[meme] Trains are 100000x easier to electrify and automate than cars, so why does everyone keep talking about electric and driverless cars?

Cars fulfill a very self-indulgent narrative. 'I get to decide where and when I travel', makes people feel "free" snd "important" even when millions of them are silently coming to the same decisions-- like going downtown at 09:00 on weekdsys-- that allow huge efficiency plays.

Notice how many ads feature fantasies of open roads and trips to faraway attractions, not the real world of "I need to sit in rush hour traffic from 6:30 on to get to the Work Factory"

Maybe public transit needs to focus its message on the freedom from drudgery it offers-- you don't have to be staring at the driver in front of you, scanning the traffic reports

I dunno what country you are from, but here in the US of A, the monopolies that own all the train infrastructure make sure to keep trains as public transportation as cost prohibitive as possible.

Big Auto has been destroying any idea of high speed rails for decades. Our trains are complete trash because of car lobbyists.

Because as much as trains and buses are great for everyday commuter movement (and having amenities within walking distance is key as well), there's two issues:

• Changing the infrastructure and zoning of an existing city is much easier said than done. Ripping up concrete, tearing down existing business and homes to increase densification, that's a huge undertaking.
• Trains never replaced the horse drawn carriage. You can never fully eliminate the need for cars because sometimes you need to move something big like a couch. Even if there's less cars on the road, it'll never be 0, as this also includes things like ambulances, and fire trucks that can't rely on schedules.

I would just settle for sidewalks, where I live in the USA it's just streets with no sidewalks everywhere. I used to live one mile from where I worked and I could barely even bike there because of crazy car drivers and nowhere to go if someone wasn't paying attention. Rural America is going to be car dependent for a long, long time.

I love trains

In Germany electric trains are standard for local public transportation.

Trains only run on a specified track and there isn't one near me. A car isn't bound by a track and can go anywhere.

I have an electric car because I refuse to pay any more money to fossil fuel companies but still need to drive. I use public transport where possible, but many trips just aren't viable.

It takes me 30 minutes to walk to the nearest shopping centre, but 2 hours to get there by public transport, or 5 minutes by car.

As an average citizen, I don't have the means to build or fund new railway lines. I am, however, lucky enough to be able to refuse to drive fossil fueled vehicles and still survive.

Electric cars don't solve a lot of the root problems of cars. They still require massive amounts of energy to move thousands of pounds of steel. They also still rely on sprawling roads and parking lots.

This isn't a binary. We need both robust public transportation and electric cars (with an electric grid supplied by renewable energy). Public transportation can't take you anywhere at anytime -- it's all a game of statistics and demand. If 12000 people want to go downtown at 7 pm, and 3 people want to go the opposite direction to get to work to start their night shift, you're going to see buses and trains headed downtown but not the opposite side of town.

Public transportation is best served for commutes and travelling to popular areas, and that's where the majority of emissions are coming from. Cars can supplement with everything else

Trains aren’t 100% the answer, but cars should be the last answer. Still we should electrify cars.

I would love to have trains and not need a car. Unfortunately that's still a decade away here in California.

Because cars aren't stuck to tracks.

I'm all in favour of trains. I only take the train to work, and it's so convenient I even take my kids to the city via train, to entertainment or shopping. However, even though I live inside the capital city in a Western European country, the train we take is powered by diesel. The government has been talking about electrifying the track for years, and the current estimate is that it will take another decade or more to get it done. There's a single electrified rail line in the entire country, and based on the electrification progress it will take several decades to electrify the rest (if ever). Based on this experience, I'd venture to say that electric cars are far easier to deploy than electrify train lines.

Running errands on public transport is an absolute nightmare. Imagine having appointments, hauling bags of groceries and maybe even having a child or pet on a leash, all while trying to catch busses and trains. Public transport is great to get a lot of people to a common place, but that's about it. Its not exactly cheap either. Where I live, a single one direction train ticket costs roughly as much as 2 liters (~½ Gallon) of gas. 2 liters can get me in and out of the downtown area about 3-5 times, depending on traffic. Or once with an hour of parking. If an electric vehicle would fall out of the sky into my lap and the only thing I had to care about is fuel (electricity) I'd definetly would save money and time compared to public transport. Public transport is absolutely necessary, but not the solution for everything.

Because North Americans were tricked by the oil and car companies in the 50s to think that car ownership was part of being human, and now we're addicted to sitting in traffic, breathing fumes, and killing pedestrians in the name of muh freedom.

I love good public transport. It's great to not have to worry about parking or having to drive. Good cities, like many in Europe and New York in the US, a car isn't really required.

But out in the countryside, a car is a must. Electric cars are massively better for the environment and way cheaper to run (like tenth the cost with a night rate).

since wen this sub is full of carbrain? like bruh.

Not every journey is possible with public transport. People will still need to lug equipment about in the electric future.

