Not Just Bikes / r/fuckcars / 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

[Xarpho's Return]

I disagree. I actually think there’s a ton of merit to most of what they say. Trains can be super efficient and if done well comfortable and populated. I think fundamentally they’re right that walkable, transit oriented cities are the future and are the best way to do things. The issue is they’re so smug and self assured I don’t care that they’re right, I want to own a gas guzzler and drive to the wall greens a few blocks over to spite them.

Merit in most of what they say? Usually it's some combination of...
- "I want alternatives to driving because I'm an autistic sperglord and/or hopelessly addicted to drugs and alcohol, but the local transit system can't get around as fast as cars"
- "Every city's problems is caused by cars. Not by crime, not by bad policies, not by misspent resources, but by cars."
- "CAR FREE IMPOSSIBLE? BUT THERE'S TOURISTY OLD TOWN EUROPE DISTRICT"
- Dogmatic garbage that has been largely been disproven...muh induced demand, muh car subsidies, muh GM streetcar ownership, muh stroads
- "UHHH ACTUALLY SWEATY YOU DON'T NEED A CAR TO DO ANYTHING, JUST TAKE FIVE TRIPS ON BICYCLE AND/OR LOAD A MATTRESS ONTO A TRAIN"
- Slobbering over pictures of Amsterdam and/or Tokyo

Even if you liked light rail/subway and wanted to see more of it, they're out of ideas and either want some unrealistically budgeted extension of train service or crippling the road infrastructure to make public transit "better".

 

[Reckless Entity]

I don't know where you live but I can give you a car free place where learning a new language isn't an issue. Mackinac Island, located in Lake Huron, between the lower and upper peninsulas of Michigan, is completely car-free (with the exception of a few emergency and occasional maintenance vehicles). Although in winter they use snowmobiles so not completely of private motor vehicles free but pretty much as close you can get. They don't even allow electric bikes, scooters or seaways without doctors note. Summer, spring and fall the island is for basic bikes and horses.

Just to note I haven't personally been there, just heard about from touristy sources so I can't say anything about actually living there.

I've been there on vacation a couple times. The place is a big tourist trap, and the whole island basically shuts down in winter. You only live there if you're rich enough to have a vacation home, or if you work on the island and make enough.

 

[Chuck McGill]

You have infinite understanding for people who for the flimsiest reason absolutely need a car with no alternatives available, but none for people who desire not to have their lives defined by the car.

I am willing to accept work vehicles and delivery vans and emergency vehicles on my street, but not car commuters. Is that truly too much to ask? How hard is it for people who self righteously want to commute by car to just live somewhere else? There are plenty of places that bend over backwards to enable their lifestyle, but none for me. The places that I enjoy are full of people far richer than me who do their best ruining them with their cars. And then laugh to my face that it’s not a place that everyone (particularly not me) should be able to afford. Ridiculous! This whole car-free stuff should not be offensive to anyone. It’s beautiful and great.

You're willing to accept, eh? You hear that boys? King Bike is willing to accede to our glorious demands lmao. You want the people who live in these communities "ruined by car culture" to just take a step back and let the glorious trains and buses come? Why do you have some special rights that they don't. You're just the same as any other lefty garbage. Oy vey oy gevalt, if only the unwashed proles would listen it would be so much better. As if anyone is obligated to listen to a broke little bitch like you.

And you have the gall to tell them "just live somewhere else lmao". Go fuck yourself you entitled little shit. Amsterdam is right fucking there and it's not my problem you're such a fuckup you can't work out the logistics of moving there. Either move there or kill yourself. We're tired of listening to you bikeniggers fucking whine.

 

[Pedophobe]

To be fair, he's against the Hyperloop, Battery-Powered trains and other such "Fucking magical" solutions.

He may be a Junior Communist with a swelled head, but he at least knows when an idea isn't going to work in the real world.

Yeah making fun of notTrains and some mildly interesting history-fagging is probably his best contribution to the Net. But Adam Something used to do stuff like that too before he became a NATO spokesmodel so it's not a real guarantee of quality.

 

[Tealeaf]

But unless you neighborhood already prohibits cars you are making the choice for other people and forcing them to live according to your will.

