💾 Archived View for bbs.geminispace.org › u › karel › 13059 captured on 2024-06-16 at 19:28:40. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2024-05-12)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Those who ride 1:15 to work with the bus coming every 30 minutes, while the car drive is about 40 minutes and starts anytime. Both ways. It adds up to 6 hours per week, almost a full working day or the amount of time a healthy person invests in sports every week.
This is a trivial use case. The call for personal sacrifice goes nowhere as it lacks realism. And it's not the we really are that busy: society asks for long working hours; quick intelligent results are not often honoured. What gives? Mobility, family, hobbies.
Better go for a systematic change of opportunities: what if work, the market and the school are all within 20 minutes by foot? That is a change!
2023-12-27 · 6 months ago
I like this discussion.
I'd like to add that around where I live public transit is seen as unsafe by a lot of people, especially in off hours. Not sure how to change that perception and/or reality.
🚀 stack [OP] · Dec 27 at 21:20:
I failed to mention that insurance rates appear to be much (even several times?) higher for electric cars, according to some reports...
🚀 stack [OP] · Dec 27 at 21:24:
@karel: true, driving is usually faster in many (most?) places. But I've lived in NYC most of my life, where driving is just not an option and public transit is decent, mostly. Millions of New Yorkers just take the subway to/from work. We've learned to spend the time wisely - reading, resting, watching movies on our phones, chatting with strangers (NYC is amazing for casual conversations), or just thinking or daydreaming. Not so bad.
👻 shikitohno · Dec 31 at 18:16:
Sure, commuting takes up some time compared to the instant gratificaiton of hopping in your car and driving. As @stack says, you can reclaim some of that time. I think that many people would be quite content to give up the costs associated with car ownership if they had a feasible alternative. To operate a car where I live would cost me a whole month's of my part of the rent, between the car payment, insurance, etc, each month.
Of course, choosing to live in a rurally as you advocate for is also a personal choice. If you don't need to be out in the sticks, you can get more frequent public transportation options in higher density areas, and still have reasonable access to rural areas.
interesting, relevant read to the discussion here
— Your eco friendly lifestyle is a myth
Electric cars: reprise — [gemini link] Thank you for this and other responses. No cars is better than any cars of any kind -- that is true; public transit, density and sensible city planning are much better. In the meantime, electric cars do offer a reasonable-seeming solution for short suburban commutes with lots of time to recharge, in places where infrastructure is available. But I still think we are fooling ourselves about pollution (unless we are in Norway or some place that does not use...