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

I discovered Not Just Bikes and others like him about three years ago by accident and I thought they made interesting points about inefficiency in city design and how gimped America’s rail system is, but, like every politically oriented group, they started getting absurdly extreme with their ideas until I tuned out. Why can’t Internet People find a way to discuss issues without purity spiraling into stupidity?
As soon as a community becomes big enough for people stopping recognizing each other, it gets ruined by shizos. "Normies ruin everything" has been a wrong concept for the whole time: the majority of people both IRL and online are pretty well-adjusted, but the overly active minority that has nothing better to do than preaching their shizoid ideas destroy everything they take notice of.
 
I like high speed rail as an option. I think having options is important to transit. I am not against rail, buses, highways, or planes. I think we should invest in infrastructure in general, at least my tax dollars would be doing something.
I wished my taxdollars would go more into infrastructure. I decided to take the train to a thing yesterday, about a 200 km trip each way, and to and back I took a total of five trains excluding metro, and every single one of them was delayed in some way, causing me to be over an hour late on the way there. Only 15 on the way back, at least.
The inter-city rail system here is so goddamn fucked.
Now the intra-city transport systems, those work well. Trams and metro and busses, they have good coverage and run well, at least in my city. Sometimes they use some charmingly old rolling stock on the metro, too. Tram has some trains going back to the 80s, metro even from the late 60s. They're less comfortable than the newer ones of course, but I like how they look.
Trams inhabit a weird space in the USA - they're either railroads and regulated federally (which has its own sorts of fun associated) or they are technically busses on rails and regulated by the city/state. The latter causes them to have to follow traffic laws.
I guess it's because sometimes the tram tracks are kinda semi grade separated. Like, often the tram is fully part of the road and has to adhere to the same rules as any other vehicle, but also like in this picture they're running on a separate lane.
 
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Trams inhabit a weird space in the USA - they're either railroads and regulated federally (which has its own sorts of fun associated) or they are technically busses on rails and regulated by the city/state. The latter causes them to have to follow traffic laws.
If there's one thing that this thread has taught me, it's that urbanists hate having to follow traffic laws themselves.
 
I know this has been discussed but here's a 1960 ad (source) for something we might call a SUV. Dunning-Kruger urbanists think SUVs weren't invented until the late 1980s.

2024-11-28 09_04_09-Beeville Bee-Picayune (Beeville, Tex.), Vol. 73, No. 37, Ed. 1 Thursday, F...png
 
I know this has been discussed but here's a 1960 ad (source) for something we might call a SUV. Dunning-Kruger urbanists think SUVs weren't invented until the late 1980s.

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Back then they called them station wagons. Brits called them estate cars. Technically the modern SUV is a different body type whereas these were elongated sedans or enclosed pickups
 
Back then they called them station wagons.
SUVs were usually built on a truck chassis whereas wagons were built on a regular car chassis, the modern SUV is a result of the former being made more comfortable with improved suspension to the point that a truck-like chassis becomes suitable for an upmarket vehicle.
 
Back then they called them station wagons. Brits called them estate cars. Technically the modern SUV is a different body type whereas these were elongated sedans or enclosed pickups
We still do in Europe, they're pretty popular although they've been getting pushed out by SUVs. (This is largely due to EU regulations that penalize small cars - small wagons are disappearing because they can't be competitive due to EU-imposed fines, so cars are getting bigger. Yay.)

Brits call them estates and continental Europe calls them station wagons or combis.
 
We still do in Europe, they're pretty popular although they've been getting pushed out by SUVs. (This is largely due to EU regulations that penalize small cars - small wagons are disappearing because they can't be competitive due to EU-imposed fines, so cars are getting bigger. Yay.)

Brits call them estates and continental Europe calls them station wagons or combis.
US automakers stopped doing wagons right around the end of the 80s. Wish they'd make a comeback. We need more fake wood panelling
 
I know this has been discussed but here's a 1960 ad (source) for something we might call a SUV. Dunning-Kruger urbanists think SUVs weren't invented until the late 1980s.

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This is a gross misrepresentation. SUVs are nothing like Station Wagons because SWs actually had some fucking thought behind them. They were basically panel vans with extra windows and seats. Fit an entire family in it with legroom. Works of art, man. My favorite is the '70 Chrysler Town & Country (which is based in the New Yorker, a beautiful car).
 
We still do in Europe, they're pretty popular although they've been getting pushed out by SUVs. (This is largely due to EU regulations that penalize small cars - small wagons are disappearing because they can't be competitive due to EU-imposed fines, so cars are getting bigger. Yay.)