Because in our current state with everything built around cars, creating a train system to accommodate it all is nearly impossible. Trains work great in a downtown, or centralized area. They are very difficult to build to accommodate our 1x1 grid system that cars use. Or at least that's my perception of it. Even if the system could be built, it'd have to be manned, it'd have to travel to certain areas at certain times to account for jobs. And it becomes increasingly unwieldy the more requirements you add to it. I wish things had built up along a sustainable train systems instead of cars, but placing a train system in to replace the decentralized nature that cars introduce is a monumental and perhaps untenable task.

Because people want a means to travel independently, as in they are in control and not riding with strangers.

/s

Cars can pick me up 10 feet from my front door(my car). No train tracks within 5 miles of me. I would love if their were tracks closer.

Trains are great to connect cities. But a train trip for me will tipically take me will typically take 3 times longer than it would with a car. Last time I had to take the train/bus it took me 6 hours and had to change between 3 busses and 1 train. I could have done the whole trup in 2 hours, no changes and actually same price as I spent on fuel for my car.

And this is in Scandinavia where things run pretty smoothly!

I agree that within cities public transportation is great. But there are people who need cars no matter how many trains you set up or electrify. For us, EV is a good option (when they become more affordable)

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[Citation needed] on the 100000x easier part, but nice meme.

Electric cars seem like a stopgap more than anything to me.

Well that's a topic that intrigued me recently.

Here in France there was already some debates about how worth it was, mostly because it takes a few years to compensate the cost of production of the battery. But in France we think of the electricity as basically carbon-free (our energetic mix is something like 70% nuclear, 7% gas+coal, then "clean" energy)

However, in the world I think something like 70% of electricity production is fossil (with ~40% of coal), I don't get how electric cars are even a thing, say in the US?

Because places like America are so spread out (by design) that rail networks, especially in the Great Plains and Southwest, are viewed as impractical unless all of their population moved to cities or towns in close proximity to rail lines, and Americans tend to take up a large chunk of the bandwidth.

Batteries used gives you150 ebikes for every e-car

People here are saying a lot that cars are convenient because there's more roads... like... let public transport run on those roads? People seem to literally be unable to realize that things are the way they are now solely because you refuse to believe they can be in any other way and don't solve problems because "it's not practical". Short termed thinking runs too much

I am all for more public transportation in this country, but it wouldn't help me personally. I live outside of city limits- the closest bus line is two miles away. My work is even further outside city limits, a 10-minute drive south of me down a four-lane highway, past farm fields and into an industrial park.

There's just no way public transportation is going to help me there. And even if I didn't have to do it down a highway, there's no way I'm riding a bike there in the middle of winter.

So do please make public transport more available and expansive. Just know that it still won't be a universal solution. Individual transport is needed by some of us.

I plan to get an electric (not a Tesla) for my next car. I currently drive a hybrid.

B-but think of the iNdIvIdUaL!

Because trains are massively inconvenient to anyone that isn't living in AND traveling to the most dense of urban areas.

People associated "freedom to go anywhere" with cars but it's a disguised argument. For the most part it's about not traveling with others. To a degree it's also about status symbol but for the most part they want to be alone and dictate their own schedule. If they really cared about freedom to move wherever they would get offroad motorcycles and never need to pay for parking again.

Yeah, but no train takes me from my front door to my job/the movies/my vacation place. And my car works even if the state decides to shut down the trains/buses.

Public transit good, but in america public transit is not well funded and only really available in big cities. I think sadly it will be years before americans can give up the independence of being able to have transportation direct from point a to point b. Consider that in rural areas it could be a 30 minute drive to get groceries with no transit options. As long as americans are going to drive cars, we can at least try to make them electric vs ICE.

I will continue to vote for public transit initiatives and if we had a bus or train system in my town I would use it. I have a fuel efficient ICE car but trying to buy electric as soon as I can afford to buy something that isn't a telsa pile of crap.

Because they give people a lot more freedom than trains --- if you own a car. If you don't own a car but live in a society where everybody else has one you are kinda screwed.

You ever try taking your new mattress and bed frame on a train?

Simple - Tracks vs Road ratio.

Because as the wiseman said, somebody just wants to sell more cars.

Been seeing a big push for trains in Florida and California lately, hopefully things with Amtrak go well and we see more lines implemented in the future

We 100% need more trains. But in rural America, we need cars to do anything.

It’s not remotely easier. Trains carriages are easy to build, but the infrastructure is not. You have to move and extend roads, demolish buildings, lay the rails, build bridges, if you go underground there will be lots of digging and engineering work to protect nearby buildings, and don’t forget about maintenance. It is only profitable when the population is high enough and people have the need to travel to set places en mass. Otherwise it is just fantasy. If you live your whole live around any city Center, I can understand that you are not going to drive . But plenty of people lived in a tiny town of population under 10000people .

In cities, yeah. Outside cities, impossible

But I'd love to rent autonomous electric cars to move

cars don't need to be driverless to be electric. i'm in favor of public transport but as long as we're in the long process of building it out it's still a lot better to have electric cars than gas guzzlers, with drivers still included.

there is a doctrine here where you fuck up a less optimal but easier solution just to force the world to adopt the better one but it's a shitty thing to do. public transport and electric vehicles aren't exclusive. in fact, for lower density stuff we will need buses and those should be electrified too.

