town and their grocery store. My town back in the day apparently had a great town square, vibrant, very walkable. Over the years it’s become more delapidated due to neglect, and businesses don’t want to open there. Our grocery store left the downtown area so they could build a new one on the outskirts of town. People love it, it’s bright, big, huge even, and of course, plenty of parking. So they think it’s an absolute win. Except it’s not. It was the town’s only grocery store and now rather than having a walkable store from all the houses in town, everyone now gets in their car and drives 2 miles out of town, parks in the massive parking lot, and walks inside.
This is how commercial has all happened in small towns. It’s left the downtown which you’re right, would be very walkable, and has moved outside of town. On top of that, it’s extremely anti-pedestrian, so even if there would be a bus added eventually, it would still require walking 1/4 mile from the bus stop across a parking lot just to get to the entrance of one of the stores.
The entire thing is ridiculous, and you’re right for not understanding it. The only way it makes sense is if everyone is brainwashed into thinking that “it’s better that I get to get into my car, drive 2 miles, and pick up my groceries, put them all in my car, drive 2 miles home, then bring them all inside”
I will say EVs do work there, and it’s not because of charging infrastructure, but because everyone forgets that you can charge your car at home. Most residents are single family homes with 2, 3, hell even 4 car garages. Each space could have a charger, and every home could have solar added. Places like grocery stores can add chargers. In that small town we (for some reason) had 6 gas stations for our 15k people. They could be mandated to add some chargers, but even then, if everyone charged at home it’s like leaving your house on a full tank every day. Very few people seem to think that way.
Transit is by far the superior option, but we’re talking decades, centuries to hook up these small towns. In the short term, EVs will lower our dependence on fossil fuels at least.
Yeah. America isn’t the world.
Plenty of countries have functioning public transport.
America is not the exception, you can survive without cars.
They say, as I know people in the midwest who commute 1.5 hours each way to the city for their job and then turn around and drive home. I have a friend who lives in a town of no shit, 400 people.
There’s no bus that goes there. It’s 30 miles from the nearest “city” of 15,000, and he works another 20 miles past that.
Sure, they’ll just not eat, not work, and not do anything. Dude I’m all for urbanization and adding mass transit, but you’re going to be hard pressed to add rail routes or even bus routes to not just that one town of 400, but all the other thousands of tiny towns. Hell even the town of 15,000 doesn’t have a rail route. Hell even the state capital is missing a rail route. Let alone commuter options.
I’m not saying America is an exception, I’m saying you’re naive for thinking your one opinion will work for everyone, and that the problem is more nuanced then you understand.
That’s why I brought up Cali HSR. It’s been over a decade of planning and building that, and that’s connecting two of the largest cities in the country, and you’re just casually saying “Just build it everywhere”. Like yes we want that too, but the realities of building that would be centuries of work.