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]

The GM streetcar conspiracy that urbanists love to talk about was in reality GM buying up dying streetcar companies and replacing the streetcars with GM-manufactured buses (GM manufactured a lot more than just cars back in the day). It wasn’t evil Big Auto shutting down transit companies to force people to buy cars and many of those bus routes still exist to this day.

Not even that, it was more "WHEN you inevitably replace your streetcars with buses, it has to be General Motors buses".

That's what the "conspiracy" was. It was just a violation of the anti-trust laws at the time.

 

[Yamamura]

Not even that, it was more "WHEN you inevitably replace your streetcars with buses, it has to be General Motors buses".

That's what the "conspiracy" was. It was just a violation of the anti-trust laws at the time.

The GM "new look" buses from the 80s were actually really frigging good. They held up surprisingly well for their age and I bet the transit commission in my town could have kept running them today if it weren't for changing fuel economy regulations. Hell I think there's still one route it my town that used one up until 2008.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Don't know how I didn't realize until now, but this throws a huge wrench into the urbanist narrative that life was all fine and dandy and children were playing in the streets until cars invaded and took over everything. No, life sucked before the car. Hugely.

That's probably the real reason why they never mention horses and have to come up with this ahistorical narrative.

"/r/fuckhorses" would still exist, but just be different than it ... currently probably is.

Proof!

This situation was made even worse by the introduction of the horse into an area from which it had been conspicuously absent: personal intra-urban transportation. Prior to the nineteenth century, cities were traversed almost exclusively on foot. Mounted riders in US cities were uncommon, and due to their expense, slow speeds, and jarring rides, private carriages were rare; in 1761, only eighteen families in the colony of Pennsylvania (population 250,000) owned one. The hackney cab, ancestor of the modern taxi, was priced far beyond the means of the ordinary citizen.

This changed with the introduction of the omnibus in the 1820s. Essentially large stagecoaches traveling fixed routes, these vehicles were reasonably priced enough to cater to a much larger swathe of the urban population. By 1853 New York omnibuses carried 120,000 passengers per day. Needless to say, this required a tremendous number of horses, given that a typical omnibus line used eleven horses per vehicle per day.

They'd still bitch that you should bike or walk everywhere (and to be honest, if my car shat and pissed and died in 3 years I probably would walk more). I'd really like to get my hands on some of the primary source writing for this, as I suspect I could change it very slightly and publish it as climate change articles. "Oh, we're all fucking doomed" has been the refrain of plebs for fifty thousand years.

With the state of the used car market you got to feel bad for teenagers who want to drive and the cheapest car that isn't a total shitbox is $15,000-20,000.

Teenagers who want to drive should get a shitbox and be happy about it; the best way to learn to drive is with a shitbox you have to keep running yourself. Bonus points if the brakes are a bit finicky so you can't rely on ABS to save your ass.

Edit: holy shit

Horses killed in other, more direct ways as well. As difficult as it may be to believe given their low speeds, horse-drawn vehicles were far deadlier than their modern counterparts. In New York in 1900, 200 persons were killed by horses and horse-drawn vehicles. This contrasts with 344 auto-related fatalities in New York in 2003; given the modern city’s greater population, this means the fatality rate per capita in the horse era was roughly 75 percent higher than today. Data from Chicago show that in 1916 there were 16.9 horse-related fatalities for each 10,000 horse-drawn vehicles; this is nearly seven times the city’s fatality rate per auto in 1997.

do carfuckers actually want fatality rates back up? Maybe they want TND in a surprisingly submarine urban way?

 

[JJLiautaud]

They'd still bitch that you should bike or walk everywhere (and to be honest, if my car shat and pissed and died in 3 years I probably would walk more).

Dont forget a fall every 100 or so miles that can break your leg or your femur and that carried an 80% fatality rate until around world war 1 or because you didnt wear a helmet mainly because they didnt exist you dashed your brains out on the streets and just fucking died.

 

[Big Budoo Troy]

Another thing I'm wondering, have hivedwellers ever addressed the efficiency issue public transport faces off peak times in smaller cities? If we ban all cars, public transport has to run 24 hours a day 7 days a week to account for everyone. This may not be a problem in say, Tokyo, but when I used to live in a city that *only* had a population of 3 million, I took public transport way more often than I drove. The only times the trains and buses were full were either a) during big events like footy games or concerts or b) peak hour on work days in the inner city only. I only lived 3 kilometres from the CBD, my closest train station was 3 stops from the Central hub, and even during peak hour after work by the time it got to my stop it was half empty. The reason for that is that in a non-hive city with suburbs you either make people wait for hours to get home or you need to build a bunch of different lines, and we did the latter. Same with buses, because they have so many routes the bus I took would be completely full for about 3 stops from Central Station, but by the time I got off another 5-ish stops later I was one of the only people still on. If I went somewhere on the weekend, or off peak time both buses and trains were sometimes completely empty and never full. Late at night, while public transport leaving the city might have been full of clubgoers, not a single person is catching them back into the city, meaning half their travel time was a total waste.

