Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
view the rest of the comments
Bus lanes and trams are a symbol of “communism” and car is a sign of “freedom” until you realize that the ultimate freedom is choosing to walk, bike, take transit, or drive to your destination.
Well, that’s a fucking problem. Don’t take a job in which you are expected to use a personal vehicle for work purposes. Work provided vehicle and submit receipts for gasoline. Insurance company won’t like it. You won’t like how fast your car goes through tires and then dies. Etc.
I feel like the legality of not reimbursing him for using his personal vehicle for work purposes is fairly dubious though I'd be lying if I said I knew the specifics of the laws there.
Employer: taps head They're a contractor and I don't pay then enough to live.
I think in his case he's salary as a regional manager. Contractor is a whole other thing.
I can only see so much of the article so I don't know where he's based, but I know in some places the reimbursement is mandatory. Per IRS mileage reimbursement is currently $0.725/mile. Working in hospice I drive to patients homes with my supplies full time, which cuts me a check for about $300-450 mo, which more than covers gas.
I actually just switched to a hybrid so since reimbursement stays the same, it'll start paying for the car a well.
Given the cost of fuel, a bus pass for me (if I still had to commute, I work from home now) for a month is now just over $800/mo.
6 years ago, that was $375/mo.
I don't think the issue is limited to car drivers, I suspect more than a few folks who took public transit with me are looking at a pretty impactful monthly cost.
Trains. Overhead wire. Green energy. Build it now or suffer later.
I agree.
That does nothing to address the current (rapidly rising) commuting costs happening now, though.
We need Americans to feel the pain hard enough they screen for trains
Would be wonderful.
Unfortunately the time to do it was years ago. Obviously the next best time is to start now, but it will be years before results and that doesnt help those impacted now.
We had electric buses with overhead wires in São Paulo in the 80s.
The US had electric interurban railroads in the Rockies a hundred years ago.
It can happen very fast.
No I'm sorry I'm informed that trains do jot ql4eady exist and so cannot exist
What.... the fuck....? Where do you live that this costs 800 FREAKING DOLLARS???
Northeast US.
The bus stop by me also was shut down, so if I were to do it now, I'd have to drive 25min east. The parking is limited though, so either its pay someone for a monthly parking spot, get there early enough (5:50am, after that its unlikely you'll find a spot), or get dropped off. Or take the risk of a parking ticket I suppose.
Or I could drive 15 min west, away from where I'd be going, and pay an hourly rate for parking. About $25/day, or a monthly cost of ~$250 (last I checked with someone who goes this route). It'll add another $30/mo to the commuter pass for the bus as well.
(EDIT: Just checked out of curiosity - and no more monthly parking there, its now only flat rate of $2.50/hr. There are other lots a block or two away in a few directions that may still offer monthly, but I couldn't say.)
If I drive for about 30 minutes, I can get to a train station where its $400/mo, though the parking cost there is higher at $300/mo, my cousin does that ride but his wife drops him off.
These are not uncommon costs for commuting into major cities.
That is horrifying. I can get a monthly transit pass in my city for $88, which is actually down from 10 years ago, when it was $100.
There's the difference. Most people aren't commuting inside the city. If I were to live in the city where my job is, commuting would be drastically cheaper (though I'd also just bike it, but thats a different matter).
The cost of living there, though, is astronomically high. It also wouldn't work out for my wife, who works more in the agricultural industry, not even getting into the other factors like public schools/quality of education, air quality, etc.
It been a lonnngg time, but in 2008 a 30 day bus pass was $45 in connecticut. brb, gonna go look it up.
https://www.cttransit.com/fares $63 bucks
edit edit, I see you are accounting for.. your parking too. well, thats.. different.
Yeah. I feel very lucky to have moved to a place where I have an electric train and an electric bus system powered by hydroelectric.
Oh wait, climate change means our glacial flow is 12% of the typical rate and the province is announcing a datacenter construction plan?
Well fuck me too I guess.
Wait. Where are you that a bus pass changes price based on fuel?
Northeast US.
Costs go up -> price goes up.
Commenting for update on response ^
?
What update are you expecting here?
Your response to that comment. I wanted to know, so I used a comment as a bookmark.
This is basically it.
I saw a post the other day that argued to the conservative mind there must be an underclass. There must be poor people whose lives suck. If you try to make things good for everyone, you're going against nature and will just make things bad for everyone.
Thus good public transit is bad. If different classes of people all mingle then it's like mixing your food up on the plate and that's just wrong!
They really are like children
But but the oil and car companies DESERVE our income! Corporate rulers are just born better! /s
I still don't get truck culture.
I grew up kinda out in the sticks, fair number of religious nuts and racists.
You know what they'd say about trucks, in the late 90s?
If you need a truck, like, really actually need a truck, you get it and use it only for actually hauling shit, or towing something.
Then you have a sedan or similar for everything else.
Like, ... the yokels of 20/30 years ago would all be laughing at the yokels of today.
I don't get how these people can be this aggresively stupid, its literally an insult to their 'heritage', fucked up as that heritage may or may not be.
They would! I remember my gear head uncles scoffing and laughing at the extended cab in the 90s.
They would absolutley laugh at these yuppies. Now some of them are the yuppies.
its wild.
Yep I remeber that too, specifically
Extended cab? Ridiculous. Like 'hwaaaak ptooie' ridiculous.
Whatchu gonna do with that?
Take your wife down to the feed and seed, ask her for help liftin bags into the bed?
Ahhahahahah!
Swear to god I heard nearly exactly that at some point.
This implies your wife is so large she couldn’t just sit in the passenger seat to one’s right.
... correct.
Multi-stage / trap joke, they want you to walk into that one so they can start making fun of you and her from that angle too.
It's masculine insecurity. Our culture doesn't produce men who are secure in their gender identity so they have to constantly proofs it to themselves and others all the time. Once you see it, you realize it's the root cause from everything from truck nuts to looksmaxxing
Right but like, I'm basically from them.
And I am a guy.
And I have been insecure.
I addressed this via self reflection, learning about myself and others, finding things I wanted to become good at and then becoming good at them.
Like I totally agree with you that trucknutz are literally gender affirming care, but I... I don't get it.
I can't relate to or understand such people beyond pathologizing them and basically treating them as an NPC sub type.
EXACTLY. GIVE A CHOICE!!
I myself am a car person but still. Give us a choice. I would be ALL FOR banning cars in our downtown area and just having to bike walk or bus to get there from farther away. Cars ruin cities.
We need them in rural. But thats far fewer people.