Perhaps you should join a community that is designed to be car free..

Converting existing neighbourhoods into much better, designed to be car free neighbourhoods indeed inconveniences people who already live there and would like to keep their cars. Surely there are ways to reconcile this? No! Any compromise is communism. No inconvenience is too insignificant. I should live in a cabin far away from anyone!

You know, the entire lack of any sort of willingness to compromise from outsiders is the main reason for the urbanism bubble. There's no reasoning with anyone outside the bubble, no matter what kind of olive branches you offer. Anything even mildly car-free is so unthinkable that you'll just receive suggestions ranging from killing yourself, fucking off and to stop wanting things other people don't want. So why not preach to the choir and make the message even sharper and edgier?

 

[Skeletonized Cow]

Converting existing neighbourhoods into much better, designed to be car free neighbourhoods indeed inconveniences people who already live there and would like to keep their cars.

Chief, I think your problem is with this right here. They would be better for you, not as a whole. People don't want to cooperate because for a decent chunk of the people, it isn't an "inconvenience" and they don't just "like to keep" their cars. They need them for whatever reason, perhaps as already mentioned upthread, perhaps something else.

Your proposal is to compel people who live in neighborhoods that they likely chose to move into in accordance to their needs to have their neighborhoods changed to something that doesn't meet their needs. That isn't a compromise, that's a total capitluation to your own personal demands. The actual compromise would be to fund new car-free neighborhoods for people who are like you, one that people who also want to be car-free could choose to move into.

 

[Blatant hypocrite]

Anything even mildly car-free is so unthinkable that you'll just receive suggestions ranging from killing yourself

"Mildly car-free" is an oxymoron.

 

[2lolis1cup]

Here's a fun chart, apparently the only thing better than airlines is long-haul rail for efficiency. Busses are apparently garbage.
View attachment 4065123

yeah that chart is complete bullshit. Airlines are efficient for long distance FAST travel. You will never find an airplane that is fuel efficient to the degree a bus could be. The air frame and powerplant will weigh much more than 2 buses that would fill the aircraft. Then you have to get that thing in the air and fly it at hundreds of MPH. I just looked up some facts for a common widebody aircraft that most airlines use.

Here we have the fuel capacity and consumtion of 767-300s powered by RB211-524H engines.

Fuel capacity:
20,112 Imperial gallons (91,380 litres/73,078 kgs)

Fuel consumption:

Shorthaul -
1,199 Imperial gallons (5,451 litres/4,360 kgs) per hour

Longhaul/Regional -
1,279 Imperial gallons (5,813 litres/4,650 kgs) per hour

I won't lie. I would love to ride a bus that burned that amount of jet fuel per hour.

 

[Tealeaf]

The actual compromise would be to fund new car-free neighborhoods for people who are like you, one that people who also want to be car-free could choose to move into.

You mean "live in a cabin in the woods away from literally anyone"? That's a total capitulation to others' personal demands. You realize that "urbanism" means people who like "urban," not new exurbs in the middle of nowhere. It's an extremely poor implementation of car-free if you have to get a car from your middle-of-nowhere community to go to work.

I have nowhere I can move to choose the lifestyle that I desire. All possible existing options have barriers I cannot currently cross: financial, cultural or otherwise.

 

[quaawaa]

Converting existing neighbourhoods into much better, designed to be car free neighbourhoods indeed inconveniences people who already live there and would like to keep their cars. Surely there are ways to reconcile this? No! Any compromise is communism. No inconvenience is too insignificant. I should live in a cabin far away from anyone!

Yes, there is an easy compromise. Buy some land on the outskirts of the city with a bunch of likeminded individuals and build your dream car-free neighborhood there.

But you won't be happy and the first thing you will do is complain that you can't leave it and demand that the rest of the city pay for a transit system and transform their neighborhoods so that you can travel to their businesses and attractions.

You're acting like we've never seen communist incrementalism before. Plenty of well-meaning people have tried to compromise by proposing the construction of bike trails, pedestrian bridges, garages, etc. only to be rebuked by urbanists who complain that cars aren't being inconvenienced enough.