Cars are often demonised for being inefficient, but all those statistics rely on people assuming peak capacity for public transport versus cars with only one occupant. They don't usually compare full/full, and never compare empty off-peak public transport to cars of any capacity. I don't know the energy use statistics off the top of my head for trains vs cars but I found a graph of carbon emissions so let's address the environmental side and assume energy works similarly:

As you can see, while an average train puts out less emissions per passenger-kilometre compared to a small car carrying 4 people, it does so by carrying 39 times the amount of people. Or to put it another way, if my maths is right, any train with less than 40 people on it is less efficient than an almost-full sedan. Buses are even worse, although admittedly this graph makes them look worse since 13 people is not a full bus. Even still, a bus still needs to have ten people on it to make a significant dent in pollution compared to somebody alone in their car. If people who work night shift rely on cars to get around, then they're only causing 4 empty seats worth of wasted energy. If buses and trains run at all hours of the night for them with tens to hundreds of empty seats they are objectively worse.

This problem can even happen in larger cities, if Bombay or Tokyo decided to fix their overcrowding by just adding more carriages, then they're consuming more energy needlessly off-peak as well. The only way to "fix" this is to eliminate all the extra lines which naturally empty out and force everybody into hives that are so dense the trains are constantly full to capacity. And even then we'd be fucked when a rail line has to be closed for maintenance or due to an accident. You can reduce needless waste caused by car traffic by just encouraging carpooling, you don't have to get rid of cars. A lot of cities already have carpool lanes, but I'm sure if you offered additional financial incentives like free travel on toll roads more people would do it. It's also an objectively better solution for families traveling together than public transport and the risks involved (be that getting separated from your kids somehow or the risks of the melanated variety).

 

[DavidS877]

Interestingly that graph varies from this one for the US:

Which uses Passenger Miles per Gallon Equivalent. But does agree that trains are the winner.

Here's the linked book:

https://tedb.ornl.gov/

And the raw data including their load factors:

Apparently, on average, busses in the US don't get used very much.

 

[LaxerBRO]

The GM streetcar conspiracy that urbanists love to talk about was in reality GM buying up dying streetcar companies and replacing the streetcars with GM-manufactured buses (GM manufactured a lot more than just cars back in the day).

But what about, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

 

[WelperHelper99]

The EPA was ceded the authority by that law (in violation of article 1)
Since then it has been sinching the noose tighter and tighter with the standards.


The definition of "light truck" (set by the EPA, because fuck the constitution's requirement for CONGRESS to pass laws) excluded compact pickups of the type we used to have in the early 1990's because Clinton, of course.

Obama then applied CAFE to "light trucks" causing professionals who actually need them to do truck things to complain about reduced durability and towing capacity. (To this day any professional who needs to actually use their truck still has an old one (because aluminum beds SUCK ) , the pickup truck version of Cuba's cars)

Biden is now demanding a ridiculous 40 MPG from pickups and SUV's.
It's literally not possible so expect to either see pickups become 100% fake and gay or disappear.

https://archive.li/TtboA

This is what happens when hive dwellers who think "food comes from the grocery store" start regulating what vehicles farmers and construction workers are supposed to use on the job.

The EPA regulations they're proposing are mental, and anyone saying "we don't want to take your car" are liars. These are abstract numbers with no basis in SCIENCE. If they really cared, they would approve more nuclear plants.

._. modern trucks have had radar for 10 years and blindspot cameras for 5.

Literal tech we have in planes and recently, tanks, to remain aware of targets in poor conditions, or in this case, pedestrians and cyclists. Don't forget auto braking in some cars!

 

[LaxerBRO]

Just a point of reflection...

