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

And if you really want to go full doohickey mode, add four wheels to make it a true flying car.
This works great until you get a dent in a parking lot and you have to find a certified mechanic to check and see if it's still airworthy.

Companies try it every few years and the idea never seems to get off the ground(pun intended). Too many compromises for a full mutl-mode vehicle. There are some tricycle style ones that won't require all the highway crash requirements but they're likely to be 2 people with minimal luggage.
 
Avgas is so unbelievable expensive these days that there are dozens of electric and hybrid electric turbofans/props in development by several big name and serious firms.
Yeah it makes sense too that they're starting with smaller planes as they're most reliant on such expensive Avgas/100LL sources, it's typically double the cost of mogas or more per gallon around where I live and also where aircraft struggle the most with profitability.
 
That's from their companies refusal to adapt which is what ended up killing them, since in countries where they did successfully adapt in the East trains are fast and affordable enough to seriously disrupt even airline routes.
Not refusal, inability, at least in the US.

You are forgetting that post WWII - A lot of European nations and Japan as well, nationalized their rail services AND had plenty of free (read bombed out) real estate and Marshall Plan money to rebuild them to a modern standard with an eye towards playing a major role in post war travel. In the US? We never had our railroad infrastructure bombed and taken over by the Feds (at least not all at once) and once the freeway and airline systems were in place? They were uncompetitive because they were still running on 1930's technology, and essentially have been since.

And then there's the chestnut you have to keep returning to to consider: The US' vast geography meaning that unlike Europe? The distances planes fly mean they'd beat even modern HSR , let alone 60's era trains. You just can't beat planes with trains for long distance travel in the US.

Japanese trains (in-city) pay for themselves, partly because they're well-optimized. They don't run after dark. Optimizing schedules would really cut costs in trains in America but urbanists think trains are a right.



The "everyone was happy to live in the cities until oil agitprop" is one of urbanisms' big lies. Ironically the streetcars couldn't go far enough out of town as their failure.
The reason there are 3 real-life railroads represented in Monopoly is because Atlantic City did get a lot of train traffic.... not from within, but, from people in Philly and Baltimore and New York heading for the shore for vacation. Typically, the furthest a street car system went was some area just on the outskirts of town that would serve as the summer picnic and fall fairgrounds area. Maybe an amusement park if you were really lucky. The idea that oil wrecked the railroads in a grand conspiracy is just as false as the notion that the railroads wrecked interurban systems.... like streetcars, with the same. They simply offered a better service so people used them.
 
They were uncompetitive because they were still running on 1930's technology, and essentially have been since.

Most current track has long since been upgraded...and that's one reason why the whole U.S. rail industry collapsed in the 1970s, a lot of those tracks were decades old and deteriorating. I had seen some chart somewhere of how much a train car can carry compared to it early 20th century counterpart, the decline of the common boxcar is partly because the current boxcars can carry more stuff. Europe and others barely carry freight at all, their capacity sucks.

I doubt even upgrading rails would've helped as by the 1940s railroads were losing ground fast, the spike in passenger rail came from military use, basically sending the country's best men to get mulched in an overseas war, or at the very least, sending them to do work at bases and major cities.

Except in areas that are poor or are being propped up by the government, long-distance railroads have fallen into a niche where it's either automobiles or planes are the better choice depending on distance and price, demanding that they be subsidized "just because" is a nonsensical argument.

It's a bit like ships. Shipping cargo is still done, but moving people across the ocean by boat (despite major improvements in ship technology) is impractical (7 days vs. 10 hour flight). The analogy goes further when long-distance trains are basically a "land cruise", you do it because you want the experience, not because it's faster or cheaper.

There's also some misconception that trains are better because no TSA, but even Jason can attest to long security lines, and looking up Amtrak it has the same bullshit restrictions on luggage anyway as well as the requisite "fuck you, that's why" clause TSA has.
 
You just can't beat planes with trains for long distance travel in the US.
even in smaller countries, it's the only sensible option for the most remote areas
using Bongland as an example, if you're travelling between Inverness (the northernmost city) and anywhere in the country outside Scotland, flying is the quickest way by far - if you're coming from, say, Manchester, it's 1 hour 15 minutes to fly, 6-7 hours by rail and a good 9 hours' drive, not counting breaks
 
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This works great until you get a dent in a parking lot and you have to find a certified mechanic to check and see if it's still airworthy.