Brits call them estates and continental Europe calls them station wagons or combis.

US automakers stopped doing wagons right around the end of the 80s. Wish they'd make a comeback. We need more fake wood panelling

US emissions regulations also penalize small cars, which lead to the SUV boom being a thing, and cars getting larger and larger.
 
Today is Thanksgiving and people all around America are getting together to share a meal with their extended family.
Sadly for urbanists, they weren't invited and can only seethe impotently at others having fun:
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One more truck bro.jpeg
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I thought urbanists liked "shared streets"?:
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They don't need to hire someone else to drive food to them because they have vehicles:
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There are literally trees in the picture:
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Source (Archive)
 
There are literally trees in the picture
They are missing the forest for the trees.

Based on the elevation of the photo, the poster lives in one of those 500k+ houses.
+ He just got back from a trip to Europe.

Just an extremely spoiled brat.
 
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US emissions regulations also penalize small cars, which lead to the SUV boom being a thing, and cars getting larger and larger.
Yeah backward ass emission laws along with the chicken tax made it more profitable and cheaper to sell bigger vehicles, combined with increasing safety regulations meaning more encroachment on interior room means they naturally got bigger over time. Trying to legislate people's preferences out doesn't work.
 
Today is Thanksgiving and people all around America are getting together to share a meal with their extended family.
Sadly for urbanists, they weren't invited and can only seethe impotently at others having fun:

He's in Nashville based on his Reddit history and the address looks like 15 or 25 A*** Ridge Ln. or something, sadly I haven't been able to crack that even with Davidson Co.'s tax appraisal tools. Still, you could see that he's in the upper level. Tip for Europeans and others: in America, typically normal houses have the master bedroom on the ground level (barring exceptions like the ground level is the garage), upper level is for guests, children, and renters. The concrete and asphalt is already weathered so it's not a new neighborhood, probably built in the 2000s.
 
"Normies ruin everything" has been a wrong concept for the whole time
It's true for entertainment at least, but when it comes to things with a tangiable effect on people's actual lives like urban planning they tend to be pretty level headed.
typically normal houses have the master bedroom on the ground level
Every time I see a house in American TV the bedrooms are always upstairs and the only time they aren't are when there isn't an upstairs to put them, though admittedly I can't say I'm an expert on such things, being a bong and all.
 
It's true for entertainment at least, but when it comes to things with a tangiable effect on people's actual lives like urban planning they tend to be pretty level headed.

Every time I see a house in American TV the bedrooms are always upstairs and the only time they aren't are when there isn't an upstairs to put them, though admittedly I can't say I'm an expert on such things, being a bong and all.

Well, three things to that:
1. Childrens' bedrooms are usually upstairs, and a lot of TV shows/movies have children as the main characters.
2. Going down the stairs is usually more dramatic than just going toward the kitchen.
3. It's all sets anyway.

For the last several decades, houses have a "master bedroom" which is a larger bedroom than the others, and the "master bathroom" which usually has two sinks and a larger shower. The master bedroom is almost always downstairs.
 
If there's one thing that this thread has taught me, it's that urbanists hate having to follow traffic laws themselves.
Like most leftist/academics , they expect their reward for showing the rest of us plebes the right path is immunity from having to follow it.

Station wagons did persist on smaller FWD chassis in the US into the late 90's as a body option, the early Cavaliers had one, so did most of the early 90's Oldsmobiles and Buicks, as did the Ford Escort/Taurus and it's badge cousin Mercuries.... but yeah, the fully-framed full-size wagon went out in the mid 90s as the chassis they were built on were slowly discontinued for the same damnable reasons that doomed small trucks.

I think the last "fullsize" traditional wagon (available with proper woodsides and all) was from General Motors in the form of the Buick Roadmaster (it was Chevy Caprice based, the GM fleet and cop car chassis until 1995 saw it end) I saw examples of them in fair condition still on the roads well in to the early 2010s.

Oddly enough, though they kept a fullsize sedan over at Ford in the form of the Crown Vic? The last generation of it that lasted into the early 00's never offered a wagon version to my knowledge, at least not from the factory. Maybe someone somewhere did some crazy conversions, but, you couldn't' get a wagon off the dealer lot.

I'll always hang on to my old retired P71 Police Car Vic as an example of the last true, full-size, RWD, unashamedly V8 powered American car, they will literally never build them like that again.
 
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