What bothers me most about the NJB / FuckCars crowd is what you find among many leftists. That is an utopian attitude, arrogance, and incompetence except instead of policy changes, any changes to transit infrastructure has more permanent effects. Take for example during Trumps first election, where those on the left threatened to move to Canada or Europe if he was ever elected. However when reality hit, they realized they didn't qualify for the stricter skills based immigration in those countries. Another example was when Starbucks was involved in the race controversy resulting in protests. Eventually, Starbucks decided to open their stores and restrooms to everyone regardless of if they are a customer. The result, in just a few short years, was store locations removing seating and re-instituting restroom code or removing public access altogether. Finally, we see the attempt by Oregon to follow the Portugal example when it came to decriminalizing drugs. Now, Oregon is faced with a drug overdose epidemic as no mechanism forced people into treatment.

Hence, we see a pattern. American progressives hear about X program in another country, they fetishize over it, miss key details, implement their flawed system, and then complain when the results are shit. When this is applied to the issue of transit, we see that these American progressives don't understand the daily realities of all those who actually use such a system to live, such as the multiple times actual Europeans have to correct their notions. But the problem is that they seem to lack self reflection on a large part.


Commute times per metro area.

Singapore MRT v. car.

As we see from the chart, NYC, D.C., and Chicago all have good public transit but the longest commute times with LA compared to SF only differing by two minutes per trip. The fact is that unless you live next to a main rail line and have no transfers, driving is the fastest way to get to a destination. Per the video, the car takes 30 minutes while the MRT (metro) takes one hour and 15 minutes. So, in a densely packed urban environment with good public transit, the journey time is 45 longer by public transit. This should be setting off fucking alarm bells in their brain but they just continue on with the anti-car / public transportation activism. I would venture that if we were to apply this not to only the urban core of metro areas but the surrounding suburbs we would get commute times pushing an hour and a half to possibly even two hours.

Now, I know that the standard response will be but not everyone is like them. But some people relax better at home than on public transportation. Others actually have stuff to do once they get home (e.g. walk the dog, cook dinner, spend time with the kids). With this in mind lets apply a schedule for random person.

​	Public Transit (Short)​	Public Transit (Long)​	Car​
1700	Off work​	Off work​	Off work​
1730	Transit​	Transit​	Transit​
1800	Transit​	Transit​	Transit​
1830	Transit​	Transit​	Walk Dog​
1900	Walk Dog​	Transit​	Cook, Clean, Eat​
1930	Cook, Clean, Eat​	Walk Dog​	Cook, Clean, Eat​
2000	Cook, Clean, Eat​	Cook, Clean, Eat​	Personal Care (Shower, etc.)​
2030	Personal Care (Shower, etc.)​	Cook, Clean, Eat​	Children / Personal Time​
2100	Children / Personal Time​	Personal Care (Shower, etc.)​	Children / Personal Time​
2130	Personal Time (Children are asleep)​	Personal Time (Children are asleep)​	Personal Time (Children are asleep)​
2200	Sleep​	Sleep​	Sleep​

So we see what the differences are. One could lose 30 minutes with their kids or personal time or even that time altogether (though kids could go to bed later). The response to this problem would be to go to a third place or downsize / relocate.

Addressing the first option of a third place. it just seems like a local pub with happy hour appetizers. Not only do they cost more than cooking yourself but tend to be less healthy compared to proper meals. Regarding relocation, townhouses in the city are notoriously expensive with apartments and condos have the problem of a smaller square footage and needing to deal with the issues of at least eight other people. Next we have to look at the loss in equity as compared to a single family home with the apartment having no equity and the condo having low - medium equity. This factor is important because its how one passes on wealth to their children. As such, in all their solutions a person loses money for themselves or for their children. Even with rent control and nationalized housing their are drawbacks.

So what will their society look like?

​

When I envision such a society, I am not envious but am filled with dread. How would such a life be better? Eating goyslop? Being beholden to the government for shelter? Face limited housing due to rent control? Living in an apartment? Needing to work longer due to not having equity? Not having enough space and needing to rent items? I am not going to disparage other for thinking such a life is desirable but I know its not for me...I just don't want to be dragged into dystopian due to the moral failings of progressives.

 

[MS Paint Gigachad]

Singapore MRT v. car.

Not the first time this video was posted in this thread.

Some selected quotes from the first:

Singapore, a nation with city boundaries enforced by island size, $131k PPP-GDP per capita, 3rd highest population density, and nearly unlimited government power, has decided that roads and private vehicles are necessary after all.

The country from the "Society if" meme is run by carbrains. Shocking, I know.

Keep in mind this is TODAY, a GOVERNMENT LINKED newspaper. And I've told everyone the government heavily intervenes on behalf of public transport, imposing fees that triple the cost of cars.