No one has any problem with a transit system that pays for itself, but people don't want to pay for something they don't need and they don't want traffic deliberately slowed down in an attempt to force people onto transit. Drivers are used to paying for their own infrastructure and don't understand why transit and cycling activists throw a fit when asked to pay for their infrastructure.

 

[Tealeaf]

Yes, there is an easy compromise. Buy some land on the outskirts of the city with a bunch of likeminded individuals and build your dream car-free neighborhood there.

EASY? It's so easy that it's constantly happening everywhere... it's happening pretty much nowhere. It's really fucking hard to do. It takes years to build up the place big enough to become urban. If you can build it big enough that you actually have stuff within walking distance of each other. You still have to fight with 99% car-driving suburban councils who don't get it and hate you for trying to do it. If the regional zoning plan even allows city-center tier development on empty plots of land far away from anything else (It generally doesn't).

You demand the impossible and complain that people are too entitled when they can't do it.

 

[Skeletonized Cow]

You mean "live in a cabin in the woods away from literally anyone"? That's a total capitulation to others' personal demands. You realize that "urbanism" means people who like "urban," not new exurbs in the middle of nowhere. It's an extremely poor implementation of car-free if you have to get a car from your middle-of-nowhere community to go to work.

I have nowhere I can move to choose the lifestyle that I desire. All possible existing options have barriers I cannot currently cross: financial, cultural or otherwise.

If it isn't possible to build a decent sized community for people who want a total car-free community, then you belong to too small of a minority to really cater to then. Like, in this scenario you are asking for a super-majority to be coerced to follow your personal choice.

If that's the case, then I'm sorry chief, but you will have to learn to deal with it. Your personal desires don't outweigh those of others, it would be just as ridiculous to argue that those car-free communities which do exist should be compelled to be car-supporting to cater to a minorities' personal demands after all.

 

[Blatant hypocrite]

You mean "live in a cabin in the woods away from literally anyone"? That's a total capitulation to others' personal demands. You realize that "urbanism" means people who like "urban," not new exurbs in the middle of nowhere. It's an extremely poor implementation of car-free if you have to get a car from your middle-of-nowhere community to go to work.

I have nowhere I can move to choose the lifestyle that I desire. All possible existing options have barriers I cannot currently cross: financial, cultural or otherwise.

EASY? It's so easy that it's constantly happening everywhere... it's happening pretty much nowhere. It's really fucking hard to do. It takes years to build up the place big enough to become urban. If you can build it big enough that you actually have stuff within walking distance of each other. You still have to fight with 99% car-driving suburban councils who don't get it and hate you for trying to do it. If the regional zoning plan even allows city-center tier development on empty plots of land far away from anything else (It generally doesn't).

You demand the impossible and complain that people are too entitled when they can't do it.

So let's see:

• You want to have an urban area, i.e requiring the cooperation of millions of people
• You don't want it to have car commuters, i.e limiting movement in and out of it
• You don't want to have to move somewhere (you deem it impossible)

Am I getting this right?

 

[Tealeaf]

So let's see:

• You want to have an urban area, i.e requiring the cooperation of millions of people
• You don't want it to have car commuters, i.e limiting movement in and out of it
• You don't want to have to move somewhere (you deem it impossible)

Am I getting this right?

You are not getting it right.

- I want to live in a great city. That is, just a district of a few thousand people within a larger whole is enough, as long as it's quite densely built up to actually have stuff within walking distance. Millions don't need to care. I ask them not to care.
- Anyone can travel in and out of the place by foot. Maybe there's a transit line or parking garage somewhere outside of it. (It's not necessarily a very big place.) I don't care where people walk. They are free.
- It is extremely difficult, very unreasonably hard to move to a place like this. I suspect it has to do with it being pretty much impossible to build any more.

 

[quaawaa]

EASY? It's so easy that it's constantly happening everywhere... it's happening pretty much nowhere. It's really fucking hard to do. It takes years to build up the place big enough to become urban. If you can build it big enough that you actually have stuff within walking distance of each other. You still have to fight with 99% car-driving suburban councils who don't get it and hate you for trying to do it. If the regional zoning plan even allows city-center tier development on empty plots of land far away from anything else (It generally doesn't).