Because trains aren’t economically viable for the vast majority of the US, and where they are economically they are the topic of conversation.

As far as why the conversation would center around the US, that’s just the regular American-centric tilt english conversations generally lean towards. Most of Europe has their shit together in some topics like this (public transportation, for instance) and the US is a huge consumer of automobiles and no one if building mass transit between the middle of nowhere to the other middle of nowhere where we could ‘efficiently’ move individually insignificant numbers of people at a time.

Because many of us live in places where you must use a car, there are no alternatives

In such places electric public transport is nothing but a pipe dream

Why is it that trains are always proposed as the alternative to cars? I, for one, really want PRT to succeed. It seems to be the best middle ground between efficiency and convinience.

The worrying thing here is the assumption that we can choose...

The world has 2 billions individual cars. Lithium extraction rate may not be sufficient to make 2 billions cars by 2030... and that's assuming we don't need lithium for computers, smartphones, but also not for batteries for the grid (because no solar cell works at night and wind farms are not on demand erther), and... not for electric trucks! Then comes the question of the other metals: copper, nickel, cobalt, ...

Trains will not work everywhere for everyone, but not deploying them now and fast will be a severe issue for North America when resources will get scarce.

We need a smart mix of trains, buses, subways, tramways, shared vehicles, bikes, everything but one individual car per person. That era will come to an end because we're closer to the bottom of our planet's natural resources stock than the beginning.

There's not even a real option of keeping gas cars a little while more, as cheap oil is also coming to an end.

The difference between accepting this and "choosing" individual cars is how ready countries will be when resources will get scarce. It may get ugly...

Trains are electric. They use diesel generators to power the wheels.

because in lots of countries there is effectively no public transport culture existing, and car companies take advantage of that. it's really just about car culture and taking advantage of people in my opinion

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Because public transport is for dirty poors,, obviously /s

Trains, busses subways and trams with room for bikes. Bike and walking infrastructure along roads and in cities. Secure bike parking both publicly and at home. Frequent and flexible busses. And a wide variety of easily avaliable rental cars.

Trains: live super densely, it's great. Cars: chill bro

Because we can't have trains

because cars are more popular lmao. also they’re easier. cars are not going away.

How many trains run from my garage to the convenience store at anytime I want? Or from my garage to work at anytime between 8 and 9 am and then home at whatever time I want to leave? What about the trains that run to my mother's house or my sister's house in different cities? What about the one that goes to the snowboarding resort I like it in the boonies, or for that matter, the one in the middle of the mountains? I will never live in an apartment with other people for many different reasons, and it gets both miserably hot and dangerously cold where I live. There are plenty of other things to fix before going after vehicles, especially electric vehicles. Making me operate on some strict schedule with trains and buses it other public transportation takes away my freedom to do what I want, and I will fight tooth and nail to make sure that's not taken from me, especially when both can coexist.

Oh great, you pipsqueaks moved to lemmy? Fuck, you guys are annoying

Public transportation in America is typically a magnet for crime.

I’ll take a hard pass on being trapped in a tube with my assailants.

Because I don't want to be on a train with loud smelly inconsiderate people.

I'm 100% less likely to get stabbed by a tweaker in my car than on public transit in my city.

It's simple: people pay for cars. Companies or states pay for trains. Liberals want people to give money to companies, so cars it will be.

Honestly, driverless cars are going to reduce the total number of vehicles purchased because: People will be able to subscribe to a car service. It will know your work schedule and have a car waiting to pick you up from home and job. If you want to go somewhere, you just let the app know when and a car will come. If you go to town to do some shopping, it will drop you off. You don't own the car. You don't pay maintenance. You have no car payment. You pay the monthly sub (and it can be different tiers, depending on how much travel time you need regularly.

Once most people start doing this, cities will only need enough cars to support the maximum transit demand at peak times. Some of the cheaper plans will offer rideshare, meaning the car will pick up multiple passengers that are going the same direction. The demand for owning a car will drop as it will be a bigger expense and feel cumbersome in time.

Parking lot space will be reclaimed and repurposed in cities (hopefully by making mini parks with trees and plants). Overall, cities will become healthier (since the vehicles will have cleaner emissions), with the air quality improving. Traffic accidents will be almost non-existent.

if I lived in a much safer city with less homeless and robbers I'd agree with you

Autonomy.

Because I value my autonomy and don't want to have to wait for a train to show up when I want to go somewhere. Also, paved roads are significantly cheaper to maintain than rail lines, which makes a substantial difference when you take into account the size of the US.

Trains are not flexible and safe enough.

I have been to Singapore and Tokyo (train-centric cities), but cars are, unsurprisingly, easier to use in there.

You have pregnant wife or small kids? Trains are suicide in rush hours.

Because I like driving. It's really not that hard to figure out why the hive effort over EVs.

Everyone wants to go somewhere else, bro.

this is dumb on so many levels... i cant take my train to go to the supermarket

I don't want to be stuck on and overpacked train or bus, dependant on train or bus schedules and like the freedom to go where I want.

Maybe cry about cruise ships and industrial shipping that spews out the equivalent of millions of cars?