Also it looks like Singapore has very low speed limits for highways. A highway only route like this one would take half the time in my city because I can drive over twice as fast.

TLDR, Singapore is rich country, very dense, very urbanized, high level of government control, aggressively pushes public transit/discourages cars. Car still better.

Spoiler: PS: off topic singapore autism

That’s also not a picture of Singapore Changi Airport. It’s a picture of Jewel Changi Airport, which is a shopping mall located next to the terminal and that post is the equivalent of posting a picture of the Mall of America and saying that it’s Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport:

PS I would like to set the record straight on this: Yes, Jewel Changi Airport is not an airport terminal, BUT it's directly connected to the airport and is somewhat integrated with it, with stuff like early check-in services for some airlines available there. You could think of it as an extension to terminal 1, perhaps?

As for the train you see in the "society if" meme? That's the skytrain, a low capacity train kinda system which moves people between terminals.

https://www.changiairport.com/en/airport-guide/departing/early-checkin-online.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changi_Airport_Skytrain

https://youtu.be/_V37cWoSgjc

 

[Yamamura]

Hence, we see a pattern. American progressives hear about X program in another country, they fetishize over it, miss key details, implement their flawed system, and then complain when the results are shit. When this is applied to the issue of transit, we see that these American progressives don't understand the daily realities of all those who actually use such a system to live, such as the multiple times actual Europeans have to correct their notions. But the problem is that they seem to lack self reflection on a large part.

Usually these progressives think they'll be the ones at the top doing the sort of hand waving to command the paroles at the bottom to do their bidding. How will any of this be implemented? Well I'm sure the lumpenproletariats will figure out a solution for me. I'm the idea guy, I can't be assed with the details!

For NJB, Jason looks at himself like some sort of visionary leader who will lead the unwashed masses to a better future, but in reality he's more like a child whinging to his parents, "look Jared's parents have a pool why don't we?" when looking at Amsterdam and complaining about all the stuff he doesn't have back at home. Unlike someone like Road guy Rob who understands the realities of why things are set up the way they are and suggesting improvements that could have tangible real world applications.

When I envision such a society, I am not envious but am filled with dread. How would such a life be better? Eating goyslop? Being beholden to the government for shelter? Face limited housing due to rent control? Living in an apartment? Needing to work longer due to not having equity? Not having enough space and needing to rent items? I am not going to disparage other for thinking such a life is desirable but I know its not for me...I just don't want to be dragged into dystopian due to the moral failings of progressives.

The only solace I have that gives me a warm feeling is the fact that the progressives will inevitably be left to wallow in the mess of their own creation, like what they've turned Portland into. Just like Rorschach said in the Watchmen, "The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown (...) politicians will look up and shout 'SAVE US!'".

Unfortunately, we are unable to wall them off and they'll just move to the next untainted area to repeat the process over again.

 

[WelperHelper99]

only solace I have that gives me a warm feeling is the fact that the progressives will inevitably be left to wallow in the mess of their own creation, like what they've turned Portland into. Just like Rorschach said in the Watchmen, "The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown (...) politicians will look up and shout 'SAVE US!'".

Unfortunately, we are unable to wall them off and they'll just move to the next untainted area to repeat the process over again.

The only thing that can be done is to drive, guzzle gas (the 6 cylinder in my car takes care of that for me lol), and make sure they stay in their hives with all that bloody electric bus and train autism. Make them realize that lithium powered passenger vehicles aren't all it's cracked up to be, especially when the cold hits, even if it takes years

 

[Fields Of Rye]

._. modern trucks have had radar for 10 years and blindspot cameras for 5.

Also what’s with this “you can line up 10 kids” shit? I keep seeing this pop up but realistically, as someone who grew up on a farm (you can put an infinite amount of children in front of a backhoe with a raised dozer), if the truck is moving, there aren’t going to be any kids in front of it. If it’s not moving, it’s not dangerous, so what level of cope is this? Even if you start up and go, you’ll pass the line of presumably suicidal kids on the way to the truck.

You can put 1.2 miles of kids in front of a freight train and it’ll pulp every single one of them but we all know how stupid that sounds

 

[WelperHelper99]

Also what’s with this “you can line up 10 kids” shit? I keep seeing this pop up but realistically, as someone who grew up on a farm (you can put an infinite amount of children in front of a backhoe with a raised dozer), if the truck is moving, there aren’t going to be any kids in front of it. If it’s not moving, it’s not dangerous, so what level of cope is this? Even if you start up and go, you’ll pass the line of presumably suicidal kids on the way to the truck.