You demand the impossible and complain that people are too entitled when they can't do it.

I suspected you were British because of your spelling of “neighborhood” and you confirmed it with your use of “council” and “city center”. Move to literally any city center in your entire country and you’ll have exactly what you want, but I suspect you’re the type who isn’t happy unless you can have a large flat in Zone 1 of London and you’re too poor to live there.

Rural land in most places (i.e. not Britain with it’s anti-sprawl laws created by urbanists/environmentalists/retards who thought that seeing a house near a road/rail line was proof that the entire countryside was built up) has near zero rules for building outside of city limits. A walkable neighborhood is small by definition because people walk very slowly. It doesn’t take decades to build one. You’re complaining, as I predicted, that you wouldn’t have access to an entire city and admitting that you wouldn’t be happy stuck in a “15 minute” walkable neighborhood.

 

[Blatant hypocrite]

You are not getting it right.

- I want to live in a great city. That is, just a district of a few thousand people within a larger whole is enough, as long as it's quite densely built up to actually have stuff within walking distance. Millions don't need to care. I ask them not to care.
- Anyone can travel in and out of the place by foot. Maybe there's a transit line or parking garage somewhere outside of it. (It's not necessarily a very big place.) I don't care where people walk. They are free.
- It is extremely difficult, very unreasonably hard to move to a place like this. I suspect it has to do with it being pretty much impossible to build any more.

Well that sounds entirely too easy. A single large block of flats would, indeed, be a small zone with a few thousand people and no cars inside.

 

[Amber the Hedgehog]

Is

Well that sounds entirely too easy. A single large block of flats would, indeed, be a small zone with a few thousand people and no cars inside.

Isn't there a town in Alaska that's like one house?

I checked and there is the town of Whittier that is mostly made of one large apartment building. About 85 % towns little under 300 people live there and most services are under that one roof too. They do have cars thought as that's easiest way to get to and from the town.

 

[I'mma real anime gurl]

You are not getting it right.

- I want to live in a great city. That is, just a district of a few thousand people within a larger whole is enough, as long as it's quite densely built up to actually have stuff within walking distance. Millions don't need to care. I ask them not to care.
- Anyone can travel in and out of the place by foot. Maybe there's a transit line or parking garage somewhere outside of it. (It's not necessarily a very big place.) I don't care where people walk. They are free.
- It is extremely difficult, very unreasonably hard to move to a place like this. I suspect it has to do with it being pretty much impossible to build any more.

There's a place where people could walk and ride bikes that fits your description. It's called the ghetto and I dare you to confront the nigger who'd steal your fucking bike.

 

[Tealeaf]

Well that sounds entirely too easy. A single large block of flats would, indeed, be a small zone with a few thousand people and no cars inside.

You would really fucking think it's easy. It's so unoffensive and practical to do. But in truth, it's clearly incremental communism or something with a sinister plan to make everything everywhere like that. Or something.

I'm working on doing exactly that for the condo corp where I live. My main concern is how to comply with minimum parking requirements, as any substantial increase of density requires multi-level parking structures that are expensive, no one really wants to pay that much for parking, and home prices in the area are not high enough to allow writing off the structure when selling the new homes. And if you waive (much of) minimum parking, you're going to get so many people complaining about "but where will they put their cars" or such.

And that's the big hurdle after (if) I can gather enough buy-in from the other condo shareholders to make a lot of money out of development.

 

[Chuck McGill]

EASY? It's so easy that it's constantly happening everywhere... it's happening pretty much nowhere. It's really fucking hard to do. It takes years to build up the place big enough to become urban. If you can build it big enough that you actually have stuff within walking distance of each other. You still have to fight with 99% car-driving suburban councils who don't get it and hate you for trying to do it. If the regional zoning plan even allows city-center tier development on empty plots of land far away from anything else (It generally doesn't).

You demand the impossible and complain that people are too entitled when they can't do it.

>suburban council

Ah, it's a tea sucker. I should have guessed no American could be so insufferable. Hope you freeze to death soon limey.