• Genius@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    I have some information that’s gonna blow your mind: people lived in rural areas for many thousands of years and cars were only invented a hundred years ago.

    They lived self sufficient lives and walked to town once a month for essentials. If they were lucky, they had a mule and a wagon.

    I’m guessing you live in a rural area and you think you need your car, because you’ve gotten used to driving into town every few days for fresh groceries and haircuts? Yeah, so that’s arrogant decadence. You live a cosmopolitan lifestyle with inner city conveniences, despite being out in a rural area with plenty of space and low land values, and this is made possible by your poison death machine.

    The poison death machines are not sustainable. Go back to living how your ancestors did. Take the mule into town once a month for soap and molasses, or move to the city. You don’t get to have it both ways

      • Genius@lemmy.zip
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        1 day ago

        Tough shit. Your poison death machine is killing people on the other side of the world, and the only way to have a clean conscience is to get rid of it

        • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 day ago

          You lack imagination. Plenty of ways to not kill people without having to recede to Palaeolithic levels of life quality.

          • Genius@lemmy.zip
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            1 day ago

            Yeah, I’m actually subtly manipulating you. See, you were acting like there’s no way to live rurally but to use cars, so I explained that people can live in rural areas without cars in a way you can’t argue with. But the trick is, I lowballed you to set your expectations low. Now I can explain that the United States was basically built by railroads, and that trains are faster than donkeys. Furthermore, rail technology has advanced massively in the last 100 years, to the point that you genuinely could live rurally without a car and still enjoy those urban conveniences you love, like out of season fruit. It won’t be as convenient as the car, but I’m sure now you’ve realised it would still be a far better quality of life than has ever been possible for your ancestors. And now it’ll look really selfish if you say you’re still not satisfied with that and you want to poison the sky and kill people for even more convenience.

            • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 day ago

              I live in Europe (Spain for reference). I think my country is the second one in the world in ultraspeed train network only behind china (or it used to).

              People in rural areas still needs cars. In fact people in rural areas doesn’t even use trains for the most part. Buses work better. Still, living there without a car is a big drop in life quality.

              We fund trains with public money to make them cheaper. Some trains are even FREE to the public, free as in you can hop in without paying. Still people don’t use trains in rural areas unless they have not access to a car. Because it’s imposible to have a network with enough frequency and travel time to match people expectations on transport. The infrastructure needed for it would be impossible.

              Sorry to break your great manipulation revealing that I do not live in the US.

              Next revelation is that I don’t even live in rural areas, but I know plenty of people who does.

              • Genius@lemmy.zip
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                1 day ago

                Trams would have a lower maintenance cost and higher volumes than buses. Buses are ideal for temporary routes and little else. If the provincial government ran trams instead of buses, they could afford to maintain more routes at the same annual cost, provided a little extra initial money. Then it wouldn’t be so impossible to have a tram route serving you.

                What you’re seeing isn’t a physical law. It’s an engineering problem.

                • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  1 day ago

                  We got rid of trams last century because there were better engineering solutions. Buses got more efficient, larger and more comfortable than they used to. Also within a city metro is much better and faster. They are also electric now. No need for investing in tram infrastructure for most cases nowadays.

                  Also when talking about rural I don’t think if we are talking really about trams, more like low distance trains, at least that’s what we call them here. They use full train infrastructure. Trams are more for cities.

                  What I don’t get is why some people cannot be happy with a 70% traffic reduction in cities ? That would be a great objective that would get rid of tons of emissions and problems without that much fuss because it’s easy to provide not only the same but better life quality with that objective. But some people feel the need to push to really hard extremes that, imho, only make people to push back over any attempt on traffic reduction. We could do a lot with proper demand control instead of trying to push a lot of restrictions on people and wanting to take away rights and life quality.

                  • Genius@lemmy.zip
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                    1 day ago

                    First off, the Netherlands brought back their trams, and it’s awesome. Trams are the most accessible form of transportation for people with mobility or financial issues, and they contribute very positively to the local economy by increasing foot traffic around local businesses. And as I said, they’re cheaper to run and maintain than buses.

                    Second, a 70% traffic reduction in cities would be around a 50% reduction in car usage overall, which was the thing you started this argument by complaining about. My radicalism caused you to push for a compromise that you previously considered too extreme. Get got. Being radical works.