You can put 1.2 miles of kids in front of a freight train and it’ll pulp every single one of them but we all know how stupid that sounds

Yeah they really think kids have a death wish. You don't have to be very old to understand a F-150 is big, heavy, and will make you go splat. A 8yo understand this, especially one that likes building Lego cars and collecting Hot Wheels.

 

[AN/ALR56]

Dont forget a fall every 100 or so miles that can break your leg or your femur and that carried an 80% fatality rate until around world war 1 or because you didnt wear a helmet mainly because they didnt exist you dashed your brains out on the streets and just fucking died.

Fun fact, the reason mongolians wore those big ass fur hats was because it offered protection if you fell off a horse.

Also anyone fucking tired of YouTube recommending this city planning shit? I click on don't show this channel and there it is, some retard talking shit about cars covering half of the related videos bar, happens especially when I watch Doug Demuro.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Also what’s with this “you can line up 10 kids” shit? I keep seeing this pop up but realistically, as someone who grew up on a farm (you can put an infinite amount of children in front of a backhoe with a raised dozer), if the truck is moving, there aren’t going to be any kids in front of it. If it’s not moving, it’s not dangerous, so what level of cope is this? Even if you start up and go, you’ll pass the line of presumably suicidal kids on the way to the truck.

You can put 1.2 miles of kids in front of a freight train and it’ll pulp every single one of them but we all know how stupid that sounds

It's from stupid shit like this: https://www.indiatimes.com/auto/cur...his-highlights-a-disturbing-issue-504387.html (a) and while it highlights a real fact about vehicles, it's something any driver should have learned when starting out.

This is why you should stop at a cross walk not so your bumper barely touches the line, but so your sight profile touches the line. Idiots who don't recognize this and drive their SUV like it's a low-slung corvette probably need to be shot, anyway.

And whilst I can fight discussion about blind spots and sight lines for construction equipment, busses, trucks and cars, I can't find SHIT for locomotives because when you're a fucking train it don't fucking matter if you can see shit.

I mean seriously look at this thing:

I have seen army tanks with better visibility lol



Modern locos aren't significantly better, though you'll start to notice things like this on busses, light rail, and even some locos:


What is this? It's a huge window on a new streetcar. Why? So the driver can see idiots who run in front of the goddamn train when it is stopped. They still have a hard time stopping quickly (mass and Newton) but fuckers (read: city niggers) will walk right in front of the damn thing so they have to be able to see them.

Whereas modern big locos might have more visibility, they're mainly concerned with protecting the engineer if they hit a fucking truck which happens way more than it should, really.

Sorry null for breaking your website with fuckoff huge picture of a steam loco.

 

[DavidS877]

Retards in Portland, OR(redundant I know) move their apartment via bicycle. If there were only some sort of vehicle that could make this faster and easier and not require wasting 50 people's time.

 

[Tour of Italy]

Retards in Portland, OR(redundant I know) move their apartment via bicycle. If there were only some sort of vehicle that could make this faster and easier and not require wasting 50 people's time.

They live in a city where millions of tons of goods are shipped in by trucks annually and yet they feel it necessary (and virtuous!) to avoid renting one for an afternoon.

 

[I need more BMWs]

BladedAngel is a guy who makes shitty meme videos about cars (i.e think top 10 lists and shit like that). It's just kinda weird how the people who benefit and owe their whole channel careers to cars are so eager to suddenly turn against the only thing they talk about.

Surprised this guy still makes videos considering how dogshit they were and probably still are.

 

[LaxerBRO]

For NJB, Jason looks at himself like some sort of visionary leader who will lead the unwashed masses to a better future, but in reality he's more like a child whinging to his parents, "look Jared's parents have a pool why don't we?" when looking at Amsterdam and complaining about all the stuff he doesn't have back at home.

When I hear their cope strategies, I always think of North Korean defectors that want to go back.

The experience they suffered in the North has made them dependent on the state and mostly incapable of competing in the job market. Even innocuous tasks are hurdles to them because they are paralyzed by personal responsibilities, the multitude of choices, and outcomes.

When confronted with this new reality, it's understandable why they want to go back to a society where ones role and choices are prescribed.

Now when this is applied to the NJB people, it's not as extreme but still there. They surrender their time to the government through transit schedules. They surrender their ease of movement to transit routes. They surrender living space and outdoor yards to get common areas in residential communities. In a way, it seems they don't want to be adults and much rather be told when, where, and what to do.