Companies try it every few years and the idea never seems to get off the ground(pun intended). Too many compromises for a full mutl-mode vehicle. There are some tricycle style ones that won't require all the highway crash requirements but they're likely to be 2 people with minimal luggage.
Much like the electric car? The technology to build a flying car has existed for well over a Century by now (they had car/plane hybrids featured in the news and science magazines as long back as the 20's and 30's).

The issue continues to be utter lack of practicality compared to the ICE personal auto.


Most current track has long since been upgraded...and that's one reason why the whole U.S. rail industry collapsed in the 1970s, a lot of those tracks were decades old and deteriorating. I had seen some chart somewhere of how much a train car can carry compared to it early 20th century counterpart, the decline of the common boxcar is partly because the current boxcars can carry more stuff. Europe and others barely carry freight at all, their capacity sucks.
The track is indeed much better today. Joint rail has given way to welded continuous, materials tech is better, it lasts longer, runs smoother, etc.

The bottleneck for HSR is that the right-of-way, the footprint those tracks follow? Is too tight for speeds above 80 at the most generous.

Eighteen degree turns will derail anything going faster.

Grade level crossings by the hundreds pose a serious collision risk.

The signaling system is set up under the assumption you're going "slow" enough to read old-fashioned colored lights whizzing by

None of these are insurmountable by current technology.

But they ARE insurmountable by cost.


This is why it was cheaper for HSR to just build their own trackage in Florida and California, separate from every other rail network, the cost to do that is comparable or under what it would cost to even attempt a retro-fit.
 
Trump himself pulled up with a gun but I fought him off and everyone clapped.

1951263665bd53ac46389e155dafd93f96d5de890876b043eaaac02de4f184d7.jpg
 
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Urbanists: Here's why everyone form the suburbs and rural areas are backwards and stupid. Urban cities: Why is the crime rate so high and trash everywhere? Clearly this is the fault of the reactionary right-wingers.
I like how there’s a parked car in the “Where would I park my car?” picture. That looks like a Japanese residential street, and most of the houses have parking spots/carports.

Also why is there empty space in the “literal communism” picture? They could build so much housing on that lot!
 
Oh, so Tesla is the Apple of EVs? That explains everything!
Oh it's worse than that. Apple at least ships a product that works, maybe not well but it does work. Tesla ships and incomplete product and then forces you to pay extra for features that maybe get implemented in a firmware update a few months from when you bought it. Plus the build quality on Teslas as far as fit and finish goes is about the same as a base model entry level GM and the interior and ride quality is about equally as shitty.
 
View attachment 7083981
Urbanists: Here's why everyone form the suburbs and rural areas are backwards and stupid. Urban cities: Why is the crime rate so high and trash everywhere? Clearly this is the fault of the reactionary right-wingers.
the bottom left one is typical early 20th century suburban housing in Bongland, and this type of housing is usually found on quiet streets away from town and city centres
(example - a less fancy architectural style, in a lower-income neighbourhood, but laid out in a similar way)
 
Trump himself pulled up with a gun but I fought him off and everyone clapped.

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There were people that collectively attacked and vandalized cybertrucks in an event around a week ago in Orleans while cops stood by and didn't even bat an eye at them causing felonious amounts of damage while being cheered on by MSM. Musk should open a looney bin for Tesla derangement syndrome freaks like this dude honestly, I've never seen such people get as repulsed as they do in the presence of a steel pavement princess like it.
 
Oh it's worse than that. Apple at least ships a product that works, maybe not well but it does work. Tesla ships and incomplete product and then forces you to pay extra for features that maybe get implemented in a firmware update a few months from when you bought it. Plus the build quality on Teslas as far as fit and finish goes is about the same as a base model entry level GM and the interior and ride quality is about equally as shitty.
The only Tesla I've ever been was ubering around Vegas and it's also the only car I've ridden in since the worst of the 80s mobiles that had a seat belt that didn't latch. It seemed perfectly designed to be a shitty taxi and not much else from that experience.
 
View attachment 7083981
Urbanists: Here's why everyone form the suburbs and rural areas are backwards and stupid. Urban cities: Why is the crime rate so high and trash everywhere? Clearly this is the fault of the reactionary right-wingers.
The "Where do I park my car?" picture clearly shows.... a parked car......
 
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